From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 7 00:47:35 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id E110A14F32; Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:47:34 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #551 Message-Id: <20051207054734.E110A14F32@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:47:34 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:47:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 551 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Red Cross Worker Steals Client Debit Cards (Kathy Colbert) Europe's Own Internet Space Now Open for Business (Reuters News Wire) In Face of False Article, Wikipedia Tightens Rules (BBC News Wire) Communications History (Dave Marthouse) Sony BMG Urges Security Fix for CDs (Monty Solomon) Sources For Print Telephone Directories? (Larry G) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Randal Hayes) Re: The Lasting Impact of Sony's Rootkit (alonzo_heem@yahoo.com) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Kathy Colvin Subject: Red Cross Worker Steals Client Debit Cards Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 22:33:42 -0600 Red Cross Volunteer and His Sister Charged With Stealing More Than 100 Red Cross Debit Cards Intended For Hurricane Evacuees Contact: Kathy Colvin of the U.S. Department of Justice, 214-659-8707, Web: http://www.USDOJ.gov/USAO/TXN DALLAS, Dec. 6 /U.S. Newswire/ -- United States Attorney Richard B. Roper announced that Brian Oneal Hines and his sister, Charmaine Denise Hines, surrendered to a federal marshall Tuesday and appeared before United States Magistrate Judge Wm. F. Sanderson, Jr., on charges outlined in a federal criminal complaints filed yesterday in the Northern District of Texas. Each complaint charges each with using stolen Red Cross debit cards to fraudulently obtain goods and services, in violation of 18 U.S.C. section 1029(a)(2). Judge Sanderson detained each of the defendants. The affidavit filed with the federal criminal complaint states that on Nov. 2, federal law enforcement agents received information from the Red Cross office located at 4800 Harry Hines Boulevard in Dallas that a Red Cross volunteer/temporary worker, Brian Hines, was committing fraud with stolen Red Cross debit cards intended for hurricane evacuees. A Red Cross employee stated while he was researching missing Red Cross debit cards on Sept. 27, Hines came into the office offering to volunteer. While the employee was working, he noticed that Hines had a small piece of paper in his hand and that every time he came around, Hines would crumple up the piece of paper in a suspicious manner. The employee was able to read numbers on Hines' paper and identified the numbers on this list as being consistent with a series of missing debit cards. The employee was able to determine that one of the missing debit account numbers had been activated with $4,695 loaded as the value of the card. The employee found that there were at least 100 debit cards missing. The national office of the Red Cross notified the employee that half of the missing one hundred cards had been activated, most of which with a value of $4,695 each, an unusual amount according to the Red Cross employee. Prior to Nov. 2, the Red Cross employee had discussed his suspicions about Hines with another Red Cross employee, who thought it was probable that Hines might leave the Red Cross office and conduct a fraudulent ATM transaction using one or more stolen Red Cross debit cards. On the afternoon of Nov. 2, the employee observed Hines exit the Red Cross parking lot and drive to a Frost Bank branch located on Harwood in Dallas, where Hines pulled into the ATM lane of the bank. A few days later, a U.S. Postal Inspector and a U.S. Secret Service agent interviewed Hines who eventually admitted repeatedly using stolen Red Cross debit cards to fraudulently obtain large amounts of cash from Dallas area ATMs. Hines stated he gave 20 - 25 cards to his sister, Charmaine Denise Hines and her boyfriend. When asked what he bought with the proceeds from the debit cards, Hines stated that he bought jewelry for himself and his girlfriend and vehicles for both family members and friends. Hines also gave gifts of cash, clothing, shoes and jewelry to his family and friends Hines also admitted that in October of 2005, he stole at least 100 Red Cross debit cards or "client assistance cards" from various locations. Hines stated that he was able to steal Red Cross debit cards from the Reunion Arena location with the help of _security guard personnel_. Hines confessed to activating and loading (values) on approximately 100 stolen debit cards. When law enforcement interviewed Charmaine Denise Hines, she admitted that her brother had given her several stolen Red Cross debit cards and that she had fraudulently used the cards to obtain large amounts of cash. While the investigation is ongoing to determine the scope of the fraudulent activity and the total dollar loss, Red Cross records reflect a loss of more than $230,000 at this time. U.S. Attorney Roper praised the investigative efforts of the U.S. Secret Service and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney David Jarvis. http://www.usnewswire.com/ Copyright 2005 U.S. Newswire 202-347-2770 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: Reuters News Wire Subject: Europe's Own Internet Space Now Open For Business Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 22:37:10 -0600 Trademark holders and government bodies can start claiming their European identities on the Internet from 1000 GMT on Wednesday, when the registers open for the new ".eu" domain name aimed at boosting European e-commerce. The first steps toward a European Internet domain were taken in 1999 and later supported by the European Commission to encourage cross-border electronic commerce within the Union. "This is the first time we see a geographic top level domain shared by multiple countries. It creates an e-commerce trading block the EU hopes to benefit by," said David Saias, vice president of sales for Register.com, one of the big registrar companies with which requests for domain names can be filed. New EU member states such as Poland, which want a bigger presence on the Web, can use the ".eu" domain to be more visible and easier to find, he said. But even in the traditional EU nations such as Germany, many companies currently register their Internet name under the national ".de" name instead of the ".com" space which is associated with American or global organizations. If successful, the ".eu" domain could become the de facto domain for all European organizations, which would make it easier for companies and consumers to find and approach companies outside their home countries, Saias said. "This '.eu' domain is a geographic marketing tool," he said. For the first two months, close to 500 registrar companies will take down claims only for registered trademarks, public bodies and geographical locations in the European Union. Companies, trade names, business identifiers and literary works can be registered for two months after that. Starting April 7, all individuals within the 25 European Union member states can start filing their requests, said the not-for-profit EURid organization which keeps the database for the .eu domain names. The European Union had demanded a "sunrise period" before open registration to avoid "cybersquatting," which could result in trademarks being registered by parties other than their owners or companies having to pay massive amounts to buy their Internet domain names from speculators. During the sunrise period, evidence of prior rights such as trademarks will be checked by PricewaterhouseCoopers. 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: BBC News Wire Subject: After False Article, Wikipedia Tightens New Rules Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 22:41:19 -0600 Wikipedia tightens online rules -- Online encyclopaedia Wikipedia has tightened its submission rules followinga complaint. Prominent journalist John Seigenthaler described as "false and malicious" an entry on Wikipedia implicating him in the Kennedy assassinations. When he phoned Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder, he was told there was no way of finding out who wrote the entry. Wikipedia has since removed the entry and now requires users to register before they can create articles. But visitors to the site will still be able to edit content already posted without having to register. The case has highlighted once again the problem of publishing information online. 'Impulse vandalism' Unlike content published in magazines, books or newspapers, online information can be posted anonymously by anyone. ************************ The marketplace of ideas ultimately will take care of the problem but in the meantime, what happens to people like me? -John Seigenthaler ************************ Wikipedia has thrived on offering people the chance to contribute to a collective knowledge bank. Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has gathered together some 850,000 articles in English as well as entries in at least eight other languages on a wide range of topics. Based on wikis, open-source software which lets anyone fiddle with a webpage, anyone reading a subject entry can disagree, edit, add, delete, or replace the entry. It relies on volunteers, many of whom are experts in a particular field, to edit previously submitted articles. Mr. Wales acknowledged that the new procedures would not prevent people from posting false information but said he hoped it would limit the number of new articles being created. This, in turn, should make it easier for the 600 volunteers to edit content, he said. "In many cases the types of things we see going on are impulse vandalism," he said. In an opinion piece for the USA Today, where Mr Seigenthaler was the founding editorial director, the 78-year-old journalist claimed that only one sentence in his Wikipedia biography was correct -- the fact that he was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. He went on to describe Wikipedia as a "flawed and irresponsible research tool". "The marketplace of ideas ultimately will take care of the problem but in the meantime, what happens to people like me?" he asked. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/4502846.stm Copyright 2005 BBC MMV 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. For more news headlines from the BBC each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html ------------------------------ From: Dave Marthouse Subject: Communications History Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 23:33:02 -0500 I am a bit of a communications history buff. I've been doing a little research about telecom in the days before transoceanic phone service before cables and satellites. The only way to bridge the oceans was hf radio. It's interesting to note that anyone with a shortwave radio could listen to all the international point-to-point phone traffic. I am going to assume that a form of independent sideband was used with a maximum of two or four circuits going to a specific country. Ssb is very easy to receive even with a standard shortwave radio of the day as long as it had a bfo to demodulate and recover the signals. I would like to know if any form of primitive encryption was used to make the circuits a bit more secure. It must have been very easy to literally monitor all the international traffic to and from a given nation. Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be appreciated to help scratch my historical itch. Dave Marthouse dmart@pure.net ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:24:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Sony BMG Urges Security Fix for CDs By ALEX VEIGA AP Business Writer LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Sony BMG Music Entertainment said Tuesday some 5.7 million of its CDs were shipped with anti-piracy technology that requires a new software patch to plug a potential security breach in computers used to play the CDs. The security vulnerability was discovered by online civil liberty group Electronic Frontier Foundation and brought to the attention of Sony BMG, which has been under fire in recent weeks over security issues with an unrelated CD copy-protection plan. The company said Tuesday it brought the issue up with the MediaMax software maker, SunnComm Technologies Inc., which has developed a software patch to fix the problem. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=53741647 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 6 Dec 2005 16:13:04 PST From: Larry G Subject: Sources For Print Telephone Directories? Hi everyone, I tried sending this post via usenet, but for some reason it either wasn't approved or never reached the servers. I managed to find my own answer to the question, but more sources can't hurt. Years ago, I ordered some out-of-state phone directories (I live in California) and received a catalog of where to get more. I remember having a catalog from AT&T and one from GTE (which is now Verizon). Recently, I was curious to know if you could still order out-of-state/area telephone directores. While sources for online listings were plentiful, print sources were not. Through some obscure search, I managed to find Verizon's website for this "DirectoryStore.com", but was wondering if that was the only source. I assume that you can also order from your local phone company directly. This question in this timeframe is like asking for a listing of someone's 8-track tape collection, I realize, but not all cities and places have listings online. Thanks for any information, and if the original post was rejected for some reason, can you please tell me why. AFAIK, it is telecom related. Thanks in advance, Larry [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So far as I know, your original post did not get to me. It is telecom-related and would have been used, as it was this time. But, you know how it goes with spam on the net. While legitimate mail can often times get lost in the rush of junk coming through, the only email guarenteed prominent placement is spam. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 14:48:27 -0600 From: Randal Hayes Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List > I called 1-888-382-1222. After I entered my phone number, the voice said > the calls would stop in 3 weeks, My understanding is that it is 3 months. Although the "refresh" and "scrubbing" frequency from the FTC/FCC DNC Registry was originally set at 3 months, it was changed such that those telemarketers who must comply with the DNC Registry must "scrub" their lists every 30 days with the latest DNC database information. Randy Hayes ------------------------------ From: alonzo_heem@yahoo.com Subject: Re: The Lasting Impact of Sony's Rootkit Date: 6 Dec 2005 15:00:56 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Maybe Sony should have read this piece first: " The effort required to enforce copyright is approaching infinity. " Encryption, the Industry counters: we will be so clever that we'll only distribute a product that can be unlocked and used by the customer, by the miracle of the cipher, a secret code. "The Internet was built for maximum survivability in a nuclear war. It's everywhere, and growing exponentially. How's the hell is Entertainment business going to keep up with that? And copyright all you want. The Internet doesn't care; if it can be digitized and loaded onto a networked computer, it will be everywhere, soon. The cyborg guarantees it. Go ahead - sick your lawyers on a few dozen downloaders. It's just a finger in the dyke; a thousand new holes will appear every day. Squared. "Comparisons of the Internet to a military cyborg really aren't hyperbole. The grim history is that Internet was originally built as a cybernetic military command-and-control infrastructure for coordinating, among other things, the launch of nuclear missiles. Researchers at the Department of Defense figured out that virtual communication circuits on a network beat the heck out of literal, point-to-point circuits of dedicated wiring. This scheme of virtual circuits brought with it the prospect the military could build a control system that could fix itself instantaneously if it sustained damage. "Damage, as in, nuclear damage. When a segment of the network was compromised -- as in, "Oh, heck -- they just nuked Denver" -- the system could re-configure these virtual circuits on-the-fly -- with computers and routers instead of work crews with pliers, wire and soldering guns -- and the messages would still get through, right now. Simply, the Net interpreted sudden silences in any of its network nodes as damage, and routed around it. "That is the Prime Directive, core message, and DNA of the Internet, all in one: If you can't get a message through one channel, route around it -- invisibly, silently, relentlessly -- until you make the connection. "And here's the commercially grizzly implication of that Prime Directive no entertainment executive has, as of yet, been able to understand: The Internet interprets commercial interest, censorship or virtual toll-booths of any kind as damage. And routes around them. Invisibly, automatically, instantaneously." Quoted from http://www.thomasscoville.com/Tinseltown_Burning.pdf "Why downloading isn't wrong, copyright is dead and Hollywood is in decline." ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 20:42:22 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: > Here is the problem, > I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL > connections to the internet and use these connections to provide > internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of > about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would > like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I > don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to > balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). > Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? > -Jonathan Obtain a Linux server, connect each DSL line to a separate Ethernet card, and modify its route table to give equal weight to each line. You'll need a third card for your wireless AP or other LAN connections. Best of luck. William ------------------------------ 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, For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml End of TELECOM Digest V24 #551 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 7 15:41:05 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 7F9FA14F88; Wed, 7 Dec 2005 15:41:04 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #552 Message-Id: <20051207204104.7F9FA14F88@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 15:41:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BEEN_TURNED_DOWN,DRUGS_ERECTILE autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Dec 2005 15:42:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 552 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Phony Email Tricks Ebay Investigators (Robert McMillan) FTC Study on Masking and Filtering to Stop Spammers (Thomas Claburn) Interview With a Spammer (Tom Spring) Amp'd Dials Down Music Prices (Eric Friedebach) For RIM: Careful What You Ask For (Eric Friedebach) Hypothetical SxS Question (Lisa Hancock) Cellular-News for Wednesday 7th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Cisco Chief: Video Will Boost Internet Traffic (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (GlowingBlueMist) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (jonfklein@gmail) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (Gordon Burditt) Re: Don't Call It Spyware (John Levine) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lisa Hancock) Re: Default COCOT Behavior (Ed Greenberg) Re: Communications History (Rik) Re: Communications History (Lisa Hancock) Re: Communications History (Scott Dorsey) Re: Communications History (Jim Stewart) 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: Robert McMillan Subject: Phony Email Tricks Ebay Investigators Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:44:29 -0600 Robert McMillan, IDG News Service A sophisticated phishing attack has proven so successful, it has tricked eBay's own fraud investigations team into endorsing it as legitimate, according to an independent security consultant who reported the attack to eBay. In late November, Richi Jennings received a fraudulent e-mail message containing the subject line "Christmas is Coming on ebay.co.uk." Offering him "great tips for successful Christmas selling," the message directed him to the Web site ebaychristmas.net, which then asked Jennings to enter his eBay user name and password, as well as the name and password for his e-mail account. Jennings reported the site to eBay on November 25, and four days later he got a note back from the company's investigations team claiming that the e-mail message was, in fact, "an official e-mail message sent to you on behalf of e-Bay." Jennings was dumfounded. He immediately wrote back to eBay pointing out that the Web site being used was clearly fraudulent, but his e-mail went unanswered. eBay Changes Tune On Monday, an eBay spokesperson confirmed that the e-mail message was indeed part of a fraud, but she could not explain why it had initially been identified as legitimate. "I don't know the answer to that," said spokesperson Amanda Pires. "I'm assuming right now it was just an error." From their initial response, it appeared that eBay's investigators did not take his concerns seriously, Jennings said. "They never actually used the word idiot, but I felt like they were calling me an idiot," he said. He believes that the e-mail message in question bore such a close resemblance to a legitimate eBay message that the company's investigators were simply tricked by the scam. Pires said that eBay had, in fact, been working to take down the phishing site since November 8, weeks before Jennings even contacted the company. Both Jennings and eBay agreed that the phony Web site has been set up in such a way that it is extremely difficult to shut it down. The Web site's server software is being hosted on a variety of different PCs that appear to have been taken over by malicious "bot" software. Whenever eBay succeeds in getting one of these servers shut down, a new one pops up to take its place, Pires said. "This is one of the cleverest [phishing attacks] I've seen in a while," Jennings said. Antifraud Efforts EBay has also been trying to shut down the Web site by working with the Internet registrar that was used to acquire the ebaychristmas.net domain, Pires said. Despite these efforts, however, the site has remained operational. That registrar, which does business under the name Joker.com, has the power to shut down the scam Web site, Jennings said. "If they were taking their responsibilities seriously, the site would have been shut down weeks ago," he said. Joker.com did not respond to e-mail requests to comment for this report. EBay's gaffe shows how hard it has become to keep track of fraudsters, said Rich Miller, an analyst with Internet services vendor Netcraft. Netcraft, which offers a free antiphishing toolbar of its own, classified more than 8,000 phishing sites in the month of November, Miller said. "It's very had to keep straight what is legitimate and what's not," he said. As for Richi Jennings, though he doesn't have high regard for eBay's investigators, he's willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. It's possible, he said, that the company was simply overwhelmed with questions about a legitimate e-mail message that closely resembled the scam, and then made the mistake of assuming he was writing about the same thing. "Hopefully this was a false negative in a sea of correct answers," Jennings said. Copyright 2005 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. *** 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 ------------------------------ From: Thomas Claburn Subject: FTC Study on Masking and Filtering to Stop Spammers Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:54:09 -0600 By Thomas Claburn Security Pipeline Tue Nov 29, 9:00 AM ET Trickery and technology both play key roles in managing spam, according to a study released yesterday by the Federal Trade Commission. The agency looked at three aspects of spamming and efforts to control it: the automated harvesting of E-mail addresses on public areas of the Internet; using E-mail address masking to reduce address harvesting; and the effectiveness of spam filtering by Internet Service Providers. To conduct its five-week study, the FTC established 50 test E-mail accounts at each of three separate ISPs; two used spam filters and one didn't. It also posted 50 E-mail addresses on various Web sites, chat rooms, message boards, USENET groups, and blogs. Sure enough, spammers harvested many of those addresses and spammed them. However, addresses posted in chat rooms, message boards, USENET groups, and blogs proved less likely to be harvested than those on general Web sites. The FTC noted that some chat room operators took active steps to prevent E-mail address harvesting from online areas under their supervision. E-mail address harvesting qualifies as an aggravated violation of the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act of 2003 (CAN-SPAM). The study concluded that E-mail address masking is an effective way to reduce spam. During the course of the study, unmasked E-mail addresses received over 6,400 spam messages, while only one spam message reached masked E-mail addresses. Also known as "munging," masking is the long-standing practice of altering an E-mail address so that it's readable by people but improperly formatted for machines, such as "tclaburn at cmp dot com." However, the effectiveness of address masking is not foolproof, particularly if a simple masking method (such as the one above) is used. The FTC observed that at least one harvesting program appeared to be able to capture masked addresses and translate them into a useable form by converting the words "at" and "dot" into their respective symbols. While the FTC concludes address masking is an effective tactic to prevent spam, some Internet users argue the practice diminishes the Internet's functionality for the sake of personal gain. The study also underscores the utility of ISP-based filtering. After five weeks, E-mail accounts at the ISP with no filter received 8,885 spam messages. The accounts at the ISPs that filtered received 1,208 spam messages (over 86% blocked) and 422 spam messages (over 95% blocked) respectively. The FTC did not disclose the makers of the two spam filters used in the study. But it did note that the difference between the two ISPs' block rates is not necessarily a reflection of superior technology because the study does not address whether the filtering resulted in any false positives (legitimate messages mistaken for spam). An FTC spokesperson was not immediately available for comment. Copyright 2005 CMP Media LLC. 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, CMP Media, LLC. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Tom Spring Subject: Interview With a Spammer Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 00:50:15 -0600 Meet Average-Joe Spammer Tom Spring, PC World Tip of the MonthWatch Out for Holiday-Related Scams. Phishers love the holiday season because they view the boost in online shopping as an opportunity: The security firm AppRiver reports that spam volumes nearly double over the holidays. Be particularly on guard for e-mail messages that purport to come from your credit card company or your favorite online merchant. It's tough being an average-Joe spammer these days. Divorced and in his 40s, Mike has two kids to help support, a skyrocketing home heating bill, and a mortgage. And spamming just isn't paying the bills like it used to. In the heyday of his spamming career, from 1997 to 2000, profiting from sending out unsolicited bulk e-mail was easy, Mike says. On an average month he made $40,000 pelting millions of inboxes with spam. Now, he complains, spam filters have become too effective and block most of his e-mail. Also, he adds, spamming for a living has become increasingly risky, as evidenced by recent arrests of--and fines imposed on-spammers. He himself is currently being sued by a large ISP for using illegal methods for sending spam, he says. "Spamming becomes a little more unprofitable and a little more high-risk every day," says Mike, who agreed to be interviewed on condition that his real name be withheld. "I don't know why I still do it." In fact, spam is no longer Mike's sole, or even principal, source of income. He now works in construction by day and devotes only 20 hours a week at night to spam. And because of the lawsuit, Mike has changed the nature of his activities. He makes $500 a week by selling lists of IP addresses for compromised computers, sometimes called zombie PCs -- systems that have been hijacked by a hacker so that they can be used to send spam. The people who own these computers (which can be in homes or businesses) have no idea their PCs are being used for such purposes. By routing junk e-mail through these PCs, spammers can hide their identity and can also save money on the bandwidth required to send large volumes of e-mail. Mike either buys the lists of compromised PCs from hackers and fellow spammers, or he gets them free from sites run by spammers, such as the Russian-based FreeProxy.RU. Once he gets a list, he checks the validity and quality of the addresses, weeding out those that don't respond or that have been put on spam blacklists. He then sells the "cleaned" lists of zombie PCs to other spammers. Mike is one of the thousands of spammers in the world who make up the majority of junk e-mail purveyors. "There are only a few dozen spammers worldwide that are making 90 percent of the spam profits," he says. "The rest of the bulk e-mailers are people like me." After I found Mike through a Web site where spammers meet and share tips, he agreed to a phone interview. Here is an edited transcript of that conversation. Interview With a Spammer Q: Don't you think what you do is wrong? A: I don't care what people think. If nobody was really interested in spam and never bought anything that was advertised to them, spam would go away. But people are interested in spam. As long as people buy things advertised in spam then people like me will send bulk e-mail. Are we really that different from so-called legitimate bulk e-mailers? I don't think there is a whole lot of difference. Q: Why don't you send bulk e-mail legally? The Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act [the federal law regulating unsolicited bulk e-mail] allows you to. A: You are correct. CAN-SPAM created a lot of opportunity for spammers. However, playing by the rules is too risky, and it's bad for business. Here is what I mean. The only way spammers can sneak by an ISP's anti-spam filter these days is by tricking spam filters. The techniques to trick anti-spam filters are illegal, according to CAN-SPAM -- not to mention a growing number of state anti-spam laws. To get past spam filters you can't play by the rules. Those illegal spammers who try to go legit are finding themselves in court for violating different anti-spam laws. CAN-SPAM was great because there was one law to abide by for sending bulk e-mail. Now ISPs and states are coming after us. If you want to be sure you don't end up in a court, don't let them find you. Q: Are anti-spam laws and better filters working to stop spammers? A: Yes. Today big ISPs block e-mail from suspicious sources. They filter out spam based on e-mail addresses, words, links in the e-mail, pictures, or anything. For people like me it's just not worth it anymore. However, this forces a lot of spammers to send more spam. In the old days you could earn, say, $1000 by sending out 20,000 spam messages. Today, to earn $1000, you have to send out 2 million spam messages or more. The better filters get, the more determined we will get. It's not as if spammers really want to break the law. It's just that we are looking for any edge possible to get past the filter. Right now we are targeting smaller ISPs that don't have a lot to spend on good spam filters. Q: So why spam, if it's getting riskier and less profitable? A: Good question. For me, it's what I know how to do. And I just would hate to give up. It's like admitting defeat. But I am planning on quitting this spring. Q: How did you make money when you were actually sending out spam? A: For me it was mortgage and debt consolidation leads. For every person that called a mortgage broker based on my e-mail I would earn between $22 and $26. Dating sites would pay me $2 for every trial membership I brought them, and $15 for anyone who joined. Q: What does the future of spam look like for average-Joe spammers? A: Not good. The capital investment in computers and software required to make it worth the risk is enormous. A lot of people younger than me are spamming. But for a lot of people like myself, it's no longer easy money. We are throwing in the towel. Q: So you are seeing a changing of the spam guard, so to speak? A: Here is the deal. Spammers make money through advertising. And spammers today are diverse. They work with adware; they control botnets of computers; they are virus writers. Today's spammers don't just want to sell you Viagra; they want to trick you to into handing over your credit card number, or infect your system and turn it into a zombie. Q: Will spam ever go away? A: Spam will never go away. Filters may get better and more spammers may get arrested, but there will always be spammers. We adapt. I don't know what the next great spamming technique will be. But I can promise you spammers are working on it right now. As I said before, so long as people click on spam and buy things advertised in their inboxes, spam will exist. Copyright 2005 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. *** 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 ------------------------------ From: Eric Friedebach Subject: Amp'd Dials Down Music Prices Date: 7 Dec 2005 09:10:32 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com by Peter Kafka, 12.06.05, Forbes.com NEW YORK - How much does a digital song cost? At Apple Computer's store, a single goes for 99 cents. But buy the same tunes via Sprint Nextel's over-the-air download service through your mobile phone, and it will cost $2.50. Both the wireless carrier and the music companies with which it works say that customers will pay a $1.50 premium for the opportunity to buy a song any time they want it, without being tethered to a computer. But executives at new wireless phone service Amp'd Mobile, aimed at young customers with insatiable appetites for digital content, argue that logic is flawed. When Amp'd launches on Dec. 15, the carrier will sell over-the-air downloads for 99 cents. http://www.forbes.com/technology/wireless/2005/12/07/music-downloads-ampd-cx_pk_1206musicampd.html Eric Friedebach /Jaywalking in Dallas/ ------------------------------ From: Eric Friedebach Subject: For RIM: Careful What You Ask For Date: 7 Dec 2005 09:17:23 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Tomas Kellner, 12.06.05, Forbes.com NEW YORK - Last November, the federal government injected itself in the protracted BlackBerry court fight, where NTP is suing BlackBerry's maker, Research In Motion, over patent infringement. The feds filed a "statement of interest" with the court, saying the U.S. government is a major BlackBerry user, and the court should refrain from issuing any injunction that would shut government BlackBerries down. The government went on to say that it was "assessing" the extent to which "the public interest would be impaired by the award of any injunctive relief" to NTP. "This is nearly unprecedented," says professor Mark A. Lemley, director of Stanford's Program in Law Science and Technology. "I can't think of another case in which they have weighed in unsolicited on whether a court should grant a particular injunction," which is a great weapon for plaintiffs in patent litigation, shutting down defendants' product or even the entire business, and forcing them into settlement talks. http://www.forbes.com/2005/12/05/rimm-federal-lawsuit-cz_tk_1206rimm.html Eric Friedebach /Jaywalking in Dallas/ ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: 7 Dec 2005 10:40:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com This question is purely speculative only, not for real use. Suppose we wanted to install a PABX using step-by-step gear in a condo complex. We need 250 stations. My question regards the most efficient station number assignments. One person says the stations ought to have a four digit number that corresponds to the apartment number. There are 19 buildings with 10-15 units per building. So unit #103 would get phone number 0103 and unit #1513 would be phone 1513. While the above is easier to remember, wouldn't that be a waste of SxS terminals and require more switch units without any gain in efficiency? Isn't a four digit code inherently more complex than a three digit in an SxS environment? I think the phone ought to be numbered strictly sequentially, starting from 111 and going upward. The Bell System history talks about "graded multiples" to more efficiently use trunks and switchgear in central offices, but I don't think that would apply in this application. Now if we wanted to implement the above using modern technology, would only a PC be required with appropriate software and cards? I guess we'd need capacity for about five conversations at once. P.S. (For real). We had in-house maintenance staff which had three Nextel "push to talk" walkie talkie cell phones -- two guys and the manager. The maintainence staff was let go and replaced by outside contractor. The phones were surplus. They had to pay $600 to get out of the contract (stll cheaper than the 18 months left ). The homeowners were annoyed at that. Some were annoyed at the termination of the inhouse staff, but not very much. Thanks. Public replies please. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The problem as I see it with matching apartment number to intercom number is a security issue. Do you really want to let strangers know that the tenant in apartment 103 (0103) or the tenant in apartment 1513 (1513) is or is not at home? With the Bell System 'Interphone' (or the competitor's 'Enterphone') arrangement, the intercom numbers were used randomly for more security. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Wednesday 7th December 2005 Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 07:46:15 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Cingular 3G Launch Presents Data Revenue Opportunity http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15126.php Cingular Wireless launched its third-generation wireless network in select markets Tuesday, bringing with it the opportunity to derive additional revenue from data services. ... [[ Financial ]] Russia's largest mobile operator MTS bids for Turkey's Telsim http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15124.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has filed a bid for Turkey's second-largest mobile operator Telsim, a spokesperson for MTS told Prime-Tass late Monday. ... Orascom CEO Interested In TIM Hellas Via Weather Fund http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15125.php Orascom Telecom Holding Chief Executive Naguib Sawiris is exploring the possibility of bidding for Greek wireless operator TIM Hellas, a spokesman for Sawiris' telecommuncations unit said Tuesday. ... Minister says Russia's MTS may get control over MTS Belarus http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15127.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) may get a controlling stake in its Belarus affiliate, MTS Belarus, in 2007, Belarus' Communications Minister Vladimir Goncharenko told a news conference Tuesday. ... More Cash for MVNO Vendor http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15139.php Visage Mobile, which provides MVNO platforms, says that it has closed US$30 million in series D funding led by Nomura International, bringing its total capital raised to more than US$80 million. All of its previous investors participated in the D rou... [[ Messaging ]] Celcom Boosts its Messaging and Prepaid Capacity http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15136.php LogicaCMG says that it has deployed a major mobile messaging and mobile payments upgrade with Malaysia's Celcom, serving over 5 million prepaid subscribers. The contract valued at approximately over US$16 million includes the deployment of LogicaCMG'... [[ Network Contracts ]] UPDATE: Ericsson Wins 'largest Ever' Network Deal From U.K.'s 3 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15123.php Ericsson AB said Tuesday it has won an exclusive contract to run the network and IT infrastructure of Hutchison Whampoa's third-generation U.K. operator, 3. ... T-Mobile Signs Single Clearing House Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15132.php BSG Clearing Solutions, a provider of clearing and settlement solutions, has announced the signing of a framing agreement with T-Mobile International for international roaming clearing services. The agreement allows all European affiliates of T-Mobil... [[ Network Operators ]] Russia's VimpelCom to launch Beeline brand in Ukraine next year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15128.php Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom plans to offer mobile services under the Beeline brand in Ukraine hrough its local subsidiary in five to six months, VimpelCom's CEO Alexander Izosimov told Prime-Tass Tuesday. ... CDMA Coverage in the Arctic Wilderness http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15131.php Alaska Communications Systems has extended its CDMA network to an area of the North Slope oil fields in Alaska. Two new CDMA cell sites were turned up late last month in Deadhorse and Kuparuk, on the North Slope. The footprint covers Deadhorse, Prudh... [[ Personnel ]] Australia's Telstra Says Doug Campbell To Retire http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15122.php Telstra Corp. said Tuesday that Doug Campbell will retire as head of its CountryWide rural services division later this month. ... New Boss for Hutch 3G Ireland http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15134.php Hutchison 3G Ireland 3 has announced the appointment of Robert Finnegan as managing director for 3 Ireland. Finnegan will report directly to 3 UK and Ireland CEO, Bob Fuller. Most recently, Finnegan was CEO of Sentrio Technologies, a hosted mobile re... [[ Regulatory ]] Russia's Reiman says VimpelCom "has best chance" for Far East license http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15130.php Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom "has the best chance" to get GSM licenses for regions in Russia's Far East Federal District, as it filed its application earlier than other companies, Russian IT and Telecommunications Minister Leon... [[ Reports ]] O2 Tops Mobile Phone Retailer Survey http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15137.php O2 and Phones 4u rank highest in satisfying customers with their mobile phone retail experience, according to the J.D. Power and Associates 2005 UK Mobile Phone Retailer Study. The study measures customer satisfaction with the seven leading mobile ph... Young Consumers Are The First 'Technology Everywhere' Generation http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15140.php Young consumers are using more technology at a younger age to connect with more people than ever before, according to a survey of more than 5,000 US and Canadian online youth between the ages of 12 and 21 by Forrester Research. For example, 87% of 15... [[ Statistics ]] Russia's Sibirtelecom mobile user base up to 1.8 mln Dec 1 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15129.php The mobile subscriber base of Russian telecommunications company Sibirtelecom and its subsidiaries rose 86% since the beginning of the year to 1.834 million people as of December 1, the company said Tuesday. ... Two Million Customers for Jordanian Operator http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15135.php Jordan's Fastlink has announced that the number of its customers has risen to 2 million with the advent of the year end, reaching the targeted number for 2005, a year that has witnessed fierce competition in the telecommunications market in Jordan. T... [[ Technology ]] Vodafone Group Launches Global Mobile TV From Dec http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15121.php Vodafone Group Plc Tuesday announced the launch of its global Mobile TV channels featuring a mix of world TV brands, pan-European sports coverage and entertainment and documentary programmes. ... France Telecom Signs Chinese R&D Agreement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15133.php China's ZTE and France Telecom has signed an agreement for joint research and development, initially focusing on applying the Linux operating system for 3G smartphone handsets, with the development of a particularly innovative client interface. The a... Vodafone Selects Integrated Location Solution http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15138.php Openwave Systems says that NEC is integrating the company's Location Manager into NEC's Network Assisted Location Information Solutions. Vodafone K.K. in Japan is the first customer to select the combined solution. Openwave and NEC's location solutio... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 12:03:18 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Cisco Chief: Video Will Boost Internet Traffic USTelecom dailyLead December 7, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zDcsatagCzsTnRJVQV TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Cisco chief: Video will boost Internet traffic BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * BellSouth announces IPTV trial * RCN buys Con Ed Communications * SunRocket offers new VoIP plan * Comcast, TWC mull family-friendly tiers * Gartner advises companies to halt "mission-critical BlackBerry deployments" USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Telecom Crash Course -- The must-have book for telecom professionals TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Cingular launches 3G network * Nortel to help build WiMAX network in Canadian province * Mobile Web quality improves * Yahoo! is on the line with new phone service REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Dutch government halves KPN stake Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zDcsatagCzsTnRJVQV ------------------------------ From: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 01:15:17 -0600 Organization: Octanews wrote in message news:telecom24.550.3@telecom-digest.org: > Here is the problem, > I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL > connections to the internet and use these connections to provide > internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of > about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would > like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I > don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to > balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). > Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? > -Jonathan There are many routers on the market that do exactly what you are describing. Try a quick Google search using "load balancing router" and check out what turns up. Caution -- Many routers allow two WAN ports be connected like you want but in actuality they are only configured to use one or the other for traffic and switch to the other one when the link in use fails. Read the reviews and check online user manuals to verify the router you pick does load balancing as well as failure mode switching. You might check out the D-Link DI-604 router for example. I have seen it go for around for $35 bucks on www.streetprices.com. Here is the link to D-link model DI-604 http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=62&sec=0 From there you can read the manual or other information about the product. ------------------------------ From: jonfklein@gmail.com Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: 7 Dec 2005 09:44:50 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I know nothing about setting up a server, so please pardon my ignorance. Is there any reason why it needs to be a linux server? Could it be Windows? Where can I get further information about setting up a server and modifying the route tables? William Warren wrote: > jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: >> Here is the problem, >> I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL >> connections to the internet and use these connections to provide >> internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of >> about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would >> like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I >> don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to >> balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). >> Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? >> -Jonathan > Obtain a Linux server, connect each DSL line to a separate Ethernet > card, and modify its route table to give equal weight to each line. > You'll need a third card for your wireless AP or other LAN connections. > Best of luck. > William ------------------------------ From: gordonb.sn0lt@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 19:56:47 -0000 > I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL > connections to the internet and use these connections to provide > internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of > about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would > like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I > don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to > balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). Are the lines connected to the same provider? Are they willing to bond the lines together on their end? (This may cost extra, or you may get the voice equivalent of a blank stare from the customer service representative in India.) You may be able to distribute outgoing traffic evenly between the two lines, but you have no control over how the incoming traffic is distributed unless you make arrangements with your ISP. There are drivers in FreeBSD (and probably Linux as well) which permit distributing traffic over several lines which presumably have the same destination. In FreeBSD, this is the netgraph driver with the one2many module. The rest of the system pretends the two lines are one interface. This works best if the other end is also doing the same thing (and I suspect Cisco routers at the ISP can do it). You would use a FreeBSD or Linux machine as your router with multiple network cards (two for the two lines, one for internal net, perhaps one for wireless). It is possible (especially if the lines are from different providers) that each DSL line will not accept outgoing packets except for those with "from" IP addresses assigned to the DSL lines. In other words, packets going out DSL line A have to be from netblock A, and the replies will probably be routed down DSL line A. Similarly for DSL line B. (ISPs do this to prevent untraceable spoofed flooding. If you flood, it's at least traceable to a specific box at the ISP. You might still be able to spoof your neighbor if he's on the same box.) Once you start a TCP connection, the IP address must be from either netblock A or B and traffic must go out the corresponding line for the duration of the connection. Do you intend to accept incoming connections from the outside? (Mostly, this means servers, but some peer-to-peer and FTP issues are involved also). Then you need an arrangement with your ISP to fail over (and you want load balancing also) from line A to B and vice versa routing for the public IPs of your servers. > Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? To do a good job, you need help from your ISP. To do a really good job, especially if the lines are from different ISPs, you need to talk BGP on both of them. For what you are doing, this is a bit like using nuclear weapons to solve a mosquito problem. Gordon L. Burditt ------------------------------ Date: 7 Dec 2005 17:47:53 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Don't Call It Spyware Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA In article you write: > Three years ago the company was considered a parasite and a scourge. > Today it's a rising star -- selling virtually the same product. How a > pop-up pariah won the adware wars. There's some statements in this article which I know are wrong, like the claim that they finance the Anti-Spyware Coalition. I'm an ASC member and I can assure you that Gator/Claria has never tried to show their face, and would have been turned down if they asked, like many other adware companies already have. This makes me somewhat sceptical of the whole article. Also, I've met Annalee and she is a good writer but she is not the most skeptical person I've ever met. Claria has been pretty good at dealing with their legal challenges, and their PR is great (it even fooled Esther Dyson), but people in the industry are under no illusions about what they do. Regards, John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 7 Dec 2005 10:47:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com There are three huge loopholes in this program and they're taking full advantage. Telemarketers are scum. They can't bear not to use their high speed auto dialers and cheap phone lines. Answering machine picks up and they leave a message. Human picks up and they switch a human on. One is non-profits. They are aggressively calling for donations for ambulances to zoos. Two is political. They very aggressive call around election times. Third is "prior relationship". Because of the loose definition, practically any business can claim a "prior business relationship" through some sort of loose affiliation with another business. If you have a bank account, your bank can sell your name to "affiliates". Supermarket discount cards, pharmacy registration, etc. Other businesses simply lie. I've gotten several calls starting off "we think we've done work for you a few years ago". In my case I know they're lying since I live in an apartment and could never have used their services. They bank on the fact that most of us have lives and won't bother to file a formal complaint with the authorities and even if we do the authorities won't do much about it. Anyone care to defend telemarketers or the people who make the equipment they use? [public replies please ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 06 Dec 2005 22:35:53 -0800 From: Ed Greenberg Subject: Re: Default COCOT Behavior > I have an interest in telephony, and to further it, I recently bought > a COCOT for personal use to play around with. > Another interesting behavior I've noticed is that while you're dialing > a number, but before you deposit any money, it beeps out the DTMF for > the number to be dialed extremely slowly over the line. If you don't > deposit any money by the time the number is about to be completely > dialed, it will hang up. After you deposit the money, it will pick up > again and dial the number quickly. Does anyone have any explanations > for why it would do this? The circuit board inside is described as an > "Elcotel Series 5," if anyone is curious. This is called trickle dialing. The phone relies on the line for power, so it's gone off hook to get voltage while it's interacting with you. The digits are being dialed in order to keep the dialtone from timing out. This also keeps the phone from ringing in while you are off hook. > Despite all the oddities, having your own pay phone sure is fun. Did you get software, so you can reprogram it to do what you want it to do? ------------------------------ From: Rik Subject: Re: Communications History Date: 7 Dec 2005 03:48:59 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Similarly, in the 1970's long distance phone calls were being sent via satellites using sub-carriers on frequencies in the "shortwave" range. These subcarriers were modulated with ssb. I connected an output of my satellite receiver to my shortwave receiver and tuned in many telephone circuits. The audio was very clear and there was no fading as was common on over the air shortwave. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Communications History Date: 7 Dec 2005 06:27:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dave Marthouse wrote: > The only way to bridge the oceans was hf radio. It's interesting to > note that anyone with a shortwave radio could listen to all the > international point-to-point phone traffic. One of the Bell Labs history "A History of Engineering & Science in the Bell System" series covered overseas radio transmission in detail. Most larger libraries have these and it's worth checking out. I'm not sure which volume of the series covers overseas calls. They used a combination of long wave and short wave transmissions, using whichever happened to afford the best signal when the call was made. I sensed that engineers had to babysit every call adjusting the signals as necessary. They had to manually consider a variety of electronic and atmospheric conditions. The ability of equipment to "lock on" was limited in the early days. I believe later on they did use an elementary form of encryption to protect privacy. Not enough to guard against a determined listener but enough so that a casual listener couldn't understand. While radio transmission technology grew sharply during WW II I don't think much was applied to overseas radio calls. Instead the emphasis was on designing, building, and laying the overseas Atlantic cable. Made a world of difference when that went into service. I don't know much about overseas Pacific telephone lines, where the distances are so much greater. There was a British company, "Cable & Wireless" that had telegraph service. The company maintained relay stations on little islands with some people and equipment. Very expensive. I'm curious as to when Hawaii got radio-telephone service to the mainland US and then cable service. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Communications History Date: 7 Dec 2005 10:18:29 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Dave Marthouse wrote: > I am a bit of a communications history buff. I've been doing a little > research about telecom in the days before transoceanic phone service > before cables and satellites. The only way to bridge the oceans was > hf radio. It's interesting to note that anyone with a shortwave radio > could listen to all the international point-to-point phone traffic. I > am going to assume that a form of independent sideband was used with a > maximum of two or four circuits going to a specific country. Ssb is > very easy to receive even with a standard shortwave radio of the day > as long as it had a bfo to demodulate and recover the signals. I > would like to know if any form of primitive encryption was used to > make the circuits a bit more secure. It must have been very easy to > literally monitor all the international traffic to and from a given > nation. Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be > appreciated to help scratch my historical itch. For the most part, radiotelephone links didn't go SSB until the early 1960s, and there were still AM links hanging on well into the eighties here and there in the South Pacific. No encryption. No more than current ship-to-shore HF radiotelephone traffic uses today. That's why the Communications Act of 1934 made divulging communications to a third party illegal. scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 10:19:55 -0800 From: Jim Stewart Reply-To: jstewart@jkmicro.com Organization: http://www.jkmicro.com Subject: Re: Communications History Dave Marthouse wrote: > I am a bit of a communications history buff. I've been doing a little > research about telecom in the days before transoceanic phone service > before cables and satellites. The only way to bridge the oceans was > hf radio. It's interesting to note that anyone with a shortwave radio > could listen to all the international point-to-point phone traffic. I > am going to assume that a form of independent sideband was used with a > maximum of two or four circuits going to a specific country. Ssb is > very easy to receive even with a standard shortwave radio of the day > as long as it had a bfo to demodulate and recover the signals. I > would like to know if any form of primitive encryption was used to > make the circuits a bit more secure. It must have been very easy to > literally monitor all the international traffic to and from a given > nation. Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be > appreciated to help scratch my historical itch. My copy of "Principles of Electricity applied to Telephone and Telegraph Work" published by AT&T in 1953 shows block diagrams of the LD-T2 and LD-R1 HF transmitter and receiver pair. There is no encryption of any kind. Furthermore, the block diagram of the TD-2 microwave system is devoid of any encryption. Granted, picking off a single voice channel would not be trivial, but it wouldn't be impossible either. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #552 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 7 18:56:25 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id BF3CD14F06; Wed, 7 Dec 2005 18:56:24 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #553 Message-Id: <20051207235624.BF3CD14F06@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 18:56:24 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 7 Dec 2005 19:00:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 553 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson SBC Long Distance and Lack of Customer Service (tvirl438@hotmail.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: tvirl438@hotmail.com Subject: SBC Long Distance and Lack of Customer Service Date: 7 Dec 2005 07:27:20 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This very lengthy article demonstrates quite well why so many of us who _can_ do better than have SBC as our telephone company _choose_ to use some other carrier. I quite well understand that not everyone can be so fortunate as to have a choice in local telephone service as we do here in Kansas, and if you are not able, for whatever reason to choose any other carrier then I have to sympathize with you unless you happen to like SBC (in its new manifes- tation as AT&T), but many of us do not like it, and refuse to deal with it. This reader, tvirl438@hotmail.com , I am sure thought he would save time and effort by dealing with SBC via email. Such was not the case, as you will find out by reading through his various email correspondence with the company, and their non-committal replies. I can tell you, from my own experience with SBC, that they tend to say one thing, and do another. It happened to me a few times also; a rep makes one claim, then later a totally different result. I will not trouble you with all my experiences with SBC, but this reader will describe his experience with SBC's long distance service. PAT] =============================== (now our reader begins) The fact that I can hold 2 e-mail conversations with the same company and get different results should show how incompetent they are. They increased my monthly amount without telling me. I switched calling plans in August, because the plan that I was on had an increase in its rate. When I switched, they notified people who were customers 2 days before I was. Is this legal? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The correspondence begins with an explanation by SBC for some action taken. PAT] Greetings, Thank you for your recent email. We would like to extend our sincere apologies for the problems you encountered. That information in the previous email was taken directly from your July 28, 2005 statement. It is our goal to provide excellent customer service. We are sorry if we did not meet that objective. If you would like it removed please let us know by emailing or calling the customer care center. The plan in question was another plan that also changed, no notice was sent of this change because you had changed plans after the notice of your original plan was changed. Please let us know if you are still having issue with your long distance plan. Customer Care Center: 1-800-924-1000 Hours of operation: West - Monday - Friday 7:00 am - 9:00 pm Saturday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Pacific Southwest - Monday - Friday 7:00 am - 9:00 pm Saturday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Central Midwest - Monday - Friday 7:00 am - 9:00 pm Saturday 8:00 am - 5:00 pm Central Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. Regards, Your SBC Customer Service Representative NOTICE Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. SAFETY TIP The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. =========================== [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now he responds to SBC, quoting parts of his original letter. PAT] On Mon Dec 05 11:57:29 PST 2005,wrote: > This never printed just like someone else said in a different e-mail. > I have 2 threads going with you on this topic. The text below never > printed on any of my bills. > RESRD2MW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: Greetings, > Thank you for your recent email. We are pleased we are able to assist you with your inquiry. We apologize for the inconvenience of not giving you the answer you were looking for. > Effective October 12, 2005, the name of the JustCall (sm) 60 long distance price plan was changed to "JustCall (sm) 100", and the number of nationwide direct-dialed minutes will increase from 60 to 100 per month. The monthly recurring charge will increase from $3.00 to $6.00 and the per minute rate will increase from $0.07 to $0.09 for calls beyond the 100 minute block. This plan will also no longer be offered, however, until the plan is discontinued entirely, you may keep it unless you move or change service. Doing so will result in your being asked to select another long distance price plan. For more information or to discuss other long distance plans, please refer to the phone number on the front of your bill. > Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > Regards, > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > NOTICE > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > SAFETY TIP > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: He writes to SBC again and complains that they _still_ are not adressing his original questions. PAT] > On Fri Dec 02 17:25:07 PST 2005: >> If you look at the text below, that doesn't talk about the plan in question. That is the plan I left because of the $2 fee. Where does it state an increase in my plan that I cancelled yesterday from $3 to $6? This month's statement had a $6 plan. Where does your text mention $6? > > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > Greetings, > > Thank you for your recent email. > > I understand your concerns regarding the increase to your SBC Long Distance calling plan. Your 7/28/05 SBC billing statement included the following message under the SBC Long Distance portion of your bill regarding the recent long distance increase: > > "Your Rates, Terms or Services Have Changed: > > Effective September 12, 2005 the > > Long Distance III -- JustCall Standard > > calling plan will have a recurring monthly charge > > of $2.00. The domestic direct-dialed per minute > > rate for this plan will remain $0.10 per minute. > > This plan is no longer available for sale, > > however until this plan is discontinued entirely, > > you may keep this plan until you move or change > > your service, at which time you will be asked to > > select another long distance price plan. SBC has > > a variety of plans available. If you would like > > to discuss other long distance calling plans, > > please call 1-888-617-2253. Thank you for > > choosing SBC Long Distance." > > Our records indicate that this billing statement is still available online for your viewing. To view the details of your 7/28/05 bill: > > 1. Log in to your MySBC eBill(SM) account at http://www.sbc.com/mysbc with your User ID and Password. > > 2. Click on View My Bill under Current Bill Summary. > > 3. Select the month you wish to view from the pull down menu at > > the top of the page. > > Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. > > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > > Regards, > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > NOTICE > > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > SAFETY TIP > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Let's try it again, shall we? PAT] > > On Fri Dec 02 11:52:08 PST 2005,wrote: > > > When was I informed about the rate increase? Please show me which statement this was on. Can a live person give me an honest answer? 3 phone calls and 2 e-mails later, still no one competent has responded to my question. > > > You can adjust your rates, but you also need to inform your customers about the increase. I joined the plan after you sent out the information. > > > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > > Greetings, > > > > > > Thank you for your recent email. > > > We would like to extend our sincere apologies for the problems you encountered. It is our goal to provide excellent customer service. We are sorry if we did not meet that objective. > > > We appreciate your inquiry about our rates. SBC companies have been proudly serving its customers for more than 125 years. Like any business in a highly competitive industry, we occasionally adjust our rates to ensure that we are aligned with current market conditions. Factors in our pricing decisions include our costs of doing business, the value our services provide, and our need to invest in the future. > > > Please don't hesitate to email us again if there is anything else we can do for you. Thank you for taking out the time to email SBC. We definitely value your business. > > > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > > > http://sbc.com/repair - A self-help resource for your residential or small business repair questions. > > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > > > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > > > Regards, > > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > > NOTICE > > > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > > SAFETY TIP > > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. > > > On Fri Dec 02 06:48:00 PST 2005, wrote: > > > > I make less than 60 minutes of long distance calls per month. > > > > When I first received telephone service, I chose AT&T. They > > > > offered me a plan that had no monthly charge. I would buy calling > > > > cards at Sam's for less than 4 cents per minute. I had AT&T for 2 years, was never charged a dime. AT&T then instituted a $5 monthly minimum. I have SBC local service. At the time, SBC was entering the long distance market. They offered me a plan that also had no monthly charge. This worked for about a year. The promotional period, which I was not warned about, ran out. I called them and they had another plan to switch me to that also had no monthly fee. I asked them how much it would be to remove long distance from my line. They told me $17. Free sounded better than $17 so I switched to the new plan. Nine months passed and I was then warned that my plan would not be sold to any new customers, details to follow. The next month the details were that I would be charged $2 per month, plus 10 cents per minute for all calls. I called SBC and asked if they had any free plans. None. They did however have a plan that would be $3 per month for the first 60 minutes. I asked if there were any promotional periods. She said none. I made the switch in August. This worked for 3 months, the first month was even free. I would use about 50 minutes per month, was only paying $3. Then my bill came yesterday. My $3 plan for 60 minutes became a $6 plan for 100 minutes. Do the math, I am getting doubly screwed. I called them and asked for an explanation. My plan had terminated again. I was told they mentioned it on the July statement. They did not. I asked to speak to a supervisor. She didn't understand the request. I asked to "speak to someone who had more brains". I got put into a queue for the supervisor. Same woman came back 2 minutes later and said that her supervisor would tell me the same thing. I asked how much to remove long distance, I was told $10.51. I agreed. I will use the calling cards and my cell phone for long distance. I only have SBC local service so I can get DSL cheaper through another provider. Why are you doing this to your customers? > > > > > > > > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > > > Greetings, > > > > > > > > Thank you for your email and for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. Our goal is to provide you with the personal attention you deserve. We make every effort to respond to each email individually and address each customer's specific needs. We will make every attempt to respond to your inquiry within 1-2 business days, Monday through Friday. Your patience is appreciated. > > > > While you are waiting for our email response, you may want to visit our online self-help tool, where many customers have found fast answers to their questions. Cut and paste ask.sbc.com into your browser (see safety tip below). > > > > RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS > > > > If you are a residential customer and would like to establish service with your SBC local service provider or add features to your existing account, please visit the address listed below and click on your state to use our Shopping Cart: sbc.com/products > > > > BUSINESS CUSTOMERS > > > > If you are a business customer and you would like to establish service with your SBC local service provider or add features to your existing account, please visit sbc.com/business_customers, select "View Products and Services" and your state. > > > > If you need more information, please visit the appropriate addresses below: > > > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless and satellite products and services. > > > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers and handy online tips. > > > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > > > Thank you again for your patience. > > > > Regards, > > > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > > > NOTICE > > > > Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > > > SAFETY TIP > > > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should guard against clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, always copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at sbc.com/safety. > > > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now, our fearless reader tries yet one more time to get a specific answer from a real person, he supposes, by writing to the 'name' which has been replying to him all along. PAT] > > > > >To: RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com > > > > >Message: > > > > >Your customer service does not service the customer. My SBC Long > > > > >Distance plan has been changed 3 times in the 24 months that > > > > >I have > > > > >had you as a carrrier. It has changed because I keep getting bumped > > > > >out of plans you discontinue. That is why I no longer have any long > > > > >distance. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We told you early on that there were _two_ threads in progress. Above this point was one thread, and now here is the other thread, again, starting with a reply from SBC to his earlier correspondence. PAT] Greetings, Thank you for your recent email. Based on the information provided in your request, we are unable to process the adjustment of $3. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Even though in thread #1 above they said they 'would remove it' from his account. PAT] If you have any additional questions regarding this issue, please visit our Web Site at http://sbc.com/contactus or call the SBC Billing Department at 1-800-924-1000. Hours of operations are: Monday-Friday 7:30 AM-9PM, Saturday 8AM-5PM (LOCAL), Closed Sunday & SBC Holidays. Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We appreciate your business and continued loyalty. If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. Regards, Your SBC Customer Service Representative NOTICE Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. SAFETY TIP The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What brought this latest thread on was reader's simple request to receive a small credit, as follows: PAT] On Mon Dec 05 11:59:47 PST 2005, wrote: > I will ask you this question again: If it never printed on my statement, due to your system and no fault of mine, should I be held responsible for this? > How many other customers have you pulled this one on? Can you credit me the $3 difference? > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > Greetings , > Thank you for your recent email. > On behalf of SBC Wisconsin, I would like to extend my sincere apology for the problems you encountered regarding the confusion and our delay in answering your original inquiry. It is our goal to provide excellent customer service, and I am sorry that we did not meet that objective. > The change in your SBC Long Distance plan from the Just Call 60 Standard II to the Just Call 100 Standard II became effective 10/12/05. After reviewing our records, we show that you ordered the Just Call 60 Standard II on 8/12/05. Since you ordered the plan after your SBC Long Distance bill date, which is the 10th of each month, the August bill message that informed customers of the change did not print on your 8/28/05 statement. > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > Regards, > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > NOTICE > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > SAFETY TIP > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Still not willing to give up, our reader writes his 'service representative' once more. Remember, this is the second concurrent thread we are on now. PAT] > On Fri Dec 02 17:33:40 PST 2005, wrote: >> Read what I wrote you and then read what you wrote me. We are comparing apples and oranges. I will be informing all of my friends and co-workers of the problems that I have been having. Enjoy losing their business too. This is why I chose to drop long distance completely yesterday. I have tried to be nice about this, but this is the third time in 24 months that you have allowed me to go into a plan that has terminated within 12 months, the most recent only being 3 months. That is why the plan you are talking about and the plan I am talking about do not match. >> I did a Google search on problems with your company and I was not surprised to see that you have been giving other customers customer no service. >> This is a lot of work to try to get $6 out of your company, but I enjoy the fact that it is taking your company more than $6 in time to fix this. Your e-mail below does not explain any $6 charge. >> RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > Greetings , >> Thank you for your recent email. >> I understand your concerns regarding the increase to your SBC Long Distance calling plan. Your 7/28/05 SBC billing statement included the following message under the SBC Long Distance portion of your bill regarding the recent long distance increase: > > "Your Rates, Terms or Services Have Changed: > > Effective September 12, 2005 the > > Long Distance III -- JustCall Standard > > calling plan will have a recurring monthly charge > > of $2.00. The domestic direct-dialed per minute > > rate for this plan will remain $0.10 per minute. > > This plan is no longer available for sale, > > however until this plan is discontinued entirely, > > you may keep this plan until you move or change > > your service, at which time you will be asked to > > select another long distance price plan. SBC has > > a variety of plans available. If you would like > > to discuss other long distance calling plans, > > please call 1-888-617-2253. Thank you for > > choosing SBC Long Distance." > > Our records indicate that this billing statement is still available online for your viewing. To view the details of your 7/28/05 bill: > > 1. Log in to your MySBC eBill(SM) account at http://www.sbc.com/mysbc with your User ID and Password. > > 2. Click on View My Bill under Current Bill Summary. > > 3. Select the month you wish to view from the pull down menu at the top of the page. > > Thank you for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. > > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > > Regards, > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > NOTICE > > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > SAFETY TIP > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Our reader asks them still another time. PAT] > > On Fri Dec 02 11:52:08 PST 2005, wrote: > > > When was I informed about the rate increase? Please show me which statement this was on. Can a live person give me an honest answer? 3 phone calls and 2 e-mails later, still no one competent has responded to my question. > > > You can adjust your rates, but you also need to inform your customers about the increase. I joined the plan after you sent out the information. > > > RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > > Greetings , > > > Thank you for your recent email. > > > We would like to extend our sincere apologies for the problems you encountered. It is our goal to provide excellent customer service. We are sorry if we did not meet that objective. > > > We appreciate your inquiry about our rates. SBC companies have been proudly serving its customers for more than 125 years. Like any business in a highly competitive industry, we occasionally adjust our rates to ensure that we are aligned with current market conditions. Factors in our pricing decisions include our costs of doing business, the value our services provide, and our need to invest in the future. > > > Please don't hesitate to email us again if there is anything else we can do for you. Thank you for taking out the time to email SBC. We definitely value your business. > > > If this response does not address your concern, please reply directly to this email, or you may get additional information by clicking on the links below. Another option is cutting and pasting the links into your browser (see safety note below): > > > http://sbc.com/repair - A self-help resource for your residential or small business repair questions. > > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless, and satellite products and services. > > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers, and handy online tips. > > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > > http://sbc.com/mysbc - A single secure point of access to review, modify, manage, and pay for your services online. > > > Additionally, you may reach us by phone. Visit http://sbc.com/contactus for a list of customer service numbers. > > > Regards, > > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > > NOTICE > > > Based on the information you provided, our understanding of your request, and currently available data, we have addressed your inquiry to the best of our ability. If we have not answered your question, reply directly to this email, and we will respond as quickly as possible during regular business hours. Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > > SAFETY TIP > > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should be careful when clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at http://sbc.com/safety. > > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Reader explains further: > > > On Fri Dec 02 06:48:00 PST 2005, wrote: > > > > I make less than 60 minutes of long distance calls per month. > > > > When I first received telephone service, I chose AT&T. They offered me a plan that had no monthly charge. I would buy calling cards at Sam's for less than 4 cents per minute. I had AT&T for 2 years, was never charged a dime. AT&T then instituted a $5 monthly minimum. I have SBC local service. At the time, SBC was entering the long distance market. They offered me a plan that also had no monthly charge. This worked for about a year. The promotional period, which I was not warned about, ran out. I called them and they had another plan to switch me to that also had no monthly fee. I asked them how much it would be to remove long distance from my line. They told me $17. Free sounded better than $17 so I switched to the new plan. Nine months passed and I was then warned that my plan would not be sold to any new customers, details to follow. The next month the details were that I would be charged $2 per month, plus 10 cents per minute for all calls. I called SBC and asked if they had any free plans. None. They did however have a plan that would be $3 per month for the first 60 minutes. I asked if there were any promotional periods. She said none. I made the switch in August. This worked for 3 months, the first month was even free. I would use about 50 minutes per month, was only paying $3. Then my bill came yesterday. My $3 plan for 60 minutes became a $6 plan for 100 minutes. Do the math, I am getting doubly screwed. I called them and asked for an explanation. My plan had terminated again. I was told they mentioned it on the July statement. They did not. I asked to speak to a supervisor. She didn't understand the request. I asked to "speak to someone who had more brains". I got put into a queue for the supervisor. Same woman came back 2 minutes later and said that her supervisor would tell me the same thing. I asked how much to remove long distance, I was told $10.51. I agreed. I will use the calling cards and my cell phone for long distance. I only have SBC local service so I can get DSL cheaper through another provider. Why are you doing this to your customers? RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com wrote: > > > > Greetings, Thank you for your email and for choosing the SBC family of companies. We value your business and continued loyalty. Our goal is to provide you with the personal attention you deserve. We make every effort to respond to each email individually and address each customer's specific needs. We will make every attempt to respond to your inquiry within 1-2 business days, Monday through Friday. Your patience is appreciated. > > > > While you are waiting for our email response, you may want to visit our online self-help tool, where many customers have found fast answers to their questions. Cut and paste ask.sbc.com into your browser (see safety tip below). > > > > RESIDENTIAL CUSTOMERS > > > > If you are a residential customer and would like to establish service with your SBC local service provider or add features to your existing account, please visit the address listed below and click on your state to use our Shopping Cart: sbc.com/products > > > > BUSINESS CUSTOMERS > > > > If you are a business customer and you would like to establish service with your SBC local service provider or add features to your existing account, please visit sbc.com/business_customers, select "View Products and Services" and your state. > > > > If you need more information, please visit the appropriate addresses below: > > > > http://sbc.com/help - Find help for your local, long distance, Internet, wireless and satellite products and services. > > > > http://ask.sbc.com - Find answers fast to your questions about our SBC products and services. > > > > http://sbc.com/up2speed - Enroll to receive regular SBC email communications, special offers and handy online tips. > > > > http://sbc.com/eov - To review the SBC products and services to which you've subscribed. > > > > Thank you again for your patience. > > > > Regards, > > > > Your SBC Customer Service Representative > > > > NOTICE > > > > Please note that prices, terms, and conditions are subject to change, and in the event of a discrepancy, prices, terms and conditions in any applicable tariffs govern. > > > > SAFETY TIP > > > > The SBC companies care about your Internet safety. Since even familiar links can be used to misdirect and defraud, consumers should guard against clicking directly on hyperlinks. To be sure you're being directed appropriately, always copy and paste the URL into your browser. Learn more about ensuring a safe Internet experience at sbc.com/safety. > > > > (c) 2002-2005 SBC Knowledge Ventures, L.P. All rights reserved. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As for me, I would have long since given up, but not our sturdy reader. He makes one final attempt to get his message across. PAT] > > > > >To: RESREDMW@txmail.sbc.com > > > > >Message: > > > > >Your customer service does not service the customer. My SBC Long > > > > >Distance plan has been changed 3 times in the 24 months that > > > > >I have > > > > >had you as a carrrier. It has changed because I keep getting bumped > > > > >out of plans you discontinue. That is why I no longer have > > > > >any long > > > > >distance. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And thus ends (as of this time) the second thread in this concurrent set of two email exchanges. Is it all just as clear as mud? SBC obviously does not intend to give him the money (three dollars? six dollars?) they screwed him out of. I do not know, but they have by now probably sent him another set of 'safety hints' and 'warnings' about how to click on their links. I sure am glad I do not have to deal with them any longer, except for the once per week promotional mailings telling me how much they miss me as a customer and how if I agree to come back and get screwed again they will (they claim) offer me two or three months of take it all service for $19.95 plus DSL for another $19.95 or so. I told you when this customer correspondence started with his 'service representative' that it was a long message, and indeed it was. If there is _anyway -- anyway at all_ that you can dump SBC/AT&T and go with someone else, I strongly urge you to do it. Is there any UNE operation in your community? (Such as Prairie Stream or Gage). Get over to them. Dump your DSL and go with cable or satellite for your internet if possible. Even SBC is now trying to undercut operations like Prairie Stream ($24.95 for take it all, plus one hundred minutes of long distance) by quoting 'only' $19.95 for their package that is the same thing. But you know, SBC tends to lie (see the above message) and stall and apologize repeatedly for same but never really give any customer service. If you had the patience to read all the above email send to our reader/user, and _still_ want to stay with SBC, then be my guest. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #553 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Dec 8 16:04:43 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 64FDD14E14; Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:04:42 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #554 Message-Id: <20051208210442.64FDD14E14@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:04:42 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, LONGWORDS autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 8 Dec 2005 16:06:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 554 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Paul R. LaMonica) Yahoo to Offer Cheap PC to Phone Calls (Eric Auchard) Yahoo Updates Messenger's Phone Features (Juan Carlos) Public Interest Registry Announces Milestone: 4 Million Domains (P Godwin) Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones? (donotemailme@ekkinc.com) Busing Amazon Workers From Tulsa to Coffeyville (Wesrock@aol.com) Cellular-News for Thursday 8th December 2005 (Cellular-News) BT Enlists Content Partners For TV Service (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Neal McLain) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Carl Navarro) Re: Communications History (Paul Coxwell) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) 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: Paul R. LaMonica (cnnmoney@telecom-digest.org) Subject: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:46:22 -0600 SBC has joined forces with AT&T and taken its name...but the growth still isn't there. By Paul R. La Monica, CNNMoney.com senior writer NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - Ma Bell is back. But it almost seems like she never left. SBC, the Baby Bell that was spun off during the AT&T breakup in 1984, agreed to buy AT&T earlier this year. But SBC decided to hold onto the old AT&T name for the combined company. The deal was completed in November and shortly after closing, SBC got rid of its "SBC" ticker symbol. Effective Dec. 1, the new AT&T (Research) even adopted Ma Bell's old "T" ticker symbol. So SBC no longer exists. It's now AT&T. Get it? Lots of static But can the new AT&T do any better in the cutthroat world of telecom than the old one, or for that matter, the standalone SBC, did? Analysts are skeptical. Investors looking for the merger to quickly boost profits through cost cutting may be in for a surprise. "We think full realization [of cost-saving efforts] may not come until 2009 or beyond, which is a long time in this industry," wrote Dave Novosel, an analyst with fixed-income research firm Gimme Credit in a recent report. The other rationale behind SBC buying AT&T was that SBC would be able to bolster its presence with so-called enterprise accounts, large national corporations buying long-distance and data services. SBC, like fellow Baby Bells Verizon (Research), BellSouth (Research) and Qwest (Research), had struggled to extend its corporate business beyond local regions. AT&T and its rival MCI (the former WorldCom) remained tops in the enterprise game. But holding on to AT&T's enviable list of Fortune 500 clients won't be easy. With MCI (Research) being bought by Verizon, one analyst said he thinks that the competition between the new AT&T and Verizon could be brutal. After all, the old AT&T and MCI often had to resort to price wars in order to hold onto enterprise business and that's a big reason why revenues at the old Ma Bell had started to decline. "It's possible that Verizon and AT&T will come to unwritten terms on having their own fiefdoms and not killing each other," said Patrick Comack, an analyst with Zachary Investment Research. "But these guys are going to be shooting for national accounts and I don't see how they avoid bumping heads in a serious way." Wireless weakling Another analyst points out that as a result of the merger, AT&T will not have as big a presence in the more lucrative wireless market. SBC co-owns Cingular Wireless with BellSouth but the old AT&T unloaded its wireless unit a few years ago and was left with mainly consumer long distance and corporate divisions. "We remain concerned with AT&T's higher exposure to the declining enterprise long distance market as well as its moderately aggressive broadband strategy which dilute the benefit of Cingular," wrote Kevin Moore, an analyst with Wachovia Capital Markets, in a recent report. Moore estimates that the new AT&T will generate less than a quarter of its sales and about 21.5 percent of its earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) from the Cingular wireless business. By way of comparison, BellSouth generates about 41 percent of its total revenue and 31 percent of EBITDA from wireless, Moore estimated. Comack added that investors considering bets in telecom should focus on companies that have stronger wireless businesses. He said that in addition to competition from Verizon's wireless unit, the new AT&T will face increased pressure from Sprint Nextel (Research) and the group of top cable companies that are partnering with Sprint to offer their own wireless service. "If you are going to be in telecom at all, you want to be in wireless stocks. There is no reason to be an investor in SBC/AT&T," he said. And if competition from other big phone and cable companies wasn't bad enough, AT&T also has to contend with a host of new challengers such as Internet phone companies Vonage and Skype, which is now owned by eBay (Research). Search giants Google (Research) and Yahoo! (Research) could become a force in the so-called voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) market as well. To be sure, the new AT&T has a VoIP offering of its own. But Victor Schnee, president of Probe Financial Associates, an independent telecom research firm, said that the toughest task for the new AT&T will be trying to expand in emerging telecom businesses like VoIP and digital television services while also dealing with the integration of the more mature assets from the old AT&T. "This is a work in progress," said Schnee. "They are struggling with how do they modernize and take advantage of new growth markets. It's hard to get excited about closing the AT&T deal." Other telcos are much better bargains Of course, some might argue that all these risks are already priced into the stock. AT&T, after all, trades at just 14 times 2006 earnings estimates. But that's not exactly a bargain considering that analysts expect earnings to increase by just 6.7 percent next year. BellSouth also trades at 14 times next year's profit projections but analysts expect earnings to increase by 11 percent. And even though Sprint Nextel trades at a premium of 16 times 2006 estimates, it also looks like a better bet than AT&T since its profits are expected to increase by nearly 14 percent next year. Given its prospects, the new Ma Bell looks an awful lot like the old Ma Bell. And that's not a good thing. Analysts quoted in this story do not own shares of the companies mentioned. Wachovia has done banking for AT&T, BellSouth and Qwest The other firms do not have investment banking ties to the companies. http://money.cnn.com/2005/12/01/technology/techinvestor/lamonica/index.htm Copyright 2005 CNN Money. 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, CNN Money. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml To discuss this with other readers, go to our forum area: http://telecom-digest.org/chat ------------------------------ From: Eric Auchard Subject: Yahoo to Offer Cheap PC-to-Phone Calls Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:41:41 -0600 By Eric Auchard Yahoo Inc. said the company plans to allow computer users to make and receive calls from phones at rates that undercut eBay-owned rival Skype and are significantly below traditional phone companies. Yahoo said on Wednesday a new version of its Yahoo Messenger text, voice and video communications software to be introduced in the next few days will include "Phone Out," with low per-minute charges for calls from computers to phones, and "Phone In," a low-cost subscription service for phone callers to call computer users. The world's largest Internet media company said it plans to charge one cent per minute to Yahoo Messenger users calling the United States from, say, Russia, or anywhere else in the world and 2 cents a minute to call 30 other countries including Australia, China, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Korea. In all the Yahoo Messenger phone-calling service will be available in 180 countries, according to Terrell Karlsten, a spokeswoman for the Sunnyvale, California-based company. Details were due to be available shortly at http://voice.yahoo.com/. Blair Levin, an analyst with Stifel Nicolaus and a former staff member of the Federal Communications Commission, said in a report to investors that Yahoo's move is part of a broad and growing challenge to traditional telecommunications carriers. While unlikely to lead consumers to replace traditional phone services on a broad scale, he said, computer-based phone services will put further pressure on phone company revenues, even as they raise regulatory issues about whether to begin requiring Internet services to meet costly phone regulations. "We believe pricing is dropping to a level where price itself is likely to be less of a factor driving a consumer's choice," Levin wrote. Instead convenience, ease-of-use, and how well voice-calling can be integrated with other computer services will be what differentiates Time Warner-owned America Online's AIM, Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and Skype. YAHOO TRADES BLOWS WITH SKYPE Yahoo, which has offered some voice calling features via instant messaging software for five years is seeking to recapture momentum from Skype, which has in two years built up a base of 68 million users worldwide, including several million of Skype Out computer-to-phone, low-cost calling services. Yahoo Messenger calls to the United States are half the price of Skype's 2.1 cents per minute. But the Skype rate applies to nearly 30 countries, making it comparable with Yahoo rates. (see http://www.skype.com/products/skypeout/rates/ ) "In a basic sense, Skype is functionally identical to AIM, MSN or Yahoo," said Nick Shelness, an instant messaging analyst with Ferris Research based Perthshire, Scotland who was formerly a chief technology officer at IBM's Lotus division. "All three -- AIM, MSN and Yahoo -- have had audio capabilities for quite some time. They just didn't stress those features," he noted. Yahoo Messenger also offers e-mail links, text messaging to mobile phones, photo sharing and video calling services. The new low-cost calling services rely on deals struck with a variety of traditional long-distance carriers which Yahoo inherited through its acquisition of Dialpad in June 2005. "Historically communications have been stuck in a bunch of different silos," said Brad Garlinghouse, Yahoo vice president of communications products, and a former executive at Dialpad. "The home phone is one silo, the work phone is a silo, the mobile phone is a silo, instant messaging is another silo and mobile phone text-messaging is another silo," he said of how Yahoo plans eventually to tie together communication services. Phone In, the phone-to-PC service, costs $2.99 a month or $29.90 a year, allowing people to select a personal phone number, and receive incoming calls at no additional charge. As an example, San Francisco residents using the service who have friends or family in London will be able to choose a local London-based phone number. UK callers to the number would be charged for making a local call. Travelers can have multiple numbers that allow them to have local numbers in each country they visit, starting first in France, the United Kingdom, and the United States with other countries to follow, Yahoo said. The new version of Yahoo Messenger allows users to search for contacts they have entered the system by name, by Yahoo nickname, by phone number or other contact details. Users can then choose to communicate via text, voice or e-mail. To encourage use of its phone calling services, Yahoo said that, for a limited time, it would offer a free headset to users who sign up for its Phone Out service. Localized versions in various national markets will be available, Yahoo said. Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. 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 with other readers, go to our forum area: http://telecom-digest.org/chat.html ------------------------------ From: Juan Carlos Subject: Yahoo Updates Messenger's Phone Features Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:43:04 -0600 Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service Yahoo plans to upgrade Yahoo Messenger with a capability that lets users dial out from the instant messaging service interface to traditional or mobile phones, a Yahoo executive says. Cheap Calls Yahoo Messenger users will also be able to rent one or more phone numbers from Yahoo to receive phone calls through the instant message (IM) interface, said Jeff Bonforte, the company's senior director of voice product management. Calls made from within Yahoo Messenger to U.S.-based phone numbers will be priced at 1 cent per minute, while calls to 30 other countries with heavy telecommunications traffic in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia will cost under 2 cents per minute, he said. Calls can also be made to over 150 other countries, and rates vary, he said. The rates are based on where the call terminates, not where it originates, Bonforte said, so it would cost someone in, for example, Singapore or Brazil one cent per minute to call someone in the U.S. To use this feature, which Yahoo calls "phone out," Yahoo Messenger users need to prepay for the calls in chunks of either $10 or $25, but the unused credit never expires, so a user could theoretically buy $10 worth of calls and take years to spend the amount, he said. Yahoo Messenger has had PC-to-PC voice communications for years, and it has offered users a fee-based option to dial out to a phone number using the third-party Net2Phone service. However, this voice capability is now being tightly integrated with Yahoo Messenger and will be threaded into various other Yahoo online services in the future, he said. Yahoo views voice communications not as an IM-specific feature but rather as an application that is becoming key to interacting online in general. "This is just the beginning for Yahoo" in the voice space, Bonforte said. Sounds Good, Says Analyst Users will be able to obtain one or more phone numbers for $2.99 monthly or $29.90 per year to receive calls from regular or mobile phones via their Yahoo Messenger interface. To start, only U.S., U.K. and French numbers will be available. However, Yahoo Messenger users worldwide can get U.S. or U.K. numbers, Bonforte said. So, for example, someone living in Germany who speaks often with people in San Francisco and New York, can get local numbers for those U.S. cities. French numbers are restricted to residents of that country, he said. Yahoo hasn't yet announced when the new Yahoo Messenger version with these phone-out/phone-in capabilities will become available. While eBay's Skype is the undisputed leader in PC-to-PC voice communications, Yahoo does well to integrate this functionality into Yahoo Messenger and into its other online services, an analyst said. That way, Yahoo will make it convenient for its users to engage in PC-to-PC phone calling, both for those who also use Skype and for those who don't, said Yankee Group analyst Kate Griffin. "It definitely extends the value and functionality for users," she said. Note: PC World has a partnership agreement to provide content to Yahoo News. Copyright 2005 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. To discuss this with other readers, please go to our forum area: http://telecom-digest.org/chat ------------------------------ From: Peter Godwin Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 17:43:20 +0100 Subject: Public Interest Registry Announces Milestone of 4,000,000 .ORG Domains Worldwide .ORG usage contributes to continued growth in the .ORG Community RESTON, VA - November 30, 2005 - Public Interest Registry (PIR), the .ORG registry, announced today that over 4,000,000 .ORG domains are registered worldwide. The successful growth of the .ORG domain is a direct result of the increase in global internet use, the credibility associated with the .ORG brand, as well as the success of over 180 .ORG resellers worldwide. "We have reached a significant milestone within the .ORG community," said Edward G. Viltz, President and CEO of PIR. ".ORG is no longer considered to be the 'other' domain. It has become the established Internet home of the worldwide noncommercial community. The attainment of four million registered .ORG domains is a direct reflection of the increased awareness and demand for the .ORG domain. We reaffirm our commitment to the continued management of the .ORG Registry in the public interest and thank our Registrars, their Resellers, Afilias Global Registry Services and the .ORG Community for their support." .ORG, originally created in 1984, has grown to be the third largest generic top level domain and the fifth largest when including country code top level domains. PIR is promoting the use of .ORG within the global nonprofit community through outreach programs targeting developing regions of the world. Additionally, PIR has offered to .ORG registrars discounts targeting Latin America, Africa, India, China and Southeast Asia in an effort to expand the Internet and promote the .ORG domain in these regions. About PIR Public Interest Registry ( http://www.pir.org ) is a 501(c) (3) not-for-profit corporation created by the Internet Society (ISOC) to manage the .ORG domain. PIR's mission is to manage the .ORG domain in an exemplary manner, while educating and empowering the global non-commercial community to use the Internet more effectively and, concurrently, to take a leadership position among Internet stakeholders on policy and related issues on behalf of the .ORG community. PIR is based in Reston, VA, USA. ABOUT .ORG The .ORG domain, which has come to be associated with noncommercial activities, is the Internet's third largest "generic" or non-country specific top-level domain with more than 4 million domain names registered worldwide. In 2002, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) Board of Directors selected ISOC's proposal from among 11 organizations bidding to operate the .ORG top-level domain. PIR assumed control of the registry on 1 January 2003. ABOUT PIR Public Interest Registry (www.pir.org) is a not-for-profit corporation created by the Internet Society (ISOC) to manage the .ORG top-level domain. PIR's mission is to manage the .ORG domain in a manner that supports the continuing evolution of the Internet as a research, education and communications infrastructure, while educating and empowering the non-commercial community to most effectively utilize the Internet. PIR is based in Reston, Virginia. For more information: Michael Ward Public Interest Registry (703) 464-7005 x113 E-mail: mward@pir.org ------------------------------ From: donotemailme@ekkinc.com Subject: Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones? Date: 8 Dec 2005 10:07:35 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com A little advice needed: For a new office I am helping to setup, we are installing a 384k T1 line, and are planning on using vonage over that T1 line for our phone service. We plan to have at least 2 and maybe 3 phone lines through vonage. We are looking into cordless multi-line phones. We figure we'll need 1 base station and 4-8 handsets. Vonage offers a call-hunt feature that will ring the second or third line if the first line is busy. Will this multi-line service from vonage work with 1 mutli-line base station? Thanks, Ken ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Wed, 7 Dec 2005 20:28:11 EST Subject: Busing Amazon Workers From Tulsa to Coffeyville Amazon taps state for temp workers By Jim Stafford The Oklahoman TULSA - Amazon.com has reached into Oklahoma for some of the 1,000 seasonal workers it needs to staff its Coffeyville, Kan., shipping center during the holiday season, luring them across the border with daily chartered bus commutes that feature televised entertainment. Every afternoon at 3 p.m., a chartered bus pulls out of the Albertsons parking lot near E 51st Street and Memorial here and begins the 90-minute, 75-mile trek north to Coffeyville. "It's a nice chartered bus with a television and VCR so they can watch movies, things like that," said Lisa Brown, director of operations for Chicago-based Staff Management. Amazon.com contracted with Staff Management to hire the temporary workers it needs to ship the vast quantities of books, electronics, toys and other merchandise bought by online shoppers during the Christmas retailing season. The 45 long-distance commuters from Tulsa arrive at the 1-million-square-foot "fulfillment center" well before their 5 p.m. shift begins, Brown said. Staff Management also buses almost three times as many temporary workers to Coffeyville from Joplin, Mo., each day. Joplin is 67 miles to the east. "We are busing about 140 people from Joplin," Brown said. "And I believe we do have some who are driving on their own." Amazon.com opened the Coffeyville fulfillment center in a former Golden Books distribution center in 1999, said Doris Scism with the Coffeyville Chamber of Commerce. The center was expanded from an original 450,000 square feet to the current 1 million, she said. The Coffeyville center employs about 500 full-time workers, in addition to the temporary employees. Coffeyville's population of about 12,000 requires Amazon.com to look beyond the immediate area for seasonal workers to meet the holiday demand. Oklahoma's work force development agency, Workforce Oklahoma, worked with Staff Management in recruiting the Tulsa workers, Brown said. A Staff Management news release said starting pay for employees at the Amazon.com center is $9.50 per hour for day-shift workers and $10 per hour for nights and part-time positions on weekends. Staff Management offered the incentive of a "performance-based" raffle of a new 2005 Chevrolet Aveo to workers who signed on for the seasonal jobs. Those who complete their temporary assignments, which generally end at Christmas, will be eligible for the drawing, Brown said. This is the second year that bus transportation has been provided for the temporary workers, Brown said. The Tulsa bus begins its return trip into Oklahoma after the night shift ends at 1:30 a.m., and arrives back in town about 3 a.m. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A large number of Amazon.com workers also come from Independence, which is about twelve miles north of the Coffeyville Industrial Park on Sunflower Avenue where Amazon is located. Amazon is considered one of the major employers both for Independence and Coffeyville. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Thursday 8th December 2005 Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 09:25:26 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ Financial ]] Dutch Government Trims Stake In KPN http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15143.php The Dutch government on Wednesday said it trimmed its stake in the country's leading telecommunications services provider, KPN, to around 8% and said it would get rid of its "golden share" in the company. ... http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15144.php British Sky Broadcasting Group PLC isn't immediately planning to offer mobile phones as part of its product range, a senior executive said Tuesday. ... Alfa Group Expects Telsim Sale Price To Be Too High-Executive http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15145.php The head of Alfa Group's telecommunications branch, Altimo, said Wednesday he expects the sale price of Turkey's Telsim Mobil Telekomunikasyon to be too high. ... Virgin Mobile Rejects NTL Takeover Bid http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15148.php Virgin Mobile Holdings (U.K.) PLC said Wednesday that its board had unanimously rejected the proposed takeover offer by NTL Inc. ... Belarus' BeST to take $184 mln loan from China Eximbank http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15149.php Belarus state-controlled GSM mobile operator Belarus Telecommunications Network, or BeST, has signed an agreement to take out a U.S. $184.2 million loan from Export-Import Bank of China (China Eximbank). The agreement was signed during Belarusian ... [[ Handsets ]] PRESS: Russia's Euroset postpones Eurobond offering indefinitely http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15150.php Russia's largest mobile handset retailer Euroset has indefinitely postponed the offering of its debut, U.S. $150 million 30-month Eurobond issue, the company's President Eldar Razroyev said, Vedomosti business daily reported Wednesday. ... Bulgarian Operator Extends Retail Presence http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15153.php Bulgaria's M-Tel has expanded its retail outlets to include selling its products through the independent retailers, Technopolis and Handy shops. The two dealers will exclusively offer the services of the biggest mobile operator in Bulgaria, including... Nearly 1 in 5 of Recent Handset Purchases Have No Landline http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15155.php New research released today by the USA's Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) shows a shift away from landlines to wireless phones for many American consumers, particularly younger age groups, those who rent their homes and singles. A full 17% of c... Wal-Mart and RadioShack Top US Handset Sales http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15156.php Telephia has reported that Wal-Mart and RadioShack have posted strong market share for retailing wireless handsets. Among recent wireless purchasers who bought their phone within the last 6 months at a major U.S. retailer, such as big box and consume... UTStarcom Wins Vietnamese CDMA Handset Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15159.php UTStarcom has won a contract to supply its C1161 CDMA 1x handsets to S-Fone, a nationwide CDMA service provider based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. S-Fone is the sixth operator in 2005 to offer UTStarcom-designed and -manufactured handsets, joining S... [[ Legal ]] Lawmakers Ask Swiss Government To Explain Swisscom Disclosure http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15146.php Two parliamentary commissions Wednesday asked the Swiss government for a response to criticisms of its handling of Swisscom AG's privatization plan and terms attached to it. ... [[ Messaging ]] Visto Powering Turkish Push Email Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15160.php Visto Corp. has announced that Turkey's Turkcell has deployed Visto Mobile with ConstantSync technology to deliver mass-market push mobile email services to a customer's wireless device of choice. Called TurkcellE-Postaci, the new service is a perso... [[ Network Contracts ]] Contract to Improve Phone Coverage Inside Trains http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15152.php Avitec has won the contract to provide and install OnBoard Repeaters for mobile coverage in all of Sweden's high speed train wagons (X2000). The order was signed by the Swedish Railway Authorities in collaboration with SJ, TeliaSonera, 3, Tele 2 and ... Ericsson Involved in Slovak Military Mobile Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15158.php The UK defense contractor, BAE Systems, along with Ericsson has been selected by the Slovak Ministry of Defence to deliver a fully US, EU and NATO interoperable mobile military communications system (MOKYS) to the Slovak armed forces. The contract wi... [[ Offbeat ]] Nokia Face Of Africa returns in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15157.php The continent's most established model talent search, the Nokia Face Of Africa begins its sixth season this month as the African TV channel M-Net and leading mobile company Nokia have renewed their commitment to popular initiative. This time round 12... [[ Regulatory ]] Mexican Antitrust Regulator Expects Tougher Law In 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15141.php The head of Mexico's antitrust commission said Tuesday that he is optimistic a new law giving regulators more power will be passed in the spring congressional session. ... [[ Statistics ]] Ukraine's URS chief says subscriber base up to 219,000 Dec 1 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15147.php The subscriber base of Ukraine's mobile operator Ukrainian Radiosystems (URS) rose to 219,000 people as of December 1 from 160,204 people as of October 1, Sergei Mironov, chairman of URS' executive board, told Prime-Tass Wednesday. ... [[ Technology ]] Ericsson Adds New Features To Mini-Link Product http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15142.php Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer Telefon AB L.M. Ericsson (ERICY) Wednesday said it has added new capabilities to its Mini-Link TN microwave transmission family so that it now offers a complete, end-to-end transmission solution, opti... Samsung Licenses Smart Antenna Technology http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15151.php ArrayComm says that it has granted Samsung Electronics the right to use ArrayComm's smart antenna solutions for Samsung wireless communications base station products. The agreement gives Samsung full rights to use ArrayComm solutions for base station... Chip Standardization Good News for Handset Manufacturers http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15154.php Intel and STMicroelectronics have announced they will collaborate on the development of NOR-type flash memory products, a move that will bring much-needed standardization to the market, iSuppli Corp. believes. The two semiconductor suppliers on Monda... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:17:05 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: BT Enlists Content Partners for TV Service USTelecom dailyLead December 8, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zJBoatagCAbMBJtTDI TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * BT enlists content partners for TV service BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Virgin Mobile balks at NTL bid * RIM, NTP communicate via mediator * Analysis: What does the future hold for print directories? USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * In the Telecom Bookstore: Wireless Crash Course TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Inmarsat announces satellite broadband service * Mobile WiMAX standards approved * Verizon Wireless to offer CBS shows REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC seeks extensive data in Adelphia review * Will Google's reach incite regulation push? Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zJBoatagCAbMBJtTDI ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:12:00 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Suppose we wanted to install a PABX using step-by-step gear in a condo > complex. We need 250 stations. My question regards the most > efficient station number assignments. > One person says the stations ought to have a four digit number that > corresponds to the apartment number. There are 19 buildings with > 10-15 units per building. So unit #103 would get phone number 0103 > and unit #1513 would be phone 1513. > While the above is easier to remember, wouldn't that be a waste of SxS > terminals and require more switch units without any gain in > efficiency? Isn't a four digit code inherently more complex than a > three digit in an SxS environment? I think the phone ought to be > numbered strictly sequentially, starting from 111 and going upward. The most "efficient" numbering plan (least amount of equipment) would be to assign extension numbers in three 3-digit ranges: 211-200 311-300 411-400 This arrangement provides a total of 300 lines, enough to accommodate 250 apartments with spares for other uses (office, maintenance room, loading dock, etc.). Advantage: This plan requires only three sets of switches: linefinders, first selectors, and connectors. By contrast, the hypothetical 4-digit plan that "one person" suggests would require four sets: linefinders, first selectors, second selectors, and connectors. As you note, a four digit code [is] inherently more complex than a three digit in an SxS environment." Advantage: This plan avoids two SxS taboos: subscriber numbers beginning with 0 or 1: - Initial 0 is taboo because "experience has shown that in a single- office system it is not advisable to use subscribers' numbers commencing with the numeral zero (0) unless absolutely necessary to secure the desired capacity" [1]. And, of course, zero is traditionally used to reach the local operator, if any. - Initial 1 is taboo because an SxS (or any other rotary-dial) switch can't distinguish between an intentionally-dialed 1 and a false switchhook depression. Disadvantage: It's not possible to match subscriber numbers to apartment numbers (although, as PAT notes, this might not be a good idea anyway). [1] Kempster B. Miller. "Telephone Theory and Practice" vol. 3 "Automatic Switching and Auxiliary Equipment." New York: McGraw Hill, 1933, p. 129. Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 17:46:43 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On 7 Dec 2005 10:40:16 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > This question is purely speculative only, not for real use. > Suppose we wanted to install a PABX using step-by-step gear in a condo > complex. We need 250 stations. My question regards the most > efficient station number assignments. > One person says the stations ought to have a four digit number that > corresponds to the apartment number. There are 19 buildings with > 10-15 units per building. So unit #103 would get phone number 0103 > and unit #1513 would be phone 1513. > While the above is easier to remember, wouldn't that be a waste of SxS > terminals and require more switch units without any gain in > efficiency? Isn't a four digit code inherently more complex than a > three digit in an SxS environment? I think the phone ought to be > numbered strictly sequentially, starting from 111 and going upward. Of course it would waste resources, but on the bright side you'd only have to clean the first two levels of the connector banks :-) Later implementations would have used a tranlator and register senders. You dial 1513 and the translator converted it into 813. The wiring and troubleshooting of translators and register senders, even in a common control crosspoint office, would have been a nightmare. > The Bell System history talks about "graded multiples" to more > efficiently use trunks and switchgear in central offices, but I don't > think that would apply in this application. > Now if we wanted to implement the above using modern technology, would > only a PC be required with appropriate software and cards? I guess > we'd need capacity for about five conversations at once. Or a PBX carded 4x250. The high station count precludes an old analog Mitel SX-200, but it would have served about 188 stations with 31 calling paths. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The problem as I see it with matching > apartment number to intercom number is a security issue. Do you really > want to let strangers know that the tenant in apartment 103 (0103) or > the tenant in apartment 1513 (1513) is or is not at home? With the > Bell System 'Interphone' (or the competitor's 'Enterphone') > arrangement, the intercom numbers were used randomly for more security. In a Viking entry sysem, you assign 2 or 3-digit numbers to a directory, but those numbers don't relate to anything but storage bins. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: Communications History Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 13:51:33 +0000 > I am a bit of a communications history buff. I've been doing a little > research about telecom in the days before transoceanic phone service > before cables and satellites. The only way to bridge the oceans was > hf radio. It's interesting to note that anyone with a shortwave radio > could listen to all the international point-to-point phone traffic. I > am going to assume that a form of independent sideband was used with a > maximum of two or four circuits going to a specific country. Ssb is > very easy to receive even with a standard shortwave radio of the day > as long as it had a bfo to demodulate and recover the signals. I > would like to know if any form of primitive encryption was used to > make the circuits a bit more secure. It must have been very easy to > literally monitor all the international traffic to and from a given > nation. Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be > appreciated to help scratch my historical itch. In the earlier days, quite a number of the HF links were just regular double-sideband AM with carrier, not even SSB. Even today we still have ship-to-shore telephone links operated over simple, unencrypted SSB links in the marine band (2 to 3MHz-ish). I'm on the east coast of England, and there are still quite a number of calls placed this way from the off-shore oil rigs in the North Sea. When satellites started taking over international circuits, there was no encryption either. They used the same sort of basic carrier arrangements as were already in use for coax systems, with each circuit in an SSB channel of 4kHz overall bandwidth (wider than the telephone speech bandwidth to allow for guard bands, pilot tones, etc.). 12 channels made up a group, then 5 groups were multiplexed together to form a supergroup, and so on. The arrangement allowed for easy routing of circuits at intermediate points without splitting everything down to individual channels and then recombining. If, say, one group (12 channels) out of a supergroup was destined for a particular place,you could just extract that group complete and then multiplex it on to a different supergroup to send it on its way -- No need to worry about the individual channel content of the group. Anyone with a suitable satellite receiver/downconverter could connect it to a receiver and then just tune across the band, finding an SSB telephone channel every 4kHz or so. In fact when I worked for BT in the 1980s that's almost EXACTLY the way we would check a specific channel off the satellite (or other carrier systems). We had monitor sets that we could connect to the downconverted satellite baseband. They had precisely calibrated level meters so we could measure pilot-tone levels to make adjustments, but they were still, in effect, just fancy SSB SW receivers. Of course, in this case you'd be picking up just one direction of the conversation, as hybrids were used back at the origin to split the circuit. Finding the "mate" of a channel was easy enough with all the records in front of you, although even that could take a while to set up. For someone tuning around without that information, it would be much, much harder. Paul ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 7 Dec 2005 13:50:02 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Telemarketers are scum ... non-profits ... aggressively calling for > donations It's not so much the non-profits, but the telemarketing companies they hire to make the calls. They are using the same obnoxious techniques that were used before the Do Not Call went into effect. As you described, they hang up when an answering maching picks up. The call shows up as "toll free" or "out of area" on the Caller ID. Sometimes I'll see the number, so I know it's the same telemarketer calling over and over again. I had one, calling on behalf of a legitimate charity, ring my phone three and four times a day, every day over a period of two weeks, anytime between 9 a.m. and 8:56 pm. I knew who it was, because the first time they called, I answered and said I was too ill to discuss the charity. After two weeks of this harassment, I answered and blew off steam at the unfortunate young lady who made that call. But they got the hint, finally, and stopped calling me. My next move was to find the name and email address of the director of the charity that hired the telemarketer and give him a piece of my mind about telemarketers, how rude and inconsiderate they are, and how, by choosing that form of soliciting for my contribution, I'll never give them another dime. Lena ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. 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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 #554 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 9 15:19:04 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id EACEB14D26; Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:19:01 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #555 Message-Id: <20051209201901.EACEB14D26@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:19:01 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, RISK_FREE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 9 Dec 2005 15:20:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 555 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers (David Caruso) Fear of ID Theft Greatly Overblown, per Government Study (Reuters NewsWire) Google Ad Fraud Plaintiff Seeks to Cut Role in Case (Eric Auchard) Many Domains Registered With False Registration Data (zonk) Cellular-News for Friday 9th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Ron Kritzman) Telecom Update #509 - Canada - (Angus Telemanagement) Alltel to Spin Off Landline Business (USTA Daily Lead) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Robert Bonomi) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (Robert Bonomi) Re: Communications History (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Last Laugh! RSStroom Reader (CmdrTaco) 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: David Caruso Subject: MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:28:18 -0600 By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer Every evening rush hour, hustlers lugging bags full of bootlegged movies walk the subway train aisles, calling "two for five dollars!" as brazenly as if they were selling hot dogs at Yankee Stadium. At those prices, the DVDs, often of current Hollywood blockbusters, sell well, despite laughable sound and picture quality. Few customers seem to care the copies were made illegally. Bootleggers apparently have little to fear. Under state law, people caught videotaping inside a movie theater face a maximum fine of $250. As part of its worldwide campaign against piracy, the film industry is pushing for tougher penalties for smuggling a camcorder into a cinema in New York, which has the country's worst bootlegging problem and some of the weakest penalties. A bill pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America would make operating recording equipment inside a theater a criminal misdemeanor, raising the maximum punishment to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. Making the crime a misdemeanor also would empower police to arrest violators on the spot, rather than simply issuing a summons. People caught a second time would be charged with a felony. "We have to do something, because right now there's no risk," said William J. Shannon, a Yonkers-based deputy director of the association's U.S. anti-piracy operation. "Right now, you're looking at something about the same as a parking ticket." Legislators, film industry representatives and lawyers met Wednesday in Manhattan to discuss the new proposal, which would make New York one of several states to adopt tougher rules on movie piracy in recent years. But Pace Law School professor David N. Cassuto likened the use of tough criminal penalties to attack the lowest-level offenders in pirating operations to "using a howitzer to solve a roach problem." The proposed penalties would also apply to an obnoxious 16-year-old who holds up a camera phone during the coming attractions to snap a photograph of the screen, warned defense attorney Marvin Schecter. Through intricate watermarking technology, investigators can now determine in which theater a film was playing when it was recorded by someone with a handheld camera. About half the bootleg films that are recorded live in a theater, duplicated thousands of times, then sent around the globe originated in New York City, the trade group said. ___ On the Net: Motion Picture Association of America: http://www.mpaa.org/ 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. For more Associated Press News, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html To chat with other readers about this event, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/forum.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Fear of ID Theft Greatly Overblown, According to US Study Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:23:28 -0600 A new study suggests consumers whose credit cards are lost or stolen or whose personal information is accidentally compromised face little risk of becoming victims of identity theft. The analysis, released late on Wednesday, in a report commissioned by the United States government, also found that even in the most dangerous data breaches -- where thieves access social security numbers and other sensitive information on consumers they have deliberately targeted -- only about 1 in 1,000 victims had their identities stolen. ID Analytics, the San Diego, California-based fraud detection company that performed the analysis, said it looked at four recent data breaches involving a total of 500,000 consumers. It declined to provide the names of the companies involved in the breaches, but Mike Cook, ID Analytics co-founder, said one of them was a top five U.S. bank. After six months of study, comparing compromised information against credit applications, ID Analytics said it discovered something counterintuitive: The smaller the breach, the greater the likelihood the information was subsequently used by fraudsters to hijack the identity of victims. "If you're in a breach of 100, 200 or 250 names, there's a pretty high probability that you're identity is going to be used," said Mike Cook, ID Analytics' co-founder. "The reason for that is if you look at how long it takes a fraudster to use an identity, they can roughly use 100 to 250 in a year. But as the size of the breach grows, it drops off pretty drastically." A study conducted earlier this year by Javelin Strategy and Research, which mirrored the methodology of an earlier Federal Trade Commission study, found that 9.3 million Americans said they had been victimized by identity thieves during the preceding 12 months. ID Analytics said it discovered that identity thieves have a hard time using a stolen credit cards to hijack the identity of cardholders because the cards are usually quickly canceled -- and because piecing together an identity based on the information on the card is hard work. Not one of the card breaches it studied resulted in a subsequent identity takeover. While the findings will provide some comfort to consumers whose credit cards are lost or lifted or whose sensitive information is compromised when, for instance, a laptop is stolen, as recently happened at Chicago-based Boeing Co., some of ID Analytics' suggestions could be controversial. The company suggests, for instance, that companies shouldn't always notify consumers of data breaches because they may be unnecessarily alarming people who stand little chance of being victimized. That's likely to rankle consumer watchdogs, who are pushing Congress to enact a law, sponsored by Sen. Arlen Specter (news, bio, voting record), Republican of Pennsylvania, and Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record), Democrat of Vermont, that requires companies to implement tough data security standards and to notify consumers, law enforcement and credit-reporting agencies whenever there's a breach. "As far as notifications, we think there are certain instances where businesses might want to notify consumers and certain instances where they might not to inform them," said Cook. "For instance, if they lose data, and they don't know where it is, we think too many notices may not be a good thing. They should probably monitor that and spend dollars on consumers who are actually harmed, rather than spending dollars on 10 million consumers" most of whom won't be affected. 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. For more news stories, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html To discuss this report, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/forum.html ------------------------------ From: Eric Auchard Subject: Google Ad Fraud Plaintiff Seeks to Cut Role in Case Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 12:26:03 -0600 By Eric Auchard Click Defense Inc., which had filed a lawsuit against Google Inc. claiming the Web search leader's advertising sales practices were fraudulent, said on Thursday it was seeking to withdraw as lead plaintiff in the suit in order to focus on its own business. The company said in a statement it wanted to withdraw as the lead plaintiff named in a lawsuit seeking class-action status it had filed against Google in June in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Still, Click Defense said it planned to press its claims against Google. "We are only withdrawing as a representative plaintiff," Click Defense Chief Executive Scott Boyenger said in a statement, adding that the company was doing so in order to focus on its business as a provider of technology used to detect "click fraud" in online advertising campaigns. Virtually all of Google's revenues derive from so-called pay-per-click advertising in which advertisers pay only for ads on which Web users have clicked to view more information. Click fraud is not "fraud" as defined under the law. Rather, it is an industry term used to describe the deliberate clicking on Web search ads by users with no plans to do business with the advertiser. Rival companies might employ people or machines to do this because the advertiser has to pay the Web search provider for each click. Click fraud can run up thousands of dollars in advertiser costs or benefit a Web site operator that gets a cut of advertising revenue from Internet search providers. Google declined to comment on the pending case. At the time the lawsuit was originally filed it stated: "We believe the suit is without merit and we will defend ourselves against it vigorously." In general, Google says its credits advertisers who can show they have fallen pray to "invalid click" schemes. The complaint filed by Click Defense of Fort Collins, Colorado, alleged that Google has refused to take steps to thwart fraudulent advertising billing practices "even though the company was well aware of the practice." "We remain a member of the class and our click fraud claims against Google will still be litigated when and if the class is certified," Boyenger said. Click Defense said it was withdrawing after another potential plaintiff had stepped forward to act as representative plaintiff. On Wednesday, Advanced Internet Technology (AIT), a $34 million-a-year Internet service provider serving customers in the Middle Atlantic states and the Carolinas, said it planned to take over as lead plaintiff in the suit against Google. "(Click Defense) started down the road and got cold feet and we are jumping in their stead," Jay O'Dell, a sales executive with AIT, told Reuters by phone. Darren Kaplan, an attorney with the law firm Chitwood Harley Harnes LLP, remains plaintiff's counsel. A hearing on the motion for class certification in the Google click fraud case has been scheduled for May of 2006, Click Defense 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. For more news headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html To discuss this item with other readers, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Zonk Subject: Many Domains Registered With False Data Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:05:15 -0600 Posted by Zonk on Thursday December 08, @01:01PM from the seekrit-webmaster-conspiracy dept. bakotaco writes "According to research carried out by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) many domain owners are hiding their true identity. The findings could mean that many websites are fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals. The report also found that measures to improve information about domain owners were not proving effective." From the article: "The GAO took 300 random domain names from each of the .com, .org and .net registries and looked up the centrally held information about their owners. Any user can look up this data via one of the many whois sites on the net. The report found that owner data for 5.14% of the domains it looked at was clearly fake as it used phone numbers such as (999) 999-9999; listed nonsense addresses such as 'asdasdasd' or used invalid zip codes such as 'XXXXX'. In a further 3.65% of domain owner records data was missing or incomplete in one or more fields." To discuss this matter further, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As the official Keeper of the Records, ICANN was asked for a comment on this report, but they refused any discussion of it. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 9th December 2005 Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 07:50:18 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ Financial ]] Virgin's Branson Confident NTL's Mobile Bid Will Go Ahead http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15161.php Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson said Thursday he is confident that NTL Inc.'s bid for Virgin Mobile Holdings U.K. PLC will go ahead. ... Qualcomm Raises 1Q View On Chip Shipments http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15163.php Qualcomm Inc. raised its outlook for first-quarter earnings based on growth in mobile station modem chip shipments. ... Ukraine's Kyivstar plans to invest over $600 mln in 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15164.php Ukraine's leading mobile operator Kyivstar plans to invest over U.S. $600 million in the development of its network in 2006, compared with about $594 million allocated for this year, Telenor's CFO and Kyivstar's board of directors' member Torstein Mo... [[ Handsets ]] Nokia To Open Flagship Stores In "Shopping Capitals" http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15162.php Finland's Nokia Oyj Thursday said it would start a new multimedia retailing activity by opening several Flagship Stores in "shopping capitals of the world." ... [[ Network Contracts ]] Sprint Shakes Up, Expands Business Consulting Unit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15165.php Sprint Nextel Corp. is looking to expand its presence in the consulting business beyond advice and into implementation. ... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 08 Dec 2005 15:23:48 -0600 From: Ron Kritzman Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell cnnmoney@telecom-digest.org wrote: SBC has joined forces with AT&T and taken its name ... Okay. Illinois Bell, Ameritech, SBC, and now AT&T, in area codes 312, 708 and 847. So I've had 4 phone companies 3 areacode swapped out from under me while living in the same house with the same phone number. What do I win? - Ron Emoveray ethay Igpay Atinlay otay eplyray [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You must apparently live in the north shore area of Chicago. (I assume they are still '847' or has that been changed as well?) PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 10:50:40 -0800 Subject: Telecom Update #509 From: Angus TeleManagement Group Reply-To: Angus TeleManagement Group ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 509: December 9, 2005 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.com/canada/telecom/ ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** Former Bell Exec to Head MTS-Allstream ** Alberta Plans Canada's First Wi-Max Net ** Yukon, NWT Get Wireless Competitor ** Shaw Quits Cable Association ** Cellphones Up 481,000 in Three Months ** Bell, March Ally for Surveillance ** Amtelecom Buys Rural Telco ** Competitors, Cablecos Battle over Voice QoS ** Rogers Wants Ban on Wireless Junk Voicemail ** Ontera Waives Charges for Kashechewan Customers ** Dog Days for Cellphones ** Wi-LAN, Cisco Settle Suit ** Globalstar Readies Satellite Launch ** Nortel Buys into Vodavi ** Court Approves TIW Payout ** Branson Says Virgin Deal "Close" ** Cogeco Sales, Profits Rise ** IIC Conference in Ottawa Next Week ============================================================ FORMER BELL EXEC TO HEAD MTS-ALLSTREAM: Pierre Blouin, former head of Bell Canada's consumer and wireless organizations, has been named CEO of MTS Allstream, Canada's third-largest telecom carrier. He replaces Bill Fraser, who previously announced his plan to retire. ** Blouin left Bell in September after a reorganization removed Bell Mobility from his portfolio. He had been with the telco for 20 years. (See Telecom Update #495) ALBERTA PLANS CANADA'S FIRST WI-MAX NET: The Alberta Special Areas Board has contracted with Nortel Networks and Netago Wireless to deploy what is believed to be the first commercial network in Canada based on the new Wi-Max standard. The network will bring high-speed Internet access (1 Mpbs to 3 Mbps) to about 80% of businesses and residences in rural parts of southeastern Alberta by the third quarter of 2006. YUKON, NWT GET WIRELESS COMPETITOR: Cellular competition began in Yukon this week when Ice Wireless Inc. launched service in Whitehorse. The Ice consortium plans to extend coverage soon to Yellowknife; one of its partners, New North Networks, has served Inuvik since 1999. Until now Bell Mobility has been the sole provider in most of the North. SHAW QUITS CABLE ASSOCIATION: Shaw Communications has resigned from the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, citing "divergent interests and different strategic objectives." The CCTA expressed regret and promised to continue "business as usual." CELLPHONES UP 481,000 IN THREE MONTHS: There are now more than 16 million cellphones in use in Canada. Figures compiled by the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association show a net increase of 481,000 phones in the third quarter of 2005, and over a million in the first three quarters. ** Rogers added 402,000 subscribers in the first nine months of the year. Telus Mobility grew by 349,000; Bell/Aliant added 306,000. BELL, MARCH ALLY FOR SURVEILLANCE: Bell Canada and March Networks have formed a partnership to develop and market video surveillance applications in Canada. Development will take place at the Bell Advanced Solutions Innovations Centre in Ottawa, a joint venture of March's holding company and Bell. (See Telecom Update #500) AMTELECOM BUYS RURAL TELCO: Amtelecom, Ontario's third-largest independent telco, has bought the tenth-largest, People's Communications of Forest, for $21 million. Amtelecom gains about 5,000 phone subscribers, bringing its total to approximately 27,000. COMPETITORS, CABLECOS BATTLE OVER VOICE QoS: Cybersurf, supported by Vonage, Primus, and a coalition of Quebec ISPs (see Telecom Update #507), wants the CRTC to order Shaw, Rogers, and Videotron to make PacketCable functionality available to ISPs, and to require Shaw to allow competitors to resell a Quality of Service enhancement it currently markets to its own Internet customers. ** Videotron, the Canadian Cable Telecommunications Association, and Telus say such an order is unwarranted and would amount to a revision of the VoIP decision. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2005/8622/C122_200512716.htm ROGERS WANTS BAN ON WIRELESS JUNK VOICEMAIL: Rogers has asked the CRTC to prohibit "voicecasting" -- automatic delivery of unsolicited solicitations to voice mailboxes--to wireless customers. Rogers says its customers are irate about the cost and annoyance of receiving such messages. (See Telecom Update #452) http://www.crtc.gc.ca/PartVII/eng/2005/8622/r11_200514936.htm ONTERA WAIVES CHARGES FOR KASHECHEWAN CUSTOMERS: Ontera, the provincially owned telco in northern Ontario, is waiving more than $12,000 in long distance and Internet charges for relocated residents of Kashechewan. DOG DAYS FOR CELLPHONES: Vancouver-based On4 Communications says it will introduce a $350 cellphone for dogs early in 2006. The bone-shaped PetCell, a GPS-equipped handsfree (pawsfree?) device, will enable owners to track runaway dogs, and allow them to talk to lonely home-alone pets. Calls to the dog-phone will require a passcode, to ensure the pet isn't bothered by wrong numbers and telemarketers. WI-LAN, CISCO SETTLE SUIT: Cisco Systems has purchased patents from Wi-LAN Inc, settling a suit for patent infringement filed by the Calgary wireless broadband developer in 2004. (See Telecom Update #439) GLOBALSTAR READIES SATELLITE LAUNCH: Globalstar has signed contracts with two European companies and obtained U.S. government approval to launch up to eight spare satellites in Kazakhstan, beginning in 2007. The satellite phone provider is also building a new satellite gateway in Wasilla, Alaska. NORTEL BUYS INTO VODAVI: In an SEC filing dated December 2, Nortel Networks says its Korean subsidiary has acquired 23.3% of the outstanding shares of Vodavi Technologies, an Arizona company that manufactures IP-based business telephone systems. COURT APPROVES TIW PAYOUT: Telesystem International Wireless, which is going out of business, has obtained court approval to distribute $259 million to shareholders. A further $27 million payout may follow. (See Telecom Update #502) BRANSON SAYS VIRGIN DEAL "CLOSE": Virgin Mobile Holdings has rejected NTL's offer to buy the cellco for US$1.4 billion, but Virgin's owner Richard Branson says the two sides are "quite close." In Canada, Virgin Mobile is a partnership between Branson's company and Bell. (See Telecom Update #427) COGECO SALES, PROFITS RISE: Cogeco Cable says that its digital and Internet customer base grew by 22.5% and 15.9%, respectively, in its 2005 fiscal year. Revenue increased 5.3%, to $554 million; net income was $28.7 million. IIC CONFERENCE IN OTTAWA NEXT WEEK: The Canadian Chapter of the International Institute of Communications is holding its fifth annual conference at the Ottawa Congress Centre on December 12-13. The theme of this year's meeting is "Broadband: Are We Ready?" See the IIC'S website for the conference agenda and registration information. http://www.iic-canada.ca ============================================================ 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 http://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 http://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 jriddell@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. ============================================================ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 13:34:27 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Alltel to Spin Off Landline Business USTelecom dailyLead December 9, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zNnwatagCAhfldDseX TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Alltel to spin off landline business BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * EA snaps up JAMDAT * Report: Cable penetration sagging * Cable's wireless dilemma * Free Wi-Fi becomes the norm * Alcatel projects big growth from mobile operations USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Voice Over IP Crash Course by Steven Shepard TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Yahoo! strikes cross-platform deal with Aussie broadcaster VOIP DOWNLOAD * BellSouth enhances enterprise VoIP offering * BT takes another step toward 21CN reality Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zNnwatagCAhfldDseX ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: 9 Dec 2005 10:04:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > "the new Ma Bell" Too many journalists writing about AT&T these days still use the term "Ma Bell". That's inaccurate. Ma Bell isn't going away, it's been long gone. "Ma Bell" referred to the old AT&T Bell System pre-divesture. It referred to the old system, somewhat negatively, of when Bell owned all equipment and long distance, and supplied 100% of customers needs. Once AT&T divested the local companies, it ceased being the old Ma Bell. It quickly evolved into other types of business. It even lost the "Bell" name. The old AT&T died at divesture. If anything, the term "Ma Bell" is more accurately applied to the divested companies since they still have monopoly control in some areas and operate more of the traditional services. They use the Bell name and logo. (Verizon still prints the "Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania" on its literature and puts the Bell logo on its payphones.) People, knowing my interest in telephones, ask me how I feel about "AT&T going away". I answer it went away long ago at divesture. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:58:04 EST Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question In a message dated Wed, 07 Dec 2005 18:12:00 -0600, Neal McLain writes: > Advantage: This plan avoids two SxS taboos: subscriber numbers beginning > with 0 or 1: > - Initial 0 is taboo because "experience has shown that in a single- > office system it is not advisable to use subscribers' numbers > commencing with the numeral zero (0) unless absolutely necessary > to secure the desired capacity" [1]. And, of course, zero is > traditionally used to reach the local operator, if any. > - Initial 1 is taboo because an SxS (or any other rotary-dial) switch > can't distinguish between an intentionally-dialed 1 and a false > switchhook depression. > Disadvantage: It's not possible to match subscriber numbers to apartment > numbers (although, as PAT notes, this might not be a good idea anyway). > [1] Kempster B. Miller. "Telephone Theory and Practice" vol. 3 > "Automatic Switching and Auxiliary Equipment." New York: McGraw Hill, > 1933, p. 129. > Neal McLain The 1933 citation you mention, which I read in the 1940s, was really my introduction to how the telephone and telephone systems works, and definitely piqued my interest in the field. However, the 1 as initial digit taboo was reserched thoroughly when DDD was extended to customers through CAMAs in largely step-by-step exchanges, particularly in large cities that were primarily step-by-step. I forget how many million actually live calls were studied to determine how many of them had a false switchhook depression. There were none. Zero. Conventional wisdom was wrong. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I used to know someone who worked his away around the 'incoming calls only' rule on a telephone at the place where he lived. Although the phone did have dial tone, it also had a blank face plate, to avoid being able to dial outgoing calls, supposedly. His respose was to learn how to tap on the hook in the proper sequence and timing. Inconvenient to be sure, but it worked. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 15:50:42 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > This question is purely speculative only, not for real use. > Suppose we wanted to install a PABX using step-by-step gear in a condo > complex. We need 250 stations. My question regards the most > efficient station number assignments. > One person says the stations ought to have a four digit number that > corresponds to the apartment number. There are 19 buildings with > 10-15 units per building. So unit #103 would get phone number 0103 > and unit #1513 would be phone 1513. > While the above is easier to remember, wouldn't that be a waste of SxS > terminals and require more switch units without any gain in > efficiency? Isn't a four digit code inherently more complex than a > three digit in an SxS environment? I think the phone ought to be > numbered strictly sequentially, starting from 111 and going upward. A 'subset' 4-digit system (where all digits are in the range 1-4) would likely be the 'most efficient' hardware construct. this gives you 256 'numbers', which is a close match to your 250 station requirement. > The Bell System history talks about "graded multiples" to more > efficiently use trunks and switchgear in central offices, but I don't > think that would apply in this application. > Now if we wanted to implement the above using modern technology, would > only a PC be required with appropriate software and cards? I guess > we'd need capacity for about five conversations at once. Correct, one approach would be a _little_ PC (e.g. a 386 box), Asterisk software, and an appropriate number of line cards. And, of course, with computer-based system, you can assign 'dialable' numbers any way you want. You don't have any additional 'mechanical complexity' based on the length of the numbering plan. The problem is going to be in those 'line cards'. 250 'stations' requires 250 POTS ports on the 'switch'. Now, you _can_ get that many ports on the PC, no problem. A mere 3 quad-port T-1 cards does it. But then you need 11 "D-4" channel banks, or equivalent, to break those T-1s out to the individual POTS circuits. Then, if this is going to be more than an 'intercom' system, you need a bunch of 'trunk' lines to the C.O. '5 conversations' may be a reasonable 'average' usage (although it strikes me as _low_), but you'll need *several* times more than that to handle reasonable variability in call volumes. probably more like 50 (at least!) to handle 'reasonable' peak calling without having to give fast-busy, due to lack of 'trunk' circuits. ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 13:50:45 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing There's a very nice way to shut out all telemarketers. See if your LOC offers Do Not Disturb service. Do Not Disturb service, which is often *cheaper* than No Solicitation, can be set with a 24 hour/day "no-disturb" period. To ring your phone, the caller has to know a 4-digit password set by you. You can optionally allow "emergency calling" with "*", which requires the caller to state their name (and you get to hear that before deciding whether or not to allow the call to connect). You have to make sure that you do not have voice mail or other forwarding, since it will send your call to your voice mail if you do. An answering machine is OK. I've done this for over a year now, and the blessed silence from my landline phone has been delightful. The handful people who are authorized to call me all know the password; and it's easy enough to program it into the speed dial on most modern phones. You can also change the password at any time. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 14:53:33 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , William Warren wrote: > jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: >> Here is the problem, >> I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL >> connections to the internet and use these connections to provide >> internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of >> about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would >> like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I >> don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to >> balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). >> Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? >> -Jonathan > Obtain a Linux server, connect each DSL line to a separate Ethernet > card, and modify its route table to give equal weight to each line. > You'll need a third card for your wireless AP or other LAN connections. This approach only solves "part" of the problem, namely 'outgoing' traffic. "Incoming" traffic is an entirely different problem. And load-balancing _that_ traffic cannot be done in anything approaching a satisfactory manner without 'help' from the 'upstream' end. And it requires that both DSL circuits terminate at the same 'upstream' provider. In article , jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: > I know nothing about setting up a server, so please pardon my > ignorance. Is there any reason why it needs to be a linux server? No, it *doesn't*have*to*be* "Linux". > Could it be Windows? It _could_. *BUT* the 'standard' routing code _in_the_kernel_ of most operating systems does =not= support multiple equal-priority routes to the same destination, *with* rotating use of those routes on a per-packet basis. Thus, you are _very_probably_ going to have to modify the relevant pieces of the O/S kernel to accomplish this 'ping-pong' load-balancing. Doing those modification is _much_ easier if you have the source-code for the O/S available. If you can get access from Microsoft, go for it. > Where can I get further information about setting up a server and > modifying the route tables? "If you have to ask ..." about basics like that, you should _not_ be attempting this on your own. This kind of exotic tweaking _does_ call for a "guru". Hire a professional to explain to you what this approach _will_ accomplish, and what it will *not* accomplish. There are a _lot_ of things to take into consideration that have not even been _touched_ on in this discussion, before concluding that this approach is viable for what you "really" want to accomplish. e.g. do you want to load-balance 'incoming' or 'outgoing' traffic, or "both"? Also, what proportion of the total traffic will be 'incoming', and how much will be 'outgoing'? Also _where_ will the 'far end' of the traffic be going -- is it "anywhere on the Internet" (as in a 'Internet cafe' environment), or is it all to a _single_ place (as in a 'remote' office, just needing connectivity back to the big computers at 'headquarters')? Will this be TCP traffic, or UDP traffic? will TCP 'connections' be long-lived, or very transient? *ALL* of those things affect the nature of the 'solution' to load-balancing traffic loads that is 'right' for _your_ situation. > William Warren wrote: >> jonfklein@gmail.com wrote: >>> Here is the problem, >>> I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL >>> connections to the internet and use these connections to provide >>> internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of >>> about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would >>> like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I >>> don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to >>> balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). >>> Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? >>> -Jonathan >> Obtain a Linux server, connect each DSL line to a separate Ethernet >> card, and modify its route table to give equal weight to each line. >> You'll need a third card for your wireless AP or other LAN connections. >> Best of luck. >> William ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Communications History Date: 9 Dec 2005 07:34:06 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Dave Marthouse wrote: > Anyone who can shed light on this subject would be appreciated to > help scratch my historical itch. I pulled up the Bell System Eng & Science history and there is an extensive chapter on radiotelephony and overseas calls. They go into good detail on the technical challenges of high powered transmitters, greatly varying originating voice signal strength, amplification, echo control, 2-wire to 4-wire conversion, antenna design and construction, signal propagation, etc. It is in the first volume of the series, 1875-1925. I strongly recommend it*. A large muncipal or college library likely would have it. As mentioned, they used both high and low frequency depending on conditions. Channel capacity was very limited. It appears that functions of radio transmission we take for granted today all had to be worked out by them. It amazes me that a tiny little cell phone can do everything (although at much lower power) they needed to do to send and receive a telephone radio signal. They DID use a basic encryption to provide some privacy by inverting some frequency bands and "wobbling". As mentioned, a determined listener could bypass that but a cascual listener would not hear intelligable conversation. The book goes into detail on this process. *I also recommend Vol 2 which covers 1925-1975. Lots of interesting stuff on switching development. Vol 3 covers military applications which I didn't find so interesting but there are chapters on military radio development. At the beginning of WW II they experimented with both AM and FM vehicle radios to see what was best. They also talk about the challenges of dealing with sub-contractors meeting demanding military specs. Equipment for the domestic market simply would quickly break in the rough military environment. ------------------------------ From: CmdrTaco Subject: Last Laugh! RSStroom Reader Date: Thu, 8 Dec 2005 19:11:06 -0600 Get RSS Feeds on Your Toilet Paper Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday December 08, @02:29PM from the raising-the-bullshit-detector dept. 0110011001110101 writes "A crazy new product out of Taiwan seems to be aimed at the feed dependent of us out there. The 'rsstroom reader' is a bathroom gadget that prints news feeds onto your T-P -- that's right, your TOILET PAPER! The best part is the "biometrics" toilet seat that'll figure out who you are based on your weight and prints the news you want -- not your roommates tabloid garbage. Going to the rsstroom will never be boring again! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you know how to program this RSS reader, fine, but if you do not, the vendor will ship it to you pre-programmed with certain 'factory default' settings regards the RSS feeds, based on 'average' weight and posture on the toilet seat, and including such gems of RSS feeds as Slate, PC World Communications and Telecom Digest. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. 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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 #555 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 9 21:37:42 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id E90B01504D; Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:37:41 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #556 Message-Id: <20051210023741.E90B01504D@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:37:41 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.2 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, INFO_TLD,MAILTO_TO_REMOVE autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:40:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 556 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Two NYC Workers Accused of Stealing 9-11 Funds (Associate Press NewsWire) One in Four Netters Recieve Phony E-Mail (Jennifer C. Kerr) Verizon Wireless to Deliver CBS Clips to Phones (Reuters News Wire) US Air Force to Guard Cyberspace (Grant Gross, IDG News) Businesses Rush for '.eu' Domains (Associated Press News Wire) 'Always On' Internet (AFP News Wire) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Joe Morris) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Arthur Kamlet) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (James Carlson) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) 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: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Two NYC Workers Accused of Stealing 9-11 Funds Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:31:21 -0600 Two former employees in the city medical examiner's office were charged with embezzling millions of dollars intended to help identify victims of the World Trade Center attack. Natarajan R. Venkataram, 41, and Rosa Abreu, 38, were arrested Wednesday. "These defendants breached their positions of trust and responsibility and took advantage of a national tragedy," said Rose Gill Hearn, city commissioner of investigation. After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Federal Emergency Management Agency forwarded millions of dollars to help the medical examiner buy computer hardware, software and support services to identify the dead. Prosecutors said Friday that the defendants, both administrators in the medical examiner's office, steered an $11.4 million contract to a company controlled by an associate of Venkataram's. The company did some work, but most of the money went to companies that did little or nothing and were sometimes controlled by the defendants, prosecutors said. About $5.5 million was allegedly transferred at Venkataram's direction to bank accounts in India. A lawyer for Venkataram declined to comment. Abreu's attorney did not immediately return a call. 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. For more Associated Press headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html Discuss this event in our forum: http://telecom-digest.org/forum.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not know if this is a new record for thievery where municipal employees are concerned or not. I do know that in 1996-97 several employees of the Chicago Transit Authority absconded with several million dollars -- a couple hundred dollars at a time -- from CTA on an almost daily basis. Although you might think the biggest heists each day would be at the money counting room, 77th and Vincennes bus barn where several routes terminated each day -- and workers there were commonly walking away with a fist full of dollar bills routinely -- and not to take them to the bank! -- the subway fare collecting agents had a good racket going also: Sitting in their cage, they'd collect fares from passers by but then fail to register the fare. They were supposed to (older style) pull an overhead strap which caused a bell to ring, flashed a light and unlocked the turnstile. The newer sytem had them punch a button on a keyboard which in turn rang the bell, turned a red light (stop!) to green to allow passengers to walk through the temporarily opened gate, etc. Then each day at the end of their shift they would 'read the meter' in the presence of the employee who was relieving them, take all the money away to be audited elsewhere (probably 77th and Vincennes). That was supposed to be the CTA audit trail on fares collected. Trouble is, the employees learned they could (instead of ringing the 'fare paid' button they could instead ring the 'monthly pass presented' key, or the 'employee pass' key or a couple others which would unlock the turnstile and flash a light but _not_ show up on the fare collected register. That money was of course, their take. The night shift agents at State Street and Jackson/Van Buren downtown between them pulled about a million dollars over two years before they got caught. For about a year in the time period 1988-90 I was employed as a 'rider' -- in CTA parlance, a 'rider' is an 'ignorant' old man or an old 'shopping bag' woman, also allegedly too old and mentally feeble to know what was happening. Objective: _always_ pay with cash, _always_ rush through the gates, _never_ pay attention to anything, (or so the collection agents were to think) but really, out of the corner of your beady eyes notice if the _right_ lights flashed on the gates, the register incremented your trip, etc. Other 'riders' were to deliberatly find a reason to pick a fight with the collection agent or bus driver, or train conductor, etc and see how they responded. It helped a lot if the 'rider' was unshaven, had body odor, and, just in general, acted ignorant. The CTA employees were not to think that a 'rider' was anyone of any consequence, obviously. Jackson/Van Buren subway _did_ have a lot of strange people boarding the train there anyway, so I did not look out of place, and I did work downtown on the late shift for that department store (where I took care of their PBX/centrex) so several nights per week I was an ideal person (in CTA's view) to 'ride' through that station. You were _never_ to reveal anything about yourself to the fare collector, etc, just toss your money in at her and shove your way along. If you had anything to talk or snitch about, you were to do that by calling a certain private, non-published direct phone line in someone's office at CTA, the same as Walmart does it now with their 'mystery shoppers'. But I had this one situation; the fare collector acted _so ignorant_; was _so brazen_ in her thievery (she hit me three times in one week for my fare during the late night hours); I just could not resist telling her off good. A middle-age black lady; she impresed me that she was into drugs as a spare time thing. Monday and Tuesday she grabbed at my money as I stuck it in the cage at her and did 'monthly pass' to open the gate. I said nothing, just catalogued it away, and continued on my trip home. I did not go to work Wednesday, but went in Thursday night, and I do not remember why, exactly, but she did or said something to another passenger which really annoyed me, so when she hit me on my fare again (used the employee free ride) to open the gates that night, I decided to call her on it. I had seen her do the same thing for two riders ahead of me in line that night, so I decided to have fun with her. She rang 'employee free' on my fare, the light turned green, instead of walking through I just stood there and said to her 'why did you ring me like that? do it correctly'. All real nasty and authoritarian she ordered me 'keep moving, do not hold up the line'. I told her when you _ring my fare correctly_ I will move along, not before. She came up with a lame excuse about how she had 'earlier double rang a fare and wanted to make up for the resulting shortage.' I told her 'you have a pad of Form (whatever) in there to be used in that case. On the Form, you write down the money amount (usually 90 cents for one fare), you initial it and ask the passenger to also scribble his initials there, _then_ you open the gate with the mis-ring key and you turn in that scrap of paper with your work for the night, that is how you do it.' Now she was furious! "You hurry up and get through the gate or I will call the police and have you arrested!" I told her "you just do that ... go ahead and call police, do you want to use the phone there in the cage or would you prefer I call them from the payphone over there on the wall? But if _I_ call, then I will also call the fare collector supervisor over at State/Lake Street and tell her about it also." Now she knew I had to know _something_ about the 'system' and she thought about that for a minute and decided it would probably be best to not get police or her supervisors involved. She ripped off one of the 'fare adjustment' forms from the pad of same, filled in the amount of the fare shoved it out the window at me and said 'put your name on here', with a very angry look on her face (at being caught). I just was _not_ going to let that one go through, so the next morning I called the private, unlisted phone number at the Merchandise Mart (CTA headquarters) and told the man all about it. I told the gentleman about it, he said that he had heard 'other hearsay reports about that same lady' so he figured it was about time to hit her with a bunch of 'riders'; several 'riders' each night for a week or two, so I can 'catch her in the act and she won't be able to deny it.' I guess the collection fare person had never had so many old bag-ladies and smelly, unshaven old men come past her booth in one night before. About a month later, I got a call from someone at CTA who identified himself as 'the agent supervisor'. It was a very short phone call and got right to the point: "you remember about a month ago when you called here and made a complaint about Agent (number)?" I said I did, and his reply was "you were right. I fired her yesterday, she went to the Union to file grievance. The Union told her, 'we would help you, but CTA has been on our case lately for defending so many people who have been alleged to steal from them.' So, I think the Bitch is out of here, and chances are the Authority will have an indictment for her sometime real soon." NOTE: The CTA is itself a quasi government in the Chicago area. Not a government _agency_ but a _government_, with the power to fine, indict, prosecute, etc. Her, and 'her kind' took CTA for several million dollars as best as anyone was ever able to figure out. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jennifer C. Kerr Subject: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:40:29 -0600 About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting consumers, a study says. Of those receiving the phony e-mails, most thought they might be from legitimate companies -- seven in 10, or 70 percent, were fooled by the e-mails, said the report. The study released Wednesday by America Online and the National Cyber Security Alliance looked at Internet security and "phishing scams." Phishing refers to e-mails that appear to come from banks or other trusted businesses and are used to induce recipients to verify their accounts by typing personal details, such as credit card information, into a Web site disguised to appear legitimate. "What's happening is that more and more people are actually engaging in transactions online that would generate e-mail traffic that the scammers are copycatting," said Tatiana Platt, senior vice president at AOL. The study found nearly three-quarters of those surveyed, 74 percent, use their computers for sensitive transactions such as banking, stock trading or reviewing medical information. That leaves phishers with a good chunk of Internet users to target, Platt said. Platt said too many people still don't have adequate computer security to guard against viruses, hackers and other threats. The study found 81 percent of home PCs lacked at least one of three critical protections -- updated antivirus software, spyware protection and a secure firewall. The researchers conducted in-home interviews with more than 350 Internet users nationwide. The researchers also reviewed the e-mails received by those households. The Federal Trade Commission has several tips to keep from getting hooked by phishers: _If you get an e-mail asking for personal information, call the company directly or type in the company's correct Web address. Do not click on the link provided in the e-mail. _Use antivirus software and a firewall. This can protect a user from accepting unwanted files that could harm a computer or track a consumer's Internet activities. _Don't e-mail personal or financial information. ___ On the Net: National Cyber Security Alliance: http://www.staysafeonline.info Federal Trade Commission: http://www.ftc.gov 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. For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html To discuss phishing on the net, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Verizon Wireless to Deliver CBS Clips to Phones Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:47:28 -0600 Verizon Wireless plans to start sending clips of popular CBS shows "CSI," "Survivor" and "Late Show with David Letterman" to mobile phones, marking CBS's first foray into wireless video, the companies said on Wednesday. The clips will be available to customers of Verizon Wireless's V Cast video service and are aimed at luring more consumers to use a high-speed wireless network it is building. Mobile providers are moving beyond traditional phone calls in the hope of boosting revenue with features like video. TV networks like CBS see this trend as a way to win new viewers and give new options to existing ones. Some, like NBC, are also making agreements with Apple Computer Inc. to have whole shows or clips run on its video iPod device. While the iPod needs to be connected to a computer for video downloads, clips are delivered to cellphones wirelessly. Rather than airing full shows, V Cast will carry shorter clips, including part of Letterman's monologue from "Late Show" and highlights from other shows. It will run preview clips of CBS series "CSI" and "Survivor." Customers will also start receiving video news segments from CBS News and Paramount TV's "Entertainment Tonight," the companies said. The news clips will include breaking news as well as features from "CBS Evening News" and "The Early Show." CBS, now a unit of Viacom Inc., will become a publicly traded company next year; Paramount TV is also a Viacom unit. Verizon Wireless is a venture of Verizon Communications Inc. and Vodafone Group Plc. Reuters/VNU Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. ------------------------------ From: Grant Gross Subject: US Air Force to Guard Cyberspace Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:49:17 -0600 by Grant Gross, IDG News Service WASHINGTON-- The U.S. Air Force's goals now include "fighting" in cyberspace, according to a new mission statement released this week. A cyberspace security responsibility was newly included in the mission statement, released Wednesday. The new mission statement, intended to set the current and future direction of the Air Force, reads: "The mission of the United States Air Force is to deliver sovereign options for the defense of the United States of America and its global interests -- to fly and fight in Air, Space, and Cyberspace." A story on the Air Force Web site quotes a letter to airmen from Michael Wynne, secretary of the Air Force, and Gen. T. Michael Moseley, the Air Force chief of staff, saying U.S. enemies will use any means to strike at the country and it is the Air Force's calling to "dominate" air, space and cyberspace. Details Promised The Air Force is the first of the five branches of the U.S. military to include fighting in cyberspace as part of its core mission. However, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has advocated training the military to also defend cyberspace. The government has also warned of potential virtual attacks in response to conventional military action. "We have quite a few of our Airmen dedicated to cyberspace ... from security awareness, making sure the networks can't be penetrated, as well as figuring out countermeasures," the Air Force-written story quotes Wynne as saying. "The Air Force is a natural leader in the cyber world and we thought it would be best to recognize that talent." An Air Force spokesperson declined to further elaborate, saying Wynne was tentatively scheduled to talk about the new mission statement in a press conference next week. The term, "sovereign options," was also new to the mission statement, according to the Air Force Web site. Copyright 2005 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. To read stories in USA Today, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wonder if this means that someday, Air Force guys will investigate hackers, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Associated Press NewsWire Subject: Businesses Rush For '.eu' Domain Names Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:51:07 -0600 European businesses rushed to sign up for the new ".eu" Internet domain name, putting in 100,000 Web site applications by the end of its first day available, the group in charge of registering the requests said Thursday. Businesses and public bodies were able to sign up for the new European Union Internet address starting Wednesday morning, and they did so with haste. They filed 40,503 applications within the first 15 minutes of availability -- hitting a top speed of 60 requests per second -- according to the European Registry of Internet Domain Names, or EURid, the nonprofit organization in charge of handling requests. That number had nearly doubled by the end of the first hour, when 80,000 applications had been received. By the end of the day, "sex.eu" was the most requested name, with 213 applicants bidding for it, followed by "hotel.eu" and "travel.eu." Other popular site names included jobs, casino, poker, golf, music and porn, followed by the new ".eu" domain. The Web site names were handed out on a first-come, first-served basis, with German enterprises filing the most requests, EURid said. France and the Netherlands rounded off the top three countries most eager to sign up for the new domain. Until now, Europeans had to choose between a national domain such as ".fr" for France or a global one like ".com," often seen as American. Richard More O'Ferrall, spokesman for the EU small business lobby UEAPME, said the ".eu" name could be useful for European companies. "It broadens your appeal and the appeal of your product across Europe," he said. "You have something that identifies you with the EU." Though many are not yet up and running, new domain names can be used immediately but not everyone is allowed to register names during this sunrise period. Only registered trademark owners, government agencies and companies may sign up during the registration round that began Wednesday. On Feb. 2, ".eu" opens up to family names. General registration begins April 7, but only to people who live in the European Union and to companies with headquarters or branches inside the 25-nation bloc. 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. For more headlines from Associated Press, listen to Telecom Digest News Radio: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/TDNewsradio.html (and also) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/Fednews.html ------------------------------ From: AFP News Wire Subject: 'Always on' Internet Changing American Life Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 16:52:42 -0600 "Always on" broadband Internet hook-ups are transforming American life, empowering grass roots politics, moulding new work and shopping habits and bringing far flung families closer. A major new survey published Wednesday also found that the most explosive growth in online time was among low income web surfers, who had previously been excluded from the Internet revolution. "The Internet has clearly matured across all segments of American society," said Jeffrey Cole, director of the University of South California Annenberg School Center for the Digital future, which conducted the survey. The project, the fifth annual release of the study, yielded "extraordinary findings about how the Internet continues to change America," Cole said. In 2005, more Americans than ever before were on the Internet -- 78 percent of the population -- and their use of the medium rose to an average of 13.3 hours a week. For the first time, a broadband connection is the most popular way for US users to access the web -- 48 percent compared to the 45 percent of users still drumming their fingers as their computer labors through a dial up process. "It is really the always on (factor) which changes our relationship with the Internet long term," Cole said, at an advance briefing on the report for congressional staffers last week. Whereas dial-up consumers typically get online two to three times per day for around 30 minutes, those with broadband links frequently log on to check news, shop or to chase down information, Cole said. E-mail remains the most popular online activity, followed by general web surfing, reading news, shopping and entertainment -- and only 27 percent of users said they would give up the Internet over their cell phone or television. Internet use is also becoming more available across the economic digital divide. In 2005, Internet use among those with incomes of less than 30,000 dollars rose to 61 percent, after hovering around 50 percent for four years. "The fastest growing use of the Internet is among those with the lowest income," said Cole. The survey also found online campaigning is transforming US politics and empowering individual voters dwarfed by the might of the print and broadcast media. The online revolution could even allow a third-party candidate to break the two-party Republican/Democrat monopoly of US politics, said Cole. "The Internet will forever change the course and nature of American politics. "The Internet is no longer a marginal force in American politics -- it is quickly becoming the central force in empowering voters," Cole said. Cole said at the congressional briefing that 40 percent of Internet users now believe going online can give people more political power. A majority of Internet users told the survey that the Internet was having no influence on the time they were spending with family and friends. But 40 percent said it had increased contact with close relatives and friends. The web is also playing an important role in keeping members of the US military, many fighting far flung conflicts, in touch with their families back home, the survey said. 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, Agence Presse France. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: 9 Dec 2005 13:11:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Thanks to all who responded. Interesting observations. Neal McLain wrote: > The most "efficient" numbering plan (least amount of equipment) would be > to assign extension numbers in three 3-digit ranges: That's what I thought. > This arrangement provides a total of 300 lines, enough to accommodate > 250 apartments with spares for other uses (office, maintenance room, > loading dock, etc.). In my hypothetical example, I envision a copious amount of "house phones" throughout the community, such as in front of each building, at the pool, etc. > Disadvantage: It's not possible to match subscriber numbers to apartment > numbers (although, as PAT notes, this might not be a good idea anyway). I agree for security and privacy reasons it is better NOT to have matching intercom and apt numbers. If you want to call a specific person, you should know their number. > [1] Kempster B. Miller. "Telephone Theory and Practice" vol. 3 > "Automatic Switching and Auxiliary Equipment." New York: McGraw Hill, > 1933, p. 129. Thanks for the above book reference. Is it hard to find? Seems worthwhile to check it out. Regarding other comments, I envisioned this to be a private system only without any outside connection. This would keep it simple and for internal use only. One friend suggested having a manual switchboard instead. I realized there are two neighbors who would love to do that. They'd be good at it because, how can I say this, they know everyone's whereabouts and business at all times. So if you want to call Mr. Smith but he's away, these neighbors will already know where Mr. Smith is, what he is doing, whether or not Mrs. Smith is aware of it, etc., as well as the status of each and every other neighbor in the complex. Not that they would gossip or listen in on calls, they would NEVER EVER do that. I happened to meet a retired Bell Telephone craftsmen and mentioned my idea. He thought I was crazy. He pointed out the immense wiring and maintenance needs of an SxS plant. That made me realize and appreciate how far we've come with electronics, and how complex the old Bell System was to build and run. It's relatively easy for us today to pop in an electronic box and have fancy phone service. It's totally another to bring together expensive and complex SxS gear to provide service reliably. My application is pretty basic as phone applications go, but we can see it would still take some serious engineering and planning. Switches, wiring, and footprint are all expensive and we don't want a 2,000 sqft room when a 500 sq ft one will do. Modern technology has made the need for such a system obsolete. Years ago fine apartment buildings had separate house phone systems -- more than a plain intercom -- so the office or doormen could check in with an apt or vice versa. Many people had message rate service* and a PBX was a free call to call neighbors. Some buildings had answering service switchboards which I believe Pat worked with. Anyway, today call waiting or multiple individual phone lines eliminated the need for a separate system. Cell phones and portable cordless phones eliminate the need for outside and house phones -- people have their cordless or cell phones with them and won't miss an incoming call. Ironically the switching cost of such a system would be cheap today but we don't even need it. Years ago I stayed in a Miami hotel. A big function of the PBX operators was paging guests who weren't in their room. The hotel PA system covered all public areas. House phones were liberally placed all over the hotel; I remember the pool area having numerous outdoor telephone boxes (and thinking that kind of coverage was pretty neat). The hotel PBX was a high 3 position manual board with two multiples of the extension bank. Very small motels would have a small cord switchboard handled by the desk clerk, but anything larger had at least one full time operator, maybe several. Actually in hindsight the constant paging on the PA system was a bit tiring to other guests. I wonder if resort hotels still bother to do that, or simply route to the room's voice mail. Today hotels have a tiny little console the desk clerk handles in his spare time. Some are centrex with the room numbers matching the telephone extension. However, I was surprised recently when visiting a friend in the hospital how often the PA system was used to page doctors. Way back when I worked in a hospital they were converting to pagers; I presume all doctors and key staff would carry them now. Bell had a "meet me page" in the 1970s where the paged person would dial a special extension and be automatically connected with the incoming call instead of the operator manipulating cords. *Message rate service is still offered today. But the price of a message unit has remained stable -- 7c in my area -- for years, 7c in 1965 was more like 70c. Further today they give off peak discounts so a weekend call might only be 3c. ------------------------------ From: Joe Morris Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 22:29:52 UTC Organization: The MITRE Organization TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Wesrock@aol.com: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I used to know someone who worked his > away around the 'incoming calls only' rule on a telephone at the place > where he lived. Although the phone did have dial tone, it also had a > blank face plate, to avoid being able to dial outgoing calls, > supposedly. His response was to learn how to tap on the hook in the > proper sequence and timing. Inconvenient to be sure, but it worked. PAT] And I'm sure you remember the little "dial lock" gizmos that were clamped into the "1" fingerhole and were supposed to keep people from making outbound calls on an unattended office telephone? It seems that nobody ever thought about dialing with the switchhook -- or just banging away with ten or more pulses and asking the operator for assistance. Joe Morris ------------------------------ From: kamlet@panix.com (Arthur Kamlet) Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 21:25:17 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: ArtKamlet@aol.REMOVE.com In article , wrote: > "Ma Bell" referred to the old AT&T Bell System pre-divesture. It > referred to the old system, somewhat negatively, of when Bell owned > all equipment and long distance, and supplied 100% of customers needs. > Once AT&T divested the local companies, it ceased being the old Ma > Bell. It quickly evolved into other types of business. It even lost > the "Bell" name. Except that AT&T fought for and succeeded in keeping the name: Bell Laboratories. Not until AT&T spun off Western Electric and Bell Labs, soon renamed Lucent Technologies, did Lucent's managers manage to screw up Bell Labs. Art Kamlet ArtKamlet @ AOL.com Columbus OH K2PZH ------------------------------ From: James Carlson Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: 09 Dec 2005 17:35:20 -0500 Organization: Sun Microsystems bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: > "Incoming" traffic is an entirely different problem. And > load-balancing _that_ traffic cannot be done in anything approaching a > satisfactory manner without 'help' from the 'upstream' end. Indeed. > And it requires that both DSL circuits terminate at the same > 'upstream' provider. Not necessarily. There are at least two other possibilities here, both of which allow for connections to multiple providers: - NAT in use, and load balancing on a per-connection basis. This automatically balances the return traffic as well, as everyone on the net thinks you're actually two separate independent IP nodes. - You're a big company and you can afford to arrange BGP peering with the ISPs and inject routes into the backbone. There are others as well that involve just living with the fact that you'll appear to be separate nodes on the net, and remaining multihomed -- this is what you'd probably do if you were doing this for (say) a web server with multiple A records. > *BUT* the 'standard' routing code _in_the_kernel_ of most operating > systems does =not= support multiple equal-priority routes to the same > destination, *with* rotating use of those routes on a per-packet > basis. Doing it on a per-packet basis ("round robin") is a mistake. It causes poor performance by reordering packets and often causes trouble with various middleboxes. Instead, you want to hash based on flow identification, which some systems can do. James Carlson, KISS Network Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 9 Dec 2005 14:53:06 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mark Crispin wrote: > There's a very nice way to shut out all telemarketers. > See if your LOC offers Do Not Disturb service. > Do Not Disturb service, which is often *cheaper* than No Solicitation, > can be set with a 24 hour/day "no-disturb" period. To ring your > phone, the caller has to know a 4-digit password set by you. It's a great idea, but wouldn't work for us who have so many lame- brained friends who would never remember any code. We can't even get our friends to remember to change their email addressbook when we change our email provider. There is also an item called "Caller ID Manager" from Privacy Corps. It looks like a separate Caller ID box, but can be set to block whatever numbers you program into it, including all 800 numbers, all 888 numbers, unidentified numbers, etc. Costs about $100. From the description, it looks like it works on one phone and one would have to add "remotes" for other phones. (Google it). I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. Lena ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #556 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Dec 10 22:56:24 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 383ED14EA1; Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:56:23 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #557 Message-Id: <20051211035623.383ED14EA1@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:56:23 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, RISK_FREE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:00:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 557 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Economist.com How the Internet Killed the Phone (Marcus Didius Falco) The Meaning of Free Speech Economist.com (Marcus Didius Falco) Foreign Residential Listing (Verizon Again) (Fred Atkinson) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Fred Atkinson) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (harold@hallikainen) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (Robert Bonomi) Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (Barry Margolin) Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (Scott Dorsey) Re: Many Domains Registered With False Data (Robert Bonomi) Re: Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones? (Robert Bonomi) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Steve Sobol) Re: MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers (Robert Bonomi) 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, 09 Dec 2005 21:58:02 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Economist.com How the Internet Killed the Phone http://economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3DE1_QQDTVJQ http://economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=3D4401594 Economist.com Telecoms and the internet From The Economist print edition Almost-free internet phone calls herald the slow death of traditional telephony THE term 'disruptive technology' is popular, but is widely misused. It refers not simply to a clever new technology, but to one that undermines an existing technology and which therefore makes life very difficult for the many businesses which depend on the existing way of doing things. Twenty years ago, the personal computer was a classic example. It swept aside an older mainframe-based style of computing, and eventually brought IBM, one of the world's mightiest firms at the time, to its knees. This week has been a coming-out party of sorts for another disruptive technology, voice over internet protocol (VOIP), which promises to be even more disruptive, and of even greater benefit to consumers, than personal computers (see article). VOIP's leading proponent is Skype, a small firm whose software allows people to make free calls to other Skype users over the internet, and very cheap calls to traditional telephones -- all of which spells trouble for incumbent telecoms operators. On September 12th, eBay, the leading online auction-house, announced that it was buying Skype for $2.6 billion, plus an additional $1.5 billion if Skype hits certain performance targets in coming years. This seems a vast sum to pay for a company that has only $60m in revenues and has yet to turn a profit. Yet eBay was not the only company interested in buying Skype. Microsoft, Yahoo!, News Corporation and Google were all said to have also considered the idea. Perhaps eBay, rather like some over-excited bidder in one of its own auctions, has paid too much. The company says it plans to use Skype's technology to make it easier for buyers and sellers to communicate, and to offer new =93click to call advertisements, but many analysts are sceptical that eBay is the best owner of Skype. Whatever the merits of the deal, however, the fuss over Skype in recent weeks has highlighted the significance of VOIP, and the enormous threat it poses to incumbent telecoms operators. For the rise of Skype and other VOIP services means nothing less than the death of the traditional telephone business, established over a century ago. Skype is merely the most visible manifestation of a dramatic shift in the telecoms industry, as voice calling becomes just another data service delivered via high-speed internet connections. Skype, which has over 54m users, has received the most attention, but other firms routing calls partially or entirely over the internet have also signed up millions of customers. A price of zero. The ability to make free or almost-free calls over a fast internet connection fatally undermines the existing pricing model for telephony. If you believe that you should not have to pay for making phone calls in future, just as you don't pay to send e-mail, says Skype's co-founder, Niklas Zennstrom. That means not just the end of distance and time-based pricing it also means the slow death of the trillion-dollar voice-telephony market, as the marginal price of making phone calls heads inexorably downwards. VOIP makes possible more than just lower prices, however. It also means that, provided you have a broadband connection, you can choose from a number of providers of VOIP telephony and related add-on services, such as voicemail, conference calling or video. Many providers allow a VOIP account to be associated with a traditional telephone number or with multiple numbers. So you can associate a San Francisco number, a New York number and a London number with your computer or VOIP phone and then be reached via a local call by anyone in any of those cities. Furthermore, your phone (or computer) will ring wherever you are in the world, as soon as it is plugged into the internet. So you can take your Madrid number with you to Mumbai, or your San Francisco number to Shanghai. Skype and other VOIP services, in other words, are leading to lower prices, more choice and greater flexibility. It is great news for consumers but terrible for telecoms operators. What can they do? Watching the elephants dance As is always the case with a disruptive technology, the incumbents it threatens are dividing into those who are trying to block the new technology in the hope that it will simply go away, and those who are moving to embrace it even though it undermines their existing businesses. Since VOIP will cause revenue from voice calls to wither away, the most vulnerable operators are those that are most dependent on such revenue. In particular, that means mobile operators, which have been struggling for years to get their subscribers to spend more on data services, but are still hugely dependent on voice. Worse, the very third generation (3G) networks that are supposed to provide future growth for these firms could now undermine them, because such networks make mobile VOIP possible too. Least vulnerable, by contrast, are those fixed-line operators that are now building new networks based on internet technology, which will enable such firms to benefit from the greater efficiency and lower cost of VOIP compared with traditional telephony. These operators are taking an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach and getting into the VOIP business. While their voice revenues will slowly evaporate, they will then be well placed to offer fee-based add-on services over their new networks. Again, this is a common pattern with disruptive technologies: forward-looking incumbents can end up giving upstart innovators a run for their money. It is now no longer a question of whether VOIP will wipe out traditional telephony, but a question of how quickly it will do so. People in the industry are already talking about the day, perhaps only five years away, when telephony will be a free service offered as part of a bundle of services as an incentive to buy other things such as broadband access or pay-TV services. VOIP, in short, is completely reshaping the telecoms landscape. And that is why so many people have been making such a fuss over Skype, a small company, yes, but one that symbolises a massive shift for a trillion-dollar industry. Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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, Economist.com For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:58:46 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: The Meaning of Free Speech Economist.com http://economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=3DE1_QQDDSDQ http://economist.com/business/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=3D4400704 Sep 15th 2005 | LONDON AND SAN FRANCISCO From The Economist print edition The acquisition by eBay of Skype is a helpful reminder to the world's trillion-dollar telecoms industry that all phone calls will eventually be free NIKLAS Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the founders of Skype, which distributes software that lets people make free calls from their computers to other Skype users anywhere in the world, don't usually travel to America. Legally, they probably could. But they prefer to avoid that jurisdiction, since they also founded (and subsequently sold) KaZaA, a peer-to-peer software company whose product many people use to share copyrighted songs. So setting foot in America could invite some legal trouble. This does not mean, however, that they cannot appear at conferences in Silicon Valley, where Skype which uses the same basic idea of KaZaA, but applies it mainly to voice communication=97is considered the next big thing. Thus, in July, Mr Zennstrom appeared, via a Skype video call, on the screen of a packed auditorium at Stanford University, while sitting in Estonia next to Tim Draper, a venture capitalist who invested $10m in Skype. Mr Draper is the ultimate loud American, whereas Mr Zennstrom is a sombre Swede. He's already taken down one industry and he's on to the next one, hollered Mr Draper referring to recording studios and telecoms companies. Mr Zennstrom started shifting uncomfortably. I never wanna sell my stock until it's a hundred billion, Mr Draper yelled, then started singing and dancing. The blushing Mr Zennstrom was speechless. Of course, Mr Draper was posturing. That became clear on September 12th, when Skype announced that it had agreed to be taken over by eBay, based in Silicon Valley and the world's largest online marketplace. Mr Draper and Skype's other investors will get nothing like $100 billion, but eBay is paying a hefty sum $2.6 billion in cash and shares and perhaps more if certain criteria are met nonetheless. This pairing took many people by surprise. There have been rumours that Yahoo!, Google, Microsoft and other technology companies were also interested in buying Skype. Any of these might have made a more obvious fit, since each also has instant-messaging software that can be used for free phone calls (or 'voice chats', as opposed to text chats) between computers. Google, the world's most popular internet search engine, launched its own voice-chat software in August. A week later, Microsoft bought Teleo, a San Francisco company that lets people call conventional telephones from their computers (as Skype also does, for $0.02 a minute). Yahoo! had already bought Dialpad, another Skype-like firm, in June. AOL, Apple and others have similar products. As Meg Whitman, eBay's boss, and Mr Zennstrom explain it, a combination of eBay and Skype is not all that far-fetched. From eBay's point of view, placing cute Skype buttons on the web pages where people trade used cars, houses and other items that usually require voice bargaining =93reduces friction=94, says Ms Whitman. Buyers can simply click on the button and talk to sellers. Another idea is to make money from 'pay-per-call' advertising, where advertisers would place voice links (ie, Skype buttons) on certain pages just as they now place text links on, say, the search-results pages of Google. Whenever a web surfer clicks on one of these links and talks to a salesperson, the advertiser would pay eBay and Skype a fee. Google got rich by doing this in the text world; there is no reason why eBay might not be able to do it in the voice world. From Skype's point of view, the deal strengthens its existing link with PayPal, eBay's online bank, which it uses to charge for services such as calls from computers to conventional telephones (called SkypeOut) or from conventional phones into Skype (called SkypeIn). This involves prepaid accounts, which Skype users can top up via PayPal with their credit cards. For Skype, however, the main attraction may be that eBay, unlike the other potential suitors, plans to leave it largely alone, both as a brand and as a business. When Yahoo! and Microsoft buy companies, they typically disintegrate them, says Mr Zennstrom. His vision for Skype, by contrast, is to become the world's biggest and best platform for all communications 'text, voice or video' from any internet-connected device, whether a computer or a mobile phone. This is every bit as audacious as it sounds. Mr Zennstrom, in general, is a modest man. But his company is only three years old, will probably make only $60m in revenues this year, and will certainly not turn a profit. So it is the fact that his ambition is not nearly as ridiculous as it sounds that should make incumbent telecoms firms everywhere break out in a cold sweat. That is because Skype can add 150,000 users a day (its current rate) without spending anything on new equipment (users 'bring' their own computers and internet connections) or marketing (users invite each other). With no marginal cost, Skype can thus afford to maximise the number of its users, knowing that if only some of them start buying its fee-based services such as SkypeOut, SkypeIn and voicemail, Skype will make money. This adds up to a very unusual business plan. "We want to make as little money as possible per user," says Mr Zennstrom, because we don't have any cost per user, but we want a lot of them. This is the exact opposite of the traditional business model in the telecoms industry, which is based on maximising the average revenue per user, or ARPU. And that has only one logical consequence. According to Rich Tehrani, the founder of Internet Telephony, a magazine devoted to the subject, Skype and services like it are leading inexorably to a future in which all voice communication, near or far, will be free. End of the line The technical term that encompasses all forms of voice communication using the internet is voice-over-internet-protocol, or VOIP. This includes pure computer-to-computer calling as well as the various hybrid states, such as a Skype user connecting to the traditional telephone network, or even two people talking on seemingly conventional phones that are linked, behind the scenes, via the internet. It also includes residential VOIP providers such as Vonage, based in New Jersey and the market leader in America with over 1m subscribers, that supply their customers with adapters so they can plug ordinary telephones into their broadband connections without using a= computer. Sandvine, a telecoms-equipment firm, estimates that there are 1,100 VOIP providers in America alone. But the trend is worldwide. IDC, a market-research firm, predicts that the number of residential VOIP subscribers in America will grow from 3m at the end of 2005 to 27m by the end of 2009; Japan already has over 8m subscribers today. Worldwide, according to iSuppli, a market-research firm, the number of residential VOIP subscribers will reach 197m by 2010. Even these numbers, however, do not include people using VOIP without subscribing to a service (ie, by downloading free software from Google, Skype or others). Skype alone has 54m users. Even before VOIP makes 100% of telephone calls in the world completely free (which may take many years), it utterly ruins the pricing models of the telecoms industry. Factors such as the distance between the callers or the duration of a call, the key determinants of cost today, are simply irrelevant with VOIP. Vonage already lets its customers choose telephone numbers in San Francisco, New York or London, no matter where they live. A Londoner calling the London number is making a 'local' call, even if the Vonage subscriber is picking up the phone in Shanghai. As when checking e-mail on, say, Hotmail, the only thing needed is a broadband-internet connection, but it can be anywhere in the world. Sooner or later, people will discard their unwieldy phone numbers altogether and use names, just as they do with their e-mail addresses, predicts Mr Zennstrom. Call duration is also becoming irrelevant. A lot of people open a Skype audio channel and keep it open, says Mr Zennstrom. After all, it costs nothing. Many people with Apple computers are already accustomed to this. They open an application called iChat, which is a video and voice link, and stay connected to their loved ones far away. Increasingly, members of a family or a business team can stay online throughout the day, escalating from unobtrusive instant- messaging (Can you talk?) to a conference call, a video call and back to a little icon on their screen. It is thus altogether wrong to call this phenomenon the end, or death, of telephony. "Calling it the death of telephony suggests people aren't going to make calls, but they are," says Sam Paltridge, a telecoms guru at the OECD. "It's just the death of the traditional pricing models. In short, all this is great news for consumers and awful news for telecoms operators. "VOIP will destroy voice revenues faster than most analysts' models predict," says Cyrus Mewawalla, an analyst at Westhall Capital. Voice will very rapidly cease to become a major revenue generator for all telecoms operators, fixed and mobile. That said, some telecoms carriers are much more vulnerable to VOIP than others, says Mr Mewawalla. Telecoms operators offer and charge for a number of services besides pure voice calls. Because VOIP will cause only the revenues from voice calls to shrink, it will hit those operators hardest that are most dependent on their revenues from voice (see chart 2). For pure mobile operators, such as Vodafone or Taiwan Mobile as it happens, Taiwan is the country with the highest ratio of Skype users 'VOIP could be an enormous problem', says Mr Mewawalla, because voice accounts for over 80% of their revenues. By contrast, VOIP is less threatening to integrated operators (ie, those offering both fixed and mobile services) such as Deutsche Telekom or Japan's NTT. And those carriers such as BT, France Telecom or KPN that are currently building next-generation networks based on internet technologies will be able to offer VOIP services themselves, bundled with other offerings, and might emerge relatively unscathed. Some operators are taking an unenlightened view by trying to delay the advance of VOIP. China Telecom has been blocking access to Skype from Shenzen, according to local newspaper reports. Vodafone has introduced wording into new contracts for some German subscribers reserving the right to block VOIP in future, though a spokesman for the company says it is not doing so at the moment. Clearwire, an American wireless-broadband provider, also reserves the right to block VOIP traffic. In February, Madison River Communications, a rural phone company in North Carolina, was fined $15,000 by regulators for blocking access to Vonage's VOIP service. Occasionally, operators have even blocked access to Skype's website, thus preventing people from downloading the software or topping up their calling credit. The more enlightened approach which most operators in rich countries, to varying degrees, accept is to compete with VOIP openly or even to embrace it. Already, says Mr Paltridge, pricing of traditional phone services is changing quite radically as operators try to adjust and to compete with the Skypes of this world. Operators are moving towards flat-rate pricing plans for traditional telephone service, so that the marginal price of making calls falls to zero. Many American regional operators offer unlimited local and national calling for a fixed monthly fee, and such schemes are also becoming popular in other countries. Several incumbent operators have also launched their own VOIP services, such as Verizon's VoiceWing and BT's Broadband Voice. These offer lower prices than traditional telephone service but are generally not as cheap as a call between Skype and a regular phone. "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em," says John Delaney of Ovum, a consultancy. Such services are an admission that a less lucrative VOIP customer is better than no customer at all. Switching to VOIP also helps operators by lowering their own costs dramatically. BT and others are building new, internet-based networks behind the scenes, which will carry all voice traffic as VOIP even if the calls start or end in the traditional way. The other argument for embracing VOIP is that the incumbents can then start offering the fun new services that VOIP makes possible and charging for them. This goes far beyond traditional voicemail. Video-conferencing and unified messaging whereby all forms of communication, from voicemail and video messages to e-mails or entire electronic documents go into one virtual inbox will become common, says Wendy McMillan-Turner, head of voice services at BT. Since all of these features are essentially software programmes, they can all be integrated with applications that people today use on their computers, such as Outlook calendars and contacts files. The service that many telecoms operators are most excited about, however, is IPTV, which refers to television (and entertainment in general) being delivered over new and super-fast broadband-internet connections into homes. This would allow them to charge for a bundle of services, including broadband access, entertainment and voice. The voice component could then atrophy gracefully and eventually be thrown in for nothing. Ultimately -- perhaps by 2010 -- voice may become a free internet application, with operators making money from related internet applications like IPTV, says Mr Mewawalla. Cable operators are coming at VOIP from exactly the opposite direction. They already offer television and entertainment, as well as broadband access, so they might as well offer cheap telephony as well. This puts the cable companies in a good position. Unlike the telecoms operators, they do not depend on voice for their revenues today, so they can use cheap VOIP service as a competitive weapon to make life difficult for the telecoms operators, who are increasingly their only competition. In California, for example, most people have a choice between one cable company, Comcast, and one traditional telecoms carrier, SBC. Since voice uses very little bandwidth compared with television, the cable companies need not even add a lot in the way of bandwidth. The result, says Mr Mewawalla, is that voice service is fast becoming a marketing freebie to make customers 'sticky' to keep them loyal. "I would expect people to advertise free calls with VOIP, subsidised by other elements of the package,' says Ms McMillan-Turner. Thus, BT will consider value-added services sold around VOIP as voice revenues in future, she says. BT hopes that selling such services will offset the inevitable decline in traditional voice revenue. Evalueserve, a consultancy, predicts that American and European fixed operators' long-distance voice revenue will decline by around 40% by 2008, and that in Europe 50% of broadband users will give up their voice lines by 2008. Mobile operators face a far greater challenge than fixed-line carriers. Voice accounts for the bulk of their business and they cannot (at least today) offer broadband access as easily as the cable and fixed-line companies. New =93third-generation=94 (3G) networks were supposed to make possible whizzy new data services to compensate for flat and even declining revenues from voice calls, but consumer adoption has been slow. Worse, those very 3G networks that are supposed to provide future growth for the industry could now undermine it, since they make possible VOIP calling over mobile networks. Already, one mobile operator, E-Plus in Germany, has announced a deal that will allow subscribers to use Skype on its 3G network. Users would thus pay only for the internet connection, while making free calls to other Skype users and to other telephones for very little. E-Plus hopes to win valuable business customers and to put pressure on much bigger but less agile rivals such as Vodafone. Today, VOIP calling over 3G networks is still very much a minority sport, but as 3G coverage and transmission speeds improve something the industry is racing to achieve, it will become common. This represents a mortal danger for mobile operators. VOIP on mobile is the first real threat they are going to face, and they are in a state of shock, says Mr Mewawalla. Mobile operators generally charge three to five times as much as fixed operators for each minute on the phone, so they have far more to lose from falling voice prices. International travellers will use VOIP over hotel-room broadband links or Wi-Fi hotspots in airports to save on the roaming charges by their mobile-phone company. Vodafone counters that, like BT, it is moving towards internet-based networks that will reduce its own cost of carrying calls and make possible new value-added services. But this sounds unconvincing. Much more so than fixed-line operators, mobile operators would have to cannibalise their current business in order to generate new revenues from VOIP. Ironically, this means that BT, once regarded as a dinosaur-like incumbent, is now being held up as a shining example of an operator that is embracing the future, while Vodafone, whose pure-mobile strategy once seemed visionary, now stands accused of being on the wrong side of history. At the end of the day, there is no getting around the reality, as Skype's Mr Zennstrom says, that "something that is a great business model for us is probably a terrible business model for them." Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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, economist.com For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Direct replies are unlikely to be read. To reply use the address below: falco(underscore)md(atsign)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Foreign Residential Listing (Verizon Again) Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 19:44:14 -0500 Well, as a result of not getting my billing for my foreign residential listing straightened out, I escalated to the NC PSC to get help. I have been on the phone monthly with Verizon trying to get it resolved. My listing is with directory assistance, but I haven't been paying for it. I'm fairly certain that sooner or later someone doing an audit will discover that they are not getting any money for it and delete it. Each month, they tell me they've now fixed it and I'll get a correct bill the next month, but I don't. Well, I got a call from a very well mannered young lady from Verizon. She investigated and is now telling me that I will be billed for a year forward when the directory is published in March. So, I'm getting free listing with directory assistance until then. Somehow, I don't think that's right. As even in spite of the enormous number of people I have talked with, I still can't get them to straighten it out. I can't be without a directory assistance listing. Someone from my past may need to track me down for any one of a number of positive reasons. I'm going to have to call that young lady back and push this further. This is ridiculous. Fred Atkinson ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 08:28:36 PST From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Reply-To: fatkinson@mishmash.com Lena wrote: > It's a great idea, but wouldn't work for us who have so many lame- > brained friends who would never remember any code. We can't even get > our friends to remember to change their email addressbook when we > change our email provider. Not just those who can't remember a four digit code, but how about those who never got your code? I tried to call an old friend the other night whom I hadn't spoken to in years. He's got that feature installed and I have no idea what his code is. So, I didn't get to talk to an old buddy I hadn't been in contact with in a very long time. And there's no way to leave him a message letting him know I called. > There is also an item called "Caller ID Manager" from Privacy Corps. > It looks like a separate Caller ID box, but can be set to block > whatever numbers you program into it, including all 800 numbers, all > 888 numbers, unidentified numbers, etc. Costs about $100. From the > description, it looks like it works on one phone and one would have to > add "remotes" for other phones. (Google it). There are always technological solutions out there. Sad we have to pay to keep telemarketers from calling us. > I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to > prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or > political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. They've done one better than that. They've passed a law allowing you to have your number listed as a number that telemarketers are not allowed to call. And when they do call, you can report it to the FTC. When they get enough complaints, they can take action against them. I've got all of my home numbers (and I have a few) listed on it. I can't even remember when was the last time I received a telemarketing call. > Lena Fred Atkinson ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 08:28:57 -0800 Organization: University of Washington On Fri, 9 Dec 2005, Lena wrote: > It's a great idea, but wouldn't work for us who have so many lame- > brained friends who would never remember any code. We can't even get > our friends to remember to change their email addressbook when we > change our email provider. Leaving aside whether you'd want to have friends like that, there is still the out of having the "*" for emergency break-through. In my experience, the least techo-savvy of my contacts are the ones who had the least problem in coping with my line's password. Their questions are never about how to get through to call me, but rather about how to set it up on their own phone line! -- Mark -- http://panda.com/mrc Democracy is two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote. ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: 9 Dec 2005 19:59:14 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I seem to recall a router that had two WAN connections and a dial-up connection. I think it did some sort of load balancing between the two WAN lines and switched to dial-up if both WAN lines failed. I don't remember who made it, but I THOUGHT they were sold to Symantec, but I can't find it on their website. I'm not sure how it worked, but I have the impression that it routed web page requests out the two WAN lines and then put them back together on the LAN side. Since most web pages contain (too many) lots of images, the image loading was split between the two WAN lines, so the user saw faster loading. It did not, as far as I know, try to spread out packets from the same transaction, but, instead, spread out the transactions (file requests, etc.). I was considering buying one a few years ago, but never got around to it. Harold FCC Rules updated daily at http://www.hallikainen.com ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:30:14 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , James Carlson wrote: > bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: >> "Incoming" traffic is an entirely different problem. And >> load-balancing _that_ traffic cannot be done in anything approaching a >> satisfactory manner without 'help' from the 'upstream' end. > Indeed. >> And it requires that both DSL circuits terminate at the same >> 'upstream' provider. > Not necessarily. There are at least two other possibilities here, > both of which allow for connections to multiple providers: > - NAT in use, and load balancing on a per-connection basis. This > automatically balances the return traffic as well, as everyone on > the net thinks you're actually two separate independent IP nodes. NO, it does _Not_. You cannot change the NAT translation _during_ a 'session' (a single TCP connection). And if the 'incoming' data characteristics change radically _during_ that session, the 'balance' goes out the window. Consider a scenario where there is -one- durable connection presently in progress, which is, say, 'streaming audio' to laptop #1, and coming in over circuit #1. Now, the over the space of a minute, other 19 laptops each initiate a web request to a trivial text-only web-page with the Windows XP SP2 update _information_ on it, including a link to a copy of the actual service pack which resides on that same server. Oh, yeah, those requests have the HTTP 'keepalive' protocol flag set. Circuit #2 is 'unused' at the moment, so -- based on traffic levels -- _all_ these HTTP sessions are going to go on circuit #2, using 'source' addresses that will cause return data to come in over that selfsame circuit #2. Which _is_ reasonable at this point, the overall traffic from retrieving the 19 copies of that text web-page is likely less than the the one-minute block of streaming-audio. *BUT*, now each laptop decides to download the actual service pack. BAM! usage on circuit #2 goes through the roof. And circuit #1 is still loafing along at a small fraction of capacity. Yes, this is an extreme case, but it illustrates the point that there is _no_PRACTICAL_way_ to balance the incoming load without active co-operation from the 'upstream' end(s) of the circuits. You (on the receiving end) *cannot* unilaterally (meaning "without active cooperation from the remote end[s]) change which circuit those packets are coming in over. You cannot suddenly switch the IP address the laptops are using; "keepalive" is in effect, the request goes as part of the _same_ connection, and of course, once the download request was sent, the laptop is only doing 'listen and ack'. > - You're a big company and you can afford to arrange BGP peering > with the ISPs and inject routes into the backbone. THAT doesn't solve the "problem", either. Not even 'mostly'. Again, the original scenario was a 'site' with a maximum of 20 machines (all laptops) at the location. In _that_ situation, "good luck" in getting a BGP announcement for a /27 (or smaller) propagated past an immediate upstream. IF _they_ will agree to accept it. To get a moderately-reliably 'forwardable' announcement, you're going to have to use "gross overkill" sized blocks. you'll have a _terrible_ time providing adequate 'justification' to get PA space for that application from an upstream. And you're way too small to qualify for your own PI space, for _this_ application alone. Now, if you're big enough that you've got a PI /16, say. *and* can afford to dedicate a couple of /24s to this inefficient (at best, approximately a _four_percent_ utilization of the address-space), you _can_ 'play games' to influence the inbound traffic. *BUT*, to re-route individual hosts, *without* changing their IP address, you are likely to have to BGP 'announce' routes for a /32. Over time, this _will_ lead to fracturing of the space, and you _will_ be announcing separate routes for most of those hosts, *individually*. *OR* you get _really_ wasteful of address-space, and _use_ only one address in each /24 -- thus needing about a /19 to support 20 laptops. With an address-space utilization of approximately 0.25%. Yeah, this would work, but I can't imagine that anyone would classify it as a "practical" solution. We won't even go into 'what happens' to a pre-existing connection with an _active_ stream of traffic when a route 'withdrawal' (for an address presently routed via circuit #1) arrives at an intermediate router before the 'announcement' for routing via circuit @2 arrives. Note: if you already announce an 'inferior' grade of route through circuit #2 for that address, you cannot ensure that inbound traffic will come through circuit #1 -- it _is_ "guaranteed" that "somebody" will be using a 'policy' bias in their routing that causes them to select the carrier supplying circuit #2 over that or circuit #1. *sigh* > There are others as well that involve just living with the fact that > you'll appear to be separate nodes on the net, and remaining > multihomed -- this is what you'd probably do if you were doing this > for (say) a web server with multiple A records. Review the original context -- site supporting "a maximum of 20 _laptops_", wanting to load-balance the two circuits. How many folks run servers (web, or otherwise) _with_multiple_A_records_ on laptops? <*grin*> Absent any specifications of the data flow, a reasonable "first guess" is that the traffic will be mostly: web-page retrieval, e-mail reading/sending, possibly some RSS feeds, along with some other 'streaming' incoming data. Not guaranteed, of course, but absent better data for that scenario, it is 'betting odds' that at least 95% of the total traffic is 'incoming'. Which means that the 'easy' approaches -- which are for balancing _outgoing_ traffic -- aren't of much use. Especially since -- for the aforementioned kinds of traffic -- there is _very_little_ correlation between incoming and outgoing traffic on a machine-by-machine, or even connection-by- connection basis. Obviously, the "more you know" about the actual traffic generated, the better your chances of designing a policy that works effectively for _that_ traffic mix. Caveat: even a minor change in traffic characteristics can utterly invalidate a 'carefully tuned/optimized for one particular scenario' balancing policy. As soon as you have any form of 'durable' connection involved, any attempt to balance things based solely on conditions at the time of connection _initiation_ is doomed to to lead to 'far less than optimal' balancing at a point later in time. 'Things change', and the circuit assignment for that already established connection cannot be modified to adapt to the fact that "the world has changed out from under it". >> *BUT* the 'standard' routing code _in_the_kernel_ of most operating >> systems does =not= support multiple equal-priority routes to the same >> destination, *with* rotating use of those routes on a per-packet >> basis. > Doing it on a per-packet basis ("round robin") is a mistake. It > causes poor performance by reordering packets and often causes trouble > with various middleboxes. Instead, you want to hash based on flow > identification, which some systems can do. THIS depends on what your objectives are. :) If you're interested in maximizing your link utilization, _without_ regard to impact on QOS (as it were) to the users, the performance hits due to out-of-order packet reception are "not my problem". Packet re-ordering _may_ occur in some instances, *BUT* it is not a guaranteed problem. Furthermore, if the pair of lines are 'bonded' into a single logical circuit -- which requires cooperation from the remote end -- then this "possible" issue effectively disappears. If the circuits go to different end-points, you do get a whole raft of other possible issues -- including, but not limited to, remote servers that are multi-homed _on_ both of the networks you are connected to. They see packets that are part of the same 'connection' arriving on different interfaces. This _can_ confuse some kinds of systems, notably 'load balancers' that exist in front of a 'farm' of "identical" servers. Also, if the circuits go to different end-points, then you _are_ likely to have issues with 'larger than single packet' communications to "anycast" servers. They may well be routed to _different_ servers. Available evidence suggests that this would be a 'vanishingly small' issue for 'typical' _laptop_-origin traffic. ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Organization: Symantec Date: Fri, 09 Dec 2005 21:29:03 -0500 In article , Jennifer C. Kerr wrote: > About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month > that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting > consumers, a study says. Only one in four? I figure almost all netters get spam, and at least 75% would get phishing spam. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Date: 10 Dec 2005 15:31:54 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Jennifer C. Kerr wrote: > About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month > that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting > consumers, a study says. Who did this study? Pretty much all of my users get at least a couple dozen a day. Some of them get a couple dozen an hour. Where can I go where only a quarter of the users get them a month? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Many Domains Registered With False Data Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:29:15 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Zonk wrote: > Posted by Zonk on Thursday December 08, @01:01PM > from the seekrit-webmaster-conspiracy dept. > bakotaco writes "According to research carried out by the US > Government Accountability Office (GAO) many domain owners are hiding > their true identity. The findings could mean that many websites are > fronts for spammers, phishing gangs and other net criminals. The > report also found that measures to improve information about domain > owners were not proving effective." From the article: "The GAO took > 300 random domain names from each of the .com, .org and .net > registries and looked up the centrally held information about their > owners. Any user can look up this data via one of the many whois sites > on the net. The report found that owner data for 5.14% of the domains > it looked at was clearly fake as it used phone numbers such as (999) > 999-9999; listed nonsense addresses such as 'asdasdasd' or used > invalid zip codes such as 'XXXXX'. In a further 3.65% of domain owner > records data was missing or incomplete in one or more fields." > To discuss this matter further, please go to: > http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As the official Keeper of the Records, > ICANN was asked for a comment on this report, but they refused any > discussion of it. PAT] "Figures don't lie, but liars can figure." The last line of the cited report is a particularly egregious example of this. One of the domain owner fields is a for a 'fax' number for contact. If you don't have a fax then, *of*course*, that field is going to be 'incomplete' -- or filled with some registrar 'default', recognizably *invalid*, data -- e.g. (000) 000-000, or (999) 999-999. The '5.14%' number is similarly suspect, _if_ the 'phone numbers' examined include the 'fax phone number' field. And, unless the GAO restricted the check to domains registered to addresses in the USA, 'defective' and/or 'missing' *ZIPCODE* data is to be expected. Even Canada doesn't have _ZIP_ codes. that said, I figure that this one is a gratuitous error on the part of the person writing the review of the GAO report, rather than a procedural flaw in the GAO analysis. That said, I expect the GAO report did find evidence of real problems in the registration process. Too much 'trust', and not enough '*trust*but* *verify*'. For U.S.A. based addresses, there is simply no excuse for accepting a registration where the street address and "postal code" do not match. The USPS has an on-line look-up tool where the full ZIP+4 can looked up for any particular address. Now, admittedly, some addresses may have multiple ZIP+4 codes -- e.g. my building has distinct zip+4 for each of several groups of residents, _and_ a 'catch all' ZIP+4 that is valid for any address in the building. I think there may be yet another '+4' that identifies 'some/any building on this block'. A number of other countries have similar publicly accessible tools for validating addresses, postal codes, and/or the combination thereof. The fact that registration services do -not- make use of things like that to make even a 'minimal' attempt to keep the database 'clean' *is* an outrage, and an abomination, no doubt about it. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Vonage + Multi-Line Cordless Phones? Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:36:40 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > A little advice needed: > For a new office I am helping to setup, we are installing a 384k T1 > line, and are planning on using vonage over that T1 line for our phone > service. We plan to have at least 2 and maybe 3 phone lines through > vonage. We are looking into cordless multi-line phones. We figure > we'll need 1 base station and 4-8 handsets. Vonage offers a call-hunt > feature that will ring the second or third line if the first line is > busy. Will this multi-line service from vonage work with 1 mutli-line > base station? "Probably". Most residential-grade type equipment is designed to work with multiple (single-line) POTS lines from the telephone service provider. Vonage provides a single-line POTS line, on the 'telephone' side of the 'adapter'. Note, be sure to co-ordinate wih whomever is installing the Internet 'fractional' T-1, to arrange for an enhanced QOS, or at least priority, for the VOIP traffic on your T-1. Three simultaneous voice conversations can tie up 50% or more of that pipe. That's a big enough share that you don't want the risk of 'non-real-time' traffic pigging the bandwidth. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 17:10:18 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Ron Kritzman wrote: > cnnmoney@telecom-digest.org wrote: > SBC has joined forces with AT&T and taken its name ... > Okay. Illinois Bell, Ameritech, SBC, and now AT&T, in area codes 312, > 708 and 847. So I've had 4 phone companies 3 areacode swapped out from > under me while living in the same house with the same phone number. All of my friends living back home, too (old Ohio Bell territory). Not my parents now, they live out in the sticks in Alltel land ... but most of THEIR friends are still in AT&T land :) Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: MPAA Demands Tougher Laws - Jail Time - For Bootleggers Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 00:47:05 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , David Caruso wrote: > By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer > Every evening rush hour, hustlers lugging bags full of bootlegged > movies walk the subway train aisles, calling "two for five dollars!" > as brazenly as if they were selling hot dogs at Yankee Stadium. At > those prices, the DVDs, often of current Hollywood blockbusters, sell > well, despite laughable sound and picture quality. Few customers seem > to care the copies were made illegally. > Bootleggers apparently have little to fear. Under state law, people > caught videotaping inside a movie theater face a maximum fine of $250. Of course, under Federal copyright infringement statutes, which such taping _does_ also violate, the penalties are *much* higher. All the copyright owners have to do is file the _appropriate_ lawsuits. But that's a civil tort. and _they_ have to do the investigation and suit prosecution themselves. A criminal violation, -that- is the responsibility of 'somebody else' to investigate/prosecute. and they get the benefits _without_ having to 'do anything' themselves. > As part of its worldwide campaign against piracy, the film industry is > pushing for tougher penalties for smuggling a camcorder into a cinema > in New York, which has the country's worst bootlegging problem and > some of the weakest penalties. > A bill pushed by the Motion Picture Association of America would make > operating recording equipment inside a theater a criminal misdemeanor, > raising the maximum punishment to a $1,000 fine and a year in jail. > Making the crime a misdemeanor also would empower police to arrest > violators on the spot, rather than simply issuing a summons. > People caught a second time would be charged with a felony. > "We have to do something, because right now there's no risk," said > William J. Shannon, a Yonkers-based deputy director of the > association's U.S. anti-piracy operation. "Right now, you're looking > at something about the same as a parking ticket." *IF* they filed a civil lawsuit against every person to whom a 'summons' was issued, I bet the problem would go away _really_ quickly. Amazing, isn't it, how they want 'somebody else' to solve their problem for them, but aren't willing to use the _existing_ remedies available to them, whereby they could clean up the problem themselves? ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #557 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Dec 11 16:04:08 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8C7F814DC2; Sun, 11 Dec 2005 16:04:07 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #558 Message-Id: <20051211210407.8C7F814DC2@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 16:04:07 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 11 Dec 2005 15:05:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 558 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Court Rules Against Mother in Downloading Suit (Ted Bridis) CNN Pours Into Broadband Pipeline (Paul Grough) Sprint Showing Full Length Movies (Robert McMillan) Privacy implications of Microsoft's Windows Live Local (Monty Solomon) Can This Man Reprogram Microsoft? (Monty Solomon) Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (DevilsPGD) Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails (Steven Lichter) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) 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: Ted Bridis Subject: Court Rules Against Mother in Downloading Suit Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:18:48 -0600 By TED BRIDIS, Associated Press Writer A federal appeals court late Friday upheld the music industry's $22,500 judgment against a Chicago mother caught illegally distributing songs over the Internet. The court rejected her defense that she was innocently sampling music to find songs she might buy later and compared her downloading and distributing the songs to shoplifting. The decision against Cecilia Gonzalez, 29, represents one of the earliest appeals court victories by the music industry in copyright lawsuits it has filed against thousands of computer users. The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago threw out Gonzalez's arguments that her Internet activities were permitted under U.S. copyright laws. Gonzalez had rejected a proposed settlement from music companies of about $3,500. A federal judge later filed a summary judgment against her and ordered her to pay $750 for each of 30 songs she was accused of illegally distributing over the Internet. Gonzalez, a mother of five, contended she had downloaded songs to determine what she liked enough to buy at retail. She said she and her husband regularly buy music CDs and own more than 250. However, the appeals panel said Gonzalez never deleted songs off her computer she decided not to buy, and judges said she could have been liable for more than 1,000 songs found on her computer. "A copy downloaded, played, and retained on one's hard drive for future use is a direct substitute for a purchased copy," the judges wrote. They said her defense that she downloaded fewer songs than many other computer users "is no more relevant than a thief's contention that he shoplifted only 30 compact discs, planning to listen to them at home and pay later." Gonzalez could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Geoff Baker, said comparing Gonzalez to a shoplifter was "inflammatory" but declined to comment further until he had more time to review the decision, which was released late in the day. Gonzalez was named in the first wave of civil lawsuits filed by record companies and their trade organization, the Recording Industry Association of America, in September 2003. "The law here is quite clear," said Jonathan Lamy, a senior vice president for the Washington-based RIAA. "Our goal with all these anti-piracy efforts is to protect the ability of the music industry to invest in the bands of tomorrow and give legal online services a chance to flourish." 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Paul J. Gough Subject: CNN Pours Into Broadband Pipeline Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:21:22 -0600 By Paul J. Gough CNN has finally joined the broadband big leagues, lifting the veil on an extreme makeover of its Web site that has been in the works for more than a year. The long-awaited premium broadband service, dubbed Pipeline, went live December 5 and already has signed up a number of subscribers in its initial week, though CNN executives decline to cite specifics. The killer app for Pipeline is four live video streams, which offer mostly unedited looks at news events throughout the world. These streams -- or "pipes" -- can be played in a special video player and chosen by Pipeline's editors in Atlanta. On Thursday night, Pipeline offered video streams from CNN International, a memorial service for slain Beatle John Lennon in Central Park, the House of Representatives and a traffic cam on a snowy Chicago night. That last pipe turned out to be prescient an hour later when news broke out from Chicago's Midway Airport when a Southwest Airlines jet slid off a runway. The third stream became video live from the scene at WFLD-TV. A day earlier, when a passenger was shot and killed by federal agents at the Miami airport, Pipeline offered several live camera angles of the scene. "When the plane shooting happened, we had three different affiliates' coverage. We had multiple angles on the story; you could select the one you wanted," said David Payne, senior vp CNN News Services and general manager of CNN.com. "I think even more intriguing, as that was happening, there was a bank robbery in Oregon and a rescue in Georgia." All were represented on the streams. NEWSROOM'S-EYE-VIEW Payne thinks this is the promise of Pipeline. He said the mostly anchorless live streams show what the news is. The live coverage of the plane shooting allowed viewers to see the same feeds that the network control rooms were viewing at the same time. "As the story was unfolding for the plane shooting, and it became clear that that was under control, all these other events were happening," Payne said. "That really shows the power. On linear television, you're so limited in what you can do and what you can show. We have four times the capability." Live coverage isn't the only hallmark of CNN Pipeline. The video player offers users the ability to see the top stories in video, get other news on demand and even browse CNN's vast archives. But the one thing you won't see: whole programs. Payne doesn't think that's a good thing, despite what others in the news industry are doing on their Web sites. "We think that showing shows, creating specific programing, is not the right approach. Consumers are pretty loud and clear about that to us," Payne said. "Our goal is to let the news take you to wherever it goes and we're going to go along with it. I don't anticipate creating shows or linear programing." Payne doesn't think the $2.95 a month -- or $24.95 a year -- price tag is a deal-killer, despite the evidence that consumers are generally still resistant to paying for premium content on the Web. "There's no question in my mind that there's a $2.95 value that can be created of an entire month that would enable somebody or cause somebody to this," Payne said. "I can't even find an analogy to spending 9 cents a day." More innovations are coming, predicts Payne, that will go far beyond the mostly TV-centric news Web sites. "We can do so much more than a set-top box or rabbit ears on a TV," Payne said. "Once you think about your computer as a set-top box, with all the capability it has and all the advancements it has, I think in the future what we see on our converging scenes is something that we can't even dream of." 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Robert McMillan Subject: Sprint Offering Full-Length Movie Downloads Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:16:53 -0600 By Robert MacMillan Using a mobile phone to buy movie tickets and check showtimes is one thing, but Sprint offers the whole movie. Sprint Nextel Corp. is expected to announce on Monday that it has begun selling a service which allows users of its mobile video phones to watch full-length movies, television shows, concerts and comedy specials. Provided by vendor MSpot, the service offers unlimited shows and movies for a monthly flat fee of $6.95, on top of regular service charges. The announcement comes as Sprint and other wireless phone services are looking to video content like TV programs, music and sports to boost revenue. They also are spending billions of dollars building up their networks for mobile video and speedy Internet service so they can grow revenue despite cheaper calling plans and a shrinking pool of first-time wireless phone subscribers. The initial lineup includes films that are far from anyone's first-run list. Among them are "One-Eyed Jacks," the Marlon Brando-Karl Malden Western, as well as "Angel and the Badman" with John Wayne. Other titles include "Night of the Living Dead" and the most recent -- "Short Circuit" from 1986. "This is what we could get rights to quickly," said Dale Knoop, Sprint's general manager for multimedia services. He said the company and MSpot are in negotiations for more current content, but declined to say which studios are involved. Sprint plans to debut seven new films a week. Knoop also declined to say how many people have watched the films. One question facing Sprint and the wireless industry is whether handheld-device users want to watch a feature-length film on a 2-inch or 3-inch screen. Sprint found that many people have a shorter attention span when it comes to mobile phone video, a Sprint spokeswoman said. Allowing for that, the service lets viewers watch movies in segments, similar to a DVD. Apple Computer Inc. also is exploring longer video content. The company earlier this week said it would offer iPod downloads of full-length NBC-owned television shows, including recent ones such as "The Office" and "Law & Order," as well as older shows like "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" and "Knight Rider." It also offers replays of ABC programs "Desperate Housewives" and "Lost." The NBC and ABC shows cost $1.99 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:29:20 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Privacy Implications of Microsoft's Windows Live Local by David Pescovitz Mike Liebhold, my colleague at the Institute for the Future, is deep into the geohacking scene. He just took a look at Microsoft's new Virtual Earth incarnation, Windows Live Local and found some big privacy concerns. Below is the entirety of Mike's post to the Geowanking listserv: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/12/09/privacy_implications.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 23:33:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Can This Man Reprogram Microsoft? By STEVE LOHR Redmond, Wash. THINK back to Round 1 of the Internet, when things really got rolling in 1995. The computing landscape was shifting, and a cool, fast-growing young company symbolized the new order: Netscape. At the time, Microsoft looked to be a lumbering old war horse, trapped in the yesteryear of desktop personal computer software, word processors, spreadsheets and operating systems. It seemed, in other words, so 1980's. But, of course, Microsoft emerged a winner. It embraced the Internet and vanquished the Netscape threat with hard work, ingenuity and strong-arm tactics that a federal court ruled violated the nation's antitrust laws. Microsoft's shares soared to a record high at the end of 1999. The Internet, Round 2, is now under way. Again, the computing terrain is changing remarkably, helped along by free software like Linux and the spread of high-speed Internet access. Today, all kinds of computing experiences can be delivered as services over the Internet, often free and supported by advertising. Clever Internet software can now turn flat, view-and-read Web pages into snappy services that look and respond to a user's keystrokes much like the big software applications that reside on a PC hard drive. New companies are even sprouting up to offer Web-based word processors and spreadsheets, products long regarded as mature - and long dominated by Microsoft's desktop programs. Champions of the Internet services model range from I.B.M. to start-ups. But the totemic company in this next big evolutionary step in computing is Google, the Internet search power whose ambitions appear to be growing as fast as its profits. And Microsoft? It once more finds itself surrounded by doubt and dismissed as a laggard. Some of its own senior engineers have defected to Google and elsewhere, and its stock price has barely budged in three years, despite solid earnings growth, because others appear to be winning the race for the future. The familiar pattern of a decade ago begs the question that Bill Gates was asked when he met last month with a group of executives and journalists from The New York Times: Will you do to Google what you did to Netscape? Mr. Gates, the Microsoft co-founder and chairman, paused, looked down at his folded hands and smiled broadly, as if enjoying a private joke. "Nah," he replied, "we'll do something different." The man whom Mr. Gates is counting on to make a difference is Ray Ozzie, a soft-spoken 50-year-old who joined the company just eight months ago. He has the daunting task of galvanizing the troops to address the Internet services challenge, shaking things up and quickening the corporate pulse. The forces arrayed against Microsoft, analysts say, may well prove more formidable than ever. "The problem Microsoft faces today is that there is a totally different model emerging for how software is created, distributed, used and paid for," said George F. Colony, the chairman of Forrester Research, a technology consultant. "That's why it's going to be so difficult for Microsoft this time." Yet there are optimists. Big industry shifts, they say, create opportunity. Inevitably, they note, Internet computing erodes Microsoft's power to set technology standards, but the company can still benefit as the overall market expands. That's what happened in the 1990's. They say that if Microsoft shrewdly devises, for example, online versions of its Office products, supported by advertising or subscription fees, it may be a big winner in Internet Round 2. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/yourmoney/11micro.html?ex=1291957200&en=d6cd667b8d963552&ei=5090 ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 21:16:13 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: > Jennifer C. Kerr wrote: >> About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month >> that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting >> consumers, a study says. > Who did this study? > Pretty much all of my users get at least a couple dozen a day. Some > of them get a couple dozen an hour. > Where can I go where only a quarter of the users get them a month? Unplug your server from the internet and the phishes dry up :) ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: One in Four Netters Get Phony E-Mails Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 04:26:33 GMT Barry Margolin wrote: > In article , Jennifer C. Kerr > wrote: >> About one in four Internet users is hit with e-mail scams every month >> that try to lure sensitive personal information from unsuspecting >> consumers, a study says. > Only one in four? I figure almost all netters get spam, and at least > 75% would get phishing spam. > Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu > Arlington, MA > *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** Shoot, every day I get at least 6 telling me they want to buy stuff freom my store, I won a lottery; they I did not remember entering or that my Ebay, PayPal, or other account is being violated. Funny I don't use the e-mail account for any of them. It all started with just one post here before I got my e-mail client to crunch my address, before that never got one. The Nigerians are going to have to do a better job of killing off the scammers, now they are moving to Romania and Russia. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: All you get each day is only six? I get six each day from people doing bogus PayPal entries, and a couple dozen more from people impersonating various other banks. Over all, I get 30-40 phish attempts daily, an additional 20-30 viruses, and at least 150-200 'regular' spams (many of which fall directly into my spam file, but not all of them.) All the above is just my account here at massis.lcs.mit.edu on behalf of telecom. A good thing about a text- based account (like here at massis) is that those html-based items (spam, scam and phish) stand out like a sore thumb; their size is so large (even a very short spam can easily take 50-75 K) as opposed to a legitimate text-based email (usually 3-5 K) that you can spot them almost immediatly without reading anything other than maybe one line or so. Now, with my personal Cableone.net account although the ratio of virus/spam/scam is about the same as Telecom mail (85-90 percent junk), at least cableone.net screens it out before showing it all to me. What they percieve to be unwanted junk, they put in various folders for me so that one click gets rid of it all even though it is all html-based. What is amazing about some phishers and other con-artists there are the ones who go to so much trouble to actually 'invent' an entire bank (not just divert the front page in order to capture your data before then turning you over to the real bank). These guys make up an entire bogus bank to convince victims that the (bogus) bank is holding some sum of money for them as 'next of kin' or associate of the 'bank officer' who wants to transfer a huge amount of money to you, etc, as long as you first part with your life savings to them. But Steve, I guess we should not complain, since after all, we live in the United States under the governorship of ICANN and Vint Cerf, and as one of the readers here would say (a real First Amendment nut if ever one existed) we dasn't dictate how others 'run their sites' or the contents therein. And as another old fool reading this message would proclaim, it is wrong to return such mail to the _LEGITIMATE_ and _BONAFIDE_ senders of same, since doing so might be construed as a Denial of Service for them and cause us to get sued or imprisoned for causing _them_ grief for doing that. I don't know about you, Steve, but I am about ready to pack a lunch and a clean pair of underwear and report to the nearest prison. That probably is where I belong, as an enemy of ICANN, and all the 'good and decent' things the net has become under their governorship, taking all my complaints with me. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Sat, 10 Dec 2005 22:00:56 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Sat, 10 Dec 2005, Fred Atkinson wrote: > Not just those who can't remember a four digit code, but how about > those who never got your code? I tried to call an old friend the > other night whom I hadn't spoken to in years. He's got that feature > installed and I have no idea what his code is. So, I didn't get to > talk to an old buddy I hadn't been in contact with in a very long > time. And there's no way to leave him a message letting him know I > called. I sympathize. But does he have the "*" emergency break-through enabled? If so, then you can break through the lock; you just have to state your name and see if he takes the call. If not, then he's chosen to lock out people who don't have the code; and you'll have to use email or buy a postage stamp. Not long ago, I heard from two old friends from 30 years ago. One wrote a letter, the other sent email. After that long a period of time, it's probably better to use written contact rather than suddenly barging in with a phone call. You don't know how someone's life has changed in the past several decades, much less whether a phone call would be a burden or even unwelcome. Note that in a true emergency, you can ask the phone company to make an emergency contact with someone and pass along a message. They pass along "so-and-so is dying, call such-and-such number immediately" type messages to estranged family members all the time. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 11 Dec 2005 06:25:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Fred Atkinson wrote: > Lena wrote: >> I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to >> prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or >> political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. > They've done one better than that. They've passed a law allowing you > to have your number listed as a number that telemarketers are not > allowed to call. And when they do call, you can report it to the FTC. Fred, I've done that; added my name to the "Do Not Call" register. The telemarketers that call are part of the exemptions in the law that allows political and charitable organizations to call, even those on the "Do Not Call" list (as well as those businsses who have done business with the person being called). These are the ones I would like to see limited to one call per year. Lena [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Lena, when you limit those people to 'one call per year', wouldn't that be like saying spammers and scammers and phishermen should be limited to one spam, scam or phish per year? Are you trying to dictate what people can talk about on their phone? PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #558 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 12 03:48:10 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 450191506C; Mon, 12 Dec 2005 03:48:01 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #559 Message-Id: <20051212084801.450191506C@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 03:48:01 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, BIZ_TLD autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Dec 2005 03:50:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 559 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Wikipedia Prankster Confesses (Katarine Q. Seelye) Wikpedia Becomes Force (Agence France Press News Wire) Arizona Town Goes Wireless (Michelle Roberts) Analysis Tool for Wholesale Telecom Market (poderico@gmail.com) Re: Showdown with USA Over Internet Control (Seth Breidbart) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Ron Kritzman) Re: Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy) (Seth Breidbart) Re: Who Owns the Music? (Seth Breidbart) 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: Katharine Q. Seelye Subject: Wikipedia Prankster Confesses Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 22:51:23 -0600 By Katharine Q. Seelye The New York Times It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker quitting his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility. A man in Nashville, Tenn., has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean newspaper in Nashville. Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small delivery company, told Seigenthaler he had written the material suggesting Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. Seigenthaler discovered the false entry only recently and wrote about it in an op-ed article in USA Today, saying he was especially annoyed that he could not track down the perpetrator because of Internet privacy laws. His plight touched off a debate about the reliability of information on Wikipedia -- and by extension the Internet -- and the difficulty in holding Web sites and their users accountable, even when someone is defamed. In a letter to Seigenthaler, Chase said he thought that Wikipedia was a "gag" Web site and that he had written the assassination tale to shock a co-worker, who knew of the Seigenthaler family and its illustrious history in Nashville. "It had the intended effect," Chase said of his prank in an interview. But Chase said that once he became aware through news accounts of the damage he had done to Seigenthaler, he was remorseful and scared of what might happen to him. Chase also found that he was slowly being cornered in cyberspace, thanks to the sleuthing efforts of Daniel Brandt, 57, of San Antonio, Texas, who makes his living as a book indexer. Brandt has been a frequent critic of Wikipedia and started an anti-Wikipedia Web site in September after reading what he said was a false entry about himself. Using information in Seigenthaler's article and some online tools, Brandt traced the computer used to make the Wikipedia entry to the delivery company in Nashville. Brandt called the company and told employees about the Wikipedia problem but was not able to learn anything. Brandt then sent an e-mail message to the company, asking for information about its courier services. A response bore the same Internet Protocol address that was left by the creator of the Wikipedia entry, offering further evidence of a connection. A call by a reporter to the delivery company Thursday made employees nervous, they later told Seigenthaler. On Friday, Chase hand-delivered a letter to Seigenthaler's office, confessing what he had done, and they talked at length. Wikipedia, a nonprofit venture that is the world's biggest encyclopedia, is written and edited by thousands of volunteers, and mistakes are expected to be caught by users. Chase wrote: "I am truly sorry to have offended you, sir. Whatever fame comes to me from this will be ill-gotten indeed." Seigenthaler said he "was not after a pound of flesh" and would not take Chase to court. Chase resigned because, he said, he did not want to cause problems for his company. Seigenthaler urged Chase's boss to rehire him, but Chase said this had not happened. Seigenthaler, founder of the First Amendment Center, said that as a longtime advocate of free speech, he found it awkward to be tracking down someone who had exercised that right. "I still believe in free expression," he said. "What I want is accountability." Copyright 2005 The Seattle Times Company 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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, Seattle Times and New York Times. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Agence France Press Subject: Wikpedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 23:15:44 -0600 Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that is the product of collaboration of its users, has become a major force on the Internet, but faces a crisis after a false biography raised questions about its credibility. The website, created as a free, "open source" multilingual encyclopedia for the world, has reached a crossroads after phenomenal growth along with a scandal that has forced the site to tighten up monitoring of its content. Wikipedia was started in 2001 as an experiment in "wiki" software. Wiki means quick in Hawaiian, but the software enables multiple users in different locations to edit a document. Wikipedia has more than two million articles, including over 850,000 in English. It has sites in 200 languages, with 10 of them having over 50,000 articles -- English, German, French, Japanese, Polish, Italian, Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish. Nielsen/Netratings found that Wikipedia had over 12.7 million US users in September, up nearly 300 percent from a year ago. It was ranked as the 35th most popular global website by Alexa.com. As an open-source encyclopedia, Wikipedia can be revised and edited in real time by any of its users. Although that might be seen by some as a recipe for disaster, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said the give-and-take helps create a better product. Wales told AFP that users often find a common ground that helps the site maintain its stated policy of "neutral point of view," or NPOV. "That process of debate and dialogue is what generates some of the best work on Wikipedia," said Wales, a former options trader whose past projects have included a pornographic website. "Some of the best articles come out of a dialogue of people who don't agree -- you end up with a really solid representation." Wales said Wikipedia has only three employees, but "several hundred" volunteers who monitor the site to help maintain accuracy and neutrality. He put up 500,000 dollars to start the site, but it now operates with donations and grants through a non-profit entity he formed called the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikipedia strives for "Britannica or better quality," Wales said, but admits it has not yet achieved that. Wales acknowledged a breakdown in the process in a biography posted earlier this year of John Siegenthaler, a retired journalist who was an aide in the 1960s to attorney general Robert Kennedy. A Wikipedia article that went largely unnoticed for several weeks said, "For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven." "I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious 'biography' that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia," Siegenthaler wrote in a column in USA Today. Wales said Wikipedia tightened up its monitoring after the incident and will require users to register before making any changes or new postings. But he said the site will remain anonymous and that the overall policy will remain unchanged. Wikipedia has spawned critics, including a website called Wikipedia Watch. "The basic problem is that no one, neither the trustees of Wikimedia Foundation, nor the volunteers who are connected with Wikipedia, consider themselves responsible for the content," says Wikipedia Watch's Daniel Brandt. Additionally, he said "anyone can edit an article, and there is no guarantee that any article you read has not been edited maliciously." In an unusual bit of self-criticism, Wikipedia notes on its site that some complain about "a perceived lack of reliability, comprehensiveness, and authority" in the encyclopedia. But as part of its open-source credo, it states that "Wikipedia's editing process assumes that exposing an article to many users will result in accuracy." Despite the recent controversy, Wikipedia has been "a great success story," says Michael Cornfield, research consultant at the Pew Internet and American Life Project in Washington. "It's become synonymous with (online encyclopedia) the way Google has become with search engines and Xerox with copiers," said Cornfield. Cornfield said a key milestone for Wikipedia was the 2005 tsunami, after which numerous scientists contributed to the site. He said many experts contribute to Wikipedia because "if you have knowledge and the teaching instinct, here is a classroom of the world." But Cornfield said Wikipedia must find a way to ensure its credibility, even if it means a more heavily monitored or edited product. "This is the first crisis, but having a crisis is a marker of growth," Cornfield said. "Enough people use it now and contribute to it, so we may have a public solution to the crisis." 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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, Agence France Presse. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Michelle Roberts Subject: Arizona Town Will Go Wall-to-Wall Wireless Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 22:56:04 -0600 By MICHELLE ROBERTS, Associated Press Writer Call it a municipal status symbol in the digital age: a city blanketed by a wireless Internet network, accessible at competitive prices throughout the town's homes, cafes, offices and parks. Tempe, the Phoenix suburb that is home to Arizona State University, is due to have wireless Internet available for all of its 160,000 residents in February, becoming the first city of its size in the United States to have Wi-Fi throughout. Tempe officials hope that by making high-speed Internet as accessible as water or electricity across its 40 square miles, it will attract more technology and biotech companies -- and the young, upwardly mobile employees they bring. An increasing number of the nation's cities are looking at using Internet access as an economic development tool. Few cities have gotten as far as installing systems, "but most cities are realizing that it may be something that they want to do," said Cheryl Leanza, legislative counsel for the National League of Cities. Philadelphia is developing a citywide high-speed system with EarthLink Inc. Unlike Philly or Tempe, New Orleans is building a free system, though the network speed will be limited. The Tempe network is being installed by NeoReach Wireless, a subsidiary of Bethesda, Md.-based MobilePro Corp. Roughly 400 antenna boxes mounted on light poles throughout the city will be used to stitch together the network, to which NeoReach will sell access, primarily through other providers. The network uses a so-called "mesh" setup, meaning it passes wireless signals from pole to pole and automatically reroutes transmissions if one of the transmitters breaks down. Speeds will vary depending on the number of users logged into the same access point. The network is strong enough only to be picked up outdoors or through one wall, meaning those who want service in their businesses or homes will need a box that serves as a signal booster and router. The city of Tempe gave the company access to its light poles in exchange for use of the network in transmitting data to and from city offices and vehicles, said Karrie Rockwell, a spokeswoman for NeoReach. Two hours of free access each day also will be available for Internet users on the Arizona State campus or the nearby Mill Avenue retail district, where the network began a year ago as a pilot project and has proven popular. Robert Jenkins, 50, sits at a coffee house on Mill Avenue a couple of times a week with his laptop, downloading larger files that take too long at home when he uses his mobile phone to access the Internet. NeoReach will directly sell service to outdoor users for $3.95 per hour or $29.95 per month. The resellers of NeoReach access have not yet announced pricing, but Rockwell said it will be cheaper than DSL or cable Internet access. Cable operator Cox Communications Inc. charges $49.95 per month for customers who don't get Cox phone or TV service. Qwest Communications International Inc. charges $44.99 and $54.99 per month, depending on the speed. Tempe signed a contract with NeoReach after asking for bids -- which prevented it from having to start its own utility and probably quelled potential objections to the city's involvement in a Wi-Fi network. Elsewhere in the nation, cities have run into heavy resistance from telecom companies, which argue that the free market should dictate the cost and availability of service. At least 14 states have passed laws limiting municipal Internet service, and other states are expected to consider similar limits, Leanza said. Arizona does not have such a law. ___ On the Net: City of Tempe: http://www.tempe.gov NeoReach Wireless: http://www.neoreach.com 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: poderico@gmail.com Subject: Analysis Tool For Wholesale Telecom Market Date: 11 Dec 2005 13:38:21 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com The telephone providers supports national as well as international calls. While in the national case a proprietary network can be used to satisfy the entire demand, the international calls must be, whole or partially, satisfied with other carriers. Each carrier provides a complete price list for every destination reached, completed with the declared Quality of Service (QoS). For some estinations, the carrier can details these information for some locale area. The cost is represented as a cost per minute plus a cost per call; while the QoS is represented with a real number ranging from 0 and 1: 0 is the lowest quality and 1 is the highest quality. The destinations are identified with the international code eventually completed with the area code when needed. The above information can be used to estimate cost and quality of offered service, but these are not sufficient for a complete calculus. An estimation or historical data on distribution calls must be used to have a well done service cost and quality calculation, being for each destination the number of calls and the total minutes of traffic given. A generic telephone provider has the problem to schedule the best way to route the outgoing calls, selecting for each destination a preferred carrier. More details on http://www.poderico.it/bestprice/index.html Luigi Poderico www.poderico.it ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Showdown with USA Over Internet Control Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:37:47 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Seth Breidbart wrote: > In article , Patrick Townson > noted in response to an article by > Andy Sullivan wrote: [ICANN] >> And they do not want to make things _too easy_ to filter >> out; that might make the internet useful for average, everyday >> citizens once again. > Is that why ICANN kicked AOL off the Internet? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two comments, Seth ... _when_ did ICANN > 'kick AOL off the internet'? Once, again, we see that sarcasm doesn't play on the net. > And, if as you claim, 'ICANN has no control over the wires' then how > come if I do not sign their contract when requested, granting them > ownership and sole arbitrator privleges over the name > 'telecom-digest.org' they can refuse to allow me to be on the net? Really? Who do you get your connectivity from? I get my home connectivity from RoadRunner, and they don't require me to sign any contract with ICANN; my colo server gets connectivity from another provider, and they don't require any contract with ICANN either. I have registered several domains, and _that_ requires a contract with ICANN. But if I preferred to just give out the IP address, I wouldn't need those either. > I would say that if I am required to sign a contract > which 'allows me' to use my name and make speeches on the net, then > the person or entity who makes that requirement has a lot of control > over the net, wouldn't you? But I've been using my name and making speeches on the net for a long time, since well before I had a domain. (Depending on how you define "the net", I could argue I was doing so before ICANN existed.) > And what real problem would there be, > in the process of handing out those contracts to sign in which I must > agree to certain things to _amend_ those contracts to include things > dealing with spam/scam, etc? Everyone has to sign one of those > contracts every so often, don't they? No, they don't. When does schlund.de sign a contract with ICANN? Seth [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I seriously doubt that schlund.de has any contact with ICANN. I get my connectivity through cableone.net both for personal matters _and_ for the Digest. In the case of the Digest, I use puTTY (a secure form of telnet) to connect with massis. lcs.mit.edu in Boston. I do _not_ do telnet to telecom-digest.org. 'telecom-digest.org' only exists as a figment of my imagination. It is an _alias domain name_, ditto telecom-digest.com and telecom-digest.net. The only one I use is telecom-digest.org (as you may know), and all three of those aliases (.org/.com/.net) terminate on the computer system of the mayor of Trumansburg, NY known as iecc.com. When calls to those three alias names (let's call it http://telecom-digest.org ) hit the mayor's computing system, they are forwarded to MIT to the massis.lcs.mit.edu computer where they then land, or go into the telecom-archives directory. Calls for http first land on a web page on the mayor's computer where they are instantly redirected over to MIT. If I did (some form of) _telnet://telecom-digest.org_ I would wind up on Mayor Levine's computer, rather than massis/MIT. So when I start work here each day, I must telnet (or puTTY, actually) to massis.lcs.mit.edu and login here _on MIT_ where I pretend I am dealing with a fictious entity known as telecom-digest.org and do all my editing work on massis before I send it out as telecom-digest.org using sendmail with the flag -f ('trusted user' manipulates the 'From:' portion of the email address, so that 'ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu' becomes 'ptownson@telecom-digest.org' or 'editor' or whomever.) Now, is all that clear? So whatever I do here all day, either telnetting to MIT for this Digest, or telnetting to one of my accounts at Berkeley, CA where I have a couple .edu accounts or a couple other .edu accounts 'back east' I begin by hooking my computer to the cable line of cableone.net in Independence, KS and I have a 'backup' arrangement to do dialup via TerraWorld.net here in Independence also. I do not know what arrangements Cable One has with ICANN, nor do I know what arrangements the various .edu sites I use have with ICANN. All I know is that my _domain name_ telecom-digest (multipled three times, .org/.net/.com) is registered with ICANN and they reserve the right to take it away from me if they wish to do so. Either I (or someone) has to pay an extortion fee to ICANN and _sign a contract with them_ waiving most of my rights. If that is not having control over the net, I do not know what is. I keep hearing people saying "ICANN has no rights over your domain name," and I do not know where they come from or what happens with _their_ domain names. Surely they have to sign the same contract signing away their rights to ICANN also. Am I some sort of exception to the rules? I must obey ICANN's rules but no one else has to? That must be the case. I must be some sort of exceptional case; no one else has to sign away their domain name or pay some extortion payment? Is that why I have to keep explaining this over and over? Why should I have to pay ICANN exortion money to be able to use my name? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 11 Dec 2005 20:54:39 -0600 From: Ron Kritzman Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You must apparently live in the north > shore area of Chicago. (I assume they are still '847' or has that been > changed as well?) PAT] Still 847, but they've overlaid 224. To date the only 224 numbers I've seen are cellphones. I've never seen any statistics, but I'm guessing that there are a lot of numbers being returned to the pool as residential users get rid of 2nd lines in favor of broadband internet. Emoveray ethay Igpay Atinlay otay eplyray ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 05:43:29 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Anthony Bellanga wrote: >> Lisa Hancock wrote: >>> Nowadays employers seem a lot tighter and grant only the major day >>> off. Many retailers are open on holidays, even Thanksgiving, >>> Christmas, and New Years, and expect people to work. > I guess it depends on who you work for or what type of business or > work you do. And aren't there certain labor laws requiring time and a > half or similar for (non-union) employees who have to work on certain > declared *National* (not "just" Federal) Holidays such as > Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, Independence Day, and maybe Labor > Day? (the original "big five", which does not include Memorial Day, > Columbus Day, Veterans' Day, Presidents' Day (which was originally > known as George Washington's Birthday), and in more recent years mlk > day). According to the "Your Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act" poster (as posted in every workplace), you get time and a half after 40 hours worked in a week. It doesn't say anything about holidays. Seth [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only for more than 40 hours in one week, but also more than 8 hours in one day. PAT] ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Who Owns the Music? Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 06:18:44 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Steven Lichter wrote: > DevilsPGD wrote: >> Before posting legal advice please take the time to investigate where >> the person asking the question is located since their jurisdiction may >> have vastly different rules then yours. > I was not posting legal advice and besides this has to to with Federal > Law!! For which (local) federation? Seth ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #559 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 12 14:57:30 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 76A3B14F98; Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:57:30 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #560 Message-Id: <20051212195730.76A3B14F98@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:57:30 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 12 Dec 2005 14:59:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 560 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Yahoo Offers Moveable Type For Bloggers (Eric Auchard) Court Refuses to Hear National Geographic CD-ROM Case (Reuters News Wire) MCI Tests Ultra Long-Haul Technology (USTelecom dailyLead ) Cellular-News for Monday 12th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Wage Laws, was Holiday Observances (was Re: Kennedy) (Danny Burstein) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell (Lisa Hancock) Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Eric Auchard Subject: Yahoo Offers Moveable Type For Bloggers Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:26:10 -0600 By Eric Auchard Yahoo Inc. and Six Apart Ltd., creator of Movable Type -- the most popular software used to create professional blogs -- said on Sunday Yahoo will be the preferred supplier of Movable Type for small businesses. The partnership is the latest in a string of deals by the world's largest Internet media company as it seeks to embrace so-called "social media," the new generation of Web sites that encourage Internet users to share written text, photos and videos. On Friday, Yahoo acquired Del.icio.us, a site for users to share their favorite Web links. Earlier this year, it acquired Flickr, which offers a way to annotate and share photos. Yahoo will effectively act as the preferred provider of Movable Type for small business users, taking advantage of its scale and efficiency, Anil Dash, vice president of professional products for San Francisco-based Six Apart, said in a phone interview. "This is going to be our recommended (sales) channel for small business," he said. Sunnyvale, California-based Yahoo said it will offer commercial blogs based on Movable Type as part of its existing small business Web-site management service. Yahoo provides customers with a unique Web address, blogging tools and business-class e-mail services with spam and virus protections for less than $12 a month. Movable Type is commonly used by businesses, Web designers and professional bloggers to create easily updated Web sites. Other blog software such as Google Inc.'s Blogger, WordPress, Xanga and Six Apart's own Live Journal, are more often used to create blogs for individuals. Yahoo hosts roughly 30 million individual Web sites, including hundreds of thousands of small business sites, said Rich Riley, general manager of Yahoo's small business unit. One in eight U.S. online stores are hosted by Yahoo, he said. Yahoo is one of the world's largest suppliers of hosted Web sites, which refers to Web sites set and maintained for customers by Yahoo for a monthly subscription fee. Six Apart said it had optimized the underlying software in Movable Type so that it responds twice as fast as the same software offered by Six Apart's own Web site. Six Apart continues to develop versions of Movable Type designed to run inside big businesses, along with its consumer-oriented Live Journal software and a quick set-up version of Movable Type known as TypePad. Separately, Dash said Six Apart's Japanese unit is developing a version of Movable Type to run on Oracle database software, in a bid to encourage wider use of blogs among big businesses. Six Apart was developed to run on open source database software originally. Privately-held Six Apart, founded four years ago by husband-and-wife team Ben and Mena Trott, counts 100 employees worldwide. It has received nearly $12 million in funding from backers Neoteny Co. Ltd. and August Capital, Dash 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Court Won't Hear National Geographic CD-ROM Case Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:28:17 -0600 The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday let stand a ruling that copyright law authorized a publisher to reproduce a collective work in CD-ROM format, even if some new materials have been added. The justices declined to review a dispute involving National Geographic magazine and whether it had to pay freelance writers and photographers additional compensation for using their work in the electronic compilation. In 1997, the National Geographic Society began selling a CD-ROM set containing digitally scanned copies of all past issues dating back 108 years. The 30-disc set depicted an exact electronic image of the original bound magazines, with pages presented two at a time in the very same sequence as in the original paper format. The user would see the articles, photographs and advertisements exactly as they had appeared in the original paper copies. Numerous freelance writers and photographers sued for copyright infringement and said they were entitled to additional compensation. But a federal judge and U.S. appeals court in New York ruled against the freelance contributors. The appeals court ruled that the CDs represented an "electronic replica" of the magazine and were a permissible "revision" under copyright law, even if some new copyrightable materials, such as an introductory sequence and a computer software program, had been added. The freelance contributors appealed to the Supreme Court to hear the case. But the justices rejected the appeal without any comment or recorded dissent. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 12:41:28 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: MCI Tests Ultra Long-Haul Technology USTelecom dailyLead December 12, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zSvMatagCAnewhoZKp TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * MCI tests ultra long-haul technology BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Juniper targets service assurance * BellSouth offers residential VoIP via deal with 8x8 * Columnist: Don't sweat a BlackBerry shutdown * AT&T reaches tentative contract deal with unions * Cable operators open to family tier, but programmers resist * Internet video is red hot USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * You're getting USTelecom dailyLead, but are you missing part of the story? HOT TOPICS * Alltel to spin off landline business * Verizon to unload directory unit * Telecoms turn focus to converged services * Free Wi-Fi becomes the norm * Mobile WiMAX standards approved TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Philips brings TV-on-mobile chipset to U.S. * Sprint Nextel to offer full-length movie, TV downloads Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zSvMatagCAnewhoZKp ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Monday 12th December 2005 Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 07:38:56 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[Financial News]] Australia's Telstra: Hong Kong CSL, New World To Merge http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15177.php Australia's Telstra Corp. said Friday that it has agreed to merge its Hong Kong mobile business CSL with New World Mobile Holdings Ltd., creating Hong Kong's largest mobile operator. ... Singapore MobileOne Confirms Tie-Up With PLDT, SMART http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15179.php MobileOne Ltd. confirmed Friday it will be entering into an agreement with Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co., or PLDT, and its unit. ... Alltel To Spin Off Wireline Operations In $9.1 Billion Deal http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15180.php LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP)--Alltel Corp., one of the nation's largest telecom service providers to rural areas, on Friday said it plans to become a pure wireless company by spinning off its wireline business and merging those operations with Valor Commun... NTL: Virgin Mobile Offer Better Value For Shareholders http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15184.php NTL Inc. said Friday that it continues to believe that its potential offer at 323 pence per Virgin Mobile share represents better value, for all Virgin Mobile shareholders, than Virgin Mobile's stand-alone alternatives. ... Potential Buyers Seen Unlikely To Step Up For Alltel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15185.php While Alltel Corp. may appear to be an attractive acquisition target, few buyers are likely to step up in the near term. ... Analyst says Russian mobile operators’ Jan-Sep revenue up 38% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15187.php The total revenue of Russia’s mobile operators rose 38% on the year to U.S. $7.57 billion in January-September, iKS-Consulting analytical agency said in a report Friday. ... EA Games buys Jamdat Mobile http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15199.php The console games firm, Electronic Arts and the mobile phone games developer, JAMDAT have entered into a merger agreement under which EA will acquire JAMDAT for a total of approximately US$680 million. EA and JAMDAT together plan to publish over 50 g... [[Handsets News]] Samsung To Start Making Handsets In India By March http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15182.php PREMIUM - South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co. Friday said it will start producing cellular handsets in India by March. ... Panasonic Withdraws from GSM Handset Market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15197.php Panasonic Mobile says that it will phase out development of GSM mobile phones due to severe global competition. By concentrating resources into next-generation mobile terminal technologies, as well as unifying platforms and core technologies for the ... [[Legal News]] Russian antitrust still undecided on Alfa, Telenor stakes in VimpelCom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15183.php Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) is yet to decide on applications from both Russia's Alfa Group and Norway's Telenor to increase their respective stakes in Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom, FAS Director Igor Artye... Brazil's Wireless Co Claro Resumes Operations In Minas http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15186.php Brazilian wireless operator Claro, the local unit of Mexico's America Movil SA, will resume operations in the southeast state of Minas Gerais on Saturday, after a local court overturned an injunction that forced the firm to halt operations a week ago... Verizon Wireless Wins Lawsuit Against Telemarketers http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15188.php TRENTON, N.J. (AP)--Verizon Wireless has won two legal skirmishes against telemarketers who made unwanted sales calls to its customers, and said it has launched a new offensive against unsolicited text messages. ... [[Messaging News]] MMS Interconnection for Pakistan http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15196.php Pakistan's three GSM network operators, Telenor, Ufone and Warid Telecom have launched a MMS interconnection service. This would enable the subscribers of all three operators to exchange MMS or multimedia messages with zero interconnect charges. This... [[Mobile Content News]] Students Ready to Accept Cell Phone Ads - For a Price http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15190.php Advertisers are increasingly using cell phones to reach college students, and they are finding a receptive audience, says a new study by Ball State University. A survey of 669 students at Ball State in November found a third of students are receiving... [[Network Contracts News]] Ericsson Gets 3 Contracts In West Africa From Investcom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15181.php Telefon AB LM Ericsson said Friday it has received three contracts in West Africa from the international operator Investcom LLc. ... Israeli Operator Orders Fixed/Mobile Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15193.php Israel's iDEN operator, MiRS has ordered a core convergence switching solution from Tekelec. The solution enables MiRS' transition to the Internet protocol multimedia subsystem (IMS) architecture and enables next-generation capabilities, including fi... [[Network Operators News]] GSM Expansion for Kosovo http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15195.php Kosovo's GSM network operator, Vala 900 says that it has engaged in its 4th expansion phase and is planning to expand coverage to 99% of the population by adding 284 new base stations. The company will also increase network capacity to 700,000 custom... [[Offbeat News]] Vodacom Sponsors Mobile Health Initiative http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15200.php Vodacom Tanzania has launched a mobile health clinic in partnership with Marie Stopes, an international NGO, and medical service provider Managed Mobile Health Clinic (MMHC). Vodacom has supplied the bus for the Mobile Health Clinic with all the nece... [[Regulatory News]] China Could Loose 60 Million Phone Users in 6 Months http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15192.php China's Ministry of Information Industry (MII) has announced plans to require all PrePay phone users to register their handsets, or face having them disconnected. China currently has approximately 200 million PrePay users out of a total of some 380 m... [[Statistics News]] AC&M says Ukraine's total mobile subscriber base up 5.8% in Nov http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15189.php The total subscriber base of Ukraine's mobile operators rose 5.8% in November to 26.36 million people as of November 30, Advanced Communications & Media (AC&M) said in a statement Friday. ... Australian PrePay Usage Jumps This Year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15191.php Australia's Communications and Media Authority has issued a report that gives an overview of the Australian telecoms market. The report notes that during 2004-05 mobile services increased by 12% to 18.42 million, with the penetration rate of mobile p... [[Technology News]] S Korea KT Corp, Alcatel Enter Mobile Broadband Devt Pact http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15178.php South Korea's KT Corp. said Friday it has entered into an alliance with France's Alcatel to cooperate in developing mobile broadband applications. ... SIM Cards That Talk to Each Other http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15194.php Italy's TIM has announced the Italian launch of the first SIM Card that allows mobile phones to "communicate" with TV set-top boxes, computers, household appliances and a host of home electronics devices. The new Z-SIM" SIM Card is a Telecom Italia G... CDMA/EV-DO 450 Scanner Solution http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15198.php PCTEL has announced the commercial availability of a new SeeGull DMA/EV-DO scanner solution for the 450MHz frequency band. PCTEL's CDMA/EV-DO 450 scanner solution addresses the drive testing and RF measurement needs of wireless carriers who are dep... ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Wage Laws, was Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy) Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 08:32:47 +0000 (UTC) Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) writes: [ snip ] > According to the "Your Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act" > poster (as posted in every workplace), you get time and a half after > 40 hours worked in a week. It doesn't say anything about holidays. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only for more than 40 hours in > one week, but also more than 8 hours in one day. PAT] While many people believe that, I'm not aware of any such daily requirement. And that 40 hr/week overtime line is fuzzy, with _plenty_ of exceptions. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 12 Dec 2005 04:12:19 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lena wrote: >>> I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to >>> prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or >>> political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Lena, when you limit those people > to 'one call per year', wouldn't that be like saying spammers and > scammers and phishermen should be limited to one spam, scam or phish > per year? Are you trying to dictate what people can talk about on > their phone? PAT] I'm trying to dictate what people can call me on MY phone. I don't want telemarketers calling me at all, but the ones who have exceptions to the rule, those calling on behalf of charities and political organizations are rude. They won't leave a message on the answeing machine, but will hang up, and then call over and over again. That is why I suggest limiting them to one call per year; perhaps they will leave their message and go away. As far as spammers and scammers and phishermen go, they should all be taken out and drawn and quartered. Lena [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I quite agree with your assessment, but my point was what makes _your_ telephone any more sancrosanct than _my_ computer. If _you_ have the right to dictate who can call you on _your_ phone, then _I_ should have the right to dictate what kind of messages come through on _my_ computer. And let's face it, spam-scam and phishing is far worse than telemarketers ever have been. Imagine, if you will, several hundred telemarketers ringing your phone without ceasing all day and all night, and your only recourse, according to the so-called 'experts' was to rely on screening attempts, and many of the spammer-scammers managed to trick their way around that. Sounds like a lot of fun, doesn't it? PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Hanging up on the New Ma Bell Date: 12 Dec 2005 09:57:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Arthur Kamlet wrote: > Except that AT&T fought for and succeeded in keeping the name: > Bell Laboratories. At the time of divesture everyone thought the "Bell" name had major value, thus the fight to keep it. A lot of things turned out differently that what was expected in 1984 thanks to technology and regulatory changes. Former strengths evaporated, former weaknesses grew strong. However, as it turned out, the Bell name became of little value, indeed, almost a negative. I thought Bell Atlantic was foolish when it changed its name to Verizon, but it turned out to be a smart decision. The future -- high profits -- were in new technologies not associated with the stodgy old Bell System basic black 500 set. Even though Bell developed a great many technical things, using the trade name Verizon on new and modern ads just seems to fit better. I just can't see an ad by the Bell System featuring Gwen Stefani rockin' along as Verizon uses for its cell phones, or Motorola's ad showing a woman squeezing into skintight slacks that still has room for her slimphone*. Indeed, I'm not even sure they're using James Earl Jones as their spokesman anymore. The big profit money (unregulated new services) is with the young people who get cell phones galore, use them a lot (note T-Mobile's ads with the talking cheerleader), text message, download everything, heavy duty Internet service, etc. These people never heard of and could care less of the old Bell System, the guys struggling in snow shoes up the mountain in the blizzard to maintain the microwave tower, operators on duty as flood waters creep up to their floor, etc. In the unregulated world, I think Verizon is doing quite well with that stuff, especially without the regulatory burdens of serving the poor, rate filings, etc. I suspect the kids (and adults) lose their phones regularly and spend big bucks to get out of the contracts, which is pure profit for them. They would never let a regulated company do that. Verizon sticks the old Bell logo on the _side_ of payphone mounts, probably just to reassure old geezers like myself. Admittedly I still prefer to use a "real" payphone rather than an "imitation", although any call beyond the local area will be terribly costly, and some imitation phones are actually cheaper for such calls. (Many traditional real payphones still have the "Bell System Property Not For Sale" on the cover of the coin return slot.) *In the old days, a slimphone was the Trimline set, offered at a premium price. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? Date: 12 Dec 2005 10:12:58 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com There are more and more devices coming onto the affordable marketplace that allow parents to monitor their teenagers' whereabout and activities. Is this a good or bad thing? One is a video camera in the car which monitors their driving. It can see whether they use their seatbelts (kids often forget) and whether they drive carefully or not (samples show kids, even knowing of the device, get distracted easily). Another is a GPS device for car or cell phone so they know where the kid is at all times. I have very mixed feelings about these devices and this kind of supervision. Sometimes I think the stricter the parents with this stuff and various house rules, the more wild the kid will end up as they figure out ways to circumvent them or just lie to cover up. In other words, sometimes I think a more flexible structure and some trust works out better. If I were a kid I'd be furious if my parents used such devices on me, and I wouldn't be keen if a friend's parents did so. Admittedly, myself and my friends were a pretty tame (lame?) crowd. But on the flip side, some kids out there are pretty wild and do need more structure. I knew a girl whose parents were terribly strict with her, but this girl was in the fast lane and I could see the parents not wanting to be grandparents too early. Some kids hit puberty and become totally different people, with tons of energy and restlessness, and a desire to be as adventerous as possible. Plenty of 14 y/o girls lie to their parents and seek out college boys to date (and lie to them as well). Plenty of new drivers (either gender) make the Indianapolis 500 look tame and get killed in the process. So I don't know what the ethical answer is. I am very grateful they didn't have this kind of monitoring when I was kid, as well as no metal detectors to go into high school. Indeed, in my high school they abolished the hall pass system and the halls became _quieter_ than before. I will note one big change from my teen days is that (1) parents today seem to be more involved in their own lives than in my day, that is, they don't have the time to really know their kids' day-to-day activities and friends since both parents work long hours or aren't even there. (2) more kids have their very own cars at age 16 and the freedom that goes with them. I didn't get my own car until I was 21, in my younger years a parent would drive kids out on their dates (not a lot of fun, but it did act as a damper). Borrowing the parents' car first means the car must be available and it not always is in a one-car household, and secondly requires a explanation of need, destination, etc. When a kid has their very own car it's a lot easier to just take off. [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I was in high school (1956-60) there were no metal detectors to walk through either, nor any of the other 'security' devices so prevalent these days. Somehow, we managed to survive. My friends, and the people who administer my household (Margaret [the meals on wheels lady]; the nurse and the SRS housekeeper who come around now and then, etc) always seem so amazed to hear me humming [or listening to a recording of] my favorite musical composition, the music of Johann Sebastian Bach 'Come Sweet Death, Come Blest Repose'. Don't you want to live forever, they ask. Hell no, is my reply. When my time comes for a _natural_ death, I will be so happy to be gone. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #560 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 13 04:39:17 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id CD9A715101; Tue, 13 Dec 2005 04:39:16 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #561 Message-Id: <20051213093916.CD9A715101@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 04:39:16 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, US_DOLLARS_3 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Dec 2005 04:38:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 561 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson The Front Lines - December 12, 2005 (Jonathan Marashlian) A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank (Monty Solomon) Cable Industry Gets Family Friendly (Monty Solomon) Cellular-News for Tuesday 13th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Communications History (Charles G Gray) Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (Carl Navarro) Re: Court Won't Hear National Geographic CD-ROM Case (Lisa Hancock) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lena) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lisa Hancock) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (Carl Zwanzig) Re: Wage Laws, was Holiday Observances Phone Rates (Robert Bonomi) 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 - December 12, 2005 Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 16:22:53 -0500 Organization: The Helein Law Group http://www.thefrontlines-hlg.com/ The FRONT LINES Sponsored by The Helein Law Group, P.C. http://www.thlglaw.com/ Advancing The Cause of Competition in the Telecommunications Industry 2nd CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS ALLOWS ANTITRUST CLAIMS AGAINST RBOCs TO PROCEED On October 3rd, 2005, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed a lower court ruling that had dismissed a lawsuit against all four RBOCs -- BellSouth, Qwest, SBC, and Verizon -- alleging violations of the Sherman Act, Section 1 (antitrust). Twombly, et al v. Bell Atlantic, ___ F.3d ___, 2005 WL 2420523 (2d Cir, NY). Here's the pertinent background. The plaintiffs were not CLECs or other competitors. Instead, the plaintiffs were CONSUMERS. The action is styled as a class action. The allegations are that following the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the RBOCs conspired to exclude competitors from their respective geographic markets for local telephone and high-speed Internet services and also tacitly agreed not to compete against one another in said markets. The District Court dismissed the suit for failure to state a cause of action upon which relief could be granted. The Second Circuit, however, reversed and remanded on a narrow procedural ground, finding instead that the plaintiffs had sufficiently pled enough facts to meet the notice pleading requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. Having met the notice pleading requirements, the Second Circuit held that the lower court erred when it dismissed the suit. The reversal means that the plaintiffs will be able to use discovery to build their case against the RBOCs. The suit remains subject to possible motions for summary judgment against the plaintiffs, but these filings cannot be made until after the plaintiffs have had a chance to use discovery to build their case. The specific factual allegations used by the plaintiffs are most interesting. It was alleged that - The RBOCs control 90% of the local telephone market in the U.S. The RBOCs have agreed (conspired) not to compete with one another in their respective territories. The result of this conspiracy has been to drive CLECs out of the market for local phone and high-speed Internet services. Plaintiffs (as consumers) were injured by forcing them as consumers of these services to pay at rates higher than they would otherwise pay in a competitive environment. The factual predicates stated in support allegations of antitrust violations were - The RBOCs engaged in "parallel conduct" by not competing with each other, conduct that cannot be explained but for the existence of a tacit agreement not to compete. This allegation was supported by alleging that - * The RBOCs' operating territories include pockets of territories surrounding other RBOC operating territories which provide the RBOCs competitive advantages to invade other RBOC territories, but such invasions have not occurred; * The RBOCs have frequently complained that FCC regulations implementing the 1996 Telecommunications Act hurt their businesses by forcing them to provide CLECs with access to their networks at rates that are below the cost of maintaining those networks. Such RBOC complaints should have served as a spur for the RBOCs to invade other RBOC territories to reap the benefits of being able to compete based on obtaining below cost network operations; but the RBOCs nevertheless ignored this "incentive"; * Richard Notebaert, Qwest's CEO, stated publicly that competing in neighboring SBC territories "might be a good way to turn a quick dollar but that doesn't make it right"; * The RBOCs communicate frequently with each other through a myriad of organizations that provide the opportunity for a conspiracy to form and be conducted without the likelihood of detection; and * From the day the 1996 Act became law, the RBOCs have used every means available to destroy the ability of CLECs to compete. The Second Circuit cited these and other facts to find that the antitrust lawsuit could not be dismissed for failing to state a cause of action. Thus, the plaintiffs may now proceed to the discovery stage. At stake is some form of injunctive relief, treble damages and exposure to maximum fines of $100,000,000 per corporation, $1,000,000 per person or imprisonment of up to ten years or both. CLECs and others - stay tuned. FCC CONSOLIDATES FRONTIER DECLARATORY PETITION REGARDING ACCESS CHARGES WITH PETITIONS PREVIOUSLY FILED BY SBC AND VARTEC; ACCESS CHARGES ON VERGE OF COLLIDING WITH INTERNET PROTOCOL On November 23, 2005, Frontier Telephone of Rochester, Inc. (Frontier) filed with the FCC a Petition for Declaratory Ruling that USA Datanet (Datanet) and any similarly situated carriers must pay tariffed originating interstate access charges for Feature Group A calls from Frontier's end users. Feature Group A calls require calling parties to input a seven-digit number, obtain dial tone from another carrier's switch, input a personal identification number, and then the telephone number of the called party. In its petition, Frontier seeks a declaratory ruling that it is owed originating access charges for IP-transported Feature Group A calls for the following interstate access rate elements: 1) end office common trunk port; 2) end office local switching; 3) local transport tandem transmission - fixed; and 4) local transport tandem transmission facility. Frontier filed its petition after the United States District Court for the Western District of New York stayed Frontier's case seeking payment of access charges from Datanet for originating Feature Group A access services. Frontier Telephone of Rochester, Inc. v. USA Datanet Corp., No. 05-CV-6056 CJS, Decision and Order, 13-14 (W.D.N.Y. Aug. 2, 2005). The court found it appropriate to stay the case pending the FCC's resolution of the issues raised by Frontier. Frontier asked the FCC to consolidate its petition with existing WC Docket No. 05-276, which is examining petitions for declaratory rulings filed by SBC and VarTec on similar IP access charge issues. The FCC agreed to Frontier's request. As a quick re-cap, on September 26, 2005, the FCC released a Public Notice requesting comments on Petitions filed by SBC and VarTec. Both Petitions request clarification regarding the application of access charges to certain providers of wholesale transmission using Internet Protocol (IP). As described below, SBC and VarTec take contrary positions on the issue. On September 21, 2005, SBC filed a petition for declaratory ruling that wholesale transmission providers using Internet protocol (IP) technology to transport long distance calls are liable for access charges. SBC filed its petition after the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri dismissed without prejudice SBC's claims seeking payment of access charges for long distance calls that were transported using IP technology. The court found it appropriate to defer the issues raised by SBC to the primary jurisdiction of the FCC. In its Petition, SBC seeks a declaratory ruling that wholesale transmission providers using IP technology to carry long distance calls that originate and terminate on the public switched telephone network (PSTN) are liable for access charges under section 69.5 of the Commission's rules and applicable tariffs. SBC seeks a ruling that providers meeting these criteria are interexchange carriers. VarTec filed a petition for declaratory ruling on related issues. Specifically, VarTec seeks a declaratory ruling that it is not required to pay access charges to terminating local exchange carriers (LECs) when enhanced service providers or other carriers deliver calls directly to the terminating LECs for termination. VarTec also seeks a declaratory ruling that such calls are exempt from access charges when they are originated by a commercial mobile radio service (CMRS) provider and do not cross major trading area (MTA) boundaries. VarTec also seeks a declaratory ruling that terminating LECs are required to pay VarTec for the transiting service VarTec provides when terminating LECs terminate intraMTA calls originated by a CMRS provider. As the industry rapidly migrates to IP-based calling, the issue of access charges and access charge reform is gaining traction in the courts and at the FCC. Access charges continue to be a tremendous source of revenue for ILECs and independent LECs and, as such, will continue to be tremendous motivation for lawsuits and other "self help" efforts to collect access charges from a variety of entities, some of which may or may not be applicable. If you have concerns, please contact your regulatory attorney and if you do not have one, contact us at: 703-714-1313 or via e-mail: mailto:jsm@thlglaw.com jsm@thlglaw.com. COMMUNICATIONS TAXES: News & Notes At The Helein Law Group we are frequently asked to provide advice regarding state and federal taxation of telecommunications and enhanced communications services. The firm's Telecommunications & Technology Regulatory Practice includes a separate focus that offers expert advice on federal and state excise taxes on communications products and services, as well as on state sales, use and gross receipt (excise taxes), and other "tax-like" regulatory fees that are or can be applied to a variety of communications and information technology services and products. As a new service to its clients and readers of The Front Lines, we will begin publishing summaries of tax decisions relevant to the communications industry on a more frequent basis. We are taking these steps to highlight the dizzying array of taxes, changes in tax laws & regulations, and the importance of these changes have in the context of the telecommunications & enhanced services industries. If you seek legal advice on issues pertaining to taxes or "tax-like" fees, please contact our firm at 703-714-1300 or via e-mail: mailto:mail@thlglaw.com mail@thlglaw.com. New York In New York, a recent decision held that sales tax applies to purchases of electricity used to provide power to telecommunications equipment. XO Communications, Inc. (XO), purchased electricity from Con Edison that was used to power its telecommunications equipment and filed a refund claim on the sales tax paid on its purchases of electricity. XO relied on Section 1115(a)(12-a) of the N.Y. Tax Code that its purchases of electricity were used in the production, delivery, or rendering of telecommunications services. But it was held that the exemption in Section 1115(a)(12-a) does not apply to purchases of electricity. XO then relied on Section 1115 (a)(12) claiming exemption for machinery and equipment used in manufacturing tangible personal property for sale. This argument was rejected because the term "machinery and equipment" does not include electricity and the electricity purchased did not produce tangible personal property for sale; but was used to produce a service. XO's reliance on Section 1115(c)(1) was also rejected because telecommunications services are not corporeal property because they cannot be seen or handled and telecommunications are not taxed as tangible personal property under the Tax Law but as a service. XO's final argument that under Section 1115(c)(1) its purchase of alternating current was a purchase of a raw material that was converted to direct current was rejected because the conversion was considered to be only an intermediate step in the process to sell it telecommunications services. XO New York, Inc., New York Division of Tax Appeals, DTA N 820005, 9/29/05. Pennsylvania Graham Packaging Company, L.P., recently lost its appeal to overturn the taxability of canned software based on the differences in the delivery method used, i.e., the difference between being received via computer disks as opposed to receiving via an electronic download. The question presented was whether the renewal of a license to use canned computer software that was originally delivered by computer disk was subject to sales tax when updates are delivered via electronic download? The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue held that the initial acquisition of canned software by disk, makes it tangible personal property and taxable. It issued Sales Tax Bulletin 2005-04 follows an earlier ruling against Graham, and effective 11/1/05, sales tax must be charged on all sales of canned software regardless of the delivery method. Graham Packaging Company, LP, v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, No. 652 F.R. 2002, 9/1 and Sales Tax Bulletin, 2005-04, PA Department of Revenue, 11/1/05. The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue also announced that it will soon update its Statement of Policy, 61 Pa. Code 60.20, to reflect the Federal Internet Tax nondiscrimination Act and the Mobile Telecommunications Sourcing Act, as well as Pennsylvania Act 23 of 2000 and Act 89 of 2002. In the meantime the Department provided a list of examples and definitions of both enhanced and non-enhanced telecommunication services. Services that the Department has determined are enhanced telecommunications services include: * Data Processing * Information Retrieval Services * Video Programming * Video on Demand * Voice Service Services that the Department has determined are not enhanced telecommunications services include: * Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) * Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) * Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) * Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) * Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) * Primary-rate Integrated Services Digital Network (PRI_ISDN) * T-1 and T-3 lines * Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) * Vertical Services * Plain Old Telephone Service (POTS) Sales tax Bulletin 2005-03, Pennsylvania Department of Revenue, Issued 9/30/05. Tennessee The Tennessee Court of Appeals has held that telephone central office machinery and equipment does not qualify for the industrial machinery equipment exemption under the Tennessee sales and use tax. AT&T Corporation, Network Systems Division v. Loren Chumley, Commissioner of Revenue, S Tennessee, Tennessee Court of Appeals, Appeal from the Chancery Court for Davidson County, M2004-01514-COA-R3-CV, 10/21/05. ________ The Front Lines is a free publication of The Helein Law Group, P.C., 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: http://www.thlglaw.com/ www.THLGlaw.com The Helein Law Group, P.C. 8180 Greensboro Drive, Suite 700 McLean, Virginia 22102 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 15:09:24 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: A Little Sleuthing Unmasks Writer of Wikipedia Prank By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE It started as a joke and ended up as a shot heard round the Internet, with the joker losing his job and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, suffering a blow to its credibility. A man in Nashville has admitted that, in trying to shock a colleague with a joke, he put false information into a Wikipedia entry about John Seigenthaler Sr., a former editor of The Tennessean in Nashville. Brian Chase, 38, who until Friday was an operations manager at a small delivery company, told Mr. Seigenthaler on Friday that he had written the material suggesting that Mr. Seigenthaler had been involved in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. Wikipedia, a nonprofit venture that is the world's biggest encyclopedia, is written and edited by thousands of volunteers. Mr. Seigenthaler discovered the false entry only recently and wrote about it in an op-ed article in USA Today, saying he was especially annoyed that he could not track down the perpetrator because of Internet privacy laws. His plight touched off a debate about the reliability of information on Wikipedia - and by extension the entire Internet - and the difficulty in holding Web sites and their users accountable, even when someone is defamed. In a confessional letter to Mr. Seigenthaler, Mr. Chase said he thought Wikipedia was a "gag" Web site and that he had written the assassination tale to shock a co-worker, who knew of the Seigenthaler family and its illustrious history in Nashville. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/11/business/media/11web.html?ex=1291957200&en=250503cbb293b485&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 19:37:51 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cable Industry Gets Family Friendly By JENNIFER C. KERR Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Under pressure from the government, the nation's two largest cable companies plan to offer packages of family friendly channels to give parents a new way to shield children from sex, rough language and violence. Industry leader Comcast Corp., No. 2 Time Warner Cable and several other companies will start offering "family choice" tiers, most likely by spring, said Kyle McSlarrow, head of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, the main cable trade group. Details will vary by company, McSlarrow told the Senate Commerce Committee on Monday. He did not have an estimate on the cost, but said the tiers would be tied to digital cable packages, which cost more than a standard non-digital package. The industry has come under increased scrutiny for raunchy programming, most recently from the head of the Federal Communications Commission. Chairman Kevin Martin urged cable executives at an indecency forum last month to give parents more tools to help navigate the hundreds of channels available to consumers. Without endorsing a specific solution, Martin offered several suggestions, including family friendly tiers and so-called "a la carte" pricing, which would let customers pick and pay for only those channels they want. Most cable executives have dismissed the idea of a la carte pricing, saying it would drive up costs and lead to the demise of channels that can't attract enough advertising dollars. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=53885309 ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Tuesday 13th December 2005 Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 07:42:05 -0600 From: Cellular-Nnews Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ Financial ]] NTT DoCoMo To Invest $6 Million In Chinese Mobile Payment Co http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15202.php NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Monday it will invest $6 million in January in the holding company of Chinese mobile payment service provider Just In Mobile Information Technology Shanghai. ... Russia's MTS purchases 51% of Kyrgyzstan's Bitel for $150 mln http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15204.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has purchased a 51% stake in Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel for U.S. $150 million, MTS President Vasily Sidorov told reporters Monday. ... Orascom Sells Congo GSM Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15209.php Egypt's Orascom Telecom Holding (OTH) has signed an agreement to sell its controlling 65% equity stake in its GSM operation in Congo Brazzaville, Libertis Telecom. Total consideration to OTH is US$66.6 million in cash. As of September 30th 2005, Libe... [[ Legal ]] EU Ends Antitrust Probe After ETSI Changes Patent Rules http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15203.php The European Commission Monday closed an antirust investigation into the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, a group that sets the industry's technology standards. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Mobile Content A Key Factor When Buying a Handset http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15206.php According to research on digital services for mobile phones commissioned by Buongiorno Vitaminic, downloading ringtones, wallpapers and multimedia games comes third place among the favourite activities of mobile holders, preceded only by calls and te... Mobile TV Launched in South Africa http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15210.php South Africa's Vodacom has launched the first mobile television entertainment service on cellphones, to customers in South Africa using 3G handsets. New forms of content are increasingly making their way onto cellphones -- music, in particular, is alr... [[ Network Contracts ]] Ericsson In Deal With BITE For Mobile Infrastructure http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15201.php Swedish telecommunications equipment company Telefon AB LM Ericsson Monday said it has signed a contract with Baltic mobile operator BITE Group to supply second-generation and third-generation mobile systems infrastructure in Lithuania and Latvia unt... Improved Billing Platform in Qatar http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15208.php Comptel says that it has delivered a data charging solution to Qtel in Qatar, which includes online mediation, rating product components. This will enable Qtel to offer unified and wider service offerings for both postpaid and prepaid mobile users. Q... [[ Statistics ]] 3G Spending is Higher for Operator Portals Compared to Off-Portal http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15205.php 3G raises adoption of applications and increases overall data services spending, according to a new report from Telephia, which showed that 3G users were much more active than non-3G users, especially for new and advanced mobile activities developed ... Chinese ICT Exports Overtake USA http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15207.php China overtook the United States in 2004 to become the world's leading exporter of information and communications technology (ICT) goods such as mobile phones, laptop computers and digital cameras, according to OECD data.... ------------------------------ Subject: Communications History From: Charles G Gray Date: Mon, 12 Dec 2005 13:48:28 -0600 In 1959 I was assigned to the US Army Signal Depot in Okinawa. I got my uniform all spruced up and answered all of the questions from the examining board correctly and won "soldier of the month". There were three awards. One was a new Army Green uniform, which would have cost me about half a month's pay out of my pocket. When I joined the Army in 1957 they issued us one OD uniform and one green one. We were supposed to buy the second green one ourselves. We got black shoes, but we had to dye the brown boots black ourselves. Another piece of the award was a three-minute phone call to the United States -- which at the time would cost about US$36.00 (over a third of a month's pay). As I recall it was handled by RCA Globecom from a phone booth in Sukiran to Tulsa, OK. It was full duplex, so we didn't have to do the "over" thing. I called my wife, who had just borne our first son. I learned that he had been born via a Red Cross "health and welfare" telegram, since my wife couldn't afford to call me. I'm glad that the troops today have multiple methods of communicating, but in 1958-59 I was severely restricted. My wife wrote every day, but we only had that one single phone conversation in my 15 months overseas. At $12 a minute, we could buy a lot of stamps. The final part of the award was a trip to the northern part of Okinawa (on the general's helicopter) to have a look at the tropospheric scatter radio site that was being installed. My memory is clouded by the fog of time, but I think it was Philco doing the installation. Since I was a radio repairman I got the "grand tour" of the whole site. The helicopter ride was something special as well, since they were not nearly as ubiquitous as they are today. Moving along, when I went to school with AT&T in New Jersey in 1970 we visited their HF radio site near Princeton, NJ. There were huge AM transmitters, and equally huge multi-panel rhombic antennas. At that time they were used only for contingency call routing to countries like Switzerland, who being landlocked, always had a fear of one or more of their neighbors interfering with their cable connections. Each transmitter had the name of the country it was prepared to serve. Of course, the advent of satellites put an end to the overseas HF services. Regards, Charles G. Gray Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications Oklahoma State University - Tulsa (918)594-8433 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? Date: 12 Dec 2005 12:38:14 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I was in high school (1956-60) > there were no metal detectors to walk through either, nor any of the > other 'security' devices so prevalent these days. Somehow, we managed > to survive. In fairness to today's administrators, there were some differences between now and then: 1) Drop outs: A lot of kids, particularly boys, simply dropped out of school when it got too boring or onerous. While there was encouragement to stay in school in those days, there wasn't the pressure like today and there were plenty of good jobs available if the kid had half a brain or a strong back. In those years American industry was humming along very nicely and a big demand for labor. If you had some smarts and could learn skills and worked hard on the job you would get promoted even wtihout a HS diploma and make a nice living. The point is a lot of the trouble makers in school today would simply have been out of school in those days. 2) Guns: Our country has gone nuts with guns. People had guns in the old days. But they had only one or two and they weren't as powerful as today. A kid recently murdered his girlfriend's parents and he was loaded for WW III; likewise with the kids who shot up their schools. 3) There were bad kids and bad schools: School administrators were always fanactical about keeping bad news out of the paper, but inner cities and tough rural neighborhoods had their share of violence. There was a film on that, The Blackboard Jungle. During the "good years" of WW II, schools set up in temporary construction camps for war industries were pretty rough, the boys caring little and the girls running off to "take care" of soldiers. At the end of the war there were many very bewildered 16 and 17 year old girls sitting in front of a squalid room waiting for their partying husband. Some had a baby with them. Today we'd put a man who did that in jail but back then as long as they were married it was fine. Back in the war and postwar years authors who wrote about this stuff were criticized as unpatriotic or were banished to heavy-duty college textbook status that few people would read. When Hollywood attempted (very rarely) to cover this social problems the films didn't sell and Hollywood was criticized as being commie for putting them out. Fortunately many books on this subject have survived in large libraries. The Natl Bldg Museum in Washington did an exhibit on wartime construction, incl wartime housing, and included the family and social issues therein. [public replies please] ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 05:15:42 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On 12 Dec 2005 10:12:58 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > There are more and more devices coming onto the affordable marketplace > that allow parents to monitor their teenagers' whereabout and > activities. Is this a good or bad thing? > One is a video camera in the car which monitors their driving. It can > see whether they use their seatbelts (kids often forget) and whether > they drive carefully or not (samples show kids, even knowing of the > device, get distracted easily). > Another is a GPS device for car or cell phone so they know where the > kid is at all times. > I have very mixed feelings about these devices and this kind of > supervision. I'm very close to getting a GPS for the vehicle. It has two good things in that it can monitor speed, and location. In today's society, I think it is fast becoming a must to know where your own or your child's vehicle is at all times. You can also get it to disable the vehicle, and entry level systems are in the $500 price range plus a few bucks a month for monitoring. If you have a 1970 Pinto you're probably safe from carjacking, but an SUV or any Honda or sports car and you could be a victim. To be able to go on the internet or call the law enforcement people and track your stolen ride is a pretty reasonabe investment. Some of the systems let you establish zones. ie you live in NJ and you tell your child to stay out of NYC. You set a zone around NYC and if the vehicle crosses into that zone it can page you. We could have used that to keep someone out of crack town. Ya gotta do whatever you can sometimes. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Court Won't Hear National Geographic CD-ROM Case Date: 12 Dec 2005 12:22:49 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Reuters News Wire wrote: > The 30-disc set depicted an exact electronic image of the original > bound magazines, with pages presented two at a time in the very same > sequence as in the original paper format. The user would see the > articles, photographs and advertisements exactly as they had appeared > in the original paper copies. > Numerous freelance writers and photographers sued for copyright > infringement and said they were entitled to additional compensation. The article did not describe the terms in which the contributors sold their work. Presumably in this case it was for a use in a particular magazine issue. It would appear in this case in essence NatlG merely reprinted an old issue for which they already compensated the contributor. I don't think contributors are entitled to any extra compensation if the publisher simply issues a reprint of the original work, and that happens often. In other words, if I sell a photo to NatlG and they run it in an issue, and that issue is so popular that they reprint it many times over, I am not entitled to any more compensation than if it was a normal press run. FWIW, I also want to note that the second hand price of old Natg Geo is very low. My local library has a bookcase full of them for sale at 20c each and won't take any more donations to sell. They're not moving very quickly. I like the issues from the 1950s and earliers since the Bell System always had a nice full page ad on the last page (there was a connection between the Bell System and Natlg Geo boards). I got one ad showing "the voice with a smile" which I'm giving to our Centrex operators. FWIW, a lot of ads from the 1950s are from corporations touting their defense work for the convert, such as missles and atomic energy. Lots of ads had the symbol of an atom in them. In the 1950s companies were proud of that, in the 1960s it became rather controversial. Actually, some people on e-bay make a business of buying this off stuff, clipping out the ads, and selling the ads. NatlG isn't so good for this since the pages are small, but Fortune and Life magazines have big ads (nice colorful Bell System ads, BTW). I also picked up a bound volume from the early 1950s with an interesting article on Long Island, but the bound volumes are stripped of all ads, which can be more interesting than the articles themselves. [public replies please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the past, I wrote a few articles which I sold, mostly to the Christian Science Monitor for their Home Forum page; also an occasional crossword puzzle. These were in the 1960's, and the Monitor always paid _very well_ for articles and essays and such they purchased, but the conditions were you gave them an _exclusive_ use to the content. No one else could use the articles (including yourself) and _they could use the articles when they pleased and as often as they pleased. I think they paid me fifty dollars for each my Home Forum articles and puzzles. I know it was always sufficient to keep me in beer and cigarettes. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 12 Dec 2005 12:44:38 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lena wrote: > I'm trying to dictate what people can call me on MY phone... > telemarketers ... are rude. They won't leave a message on the answeing > machine, but will hang up, and then call over and over again. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I quite agree with your assessment, but > my point was what makes _your_ telephone any more sancrosanct than _my_ > computer. ...And let's face it, spam-scam > and phishing is far worse than telemarketers ever have been. The difference between telemarketing and spam, IMHO, is that telemarketers make my phone ring, and that is something that demands immediate attention. That bothers me a lot. Much more than spam that might happen to be in the inbox when I check for it at my leisure. (I don't have automated email retrieval). I guess I have been fortunate that I am not innundated with spam. As some of my ISP provided email accounts that I guarded meticulously, and only sent to friends, leaked to (or were guessed by) spammers, I switched to gmail, which seems to have wonderful spam protection and spam reporting ease. Click a button and it's gone. Telemarketers, OTOH, are difficult to get rid of. Lena ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 12 Dec 2005 13:37:22 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Lena wrote: ... I agree with Lena. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I quite agree with your assessment, but > my point was what makes _your_ telephone any more sancrosanct than _my_ > computer. If _you_ have the right to dictate who can call you on > _your_ phone, then _I_ should have the right to dictate what kind of > messages come through on _my_ computer. ... I think all of us consumers agree that we don't want any spam emails at all and no soliciting telephone calls at all. Congress, in its infiite wisdom and infinite lobbying, finally put some limits on telemarketing. They do not go as far as we consumers want, and more restrictions need to be applied. The telemarketers have a powerful lobby and fight against this stuff. I think what Lena is suggesting a compromise that could get through Congress. In response to other posts, telemarketers representing charities, past business relationships, and political issues ARE permitted to call just as before and you can't stop them; they're exempt from regulation. Even if you told candidate Smith not to call you, in the next election candidate Jones will call you. I don't understand at all why there's no "no-spam" law passed. I don't know who represents the spamming interests and would think those supporting no-spam would be quite vocal and organized. I think one problem is the openness of the Internet where it is very hard to trace where spam truly comes from, it apparently is very easy for spammers to forge their origin points or actually hijack someone else's computer to do their duty work. To me, that kind of thing should be a serious felony offense. I understand another problem is that much spam originates overseas (along with a lot of illegal porn). I don't understand Internet message addressing, but it seems to me any initiated message should have a secured sender's address address. There should be some technical way that something like that is reasonably tamper proof so it works reliably. Such an address would cut down "phising" and other fraudulent and abusive activity now going on. Some people get very upset with that idea because they want "anonimity". Fine. Let's set up a completely separate Internet that is anonymous, without verifiable addresses (like now). People who want to interchange on that are free to do so, with all that entails. For those of us who take our Internet use a little more seriously, we should have a separate secured system where only messages and screens from properly authenticated sites are permitted. You would have to use (intentionally) two different browsers, one for the garbage, one for serious stuff. I don't understand why some people just love "mob rule". Civilization grew out of the development of rules for us to live by--basic manners and organization. It's how we get anything done in society. Random folk talk is fine for a bar. ------------------------------ From: zbang@radix.net (Carl Zwanzig) Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 01:31:57 -0000 Organization: RadixNet Internet Services Joe Morris wrote: > And I'm sure you remember the little "dial lock" gizmos that were > clamped into the "1" fingerhole and were supposed to keep people from > making outbound calls on an unattended office telephone? It seems > that nobody ever thought about dialing with the switchhook -- or just > banging away with ten or more pulses and asking the operator for > assistance. In my high school's computer lab (two ASR33's and an HP 9100), they resorted to locking the dial in the off-normal position -because- we were dialing with the switchhook (for some reason, we called it Dutch Dialing). Ten quick snaps of the hook and "Assistance in dialing, please". A small mod to the set fixed that... (as did the portable tone pad). Speaking of which, is there an online copy of the famous phrase book for operators? z! ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Wage Laws, was Holiday Observances Phone Rates (was Re: Kennedy) Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 02:27:48 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Danny Burstein wrote: > In sethb@panix.com (Seth > Breidbart) writes: [ snip ] >> According to the "Your Rights Under the Fair Labor Standards Act" >> poster (as posted in every workplace), you get time and a half after >> 40 hours worked in a week. It doesn't say anything about holidays. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Not only for more than 40 hours in >> one week, but also more than 8 hours in one day. PAT] > While many people believe that, I'm not aware of any such daily > requirement. _FEDERAL_ law does not require 'time and a half' for more than 8 hours worked. A number of STATE laws -do- so require. Federal law expressly provides that if there are both state and federal requirements that apply, the method that gives the employee the higher pay will be used. Federal law specifically does _not_ mandate extra pay for evening, night, weekend or holiday work. According to the U.S. dept of labor, "these are matters for negotiation between the employer and employee (or his representative)". ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #561 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 13 23:34:05 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id BC9071506B; Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:34:04 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #562 Message-Id: <20051214043404.BC9071506B@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:34:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, DRUGS_ERECTILE,MORTGAGE_PITCH,MORTGAGE_RATES autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:35:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 562 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Spamming the Wrong Message (Adam L. Penenerg) New Place For Spam's Same Old Pitches (Nuki Yoguchi) Spam Scam Invokes Princess Diana (Jeremy Kirk) Spam's Latest Spoilage (hampton roads.com) MASD Warns of Fake Stocktips Using Cellphones (Reuters News Wire) AT&T Rolls Out Speedier Broadband Service (USTelecom dailyLead) HSI and Diverted 1-800-CALL-ATT? (Carl Moore) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Steven Lichter) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Adam L. Penenberg Subject: Spamming the Wrong Message Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:46:08 -0600 By Adam L. Penenberg Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,67213,00.html Last week, many netizens cheered when Jeremy Jaynes, the eighth-ranked spammer in the world, was sentenced to nine years in prison. Jaynes, who also went by the name Gaven Stubberfield, was famous for pushing "zoo" porn and operating various spam scams. He fired off millions of e-mail messages, clogging ISP servers and inboxes with various come-ons while amassing a fortune estimated at about $24 million. But that's not why he's going to jail. A Loudoun County, Virginia, jury found him guilty of three counts of forging e-mail headers. Media Hack Like Martha Stewart, he wasn't convicted of a crime as much as he was nailed for trying to cover his tracks. Unlike Martha and other white-collar criminals, he may serve as much time in prison as a bank robber, rapist or someone who committed manslaughter. What this tells us is that in the spam game, e-mail isn't the only way to send a message. Graham Cluley of Sophos, an antispam and antivirus peddler, said, "This sentence sends out a strong message to other spammers that their activities are not going to be tolerated by the U.S. authorities ... It's likely that Jeremy Jaynes' nine-year sentence will keep a few spammers awake at night wondering if the rewards are really worth it." Steve Linford of The Spamhaus Project crowed, "We are very pleased the Virginia jury recommended nine years. It sends the right message to the rest of the U.S.-based spammers that jail time is waiting for them." And not to be outdone, an Associated Press headline read: "Judge sends a message: nine years for spammer." Imagine my surprise when I awoke the next morning and checked one of my many throwaway webmail accounts, which I keep under various noms de plume (my favorite is "media_wh0re"). I found the same pile of spam I always get -- for penile enhancements, Viagra, hot girl-on-girl porn and lower mortgage rates. I guess not everyone got the message. And why should they? Jaynes was prosecuted under a Virginia statute, while many spammers detonate their spam bombs from other countries. I applaud prosecutors for going after spammers, but I don't expect that it will have much impact. "The problem is, we're getting into a war-on-drugs type of situation," said Brian McWilliams, author of Spam Kings: The Real Story Behind the High-Rolling Hucksters Pushing Porn, Pills and %*@)# Enlargements. "Knocking a guy like Jeremy Jaynes out of business doesn't solve the demand side of the spam problem. There's still a significant number of people who respond favorably to spam, and as long as that's true, spammers will keep trying to reach them." Indeed. Recently, DoubleClick reported that clickthrough rates on e-mail were still at about 8 percent. With hundreds of millions of spam messages shooting through cyberspace every year, you do the math. Unless we can convince people not to click through on these (often) bawdy ads, perhaps we need to look at things differently. After all, "people go to jail for mail fraud all the time, but it doesn't make me less likely to send a letter," pointed out Jeff Rohrs, president of Optiem, an interactive-marketing agency specializing in permission-based e-mail marketing. "E-mail is just a bit ahead of the curve when compared to other digital media because its cost of entry is so low. What other medium lets you send to millions of people for pennies? That's why it remains so attractive to spammers." Citing a recent Pew Internet & American Life Project study, Rohrs believes that consumers are getting used to the nuisance of spam. Witness the drop in people who say that they are spending less time with e-mail, from 29 percent last year to 22 percent this year; and the drop in people who trust e-mail less because of spam, from 62 percent to 53 percent. He would like to see these numbers compared to traditional media like TV, radio and direct mail. He asks: "Do people trust TV less because of infomercials? Or mail less because of annoying mortgage offers that disguise themselves as bills? My guess is that these things annoy people, but they have learned to compartmentalize their impact -- the mediums still deliver value, so consumers are willing to put up with some annoyances for the real benefits." Think about that the next time you return from vacation and have to spend an hour deleting spam. Adam L. Penenberg is an assistant professor at New York University and the assistant director of the business and economic reporting program in the department of journalism. Copyright 2005 Wired News. Copyright 2005, Lycos, Inc. Lycos is a registered trademark of Carnegie Mellon University. http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,67213,00.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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Yuki Noguchi Subject: A New Place For Spam's Same Old Pitches Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:38:28 -0600 By Yuki Noguchi, Washington Post Staff Writer Now that Web logs -- blogs, for short -- are a popular online pastime for millions of people, scammers are finding new ways to exploit them as vehicles for junk advertisements. The Internet has even coined a term -- splog, a combination of spam and blog -- for a phenomenon that follows in the footsteps of rogue advertising such as spam e-mail, junk mail, junk faxes and adware. The new forms of spam can show up on blogs as fake comments posted by readers that actually have nothing to do with the subject at hand. Instead they are advertising pitches or attempts to get you to click on an unrelated Web site. They also can be set up as bogus blogs; go looking for a blogger talking about, say, bathroom renovations, and you could wind up on a Web site that has a few random renovation-related words but that mainly tries to get you to click on links to advertisements. For the most part, the ads are new pitches for old schemes -- gambling, porn -- and are posing enough of a customer nuisance that Internet giants such as Google and Yahoo are developing tools to clamp down on them. Blogs are free and easy to set up, and until now, they have mostly been earnest forums for political and personal discourse. But their blogs, the greater the potential audience for spammers. Some bloggers and search-engine users are calling on companies that help set up blogs to better police their systems. "Yahoo and Google are the common carriers of the information age, and they have a reasonable responsibility ... to prevent the illegal and inappropriate use of their services," said Scott Allen, an Austin-based online editor for About.com who also maintains a blog. Last month, Blogger, a free blog service, identified a "spamalanche" that hit its system, and the company had to dismantle 13,000 spam-filled blogs created in the course of a single weekend. "The readership of blogs has exploded in the last 18 months," and with it the popularity of splogs, said Jason Goldman, product manager for Blogger, which is owned by Google Inc. "The challenge is one of balance: to make it difficult for people to post bad script but not make it hard for our users." Unauthorized advertisers are blighting the blogosphere by hijacking legitimate discussions of topics with a flurry of phony comments. "We would get surges of it -- as many as 200 to 300 within two hours; we couldn't blacklist the [spammers' online] addresses fast enough," Allen said. "It hampers the open conversation that is the very nature of blogs." Advertisers are also setting up bogus blogs -- what Goldman and others refer to as splogs -- and linking them to numerous other sites to inflate their popularity on search engines. When searchers click on what they think is a relevant site, they end up on imitation blogs full of gibberish and links to ads. Advertisers will pay the spammers every time someone clicks on one of those links. Ben Popken, keeper of a blog called TheSpunker, recently searched the Internet for Swiss army knives and found himself stymied by splogs. Every time he typed in the topic on a blog search engine, he kept pulling up a site that appeared to be a legitimate blog but was filled with links to other Web sites. "In one way, it's a tribute to the openness of the blog system. It's kind of ingenious in this diabolical way," Popken said in an interview. "But something like this happening undermines the trust that blogs are based on." Spammers often use automated software to set up splogs, so since February Google has stepped up its efforts to stop the trashing before it begins, Blogger's Goldman said. Blogger requires a user to enter a code word before setting up a blog and has developed a way of flagging suspected spammers and requiring a similar verification process before they can post comments, he said. Google is further trying to improve its mechanism for identifying junk blogs from legit ones, he said, and only a few bloggers have complained of problems maintaining their blogs. Yahoo has instituted controls on its free Yahoo 360 blogging software that allow users to limit viewership and comments on their blogs, said company spokeswoman Meagan Busath. "Obviously, Yahoo has had a lot of experience combating spam," because it had to combat a similar problem with exploitation of its free e-mail accounts, Busath said. Still, some bloggers say the efforts are not keeping up with incoming spam. John R. Levine, co-author of "The Internet for Dummies," said spam attacks have gotten steadily worse on his blog in the past six months. "I get more fake comments from gambling sites than all other comments put together," he said. He has had to start requiring e-mail address verification before letting people post comments on his site, http://weblog.taugh.com/ . "It makes you look like a doofus. I have this nice blog about e-mail policy, and comments about poker and naked ladies [do] not improve that conversation." Identifying responsible parties can be difficult, because free blog software programs -- like free e-mail accounts -- do not require identity verification. The culprits tend to be fast-moving, and their handiwork so far is not as debilitating as other forms of online fraud. "It's rarely worth the resources and time it takes to find them," said Anne P. Mitchell, president and chief executive of the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy and a law professor at the Lincoln Law School of San Jose. But Internet companies that helped create the blog phenomenon can also help keep it clean, she said. "From an ethical, moral, good Internet neighbor perspective ... if they have the ability to do so, they should do so." 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: On my Blogger account http://ptownson.blogspot.com I have it set to require moderation on all comments added by anyone. Doing it that way allows me to erase it before the offensive stuff sees the light of day. Lisa Minter does the very same thing on her (reprint of this) Digest each day; when I first got her set up with Yahoo Groups she tried to run it openly, but it is virtually impossible to run an open-ended discussion group either here on Usenet or somewhere like Yahoo. Sad, but true. Start any sort of open-ended virtual discussion group, and it will soon be ruined by the spammers. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Kirk Subject: Spam Scam Invokes Princess Diana Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:40:57 -0600 Jeremy Kirk, IDG News Service LONDON- Antivirus experts have warned users to beware of a spam e-mail campaign that promises a sizable grant from The Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. The fraudulent e-mail messages say the recipient has been selected to receive a grant of 2.6 million British pounds (about $4.5 million in U.S. funds) grant and should contact the organization. However, the e-mail messages do not come from the memorial fund, which was founded in September 1997 soon after Diana's death. The spam is unusual in the sense that it uses the name of a real charitable fund, plus the name of an actual employee there, according to a warning from security vendor Sophos. "This is not one that will look phishy," said Carole Theriault, a security consultant with Sophos. "They've obviously done their research before they put it out." The memorial fund has also issued a warning on its Web site. Limited Success Some of the messages contain links to Web sites asking for bank account details, and in some messages recipients are directed to wire funds by Western Union to certain people, the warning said. The fund has received almost daily calls asking about the legitimacy of the e-mail, and some people are known to have gone through the first few stages of trying to collect a claim before stopping, said Therese Lyras, press and communications coordinator for the fund. "No one has contacted us to say they have actually sent money," she said. Copyright 2005 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Hamton Roads.com Subject: Spam's Latest Spoilage Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:42:56 -0600 The Virginian-Pilot Score another one for the spammers. Their floods of e-mail pitches for Viagra, luscious lips and lottery schemes have blocked genuine electronic messages warning of real storms. In an effort to reach large numbers of people quickly, emergency managers in Florida's hurricane-hit Indian River County began to send electronic alerts to their citizens. Some 4,200 folks signed up to be pinged by authorities when hurricanes, twisters and other severe incidents threaten. But thanks to non-stop solicitations, Internet service providers everywhere have had to throw up spam-blocking walls to keep their systems from being overloaded and their customers from becoming irate. So Indian River County's emergency-alert e-mails, while legitimate, looked suspicious. And to Internet providers, like AOL, mass mailings equal spam. That means messages warning citizens of impending doom never made it to the inboxes of folks who needed the information. This particular problem appears to be solved, thanks to a reconfiguration of the agency's e-mail server. For those who rely on such information, that's about as comforting as knowing that while our dependence on e-mail grows, more important stuff will get lost in the electronic shuffle. Copyright 2005 HamptonRoads.com/PilotOnline.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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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, HamptonRoads.com For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Independence, KS tried the same thing without success, for the same reason. For a long time now, the franchise agreement with CableOne (and prior, with Time Warner) requires the cable provider to not only allow a couple of channels on television to the community (cable channel 10 for general community purposes; channel 14 for Independence High School and the college; Channel 22 for City Hall and county government) but they also had an arrangement where, if the police department or sheriff had some emergency announcement, they could 'flip a switch' and make their announcment over _all channels_ (for example, weather emergency; other police announcements for the entire community; i.e. two years ago when the little eight year old girl was kidnapped outside Lincoln Elementary School). So watch whatever you wanted on television, when police or city authorities had an emergency announcement, they could cut in and make the announcement. They rarely have to use it, but they still test it once a week or so, with a thirty-second announcement. (Steady tone for a few seconds, then a voice states, "This is Independence, Kansas Emergency Responders with a test message. This is just a test, had there been an actual emergency, Independence or Mont- gomery County emergency responders would have instructed you, etc." Then a tone again and back to whatever program in progress you were watching. Just as sure as they test the emergency sirens on Saturday at 12 noon. _Never_ routine stuff; that is for channel 14 or channel 10 (which few people watch anyway). Someone said "what about people with their faces buried in their computer screens?" So the response was "since _most_ people use Windows and Windows has that 'messenger' function where a screen can be flashed at you (it was not intended exactly that way, but most Windows users know how it can be done, and keep it turned off) Independence authorities arranged with Cable One and TerraWorld (our two primary internet suppliers to do something like that; but only for emergencies. If there was a weather emergency, a tornado for example, authorities would notify cableone.net and terraworld.net and gain control of many -- but not all -- computers in the community. The kids who manage the two ISPs here in town could easily make it happen, but what they did not count on was that there are more AOL ISP users here in town than cableone and terraworld combined. So the big spam-enablers MCI and AOL kept blocking police announcements, _thinking_ they were doing us a favor; some users got the warnings but most computer users did not. The result was much confusion; police eventually quit trying to notify people in that way, although they still continue to use cable television to do so. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: NASD Warns of Fake Stock Tips in CellPhone Scam Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 18:32:23 -0600 Brokerage regulator NASD on Tuesday warned investors against reacting to stock tips sent in unsolicited mobile phone text messages, as spam schemes aimed at hyping share prices move beyond e-mail and onto cellphones. The so-called "pump and dump" schemes involve spam messages with false recommendations of a company's stock that lead the share price to rise. Fraudsters can then sell their shares, leaving investors with worthless stock, the regulator said. There have been relatively few cases of illegal spamming to U.S. cellphones and investor-focused spam schemes have been more common in e-mail to date. But the number of texts urging recipients to invest immediately in a particular stock has recently increased to the point that there were enough for NASD to take notice, said John Gannon, its vice president of investor education. "We determined there were sufficient messages coming in that it needed to be brought to investors' attention," said Gannon, who did not reveal the quantity of spam messages or say which stocks had been involved. Gannon said these schemes do not generally involve brokers, but NASD would refer any fraudulent text messaging cases it identified to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:22:50 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T Rolls Out Speedier Broadband Service USTelecom dailyLead December 13, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zWyAatagCAsKttiLtw TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T rolls out speedier broadband service BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Microsoft, MCI join forces on Internet phone service * EarthLink snaps up New Edge * Nortel wins big deal with Comcast * Motorola flying high on RAZR sales * Thomson makes offer for Thales Broadcast & Multimedia * Reliance Infocomm, China Telecom to provide telecommunications link * Vodafone wins Turkey's Telsim with $4.55B offer USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Stifel Nicolaus to Host Financial Conference at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Alltel launches wireless broadband in N.C. city * Vonage debuts Wi-Fi phone REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * European lawmakers expected to pass controversial telecom legislation * Verizon expands FiOS TV in Texas * Possibility of NYC Wi-Fi network raises questions Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zWyAatagCAsKttiLtw ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:16:57 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: HSI and Diverted 1-800-CALL-ATT? From memory, I saw "HSI" on a pay phone outside a convenience store last Sunday (it was at a Turkey Hill store on Lampter Road north of -- NOT LOCATED RIGHT AT -- Pennsylvania route 741). I apparently punched in 1-800-2255-288 (1-800-CALL-ATT) okay, but got sent to a collect-call menu of some sort. This is conjuring up some memory of "I HATE COCOTS" in this digest many years ago. Has this ever happened before where a telephone number was "intercepted" in this manner? Fortunately, there was nothing urgent about my attempted call; more of an effort to get that telephone's number onto my bill (failed!). ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 14:19:28 GMT Lena wrote: > Lena wrote: >> I'm trying to dictate what people can call me on MY phone... >> telemarketers ... are rude. They won't leave a message on the answeing >> machine, but will hang up, and then call over and over again. >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I quite agree with your assessment, but >> my point was what makes _your_ telephone any more sancrosanct than _my_ >> computer. ...And let's face it, spam-scam >> and phishing is far worse than telemarketers ever have been. > The difference between telemarketing and spam, IMHO, is that > telemarketers make my phone ring, and that is something that demands > immediate attention. That bothers me a lot. Much more than spam that > might happen to be in the inbox when I check for it at my leisure. (I > don't have automated email retrieval). I guess I have been fortunate > that I am not innundated with spam. As some of my ISP provided email > accounts that I guarded meticulously, and only sent to friends, leaked > to (or were guessed by) spammers, I switched to gmail, which seems to > have wonderful spam protection and spam reporting ease. Click a > button and it's gone. Telemarketers, OTOH, are difficult to get rid > of. > Lena I'm on the FTC's Do Not Call List and it works pretty good. I get a few 800 handups, but once in a while I will answer the phone on one of these when I'm home, when it is a telemarketer, I let them have a blast of miliwatt tone, that gets their attention and no more calls, I'm sure they have hearing problems for a while also. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 13 Dec 2005 17:38:52 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Lena wrote: > Fred Atkinson wrote: >> Lena wrote: >>> I think an amendment to the Telemarketing Laws is in order, to >>> prohibit any telemarketer, calling on behalf of any charity or >>> political organization, from calling any number more than once a year. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Lena, when you limit those people > to 'one call per year', wouldn't that be like saying spammers and > scammers and phishermen should be limited to one spam, scam or phish > per year? No one here has ever said spammers, scammers and phishers should be free to do what they do. All we've done is point out the futility in the approaches suggested here. > Are you trying to dictate what people can talk about on their phone? > PAT] No, she and we are trying to dictate what people can talk about on OUR phones. Big difference. My paying for a phone does not give someone else license to unlimited use of it for THEIR purposes. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That would also be true regarding _your_ computer accounts would it not? But finding the _legitimate, bonadide_ guilty party and chopping off his fingers would not be so futile, would it? But I have many readers here who consider me to be an imbicile and unable to correctly idenfity spammers; apparently they do not know how to geographically locate and match up IP numbers, and no, you do _NOT_ rely upon what the "From:" has to say; you begin much further up in the envelope. Start with the "from " at the very top and carefully examine the first two or three lines as well as paying close attention to the path lines showing how the message got to you. Some of that stuff up there is much harder (but not impossible!) to forge. Now, 'tis true that dial-up IPs tend to be quite dynamic and almost useless, but really serious spammers have a solid line all the time don't they? Please go look at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html to see an example of something I am working on in cooperation with the geobytes.com database. Testing the accuracy of my 'welcome to visitors' line has thus far shown a high degree of positive results. Just go look at those lines on that page. I don't care if you bother to listen to the audio or read the AP newswire. Some of you are probably too smart to bother with that anyway. If the 'welcome to visitors from' line produces really gross inaccuracies in your instance, I would like to know about it. In a day or three, I am going to present here an HTML 'form' in which you can cut and paste the top half dozen or so lines from your favorite spam. I hope you will give it an honest review, and report your results to the Tin Hat imbicile. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 12:03:49 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Mon, 12 Dec 2005, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > I don't understand at all why there's no "no-spam" law passed. There are "no-spam" laws. They are, at best, modest successes. For those of us who receive hundreds of spams daily, and/or have manage mailers which receive many more, the laws are miserable failures. The general problem is the considerable cost in going after spammers. It is almost impossible to recover more than a fraction of these costs, even when there is complete success in prosecution and seizure of the spammer's ill-gotten gains. Don't forget that when spammers get money, it goes straight through their nose (or in other non-recoverable means). For every big time spammer with a million dollar house there are lots of small fry living in his mother's basement. > I don't understand Internet message addressing, but it seems to me any > initiated message should have a secured sender's address address. > There should be some technical way that something like that is > reasonably tamper proof so it works reliably. Such an address would > cut down "phising" and other fraudulent and abusive activity now going > on. Technically, this is impossible with the current mechanisms used by Internet mail. Nothing short of a complete redesign from the ground up will accomplish it. Anything less is just a band-aid. We have had such mechanisms as PGP and S/MIME for years. An effort to create a new Internet email infrastructure would be extraordinarily expensive and complex. It would make the conversion to TCP and SMTP in 1983 look trivial by comparison. It would put legions of programmers and protocol engineers on the gravy train for many years. The people who you hear groaning about the possibility are the vendors who *sell* the products. The programmers who *write* the products (and thus are *paid* by the vendors) are salivating at the prospect of a multi-year pork-feed that would make a lamphrey look like a piker. The new email infrastructure will also give the world email postage stamps. And this time, it won't be just governments who get a cut of the profits. The biggest objection to SMTP in the SMTP vs. X.400 wars two decades ago was that SMTP's fundamental design made it impossible to impose email postage stamps. You can bet that the new redesigned Internet email won't have that problem. Guess who pays for all of this. Be careful for what you wish. You may get it. And there are plenty of people who are quite happy to provide it to you (*ka-ching*!). -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:51:48 EST Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List In a message dated 12 Dec 2005 13:37:22 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > I think all of us consumers agree that we don't want any spam emails at > all and no soliciting telephone calls at all. This must not be a true statement, since otherwise there would be no telemarketing calls, expecially. It is a labor intensive business and must provide a sufficient return to the operators of such services to make a profit. Otherwise they would go bankrupt. Everyone is a consumer in one way or another, so it must not be correct that 100% of consumers don't want any soliciting telephone calls at all. Spam is not nearly so expensive to originate, but it, too, has costs and must provide a sufficient return that it is not true that ALL consumers do not want it. Actually, I have occasionally gotten e-mails, mostly spam, form organizations or businesses with which I do have a legitimate business relationship, which make offers that I have responded to favorably and which, in at least one case, have saved me money. Then there are some e-mails that some members of a group will consider all spam, and which others in the group think are relevant to their interests and appreciate the information or offers. Defining spam in some cases becomes very controversial. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? Date: 13 Dec 2005 06:50:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Carl Navarro wrote: > In today's society, I think it is fast becoming a must to know where > your own or your child's vehicle is at all times. You mention one reason is auto theft and hijacking which are I think are valid concerns. I would be curious to how well GPS (and predecessor systems) lead to stolen car recovery. Hijacking is pretty gruesome but fortunately rare. But I'm curious as to what about "today's society" you mean? ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: 13 Dec 2005 06:55:56 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Joe Morris wrote: > And I'm sure you remember the little "dial lock" gizmos that were > clamped into the "1" fingerhole and were supposed to keep people from > making outbound calls on an unattended office telephone? It seems > that nobody ever thought about dialing with the switchhook -- or just > banging away with ten or more pulses and asking the operator for > assistance. I think it was pretty difficult for most people to tap in accurately a seven digit number. If you're timing was the least bit off any part of the way you had to start over. You also risked discovery while doing it. It wasn't that hard to tap in zero and get the operator to do it, though, but I think a lot of people didn't think of that option. All in all I'd say the dial locks, which were inexpensive, were reasonably effective to protect against telephone abuse. I've only rarely seen plate locks to cover up a Touch Tone dial. Years ago our Centrex required a PIN to make long distance calls after hours. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #562 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 14 19:17:05 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 5C12514F47; Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:17:05 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #563 Message-Id: <20051215001705.5C12514F47@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:17:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 14 Dec 2005 19:16:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 563 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Many Amazon.com Workers Sick From Food Poisoning (TELECOM Digest Editor) China on Track to Add 100M New Phone Users (USTelecom dailyLead) DirecTV to Pay $5.35 Million For Do-Not-Call Violations (Monty Solomon) Cellular-News For Wednesday 14th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Microsoft Warns of Critical Errors (Reuters News Wire) Attack Targets Mozilla Firefox (Robert McMillan) Bell System Service Standard 'Green Books'- What is Used Now? (L Hancock) IEC's Broadband World Forum Asia Presents IPTV Developments (Lisa Reyes) Re: Hypothetical SxS Question (DevilsPGD) Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? (Scott Dorsey) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Charles Cryderman) Spam (was Re: FTC Do Not Call List) (Jim Haynes) Re: Spamming the Wrong Message (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Communications History (Charles Cryderman) 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: Scores of Amazon.com Workers Sickened From Apparent Food Poisoning Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 16:41:58 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Several dozen amazon.com employes in the Coffeyville/Independence facility were stricken with apparent food poisoning early Tuesday morning after eating food provided to them by an Oklahoma catering company. The company normally provides food to employees working at night. Local and area hospitals were inudated with Amazon employees after the outbreak began about 1:30 AM Tuesday. The distribution center is located between Coffeyville and Independence in the Coffeyville Industrial Park. Emergency Medical Service paramedics and technicians from Independence, Coffeyville, Parsons, and Caney were alerted to the outbreak and began transporting victims to the Coffeyville Regional Medical Center, Mercy Hospital in Independence, and Labette County Medical Center in Parsons. Joanne Cox, director of Public Relations for Mercy Hospital said one woman was admitted, five others were treated and released. At CRMC, Susan Correll said 20 people were transported to that facility, and eight were admitted. At LCMC there were eight employees treated, then released, according to William Mahoney, CEO of the hospital. Amazon announced the closing of the facility during the early morning hours on Tuesday, but by the time for the day shift, the facility had re-opened. Word of the outbreak began shortly after midnight according to the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department. Deputy Todd Clark was making his routine rounds and noted a car on the side of the road at Paul Street and Walnut Street in Coffeyville. As is customary, the deputy stopped to inquire about the well-being of the passenger and notice a female occupant who was leaning out of the car window vomiting. He offered to help the woman or escort her to her destination. She told him she worked at amazon.com and had eaten some barbeque pork catered to the employees between the late evening and early morning shifts by Poritunes Food and Ale, an Oklahoma company which feeds employees at the facility. Cook advised his dispatcher about the situation and then about an hour later, at 1:16 AM the dispatcher advised him that Coffeyville EMS personnel were responding to Amazon where a woman with diabetes had become ill and was believed to be striken with food poisoning. Cook responded to the facility to assist the EMS workers and was told upon arrival that between 60 and 80 employees had become ill. At that point, Tony Lamb, an employee of Coffeyville EMS requested other emergency agencies in the area to assist in the evacuation and transport of the facility's employees, and that a public announcement be made asking everyone who had eaten the barbeque offered by the catering service (from the earlier shift, now mostly scattered and on their way home) to be alert to the problem and see their physician as needed. A general announcement was made over cable television in Independence and Coffeyville seeking amazon.com employees for this. Sharon Watson, director of public affairs for Kansas Department of Health and Evironment said three investigators had been assigned to work with Montgomery County health officials to detirmine the exact cause of the outbreak; They were joined by Oklahoma health officials (the catering firm is located in Oklahoma) in saying it was apparently 'tainted pork sausage' which was responsible. Samples of the pork sausage and samples from the patients were sent to the state laboratory in Topeka for futher examination. By Wednesday things were back to normal at the Amazon facility. Copyright 2005 Independence Reporter Publishing. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 12:46:45 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: China on track to add 100M new phone users in USTelecom dailyLead December 14, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zZBoatagCAASfBXSzN TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * China on track to add 100M new phone users in '05 BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * SureWest hits sweet spot with IPTV * AT&T debuts online security news channel * SES Global to buy rival New Skies * KT to raise investment 20% in 2006 * Verizon tests IMS solution from Nortel USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Learn how to implement IP video TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Avaya unveils VPN remote software for IP phones * Intel eyes home-entertainment market with new chip * Companies test wireless payments via NFC network REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * TWC seeks statewide franchise in Texas * DirecTV fined $5.3M for telemarketing Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/zZBoatagCAASfBXSzN ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 01:15:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: DirecTV to Pay $5.35 Million For Do-Not-Call Violations By Andrew Bridges, Associated Press WASHINGTON (AP) -- DirecTV Inc. will pay $5.35 million to settle charges that its telemarketers called households listed on the national do-not-call registry to pitch satellite TV programming, Federal Trade Commission officials said Tuesday. The proposed settlement, if approved by a federal judge in Los Angeles, would be the FTC's largest civil penalty in a consumer protection case. The DirecTV complaint, filed by the Department of Justice at the FTC's request, named the company and five telemarketing firms it hired, as well as six principals of those firms. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/12/13/directv_to_pay_535_million_for_do_not_call_violations/ ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Wednesday 14th December 2005 Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 07:48:11 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Malaysian 3G Coverage Expanded http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15225.php Malaysia's Maxis Communications has expanded its 3G service coverage to Penang. Since the launch of its 3G services on 1 July, Maxis has significantly increased its 3G coverage in the Klang Valley and will soon offer 3G services in Johor Bahru. To da... Temporary 3G Expansion in New Zealand http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15228.php Telecom New Zealand says that it is investing about $1.7 million in additional temporary mobile coverage to meet the demand at New Zealand's favourite holiday spots during the local summer. The extra mobile sites and increased capacity will cover the... CDMA Upgrade for Venezuela http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15231.php Venezuela's Movistar has announced the commercial launch of it's 3G CDMA2000 1xEV-DO network to serve the country's 26 main cities. Lucent upgraded Movistar's existing Lucent-supplied base stations and mobile switching center (MSC) to support CDMA200... [[ Financial ]] Vodafone Buys Telsim In Turkey For $4.55 Billion http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15215.php Vodafone Group said Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire Telsim, the number two mobile operator in Turkey, from the Turkish Savings Deposit and Investment Fund ("SDIF") for a consideration of US$4.55bn. ... Telefonica Moviles' Brazilian JV To Lower Capex In 06-07 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15216.php Telesp Celular Participacoes, the largest company within the Brazilian joint venture of Telefonica Moviles and Portugal Telecom SA, plans to cut sharply capital expenditure in 2006 and 2007, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange... PRESS: VimpelCom's directors may block 2006 capex in Ukraine http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15218.php Three members of Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom's board of directors may vote against the company's investment program in Ukraine for 2006, Vedomosti business daily reported Tuesday, citing a letter sent to VimpelCom's Chairman D... Russia's MegaFon to bid for Uzbekistan's Buztel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15220.php Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon plans to participate in the tender for Uzbekistan's mobile operator Buztel-GSM, MegaFon's Press Secretary Marina Belasheva told Prime-Tass Tuesday. She did not elaborate. ... SonyEricsson Increases Chinese Investment http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15227.php Sony Ericsson has received Chinese Ministry of Commerce approval to take control of Beijing Suohong Electronics (BSE), a Sony China controlled manufacturing facility, by raising its share holding to 74.5%. The BSE site, which is 60% dedicated to the ... Celtel Buys Madagascan Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15230.php The Pan-African GSM operator, Celtel International has reached an agreement to acquire a majority stake in Madagascar's mobile telecom operator, Madacom for an undisclosed amount. The agreement was reached with the current shareholders led by the Dis... [[ Handsets ]] Japan October Mobile Phone Shipments Up 32% On Year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15211.php Japan's shipments of mobile phones, including personal handy-phone system devices, soared 32.0% in October from a year earlier to 3.17 million units, the Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association said Tuesday. ... Emblaze Mobile Buys Handset Distributor http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15224.php Israel's Emblaze Mobile says that it has acquired a strategic interest in the European handset distributor, Global Telecoms Distribution. GTD is one of Europe's leading distributors of multimedia handsets with a 3 year trading history and 100 staff... [[ Legal ]] EU Delays Review Of Telefonica Takeover Of UK's O2 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15212.php The European Commission Tuesday delayed by two weeks its antitrust review of Spanish telecommunications company Telefonica's planned takeover of U.K. mobile communications company O2 PLC. ... Ericsson Employees Charged On Tax Crimes In Sweden http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15214.php The Swedish National Economic Crimes Bureau Tuesday charged four current and former employees at telecommunications equipment vendor L.M. Ericsson Telephone Co. with severe evasion of tax controls. ... Russia's Rezervspetsmet says MTS' buy of Bitel illegal http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15219.php The purchase of Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel by Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) was illegal, little known Russian company Rezervspetsmet said in a statement Tuesday. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Gambling Via Vodafone Live http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15221.php Austria's GSM network operator, A1 has launched a gambling service through the Vodafone live! portal. Mobile phone bets can even be placed while games are in progress. Every newly registered customer will also receive a gaming credit of EUR5.... Mobile Gamers Likely To Replace Handsets Twice a Year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15223.php IGN Entertainment has released a new report which finds mobile gamers are key growth drivers for the mobile industry. The survey documents spending habits of mobile gamers, which shows more hardware buys per year, higher minute usage and bigger wirel... [[ Network Contracts ]] Vodafone To Invest $600 Million To Upgrade Telsim Radio Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15217.php Vodafone Group PLC said Tuesday that it will invest $600 million over three years in upgrading the radio network of Turkish mobile phone operator Telsim Mobil Telekomunikasyon. ... [[ Network Operators ]] Vodafone in a Strop, a FlexiStrop http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15229.php The Czech Republic GSM operator, Oskar Vodafone has launched a service that enables customers to impose limits on the cost of their monthly phone bill. Following the Smart Overview service, the operator is introducing FlexiStrop. With this free servi... [[ Personnel ]] Eva Lindqvist Appointed Senior Vice President of Mobile Business http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15222.php Eva Lindqvist has been appointed new Senior Vice President of Mobile Business at Marketing, Products & Services at TeliaSonera's Head Office as of January 1, 2006. She will have the strategic responsibility for the mobile business within the TeliaSon... [[ Regulatory ]] French Regulator Cuts Mobile Phone Tariffs http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15213.php France's telecommunications regulator said Tuesday it will force the country's mobile-phone companies to slash wholesale tariffs by 24% from 2006, a move that will cost the three network operators an estimated EUR900 million in sales. ... [[ Statistics ]] UK is the Music Download Capital of Europe http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15226.php Motorola have released a report into the attitudes of Britons towards new technologies. The MotoWithMe study reveals that Britons' attitudes have considerably matured since the millennium dawned. Five years ago the talk was of gimmicks like intellige... ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Microsoft Warns of Critical Windows Security Flaws Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:30:55 -0600 Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday warned users of its Windows operating system of a "critical" security flaw in its software that could allow attackers to take complete control of a computer. The world's largest software maker issued a patch to fix the problem as part of its monthly security bulletin. The problem mainly affects the Windows operating system and Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser. Computer security experts and Microsoft urged users to download and install the patch available at www.microsoft.com/security. Microsoft said the vulnerability exists in its Internet Explorer Web browser, which an attacker could exploit to take over a PC by running software code after luring users to malicious Web pages. Microsoft also issued one other security warning it rated at its second-highest level of "important." A vulnerability defined as "important" is one where an outsider could break into a machine and gain access to confidential data but not replicate itself to other computers, Microsoft said. Microsoft defines a flaw as "critical" when the vulnerability could allow a damaging Internet worm to replicate without the user doing anything to the machine. The "critical" flaw affects Internet Explorer which is a part of Windows while the "important" flaw is a vulnerability in the fundamental code that the higher level functions of Windows are all based on. For more than three years, Microsoft has been working to improve the security and reliability of its software as more and more malicious software targets weaknesses in Windows and other Microsoft software. More than 90 percent of the world's personal computers run on the Windows operating system. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Robert McMillan Subject: Attack Targets Mozilla Firefox Date: Tue, 13 Dec 2005 23:32:22 -0600 Robert McMillan, IDG News ServiceTue Dec 13,10:00 AM ET Computer users who have not upgraded to the latest version of Mozilla's Firefox browser may now have an extra incentive to do so, thanks to a hacker who has posted an exploit. Exploit Shown On Sunday, a hacker going by the name of Aviv Raff published sample code that could be used to take over the computers of Firefox users running version 1.0.4 or earlier of the browser. The exploit takes advantage of a known bug in the way Firefox processes the popular Javascript Web programming language. "I think it's been enough time for people to upgrade from v1.0.4. of Firefox. So, here is the PoC [proof of concept] exploit for the... vulnerability," he wrote on his blog. The bug was fixed in Mozilla version 1.0.5, which was released during the summer, and has also been fixed in version 1.7.9 of the Mozilla Suite, said Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering with Mozilla. "As long as users keep updated to the latest version, they're, in general, very safe." Similar to IE Flaw In some ways, this latest exploit is similar to highly publicized attack code that has been circulating for the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser, said Russ Cooper, editor of the NTBugtraq newslist and a scientist with security vendor Cybertrust. "It can install and run code of the attacker's choice if a victim visits a malicious Web site," he said of the IE bug in an interview via instant message. Users who are not already in the habit of frequently updating their browsers should change their ways, because browsers are "historically broken," Cooper said. "That means they have vulnerabilities regularly," he added. "You should keep them updated within 30 days of patches being made available, regardless of what the patch is for." The IE code, which was published in November, takes advantage of a Javascript problem that has not yet been patched. Many security experts expect Microsoft to patch its Javascript bug on Tuesday, but the Redmond, Washington, software giant has not confirmed that this will be the case. Copyright 2005 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Bell System Service Standard 'Green Books'- What is Used Now? Date: 14 Dec 2005 12:16:42 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I understand until the end of the old Bell System, AT&T published service standard indexes in something called the "Green Book". This was a collection of indexes that quantified service and performance quality in a variety of ways (billing accuracy, dial tone time, etc.) Would anyone know if the baby Bells replaced that with anything? Do the non-traditional carriers (ie VOIP) have any such performance standards? Some standards may be obsolete due to replacement of expensive electro-mechanical equipment with ESS. I suspect today the local, intermediate, and long haul land-side networks have more capacity than in the past. For example, obviously we don't want long waits for dial tone. However, an instantaneous dial tone at all times for all customers would push the index too far into the opposite direction and in the old days that mean excessive expensive equipment was in use. On the other hand, incomplete call completion and call cutoffs remain a problem on wireless calls. [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: Lisa Reyes Subject: IEC's Broadband World Forum Asia Presents IPTV Developments Date: WED, 14 DEC 2005 15:16:11 -0600 Reply-To: lreyes@iec.org FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Lisa Reyes Phone: +1-312-559-3325 E-Mail: mailto:lreyes@iec.org IEC'S BROADBAND WORLD FORUM ASIA PRESENTS CUTTING-EDGE IPTV DEVELOPMENTS AT FIRST-EVER IPTV GLOBAL COMFORUM CHICAGO December 14, 2005 The International Engineering Consortium's (IEC) Broadband World Forum Asia 2006 will bring information technologies 15-18 May 2006 at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Hong Kong, China, with PCCW as the official host sponsor. As Asia leads the world in broadband penetration and innovative services, telecommunications professionals will have the opportunity to learn from top-level executives at the forefront of quadruple-play profitability and real-world deployment. They will address issues such as content licensing, market realities, managing broadband services over IP/MPLS core, security environments, digital rights management, personalization and interactivity for the end user, and more. Chairperson of an IPTV workshop Mr. Jeffrey Soong, Chief Executive Officer, BNS Ltd., commented, "With content universally accepted as being the most important differentiator for an IPTV service, understanding the licensing and copyright environment is paramount for telecommunications operators' success. However, the content business is also a largely new territory for telcos. This workshop brings together a lineup of content industry specialists to give telco IPTV operators a fundamental understanding of the basic components of content licensing, negotiations, and copyright management, which are crucial to the success of an IPTV service." The Broadband World Forum Asiass first-ever IPTV Global ComForum focuses on communications service providers who must shift from a voice-centric revenue model to a broadband IP-centric model. The IPTV Global ComForum will also allow attendees to forge business relationships with key deal makers in the rapidly expanding Asian broadband market. Additionally, the IPTV Global ComForum will provide a unique experience to examine in detail access networks to services control, delivery to QoS and customer experience, content, and multimedia applications. Mr. Vince Pizzica, Chief Technology Officer, Alcatel Asia Pacific, further commented on another IPTV workshop: "The future of a more participatory, rewarding TV experience lies in how we creatively combine communication with entertainment. Triple play will "socialize" and at the same time "personalize" the TV experience. The key question, then, for telecom operators, is how to realize the power of merging triple-play components, as this represents unprecedented opportunity to differentiate themselves by creating a user-centric, interactive TV experience for viewers. The session will focus on exploring the market potential of interactive, personalized video services, and how different players in the ecosystem can exploit this new business opportunity." Key Speakers at both the Broadband World Forum Asia and its co-located IPTV Global ComForum include the following: Keynote speakers Alex Arena, Executive Director and Group Chief Financial Officer, PCCW, and Tadanbu Okada, Senior Vice President, Executive Director, Information Sharing Labs Group, NTT. Additional speakers include the following: Eric Li, Regional Sales Director, Asia Pacific, Microsoft TV; Paul Berriman, Head of Strategic Market Development, PCCW; Thorsten Heins, Member of the Group Board and Chief Technology Officer, Siemens Communications; Paolo Pastorino, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Business Officer, Home Gateway Initiative; Michelle Guthrie, Chief Executive Officer, STAR; and Jonathan Spink, Chief Executive Officer, HBO Asia. Broadband World Forum Asia 2006 will also feature a Wireless Broadband track, a Broadband Networking Technologies and Architectures track, and a Broadband Convergence track. Mr. Soong further commented, "The Broadband World Forum is a well-organized event which maintains a high-quality standard in terms of speakers and presentations. This ensures a well-attended and fruitful discussion platform for networking and learning about latest industry issues." Last year's Broadband World Forum Asia in Yokohama, Japan, drew more than 3,000 people to register, included more than 150 presentations, and presented more than 120 industry experts as speakers. A two-day technology exhibition accompanied the show, featuring the latest broadband services, solutions, and products by more than 40 of the world's leading manufacturers and producers. NTT served as the official host sponsor in the show's second year. This year's Broadband World Forum Asia 2006, hosted by PCCW, expects to grow on the exhibition floor as well as in attendee registration. Registration for the event is now open at http://www.iec.org/events/2006/bbwf_asia/register/. For more information, please visit http://www.iec.org/events/2006/bbwf_asia/ or contact Lisa Reyes at +1-312-559-3325 or mailto:lreyes@iec.org. ABOUT THE IEC A nonprofit organization, the IEC is dedicated to catalyzing technology and business progress worldwide in a range of high-technology industries and their university communities. Since 1944, the IEC has provided high-quality educational opportunities for industry professionals, academics, and students. In conjunction with industry-leading companies, the IEC has developed an extensive, free on-line educational program. The IEC conducts industry-university programs that have substantial impact on curricula. It also conducts research and develops publications, conferences, and technological exhibits that address major opportunities and challenges of the information age. More than 70 leading high-technology universities are IEC affiliates, and the IEC handles the affairs of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department Heads Association and Eta Kappa Nu, the honor society for electrical and computer engineers. The IEC also manages the activities of the Enterprise Communications Consortium. Please visit www.iec.org. ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Hypothetical SxS Question Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 01:59:32 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Joe Morris wrote: >> And I'm sure you remember the little "dial lock" gizmos that were >> clamped into the "1" fingerhole and were supposed to keep people from >> making outbound calls on an unattended office telephone? It seems >> that nobody ever thought about dialing with the switchhook -- or just >> banging away with ten or more pulses and asking the operator for >> assistance. > I think it was pretty difficult for most people to tap in accurately a > seven digit number. If you're timing was the least bit off any part > of the way you had to start over. You also risked discovery while > doing it. A little bit of experience and it wasn't too hard to do it correctly the majority of the time. The rest of the time you'd just apologize for misdialing. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Parental Electronic Supervision of Teens - Good or Bad? Date: 14 Dec 2005 11:24:22 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Carl Navarro wrote: > If you have a 1970 Pinto you're probably safe from carjacking, but an > SUV or any Honda or sports car and you could be a victim. To be able > to go on the internet or call the law enforcement people and track > your stolen ride is a pretty reasonabe investment. I used to drive a sports car with a manual transmission and a second gearshift for the adjustable differential. I'd love to see a carjacker try and figure that out. Hell, I bet most of them can't even drive a manual.... --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 14 Dec 2005 07:07:28 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > This must not be a true statement, since otherwise there would be no > telemarketing calls, expecially. It is a labor intensive business and > must provide a sufficient return to the operators of such services to > make a profit. Otherwise they would go bankrupt. Would you have any figures? How much does a telemarketing campaign cost to run and what is its rate of return? Lately I've been innundated by political calls. How many recipients minds are changed and react as desired to the telephone request? (The calls lately aske me to call my congerssman in support or against some particular pending measure). > Spam is not nearly so expensive to originate, but it, too, has costs > and must provide a sufficient return that it is not true that ALL > consumers do not want it. Again, what are the costs and benefits? Spam is particularly odious because the sender's costs are very low and the recipients end up paying for them. In any event, people have always responded to socially undesirable antics. That doesn't mean we should accept or tolerate them. Most people think prostitution ought to remain illegal even though it has, is, and will be always well patronized. It doesn't mean we like it. > Actually, I have occasionally gotten e-mails, mostly spam, form > organizations or businesses with which I do have a legitimate business > relationship, which make offers that I have responded to favorably and > which, in at least one case, have saved me money. The emails you describe fall outside a strict definition of spam. Most people associate genital enlargement or NIgerian oil ministers or get rich quick schemes with spam. > Defining spam in some cases becomes very controversial. I don't think so. Mark Crispin wrote: > The general problem is the considerable cost in going after spammers. > It is almost impossible to recover more than a fraction of these > costs, even when there is complete success in prosecution and seizure > of the spammer's ill-gotten gains. Could you elaborate on this issue? There are two aspects of enforcement. One is via the criminal justice system, where a spammer is prosecuted for violating a law and upon conviction, sent to jail. The government assumes the cost of investigation and prosecution. The other is via the civil system, where a private party (or the government) initiates a civil lawsuit against another person in the hopes of collecting monetary damages. In some cases it is easier to win a civil case than a criminal case (note certain high profile murder cases recently), but "winning" a case is only part of it. The first part is winning your claim, that is, the court agreeing with your case. That in itself doesn't mean very much. The second part is the court awarding damages to you for your loss. You may be awarded only a nominal amount, ranging from literally $1.00 or a few hundred or thousand dollars (to a big corporation, this is meaningless). To the defendant, it is merely a cost of doing business and no big deal. The third part is the defendant's ability to pay. Even if you are awarded a large settlement, you must collect it from the defendant. Apparently some of these guys are pretty slimy and have their assets well hidden or declare bankruptcy. If there is ENOUGH willpower, the government can push aside those smokescreens, but it takes an enormous willpower not usually available. (In one rare case, a man claiming he is broke has been held in jail for ten years to force him to come up with the money the court believes he has hidden somewhere). >> I don't understand Internet message addressing, but it seems to me any >> initiated message should have a secured sender's address address. > Technically, this is impossible with the current mechanisms used by > Internet mail. Nothing short of a complete redesign from the ground > up will accomplish it. An effort to create a new Internet email > infrastructure would be extraordinarily expensive and complex. It > would make the conversion to TCP and SMTP in 1983 look trivial by > comparison. I'm not at all sure it would be as a complex process as you suggest. The internet is software driven, not hardware driven; that is, it's not like someone going out and physically rewiring every PC and server in the world. Rather, it is developing new software and downloading it. Very often I am offered upgrades for various Internet software compnents -- the PDF reader, basic browser, news reader, "flash player", basic PC operating system, etc. Actually I'm quite content with a bare bones system, but I've found that won't work. If you don't keep up, in a very short time your browser just won't work at all -- some site will simply reject you and tell you to get a new browser. My point is that with all these upgrades constantly going out it shouldn't be that big a deal to download new components. Must could be done on the gateway end. > The new email infrastructure will also give the world email postage > stamps. And this time, it won't be just governments who get a cut of the > profits. The biggest objection to SMTP in the SMTP vs. X.400 wars two > decades ago was that SMTP's fundamental design made it impossible to > impose email postage stamps. You can bet that the new redesigned Internet > email won't have that problem. Email and internet use is NOT "free". Someone is paying for the servers, routers, and lines and people who install and maintain them. For consumers, many pay an Internet Service Provider, such as an AOL, for that service. They say a very substantial amount of today's email traffic is spam. Reducing that traffic would reduce the need for routers and lines and that would save money. Maybe having email stamps isn't such a bad idea. Telephone service is offered in many grades and prices including many "unlimited" use plans for local and long distance, even overseas calls are offered at cheap package rates. There is no reason Internet service can't be offered on a similar pricing scale -- those who use it a lot would pay a lot. That is, after all, our social policy regarding communications -- pay for usage and costs. The concept of rate averaging and universal service was discarded as social policy at the time of Bell System divesture. > Be careful for what you wish. You may get it. And there are plenty of > people who are quite happy to provide it to you (*ka-ching*!). The costs of spam and fraud and high enough now, the cash register is going along quite nicely, except the thieves are getting the money. How many people, other than myself, are holding back from participating in e-commerce and communications because of mistrust of the system? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Quite a few of us are holding back. Lisa. I order via the net when it is absolutely neccessary, or appears to me to be very good deal (and have been assured it is legitimate. Usually I just deal with the local stores however. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 14 Dec 2005 16:36:05 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , wrote: > > No, she and we are trying to dictate what people can talk about on OUR > phones. Big difference. My paying for a phone does not give someone > else license to unlimited use of it for THEIR purposes. > John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com >[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That would also be true regarding >_your_ computer accounts would it not? Absolutely. > But finding the _legitimate, bonadide_ guilty party and chopping off > his fingers would not be so futile, would it? If you could find them, and if it were legal to do so. Maybe you could do that in Saudi Arabia, but the last time I checked, chopping off fingers was illegal here in the US. > But I have many readers here who consider me to be an imbicile and > unable to correctly idenfity spammers; apparently they do not know > how to geographically locate and match up IP numbers, and no, you do > _NOT_ rely upon what the "From:" has to say; you begin much further > up in the envelope. And you don't rely on the IP addresses, either. As has been repeatedly pointed out 90% or more of the spam we're subjected to is proxied through virus-infected home computers and compromised servers. The owners of those systems are no more responsible for sending spam than you would be of making phone calls to Columbia that came from someone tapping your line outside your house. You could TRY to make a claim about the websites the spam refers to, but those also are extremely short-lived, unauthorized servers often running on the same compromised systems. > Start with the "from " at the very top and carefully examine the > first two or three lines as well as paying close attention to the > path lines showing how the message got to you. Some of that stuff up > there is much harder (but not impossible!) to forge. Now, 'tis true > that dial-up IPs tend to be quite dynamic and almost useless, but > really serious spammers have a solid line all the time don't they? Yes, you can tell where the system is that the spam was sent through. But that doesn't tell you WHO sent the spam, only which compromised zombie system they used to relay it through. It won't tell you how to track down the sender, but you can use it to block further attempts. For instance, my system blocks based on sender IP address and hostname. I block anything that resolves to a hostname that looks like it came from a home system.. basically any hostname whose left-most portion contains 4 sets of numbers separated by '-', or contains any of the strings "client", "dhcp", "dsl", "pool", "ppp" and "user". I also block on a rather large list of IP ranges. > Please go look at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html > to see an example of something I am working on in cooperation with the > geobytes.com database. Testing the accuracy of my 'welcome to visitors' > line has thus far shown a high degree of positive results. Just go > look at those lines on that page. I don't care if you bother to listen > to the audio or read the AP newswire. Some of you are probably too > smart to bother with that anyway. If the 'welcome to visitors from' > line produces really gross inaccuracies in your instance, I would like > to know about it. In a day or three, I am going to present here an > HTML 'form' in which you can cut and paste the top half dozen or so > lines from your favorite spam. I hope you will give it an honest > review, and report your results to the Tin Hat imbicile. PAT] Yes, I'm sure it works. But there's a HUGE difference between legitimate web surfers and scum spammers. Web surfers don't tend to hide their activities. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What you say is true, however if the top three or four(?) lines of the header -- let's call it the 'true From line' points at you, then you have a problem. Either you are the spammer or you are a spam-enabler (by virtue of proxies, open relays, etc.) You would not be up there in the top lines if you were neither a spammer nor an enabler, now would you? Either way, you need to have your ass kicked hard. Kicked harder for the spammer than for the enabler I guess, but kicked none the less. Anyone can be 'From:' anyone else, just as I could write a perfectly awful letter to our resident President Dubya and sign your name and address to it. But if the letter was postmarked "Independence 67301 KS" and _you_ disavowed any knowlege of it, most simpletons and brain diseased old Tin Hat fools would agree it _probably_ was not your doing. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 14:49:21 -0500 From: Charles Cryderman Pat, An interesting note of this law. The main author of this law, US Congressman from Michigan, John Dingle (50 years in the House) hasn't even set his own telephone numbers on the list. (as told to JJ & Lynne, morning DJs WCSX 94.7 in Detroit) Chip Cryderman ------------------------------ Subject: Spam (was FTC Do Not Call List) Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 17:50:52 GMT Another part of the general spam problem is that spam blockers do not keep spam off the network and do not cause the spammers any pain. Most of them block spam at your machine, or at one point upstream from your machine. So the spammers just try harder to get past them by sending more messages, and that further congests the network. One scheme that seemed to me to have some promise was to detect spam in the SMTP receiving program and deliberately delay its responses to the sending program. So that the transaction of sending a message is stretched out far longer than normal. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Spamming the Wrong Message Date: 14 Dec 2005 10:02:38 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Adam L. Penenberg wrote: > Indeed. Recently, DoubleClick reported that clickthrough rates on > e-mail were still at about 8 percent. Is he saying 8% of spam recipients respond and send money in response? I find that hard to believe. I am curious as to who actually responds to spam and why. Are people that stupid, greedy, or desperate? > He asks: "Do people trust TV less because of infomercials? Or mail > less because of annoying mortgage offers that disguise themselves as > bills? My guess is that these things annoy people, but they have > learned to compartmentalize their impact -- the mediums still > deliver value, so consumers are willing to put up with some > annoyances for the real benefits." Think about that the next time > you return from vacation and have to spend an hour deleting spam. Well, I for one have changed my habits. I immediately throw out mail that looks like an ad, and I have destroyed legitimate mail as a result. In one situation, when I called to get a replacement letter, the company acknowledged that their external printing on the envelope caused many people to do just as I did and they had to send out many replacements. So they can push this stuff, but only to a point and consumers will rebel. I rarely watch TV when it's broadcast because of heavy and annoying commercials. I tape everything then watch it later so I can fast fwd through the commercials. There are some shows, especially on cable TV, that are so commercial loaded I just don't bother watching them at all, indeed, I'm rethinking about my paying $60 a month for "basic" cable TV when I watch so little of it. I use email and e-commerce extremely sparingly solely because of spam and fraud. If it weren't for them, I'd freely give out my email address; today I just tell people I don't have one. In other words, the medium no longer delivers that "value" to justify putting up with the annoyances. There is a tipping point and consumers are reaching it. ------------------------------ Subject: Re:Communications History Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 15:00:46 -0500 From: Charles Cryderman Professor Gray enlightened us with: > In 1959 I was assigned to the US Army Signal Depot in Okinawa. I got > my uniform all spruced up and answered all of the questions from the > examining board correctly and won "soldier of the month". There were > three awards. One was a new Army Green uniform, which would have cost > me about half a month's pay out of my pocket. When I joined the Army in > 1957 they issued us one OD uniform and one green one. We were supposed > to buy the second green one ourselves. We got black shoes, > but we had to dye the brown boots black ourselves. > Another piece of the award was a three-minute phone call to the United > States -- which at the time would cost about US$36.00 (over a third of a > month's pay). As I recall it was handled by RCA Globecom from a phone > booth in Sukiran to Tulsa, OK. It was full duplex, so we didn't have to > do the "over" thing. I called my wife, who had just borne our first > son. I learned that he had been born via a Red Cross "health and > welfare" telegram, since my wife couldn't afford to call me. I'm glad > that the troops today have multiple methods of communicating, but in > 1958-59 I was severely restricted. My wife wrote every day, but we only > had that one single phone conversation in my 15 months overseas. At $12 > a minute, we could buy a lot of stamps. > The final part of the award was a trip to the northern part of Okinawaka > (on the general's helicopter) to have a look at the tropospheric scatter > radio site that was being installed. My memory is clouded by the fog of > time, but I think it was Philco doing the installation. Since I was a > radio repairman I got the "grand tour" of the whole site. The > helicopter ride was something special as well, since they were not > nearly as ubiquitous as they are today. Professor, As of 1987 (when I left Okinawa) the tropospheric scatter radio systems were still in use. There were two satellite stations (not sure if that has changed any) as well as sub-sea cable off the island. Also, the US Air Force had installed a telephone system that was available for personal use though out the island. This include family housing and single enlisted housing (barracks). It was at that time about $15.00 a month and calls to the US were about 0.45 per minute. One last note, I too went before the board as a NCO. Just before I went before them it they drop the main award, a back seat ride in a Air Force F15 around the island. Now that would have been a blast. Chip Cryderman ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. 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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 #563 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Dec 15 16:41:30 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id B4B9014ED9; Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:41:29 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #564 Message-Id: <20051215214129.B4B9014ED9@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:41:29 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:43:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 564 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Microsft Files 10 Suits Over Software Pirating (Reuters News Wire) Microsft Gets Sued Over Patent Infringements (Matthew Fordahl) Google, Microsft Join Forces in New Internet Laboratory (Matthew Liedtke) Google Adds Music Search and Purchase Features (Eric Auchard) AT&T Lauches News Channel on Internet Security (Reuters News Wire) HBO Aims Sopranos Clips at Cingular Phones (Reuters News Wire) Feds Urged to Improve Cybersecurity (Grant Gross) Cellular-News for Thursday 15th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Spirent Sells Network Products Division (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Spamming the Wrong Message (John Levine) Re: Spamming the Wrong Message (NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: Bell System Service 'Green Books'- What is Used Now? (Steven Lichter) Re: Bell System Service 'Green Books'- What is Used Now? (AES) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Scott Dorsey) 11 Million American Adults are Illiterate (Ben Feller) The Flimsiest Clock in the World (Agence France Presse News Wire) 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: Reuters News Wire Subject: Microsft Files 10 Lawsuits Over Software Pirating Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:25:13 -0600 Software giant Microsoft Corp. on Thursday said it filed 10 lawsuits against companies and people, charging that they sold not-for-resale software to unsuspecting customers. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft, said the actions seek to protect Microsoft technology from being pirated. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Matthew Fordahl Subject: Microsft Gets Sued Over Patent Infringements Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:26:06 -0600 By MATTHEW FORDAHL, AP Technology Writer 50 minutes ago Mobile e-mail startup Visto Corp. has sued Microsoft Corp. for allegedly infringing on three of its patents related to how information is handled between servers and handheld devices such as cellular phones. The lawsuit, which seeks unspecified monetary damages and an injunction barring the sale of products, was filed late Wednesday - the same day Visto announced that NTP Inc. had acquired an equity stake in the startup and signed a patent licensing deal. Visto's allegations against Microsoft are similar to NTP's against Research In Motion Ltd., which now faces the possible shutdown of its popular BlackBerry messaging service in the United States. "For their foray into mobile e-mail and data access, Microsoft simply decided to misappropriate Visto's well known and documented patented technology," Visto CEO Brian Bogosian said in a statement. Jack Evans, a Microsoft spokesman, said the company had not been served with the lawsuit as of Thursday morning. "Until we have an opportunity to see and review this complaint, we're not in a position to comment on it," he said. "Microsoft stands behind its products and respects intellectual property rights." Visto claims Microsoft, as portable devices handle more e-mail, is making matters worse by bundling its Windows Mobile operating system with its market-leading Exchange e-mail server. "This method of bundling software has led Microsoft to be prosecuted by competition authorities in the past, and in this case, potentially increases the rate and manner in which their infringement on Visto's patents occurs," the company said. NTP's deal with Visto also could help it bolster its case against RIM as it can now say it is more than a company that just holds patents and litigates to enforce them. Under the agreement, Visto will have access NTP's patent portfolio for the life of the patents. "This is a clear win for mobile email users everywhere as it provides them with a viable alternative to RIM that protects them from any NTP litigation risk," Donald E. Stout, NTP's co-founder. Visto, based in Redwood Shores, Calif., said its clients include Cingular, Sprint-Nextel, the Vodafone Group and Rogers Wireless. It has more than 300 employees and holds 25 patents. The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court in Marshall, Texas. Shares of Microsoft lost 18 cents, to $26.91, in Thursday trading on the Nasdaq Stock Market. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, listen to AP NewsRadio and read news summaries: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Michael Liedtke Subject: Google, Microsoft to Fund New Internet Lab Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:28:15 -0600 By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are setting aside their bitter animosity to back a new Internet research laboratory aimed at helping entrepreneurs introduce more groundbreaking ideas to a mass audience. Sun Microsystems Inc. also is joining the $7.5 million project at the University of California, Berkeley. The Reliable, Adaptive and Distributed Systems, or RAD, lab was scheduled to open Thursday and will dole out $1.5 million annually over five years, with each company contributing equally. Staffed initially by six UC Berkeley faculty members and 10 computer science graduates, the lab plans to develop an array of Web-based software services that will be given away to anyone who wants it. Conceivably, the lab's services could help launch another revolutionary company like online auctioneer eBay Inc. or even Google, which has emerged as one of the world's most valuable companies just seven years after its inception in a Silicon Valley garage. "It's interesting to have Google as one of the founding investors because one of the big questions (the RAD lab is trying to address) is, 'How do you get the next Google out there?'" said Greg Papadopoulos, Sun's chief technology officer. The lab already has created something highly unusual -- a bond between Google, the maker of the Internet's most popular search engine, and Microsoft, the world's largest software maker. The two are fierce rivals in search, and their behind-the-scenes rancor has been publicly aired in a recent Washington state court battle triggered by Google's recent raids on Microsoft's work force. David Patterson, a UC Berkeley professor who will be the lab's director, said he was initially was worried about the friction, but "everybody was pretty mature about it." Microsoft senior researcher James Larus said the collaboration on RAD shouldn't be seen as a truce. "We are not going into this with the idea that we are going to be collaborating with Google or that they will be collaborating with us," said Larus, who will be Microsoft's primary liaison with the RAD lab. In a statement, Google said it's excited to be involved in the lab and looks "forward to the exciting ideas and technology that will be developed there." Santa Clara, Calif.-based Sun Microsystems also has had a prickly relationship with Microsoft, although they have been getting along better since Microsoft last year paid Sun $1.6 billion to settle antitrust and patent infringement lawsuits. Sun and Google are highly collegial. In October, they formed a partnership to develop more software tools that might pose a threat to Microsoft's dominant Office suite of word processing and spreadsheet applications. UC Berkeley and other universities increasingly are turning to the private sector to help offset declines in spending by the federal government. Earlier this year, UC Berkeley stuck a deal with Internet powerhouse Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) to open a research laboratory devoted to online search. High-tech companies have a huge incentive to help make up for lost government funding, said Larus, who got his doctorate from UC Berkeley. "We realize if research isn't being done in university laboratories," he said, "then the pipeline of ideas and computer science graduates coming into our companies eventually is going to dry up." On the Net: RAD lab: http://rads.cs.berkeley.edu Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Associated Press headlines and stories, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Eric Auchard Subject: Google Adds Music Search and Purchase Features Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:18:30 -0600 By Eric Auchard Google Inc. is introducing a music search feature that details the work of certain featured artists, the company said late on Wednesday. "In analyzing our traffic, we found that a huge number of users conduct music-related searches," Google said in a statement. The music search feature is prominently placed above the main search results in what Google calls its "one box" area -- where information such as weather, movies or books may also be highlighted. When a user enters a music-related search in Google search box, the resulting search returns information about the artist, a few albums and a picture, when available, above the standard search results. A link to "more" music results leads to user reviews, song titles and a choice of online retailers where the music can be purchased. Online sources include Apple Computer Inc., RealNetworks Inc. and eMusic, and retailers selling compact discs, including Amazon Inc., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and others, the editors of Web search analysis site SearchEngineWatch.com wrote after a briefing by Google. For the CD retailers, Google receives data feeds of the inventory and only returns a link to a store if the item is available, SearchEngineWatch said. While the music search feature holds out the possibility of Google taking a cut of any music sale resulting from directing the user to an online music store, a spokeswoman said there was no plans to charge anyone for the service. Google is late to the game with music search results, the analysts noted. IAC/InterActiveCorp's Ask Jeeves, Microsoft Corp.'s MSN and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) all have offered music search for some time. These music links will show up in limited cases tied to specific music artists initially. But Google plans to expand the range of searches that trigger the music feature over time, Google spokeswoman Megan Quinn said. The music search feature was developed as a side project by a Google engineer, she said. Google encourages its employees to spend a portion of their work week pursuing innovative projects that may not be related to their core job assignments. These are known as "20 percent time projects." Examples of projects created in this way include Google's e-mail service, Gmail and Google News. SearchEngineWatch.com http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3571066/ said that placement in search results is determined by a combination of the retailer's general Google search rank and other relevance factors, and an element of "randomness" to ensure "fairness." Some of the music information comes from undisclosed information suppliers to Google and some from Google's own crawling of Web sites, SearchEngineWatch 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html More headlines and stories also at: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: AT&T Launches News Channel for Internet Security Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:19:45 -0600 AT&T Inc. on Wednesday said it had launched a news channel that would focus on Internet security issues for its business and government customers. The largest U.S. telephone company, formed by SBC Communications Inc.'s purchase of AT&T Corp., said its 24-hour video Webcast, AT&T Internet Security News Network, would issue news updates twice a day on the latest Internet security and network issues. The channel launched on Wednesday. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more tech news from the newswires, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: HBO Aims Sopranos Clips at Cingular Phones Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:16:31 -0600 Cingular Wireless plans on Thursday to reveal a multiyear exclusive deal with HBO to send video clips of hit television shows including the Sopranos to mobile phones, Ovum analyst Roger Entner said. Cingular, a venture of AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corp., will use the clips to encourage customers to use a high-speed wireless network that it plans to expand from 16 markets to about 100 of the country's top markets next year. Cingular and HBO were not immediately available to comment but Cingular has said it was holding a press event at HBO's offices on Thursday afternoon. HBO, a popular premium cable TV network owned by Time Warner Inc, has agreed to send Cingular customers exclusive clips of future hit shows as well as current programs, Entner said. Given HBO's popularity among cable subscribers Entner said that the agreement was a key win for Cingular over cable providers and Sprint Nextel Corp. , which is setting up a wireless venture with four of the top U.S. cable providers. "Suddenly the best show on cable is not working with its traditional partners," he said. "Its certainly a body blow for the cable consortium and Sprint." Large wireless providers the world over are developing services such as music and video downloads for mobile phones in an effort to extend revenue sources beyond voice services. The agreement with HBO could help boost Cingular's image as a provider of such advanced services. While Cingular, the biggest U.S. wireless firm, was first in the United States to sell popular phones such as Motorola Inc.'s Razr, it is behind rivals in its plans to build its high-speed network. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Grant Gross Subject: Feds Urged to Improve Cybersecurity Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:21:42 -0600 Grant Gross, IDG News Service WASHINGTON -- The U.S. government has made little progress in most cybersecurity areas in the past year, despite warnings from several groups, a trade group representing cybersecurity vendors says. The Department of Homeland Security has failed to hire an assistant secretary for cybersecurity even though DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff announced an elevated position in July, and cybersecurity research and development within the U.S. government is "at a crisis," said Paul Kurtz, executive director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance (CSIA). Leadership Urged The U.S. government has a "special role" to play in promoting and modeling cybersecurity, he said. "The bottom line is there continues to be a lack of leadership, hard work, and execution when it comes to securing the information infrastructure," Kurtz said. "Let me be clear: We are not seeking to condemn the government or those currently involved in cybersecurity. They have good intentions. However, execution is what counts in the end." CSIA has also released a survey showing significant consumer concerns about online safety and graded the U.S. government on 12 cybersecurity priorities that the group released in December 2004. The group gave the U.S. government six "D" grades and one "F" on seven of the 12 priorities. Only one priority received a grade higher than a "C." A DHS representative wasn't immediately available for comment on the CSIA report. One high-ranking Democrat used the CSIA report to criticize DHS in a statement. Where is the government's leadership on cybersecurity?" said Representative Bennie Thompson (news, bio, voting record) of Mississippi, the ranking Democrat on the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security. "How long will the nation have to wait? I, for one, hope Mr. Chertoff doesn't wait until a cyberattack causes billions of dollars in damages or results in lost lives before he decides to appoint an assistant secretary to take charge of our nation's cyber crisis. Survey Highlights CSIA gave the government a "B" for making progress toward ratifying the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime. In July, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved the document, which would allow greater international cooperation in cybercrime investigations, but the full Senate has not taken a vote. Europe's cybercrime laws are "light years ahead" of those in the U.S., said Phillip Dunkelberger, president and chief executive officer of CSIA member PGP. "Neither does Europe tolerate the massive amount of spam, scam and phishing so prevelant in the United States," he noted. Among those CSIA priorities earning "D's": direct a federal agency to track costs of cyberattacks; promote cybersecurity corporate governance in the private sector; and strengthen information sharing between the government and private sector. There's been "little action" in the federal government on those priorities in the past year, CSIA said. In the survey, done in November by CSIA and Pineda Consulting, respondents were asked to rate the safety of networks and services on a scale from one to ten, with ten the safest. The average safety score for the Internet was 4.9, and consumer data also scored at 4.9. Health data and financial networks scored slightly better, both at 5.2. The survey of 1151 U.S. adults found 48 percent of Internet users avoid making purchases online because of concerns about information security. Sixty-five percent of respondents agreed that the U.S. government needs to give information security a higher priority, CSIA said. CSIA members said they're worried about a lack of consumer confidence in the Internet. "Assume that 48 percent of consumers were afraid to go to the mall because they could potentially be hijacked," said Steve Solomon, chairman and chief executive officer of Citadel Security Software. "What would Congress do then?" Recommendations for Action CSIA released 13 cybersecurity recommendations for the U.S. government going forward. The list, with many items repeated from CSIA's 2004 list, includes: Pass a national data breach notification bill.Pass a national spyware protection bill. Increase research and development funding for cybersecurity. Promote telework options for government employees, thus creating a backup network of computers for government agencies.Include cybersecurity planning as the U.S. government moves toward Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), a more full-featured replacement for the current IPv4. Copyright 2005 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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 ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Thursday 15th December 2005 Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 08:49:13 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Ukraine's Ukrtelecom pays 151.39 mln hryvnas for 3G license http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15240.php Ukraine's fixed-line telecommunication provider Ukrtelecom has paid a total of 151.39 million hryvnas for a UMTS/WCDMA third generation (3G) standard license, the company said in a press release Wednesday. ... [[ Financial ]] DoCoMo In Talks With KT Freetel On Business Tie-Up http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15234.php NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Wednesday that it's in talks with KT Freetel Ltd. on a possible business tie-up in mobile phone services. ... [[ Handsets ]] NEC To Cut Cellphone Range, Number Of Outlets In China http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15233.php Japan's NEC Corp. said Wednesday it will cut the number of mobile phone models it markets in China and reduce the number of its outlets on the mainland in the face of stiff price competition. ... [[ Interviews ]] INTERVIEW: Telenor To Try To Reverse VimpelCom's URS Buy http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15239.php Norway's Telenor said Wednesday that it will try to reverse the purchase of Ukrainian RadioSystems by its Russian venture, VimpelCom. ... [[ Legal ]] EU Starts Probe Over State Share In Portugal Telecom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15237.php The European Commission Wednesday began legal proceedings against Portugal to end its special shareholding in Portugal Telecom. ... Kyrgyz court upholds Russia's Rezervspetsmet right on Bitel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15238.php The economic division of Kyrgyzstan's Bishkek City Court has upheld Bishkek Interdictrict Court's ruling, finding Russia's Rezervspetsmet the rightful owner of Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel, Rezervspetsmet said in a statement Wednesday. ... [[ Messaging ]] Mobile MSN Expands in India http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15247.php MSN has extended its mobile service offering in India to five more networks though a partnership with Mobile 365. These five mobile operators include Reliance Infocomm entities - Reliance IndiaMobile (RIM) and Reliance GSM, with a total of over 15 mi... [[ Network Contracts ]] Russia's MTS launches Wi-Fi Internet access network in Moscow http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15242.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) has launched its Wi-Fi wireless Internet access network into commercial operation, the company said Wednesday. ... GPRS Billing Platform for Albanian Operator http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15244.php Albania Mobile Communications (AMC) has installed the LHS supplied BSCS 8 billing and customer care solution. The newly installed billing system will allow AMC to effectively support recently launched GPRS services. Atos Origin Hellas, a partner of L... New Mediation Platform for Suriname Operator http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15245.php Comptel says that it has agreed on the delivery of its mediation solution, Comptel EventLink, to Telecommunicatie Bedrijf Suriname (Telesur), a full service provider of fixed, mobile and data communications in Suriname. According to the agreement, Co... Cingular Extends Convergys Billing Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15246.php Convergys says that it has been granted an extension of a major contract with Cingular Wireless. Under the terms of the contract extension, Convergys will continue to manage and support billing for Cingular Wireless' customers on the Customer Assista... [[ Offbeat ]] Vodafone Ditches Ferrari for McLaren http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15248.php Vodafone and the McLaren Mercedes Formula One team have announced a long-term sponsorship agreement, commencing January 2007 which will last into the next decade. The sponsorship will commence after Vodafone's current sponsorship of the Ferrari team ... [[ Personnel ]] Australia's Telstra Says Senior Executives Won't Face Jail http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15232.php Australia's Telstra Corp. said Wednesday its senior executives won't face jail as a result of an investigation by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. ... [[ Regulatory ]] EU Opens New Telecoms Probes In Five Countries http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15235.php The European Union Wednesday opened five new probes against countries it says are breaking telecom regulations, most either by failing to allow customers to keep their mobile phone numbers or giving their national regulators insufficient powers. ... Irish Panel Upholds Vodafone, 02 Appeal Against Comreg http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15243.php Ireland's Electronic Communications Appeals Panel Wednesday annulled the communication regulator ComReg's ruling that Vodafone PLC and 02 PLC have joint dominance in Ireland's mobile market. ... [[ Statistics ]] China To Add 100 Million New Telephone Users In 2005 - Government http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15236.php China expects to add about 100 million new telephone users this year to reach a total of 750 million users, the country's top industrial planner said. ... Russia's MTS sees subscriber base up to 60 mln users this year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15241.php The consolidated subscriber base of Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) is expected to amount to 60 million users this year, Mikhail Shamolin, MTS vice president for sales and subscriber services said Wednesday at an offici... ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 13:04:25 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Spirent Sells Network Products Division USTelecom dailyLead December 15, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AhhUatagCBhiipowQR TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Spirent sells network products division BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * MCI scores deal to run Dutch bank's communications network * Visto sues Microsoft, strikes deal with NTP * Verizon reveals some VOD details * Money pours into India's telecom sector * Skype just one feather in Estonia's hot tech cap * Opera denies talks with Google USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Explore Broadband Video and Fixed Mobile Convergence at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Alltel launches Axcess Broadband in Richmond REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC Chief Martin says USF support should be tech-neutral Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AhhUatagCBhiipowQR ------------------------------ Date: 15 Dec 2005 04:01:58 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Spamming the Wrong Message Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Indeed. Recently, DoubleClick reported that clickthrough rates on >> e-mail were still at about 8 percent. > Is he saying 8% of spam recipients respond and send money in response? > I find that hard to believe. I am curious as to who actually responds > to spam and why. Are people that stupid, greedy, or desperate? Most of the mail that Doubleclick sends is legitimate, i.e., to people who asked for it. I can believe that kind of mail gets an 8% clickthrough. The numbers I've seen for spam are in the tiny fractions of a percent. When Laura Betterly was spamming, I think she said she'd send out a million spams and get maybe a dozen orders. That's about a thousandth of a percent. R's, John PS: What does this have to do with Telecom? You want to argue about spam, visit SPAM-L which is all spam talk, all the time. ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us Subject: Re: Spamming the Wrong Message Date: 15 Dec 2005 05:53:13 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > I find that hard to believe. I am curious as to who actually responds > to spam and why. Are people that stupid, greedy, or desperate? The ones responding all have small penises. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know, as crude as you are, I think you may be correct on this. Penis enlargement ads on the net (for creams, patches, pills, etc) draw considerable attention. Maybe the spam on the net is purposely arranged like that: First, readers are given some porn spam (videos or still shots) of men in action with some very extreme private parts, then as the guys decide to examine their own equipment some spam flashes across the screen to make them feel insecure about their own circumstances, with messages from bogus or quack 'doctors' telling them how to improve their lot in life. Have you seen that one spam (a short video actually) where Doctor Quack is examining his 'patient' and giving a discourse on his preferred method of treatment (in his instance, giving an injection of his 'secret formula' (with a big needle) directly in you know where. Ugh! Yet guys watch it religiously, and order more of those pills and patches, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Wed, 14 Dec 2005 17:14:45 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Wed, 14 Dec 2005, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Mark Crispin wrote: >> The general problem is the considerable cost in going after spammers. >> It is almost impossible to recover more than a fraction of these >> costs, even when there is complete success in prosecution and seizure >> of the spammer's ill-gotten gains. > Could you elaborate on this issue? I think that you did an excellent job of doing so yourself. In brief: . criminal prosecution is on the taxpayer's dime . awards for civil damages have to be collected, which entails locating hidden assets (which is itself and expensive and difficult proposition). All too often, a good deal of the assets went up the bad guy's nose. > I'm not at all sure it would be as a complex process as you suggest. > The internet is software driven, not hardware driven; that is, it's > not like someone going out and physically rewiring every PC and server > in the world. Rather, it is developing new software and downloading > it. Simply put, you greatly underestimate the magnitude of the task. The task of updating software on commodity PCs (which you refer to) is nothing compared to that of updating other clients, much less the servers. There's a whole world out there that you're apparently unaware exists, and not even Microsoft controls it. Furthermore, commodity software updates do not depend upon updates from other vendors. It would take many years (and I do mean *years*) for all of the vendors involved to agree upon the new design, new protocols, and set an update program in motion. Just take a look at how long IPv6 has taken, and is likely to continue to take. I am not trying to discourage you from this plan. It would be foolish for me to do so, as you are effectively waving around a huge chunk of pork that will have people like me on a feeding frenzy for years to come. I'll be retired long before it's ever deployed, so that I won't to worry about fixing the mistakes that will inevitably be made. If you are deterred, don't fall into the opposite trap of despair and saying "nothing can be done". Individuals, organizations, and governments are still actively applying band-aids to the spam problem. None of these will completely solve the problem, but presently the economics of spamming will cease to be as attractive and most spammers will move on. And who knows, maybe some day whomever ends up managing the Internet will be foolish^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hfarsighted enough to commission a complete redesign of Internet email. It would be a nice sinecure for me and lots of other people. >> The new email infrastructure will also give the world email postage >> stamps. And this time, it won't be just governments who get a cut of the >> profits. The biggest objection to SMTP in the SMTP vs. X.400 wars two >> decades ago was that SMTP's fundamental design made it impossible to >> impose email postage stamps. You can bet that the new redesigned Internet >> email won't have that problem. > Email and internet use is NOT "free". Someone is paying for the > servers, routers, and lines and people who install and maintain them. This is all true. Nevertheless, you misunderstand the purpose of email postage stamps. It is not for infrastructure cost recovery; you pay for that in your ISP fees. Rather, email postage stamps are a *tax*. The ostensible purpose of the tax would be to pay the government to provide the service of policing email. As with other taxes, the services provided and the amount of the taxes you pay will be decided by the government. As with other taxes, you can bet that when the money starts flowing, there will be taps put on that flow for other purposes. The Spanish-American War effort was paid off a long time ago, but we all still pay the federal excise tax on telephones that was established to pay it. Mind you, I personally favor the imposition of email postage stamps! But my reasons are not the same as yours, and you would not like my reasons. >> Be careful for what you wish. You may get it. And there are plenty of >> people who are quite happy to provide it to you (*ka-ching*!). > The costs of spam and fraud and high enough now, the cash register is > going along quite nicely, except the thieves are getting the money. You ain't seen nothin' yet. Crooks have nothing on governments when it comes to the bite. > How many people, other than myself, are holding back from participating > in e-commerce and communications because of mistrust of the system? Do you buy products from catalogs that you receive unsolicited in the mail? Why or why not? -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Bell System Service Standard 'Green Books'- What is Used Now? Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 01:21:56 GMT hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > I understand until the end of the old Bell System, AT&T published > service standard indexes in something called the "Green Book". This > was a collection of indexes that quantified service and performance > quality in a variety of ways (billing accuracy, dial tone time, etc.) > Would anyone know if the baby Bells replaced that with anything? Do > the non-traditional carriers (ie VOIP) have any such performance > standards? > Some standards may be obsolete due to replacement of expensive > electro-mechanical equipment with ESS. I suspect today the local, > intermediate, and long haul land-side networks have more capacity than > in the past. For example, obviously we don't want long waits for dial > tone. However, an instantaneous dial tone at all times for all > customers would push the index too far into the opposite direction and > in the old days that mean excessive expensive equipment was in use. > On the other hand, incomplete call completion and call cutoffs remain > a problem on wireless calls. > [public replies, please] Yes they have, at least SBC and Quest have, they are still based on the old BSP's. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Bell System Service Standard 'Green Books'- What is Used Now? Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 08:04:45 -0800 Organization: Stanford University In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > I understand until the end of the old Bell System, AT&T published > service standard indexes in something called the "Green Book". This > was a collection of indexes that quantified service and performance > quality in a variety of ways (billing accuracy, dial tone time, etc.) A few years ago I was having repeated and extended power failures every December at a residence in the heart of the mid-Peninsula -- on the Stanford University campus in fact. Every winter, the first time it rained, our sub-neighborhood would lose electrical power for up to four days. Complaints to PG&E went nowhere. Requests for PG&E's published standards on service reliability got nothing but runarounds. Since I knew some Bell System and Bell Labs old-timers, I asked them about reliability and service standards in the Bell System: Q: Were there published standards for service reliability? A: You bet! For example, "No residential customer should be without dial tone due to any reason within the control of the Bell System for more than 17 minutes per year". (That's my best memory of the quote.) Similarly: Any calls to Repair Service or Information to be answered within three (?) rings. Q: Were these quantities really measured, and did the results have any impact on performance evaluations of telco executives? A: You bet! Performance against the standards was regularly monitored, and promotion of executives in local telcos depended heavily on whether these published performance goals were met. That's my memory at this point, anyway. Sounds like these green books in action. Can anyone document the "no more than 17 minutes/year without dial tone" item? I'll look forward to any replies in this thread ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: 15 Dec 2005 11:11:28 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Agence France Press wrote: > Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that is the product of collaboration > of its users, has become a major force on the Internet, but faces a > crisis after a false biography raised questions about its credibility. I had no idea that Wikipedia had any credibility to question. Do people really take these things seriously? --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wikipedia _is_ considered an important source of information on the net in many circles. There are many experts (in their field) who have written for it and peer-review the things others have written, however the two recent 'pranks' played on them have damaged their credibility somewhat. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ben Feller Subject: 11 Million American Adults Are Illiterate Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:12:36 -0600 By BEN FELLER, AP Education Writer An estimated in one in 20 U.S. adults is not literate in English, which means 11 million people lack the skills to perform everyday tasks, a federal study shows. From 1992 to 2003, the nation's adults made no progress in their ability to read a newspaper, a book or any other prose arranged in sentences and paragraphs. They also showed no improvement in comprehending documents such as bus schedules and prescription labels. The adult population did make gains in handling quantitative tasks, such as calculating numbers found on tax forms or bank statements. But even in that area of literacy, the typical adult showed only basic skills, enough to perform simple daily activities. Perhaps most sobering: Adult literacy dropped or was flat across every level of education, from people with graduate degrees to those who dropped out of high school. Inside the numbers, black adults made gains on each type of task tested in the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, run by the Education Department. Hispanics, though, showed sharp declines in their ability to handle prose and documents. White adults made no significant changes except when it came to computing numbers, where they got better. The results are based on a sample of more than 19,000 adults, age 16 or older, in homes, college housing or prisons. It is representative of a population of 222 million adults. The 11 million adults who are not literate in English include people who may be fluent in another language, such as Spanish, but are unable to comprehend text in English. On The Net: National Assessment of Adult Literacy: http://nces.ed.gov/naal 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: During the 1980-90's, when I was doing volunteer work for the Chicago Public Library in the visually handicapped reading service (CRIS Radio), the Library had going on in the same location reading classes for persons who were illiterate. They sometimes asked me to fill in over there if one of the tutors had to miss an appointment (student had showed up, but the volunteer tutor had been unable to keep the appointment). They _never_ wanted a student to show up and not have the regular tutor (for that person) present. The students, of all ages, even sometimes sixty or seventy years old, were usually ashamed and embarrassed by the fact that they were unable to read, but they had made a good first step, by asking for help, and I would do the best I could as a 'substitute tutor' for that day's lesson. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Agence France Presse Subject: The Flimsiet Clock in the World Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 12:23:26 -0600 A Japanese watchmaker said it had created the world's first flexible digital clock which is as thin as camera film and can be bent around the curve of a wall. The clock is only three millimeters (0.12 inches) thick and offers better visibility from sharp angles and in poor visibility or high sunlight than existing models, Citizen Watch said Thursday. "It can be set along the walls of a building or on round pillars of train stations or offices, letting people check the time from widely different positions," said a spokesman for the company. The clock, measuring 53 by 130 centimeters (21.2 by 52 inches), displays time in black numbers using technology developed by E Ink of the United States. It consumes less power than conventional digital clocks, with its battery life 20 times longer. Citizen will start production of the clock early next year upon receiving orders with a price tag at 500,000-600,000 yen (4,200-5,000 dollars) each. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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, Agence France Presse. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #564 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 16 00:47:04 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id CDC2614F36; Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:47:03 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #565 Message-Id: <20051216054703.CDC2614F36@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:47:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:49:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 565 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson You've Got Mail [and Maybe a Sex Disease as Well] (Jill Serjeant) Google Opening New Office in Pittsburgh, PA (Daniel Lovering) Microsoft Nug Fix Hits a Snag (Robert McMillian) Intel Researchers Sneak Up on Rootkits (Marcus Didius Falco) Cell Phone to Land Line (medfield@gmail.com) Bringing Prime Time to Video I-Pod (Monty Solomon) Re: Wikpedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Dave Garland) Re: Wikpedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Adam Frix) Re: HSI and Diverted 1-800-CALL-ATT? (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: Jill Serjeant Subject: You've Got Mail [and Maybe a Sex Disease as Well] Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 22:43:21 -0600 You've got mail, and maybe gonorrhea By Jill Serjeant You've got mail -- and possibly gonorrhea, HIV or another sexually transmitted disease. E-mail sent through Web sites launched in Los Angeles and San Francisco is providing people with a free, sometimes anonymous, way to tell their casual sex partners they might have picked up more than they bargained for. Los Angeles County health officials launched http://www.inspotla.org this week in a bid to reduce the rapidly rising spread of STDs by encouraging sexually active men and women to get tested. "This is another opportunity for people to disclose STD exposure to partners because sometimes people don't always have that face-to-face opportunity, or that level of relationship," Karen Mall, director of prevention and testing at the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, said on Thursday. "Partner disclosure is where we really have the opportunity to break the chain of HIV infection," Mall said. The site allows users to choose one of six free e-cards to send to their sexual contacts either unsigned or with a personal message that avoids awkward face-to-face disclosure. "It's not what you bought to the party, it's what you left with," says one e-card featuring a picture of a bare-chested man. "I left with an STD. You might have one too. Get checked out soon." "You're too hot to be out of action," says another. The Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center, which runs its own counseling services for partner disclosure, welcomed the Web site program. "Many of the people we are seeing are listing the Internet as the place where they are meeting partners, so the Web site is a really helpful tool for prevention and contacting them," said Tiffany Horton, manager of the center's sexual health program. The site is modeled on one launched in San Francisco last year http://www.inspot.org which is generating about 500 e-cards a month. Both are targeted at gay men but can be used by anyone. Health officials call the e-cards a "fast, free and flexible partner notification system" that also gives information and links to local testing sites. Some 2,400 new AIDS cases were reported in Los Angeles County in 2003, along with more than 8,000 new gonorrhea cases and 830 new syphilis cases -- most of them among gay men. The Web sites urge users to show respect and not to misuse the system. Mall said only half of 1 percent of the e-cards sent through the San Francisco site had been malicious or fraudulent. "The sites do not give anybody the ability to do anything they can do already if they had somebody's e-mail," Mall said. "It is something we can monitor. People can get hold of the Web master if they have concerns or want to complain. "But I give the (gay) community more credit than that. I think the community really wants to get ahead of HIV and STDs and they realize that notification is really important," she 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Reuters headlines, please look at: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Daniel Lovering Subject: Google Opening New Office in Pennsylvania Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 22:45:08 -0600 Google to Open Research Facility in Pa. By DANIEL LOVERING, AP Business Writer Google Inc., the leading online search engine company, will open a new engineering and research office in Pittsburgh next year to be headed by a Carnegie Mellon University professor, the company said Thursday. The facility will be charged with creating software search tools for Google. It is expected to create as many as 100 new high-tech jobs in the Pittsburgh area over the next few years, said Craig Nevill-Manning, director of Google's New York engineering office. The office will be headed by Andrew Moore, a Carnegie Mellon professor of computer science and robotics who currently runs a research laboratory of 30 students, programmers and faculty members. Moore, 40, is an expert in data mining and artificial intelligence. "Andrew Moore has built his career on the twin challenges of developing techniques to extract patterns from large data sets and applying these machine learning methods to real-life problems," said Randal Bryant, the dean of Carnegie Mellon's computer science school. The office will be one of several Google has opened near universities. The company recently joined Microsoft Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc. in backing a $7.5 million Internet research laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley. It also has facilities in New York, Phoenix, Santa Monica, Calif., and Mountain View, Calif., where the company is based. Google has overseas offices in Japan, Switzerland and India. On the Net: Google: http://www.google.com Carnegie Mellon University: http://www.cmu.edu 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For Associated Press headlines and audio reports, to to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Robert McMillan Subject: Microsoft Bug Fix Hits a Snag Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 22:47:00 -0600 Robert McMillan, IDG News ServiceThu Dec 15,11:00 AM ET Some users of Microsoft's Software Update Services may be experiencing a minor annoyance, thanks to a glitch in the company's latest security patches, released Tuesday. The latest update may be changing the status of software updates that had been previously approved by administrators who use the service, according to Microsoft. "If you synchronize your server after December 12, 2005, all previously approved updates may be unapproved and the status may appear as 'updated,'" Microsoft said in a note published Wednesday. The Software Update Services (SUS) is used by Microsoft administrators to gain more control over which Microsoft software patches get installed on their network. When a patch has been tested and determined to be appropriate for installation, it can be marked as "approved" and then automatically installed on the PCs being managed by the service. Tuesday's glitch disrupts that process. Simple Fix The problem is that the latest updates appear to have overwritten a file that is used to keep track of approved updates, said Russ Cooper, a scientist at security vendor Cybertrust. Microsoft's note lists a number of workarounds for this issue, but the simplest solution is to simply restore this file, called Approveditems.txt, from a backup copy, Cooper said. "This shouldn't be a big problem for anybody because you're backing up that text file, aren't you?" he said. "But if you're not, be prepared to do a bunch of clicking." Microsoft plans to release a script that will reset these settings to a previous state, the company said. Copyright 2005 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 22:50:48 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: [johnmacsgroup] Intel Researchers Sneak Up on Rootkits http://www.eweek.com/print_article2/0,1217,a=3D167252,00.asp Intel Researchers Sneak Up on Rootkits By John G. Spooner and Ryan Naraine Intel Corp.'s researchers are working to outwit cyber attackers, including those employing stealthy rootkits. The chip maker's Communications Technology Lab, in a project called System Integrity Services, has created a hardware engine to sniff out sophisticated malware attacks by monitoring the way operating systems and critical applications interact with hardware inside computers. By watching a computer's main memory, the System Integrity Services can detect when an attacker takes control of the system such attacks sever the ties between data loaded into memory by an application and the application itself and can fool a system so as to avoid detection while potentially allowing for surreptitious pilfering of data or the perpetration of other attacks. "Our threat model assumes that the attacker gets on the system somehow and has unrestricted access to the system," said Travis Schluessler, a security architect inside Intel's Communications Technology Lab. System Integrity Services "assumes [the attacker] will modify what's running in memory to fool anti-virus software or change firewall rules so as to put the system in state where he can do whatever he wants." The System Integrity Service's hardware, however, can detect those intrusions by monitoring the interactions between the applications and memory. Once it discovers an intrusion, it can issue an alert. Thus it sets the bar much higher for malware being able to compromise system without being detected, Schluessler said. Researchers tested the system with a kernel debugger, an application whose behaviors and ability to make system changes are similar to that of a rootkit, to prove its effectiveness, he said. Although it might not make it to market immediately, Intel's anti-malware research comes at a time when anti-virus vendors are struggling to cope with the use of stealth rootkits in malware attacks. Using rootkit techniques, malware writers are able to gain administrative access to compromised machines to silently run updates to the software or reinstall malicious programs after a user deletes them. If it were to be put into a product platform, Intel's System Integrity Services could be used in conjunction with other elements, including the Intel Active Management Technology for monitoring hardware, and could also be used in concert with other research projects such as Circuit Breaker. Circuit Breaker, a research project that might also someday find its way into products regulates an infected computer's access to a network. Such a combination might help quickly head off widespread infections, which can cost companies not only in data theft by also in reduced employee productivity due to computer downtime and heavy use of IT resources to clean them up, the Intel researcher said. Indeed, in one example, "Once System Integrity Services has detected a problem, it can tell Circuit Breaker to turn [a machine] off the primary network and switch it over to a remediation network," he said. The System Integrity Services project is part of a broader focus on security inside Intel's labs. That focus has been brought about by the chip maker's recent shift to designing platforms around devices such as servers or desktop PCs. Unlike when it sold chips individually, the platform design strategy has Intel creating numerous add-ons, which include features such as virtualization and the Intel Active Management Technology, which are designed to increase the usability and manageability of desktops, notebooks and servers. Many of Intel's more advanced worm and virus detection technology are still at the research stage today some of Intel's other projects include worm signature detectors called autograph and polygraph but it could easily wind up as features inside Intel's future product platforms. Aside from being used to improve the products for customers, they could also be added to bolster Intel's competitiveness versus its rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc. The System Integrity Services' prototype hardware uses one of Intel's Xscale processors, which Schluessler said was overkill, and plugs into a PCI slot. A future version could potentially be built for a relatively small fee and included with Intel platforms, not unlike the way it packages wireless modules with its processors and chipsets for its Centrino-brand notebooks. "You can tie this technology in with AMT and the CPU [in each machine] and all of a sudden you've got something that's more than the sum of its parts," Schluessler said. Aside from working with Intel's own platforms, the technologies could be also tied in with products from Intel's close partners, including operating system and application vendors, the company's researchers have said. "We said, 'What kind of things can we do to address these challenges?' That has driven a lot of the platform thinking, whether it's VT [Intel Virtualization Technology] or active management, and how all those things work together," said Dylan Larson, network security initiatives manager at Intel's Communications Technology Lab, in a recent interview with Ziff Davis Internet. "We've had security expertise and lots of competency in this space for a long time. Now we're looking at this even more from a platform level on how we can bring these things together to drive new value to customers." The lab is also working on a projects called Autograph and Polygraph projects, which are designed to help prevent large-scale worm infections altogether by analyzing individual worms and quickly publishing data on how to detect them. Autograph and Polygraph employ a combination of heuristics and good old sleuthing to track down worms and locate their signatures or the unique pattern of data required for its particular exploit and then notify other systems with those signatures so that they can move to identify and block the worm, said Brad Karp, at Intel Research Pittsburg, a lab located on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University. Autograph's source code has been made available for download via the university's Web site, and Karp and his team are also working on a Polygraph, a similar program which can sniff out so-called polymorphic worms, which change each time they replicate in an effort to cover up their signatures and thwart the defense used in Autograph. The next step for the Systems Integrity Services now lies with Intel's platform development teams, which will make the call on whether or not to add the technology to its future systems, Schluessler said. http://htdaw.blogsource.com Direct replies are unlikely to be read. To reply use the address below: falco(underscore)md(atsign)yahoo(dot)co(dot)uk 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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, Johnmacs Group.com For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: medfield@gmail.com Subject: Cell Phone to Land Line Date: 15 Dec 2005 16:26:37 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, I need some help. I have been searching Google all day long looking for a solution for a possible Christmas gift. What I am trying to find out is how do I create my own docking station for a cell phone. My brother has an LG vx4500 http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/wireless/detail-page/vx4500-1.gif and I am trying to connect it to a Homer Simpson phone (land line) http://www.lazerbuilt.co.uk/graphics/phones/805homers.jpg I know they make docking stations online, like the dock-n-talk or Cidco Merge. But what I really want to try and do is make the connector myself; it really shouldn't be that hard, so figured I would ask around online for some tips. I know sparkfun had an article for a rotary phone http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorial/Port-O-Rotary/portable-rotary.htm but that just seemed way to complicated, or maybe it is suppost to be. I dont know. Any response would be gratefully appreciated. ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Bringing Prime Time to Video iPod Date: 15 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST Bringing prime time to video iPod By Ina Fried Staff Writer, CNET News.com Even with a few more TV shows added to the iTunes store, Chris Cardone said he just can't get enough good video for his video iPod. So, increasingly, the Cincinnati-based anesthesiologist has been turning to a little-known program called MyTV ToGo, which lets him take shows recorded to his Windows Media Center PC and put them directly onto his video iPod. "It's fantastic," Cardone said. There were some bugs with the software at first, and it could be a bit slow, he added. But when he was stuck at the hospital on call for hours, at least he did not run out of shows to watch. News.context Even with Apple Computer's deal last week to add 11 NBC shows to the iTunes store, there still is a paucity of top-shelf video content for the iPod. Digital recording specialist TiVo is promising to change that, but its video-on-the-go option for the iPod won't be ready until next year. But in stepped little Proxure, a San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based developer, with its $30 MyTV ToGo utility. It takes shows recorded by Microsoft's Windows Media Center software on a PC, converts them and transfers them into a special playlist on the iPod. The tiny software maker focused on data synchronization software until it debuted the first version of MyTV ToGo earlier this year. That product took recorded TV shows from a Windows Media Center PC and put them on a Pocket PC handheld. Proxure developed the software before portable video devices like the new iPod or Sony's PlayStation Portable became popular. http://news.com.com/2100-1026-5994073.html ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Wikpedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 15:54:04 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: > I had no idea that Wikipedia had any credibility to question. Do > people really take these things seriously? --scott The journal Nature just released a study comparing it to Britannica. The investigators peer-reviewed science articles from the two sources: The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ... Of a total of 42 comparison reviews: Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively. They don't say, but I expect the quality of writing was better, and more consistent, in Britannica. No mention of whether telephony was one of the subjects reviewed. http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051212/full/438900a.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Dec 2005 19:08:38 -0500 From: Adam Frix Subject: Re: Wikpedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis In article , kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: > I had no idea that Wikipedia had any credibility to question. Do > people really take these things seriously? --scott > "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wikipedia _is_ considered an important > source of information on the net in many circles. There are many > experts (in their field) who have written for it and peer-review the > things others have written, however the two recent 'pranks' played on > them have damaged their credibility somewhat. PAT] No matter how many "experts in their field" who contribute, Wikipedia is still nothing more than "I read it on the internet, therefore it must be true". Students write whatever they want into the Wikipedia, then quote it and reference the Wiki in their school work. The work of experts can be undone by a simple prankster, eh? Sounds like a bad idea to me. Next time it won't be a prankster, it'll be someone who isn't an expert but only THINKS he's an expert -- and then who's to say what you believe? No, the whole concept of the Wikipedia was flawed to begin with -- because of simple human nature. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: HSI and Diverted 1-800-CALL-ATT? Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 01:08:08 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Tue, 13 Dec 2005 16:16:57 -0500, Carl Moore wrote: > From memory, I saw "HSI" on a pay phone outside a convenience store > last Sunday (it was at a Turkey Hill store on Lampter Road north of > -- NOT LOCATED RIGHT AT -- Pennsylvania route 741). I apparently > punched in 1-800-2255-288 (1-800-CALL-ATT) okay, but got sent to > a collect-call menu of some sort. This is conjuring up some memory > of "I HATE COCOTS" in this digest many years ago. Has this ever > happened before where a telephone number was "intercepted" in this > manner? Fortunately, there was nothing urgent about my attempted > call; more of an effort to get that telephone's number onto my bill >(failed!). Maybe it is time to revive PAT's old Out of Order stickers to be slapped right over their coin slots. To have any effect it would have to say why the thing was out of order and be difficult to remove. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If anyone wants to work on this project, they should look in our archives http://telecom-digest.org in the section dealing with COCOTS and find the 'out of order sticker' report there. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #565 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 16 19:01:18 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 67CBB14DC2; Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:01:18 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #566 Message-Id: <20051217000118.67CBB14DC2@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:01:18 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, ONE_TIME autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:00:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 566 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson BellSouth Laying Off 1500 Managers, Other Staff (Reuters News Wire) Qwest CEO Getting Indicted (Keith Coffman) Jury Talks Begin in N.H. Phone Jamming Case (Associated Press News Wire) Huge Amount of e-Bay Fraud Going on Online (BBC News Wire) Old Phone Numbers (Neal McLain) Cellular-News For Friday 16th December 2005 (Cellular-News) WideOpenWest Sold to Private-Equity Firm (USTelecom dailyLead) Telecom Update #510, December 16, 2005 (Angus TeleManagement Group) Re: Wikpedia (sic) Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Neal McLain) Re: Wikpedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Cell Phone to Land Line (GlowingBlueMist) Re: Cell Phone to Land Line (John Levine) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (James Carlson) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lisa Hancock) Letter From Russia (Valentin) Christmas Miracle: Hermie the Turtle Gets Braces (Associated Press Wire) 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: Reuters News Wire Subject: BellSouth Laying Off 1500 Managers, Other Staff Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:28:07 -0600 BellSouth Corp. the third largest U.S. phone company, said on Thursday that it plans to eliminate 1,500 management positions and other jobs across the company, resulting in after-tax charges of $95 million. Quite a few of these will occur in the New Orleans offices of the company. In a statement, the Atlanta-based company said it plans to recognize about $50 million of the charges during the current fourth quarter. The reductions will take place in supervisory and non-supervisory management positions, including staff support functions. Most of the reductions are expected to occur through the acceptance of voluntary severance packages and are to be completed by April 30, 2006, BellSouth said. "We have worked hard to avoid it, but many companies our size and particularly our competitors operate with lower overhead and fewer management layers," BellSouth Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Duane Ackerman said in the statement. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It certainly makes for a very Merry Christmas for the employees of the company, doesn't it ... PAT] ------------------------------ From: Robert Boczkiewicz Subject: Qwest CEO Getting Indicted Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:29:51 -0600 Ex-Qwest CEO may face charges next week-sources By Robert Boczkiewicz and Keith Coffman Prosecutors are seeking a grand jury indictment next week of Qwest Communications International Inc. former Chief Executive Joseph Nacchio for personally profiting from the company's overstated revenue, two people close to the matter said this week. Nacchio, who left the company in 2002, has been a focus of an ongoing federal investigation by a grand jury that will reconvene next week for the last time this year, the sources said. Prosecutors are likely to ask grand jurors to hand up an indictment then, said one source close to the investigation. It was unclear what precise form any charges would take, but a separate source familiar with the investigation said this week that prosecutors aim to indict Nacchio for his alleged role in propping up the telephone company's worth and then selling his shares of its stock at what later proved to be an inflated value. The U.S. Attorney's office in Denver had no comment on Thursday. A judge has given prosecutors until December 31 before legal proceedings can resume in civil lawsuits that remain open against Nacchio and other ex-Qwest executives. This summer, federal prosecutors were granted a suspension of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and Qwest shareholder lawsuits to give them more time to complete their criminal probe. In court filings, U.S. Attorney William Leone had said the stay was required because the SEC case was "directly related to the facts underlying an ongoing criminal investigation." The fourth-largest regional telephone carrier in the U.S., Denver- based Qwest and its former executives have faced both civil and criminal legal action since the company in 2002 had to restate $2 billion in revenue for 2000 and 2001. Nacchio has denied any wrongdoing and recently added to his team of high-profile defense attorneys. Among them is former Iran-Contra special prosecutor and federal judge Herbert Stern. Neither Stern nor Charles Stillman, a New York lawyer who also represents Nacchio, were available for comment on Thursday afternoon. Six former Qwest executives have been charged criminally in the alleged securities fraud investigation. Robin Szeliga, the company's former chief financial officer, is the highest level executive charged so far. In July, she pleaded guilty to one count of insider trading and agreed to cooperate with authorities in the investigation, a plea agreement filed in U.S. District Court showed. In her plea agreement, Szeliga said that Qwest's senior managers were aware that the company was boosting revenue figures through deals unknown to investors. Prosecutors noted in a September court filing that Szeliga "has provided significant information related to the subject of a continuing investigation." Earlier this month, the second source familiar with the investigation said that two former top-level Qwest executives, chief legal officer Drake Tempest and president Afshin Mohebbi, testified before the grand jury against Nacchio. Mohebbi has been given immunity in exchange for his cooperation. In January billionaire financier Philip Anschutz, who founded Qwest, and former U.S. Sen. Hank Brown, a former Qwest board member, testified before the grand jury that convenes again next week, a court filing this week showed. More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed against Qwest and former executives by shareholders, including several large pension funds. The shareholders claim they lost millions when Qwest stock plummeted from a high of over $64 per share in 2000 to a low below $2 per share in 2002. Last month, the company reached a $400 million settlement with some shareholders, but lawsuits against Nacchio remain open. Last fall, Qwest agreed to pay $250 million to settle a fraud case brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. In March, the SEC sued 11 former Qwest executives, including Nacchio, accusing them of fraudulently reporting $3 billion in revenues while omitting $231 million in expenses from the company's books. The SEC alleges that Nacchio reaped $216 million in "salary, bonuses, stock sales and other compensation" based on the inflated numbers. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And obviously this will be another very merry Christmas for Mr. Nacchio as well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Jury Talks Begin in N.H. Phone-Jamming Case Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:34:14 -0600 A jury on Monday began deliberations in the case of a former national Republican Party official accused of orchestrating an election day phone-jamming plot against New Hampshire Democrats. Earlier in the day, lawyers concluded their arguments in the case of James Tobin, President Bush's former New England campaign chairman. Deliberations were to continue Tuesday. Tobin, 45, is charged with one count of interfering with voters rights and several counts of telephone harassment. If convicted, he faces a maximum 17-year prison sentence and a $750,000 fine. For nearly two hours on Election Day 2002, hundreds of hang-up calls overwhelmed Democratic get-out-the-vote phone banks and a ride-to-the-polls line run by Manchester's firefighters union. The state GOP's former executive director, Chuck McGee, who admitted hatching the plot, has completed a seven-month sentence for conspiracy. Allen Raymond, former president of Viginia-based GOP Marketplace LLC, pleaded guilty to organizing the jamming. He hopes a five-month sentence will be reduced in exchange for his cooperation with prosecutors. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: BBC News Wire Subject: Huge Amount of E-Bay Fraud Going on Online Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 14:13:41 -0600 The online auctioneer eBay has admitted an "extreme growth" in the number of personal accounts being hijacked by fraudsters. Criminals are obtaining the secret passwords of eBay subscribers and using their sites to conduct bogus auctions for non-existent goods. In a growing number of cases, would-be buyers on the UK's most used website are paying thousands of pounds to apparently reputable sellers after winning auctions on the site -- only to find out they had been dealing with criminals. In an interview with Radio 5 Live, eBay would not reveal exactly how many accounts had been hijacked, although a company spokesman refused to deny that possibly tens of thousands had been compromised. "Last year there was extreme growth," said Gareth Griffiths, head of trust and safety for eBay. "Certainly last year it was a high-growth area for us, it's a painful issue." In one recent case, up to ten people are thought to have paid a total of 15,000 for non-existent hot tubs, while another would-be buyer thought he had purchased a 4,000 camper van - which turned out not to exist. Grab and go In both cases eBay accounts had been hijacked to sell off the non-existent goods. "It gets to the point where that is obstructive to our inquiry," said Ruth Taylor, North Yorkshire Trading Standards. The hijacking of sellers' accounts is a particularly sensitive issue for the auction site, which relies to a large degree on the level of trust between the buyer and seller of goods for its success. There are more than three million items for sale on the site at any one time. eBay blames its account holders for not installing proper security on their home computers and for replying to so-called "phishing" emails. These are fake emails made to look like official eBay messages and which demand the secret passwords to users accounts. Viruses are also said to be infecting home computers by installing themselves inside hard drives, where they monitor the keystrokes of eBay users, make a record of passwords before sending them onto the fraudsters. 'Nothing to do with us' Describing the problem as an "off eBay" issue, Mr Griffiths said the problem was "nothing to do with us". In several cases examined by the BBC the eBay users who had their accounts hijacked claimed to be computer literate and vehemently denied that they had replied to phishing emails. "There is no way I would have done that," said Dr Oliver Sutcliffe a biochemist from Nottingham. His site was hijacked over the space of one weekend to sell thousands of pounds worth of electrical goods. EBay is also under fire from law enforcement officials in the United States and manufacturers over levels of crime on the site and the lack of cooperation they receive. Trading standards officers who regularly investigate crimes perpetrated on the site have accused eBay of being "obstructive" in the way it shares information. North Yorkshire Trading Standards says eBay can take up to two months to provide the names and addresses of suspects it is pursuing. "If it takes up to two months, then it is eating in to a lot of time that we have to make prosecutions," said Ruth Taylor, who heads the authority's special investigations unit. "It gets to the point where that is obstructive to our inquiry. Our investigators suggest that netters _stay away_ from eBay entirely at least for the time being." Faking it. Concerns have also been raised about the large amount of counterfeit goods on sale on eBay. Adidas told the BBC that it monitored up to 12,000 auctions involving its goods every day on the British site -- yet it estimated that up to 40% of all Adidas products available were counterfeit. eBay says it has a special relationship with brand owners, who can notify the site of auctions involving counterfeit goods which will then be taken down within hours. However, the Ben Sherman clothing brand says it recently took eBay five days to take down an auction of counterfeit clothing -- by which time much of it had been sold. "We certainly are not going to make it good for them or the buyers," said Barry Ditchfield, noting that "I think one must say that it's highly unsatisfactory," said Barry Ditchfield, Ben Sherman's brand protection manager. "With all the amount of profits that eBay makes, then there is ample scope for additional staff. Frankly, it is totally unsatisfactory, not just for Ben Sherman but for all brand holders. EBay have rejected the accusations, saying that the company has a good relationship with law enforcement officials. "The satisfaction level is generally very high," said Gareth Griffiths. Five Live Report: Policing eBay can be heard on Radio Five Live at 1930BST on Sunday 18 December or afterwards at the Five Live Report website. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/business/4533154.stm Copyright 2005 BBC. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For audio news from BBC and headlines/stories from the press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have noted from my personal experience that, like their subsidiary PayPal, eBay has a huge amount of phishing going on all the time. But unlike PayPal, where if you send them a copy of the mail to 'spoof@paypal.com' and get back immediatly an autoack saying 'that email is not ours; thank you; we will look into it', eBay does not use the 'spoof' address in the same way. EBay has a much more involved system they expect their users to follow in order to report phishing, which apparently works no better, but just takes longer to send referrals. Like Paypal, eBay encourages users "send us all the phishing things you get" and when Lisa Minter was working on that for me, it often times took several hours per day scooping them up and forwarding them to PayPal and EBay. I finally sent email to both telling them, "We only have two people working here and I am not going to hire someone else just to handle spam" and we quit cutting and pasting all the time just to help them. Still, the phishing spams roll in for both organizations. Maybe if enough people, buyers and sellers alike quit using eBay, that company will start really taking phishing seriously, if they get sued often enough, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 10:39:42 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Old Phone Numbers I've noticed a curious building here in Brazoria, Texas. It's an old two-story frame building with an ancient sign painted on the front: DAVIS BARBER SHOP AND GENERAL INSURANCE AGENCY PH. OFFICE 92 RES 116 I suppose the idea of a combination barber shop and insurance agency would catch most people's attention. But of course it was those phone numbers that caught my attention. When I first noticed the building, it was standing vacant, and looked like it was about to fall down. A couple of years ago, the City of Brazoria cited the building for several code violations, and ordered the owner to either fix it up or tear it down. The owner decided to renovate it, and hired a local contractor. One day I noticed the contractor installing siding. I stopped to ask him if he was going to cover the sign. He sort of shrugged and muttered something to the effect that he hadn't thought about it. I mentioned the phone numbers. That got his attention -- apparently he hadn't realized they were phone numbers. He said "you mean like..." and poked an imaginary touchtone dial a couple of times. No, I explained ... back in those days, you picked up the telephone and asked the operator to connect you. He stared at the sign for a few seconds, shrugged, and went back to work. I took a couple pictures, figuring that I'd never see that sign again. The sign is still visible today, although the building is still vacant. The contractor left an opening in the vinyl siding just large enough for the old sign. I've always wondered if my brief conversation about phone numbers saved that sign. http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b85/Cable77422/Image1.jpg http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b85/Cable77422/Image2.jpg Neal McLain [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for passing along those pictures! PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 16th December 2005 Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 07:49:19 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Orange Combines Wifi, 3G & GPRS to Simplify Mobile Data Access http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15269.php Orange UK has announced the launch of Business Everywhere - an integrated mobile solution for connecting to business applications via the Internet which will include access to over 13,000 Wifi hotspots across the UK and the rest of the world. Availab... Czech Operator Optimises its 3G Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15272.php The Czech Republic based Eurotel has selected UK-based wireless network optimisation specialists Arieso to maximise the performance of its new 3G network, which went live at the start of December. Eurotel will use Arieso's pioneering algorithm-based ... [[ Financial ]] KT Freetel Confirms In Strategic Alliance With DoCoMo http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15249.php KT Freetel Ltd. confirmed Thursday it has signed a strategic alliance agreement with Japan's NTT DoCoMo in which the Japanese wireless operator will purchase a 10% stake in KTF for about KRW564.9 billion. ... Intracom: Has Right To Buy 10% Of Telsim From Vodafone http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15251.php Intracom, a Greek telecommunications and information technology company, said Thursday it has an option to buy as much as 10% of Turkish wireless operator Telsim Mobil Telekomunikasyon from Vodafone Group PLC. ... Russia's Rezervspetsmet says seizes Bitel's office http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15254.php Representatives of Russia's Rezervspetsmet have seized the office of Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, Rezervspetsmet said in a press release Thursday. ... RIM Investors Should Prepare For Big Settlement http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15257.php Investors in Research in Motion Ltd. should be prepared to see the BlackBerry maker pay close to $1 billion if it settles its long-running legal battle with NTP Inc. for terms that are looking both reasonable and possible. ... Russian CDMA Operator to Invest $100 mln in Network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15260.php Russian mobile operator Sky Link plans to invest over U.S. $100 million in the construction of its federal network in 2006, Sky Link's CEO Raisa Rozinova told a videoconference from Moscow Thursday. ... Telekom Confirms Exit Plans for Guinea Venture http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15271.php Telekom Malaysia has confirmed that it has decided to completly withdraw from the Guinea market where the company had been operating the local landline and mobile phone network, Societe des Telecommunications de Guinee (Sotelgui.). TM will continue t... [[ Handsets ]] Russia's Euroset opens 12 outlets in Ukraine since Monday http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15253.php Russia's largest mobile handset retailer Euroset has opened 12 outlets in 10 Ukrainian cities since Monday increasing the total number of its outlets in Ukraine to 122, the company said Thursday. ... NII Holdings In New Handset Purchase Pact With Motorola http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15258.php NII Holdings Inc. signed a new handset-purchase agreement with Motorola Inc. ... US Shoppers Willing to Pay Extra For "cool" Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15261.php According to new research from Compete, USA based cellular phone shoppers are coveting "cool" phones and popular features this holiday season, even if they don't come free. These shopping preferences put the Motorola RAZR and the Danger Sidekick II a... [[ Legal ]] Court Won't Dismiss Ubiquitel Suit Against Nextel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15252.php A Delaware judge Wednesday turned aside a bid to block a lawsuit by Sprint affiliate Ubiquitel Inc. against Nextel Communications Inc. ... Mobile Email Startup Sues Microsoft On Patents http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15255.php SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP)--Mobile email startup Visto Corp. has sued Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) for allegedly infringing on three of its patents related to how information is handled between servers and handheld devices such as cellular phones. ... Ukraine's antitrust opens case against mobile operator Kyivstar http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15259.php Ukraine's Antimonopoly Committee has initiated a case against Ukraine's largest mobile operator Kyivstar, the committee said in a statement Thursday. ... Most UK Phones Allow Children to Access Adult Content http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15263.php Children are just two clicks away from viewing, pornography, adult chatrooms and gambling websites on internet capable mobile phones this Christmas says the web filtering company, Blue Coat. With thousands of teenagers and parents spending their Chri... [[ Messaging ]] 3G MMS Sent to MS Outlook http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15265.php General Wireless has signed a contract with Hutchison 3G in Scandinavia, to deliver its eMMS solution for integrating PC-based e-mail with mobile text and multimedia messaging. In cooperation with General Wireless, the mobile operator 3 launched the ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Developing Mobile Payment Services in China http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15264.php China's SmartPay Jieyin and Pudong Development Bank have announced a broad-ranging nationwide cooperation on mobile payment services. SmartPay and Pudong Development Bank will jointly cooperate to allow banking customers to register for SmartPay mobi... [[ MVNO ]] Amp'd Mobile Gets $50 Million In Funding From Viacom's MTV http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15256.php With its content-laden cellphone service expected to be made available Thursday, Amp'd Mobile Inc. has announced a partnership with MTV Networks and closed a $50 million investment from the music and entertainment concern. ... Experts Predict Global Brands Will Dominate the MVNO Market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15268.php Motricity has published the results of a survey conducted at last week's MVNO Summit in Miami. The poll of nearly a quarter of conference attendees indicates that brand affinity will be more critical to MVNO success than low pricing. Sixty-two percen... [[ Network Contracts ]] New Chad Operator Signs Backhaul Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15266.php Intelsat has signed a contract with Millicom, Chad's newest mobile operator, to provide cellular backhaul services to multiple locations within the country. Services have already been launched in the capital city of N'Djamena and will be available to... [[ Reports ]] Western European Billing and OSS market Set for Steady Growth http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15262.php Billing and OSS vendors in Western Europe should view the future with more confidence as the market is set to grow at an average annual rate of 6% over the five year period to 2010 to nearly US$1.7 billion, according to newly-released forecast data f... Fixed-to-Mobile Calls Cost Europeans a Big Portion of their Bill http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15270.php Tarifica's comparison of fixed-to-mobile versus mobile-to-mobile call charges across a number of European operators reveals that it can cost Europeans considerably more to call a mobile phone from their fixed line than if they use their mobile handse... [[ Statistics ]] Brazil's Mobile Cos Register 1.1 Million New Clients In Nov http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15250.php Brazilian mobile phone companies added 1.1 million clients in November, indicating a minor slowdown in the breakneck expansion in cellphone usage, according to preliminary figures released by telecommunications regulator Anatel Thursday. ... [[ Technology ]] IPWireless Signs Manufacturing Agreement for TD-CDMA Products http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15267.php IPWireless has announced Solectron as the exclusive provider of outsourced new product introduction (NPI) and manufacturing services. Under the terms of the agreement, Solectron will be the exclusive provider of outsourced NPI services for new produc... ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 12:32:48 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: WideOpenWest Sold to Private-Equity Firm USTelecom dailyLead December 16, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AknwatagCBqNiplVBE TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * WideOpenWest sold to private-equity firm BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * NTP loses another patent ruling * Report: IP Centrex and hosted PBX market heating up * BellSouth trims management positions * TWC to offer family tier in 2006 USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * RFID: Radio Frequency Identification -- Get Your Copy Today! TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Report: Alcatel to expand IP router stable * Hand-held device melds functions of mobile, PC VOIP DOWNLOAD * Google's VoIP moves threaten startups * Companies demonstrate VoIP over WiMAX * Review: AOL's TotalTalk not quite ready for primetime REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Aussie government reduces Telstra sell-off price by 21% Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AknwatagCBqNiplVBE ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 11:16:48 -0800 Subject: Telecom Update #510, December 16, 2005 From: Angus TeleManagement Group Reply-To: Angus TeleManagement Group ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 510: December 16, 2005 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** AVAYA: www.avaya.ca/ ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca/ ** ERICSSON: www.ericsson.ca ** MICROSOFT CANADA: www.microsoft.com/canada/telecom/ ** MITEL NETWORKS: www.mitel.com/ ** NEC UNIFIED SOLUTIONS: www.necunifiedsolutions.com ** ROGERS TELECOM: www.rogers.com/solutions ** VONAGE CANADA: www.vonage.ca ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** We're Taking a Holiday ** Bell to Sell Stake in CGI ** CRTC Combines Broadcast and Telecom Groups ** Rogers Promotes Linton, Hires Reynolds ** Telecom Policy Report Delayed ** Price Cap Rules Extended to 2007 ** Wade Oosterman Leaves Telus ** Study Blames CRTC for Cellphone Lag ** Bell Mobility Offers Single-Rate Global Roaming ** No Do-Not-Call List Until 2007 ** Forecast 25% of Home Lines to Be VoIP by 2008 ** Shaw Postpones Target for Wireless Launch ** RIM Wins Another Patent Ruling ** Nortel Names Toronto Lawyer as Chief Counsel ** Ottawa Optical Developer Folds ** Com Dev Revenue Steady ** Wi-LAN Books Large Loss ** Consultants Call for Speakers ============================================================ WE'RE TAKING A HOLIDAY: Telecom Update is taking a winter break; our next issue will be published Friday, January 6. We wish all readers a joyous holiday season and a successful and rewarding New Year. BELL TO SELL STAKE IN CGI: BCE is pulling out of CGI, the Quebec-based IT services company it first bought into 10 years ago. CGI will pay $859 million to buy back 100 million shares, and Bell will sell its remaining 28.3 million "in an orderly fashion." The two companies have extended their mutual "preferred supplier" agreements to June 2016. ** This deal, combined with the Globemedia sale announced last week, gives Bell well over $2 billion in cash. Asked what the company would do with the money, Bell EVP Lawson Hunter told analysts that more would be revealed at Bell's annual Business Review Conference on February 1. CRTC COMBINES BROADCAST AND TELECOM GROUPS: This week, the CRTC announced an internal reorganization: ** The Broadcasting and Telecommunications units are now part of an integrated branch, reporting to Len Katz as Executive Director. A third unit, also reporting to Katz, will provide industry, market, and technology analysis for both telecom and broadcasting. Each of the three units will be headed by an Associate Executive Director. ** A new section, Regulatory Process Management and Monitoring, will report to Secretary General Diane Rheaume. It will be responsible for the Commission's monitoring reports on both broadcasting and telecommunications and will also handle enforcement, including the National Do-Not-Call List once it is established. http://www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/NEWS/RELEASES/2005/r051215.htm ROGERS PROMOTES LINTON, HIRES REYNOLDS: Two important executive changes at Rogers this week: ** Rogers Communications CFO Alan Horn will leave that post in April. His replacement will be Bill Linton, former CEO of Call-Net Enterprises, which Rogers acquired in July. (See Telecom Update #488) ** Randy Reynolds has been named President of Rogers Telecom, the group that sells voice, data, and wireless services to business customers. Reynolds was previously President of Bell Ontario, Bell Nexxia, and Bell West; he left Bell when the company's western operations were reorganized in July 2004. (see Telecom Update #418) TELECOM POLICY REPORT DELAYED: The Telecom Policy Review Panel, originally expected to report by the end of 2005, now expects to finish its work in mid-January 2006. The report must then be translated and printed, so it is unlikely to be released publicly until after a new Cabinet is sworn in, following the federal election. PRICE CAP RULES EXTENDED TO 2007: CRTC Decisions 2005-69 and 2005-70 extend the incumbent telcos' price cap rules, without change, for one year -- to May 31, 2007, for Aliant, Bell Canada, MTS Allstream, SaskTel, and Telus, and to July 31, 2007, for Telebec and Telus Quebec. (See Telecom Update #481, 487) ** The Commission will begin a price cap review in the first half of 2006, after releasing its decision on local service forbearance (see Telecom Update #479, 499). http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2005/dt2005-69.htm http://www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2005/dt2005-70.htm WADE OOSTERMAN LEAVES TELUS: Wade Oosterman, former Chief Marketing Officer of Telus, is leaving the company. Ossterman's post disappeared in a corporate reorganization last month, and Telus says no "suitable alternative role" has been found. ** Oosterman came to Telus as part of its Clearnet acquisition in 2000. He played a key role in developing and maintaining Telus's distinctive nature-themed marketing programs. STUDY BLAMES CRTC FOR CELLPHONE LAG: A paper published this week by the C.D. Howe Institute says that "artificially low wireline prices" enforced by the CRTC are responsible for Canada being 28th among 30 OECD nations in cellphone adoption. The authors say the Commission should allow wireline phone rates to rise so that wireless service would be more attractive to consumers. ** One of the report's authors recently filed an expert report supporting Aliant's application to have local phone service deregulated in parts of Nova Scotia and PEI so that the telco could meet competition from EastLink by lowering wireline rates. BELL MOBILITY OFFERS SINGLE-RATE GLOBAL ROAMING: Bell Canada now offers a Motorola handset that can access both CDMA and GSM networks worldwide, and a rate plan of $2.49/minute for all global calls. NO DO-NOT-CALL LIST UNTIL 2007: The Do-Not-Call legislation that was rushed through Parliament just before the election was called (see Telecom Update #508) is unlikely to be implemented until mid-to-late 2007. This week Len St-Aubin of Industry Canada's telecommunications policy branch told the Ottawa Citizen that "it will take 19 months or so to get the list up and running." ** South of the border, DirecTV has been fined $5 million for violating U.S. Do-Not-Call rules. That's the largest civil penalty ever in a Federal Trade Commission consumer protection law case. FORECAST 25% OF HOME LINES TO BE VoIP BY 2008: NBI/Michael Sone Associates predicts that Voice over IP services will account for 24% of residential lines and 15% of business lines by 2008, with incumbents holding a 72% share of the business VoIP sector. ** NBI estimates the incumbents' present share of the residential market at 69% in Halifax, 87% in Toronto, and over 90% in other centres. http://www.nbicanada.com SHAW POSTPONES TARGET FOR WIRELESS LAUNCH: Back in March, Shaw said it would launch cellular service in six months. Chairman J.R. Shaw now says the timeline has been shifted so the cableco can focus on building its home phone service. RIM WINS ANOTHER PATENT RULING: On December 15, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejected the second of five NTP patents involved in the ongoing patent war between Research in Motion and NTP. The rejections are not yet final. NORTEL NAMES TORONTO LAWYER AS CHIEF COUNSEL: Nortel Networks has appointed David Drinkwater as Chief Legal Officer. Drinkwater previously held senior posts at Ontario Power Generation, Bell Canada, and Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt. OTTAWA OPTICAL DEVELOPER FOLDS: Metrophotonics, an Ottawa-based developer of optical networking gear, is going out of business. It raised more than $70 million over the last five years and had 80 employees at its peak. COM DEV REVENUE STEADY: Satellite components maker Com Dev International reports revenue of $123.6 million for the year ended October 31, a 4% increase from the previous year. Net income was $5.2 million, about the same as the year before. WI-LAN BOOKS LARGE LOSS: Calgary-based Wi-LAN reports a net loss of $25.8 million, including about $14 million in one-time charges, for the year ended October 31. Revenue rose 2% to 25.7 million. CONSULTANTS CALL FOR SPEAKERS: The Canadian Telecommunications Consultants Association will hold its Spring 2006 Conference in Toronto on April 6-8. Proposals for presentations at the conference are due by January 6. For information, write ctca.speakers@ctca.ca, or visit www.ctca.ca. ============================================================ 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 http://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 http://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 jriddell@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. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 07:52:12 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Re: Wikpedia (sic) Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Adam Frix wrote: > The work of experts can be undone by a simple prankster, eh? > Sounds like a bad idea to me. Next time it won't be a prankster, > it'll be someone who isn't an expert but only THINKS he's an > expert -- and then who's to say what you believe? Every Wikipedia entry has a "permanent link" that links to the article as it stood at the moment when you looked at it. Each entry also includes citation text in various formats so that an author can cite the article knowing it won't be changed later. Of course, any author citing a Wiki article should review it carefully for accuracy before citing it; but that can be said of any citation. In my experience, Wikipedia entries are accurate and well-written. A favorite example: Wikipedia's definitions "geostationary" and "geosynchronous" are accurate, unlike WIRED magazine that never uses the terms correctly, and refuses to print my letter asking them to correct it. Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Wikpedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 16:30:26 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Dave Garland wrote: > The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but > among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not > particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained > around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ... I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly great". 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: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: Cell Phone to Land Line Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 09:30:40 -0600 Organization: Octanews wrote in message news:telecom24.565.5@telecom-digest.org: > Hello, I need some help. I have been searching Google all day long > looking for a solution for a possible Christmas gift. What I am > trying to find out is how do I create my own docking station for a > cell phone. > My brother has an LG vx4500 > http://images.amazon.com/images/G/01/wireless/detail-page/vx4500-1.gif > and I am trying to connect it to a Homer Simpson phone (land line) > http://www.lazerbuilt.co.uk/graphics/phones/805homers.jpg > I know they make docking stations online, like the dock-n-talk or > Cidco Merge. But what I really want to try and do is make the > connector myself; it really shouldn't be that hard, so figured I would > ask around online for some tips. > I know sparkfun had an article for a rotary phone > http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorial/Port-O-Rotary/portable-rotary.htm but > that just seemed way to complicated, or maybe it is suppost to be. I > dont know. > Any response would be gratefully appreciated. If you want the landline phone to ever ring when the Cell phone call comes in you really need to purchase a docking unit designed to support the cell phone in question. The old phones take 70-90 volts to make them ring, which most, if any, cell phones do not have the capacity to generate. ------------------------------ Date: 16 Dec 2005 18:45:44 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cell Phone to Land Line Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > What I am trying to find out is how do I create my own docking > station for a cell phone. > I know sparkfun had an article for a rotary phone > http://www.sparkfun.com/tutorial/Port-O-Rotary/portable-rotary.htm > but that just seemed way to complicated, or maybe it is supposed to > be. I dont know. The Sparkfun phone has some complication to handle the rotary dial, but the circuit for a tone dial wouldn't be any simpler. The internals of a cell phone are completely unlike those of a landline phone. The signals are different, the voltages are different, the voice encoding and decoding are entirely different. (A landline phone does no coding at all, cell phones do vast amounts.) The Sparkfun kit is built around a GM862 module which is basically the entire guts of a GSM phone. With some electronic skill I wouldn't think it would be too hard to build the necessary circuits to connect a GM862 to a regular phone and handle the signals for two-way voice, dial, and the ringer, but it's a lot more than hooking up a few wires. R's, John ------------------------------ From: James Carlson Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: 16 Dec 2005 10:20:50 -0500 Organization: Sun Microsystems bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: >> - NAT in use, and load balancing on a per-connection basis. This >> automatically balances the return traffic as well, as everyone on >> the net thinks you're actually two separate independent IP nodes. > NO, it does _Not_. You cannot change the NAT translation _during_ a > 'session' (a single TCP connection). And if the 'incoming' data > characteristics change radically _during_ that session, the 'balance' > goes out the window. What part of "per-connection" was unclear? James Carlson, KISS Network Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 16 Dec 2005 07:44:36 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mark Crispin wrote: > The task of updating software on commodity PCs (which you refer to) is > nothing compared to that of updating other clients, much less the > servers. There's a whole world out there that you're apparently > unaware exists, and not even Microsoft controls it. That's true -- I know nothing of that "whole world" that makes the Internet actually work. Unfortunately, when explanations are provided, they are very technical and loaded with acronyms or buzz words I don't understand. > Furthermore, commodity software updates do not depend upon updates > from other vendors. It would take many years (and I do mean *years*) > for all of the vendors involved to agree upon the new design, new > protocols, and set an update program in motion. One of the problems with fraud and abuse is that it's hard to calculate the total costs to society and then allocate those costs to individuals. That is, if you get burned by fraud obviously you've incurred considerable costs. But others -- like credit card companies, ISPs, law enforcement, your banks, etc., -- also incur costs, both direct writeoffs and staff time. Further, entities incur preventative protection costs. Last is the lost profit from people like myself who are afraid to participate in Internet commerce. For example, most businesses must (or should) maintain adequate server and transmission capacity to handle all the incoming spam to the staff, anti-virus and spyware protection, etc. They say the cost of all that in hardware, software, and staff time, is considerable. It is entirely possible that the cost of redoing the Internet so it is properly secured in the first place may result in such savings that it is worth the effort. > Just take a look at how long IPv6 has taken, and is likely to continue > to take. What is "IPv6"? > Rather, email postage stamps are a *tax*. The ostensible purpose of > the tax would be to pay the government to provide the service of > policing email. As with other taxes, the services provided and the > amount of the taxes you pay will be decided by the government. The government can and will tax anything it can get its mitts on unless the public violently objects. In my area, some advocate replacing property taxes with income taxes saying that is more fair; but it is strongly opposed since nobody believes the measure will be "revenue neutral". That is, the people expect a new income tax BUT property taxes won't go down. Anyway, the government does wants to tax Internet transactions, and they will find a way, regardless of whatever technology is used. As an aside, one of the advantages of the old unified Bell System was that the national network was managed by one entity (Bell) and standards were issued for everyone (local and independent telephone companies) to follow. As technology grew (inter-office signalling), the standards evolved to meet them. In the 1960s, anonymous call harassment became a problem and the technology of the day couldn't deal with (it was very difficult to trace calls through automatic switches), but subsequent technology and standards allowed for that. Call-Trace (*57) has put a lot of people in jail. When outsiders used 'blue boxes', new signalling measures were devised. ------------------------------ From: Valentin Subject: Letter From Russia Date: 16 Dec 2005 18:08:08 +0300 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought about this message for quite a while, and although it would probably qualify as spam (by virtue of how many copies were distributed, I personally do not think it is a scam. If anyone feels inclined to help this fellow, please do so. PAT] Dear Friends, Please excuse me for any inconvice caused by this message. My name is Valentin. I am student and I live with my mother in small city Kaluga, in Russia. My mother is invalid. She cannot see and she receive pension from the government very rare which is not enough even for medications. I work very hard every day to be able to buy the necessities and medications for my mother, but my salary is very small, because my studies still not finished. Due to the deep crisis, authorities stoped gas in our district and we cannot heat our home anymore. I do not know what to do, because the weather is very cold here already and I'm very afraid that if the temperature will be lower than 0 degree in our sleeping room, we will not be able to survive. I applied to local Red Cross and they explained me that many people ask them for help every day and they cannot help to each family. They adviced me to search help from individuals. Thanks to free public Internet access in our public library, I was able to find several addresses, including yours and I decided to appeal to you with a prayer in my heart for a small help. If you have any old used sleeping bag, warm blanket, warm clothes in size L or XL, portable heater, canned food, vitamins, water boiler, medicines against cold weather, any hygiene products, I will be very grateful you if you could send it to our home address: Valentin Mikhailin, Rileewa Ulica 6-45, Kaluga 248030 Russia. If you think that it would be better or easier for you to help with some money, please writes me back to me and I will provide you with details how to send it safely, if you agree. This way to help is very good, because in this case I will be able to buy a portable stove and heat our home during the winter. I hope to hear from you very soon and I pray that you can help us. I also hope very much that this hard situation will become better in our country very soon. From all my heart I wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year 2006. Please excuse me, once more, for any inconvience I could cause you with this message. Valentin, Kaluga. Russia. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As I said, I do not think this is a scam, but each person has to decide that on his own. My suggestion would be to send him an international reply coupon (or maybe just a dollar American money) and ask him to buy a postage stamp to use for replying back to you. If he chooses to not so so, then the scam is apparent. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Christmas Miracle: Turtle Get Braces Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:39:05 -0600 Hermie the Turtle's little defective beak made meal time a struggle. Unable to close his mouth completely, the tiny 20-gram reptile's very existence was at stake. But today, this map turtle has a new lease on life thanks to the work of two doctors who outfitted young Hermie with braces. Now, some are calling the orthodontic work a Christmas miracle. "I've worked on animals before but nothing this small," said Dr. Peter M. Virga, a Watertown dentist who along with veterinarian Jeffrey G. Baier performed the unique procedure. After receiving Hermie in May, zookeepers at the New York State Zoo in Watertown's Thompson Park noticed the turtle was having difficulty eating. Medical exams then showed Hermie's lower jaw growing downward. "He may have adapted to eat like this, or he may have not made it," Baier said. Turtles, who are toothless, use their beaks to break food down before grinding it with the plates in their mouths. After Baier injected Hermie with two anesthetics Wednesday morning, Virga inserted four pins into the turtle's jaws, according to the Watertown Daily Times which published an account of Hermie's ordeal Thursday. During a meeting with reporters, the doctors placed the immobile turtle, believed to be between 2 and 3 years old, on a table. As Baier held Hermie's head, Virga placed two rubber orthodontic elastics -- the same kind used by children with braces -- on the pins across the turtle's mouth. While Hermie recuperates, zookeepers will remove the rubber bands once a day to allow the turtle to eat. In keeping with the spirit of Christmas, the doctors chose red and green rubber bands for Hermie's beak. "It's very exciting and I was glad to help," said Virga, who's performed root canal surgery on dogs. Baier's wife, Angela, the zoo's executive director, said she was thrilled such a small zoo could take part in such a rare procedure. "Miracles happen this time of the year," she said. "Hopefully his beak will be fixed." Information from: Watertown Daily Times, http://www.watertowndailytimes.com Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Good for Hermie! It is really great that some people care enough for a small reptile to help it recouperate in this way. It is indeed a Christmas miracle. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #566 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 16 22:36:08 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 21FDE14C9F; Fri, 16 Dec 2005 22:36:06 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #567 Message-Id: <20051217033606.21FDE14C9F@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 22:36:06 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.2 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 16 Dec 2005 22:39:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 567 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Verizon/Yahoo ISP Service From Hell (Michael Banks) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Dave Garland) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Danny Burstein) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) 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: Michael Banks Subject: Verizon/Yahoo ISP Service from Hell Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:10:42 -0800 THE ISP FROM HELL Warning, Warning, Warning; If you have Verizon as your ISP do not install the Verizon/Yahoo Internet Program. Once it is installed it is impossible to get rid of. If you don't like it you are screwed!!! The following is a transcript of three hours of hell trying to get tech support to help me get rid of it. I can no longer use Outlook as my E-Mail program, and now my home page has been taken over also. The only way to get rid of this is to switch Internet providers and do a fresh install of Windows XP!!! I HATE THIS PROGRAM!!!! [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 4:37 PM] -- Status Message The Verizon Online Support Center received your trouble ticket. A Support Representative will be assigned to your trouble ticket shortly. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 4:38 PM] -- Status Message Your trouble ticket is assigned to Support Representative, Ann. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 4:39 PM] -- Ann Thank you for using Verizon. My name is Ann and I am the Verizon Online Support Analyst assigned to help you and will be working with you today. Please allow us a few minutes to review the problem description you have provided with this ticket. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 4:39 PM] -- Ann I will be happy to assist you. I do apologize for the trouble you are currently having. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 4:43 PM] -- Ann Did you want to remove the yahoo portal with Verizon? [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 4:45 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx Yes, I thought you received my previous description of the problem and what I have done so far. Have you not received anything I sent so yet??? [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 4:48 PM] -- Ann You can remove the Yahoo Portal from Verizon by going to add and remove programs There you can uninstall it. You will still see the Yahoo logo. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 4:54 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx I have already done that. I also removed the associated folders from Program Files. There are still a few problems. 1. I still have the black V logo up in the top right corner of my browser and 2. Outlook is asking for my password continually and won't accept it. I cannot download any e-mail from outlook. I have to go to Verizon web page for e-mail. I have checked the accounts tab and everything seems to be ok but the send test is failing. I think I have gotten the program to quit changing my home page but I am not sure if it will change it again the next time I boot up. I realize this is not your fault, but this is the third time this system has made me input this description of my problem. it is becoming annoying. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 4:56 PM] -- Ann The settings will have to be changed for the incoming and our going server. For incoming put in incoming.verizon.net and outgoing.verizon.net [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:00 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx As I said, I checked the accounts tab and everything is as it should be. Those changes have already been made. I realize I can do a system restore, but I want to make sure nothing on your server will change my computer back the next time I open Explorer. I also want to remove the black V logo from my browser. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:02 PM] -- Ann As I explained the Logo will stay as is. You can do a system restore. However, we are unable to give you support. This is not within our Support Boundaries. I do apologize. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:04 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx You are telling me that I can no longer use outlook to receive my e-mail from the verizon server??? If this is not within your support boundaries what is??? [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:07 PM] -- Ann I am referring to the System Restore. Please read the content of my instruction. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:11 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx Has the account that I set up combining verizon and yahoo been terminated at your server. I know a system restore will reset my computer back but has the account been terminated at your end. And you did NOT explain...why will the black V logo stay as is??? I think perhaps you should take your own advice. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:16 PM] -- Ann Please go to netmail.verizon.net log in with user name and password. Compose a test email. Let us know if you can send and receive. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:17 PM] -- xxxxxxxxxx ok [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:23 PM] -- xxxxxxxxxx Now I can not sign in to Verizon. I saved the user ID and password info here it is (Email Address: xxxxxxx@verizon.net This is a copy of the installation log which I saved: Username: xxxxxxx Password: xxxxxxxx Alternate E-mail address: None Portal Choice: Verizon Yahoo! Help & Support: HYPERLINK "http://www.verizon.net/help" \nhttp://www.verizon.net/help Welcome to Verizon Yahoo! Your Yahoo! account is now upgraded. Account Information You can now enjoy all your Verizon Yahoo! premium services when you use these accounts: Email messages and address book entries may take up to 6hrs to move to your new Verizon Yahoo! account. Until this process completed, no new emails will be delivered to your account. Print this page for future reference. Your Verizon Yahoo! username xxxxxxxxx @verizon.net Your upgraded Yahoo! ID xxxxxxxxx @yahoo.com=20 Your POP and SMTP settings - incoming.yahoo.verizon.net - outgoing.yahoo.verizon.net ) [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:24 PM] -- Ann Click on forgot password link follow the instructions. Answer the Secret Question then reset it again. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:25 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx I have tried to sign in using the password but cannot. My home page has also been changed back to the verizon/yahoo page, and my email is still inked . Let me do a system restore and come back online to see if that helps. If you say OK then I will sign off and then sign back in with the same ticket # [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:27 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx It says my user ID does not exist. I have tried it with and without the @verizon.net [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:29 PM] -- Ann I checked the account in our data base we do not see any issues with the account as been terminated. The account is open and active. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:30 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx I am going to do a system restore and will sign back in on the same ticket # [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 5:30 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx I am stepping away and will be back shortly. [ Thu, Dec 15, 2005 7:45 PM] -- xxxxxxxxx The System Restore did not help. I am still denied access to your e-mail server. I was able to change my password and am recognized when I log in and am greeted by name, but when I try to access the e-mail I get a message that says I do not have access privileges. I am also not able to download e-mail to Outlook, and I have changed the password in the accounts tab to match the change with verizon. Question, what is the "control pad" and where is it? What do I do now to get access to my e-mail? The "enter network password" dialog box keeps asking for the password, and it cycles through each e-mail account on its own. The short answer is that you can't. Once you have chosen Yahoo as your portal your email page will always be different. There is nothing we can do to change this. The only option would be to switch portals to the MSN which does not = change your email page. You are eligible to do this 90 days after going to Yahoo. I see that you didn't get the Yahoo until yesterday. This means you can switch to MSN in 89 days. No, I guess what I am going to have to do is save most of my C drive to an external hard drive and do a fresh install of Windows XP This is worse than any virus I have ever had. Reinstalling Windows will not allow your portal page to change. This is something that is stored on the server and linked to you account. Every time you sign into a Verizon or Yahoo page your Verizon/Yahoo page will come up. This is the point of a portal. What I can do right now is check your outlook for you. Please do, as I would like to be able to use it. Also, the network at my place of employment can go back and do a system restore on my computer at work and that resets my computer back to its previous state. You do not have this ability?? Doing a system restore will take your computer back to before you has the Yahoo which will get rid of the Yahoo software, but our server has changed. As soon as you accepted the terms of service for the Verizon/yahoo your profile on the server changed and a restore wont get that back because it is different on our server. So there is literally nothing I can do?? Basically no. As I stated earlier you can switch to the MSN portal in 90 days, which does not change any of your settings or your email page. It operates in a different way. Then go ahead and check Outlook for me and see if you can get it back online. Okay. The email address listed there is not actually your verizon email is it? It was before yesterday. I don't know what it is now. It is not working because the wrong servers are in there; they have changed with the Yahoo. Actually I had three. The default was xxxxxxxxx @verizon.net. okay? Will the other two need to be changed also? Yes I will do that now. That keeps coming up which it shouldn't. This is something that has to do with the software I will check another setting When this keeps coming up it means the password or username are wrong. Have you changed the passwords at all? Not those two. Only the first primary one. You may need to change the passwords to sign in and then change them back. We can do that now if you want. Ok. What is the control pad this page speaks about down at the bottom/? It is now nonexistent software. The password for this account on the page can be changed, but we also have to change the passwords for the other 2 accounts. Ok I have already changed this one go ahead and navigate to the other two. Please type in the new PW you set for this account and we can test and see if it went through ok and then well change the PW for the other account Because the password was typed incorrectly a few times it is asking for the text letters. This is the one that you just set. Do you want the xxxxxxxxx @verizon.net What now? Lets try another email address This means that you are typing something incorrectly I don't type anything wrong that time. But I will try again if you want. Am I doing something else wrong? Well the email address you had just typed in was a different one than the address you had originally changed the password for. This one? The email address that you changed the password for originally we want to type it in on the page I will show you now. This one? --------------------------------- At this point the tech abruptly ended the support session with no notice at all. I am left with a screwed up ISP with no possibility of fixing it short of getting a new provider. The following is the customer satisfaction response I left. ---------------------------------- The tech was unable to resolve my problem due to flaws in your services. I am seriously considering canceling my acct and switching to another provider. I foolishly installed the Verizon/Yahoo package and found I did not like it. Now I am unable to get rid of it and go back to two separate programs. Not even a fresh install of Windows XP will solve my problem, as the fault is in your server. There is no way to resolve this problem short of terminating my service with Verizon. This is worse than any virus I have ever had, and is the most unsatisfactory experience I have ever had regarding my use with a computer in any way. I intend to post this problem on every web site I can to warn others from making the same mistake I made. The tech finally gave up and just signed off without warning or even a goodbye. This has been and will be horrible for some time. [TELECOM Digesst Editor's Note: Well, that will teach you to mess around with a Yahoo/Verizon combination. About three or four years ago when I still had Southwestern Bell DSL I was suckered into combining a Yahoo account with the SBC DSL and had about the same thing happen. I do not remember it exactly any longer, but I wound up changing my name on DSL amd also taking a different name on Yahoo. By doing that, the server began to ignore all the stuff under my original name, and with my new name on both systems (Yahoo and SWB-DSL) I did _not_ make that same mistake again of trying to combine them, no matter how many times the smiling lady on SBC wrote me promotional letters telling me how much I -- as a valued customer -- was missed. What you might try is opening a totally new account -- or at least a new user name with Verizon (and Yahoo, if you want that account also); never let them see or hear of the old names. Also, on your XP you might try looking in the 'documents and settings' folder and find the profile it created for you at some point. Try renaming that 'profile.old' or similar and powering down, then logging back in. Your XP will not be able to find the profile it had for you, so it will have to construct a new one. When you get back on, and a new profile has been created, then try exporting your address books and other things. Let us know how it works out for you. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 19:35:06 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) wrote: >> The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but >> among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not >> particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained >> around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ... > I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly > great". 42 seems like a very small sample, but I don't know if it's a difference that would be considered "statistically significant" or not. I expect it would also depend on questions like, "how many facts are there in an entry, anyhow?", "does the wiki entry contain more facts than the Britannica?", "are these results representative of topics other than science?", and "are the results different for topics that are relatively static, vs. topics in areas where knowledge is rapidly changing?" And note that there was *no* difference in accuracy re "serious" ("author doesn't have a clue") errors. There's far too many questions that the study doesn't answer. But I'm thinking it doesn't show a particularly great difference (which did surprise me a bit). In any case, nobody should ever expect definitive answers from an encyclopedia. Dave ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 01:58:58 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) writes: > In article , Dave Garland > wrote: >> The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but >> among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not >> particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained >> around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ... > I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly > great". I'm shocked that finding "four major errors" (out of 50) [as stated in the original article] in both Wikipedia _AND_ in the Encyclopeadia Brittanica hasn't led to people ripping the latter to shreds. The EB is supposedly a solid and accurate reference work. Yet here it's got an eight percent "major error" rate. (And the count of 123 less serious ones, while better than the 162 in Wiki, is very ugly as well). _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 18:04:06 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Fri, 16 Dec 2005, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > That's true -- I know nothing of that "whole world" that makes the > Internet actually work. Unfortunately, when explanations are > provided, they are very technical and loaded with acronyms or buzz > words I don't understand. Unfortunately, I don't know of any good pedagogical resource that explains "what makes the Internet actually work". Nor, for that matter, can I think of any single person who can answer more than a small portion of that question. I know that I can't. > It is entirely possible that the cost of redoing the Internet so it is > properly secured in the first place may result in such savings that it > is worth the effort. That may be so, but the time needed to accomplish that task is likely to exceed the lifetime of anyone reading this newsgroup. The current Internet, as hardware, software, and protocols, is the result of 35 or so years of the labor of thousands of hardware, software, and protocol engineers. >> Just take a look at how long IPv6 has taken, and is likely to continue >> to take. > What is "IPv6"? IPv6 stands for "Internet Protocol, version 6". The current IP, which has been in place since the transition to TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, is IPv4. A simplistic explanation of IP is that it is the protocol that does the addressing. The 32-bit values, expressed as four 8-bit values such as 10.44.105.69, are IPv4 format addresses. The problem with IPv4 is that the Internet is running out of 32 bit addresses. IPv6 addresses are four times longer: 128 bits. IPv6 was adopted a decade ago as the "next generation" of IP, and we are in a period of transition from IPv4 to IPv6. Supposedly, all US federal agencies will be IPv6 by 2008, and IPv4 shall finally die in 2025. Many people consider these dates to be optimistic. Although most modern operating systems support IPv6, there are many many older systems which are IPv4 only and will never be upgraded. Many of these systems are "mission critical" systems and are not easily replaced. Take a look in any large enterprise and see what does the payroll. It's a jaw-dropper. Now, remember that many of these system were patched for Y2K but not replaced. > The government can and will tax anything it can get its mitts on > unless the public violently objects. That's high on the "well, duh!" list of truisms... :-) > Anyway, the government does wants to tax Internet transactions, and > they will find a way, regardless of whatever technology is used. You can be certain that any effort to redo the Internet will be required to "fix" all the "design flaws" which get in the way of Internet taxation. To the designers of the past, these were features, not bugs. You may not remember the war between the ISO protocol suite and TCP/IP in the 1980s. Basically, ISO was designed by governments and commercial organizations; TCP/IP was designed by researchers and hackers. TCP/IP won because it worked and was available then and there, not because it was tax-friendly. There are a lot of people in the ISO camp who say "I told you so". Then again, if ISO had won, we probably would not be having this discussion since Internet would remain a toy of the elite. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #567 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Dec 18 02:00:23 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id B939514DD5; Sun, 18 Dec 2005 02:00:22 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #568 Message-Id: <20051218070022.B939514DD5@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 02:00:22 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.3 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 18 Dec 2005 02:03:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 568 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Obituary: Jack Anderson, Newspaper Columnist Dies at 83 (Connie Cass) Congress: "Merry Chrismas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs" (M Solomon) Physically Protecting the Local Loop Network? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (ThorLancelot Simon) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (timeOday) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Robert Bonomi) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (John McHarry) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cell Phone to Land Line (Lisa Hancock) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (Robert Bonomi) USO Asks For Christmas Help (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: Connie Cass Subject: Obituary: Pulitzer Winning Columnist Jack Anderson Dies Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 14:06:55 -0600 By CONNIE CASS, Associated Press Jack Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning muckraking columnist who struck fear into the hearts of corrupt or secretive politicians, inspiring Nixon operatives to plot his murder, died Saturday. He was 83. Anderson died at his home in Bethesda, Md., of complications from Parkinson's disease, said one of his daughters, Laurie Anderson-Bruch. Anderson gave up his syndicated Washington Merry-Go-Round column at age 81 in July 2004, after Parkinson's disease left him too ill to continue. He had been hired by the column's founder, Drew Pearson, in 1947. The column broke a string of big scandals, from Eisenhower assistant Sherman Adams taking a vicuna coat and other gifts from a wealthy industrialist in 1958 to the Reagan administration's secret arms-for-hostages deal with Iran in 1986. It appeared in some 1,000 newspapers in its heyday. Anderson took over the column after Pearson's death in 1969, working with a changing cast of co-authors and staff over the years. A devout Mormon, Anderson looked upon journalism as a calling. Considered one of the fathers of investigative reporting, Anderson was renowned for his tenacity, aggressive techniques and influence in the nation's capital. "He was a bridge for the muckrakers of a century ago and the crop that came out of Watergate," said Mark Feldstein, Anderson's biographer and a journalism professor at George Washington University. "He held politicians to a level of accountability in an era where journalists were very deferential to those in power." Anderson won a 1972 Pulitzer Prize for reporting that the Nixon administration secretly tilted toward Pakistan in its war with India. He also published the secret transcripts of the Watergate grand jury. Such scoops earned him a spot on President Nixon's "enemies list." Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy has described how he and other Nixon political operatives planned ways to silence Anderson permanently -- such as slipping him LSD or staging a fatal car crash -- but the White House nixed the idea. Over the years, Anderson was threatened by the Mafia and investigated by numerous government agencies trying to trace the sources of his leaks. In 1989, police investigated him for smuggling a gun into the U.S. Capitol to demonstrate security lapses. Known for his toughness on the trail of a story, he was also praised for personal kindness. Anderson's son Kevin said that when his father's reporting led to the arrest of some involved in the Watergate scandal, he aided their families financially. "I don't like to hurt people, I really don't like it at all," Anderson said in 1972. "But in order to get a red light at the intersection, you sometimes have to have an accident." Anderson began his newspaper career as a 12-year-old writing about scouting activity and community fairs in the outskirts of Salt Lake City, Utah. His first investigative story exposed unlawful polygamy in his church. He was as a civilian war correspondent during World War II and later, while in the Army, wrote for the military paper Stars and Stripes. After he went to work with Pearson, the team took on communist-hunting Sen. Joseph McCarthy, exposed Connecticut Sen. Thomas Dodd's misuse of campaign money, and revealed the CIA's attempt to use the Mafia to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Anderson also wrote more than a dozen books. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's in 1986. In a speech a decade later, he made light of the occasional, uncontrollable shaking the disease caused. "The doctors tell me it's Parkinson's," he said. "I suspect that 52 years in Washington caused it." He is survived by his wife, Olivia, and nine children. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html Other news headlines and Associated Press Audio News is at: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 14:14:06 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Congress: "Merry Chrismas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs" Congress: "Merry Chrismas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs" Alex Curtis Public Knowledge December 16, 2005 http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/19 The House Judiciary Committee today introduced a bill (HR 4569) to close the analog hole. http://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/hr4569 Here's what we had to say about the draft version of the bill. http://www.publicknowledge.org/news/analysis/content-protection-in-the-digital-age The government is proposing that devices (consumer electronics, computers, software) manufactured after a certain date respond to a copy-protection signal or watermark in a digital video stream, and pass along that signal when converting the video to analog. The same goes for analog video streams, to pass on the protection to the digital video outputs. The technology Congress is proposing (VEIL) is derived from one that originated with assorted interactive Batman toys that allowed the toys to respond to Batman television shows or videos. How cool-at least for toys. So, essentially, the government wants your future TV, TiVo, computer, cell phone, Final Cut Pro, (input your favorite analog signal viewing / converting device here) to respond to the Bat Signal. There are some details in the legislation that have yet to be fully understood, concerning protection of content that is supported by business models ( prerecorded media, video on demand, pay-per-view, subscription-on-demand) and "undefined" business models. And much of the process has to be approved, not by the FCC, but by the Patent and Trademark Office. Why the USPTO? Not because they're an "expert agency" like the FCC, but because the bill was introduced in the Judiciary Committee, which doesn't necessarily have jurisdiction over the FCC. Perhaps needless to say, Public Knowledge is against government mandated DRM and other similar tech mandates. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Metwork? Date: 17 Dec 2005 12:20:53 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com In reading about the Bell System interconnect debates of the 1960s and 1970s, one recognized concern* was that faulty customer-provided equipment could screw up other subscribers by emitting high voltages or crosstalk interference. Today customers own all their equipment that is supposed to be certified. But what happens if the customer alters the equipment or it is defective? What happens if a high voltage is sent out accidently over a telephone line (ie house current, either 110 or 220, or ringing current meant for an extension telephone of a PBX)? Further, is there any kind of high powered signal that could be sent over a phone line that would result in crosstalk or service disruption to the neighbors or other kinds of RF interference? *These concerns were studied and confirmed by the FCC and technical consultants. Other concerns were service responsibility -- would the common carrier get blamed for problems by customer equipment, and cream skimming -- would CPE hurt the principle in effect in those days of universal telephone service and universal rate averaging by eliminating cross-subsidy. As it turned out, competitors to the Bell System did do cream-skimming, yet the Bell System was denied the chance to adjust its rates (HI/LO) accordingly. ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 04:19:31 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Danny Burstein wrote: > I'm shocked that finding "four major errors" (out of 50) [as stated in > the original article] in both Wikipedia _AND_ in the Encyclopeadia > Brittanica hasn't led to people ripping the latter to shreds. Well, it's generally frowned upon to cite it (or similar works) in scholarly writing at anything but the most elementary level. The same kind of scorn should be applied to writers who cite Wikipedia; unfortunately, sometimes it is not. 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 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 11:42:25 -0700 From: timeOday Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Danny Burstein wrote: > In tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot > Simon) writes: >> In article , Dave Garland >> wrote: >>> The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but >>> among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not >>> particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained >>> around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ... >> I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly >> great". > I'm shocked that finding "four major errors" (out of 50) [as stated in > the original article] in both Wikipedia _AND_ in the Encyclopeadia > Brittanica hasn't led to people ripping the latter to shreds. > The EB is supposedly a solid and accurate reference work. Yet here > it's got an eight percent "major error" rate. It's not EB that's out of whack, it's your expectations. Even recent studies of peer reviewed scientific papers in top journals found significant error rates: http://www.nationalreviewofmedicine.com/issue/2004_06_30/clinical07_13.html "No fewer than 11.6% and 11.1% of the statistical results published in Nature and the British Medical Journal (BMJ), respectively, during 2001 were wrong. A whopping 38% of the papers in Nature contained at least one such error, as did 25% in the BMJ. Of course, these error-finding reviews aren't perfect either. Had a different group of experts evaluated those same 50 EB articles, they would have found some number of errors different than 8, maybe more and maybe less. And at some point they'd get down to arguing over which were "errors," and which were likely true but not certain, and which were true but misleading to the public, and on and on... And finally they would run out of energy and time, and try to shape their findings into something comprehensible, useful, and as informative and accurate as possible. That's how research works. Nobody has a direct line on The Truth. The harder you look, the more you find. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 00:22:38 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > In article , Dave Garland > wrote: >> The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but >> among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not >> particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained >> around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ... > I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly > great". I'm astonished that something that can be explained by "jitter" of "plus/minus one count" in 'ordinal' numeric data, would be considered anything _other_ than "not particularly great". Well, unless they do not really understand statistical analysis, that is. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 03:27:57 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net On Fri, 16 Dec 2005 16:30:26 +0000, Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > In article , Dave Garland > wrote: >> The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but >> among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not >> particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained >> around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ... > I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly > great". I saw a followup to that that looked at the length of the articles. The Wikipedia articles were longer, which slightly more than closed the gap. Wikipedia has more vulnerabilities than a traditional edited collection like Britannica, but it contains a rather amazing amount of information. Of course, no secondary source should be trusted very far. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: 17 Dec 2005 12:06:56 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mark Crispin wrote: > Take a look in any large enterprise and see what does the payroll. > It's a jaw-dropper. Now, remember that many of these system were > patched for Y2K but not replaced. Good example. I know of some large complex enterprise-wide mainframe systems developed in the 1980s at a cost of a few million dollars (the former "Big Eight" consulting firms made out great). Anyway, these systems are under consideration for redevelopment away from "green on glass" to GUI to make for an easier user interface and additional functions. Estimates to rebuild these systems to do more are coming at less than the original development price, and that ignores the big inflation of the 1980s. What this means is that computer development productivity has increased tremendously since 1980. It's not hard to see why, so many things are "canned" instead of "roll your own" and developer's tools are much more powerful and user friendly. Computer hardware is so much cheaper that programmers don't have to worry about bits and bytes as they did back then. (For example, mainframers generally need not worry about packed-decimal or binary fields as once was mandatory.) An enterprise wide mainframe in 1980 could have as little as 8 megabytes of "RAM" and maybe 1 gigabyte of disk. Today a wrist-watch has that (well, not quite, but you see what I mean.) Likewise with communications, in 1980 you were lucky to be using one shared 9600 line and you had to keep your data transmission packets small to avoid flooding out the line. Developers don't have to spend time squeezing stuff in as they did in the past. So yes, redoing the Internet network won't be an easy job, but it certainly won't be the sum of the parts that created through now. Geez, back in ARPANET (?) days someone had to first fill first out paperwork before making a long distance phone call to his counterpart, they don't have to bother with that day. Further, the Internet consists of various component, for example, email and WWW. They could be redeveloped independently of each other. When rebuilding a highway, they don't shut the old one down and rebuild it all at once, they do it in stages so traffic can keep on flowing. > Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Actually, it does. Scientific theories don't become "facts" until an idea is published and debated among scientists, who test out the theories in their own labs and will debate them. Perhaps it is not "public" debate, but an open debate is vital to science. There is a big gray area between "science" and "art". Certain scientific principles can be proven and yield predictable consistent results every time. But other scientifiic principles yield only statistical probability. That is, in 100 experiments, a certain result is expected to appear so many times, but an any individual experiment can't be predicted. That can have great impact depending on the application, for example, medicine. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Cell Phone to Land Line Date: 17 Dec 2005 12:10:17 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com John Levine wrote: > (A landline phone does no coding at all, cell phones do vast > amounts.) Yet cell phones are increasingly tiny (see TV ad with woman easily squeezing in her cell phone into the pocket of very tight jeans), while land-line phones, even contemporary ones, aren't that small. Thinking about that, do they make cordless land line phones the same tiny size as cell phones? I'd figure since there's less to do that should be easy. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 00:12:01 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , James Carlson wrote: > bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: >>> - NAT in use, and load balancing on a per-connection basis. This >>> automatically balances the return traffic as well, as everyone on >>> the net thinks you're actually two separate independent IP nodes. >> NO, it does _Not_. You cannot change the NAT translation _during_ a >> 'session' (a single TCP connection). And if the 'incoming' data >> characteristics change radically _during_ that session, the 'balance' >> goes out the window. > What part of "per-connection" was unclear? Do you note that the above problem identification specifies a *single* *connection*? What part of "single connection" is unclear to you? Do you understand that 'per connection' balancing does not work when: 1) the characteristics of the traffic are _unknown_ at the time of connection initiation, and 2) the characteristics of the traffic *change* _during_ that single connection. The rest of the problem description that you chose not to quote gave a concrete example of the problem -- using a first user with a streaming audio stream, and a bunch of other people then doing something as simple as having multiple HTTP requests ("keepalive" protocol option) over a *single* connection. If you don't like that, consider 'passive' FTP -- where where a number of users first pull a small 'readme' file, and then (still within the _same_ connection), a multi-megabyte binary. Without 'co-operation' from the other end of the links, the 'per-connection' approach _is_ the 'best' you can do. And in the average case, it does work FAIRLY well. In pathological cases, however, it can degrade to barely more than the capacity of -one- circuit. Those pathological cases are relatively rare, but they *do*exist*. And, when you get into one, performance gets =really= poor, for comparatively _long_ times. ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: USO Asking For Christmas Help Date: Sat, 17 Dec 2005 23:37:14 -0600 Quite a few years ago, I did volunteer work for the USO -- the United Service Organizations -- in their military person's center in downtown Chicago, and also at the VA Hospital. Although the VA Hospitals are maintained by the United States Government, the USO receives absolutely *no* federal funding. They depend entirely on private citizens for support. And this year the USO has a huge task awaiting them at the Christmas season. Over 400,000 of our troops will be stuck in overseas places, such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea, and other spots. For the first time since World War 2, American troops are in several places at once. In a lot of the places where troops are stationed, the natives don't care at all about Christmas, Kwanzaa, or Hanukkah. So the USO has decided that every single one of these 400,000 young men and women who won't be 'home by Christmasn' know they have not been forgotten. Its hard to imagine -- unless you have been in that situation yourself -- what it is like to spend your Holidays in a dusty desert or on a barren mountainside. You're away from your freinds and family. You can't hug your kids or your spouse, or hear their laughter, or share a few drinks with your buddies. The holiday season is absolutely the worst time of the year to be at the front lines. More than one service member either tries or is successful in committing suicide. For many of them, just a simple wors of 'thanks, we appreciate you doing what you can ' makes a world of difference; sometimes in their sanity. I know from my volunteer experience with USO during the Vietnam era how much it helps these guys just knowing that someone cares. Your gift to help the USO help our troops is really critical. There are ways we in the telecom industry can especially help. Operation Phone Home: The USO in cooperation with telephone companies provide 'American phone service' to the troops in the form of prepaid calling cards to use at special telephones rigged to bring 'American' operators on the line as needed. USO sees to it that everyone who wants a calling card gets one. Can you help? Cyber Canteens: Years ago, USO gave coffee and doughnuts for free, which they still do, but now they also provide public computer stations so troops can 'surf the web', send/recieve email from family and friends, read newsgroups, etc. They have these both at fixed locations, and at 'mobile spots which travel around as the troops travel around. They are called ATV's, and take the coffee, soda, ice cream *and computer terminals* to the troops for their use. The computer stations are operated over satellite links, to connections provided by a few ISP's back in the United States as a courtesy. Can you help? Of course, USO still has their entertainment tours with movie stars and television personalities who donate their time and many other functions going on as well. But where you could really be of help is with the phone calling cards and the Cyber Canteens. Why don't you send them a check today, and if you wish, ask them to earmark your money for telephone calling cards or the Cyber Canteen, or the mobile 'ATV' canteens, so the guys can stay on line and stay in touch. Of course, USO gifts are tax-deductable, 501-c-3 gifts per IRS. United Service Organizations (or USO for short) World Headquarters PO Box 96860 Washington, DC 20077-7677 Thanks very much for taking the time to read this special appeal. Patrick Townson ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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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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 #568 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 19 17:26:23 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3747214EFC; Mon, 19 Dec 2005 17:26:23 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #569 Message-Id: <20051219222623.3747214EFC@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 17:26:23 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.4 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 19 Dec 2005 17:29:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 569 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Make Way, Mainstream TV: Mobile Video is on the Move (Monty Solomon) The Plot Thickens/Now it's Not Enough to Watch Favorite TV (Monty Solomon) Patent Review Pending on BlackBerry (Monty Solomon) ReplayTV to Launch TV Recording Software For PCs (Monty Solomon) Time Warner to Sell 5% AOL Stake to Google for $1 Billion (Monty Solomon) Taken to a New Place, by a TV in the Palm (Monty Solomon) When PayPal Becomes the Back Office, Too (Monty Solomon) Cellular-News for Monday 19th December 2005 (Cellular-News) Report: Worldwide DSL Subscriptions Soar (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (Seth Breidbart) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Seth Breidbart) Re: FTC Do Not Call List (Mark Crispin) Re: Verizon/Yahoo ISP Service from Hell (harold@hallikainen.com) Re: Obituary: Pulitzer Winning Columnist Jack Anderson Dies (Lisa Hancock) Re: Congress: Merry Chrismas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs (Hancock) Re: Cell Phone to Land Line (DevilsPGD) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Metwork? (John C. Fowler) Re: USO Asking For Christmas Help (Howard S. Wharton) 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: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 16:00:56 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Make Way, Mainstream TV: Mobile Video is on the Move By Soctt Kirsner The biggest problem Todd Boes has with his new video iPod is prying it away from his two oldest kids, ages 4 and 6. "They'd much rather take the iPod up to their room and watch it than watch the big TV," says Boes, vice president of marketing at Maven Networks, a Cambridge start-up. They're partial to the Disney Channel hits "That's So Raven" and "The Suite Life of Zach and Cody," available from Apple's online store for $1.99 an episode. Boes -- when he can get his hands on the device -- watches episodes of "Lost," music videos from U2 and the Beastie Boys, and the odd video podcast, a low-budget snippet of personal video. But as holiday shoppers evaluate Apple's new $299 video-capable iPod, the question hanging over the entertainment industry is whether the iPod can do for motion pictures what it did for music. Does its arrival signal a transition from the era of scheduled TV, DVDs, and videotapes to the age of Internet downloads? Apple announced earlier this month that its customers have purchased (or downloaded for free) more than three million videos from its iTunes Music Store since October, when videos were added to the inventory. While the company hasn't divulged how many video-capable iPods, with their matchbook-sized screens, it has sold, the device's arrival has ignited real curiosity -- and debate -- in the worlds of TV, film, and especially home-grown video. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2005/12/18/make_way_mainstream_tv_mobile_video_is_on_the_move/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 16:08:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Plot Thickens/Now it's Not Enough to Watch Your Favorite TV Now it's not enough to watch your favorite TV show -- you may soon have to pay to get the full story By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff Madly in love with "24," or "Invasion," or "Prison Break," or "Family Guy"? Then get ready to spend more, a lot more, time with it. In the coming months, you and your TV addiction are going to be reeled into an expanded "environment" of your favorite network show, one that may require a cover charge for entry into certain exclusive zones. You'll be invited to visit characters' blogs at MySpace.com, or pay for mobile phone episodes (known as mobisodes), or buy DVD packages and video games containing new and additional plot information. Your once-simple affair with your TV "story" could have as much to do with your PC, your cellphone, and your DVD player as it does with your TV set. In other words, your relationship is starting to get complicated. Network TV is becoming only the first step in what is known as a "TV series." It's becoming an entry point to show-o-spheres, where you not only watch "24" on Mondays on Fox but you purchase a "24" DVD set that contains clues to the season's big mysteries. You not only watch "Lost" on Wednesdays on ABC but you check into the weekly podcast to hear, say, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje talk about playing Eko. You don't just laugh at "The Office" on Tuesdays; you laugh at Dwight's blog entries on the NBC site and on MySpace. Recently, "Invasion" even included a plot in which paranoid Dave was abducted because of his blog, which actually exists on ABC's site. And Neil Patrick Harris's Barney on " How I Met Your Mother" frequently refers to his blog, which is on the CBS site. Extras such as commentary and deleted scenes have been with us for years on DVDs, and of course T-shirts and knickknacks are Marketing 101. But now timely information and integral plot and character developments are also becoming available outside of the televised mothership. Last week, for example, Fox announced plans to create new episodes of its animated hit "Family Guy" exclusively for the Web next year, for a fee. http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2005/12/18/the_plot_thickens/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 17:22:08 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Patent Review Pending on BlackBerry Case threatens e-mail service By Bloomberg | December 18, 2005 WASHINGTON -- The US Patent and Trademark Office said it would try to complete a review with 'special dispatch' of patents that could result in the shutdown of Research In Moti on Ltd.'s BlackBerry e-mail device in the United States. The patents are owned by NTP Ltd., a licensing company from Arlington, Va., that won a 2001 patent-infringement lawsuit against Research In Motion. The patent office initiated the review in 2002 after James Rogan, then its director, received letters of complaint from Congress about the possible shutdown because of a jury verdict. Research In Motion later joined the request. US District Court Judge James Spencer, who presided over the 2002 trial in Richmond, has declined to delay proceedings on a possible injunction while waiting for the patent office to act on the review, called a reexamination. The agency has issued ''nonfinal" rejections of three NTP patents, including one found to be infringed. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/12/18/patent_review_pending_on_blackberry/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 18:16:04 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: ReplayTV to Launch TV Recording Software for PCs LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Digital video recording pioneer ReplayTV plans to announce on Monday it will start selling software to allow personal computers to tune in and record live television next year in a deal with Hauppauge Digital's Hauppauge Computer Works. Hauppauge's WinTV-PVR tuner-encoder card, which lets PCs tune in and record live television, will be sold with ReplayTV software starting next year in North America. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/12/18/replaytv_to_launch_tv_recording_software_for_pcs/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 09:30:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Time Warner to Sell 5% AOL Stake to Google for $1 Billion By SAUL HANSELL and RICHARD SIKLOS Rebuffing aggressive overtures from Microsoft, Time Warner has agreed to sell a 5 percent stake in America Online to Google for $1 billion in cash as part of an expanded partnership between AOL, once the dominant company on the Internet, and Google, the current online king. At stake in this battle was leadership in Internet advertising, which is a growing threat to other media companies. The loss is a blow to Microsoft, which had sought AOL as a partner in its advertising venture to undercut Google, its potent rival. Though Google is only seven years old, its lucrative search advertising business and its technical prowess could enable it to offer consumers free software and services that would directly attack Microsoft's core software business. While the terms of the proposed five-year deal are largely set, it will not be final until it is ratified Tuesday by the Time Warner board, an executive briefed on the talks said. Google has agreed to give AOL ads special placement on its site, something it has not done before. Until now, Google prided itself on its auction system for ads, which treated small businesses on an equal footing with its largest customers. By agreeing to change its business practices for this deal, Google fends off what could have been a significant challenge from a combination of AOL and Microsoft and cements its position as far and away the largest seller of search advertising. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/17/technology/17aol.html?ex=1292475600&en=159839bd461e22fa&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 09:32:26 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Taken to a New Place, by a TV in the Palm By DAVID CARR Last Tuesday night, I took my place in the bus queue for the commute home. Further up the line, I saw a neighbor -- a smart, funny woman I would normally love to share the dismal ride with. I ducked instead, racing to the back of the bus because season one of the ABC mystery-adventure "Lost" was waiting on my iPod. Claire was clearly about to go into labor and John Locke, the sage of the show, had been acting funny of late. The portable show meant my commute, which I have always hated with the force of 10,000 suns, had become a little "me" time. Much was made of how silly it was for Apple to believe people would watch television on a 2.5-inch screen. But consumers have downloaded three million video programs from iTunes since the new video iPod became available in October. What gives? The new iPod is its own little addictive medium. Its limitations -- a viewing experience that requires headphones and a hand-held screen -- create a level of intimacy that arcs to television in its infancy, when the glowing object was so marvelous it begat silent reverie. You now stare at bejeweled color and crisp lines rendered in miniature. The ability to download programming of my choosing gives me a new kind of private, restorative time, a virtual third place between a frantic workplace and a home brimming with activity. But I feel a little dirty. As a print guy, I have always thought that magazines and newspapers were the ultimate in portable media -- I even learned that fancy subway fold so I could read broadsheet newspapers without bonking my seatmate in the nose to get to the next page. And if I am living in a little world of my own making, it is not doing a great deal for my connection to the world at large. Many times on the train or bus, before the new iPod, I would run stuff over in my mind -- doing actual thinking as opposed to the data processing I do throughout the day and night. My commute has gone from a communal and occasionally ruminative day-part to a time when I stare at a television remote control that happens to have a picture embedded in it. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/weekinreview/18carr.html?ex=1292562000&en=ba96d5db754248ff&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 01:47:49 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: When PayPal Becomes the Back Office, Too By JULIE BICK December 18, 2005 WHEN C. J. Liu bills her clients, all it takes is a few mouse clicks, and for the most part their payments end up in her bank account a few days later. She does not need an assistant to send out invoices or to track accounts payable and receivable. She never has to wait for checks to arrive in the mail, and she does not have to visit the bank. Like many others who run small businesses, Ms. Liu, who offers business and personal coaching in Seattle, is a PayPal customer. From its inception seven years ago, PayPal, based in San Jose, Calif., has grown to service more than 86.6 million accounts in 55 countries, and it expects to process $25 billion in money transfers this year. About 70 percent of the payment volume comes through PayPal's parent company, eBay, and is used to buy and sell items on the Internet. But more and more, small businesses and sole proprietors outside of eBay are using PayPal as their back offices. Merchant services is "one of our biggest areas of focus for growing the business," said Sara Bettencourt, a spokeswoman for PayPal. Ms. Liu can send e-mail invoices to her clients by clicking on the PayPal Web site. The clients -- who, at Ms. Liu's request, have also set up PayPal accounts by registering bank account or credit card information -- click on a button embedded in the message to charge the sum to their credit cards, and the money is transferred to Ms. Liu's PayPal account. Along the way, Ms. Liu receives confirmation when the bill has been paid and can review the status of her accounts receivable online. Based on her business volume, less than $3,000 a month, Ms. Liu pays 2.8 percent of her total sales, as well as 30 cents a transaction, for this service. "It saves me the hassle of the billing side," she said, "so I can concentrate on my client work." Many of the newest and smallest businesses find that using PayPal is more cost-effective than turning directly to a credit card company to process transactions. A new business may be charged much more by credit card companies because it may not have much sales volume or credit history, said Avivah Litan, a research vice president at Gartner Inc. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/18/business/yourmoney/18paypal.html?ex=1292562000&en=973e3a66383666f2&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Monday 19th December 2005 Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 09:16:24 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[3G News]] 3G Research Program for the Middle-East http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15297.php The Qatar based telecoms operator, Qtel has announced a joint collaboration with Texas A&M University at Qatar (TAMUQ), University of Qatar (UQ) and the College of the North Atlantic at Qatar (CNA-Q) to conduct research and studies into 3G technologi... Vodafone Launches 3G in Hungary http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15299.php Vodafone Hungary has launched its 3G services in Hungary. The first service from Vodafone will be high speed internet access on the new 3G network with the Vodafone Mobile Connect 3G data card. Attila Vitai, Vodafone Hungary 's CEO said: "Vodafone's ... [[Financial News]] Sweden's AaF Takes Over Operations At Ericsson Design Center http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15275.php Swedish technical consultant Aangpannefoereningen AB Friday said it will take over the operations at the Ericsson Design Center in Lysekil on the Swedish west coast from Telefon AB LM Ericsson. ... Cablecom Starts Mobile Service With TDC Unit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15276.php Swiss cable television operator Cablecom Holdings AG Friday launched a prepaid mobile phone offering, further heating up competition with telephone incumbent Swisscom AG. ... Sprint Nextel To Buy Affiliate Enterprise Communications For $98 Million http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15279.php Sprint Nextel Corp. agreed to acquire affiliate carrier Enterprise Communications Partnership for $98 million, including the assumption of debt. ... Sprint Nextel To Buy Velocita;Sees Closing First Half 06 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15281.php Sprint Nextel Corp. agreed to acquire Velocita Wireless through a stock purchase agreement in an effort to add spectrum capacity. ... Russia's MTS ups stake in regional mobile operator to 100% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15283.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems, or MTS, increased its stake in mobile operator Telesot-Alania to 100% from 52.5%, MTS said Friday. ... Nokia Opens New Office in India http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15289.php Nokia has announced that it is to locate its new Nokia Global Networks Solutions Center in Chennai, India. The Solutions Center will perform network operation tasks for selected operator customers in the Asia Pacific region as well as Europe, the Mid... [[Handsets News]] Vodafone Group Japan Unit May Procure Handsets From Samsung http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15274.php PREMIUM - Vodafone Group PLC's Vodafone KK unit in Japan is considering procurement of third-generation mobile handsets based on W-CDMA technology from Samsung Electronics Co., a Vodafone KK spokesman said Friday. ... [[Legal News]] Second NTP Patent Rejected In Non-Final Action http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15273.php The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a second NTP Inc. patent in what it described as a non-final action. ... EU Criticizes Watchdogs On Mobile Roaming Charge http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15278.php The European Commission Friday criticized French and other national telephone regulators for their failure to crack down on possible excessive charges for mobile phone roaming. ... Russia's MTS says Kyrgyzstan's Bitel GSM operation restored http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15280.php Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel has restored operations of its GSM network, MTS said in a statement Friday. MTS has recently bought a 51% stake in Bitel. ... Kyrgyzstan's Bitel says 180 employees refused to come to work http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15284.php About 180 employees of Kyrgyzstan's largest mobile operator Bitel did not come to work Friday as they were afraid that their lives may be in danger, Bitel said in a statement on its official Web site Friday. ... Patent Office Rejects 3rd NTP Patent In Non Final Action http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15286.php The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected a third NTP Inc. patent in another non-final office action. ... Contactless Payment Phones Tested in USA http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15286.php A group of companies have announced an advanced Near Field Communication (NFC) trial for mobile phone applications including contactless payments, mobile content and premium arena services at Philips Arena in Atlanta, USA. The trial is the first larg... [[Mobile Content News]] 51% of UK's Frequent Internet Users Are Interested in Mobile Banking http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15290.php One in four users would consider switching banks if they were offered free mobile banking services and 51% would be interested in using a mobile banking service according to a survey of 2,127 UK online users, conducted by Forrester Custom Research an... [[Network Contracts News]] South Africa Gets Push-2-Talk http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15292.php South Africa, Vodacom has launched the first Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) service to the South African business market. The communication experience of PoC can best be described as a walkie-talkie or two way radio communication experience, which ... [[Offbeat News]] Two SIMs, One Phone Number http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15291.php Singapore's M1 is launching a service that enables its customers to have two SIM cards, but both sharing the same phone number. They can use this extra SIM card on another mobile device, including a datacard, a Blackberry, car phone, PDA or another m... [[Reports News]] Voice Competition Puts Squeeze on US Wireless Market http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15287.php A new report from Strategy Analytics has highlighted increasing signs of weakness in the US wireless voice market, with average revenues per user (ARPUs) for voice services dropping 8% year on year and data services failing to make up the gap. The qu... 10% of Drivers Use a Cellphone While on the Move http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15298.php The USA's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has released a report that finds 6% of drivers used mobile phones while driving in 2005 nationwide, compared to 5% in 2004. This result is from the National Occupant Protection Use Surv... [[Statistics News]] Russia's MegaFon user base in Siberia up to 700,000 users http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15282.php The subscriber base of Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon in the Siberian Federal District more than doubled to 700,000 users since the beginning of the year, the company's press service said Friday. ... Brazil's Mobile Phone Mix Edges Toward Post Paid In Nov http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15285.php Brazilian mobile phone companies saw the percentage of post-paid clients slightly rise to 23.7% in November from 23.5% in the month before, indicating that margins for operators may have improved slightly. ... Four Million Musical Melons in South Korea http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15293.php South Korea's SK Telecom has announced that 'Melon', a wired and wireless integrated music portal which opened in November of 2004, now has over four million subscribers. The number of paying subscribers who enjoy streaming music downloading services... 15 Million Mobile TV Users in the US by 2009 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15295.php Ten years ago, it was the Internet that threw the telecom, media and marketing worlds into chaos. Starting next year, it will be the mobile phone, according to a new report from eMarketer, which forecasts that the number of US consumers who watch TV ... Wireless to Generate 50% of Total Telecoms Revenues in 2007 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15296.php The global telecommunications industry revenue will reach US$1.2 trillion by the close of 2006, with continued strong growth in wireless communications leading the way, says a new market analysis report from Insight Research. According to the new ind... [[Technology News]] ZTE Shows Off CDMA Video Services in China http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15288.php China's ZTE says that it has become the first company to provision CDMA video service solutions in China, and only the second company to do so in the world. ZTE has successfully demonstrated video calls between video handsets, video handset and PC SI... T-Mobile Signs Signalling Contract http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15294.php Teleglobe says that it has established an agreement with T-Mobile UK to provide inter-carrier Signaling Connection Control Part (SCCP) transport of their signalling traffic from international roamers. Under the agreement, T-Mobile will directly conne... ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 12:08:05 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Report: Worldwide DSL Subscriptions Soar USTelecom dailyLead December 19, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AqcsatagCBzCwhhryW TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Report: Worldwide DSL subscriptions soar BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Report: Google to buy 5% stake in AOL for $1B * Softbank, Yahoo! to launch Internet TV service in Japan * Vonage snags more funding * Carphone aims to take on BT with Onetel acquisition * Vodafone targets developing markets USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * See the technology of communications and entertainment at TelecomNEXT HOT TOPICS * MCI tests ultra long-haul technology * Internet video is red hot * BellSouth trims management positions * EarthLink snaps up New Edge * Nortel wins big deal with Comcast TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * ReplayTV to sell TV recording software for computers * The future of interactive advertising * BPL to serve 2M in Texas REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Maine initiative would increase access to wireless services * Report: China could move soon on 3G * Q-and-A with FCC's Kevin Martin Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AqcsatagCBzCwhhryW ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 07:42:48 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Robert Bonomi wrote: > In article , William Warren > wrote: >> Obtain a Linux server, connect each DSL line to a separate Ethernet >> card, and modify its route table to give equal weight to each line. >> You'll need a third card for your wireless AP or other LAN connections. > This approach only solves "part" of the problem, namely 'outgoing' > traffic. > "Incoming" traffic is an entirely different problem. And > load-balancing _that_ traffic cannot be done in anything approaching a > satisfactory manner without 'help' from the 'upstream' end. And it > requires that both DSL circuits terminate at the same 'upstream' > provider. There are techniques for balancing (or optimizing) incoming (using NAT to set up each connection to use the better available IP address for _it_). > In article , jonfklein@gmail.com > wrote: >> I know nothing about setting up a server, so please pardon my >> ignorance. Is there any reason why it needs to be a linux server? > No, it *doesn't*have*to*be* "Linux". But if you have to ask, you shouldn't be doing it. Seth ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 07:49:36 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , wrote: > I don't understand at all why there's no "no-spam" law passed. The DMA owns to many Congresscritters. In article , wrote: > Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > The emails you describe fall outside a strict definition of spam. Spam (in this context) is Unsolicited Broadcast Email. Period. > Most people associate genital enlargement or Nigerian oil ministers > or get rich quick schemes with spam. Most people are wrong, as usual. >> Defining spam in some cases becomes very controversial. > I don't think so. It isn't. >> Technically, this is impossible with the current mechanisms used by >> Internet mail. Nothing short of a complete redesign from the ground >> up will accomplish it. An effort to create a new Internet email >> infrastructure would be extraordinarily expensive and complex. It >> would make the conversion to TCP and SMTP in 1983 look trivial by >> comparison. > I'm not at all sure it would be as a complex process as you suggest. > The internet is software driven, not hardware driven; that is, it's > not like someone going out and physically rewiring every PC and server > in the world. Rather, it is developing new software and downloading > it. Getting _everybody_ to change software just doesn't happen. New systems are either completely new, or they're compatible with old ones until all the old ones die off. That takes years, at a minimum. (Look at Usenet, and the range of ages of server and client software still in use.) > Very often I am offered upgrades for various Internet software > compnents -- the PDF reader, basic browser, news reader, "flash > player", basic PC operating system, etc. Actually I'm quite content > with a bare bones system, but I've found that won't work. If you > don't keep up, in a very short time your browser just won't work at > all -- some site will simply reject you and tell you to get a new > browser. My point is that with all these upgrades constantly going > out it shouldn't be that big a deal to download new components. Must > could be done on the gateway end. Your toy PC is the least of it. Companies that make their businesses out of providing service don't switch software anywhere near as easily (and the new software tends not to be so easily available, either, especially as it often needs to be customized). >> The new email infrastructure will also give the world email postage >> stamps. And this time, it won't be just governments who get a cut of the >> profits. The biggest objection to SMTP in the SMTP vs. X.400 wars two >> decades ago was that SMTP's fundamental design made it impossible to >> impose email postage stamps. You can bet that the new redesigned Internet >> email won't have that problem. > Email and internet use is NOT "free". Someone is paying for the > servers, routers, and lines and people who install and maintain them. > For consumers, many pay an Internet Service Provider, such as an AOL, > for that service. Taxing email is an idea that's been suggested for many years. It ain't gonna happen. If you want me to pay in order to send you email, you won't get my email. Nobody is going to make my mother pay to send me email (or vice versa). Remember: my server, my rules. > They say a very substantial amount of today's email traffic is spam. > Reducing that traffic would reduce the need for routers and lines and > that would save money. Maybe having email stamps isn't such a bad > idea. It's just one that won't work. Why would spammers pay for stamps? Maybe they'd just steal them from the same people they steal smtp service from now. > Telephone service is offered in many grades and prices including many > "unlimited" use plans for local and long distance, even overseas calls > are offered at cheap package rates. There is no reason Internet > service can't be offered on a similar pricing scale -- those who use it a > lot would pay a lot. It is. Dialup is cheaper than cable modem/adsl is cheaper than OC-3 is cheaper than OC-192, etc. Seth ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: FTC Do Not Call List Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 02:36:34 -0800 Organization: Networks & Distributed Computing On Sat, 17 Dec 2005, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >> Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. > Actually, it does. Scientific theories don't become "facts" until an > idea is published and debated among scientists, who test out the > theories in their own labs and will debate them. Perhaps it is not > "public" debate, but an open debate is vital to science. That is a misunderstanding of science and the scientific method. Facts are not subject to debate. Debate does not render a falsehood true; nor does it make truth be false. Nor do theories ever "become" facts. A theory is an explanation of a fact (generally the processes behind that fact). A theory can never be proven to true. It can only be proven false (disproven). Consequently, an essential part of what defines a theory is that a theory can be tested. For example, "God created the universe" is not a scientific theory because it is impossible to test. Science does not, can not, and will never prove (*nor* disprove) the existance of any god. Faith is immune to science, especially if faith avoids making any predictions that can be tested by science. Theories can be, and frequently are, amended or even abandoned as new empirical evidence is collected that disproves portions of the theory. Note that new evidence that agrees with the predictions of the theory does not prove the theory. But this does not happen through debate. This happens through the collection of empirical evidence. If debate decides "fact", there is no science; just pseudo-science. -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Re: Verizon/Yahoo ISP Service from Hell Date: 18 Dec 2005 10:02:34 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Quite a story! Back when I lived in Pacific Telephone/PacBell/SBC/AT&T territory, I got the postcards in the mail all the time telling me how great SBC/Yahoo was. I saw no reason to have them place content in front of me, so the cards went in the recycling bin. Similarly, my neighbor signed up for Comcast cable modem service. They did not send him any info on setting up his computer (use DHCP, use PPPOE?, etc.). Instead they just gave him a CD that pretty much messed up his computer. He never did get their email working, so he's still paying AOL for email along with Comcast for access. Why do communications companies "partner" with content companies? Does Yahoo pay the communications company since the users now end up on Yahoo's page (and users see the ads there)? I really like some things Yahoo does (like their listservs), but too much consumer oriented stuff is just plain hokey. It reminds me of years ago when I got a Radio Shack catalog. The catalog featured a transistor radio battery that had "higher lumen output." It featured a TV antena whose major attibute was that it "looked good on top of any set." I wrote them a letter about it. They wrote back that the copy can get a bit hokey at times. I dunno ... I'm finding consumer oriented advertising pretty insulting in general. Harold ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Obituary: Pulitzer Winning Columnist Jack Anderson Dies Date: 18 Dec 2005 12:19:11 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Connie Cass wrote: > Considered one of the fathers of investigative reporting, Anderson was > renowned for his tenacity, aggressive techniques and influence in the > nation's capital. The above generally, but by no means always, is a good thing. Journalists such as Anderson had tremendous power and influence over the public but they had no check or balances. Their choice of words or way of coloring a report could turn a low thing into a major scandal, or make a big thing modest; and that in turn would save or destroy a person's reputation. Major journalists such as that have made plenty of mistakes, doing great harm to political reputations. (It is extremely difficult for a public figure to sue for libel.) Writers in the journalism publiation, Columbia Journalism Review, tend to take a very priestly view of their powers, rationalizing any excesses, "well it's all in the public good", or "our record of success far outweighs our errors". Often journalists have a very "holier than thou" attitude. Let's take a look: > The column broke a string of big scandals, from Eisenhower assistant > Sherman Adams taking a vicuna coat and other gifts from a wealthy > industrialist in 1958 ... At the time, that incident _appeared_ to be a big scandal, but in hindsight, it does not appear to be that big of a deal. Adams was a very effective (although abrasive) member of the Eisenhower administration. Adams was forced to resign and that was a loss to the administration and the country. > "He held politicians to a level of accountability in an era where > journalists were very deferential to those in power." The question is "to what _standard_ of accountability"? A good columnist (watch Fox News) could take a normal satisfactory political record and make anyone look like the scum of the earth. "Accountability" is a tricky thing. I've seen local muckraters destroy politicians by presenting the facts in such a way that seriously distorted their meaning in the public's mind. For example, showing personal business investments as if they were improper, or implying normal tax deductions were fudged. > Known for his toughness on the trail of a story, he was also praised > for personal kindness. Anderson's son Kevin said that when his > father's reporting led to the arrest of some involved in the Watergate > scandal, he aided their families financially. Interesting aspect. McCarthy did the same thing -- after smearing and ruining someone publicly, he would privately help them out. > After he went to work with Pearson, the team took on communist-hunting > Sen. Joseph McCarthy ... Let's remember that other equally promient journalists assisted McCarthy by printing leaks from McCarthy or J. Edgar Hoover that smeared and ruined people. Again, once the damage is done, it's very hard to undo. Hoover (and other power brokers) used secret leaks to prominent journalists like Anderson (or probably even to Anderson) to control their enemies. Many congressmen were terrified that Hoover would leak something negative on them and ruin their careers; this was a reason Hoover (and others) stayed in power so long without challenge. Is it fair and proper for a journalist to have the power as judge, jury, and executioner? To put it another way, who watches the watchers? Something to thing about. I am not against muckraking journalists such as Anderson, I am just concerned that they'll abuse their power and have no checks and balances. [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Congress: "Merry Chrismas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs" Date: 18 Dec 2005 12:28:05 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote: > The government is proposing that devices (consumer electronics, > computers, software) manufactured after a certain date respond to a > copy-protection signal or watermark in a digital video stream, and > pass along that signal when converting the video to analog. The same > goes for analog video streams, to pass on the protection to the > digital video outputs. Very disturbing. I don't think this is being proposed by the "government", but rather private industry. I find this most objectionable as it prevents me from personally using recordings I have properly purchased and will force me to either buy duplicate copies I don't need or replacement playback equipment I neither want nor need. For example, I make my own audio tapes using selections from various sources I have -- phonograph, other tapes, CDs. I play these tapes in the car, while I walk, or at work. This proposal would preclude me from doing so and I resent that. Just out of curiosity, do radio stations have to pay a royalty to record companies when they play music? What are the rules, if any, for someone recording a song off the radio or a tape off of TV? [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Cell Phone to Land Line Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 19:45:43 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > John Levine wrote: >> (A landline phone does no coding at all, cell phones do vast >> amounts.) > Yet cell phones are increasingly tiny (see TV ad with woman easily > squeezing in her cell phone into the pocket of very tight jeans), > while land-line phones, even contemporary ones, aren't that small. > Thinking about that, do they make cordless land line phones the same > tiny size as cell phones? I'd figure since there's less to do that > should be easy. Less incentive to make phones tiny. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 18 Dec 2005 19:11:16 PST From: John C. Fowler Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Metwork? Lisa Hancock wrote: > Today customers own all their equipment that is supposed to be > certified. But what happens if the customer alters the equipment or > it is defective? What happens if a high voltage is sent out > accidently over a telephone line (ie house current, either 110 or > 220, or ringing current meant for an extension telephone of a PBX)? In the United States, customers are not supposed to connect anything to the Public Switched Telephone Network unless it conforms to FCC Part 68 (see http://www.fcc.gov/wcb/iatd/part_68.html for details). This is supposed to guarantee that the device does not create problems for the network or other customers on it. So what happens if you ignore that, and attach house current to the phone line? This would likely blow a fuse somewhere. If not, the alternative would be for the phone wires to catch/start a fire, as they usually aren't of a sufficient gauge for that kind of current. If you were to connect something that didn't blow a fuse but caused problems for other subscribers, they could file a formal complaint with the FCC against you, assuming they could figure out who you were. I think I remember once seeing a little circuit board that did nothing except guarantee Part 68 compliance. (It even had its own Ringer Equivalence Number, a whole 0.0B.) It was designed for people who wanted to attach their own homebrew projects to the phone line but not worry about causing problems. I don't remember where I saw it, sorry, but you could probably find something like it wherever you buy other bare electronic circuit thingies. John C. Fowler, johnfpublic@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: Howard S. Wharton Subject: Re: USO Asking For Christmas Help Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 10:14:23 -0500 Organization: The University at Buffalo To add what Mr. Townson wrote about the USO. As a Vietnam Vet, the USO was there for us and I can't tell you how much they were appreciated. The holidays are a lonely time for many of our troops far from home. No mattter how we may feel about the war in Iraq, the military does not make policy. If we really want to show support to our military members, please contribute to the USO. I do, because they were there for me. I want to make sure that they are there for our serviceman and woman. Howard S. Wharton Fire Safety Technician Occupational and Environmental Safety Services State University of New York at Buffalo ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. 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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 #569 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 20 00:16:51 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2A01014EA2; Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:16:50 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #570 Message-Id: <20051220051650.2A01014EA2@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:16:50 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-4.3 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:18:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 570 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Icahn Says Deal With AOL/Google is Stupid and Outrageous (Erich Auchard) TXU amd Current Team Up on Internet Over Power Lines (Reuters News Wire) Web Site Emails the Future (Nahal Toosi) Re: Congress: Merry Christmas! We're Turning Off Analog Outs (C. Griswold) Re: Congress: Merry Christmas! We're Turning Off Analog Outs (panoptes) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Metwork? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Metwork? (Gordon Burditt) Re: Spam (was FTC Do Not Call List) (Seth Breidbart) Re: Letter From Russia (Seth Breidbart) Re: Congress: Merry Christmas! We're Turning Off Analog Outs (R.T. Wurth) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Seth Breidbart) Re: Verizon/Yahoo ISP Service From Hell (Steve Sobol) Mexican Officials Say Bush Fence Blocking Plan is Stupid (William Weissert) 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 Auchard Subject: Icahn Says deal With AOL/Google is Stupid and Outrageous Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:23:06 -0600 Icahn seeks to derail Google as partner of AOL By Eric Auchard Dissident shareholder Carl Icahn on Monday labeled as "disastrous" a new deal set to be unveiled this week between Time Warner Inc.'s America Online unit and Web search leader Google Inc., as the billionaire investor argued that AOL could do better. "Not only stupid, but disasterous and outrageous," he claimed. Icahn said in a letter to Time Warner's board of directors that the company appeared to be on the verge of a "disastrous decision" following reports it is in talks to sell a 5 percent stake of its AOL Internet unit to Google Inc.. Icahn, whose group has a 3.1 percent stake in Time Warner, said he feared a Google pact may preclude a merger or other deals with the likes of eBay Inc., Yahoo Inc. IAC/InterActiveCorp, or Microsoft Corp. "Like all shareholders, I am not opposed to Time Warner entering into an AOL transaction that creates long-term value," Icahn wrote. "However, I am deeply concerned that the Time Warner board may be on the verge of making a disastrous decision concerning an agreement with Google," he said. In the past several months, Icahn has blasted Time Warner's every move as falling short of realizing the company's full value. He has hired investment bank Lazard Ltd to wage a campaign to replace a majority of Time Warner's directors. A Time Warner spokesman declined to comment. "There's nothing new here, and given that, we're not going to comment," spokeswoman Kathy McKiernan said. A Google spokesman was not immediately available to comment. Shares of Google, which traded to record intra-day high level of $446.21, up 3.7 percent on the day, turned tail and fell back on news of Icahn's opposition to the potential new search and advertising deal between AOL and Google. Google shares fell $5.55, or 1.3 percent, to close at $424.60 on Monday on Nasdaq. Meanwhile, Time Warner shares finished off 5 cents at $17.95 on the New York Stock Exchange. Icahn, who has said he is waging an "all-out proxy battle" to force Time Warner to step up asset sales and streamline, cited a recent report by Goldman Sachs that argued that Google may not be the best long-term partner for America Online. Wall Street analysts debated whether the $1 billion, which sources said Google was prepared to pay AOL for a 5 percent stake, was a meaningful calculation of the implied overall value of AOL -- $20 billion -- if it were spun-off. Some analysts groused that the investment could simply be an expedient way for Google to keep AOL as a key customer and thwart rival Microsoft from gaining a foothold in advertising. Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney calculated that AOL's business declined to just 1.9 percent of Google's net revenue recently. Another financial analyst, who declined to be named, said Google may view the $1 billion stake as a small down payment to avert the loss of AOL as its biggest single customer and thereby defend its lofty $125 billion market capitalization. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: TXU and Current Team up on Internet Over Power Lines Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:25:28 -0600 TXU Corp., Texas's largest utility, said on Monday it was teaming up with Current Communications Group to offer high-speed Internet access over power lines to about 2 million homes and businesses in the state. The companies also said they plan to use Current's broadband over power line (BPL) technology to allow TXU to more actively monitor and manage its electrical grid. TXU agreed to pay Current about $150 million over 10 years to use the "smart grid" capabilities of Current's BPL network. the companies said in a statement. TXU said the payments will not affect its previously disclosed financial forecasts. Privately-held BPL provider Current, whose investors include Google Inc. and U.S. utility Cinergy Corp., will provide broadband and wireless Internet services to TXU's customers under the agreement. TXU will also become an equity holder in Current as part of the agreement. The companies plan to start deploying the broadband network in 2006. Broadband service over power lines has been highly touted by equipment makers and federal regulators as a possible competitor to cable and telephone services that handle almost all of the roughly 40 million U.S. residential broadband connections. But until recently U.S. utilities interested in the service have faced various financial and technical problems. The signals used to carry data over electrical lines can cause interference with radio equipment, and can travel only a short distance before weakening, requiring repeaters in many areas. Some analysts have also said that most utilities don't have the skills to challenge companies that already have years of experience in the fiercely competitive Internet service business. Nevertheless several top U.S. power companies, including Cinergy and CenterPoint Energy Inc., have recently made investments in BPL. Aside from the draw of additional revenue from providing Internet services, the companies have been attracted by the possibility of cost savings from enhancement of their electrical grids. TXU said that it hopes to increase network reliability and power quality and efficiently implement automated meter reading through its partnership with Current. It said the technology should also help it prevent, detect and restore customer outages more effectively. TXU's electric transmission unit, TXU Electric Delivery, provides power to over 2.9 million electric delivery points. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and stories, please to TELECOM Digest News Radio: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/TDNewsradio.html ------------------------------ From: Nahal Toosi Subject: Web Site Lets Users Send Email to the Future Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:27:44 -0600 By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press Writer In the year 2009, on the 25th of April, a man named Greg is supposed to get an e-mail. The e-mail will remind Greg that he is his best friend and worst enemy, that he once dated a woman named Michelle, and that he planned to major in computer science. "More importantly," the e-mail says, "are you wearing women's clothing?" The e-mail was sent by none other than Greg himself -- through a Web site called FutureMe.org. The site is one of a handful that let people send e-mails to themselves and others years in the future. They are technology's answer to time capsules, trading on people's sense of curiosity, accountability and nostalgia. "Messages into the future is something that people have always sought to do," said Paul Saffo, director of the Institute for the Future. "In a way, it's a statement of optimism." Matt Sly, 29, came up with the concept for FutureMe.org about four years ago. He was inspired one day after recalling how during his education he had been given assignments to write letters to himself. Sly, who partnered with 31-year-old Jay Patrikios of San Francisco on the project, said the site has made maybe $58 through donations. He is adamant that FutureMe.org is not a reminder service and that users should think long-term. The site lets people send messages 30 years from now, though Sly's numbers show most users schedule their e-mails to be sent within three years. "We want people to think about their future and what their goals and dreams and hopes and fears are," he said. "We're trying to facilitate some serious existential pondering." He said a large number of the messages sent do one of two basic things: tell the future person what the past person was doing at the time, and ask the future person if he or she had met the aspirations of the past person. "The tone of the past person is not always friendly," said Sly, now a Yale University graduate student. "It's often like 'Get off your lazy butt.'" Recently, Forbes.com jumped on the idea, offering an "e-mail time capsule" promotion. More than 140,000 letters were collected over about six weeks. Nearly 20 percent of the messages sent are supposed to land in the sender's inbox in 20 years; others requested shorter time frames. Forbes.com is partnering with Yahoo! and Codefix Consulting on the project. "A lot of people have kind of been freaked out by it," said David Ewalt, a Forbes.com writer who worked on the project. "It really makes you stop and think about your life in a way that you usually don't." Another type of future message service can be found at sites such as myLastEmail.com or LastWishes.com, which promise to send messages to loved ones (or less-than-loved ones) after you die. Paul Hudson, co-founder of the International Time Capsule Society, said e-mail time capsules were new to him. "Part of the value of time capsules are that they are thought processes in the present," said Hudson, a historian who teaches at Georgia Perimeter College. "You define yourself when you do a time capsule. It might be a good exercise in introspection." But sometimes the past is best left behind, said Saffo, who personally finds the whole thing "sad and really weird." "The lesson about all these things, it's the lesson from time capsules, is you have to be careful lest you set yourself up for enormous embarrassment in two decades," Saffo said. "Do you really want to be reminded that you thought ABBA was cool?" Service providers try to make the delivery process fail-safe through partnerships or back up software, and they urge people to hang on to their e-mail address, but there's no ironclad guarantee that the message will ever arrive. Technology changes. Companies go out of business. Spam filters might get in the way. Still, that hasn't deterred a sizable number of people from signing up. On FutureMe.org, where more than 112,000 messages have been written, many writers are confident enough to make their e-mails -- though not necessarily their names -- public. "I hope that I've learned to take responsibility for my actions -- to not be passive aggressive and to not avoid things that are scary for me," one wrote. "I hope I've changed a little." "Are you missing an eye? If so, I apologize." wrote another. And, of course, the cautious optimist: "Hell, I hope you're still alive." ___ On the Net: . http://www.FutureMe.org 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and audio from Associated Press go to: http://telecom-digest.org/tg-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. Subject: Re: Congress: "Merry Chrismas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs" Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 17:10:57 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Just out of curiosity, do radio stations have to pay a royalty to > record companies when they play music? No & Yes -- There are three major "performance rights" agencies in the US. ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. These organizations collect royalties form radio stations and distribute them to the composer, lyricist and performer, but not to the record company. For reasons that escape me right now, but probably having to do with radio being a giant advertising medium for the record companies, no royalty is paid to the record company. > What are the rules, if any, for someone recording a song off the > radio or a tape off of TV? Depends on who's point of view is being presented. As long as its for personal use, most legal authorities would hold no foul. Hand the copy to a friend? Technically wrong, but you aren't likely to be tagged. Sell the copies on eBay? You'll get tagged quickly. ------------------------------ From: panoptes@iquest.net Subject: Re: Congress: "Merry Chrismas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs" Date: 19 Dec 2005 17:44:21 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Just out of curiosity, do radio stations have to pay a royalty to > record companies when they play music? Of course. http://www.ascap.com/licensing/radio/ ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Metwork? Date: 19 Dec 2005 10:11:31 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) wrote: > Today customers own all their equipment that is supposed to be > certified. But what happens if the customer alters the equipment or > it is defective? What happens if a high voltage is sent out > accidently over a telephone line (ie house current, either 110 or 220, > or ringing current meant for an extension telephone of a PBX)? What happens is that my line starts getting noisy. It's true that crosstalk between lines is much lower than it was back in the days of paper insulation and less careful twisting of pairs. But high levels on one pair will leak into adjacent pairs. Getting someone from Qwest to understand that this is an issue, however, is difficult. > Further, is there any kind of high powered signal that could be sent > over a phone line that would result in crosstalk or service disruption > to the neighbors or other kinds of RF interference? Sure. Any of the above. Put a high pitched tone at a high level on the phone, and it'll turn up all over the place. Use a crappy answering machine that unbalances your pair and plays an outgoing message at +20, and your neighbors will hear it. Qwest doesn't care, though. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: gordonb.wvukh@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Metwork? Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 00:27:10 -0000 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > I think I remember once seeing a little circuit board that did nothing > except guarantee Part 68 compliance. (It even had its own Ringer > Equivalence Number, a whole 0.0B.) It was designed for people who > wanted to attach their own homebrew projects to the phone line but not > worry about causing problems. I don't remember where I saw it, sorry, > but you could probably find something like it wherever you buy other > bare electronic circuit thingies. A long time ago, when they first started allowing other people to connect modems to a phone line, but NOT directly, there was the DAA ("Data Access Arrangement", I think). I worked with these in the late 1970's. You rented it from the phone company. It had a defined interface so you could pass voice through it, take the phone off the hook, pulse dial, detect ringing, etc. For tone dialing you'd just take the phone off hook and send tones. For pulse dialing you'd do the equivalent of rapidly jiggling switch-hook. Most of it was providing isolation between the phone line and your side so if lightning hit your gadget, it wouldn't get through to the phone line (much). It was also supposed to protect the other way. Typically there was transformer isolation for the voice signal and maybe relay or optical isolation for the ringing signal and switch-hook. Eventually they built these into modems, but I can still see a use for these as interfaces to one-off projects that aren't worth going through FCC certification for. Gordon L. Burditt ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Spam (was FTC Do Not Call List) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 01:12:50 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Jim Haynes wrote: > One scheme that seemed to me to have some promise was to detect spam > in the SMTP receiving program and deliberately delay its responses > to the sending program. So that the transaction of sending a message > is stretched out far longer than normal. That's called tarpitting. It would work against spammers who use their own resources to send. Those who use armies of zombies wouldn't care. Seth ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Letter From Russia Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 01:50:25 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to a message from Valentin : > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought about this message for quite > a while, and although it would probably qualify as spam (by virtue of > how many copies were distributed, I personally do not think it is a > scam. It's spam. Spam is theft. Therefore, it's a scam. If he's so hard up, where did he get the resources to spam with? Wasn't there just a thread on why spam continues, because so many idiots send money to spammers? Some are suckers for bigger bodyparts, others for free money, others for helping the needy. All of those are reasons that spam continues. Seth [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I suppose he probably got the resources to send the spam from the local public library, where he said he looked up other information. Many libraries are nto set up on their public terminals to block spam from going out. As far as 'why spam continues to be a success' the only reason (of the several you named) which I would consider at least a wee bit acceptable would be helping the needy. And do you consider the occassional 'call for papers' printed here and at other sites to be 'spam'? Or the monthly notices or minutes of meetings from the EFF, ICANN and similar? Those are unsolicited also, yet they keep coming out to the entire net. PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Congress: "Merry Chrismas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs" From: R. T. Wurth Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 02:01:17 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote in news:telecom24.569.15@telecom-digest.org: [...] > Just out of curiosity, do radio stations have to pay a royalty to > record companies when they play music? What are the rules, if any, > for someone recording a song off the radio or a tape off of TV? (IANAL, this is just my opinion, do not rely on this as legal advice. Furthermore, this reflects my understanding of the situation in the USA only. If you need legal advice, hire a lawyer.) Yes, and no. Radio stations pay a royalty to the composers and (lyric) authors (or, more correctly, to the publishing company to which they sold the rights) indirectly through license contracts with ASCAP and BMI (and sometimes a 3rd agency, SECAC, which represents a miniscule portion of the authors and composers). ASCAP and BMI license their entire libraries (and not just to radio stations, but also to stores that play music, bars, restaurants, and night clubs) for a single negotiated fee, take samples of music usage, and distribute their collections (less collection fees and profits) to the rights holders in proportion to the works' standings in the sample results. On the other hand, the actual performers (or the holders of their royalty rights) receive nothing from the radio stations. They are held to be fully compensated by the exposure they receive and the increased record and live performance ticket sales resulting therefrom. (Except, of course performer- author-composers, who still receive their author/composer royalties, but nothing extra as performers.) Record companies don't figure into the equation, unless you consider the illegal practice of payola, wherein they allegedly pay stations or DJs to play certain songs, but we all know that's illegal, so no one would actually to that (wink, wink; nod, nod). In fact, most folks in the radio biz would be "shocked! shocked!" (like the police chief in _Casablanca_), to hear that anything like that goes on. As to the 2nd question, IANAL, but my understanding is that under the Sony Betamax decision, a person has at least the right to record off the air for the purpose of time shifting, that is, a single viewing in their own home for the enjoyment of themself and their family. I think (with less certainty) one may also have the right to keep the recording around for more than one viewing. I certainly believe one does not have the right to sell (for cash or barter) the recording or charge admission to a viewing. I suspect trading or lending like for like with other enthusiasts to fill gaps in one's viewing is a gray area. -- Rich Wurth / rwurth@att.net / Rumson, NJ USA [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Regards the first part of your statement on paying royalties what about classical music stations, where a great deal of the music itself is in the public domain, owing to the age of the compositions, etc? PAT] ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 01:55:02 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Robert Bonomi wrote: > In article , Thor Lancelot Simon > wrote: >> In article , Dave Garland >> wrote: >>> The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but >>> among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not >>> particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained >>> around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ... >> I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly >> great". > I'm astonished that something that can be explained by "jitter" of > "plus/minus one count" in 'ordinal' numeric data, would be considered > anything _other_ than "not particularly great". Well, unless they do > not really understand statistical analysis, that is. 3 vs 4 is jitter. 126 vs. 168 is a bigger difference, though it's the same 25%. (Unless you believe that there are a lot of off-by-one errors, _all_ in the same direction.) Seth ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Verizon/Yahoo ISP Service from Hell Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 19:37:46 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com harold@hallikainen.com wrote: > Why do communications companies "partner" with content companies? To compete with AOL, which for years provided content *and* access. They still do content, of course, but they don't do broadband access. They still do do dialup. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: Will Weissert Subject: Mexican Officials Say Bush Fence Blocking Plan is Stupid Date: Mon, 19 Dec 2005 21:21:00 -0600 By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press Writer Mexico's foreign secretary Monday leveled his country's sharpest criticism yet at U.S. proposal for a fence along parts of its southern border, condemning it as "stupid" and "underhanded." In a radio interview, Luis Ernesto Derbez said U.S. legislators who approved the bill were turning a blind eye to the contributions millions of migrants from Mexico and elsewhere make to America's economy and culture. "It's a law that looks underhanded to everybody ... stupid," Derbez said. On Friday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 239-182 in favor of an immigration enforcement bill, which includes a proposal to build 700 miles of border fencing along parts of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Under the measure, soldiers and police would help stop people sneaking across, and employers would have to check the legal status of their workers. Derbez said he was confident the bill would not make it past the U.S. Senate, which he said was not as easily swayed as the House. Reacting Sunday to the bill's approval, Mexican President Vicente Fox said "this wall is shameful," and called the plan hypocritical for a country made up of immigrants. Fox has for years called for an immigration agreement with Washington granting some form of legal status to Mexicans who sneak into U.S. territory in search of work. President Bush proposed a new guest worker program with three-year work visas, but lawmakers refused to include the initiative in the immigration bill passed Friday. Authorities estimate there are about 11 million undocumented migrants in the United States, about half of them Mexican. There have also been suggestions to build a similar fence across the several thousand miles of Canadian border. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press audio and headline stories, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This reminds me of the feeble efforts by folks in the village of Evanston, IL (the immediate north suburb of Chicago) to try and discourage criminals and others from Chicago driving drunkenly, like bats out of hell coming from Chicago into the north suburb (where crime _was_ virtually zilch for many years.) The only part of Evanston in those day (late 1980's) and even today is the strip of (common street) 1400 to 2400 West Howard Street in Chicago. For many years, that three or four block area where city of Chicago dips north of Howard Street along Bosworth Street and Paulina Street past Juneway Terrace and Jonquil Terrace has been the 'wild west'. They don't call it 'Jonquil Jungle' for no reason. Village of Evanston usually is a straight east/west line north of Howard Street but in that little section behind the elevated tracks the boundary line gets irregular for a few blocks and runs east and in the alley behind Calvary Cemetery (Evanston) over to the lakefront. What the Village of Evanston did was turn _every one_ of the streets which intersect with Howard Street _one way_ southbound into Chicago. Although they left Sheridan Road alone the next two through streets (Clark Street in Chicago becomes 'Chicago Avenue' when it hits Evanston and Western Avenue in Chicago turns into some other street when it reaches Evanston. The only way to get into Evanston from Chicago along there in that crime-ridden area was a little two lane thing behind the elevated tracks where Paulina Street connects into Juneway Terrace. "Those snots!" proclaimed Mayor Daley the Second; "they don't want us in their village!" Either cross into Evanston on Sheridan Road (a nice neighborhood) or drive down Howard Street a number of blocks through the black area until they get to the white area of town again. Then Evanston decided to build a concrete barrier -- a little island -- on _their_ side of Howard Street a few blocks further west, and the Chicago alderman in that neighborhood (Bernie Stone) went to battle with Evanston officials about that. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #570 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 20 19:40:03 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 6700F14F11; Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:40:03 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #571 Message-Id: <20051221004003.6700F14F11@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:40:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.4 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, DRUGS_SLEEP,INFO_TLD,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,NA_DOLLARS, SOMETHING_FOR_ADULTS autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 20 Dec 2005 19:40:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 571 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (Desmond Butler) New IM Phishing Attack Launched on Yahoo Messenger (Spam Daily News) U.S. Says All Porn is Child Porn Unless Proven Otherwise (Spam Daily News) Computer Worm Catches Child Porn Offender in Germany (Reuters News Wire) Live Animals Banned on eBay (Asociated Press News Wire) Transition to Digital Gets Closer (Monty Solomon) Missing ABN Tape With Two Million Names Found (Monty Solomon) Palm Reports Q2 FY6 Results (Monty Solomon) Dumb Question About 'Do Not Call' (Randall) Spam Daily News (Patrick Townson) Cellular-News for Tuesday 20th December 2005 (Cellular-News) EU Regulators Approve Ericsson-Marconi Deal (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Spam (was FTC Do Not Call List) (David Wolff) Re: Congress: Merry Christmas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs (nospam) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Neal McLain) Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis (Barry Margolin) World Aids Day (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: Desmond Butler Subject: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 12:45:56 -0600 NYC Commuters Coping With Transit Strike By DESMOND BUTLER, Associated Press Writer Subways and buses ground to a halt Tuesday morning as transit workers walked off the job at the height of the holiday shopping and tourist season, forcing millions of riders to find new ways to get around. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had said the strike would cost the city as much as $400 million a day, joined the throngs of people crossing the Brooklyn Bridge as he walked from a Brooklyn emergency headquarters to City Hall. "It's a form of terrorism, if you ask me," said Maria Negron, who walked across the bridge. "I hope they go back to work." Other New Yorkers car-pooled or rode bicycles in the cold; early-morning temperatures were in the 20s. With traffic rules in place to prevent gridlock, the city survived the morning rush without the feared chaos. Manhattan streets were unusually quiet; some commuters just stayed home. People who were going holiday shopping went the best way they could. Officials said they would seek quick court action, and about eight hours after the strike began, a closed-door meeting about the walkout was under way in a Brooklyn courtroom. It is illegal for mass transit workers to strike in New York, and the 33,000 employees could face fines of two days' pay for each day on strike. It was New York's first citywide transit walkout since an 11-day strike in 1980. Pay raises and pension and health benefits for new hires were main sticking points. "I'm not happy about this," said Yvette Vigo, whose teeth were chattering after she walked a couple of miles to pick up a company-run shuttle bus at Wall Street. "It's too cold to walk this far." Authorities began locking turnstiles and shuttering subway entrances shortly after the Transport Workers Union ordered the strike. The nation's largest mass transit system counts each fare as a rider, giving it more than 7 million riders each day -- although many customers take a daily round trip. At one subway booth, a handwritten sign read "Strike in Effect. Station Closed. Happy Holidays!!!!" Huge lines formed at ticket booths for the commuter railroads that stayed in operation, and Manhattan-bound traffic backed up at many bridges and tunnels as police turned away cars with fewer than four people. All the while, transit workers took to the picket lines with signs that read: "We Move NY. Respect Us!" "I think they all should get fired," said Eddie Goncalves, a doorman trying to get home after his overnight shift. He said he expected to spend an extra $30 per day in cab and train fares. Commuters lined up for cabs and gathered in clusters on designated spots throughout the city for company vans and buses to shuttle them to their offices. "There were hundreds of people waiting for cabs, pulling doors left and right," said taxi driver Angel Aponte, who left his meter off and charged $10 per person. "It doesn't seem right to tie up the cultural and investment center of the world," said Larry Scarinzi, 72, a retired engineer from Whippany, N.J., waiting for a cab outside Penn Station. "They're breaking the law. They're tearing the heart out of the nation's economy." Bloomberg, who had predicted "gridlock that will tie the record for all gridlocks," put into effect a sweeping emergency plan, including the requirement that cars coming into Manhattan below 96th Street have at least four occupants. As he walked across the bridge, he smiled, admired the view and called the strike "outrageous." The union called the strike around 3 a.m. after a late round of negotiations with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority broke down Monday night. Union President Roger Toussaint said the union board voted overwhelmingly to call the strike. "This is a fight over dignity and respect on the job, a concept that is very alien to the MTA," Toussaint said. "Transit workers are tired of being underappreciated and disrespected." MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow called the strike "a slap in the face" to all New Yorkers, and Gov. George Pataki said the workers were "recklessly endangering the health and safety of each and every New Yorker." The union said the latest MTA offer included annual raises of 3 percent, 4 percent and 3.5 percent; the previous proposal included 3 percent raises each year. MTA workers typically earn from $35,000 as a starting salary to about $55,000 annually. Toussaint said the union wanted a better offer from the MTA, especially when the agency has a $1 billion surplus this year. "With a $1 billion surplus, this contract between the MTA and the Transport Workers Union should have been a no-brainer," Toussaint said. "Sadly, that has not been the case." A key issue was the MTA's proposal to raise the age at which new employees become eligible for a full pension from 55 to 62, which the union says is unfair. The MTA later agreed to allow pension eligibility at 55 for new employees, but they would be asked to pay more out of their salaries. The contract expired Friday at midnight, but the two sides agreed to keep talking through the weekend and the union set a new deadline for Tuesday. The citywide strike was preceded by a walkout Monday by two private bus lines in Queens. Commuter frustration was evident both before the strike and after it was called. "Enough is enough," said Craig DeRosa, who relies on the subway to get to work. "Their benefits are as rich as you see anywhere in this country and they are still complaining. I don't get it." Associated Press writers David B. Caruso, Verena Dobnik, Samantha Gross and Sara Kugler contributed to this report. On the Net: Metropolitan Transportation Authority: http://www.mta.info/ Transport Workers Union: http://www.twulocal100.org City contingency plans: http://www.nyc.gov/html/transitinfo/html/home.shtml 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This strike is only against the law in NYC because the city of New York passed a law claiming it was 'wrong'. I suggest that the city is condoning indentured slavery. No one can be _forced_ to work at a job they do not want to work at. If the city feels public transportation is so important, the way to demonstate that is by treating the employees who are doing that work in a respectful way, not by being even more oppressive with laws which require your work and fine or imprison you for failing to work, as is the case in Bloomberg's administation. I recall when several years ago, the staff at Cook County Hospital in Chicago went on strike after Cook County tried to change their working conditions in an unfair way. A judge (get this! yuk yuk!) ordered them to go back to work or get fined, etc. Their representative told the court, "we will not accept any punishment from this court! I will simply suggest to all employees that they resign their jobs effective immediatly. Then you won't have any healthcare workers at all and see where that gets you!" The judge replied, "you will all be in contempt in that case." The judge was told "slavery in the United States was long ago abolished. You cannot _force_ people to go to certain jobs." The judge agreed that was the case (slavery no longer allowed) and that the county would have to replace all the employees (if that was at all practical or possible). The worker's representative said "you can do that, alright, but eventually this strike will end and all our workers will have to 'reapply' for new jobs, and of course in your desire to get hospital functions up and running again, whom do you suppose would be the ones to get hired?" I think Mayor Bloomberg (and he is not _my_ mayor, I do not live there) made a fatal mistake by going to court Tuesday morning to force workers back on the job with threats of fines and jail. He has caused so much ill-will things will never get back to normal, if they ever were. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Spam Daily News Subject: New IM Phishing Attack Unleashed on Yahoo Messenger Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 15:54:13 -0600 From Spam Daily News IMlogic Threat Center reports new instant messaging phishing attack which sends IM users a message telling them their account will be blocked unless they respond to a terms of service violation. This attack sends users a message that appears to be from the Yahoo "abuse department" and informs the user that they are in violation of the Yahoo Terms of Service Agreement and they must respond to this complaint to prevent their account from being deactivated. The message includes a URL to a malicious site that appears to be the Yahoo! login page. The phishing attack is propagating from a buddy named 'ychat_complaint_dept_6b'. It will likely mutate with other variations of the screen name as it progresses. The Yahoo! messenger will ask for permission to add this buddy to your buddy list and then delivers the message. This form of social engineering has been particularly effective especially with the message focused on a loss of the service, says IMlogic. SOURCE: IMlogic, Inc. ------------------------------ From: Spam Daily News Subject: U.S. Now Says All Porn is Child Porn Unless Proven Otherwise Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 15:17:11 -0600 From Spam Daily News All pornography in the US is now effectively classified as child pornography, unless providers can prove the ages of everyone taking part. The law, which requires porn producers to hold copies of all actors' photo ID for seven years, has been in place for some time, but as of 23 June, the rule was extended to cover online pornography as well. This includes online forums, adult personals sites and any other place where adult material may be published. At issue is the government's right to make sure that anyone seen in an explicit pose on a U.S.-based website is legally an adult. Previously, the government only targeted people who actually produce sexually explicit content. That's why the boxes containing porn videos feature notes in fine print confirming that performers are of legal age. But the new interpretation allows investigators to go after so-called "secondary producers," including webmasters who buy or steal content from someone else. Critics claim that the government could even target online museum exhibits or news coverage of the pictures from the Abu Ghraib scandal. Lawrence Walters, an adult industry attorney, said the revised federal regulations impact all Web sites that allow sexually explicit images such as penetration, masturbation and S&M -- including gay male cruising sites. Cruising for a sex partner and posting a nude image doesn't necessarily fall under the federal regulations, but the images can be posted on commercial Web sites that sell ads and are in the public domain, he said. For instance, a man posting his nude picture on a Web site might have to prove to site owners that he is 18 or older, and documentation must be on file with the Web site that includes government-issued identification cards, Social Security number, name and address. In response, a number of sites have voluntarily taken themselves offline, to avoid breaking the newly applied rules. According to BoingBoing, Rotten.com has taken down ratemyboner.com and gapingmaw.com, which contained the occasional explicit image, although it is/was not a porn site, as such. RateMyBoobies.com and Fleshbot.com took down photos, as did some featuring celebrity nudity. Even non-porn online publishers like PlanetOut.com, a gay website, temporarily removed all photos from its personal ads, even though it bans pictures with adult content. In a statement on the site, gapingmaw.com's administrators call the law a "side-handed attack on the pornography industry", and says that it would be impossible for it to meet the requirements of the regulations. While the law is designed to protect minors, and prevent exploitation, some free speech campaigners argue that the law gives authorities an awful lot of power to close down sites they don't approve of, even if that was not its original goal. Violations of the requirements are criminal offenses punishable by imprisonment for up to five years for a first offense and up to 10 years for subsequent offenses, according to the DOJ. SOURCE: The Register; Wired; Washington Blade Copyright 2005 Spam Daily ------------------------------ From: Reuter News Wire Subject: Computer Worm Traps Child Porn Offender in Germany Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 12:48:56 -0600 A child porn offender in Germany turned himself in to the police after mistaking an email he received from a computer worm for an official warning that he was under investigation, authorities said on Tuesday. "It just goes to show that computer worms aren't always destructive," said a spokesman for police in the western city of Paderborn. "Here it helped us to uncover a crime which would otherwise probably have gone undetected." The 20-year-old was caught out by a version of the "Sober" worm, a prolific Internet virus which can invade computers and then send out messages from a host of fabricated addresses. The trap was set when the man got an email saying "an investigation is underway," that listed the sender as Germany's Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA). Police charged him after finding pornographic images of children on his home computer. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html (or) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Live Animals Banned on eBay Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 12:50:30 -0600 EBay Scraps Plans to Offer Live Pets Internet auctioneer eBay Inc. has canceled plans to allow live pets to be sold on its Web site after receiving thousands of angry letters from users. The San Jose-based company has long banned the sale of live animals except fish and snails, and officials said Monday they were scrapping plans to create a separate classifieds category that would feature free ads from animal shelters and paid ads from breeders. Over the weekend, an eBay manager revealed in a posting to an online message board that the company was considering lifting the ban, prompting letters from more than 2,000 users, most of whom urged that the ban remain, said company spokesman Hani Durzy. Users were worried the listings would encourage puppy mills, where animals are sometimes bred in unsanitary conditions, and that it would be difficult to differentiate between legitimate animal shelters and unsavory sources. "The feedback was pretty overwhelming," Durzy said. "Farms and for-profit commercial breeders wasn't something that they wanted to see." Booming sales of pet supplies -- and the possibility that users may want a pet listing service -- had prompted the company to reconsider its ban on the sale of live animals, Durzy said. Information from: San Francisco Chronicle, http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think it was horrible that eBay would have even considered the sale of animals through its web site to start with. Most buyer/sellers do business over a long distance using the mail or a delivery service. How is a dog or cat or other animal supposed to feel if it gets shoved into a box, sealed up inside, very possibly with no food or water, very possibly freezing cold weather, and delivered thousands of miles away and a couple days later to some total stranger it has never seen before? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 08:59:53 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Transition to Digital Gets Closer By STEPHEN LABATON The New York Times December 20, 2005 WASHINGTON, Dec. 19 - The House of Representatives moved early Monday to provide millions of households with coupons to buy equipment to keep their television sets working after broadcasters switch from analog to digital signals. But consumer groups warned that the new law would still impose significant costs on viewers. The House measure, including a mandate to complete the transition to digital television by early 2009, was included in budget legislation approved shortly before sunrise by a vote of 212 to 206. The provisions, awaiting Senate approval, are of enormous importance to the television, cable and wireless telephone industries. As part of the transition, the legislation would provide each household with up to two coupons worth $40 each for converter boxes to attach to analog television sets so they are not obsolete once broadcasters surrender their analog licenses on Feb. 17, 2009, as the new law would require. Not coincidentally, the date was selected to fall two weeks after the Super Bowl and a month before the widely watched National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball tournament. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/technology/20digital.html?ex=1292734800&en=151d18cc078ce36e&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 17:59:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Missing ABN Amro Tape With Two Million Names Found Update: Missing ABN Amro tape with 2 million names found. The tape was lost while DHL was transporting it to a credit reporting service News Story by Lucas Mearian DECEMBER 20, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - ABN Amro Mortgage Group said today it has located a tape containing personal data on about 2 million residential mortgage customers that had been lost Nov. 18 while being transported to a credit reporting company. On Friday, ABN Amro Mortgage Group Inc. told its customers that the tape was lost while being transported by DHL delivery service. The tape was being moved from a data center run by a subsidiary of LaSalle Bank Corp. in Chicago to an Experian credit bureau facility in Allen, Texas. The tape contained the names, account information, payment histories and social security numbers for residential mortgage customers, according to the letter ABN Amro sent customers on last week. http://www.computerworld.com/databasetopics/data/story/0,10801,107230,00.html ABN Amro eyes electronic data transfers after tape loss incident A tape containing information on 2M customers was lost for a month News Story by Lucas Mearian DECEMBER 20, 2005 (COMPUTERWORLD) - ABN Amro Mortgage Group Inc. has decided it will no longer send data tapes to its credit reporting bureaus after one of those tapes -- with the private information of more than 2 million customers on it -- went missing a month ago (see "Update: Missing ABN Amro tape with 2 million names found"). http://www.computerworld.com/databasetopics/data/story/0,10801,107239,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:32:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Palm Reports Q2 FY06 Results SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 20, 2005-- Quarterly Revenue $444.6 M; Up 18% Year-over-year; Company Achieves 36% U.S. Converged Device Market Share Palm, Inc. (Nasdaq:PALM) today reported revenue of $444.6 million in its second quarter of fiscal year 2006, ended Dec. 2, up 18 percent from the year-ago period. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=54116038 ------------------------------ Subject: Dumb Question About "Do Not Call" From: Randall Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 18:10:59 -0500 Three times a day, every day, the phone rings and a female robot voice says "Hello, this is not a sales call. This is about an important business matter. Again, this is /not/ a sales call, this is an Important Business Matter!" Then the damn thing hangs up. There is no CLID info with the calls -- they come through as "Unknown" or "Unavailable" -- despite the fact that this line is /supposed/ to reject anonymous calls. Been going on for three weeks or so. Three calls, every day. If I'm here when it rings and I see "Unknown" or "Anonymous", I just pick the receiver up and set it back down. They'll call back. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is no such thing as a dumb question around here, Randall. Just ask many of our users. With my tin-foil hat and diseased brain, I am likely to say almost anything as I bring discredit and shame to the entire net. The 'reject anonymous calls' condition only applies if the caller _deliberatly_ inserted *67 to withhold his number. That condition will not work if the failure to deliver ID is due to a telco shortcoming, such as the type of switch used by the sending telco, etc. The 'reject anonymous' condition relies on the sending telco specifically saying 'do not say who is calling'. In your case the sending telco is not saying that, it just does not know who the caller is or else the details somehow got lost in the switching matrix on the way. But it did not _deny_ or _hide_ anything at the caller's request. You still have a way around it however. Subscribe through your telco to *60 (I think that is called 'reject these callers' in many places). *60 answers you and says 'enter the number to be rejected' or words to that effect and from that point on _that_ caller gets a message saying you are not taking calls at this time. Now I heard your next question already: if you do not know _who_ is calling, how are you supposed to block them? Good question. The *60 recording also tells you 'to reject the last call you received, whether or not you know the number, press (some) key.' I think around here it is '01' or something. You press whatever you were told, and the Operator-Bot responds, "Thank you! That number is a _private_ entry." But none the less it has been blocked. Your telco has a 'local cache' of the last call you placed/received and it uses that entry to do the blocking. If your telco offers 'return last call' service (*68 I think) then you can also use that service to return the last call and find out what the 'important business matter' is all about. Both 'return last call' and 'reject this caller' service are sold by most telcos these days. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: New Regular Feature: Spam Daily News Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 15:33:09 -0600 You may have noticed a couple articles in the Digest today from a new daily feature available here: 'Spam Daily News'. It appears that ICANN does not intend to start anytime soon a new top-level domain called '.spam' where serious reports on this topic could go, along with, of course, I suppose, contributions from spammers/scammers/phishers, etc. So I will provide news reports on this topic through an RSS feed, which can be seen on our web site http://telecom-digest.org in the latest-issue.html area each day. If you wish to carry the news feed on your own site, please add this bit of html code somewhere: The other thing I will do now is fix a delicious dinner each day for spam-bots, you know, those things which go around to web sites looking for names and email addresses to be spammed. You will see 'Spam Poison' in my autoack message from now on and also on the front page of our web site. If the spam bot sees his dinner there, he goes to get it and winds up in a virtual endless loop forever gobbling up totally worthless email addresses, rendering him totally useless to his owner when he returns from his duties. I think they are called 'pharmers'. The code to put on your own web site if you wish to use it is this: Fight spam!Click Here! And finally, I am going to begin using the spam poison address for those users who ask to have their email names/addresses withheld here on account of spam problems. I had been using my other domain which is 'norchur.biz' to just drop those rodents directly into a black hole, but it occurred to me it would be better to put out some tasty food for them to find. Feel free to use the above however you feel best in your own circumstances. PAT ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Tuesday 20th December 2005 Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 08:31:36 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Telenor Buys 3G License In Denmark http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15300.php Norwegian telecommunications operator Telenor ASA (TELN) Monday said its Sonofon unit has received the fourth Danish UMTS, or third-generation, license by The Danish National Information Technology and Telecom Agency at a price of DKK533 million. ... US-Ukrainian ITC starts building first 3G EvDO network http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15304.php U.S.-Ukrainian CDMA operator International Telecommunication Company (ITC) has started building Ukraine's first EvDO, or Evolution Data Only, 3G high-speed network, Vsevolod Valovik, the company's marketing director told Prime-Tass Monday. ... [[ Financial ]] Brazil's Brasil Telecom To Boost Investments In 2006 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15302.php Brazil's third-largest phone company, Brasil Telecom Participacoes, plans to invest a total of 2.5 billion Brazilian reals ($1.05 billion) in its operations in 2006, the company said in a statement Monday. ... Argentina Telephone Union To Strike Over Hours, Wages http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15303.php Workers at Telecom Argentina and Telefonica de Argentina, the country's two fixed-line operators, are planning an afternoon strike Monday to demand a shorter workday and higher salaries, renewing a labor dispute that has been latent for the last year... Slow Cellphone Sales Hits RadioShack http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15316.php The USA based retailer, RadioShack has warned that it is unlikely to achieve its fiscal year 2005 earnings. Despite the projected earnings shortfall, the company reiterated previous free cash flow guidance of US$80 million to US$100 million for the f... [[ Handsets ]] ZTE Signs 3G Handset Deal With Hutchison http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15310.php China's ZTE has signed a 3G handsets supply agreement with Hutchison 3G. The first batch of ZTE and 3 co-branded WCDMA handsets has been shipped to the UK, and has been launched into the market for Christmas. Hutchison 3G operates 3G services in nine... IC Content in Cellular Phones to Surge http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15311.php In 2009, 80% of cellular phone unit sales are forecast to be replacement sales. IC Insights believes that, although some new cellular subscribers may be inclined to buy basic inexpensive phones, replacement handsets will tend to be "full-featured" an... LG Launches 'Time Machine DMB Phone' http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15312.php LG Electronics has announced the launch of the world's first 'Time Machine satellite DMB handset, LG-SB130/KB1300. The 'Time Machine TV Phone' is equipped with the 'Time Machine' function so that users can continue watching TV without pausing even wh... [[ Legal ]] MTS, Alliance Capital say do not recognize Bitel management http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15305.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), Kazakhstan's Alliance Capital and Daniyar Omurzakov, who is the general director of Kyrgyz mobile operator Bitel appointed by MTS, refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of Bitel's manage... Shenandoah Telecom Extends Talks With Sprint http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15308.php Shenandoah Telecommunications Co. and Sprint Nextel Corp. agreed to extend their discussion of a management agreement until Feb. 15, 2006. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] Partnership to Offer Bill Payment Services via Cell Phones http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15309.php Cell phone users without bank accounts will now be able to pay over 3,000 bills directly from their handsets thanks to a new partnership between SVC Financial Services and Ameracash Solutions. SVC, a provider of secure mobile transaction technologies... Sluggish Asia Wireless Location Services Market on Verge of Taking Off http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15313.php Location-based services (LBS) may finally realize its potential in the Asia/Pacific region in the upcoming five years, reports In-Stat. LBS has been labelled "the next big thing," and has been the subject of aggressive revenue projections by industry... [[ Network Operators ]] Belarus 3rd GSM operator to launch its network on Wednesday http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15307.php A third Belarusian GSM mobile operator plans to launch its network into commercial operation Wednesday, the company's representative said Monday. ... M1 Offers Roaming Deal With Vodafone http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15315.php Singapore's M1 is offering savings of up to 60% savings on data charges and will pay local data rates when roaming on Vodafone networks. These savings can be enjoyed in 8 countries where Vodafone operates and in over 30 countries by early next year. ... [[ Regulatory ]] Russian telecom assoc says worried about caller-pays principle bill http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15306.php Russia's Association of Regional Mobile Operators and GSM Association are concerned about a bill seeking to introduce the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle in the country, the Association of Regional Mobile Operators said in a press release Monday... [[ Statistics ]] MegaFon user base in Russia's Far East up to 900,000 users http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15301.php The subscriber base of Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon in the Far East Federal District soared to 900,000 users since the beginning of the year, the press service of Mobikom-Khabarovsk said Monday. ... [[ Technology ]] 3.2 MegaPixel Camera Phone Sensor Launched http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15314.php MagnaChip Semiconductor has announced the launch of a 3.2 megapixel CMOS image sensor for the camera phone application market. The 2.57u pixel of the MC532MA allows for excellent low-light performance in a small module size, which has typically been ... ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 12:23:57 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: EU Regulators Approve Ericsson-Marconi Deal USTelecom dailyLead December 20, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AtkIatagCCeIBJWUgr TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * EU regulators approve Ericsson-Marconi deal BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * RIM: BlackBerry service will not shut down * Vivato ends operations * Report: Big changes on horizon for IP set-top market * Huawei sees strong growth in Malaysia's hot telecom sector * Motorola executive: 2006 won't be 3G's breakthrough year * Icahn expresses doubt about AOL-Google deal USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Fixed Mobile Convergence and IMS now available on demand TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Coaxsys to show off ultrafast home-networking technology * Faster Internet services offered by telecoms, cable REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * India moves forward on IPv6 * House drops plan to add more H1-B visas Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AtkIatagCCeIBJWUgr ------------------------------ From: dwolffxx@panix.com (David Wolff) Subject: Re: Spam (was FTC Do Not Call List) Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 05:49:45 UTC Organization: Public Access Networks Corp. In article , Seth Breidbart wrote: > In article , > Jim Haynes wrote: >> One scheme that seemed to me to have some promise was to detect spam >> in the SMTP receiving program and deliberately delay its responses >> to the sending program. So that the transaction of sending a message >> is stretched out far longer than normal. > That's called tarpitting. It would work against spammers who use > their own resources to send. Those who use armies of zombies wouldn't > care. I would think that at least it cuts down on the amount of spam, if enough of the zombies get stuck in tarpits. Thanks -- David (Remove "xx" to reply.) ------------------------------ From: nospam4me@mytrashmail.com Subject: Re: Congress: "Merry Christmas! We're Turning Off Your Analog Outs" Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 13:05:03 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Regards the first part of your > statement on paying royalties what about classical music stations, > where a great deal of the music itself is in the public domain, owing > to the age of the compositions, etc? PAT] It is my understanding that unlike 'pop' stations classical radio stations must purchase the recordings. IANAL, but I think some ASCAP and BMI money may go indirectly to performers; BMI was founded I think in the wake of a musician's union strike which led to a several year recording embargo. Then too many classical recordings on the market are made by Eastern European orchestras which wouldn't be in the ASCAP/BMI loop. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Herb Oxley From: address IS Valid. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 09:44:04 -0600 From: Neal McLain Reply-To: nmclain@annsgarden.com Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Thor Lancelot Simon (tls@panix.com) wrote: > Well, it's generally frowned upon to cite it (or similar works) in > scholarly writing at anything but the most elementary level. The > same kind of scorn should be applied to writers who cite Wikipedia; > unfortunately, sometimes it is not. Well, then I guess my writings must be at that most elementary level. As I noted in my previous post on this subject, I find that Wikipedia articles (at least the technical ones I'm likely to cite) are accurate and well written. Of course, I review every cited article before I cite it, and I always cite the permanent link. Wikipedia offers an advantage that few other websites offer: link stability. By citing the permanent link, I can be confident that the article I'm citing won't be changed, and that it won't disappear (I've learned the hard way that I can't trust the stability of websites maintained by such presumably stable institutions as NASA, the Illinois Commerce Commission, the Mount Wilson Observatory, or the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department). John McHarry wrote: > Wikipedia has more vulnerabilities than a traditional edited > collection like Britannica, but it contains a rather amazing amount > of information. Of course, no secondary source should be trusted > very far. That's undeniably true, but there are many situations where a set of facts is so well established and/or so lost in history that it's impossible even to identify, much less cite, the primary source. What, for example, it the primary source for parabola? Sonata? Empanada? Or consider the example I mentioned in my previous post: the concept of the geostationary orbit. Who or what is the primary source? Arthur C. Clarke first published the idea [1], but even he disclaimed originality [2]. The FCC rules include a legal definition [3] which is based Federal Standard 1037C [4] which is based on the ITU Radio Regulations [5] (which costs 252 Swiss Franks to download). I suppose the ITU is the ultimate authority, but it's certainly not a primary source. For my purposes, Wikipedia's definition [6], though certainly not primary, works: it's accurate, comprehensive, permanent, and free. ----------- Citations (mostly not Wikipedia) -------------- [1] Arthur C. Clarke. "Extra-Terrestrial Relays." Wireless World, October, 1945, 305-308. Reprinted in "Ascent to Orbit: A Scientific Autobiography." New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1984, 60-63. [2] Arthur C. Clarke. "The Space Station: Its Radio Applications." "Ascent to Orbit," 53. [3] National Archives and Records Administration. United States Code of Federal Regulations. 47 CFR 2.1. http://tinyurl.com/devel [4] National Communications System Technology & Standards Division. "Telecommunications: Glossary of Telecommunication Terms, Federal Standard 1037C." http://tinyurl.com/9gzzw [5] International Telecommunications Union. General Secretariat and Telecom Radiocommunication (ITU-R). Radio Regulations, edition of 2004. http://tinyurl.com/a62du [6] Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. "Geostationary orbit." 19 Dec 2005, 08:48 UTC. 20 Dec 2005, 13:04 http://tinyurl.com/dz2sw Neal McLain ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Wikipedia Becomes Internet Force, But Faces Crisis Organization: Symantec Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 15:16:49 -0500 In article , sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) wrote: > In article , Robert Bonomi > wrote: >> In article , Thor Lancelot Simon >> wrote: >>> In article , Dave Garland >>> wrote: >>>> The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but >>>> among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not >>>> particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained >>>> around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three ... >>> I'm astonished that a 25% difference is considered "not particularly >>> great". >> I'm astonished that something that can be explained by "jitter" of >> "plus/minus one count" in 'ordinal' numeric data, would be considered >> anything _other_ than "not particularly great". Well, unless they do >> not really understand statistical analysis, that is. >> 3 vs 4 is jitter. > 126 vs. 168 is a bigger difference, though it's the same 25%. > (Unless you believe that there are a lot of off-by-one errors, _all_ > in the same direction.) Except that these numbers were averages, not actual counts. But then they rounded them off for the article. It's possible that around four is 3.7, and about 3 is 3.4, so they're actually much closer; but they could also be 2.8 and 4.3, a 35% difference. But what they also didn't include in the article was information about the distribution, standard deviation, etc. If most of the articles in Wikipedia have 3-5 innacuracies, while most of the Brittanica articles have 2-4, that's a significant overlap. On the other hand, if 2/3 of Wikipedia articles have no errors, and the other third have 10-14, while Brittanica is 90% clean with the other 10% having around 30 errors, that's quite different. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** *** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group *** ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: World Aids Day Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 14:33:37 -0600 Some way or another, I failed to mention back on December 1 that the date is refered to as 'World Aids Day', otherwise I would have given you these 'virtual red ribbons' that day. Support World AIDS Day ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #571 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 21 01:12:32 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2CDBD14DB8; Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:12:32 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #572 Message-Id: <20051221061232.2CDBD14DB8@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:12:32 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAD_CREDIT, BAYES_00,LIVE_PORN,MAILTO_TO_REMOVE,NO_COST,PAY_SITE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 21 Dec 2005 01:15:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 572 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Through His Webcam, a Boy Joins a Sordid Online World (Kurt Eichenwald) Re: U.S. Now Says All Porn is Child Porn Unless Proven Otherwise (K Abrams) Re: Missing ABN Amro Tape With Two Million Names Found (Ron Chapman) Re: Dumb Question About "Do Not Call" (Steven Lichter) 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: Kurt Eichenwald Subject: Through His Webcam, a Teenage Boy Joins a Sordid Online World Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 21:59:16 -0600 By KURT EICHENWALD, New York Times reporter The 13-year-old boy sat in his California home, eyes fixed on a computer screen. He had never run with the popular crowd and long ago had turned to the Internet for the friends he craved. But on this day, Justin Berry's fascination with cyberspace would change his life. Weeks before, Justin had hooked up a Web camera to his computer, hoping to use it to meet other teenagers online. Instead, he heard only from men who chatted with him by instant message as they watched his image on the Internet. To Justin, they seemed just like friends, ready with compliments and always offering gifts. Now, on an afternoon in 2000, one member of his audience sent a proposal: he would pay Justin $50 to sit bare-chested in front of his Webcam for three minutes. The man explained that Justin could receive the money instantly and helped him open an account on PayPal.com, an online payment system. "I figured, I took off my shirt at the pool for nothing," he said recently. "So, I was kind of like, what's the difference?" Justin removed his T-shirt. The men watching him oozed compliments. So began the secret life of a teenager who was lured into selling images of his body on the Internet over the course of five years. From the seduction that began that day, this soccer-playing honor roll student was drawn into performing in front of the Webcam -- undressing, showering, masturbating and even having sex -- for an audience of more than 1,500 people who paid him, over the years, hundreds of thousands of dollars. Justin's dark coming-of-age story is a collateral effect of recent technological advances. Minors, often under the online tutelage of adults, are opening for-pay pornography sites featuring their own images sent onto the Internet by inexpensive Webcams. And they perform from the privacy of home, while parents are nearby, beyond their children's closed bedroom doors. The business has created youthful Internet pornography stars -- with nicknames like Riotboyy, Miss Honey and Gigglez -- whose images are traded online long after their sites have vanished. In this world, adolescents announce schedules of their next masturbation for customers who pay fees for the performance or monthly subscription charges. Eager customers can even buy "private shows," in which teenagers sexually perform while following real-time instructions. A six-month investigation by The New York Times into this corner of the Internet found that such sites had emerged largely without attracting the attention of law enforcement or youth protection organizations. While experts with these groups said they had witnessed a recent deluge of illicit, self-generated Webcam images, they had not known of the evolution of sites where minors sold images of themselves for money. "We've been aware of the use of the Webcam and its potential use by exploiters," said Ernest E. Allen, chief executive of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, a private group. "But this is a variation on a theme that we haven't seen. It's unbelievable." Minors who run these sites find their anonymity amusing, joking that their customers may be the only adults who know of their activities. It is, in the words of one teenage site operator, the "Webcam Matrix," a reference to the movie in which a computerized world exists without the knowledge of most of humanity. In this virtual universe, adults hunt for minors on legitimate sites used by Webcam owners who post contact information in hopes of attracting friends. If children respond to messages, adults spend time "grooming" them -- with praise, attention and gifts -- before seeking to persuade them to film themselves pornographically. The lure is the prospect of easy money. Many teenagers solicit "donations," request gifts through sites like Amazon.com or negotiate payments, while a smaller number charge monthly fees. But there are other beneficiaries, including businesses, some witting and some unwitting, that provide services to the sites like Web hosting and payment processing. Not all victims profit, with some children ending up as pornographic commodities inadvertently, even unknowingly. Adolescents have appeared naked on their Webcams as a joke, or as presents for boyfriends or girlfriends, only to have their images posted on for-pay pornography sites. One Web site proclaims that it features 140,000 images of "adolescents in cute panties exposing themselves on their teen Webcams." Entry into this side of cyberspace is simplicity itself. Webcams cost as little as $20, and the number of them being used has mushroomed to 15 million, according to IDC, an industry consulting group. At the same time, instant messaging programs have become ubiquitous, and high-speed connections, allowing for rapid image transmission, are common. The scale of Webcam child pornography is unknown, because it is new and extremely secretive. One online portal that advertises for-pay Webcam sites, many of them pornographic, lists at least 585 sites created by teenagers, internal site records show. At one computer bulletin board for adults attracted to adolescents, a review of postings over the course of a week revealed Webcam image postings of at least 98 minors. The Times inquiry has already resulted in a large-scale criminal investigation. In June, The Times located Justin Berry, then 18. In interviews, Justin revealed the existence of a group of more than 1,500 men who paid for his online images, as well as evidence that other identifiable children as young as 13 were being actively exploited. In a series of meetings, The Times persuaded Justin to abandon his business and, to protect other children at risk, assisted him in contacting the Justice Department. Arrests and indictments of adults he identified as pornography producers and traffickers began in September, 2005. Investigators are also focusing on businesses, including credit card processors that have aided illegal sites. Anyone who has created, distributed, marketed, possessed or paid to view such pornography is open to a criminal charge. "The fact that we are getting so many potential targets, people who knowingly bought into a child pornographic Web site, could lead to hundreds of other subjects and potentially save hundreds of other kids that we are not aware of yet," said Monique Winkis, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who is working the case. Law enforcement officials also said that, with the cooperation of Justin, they had obtained a rare guide into this secluded online world whose story illuminates the exploitation that takes place there. "I didn't want these people to hurt any more kids," Justin said recently of his decision to become a federal witness. "I didn't want anyone else to live the life I lived." A High-Tech Transformation Not long ago, the distribution of child pornnography in America was a smallish trade, relegated to back rooms and corners where even the proprietors of X-rated bookstores refused to loiter. By the mid-1980's, however, technology had transformed the business, with pedophiles going online to communicate anonymously and post images through rudimentary bulletin board systems. As Internet use boomed in the 1990's, these adults honed their computer skills, finding advanced ways to meet online and swap illegal photos; images once hard to obtain were suddenly available with the click of a mouse. As the decade drew to a close, according to experts and records of online conversations, these adults began openly fantasizing of the day they would be able to reach out to children directly, through instant messaging and live video, to obtain the pornography they desired. Their dream was realized with the Web camera, which transformed online pornography the way the automobile changed transportation. At first, the cameras, some priced at more than $100, offered little more than grainy snapshots, "refreshed" a few times per minute. But it was not long before easy-to-use $20 Webcams could transmit high-quality continuous color video across the globe instantly. By 2000, things had worked out exactly the way the pedophiles hoped. Webcams were the rage among computer-savvy minors, creating a bountiful selection of potential targets. Among them was Justin Berry. That year, he was a gangly 13-year-old with saucer eyes and brown hair that he often dyed blond. He lived with his mother, stepfather and younger sister in Bakersfield, Calif., a midsize city about 90 miles north of Los Angeles. Already he was so adept at the computer that he had registered his own small Web site development business, which he ran from the desk where he did his schoolwork. So Justin was fascinated when a friend showed off the free Webcam he had received for joining Earthlink, an Internet service provider. The device was simple and elegant. As Justin remembers it, he quickly signed up, too, eager for his own Webcam. "I didn't really have a lot of friends," he recalled, "and I thought having a Webcam might help me make some new ones online, maybe even meet some girls my age." As soon as Justin hooked the camera to his bedroom computer and loaded the software, his picture was automatically posted on spotlife.com, an Internet directory of Webcam users, along with his contact information. Then he waited to hear from other teenagers. No one Justin's age ever contacted him from that listing. But within minutes he heard from his first online predator. That man was soon followed by another, then another. Justin remembers his earliest communications with these men as nonthreatening, pleasant encounters. There were some oddities - men who pretended to be teenage girls, only to slip up and reveal the truth later -- but Justin enjoyed his online community. His new friends were generous. One explained how to put together a "wish list" on Amazon.com, where Justin could ask for anything, including computer equipment, toys, music CD's or movies. Anyone who knew his wish-list name -- Justin Camboy -- could buy him a gift. Amazon delivered the presents without revealing his address to the buyers. The men also filled an emotional void in Justin's life. His relationship with his father, Knute Berry, was troubled. His parents divorced when he was young; afterward, police records show, there were instances of reported abuse. On one occasion Mr. Berry was arrested and charged with slamming Justin's head into a wall, causing an injury that required seven staples in his scalp. Although Justin testified against him, Mr. Berry said the injury was an accident and was acquitted. He declined to comment in a telephone interview. The emotional turmoil left Justin longing for paternal affection, family members said. And the adult males he met online offered just that. "They complimented me all the time," Justin said. "They told me I was smart, they told me I was handsome." In that, experts said, the eighth-grade boy's experience reflected the standard methods used by predatory adults to insinuate themselves into the lives of minors they meet online. "In these cases, there are problems in their own lives that make them predisposed to" manipulation by adults, Lawrence Likar, a former F.B.I. supervisor, said of children persuaded to pose for pornography. "The predators know that and are able to tap into these problems and offer what appear to be solutions." Justin's mother, Karen Page, said she sensed nothing out of the ordinary. Her son seemed to be just a boy talented with computers who enjoyed speaking to friends online. The Webcam, as she saw it, was just another device that would improve her son's computer skills, and maybe even help him on his Web site development business. "Everything I ever heard was that children should be exposed to computers and given every opportunity to learn from them," Ms. Page said in an interview. She never guessed that one of her son's first lessons after turning on his Webcam was that adults would eagerly pay him just to disrobe a little. The Instant Audience It was as if the news shot around the Web. By appearing on camera bare-chested, Justin sent an important message: here was a boy who would do things for money. Gradually the requests became bolder, the cash offers larger: More than $100 for Justin to pose in his underwear. Even more if the boxers came down. The latest request was always just slightly beyond the last, so that each new step never struck him as considerably different. How could adults be so organized at manipulating young people with Webcams? Unknown to Justin, they honed their persuasive skills by discussing strategy online, sharing advice on how to induce their young targets to go further at each stage. Moreover, these adults are often people adept at manipulating teenagers. In its investigation, The Times obtained the names and credit card information for the 1,500 people who paid Justin to perform on camera, and analyzed the backgrounds of 300 of them nationwide. A majority of the sample consisted of doctors and lawyers, businessmen and teachers, many of whom work with children on a daily basis. Not long ago, adults sexually attracted to children were largely isolated from one another. But the Internet has created a virtual community where they can readily communicate and reinforce their feelings, experts said. Indeed, the messages they send among themselves provide not only self-justification, but also often blame minors with Webcam sites for offering temptation. "These kids are the ones being manipulative," wrote an adult who called himself Upandc in a posting this year to a bulletin board for adults attracted to children. Or, as an adult who called himself DLW wrote: "Did a sexual predator MAKE them make a site? No. Did they decide to do it for themselves? Yes." Tempting as it may be for some in society to hold the adolescent Webcam operators responsible, experts in the field say that is misguided, because it fails to recognize the control that adults exercise over highly impressionable minors. "The world will want to blame the kids, but the reality is, they are victims here," said Mr. Allen of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. But there is no doubt that the minors cash in on their own exploitation. With Justin, for example, the road to cyberporn stardom was paved with cool new equipment. When his growing legion of fans complained about the quality of his Webcam, he put top-rated cameras and computer gear on his Amazon wish list, and his fans rushed to buy him all of it. A $35 Asante four-port hub, which allowed for the use of multiple cameras, was bought by someone calling himself Wesley Taylor, Amazon receipts show. For $45, a fan nicknamed tuckertheboy bought a Viking memory upgrade to speed up Justin's broadcast. And then there were cameras -- a $60 color Webcam by Hawking Technologies from banjo000; a $60 Intel Deluxe USB camera from boyking12; and a $150 Hewlett-Packard camera from eplayernine. Justin's desk became a high-tech playhouse. To avoid suspicions, he hid the Webcams behind his desk until nighttime. Whenever his mother asked about his new technology and money, Justin told her they were fruits of his Web site development business. In a way, it was true; with one fan's help, he had by then opened his own pornographic Web site, called justinscam.com. His mother saw little evidence of a boy in trouble. Justin's grades stayed good -- mostly A's and B's, although his school attendance declined as he faked illness to spend time with his Webcam. As he grew familiar with the online underground, Justin learned he was not alone in the business. Other teenagers were doing the same things, taking advantage of an Internet infrastructure of support that was perfectly suited to illicit business. As a result, while it helped to have Justin's computer skills, even minors who fumbled with technology could operate successful pornography businesses. Yahoo, America Online and MSN were starting to offer free instant message services that contained embedded ability to transmit video, with no expertise required. The programs were offered online, without parental controls. No telltale credit card numbers or other identifying information was necessary. In minutes, any adolescent could have a video and text system up and running, without anyone knowing, a fact that concerns some law enforcement officials. There were also credit card processing services that handled payments without requiring tax identification numbers. There were companies that helped stream live video onto the Internet -- including one in Indiana that offered the service at no charge if the company president could watch free. And there were sites -- portals, in the Web vernacular -- that took paid advertising from teenage Webcam addresses and allowed fans to vote for their favorites. Teenagers, hungry for praise, compete for rankings on the portals as desperately as contestants on TV reality shows, offering special performances in exchange for votes. "Everyone please vote me a 10 on my cam site," a girl nicknamed Thunderrockracin told her subscribers in 2002, "and I will have a live sleep cam!" In other words, she would let members watch her sleep if they boosted her up the rankings. Fearing the Fans Justin began to feel he belonged to something important, a broad community of teenagers with their own businesses. Some he knew by their real names, others by the screen names they used for their sites - Strider, Stoner, Kitty, Calvin, Emily, Seth and so on. But collectively, they were known by a name now commonplace in this Internet subculture: They call themselves "camwhores." Justin chatted with the boys online, and sometimes persuaded the girls to masturbate on camera while he did the same. Often, he heard himself compared to Riotboyy, another young-looking teenager whose site had experienced as many as 6,400 hits in a single week. In conversations with Justin, other minors with for-pay sites admitted to being scared of certain fans. Some adults wrote things like "It wants to possess you." They had special wardrobe requests for the adolescents: in jeans with a belt, without a belt, with a lacy bra, showing legs, showing feet, wearing boxers with an erection, and others. One 16-year-old who called himself hot boyy 23 finally found the entreaties too much. "Hey guys," he wrote when he shut down his site, "I'm sorry, there are just too many freaks out there for me. I need to live a more normal life, too. I might be back someday and I might not. I'm sorry I had to ruin all the fun." It was not only the minors operating Webcam sites for pay who faced frightening adults. Earlier this year, a teenage girl in Alabama posed seminude on her Webcam in a sexually charged conversation with someone she thought was another teenage girl. But her new confidant, it turned out, was an adult named Julio Bardales from Napa, Calif., law enforcement officials said. And when the girl stopped complying, she received an e-mail message from Mr. Bardales containing a montage of her images. Across them was a threat in red letters that the images would be revealed unless she showed a frontal nude shot over the Webcam. Mr. Bardales was subsequently arrested. The police said he possessed images of more under-age girls on Webcams, including other montages with the same threat. Justin says that he did not fully understand the dangers his fans posed, and before he turned 14, he was first lured from the relative safety of his home. A man he met online hosted Justin's Web site from Ann Arbor, Mich., and invited him there to attend a computer camp. Justin's mother allowed him to go, thinking the camp sounded worthwhile. Another time, the man enticed Justin to Michigan by promising to arrange for him to have sex with a girl. Both times, Justin said, the man molested him. Transcripts of their subsequent conversations online support the accusations, and a video viewed by The Times shows that the man, who appears for a short time in the recording, also taped pornography of Justin. From then on, Justin's personality took on a harder edge, evident in the numerous instant messages he made available to The Times. He became an aggressive negotiator of prices for his performances. Emboldened by a growing contempt for his audience, he would sometimes leave their questions unanswered for hours, just to prove to himself that they would wait for him. "These people had no lives," Justin said. "They would never get mad." Unnerved by menacing messages from a fan of his first site, Justin opened a new one called jfwy.com, an online acronym that loosely translates into "just messing with you." This time, following an idea suggested by one of his fans, he charged subscribers $45 a month. In addition, he could command large individual payments for private shows, sometimes $300 for an hourlong performance. "What's in the hour?" inquired a subscriber named Gran0Stan in one typical exchange in 2002. "What do you do?" "I'll do everything, if you know what I mean," Justin replied. Gran0Stan was eager to watch, and said the price was fine. "When?" he asked. "Tonight," Justin said. "After my mom goes to sleep." As his obsession with the business grew, Justin became a ferocious competitor. When another under-age site operator called Strider ranked higher on a popular portal, Justin sent him anonymous e-mail messages, threatening to pass along images from Strider's site to the boy's father. Strider's site disappeared. "I was vicious," Justin said. "But I guess I really did Strider a favor. Looking back, I wish someone had done that to me." By then, fans had begun offering Justin cash to meet. Gilo Tunno, a former Intel employee, gave him thousands of dollars to visit him in a Las Vegas hotel, according to financial records and other documents. There, Justin said, Mr. Tunno began a series of molestings. At least one assault was videotaped and the recording e-mailed to Justin, who has since turned it over to the F.B.I. Mr. Tunno played another critical role in Justin's business, the records show. When he was 15, Justin worried that his mother might discover what he was doing. So he asked Mr. Tunno to sign an apartment lease for him and pay rent. Justin promised to raise money to pay a share. "I'll whore," he explained in a message to Mr. Tunno. Mr. Tunno agreed, signing a lease for $410 a month for an apartment just down the street from Justin's house. From then on, Justin would tell his mother he was visiting friends, then head to the apartment for his next performance. Mr. Tunno, who remains under investigation in the case, is serving an eight-year federal sentence on an unrelated sexual abuse charge involving a child and could not be reached for comment. The rental symbolized a problem that Justin had not foreseen: his adult fans would do almost anything to ensure that his performances continued. At its worst, they would stand between him and the people in his offline life whom they saw as a threat to his Webcam appearances. For example, when a girlfriend of Justin's tried to convince him to shut down his site in December 2002, a customer heaped scorn on her. "She actually gets mad at you for buying her things with the money you make from the cam?" messaged the customer, a man using the nickname Angelaa. "Just try and remember, Justin, that she may not love you, but most of us in your chat room, your friends, love you very much." A Life Falls Apart In early 2003, Justin's offline life began to unravel. A former classmate found pornographic videos on the Internet from Justin's Web site, made copies and handed them out around town, including to students at his school. Justin was taunted and beaten. Feeling embarrassed and unable to continue at school, Justin begged his mother to allow him to be home-schooled through an online program. Knowing he was having trouble with classmates, but in the dark about the reasons why, she agreed. Then, in February, came another traumatic event. Justin had begun speaking with his father, hoping to repair their relationship. But that month, Mr. Berry, who had been charged with insurance fraud related to massage clinics he ran, disappeared without a word. Despairing, Justin turned to his online fans. "My dad left. I guess he doesn't love me," he wrote. "Why did I let him back in my life? Let me die, just let me die." His father did not disappear for long. Soon, Mr. Berry called his son from Mazatln, Mexico; Justin begged to join him, and his father agreed. In Mexico, Justin freely spent his cash, leading his father to ask where the money had come from. Justin said that he confessed the details of his lucrative Webcam business, and that the reunion soon became a collaboration. Justin created a new Web site, calling it mexicofriends, his most ambitious ever. It featured Justin having live sex with prostitutes. During some of Justin's sexual encounters, a traffic tracker on his site showed hundreds watching. It rapidly became a wildly popular Webcam pornography site, making Justin one of the Internet's most sought after under-age pornography stars. For this site, Justin, then 16, used a pricing model favored by legitimate businesses. For standard subscribers, the cost was $35, billed monthly. But discounts were available for three-month, six-month and annual memberships. Justin used the cash to support a growing cocaine and marijuana habit. Money from the business, Justin said, was shared with his father, an accusation supported by transcripts of their later instant message conversations. In exchange, Justin told prosecutors and The Times, his father helped procure prostitutes. One video obtained by the F.B.I. shows Mr. Berry sitting with Justin as the camera is turned on, then making the bed before a prostitute arrives to engage in intercourse with his teenage son. Asked about Justin's accusations, Mr. Berry said, "Obviously, I am not going to comment on anything." In the fall of 2003, Justin's life took a new turn when a subscriber named Greg Mitchel, a 36-year-old fast food restaurant manager from Dublin, Va., struck up an online friendship with the boy and soon asked to visit him. Seeing a chance to generate cash, Justin agreed. Mr. Mitchel arrived that October, and while in Mexico, molested Justin for what would be the first of many times, according to transcripts of their conversations and other evidence. Mr. Mitchel, who is in jail awaiting trial on six child pornography charges stemming from this case, could not be reached for comment. Over the following year, Justin tried repeatedly to break free of this life. He roamed the United States. He contemplated suicide. For a time he sought solace in a return to his boyhood Christianity. At one point he dismantled his site, loading it instead with Biblical teachings -- and taking delight in knowing the surprise his subscribers would experience when they logged on to watch him have sex. But his drug craving, and the need for money to satisfy it, was always there. Soon, Mr. Mitchel beckoned, urging Justin to return to pornography and offering to be his business partner. With Mr. Mitchel, records and interviews show, Justin created a new Web site, justinsfriends.com, featuring performances by him and other boys he helped recruit. But as videos featuring other minors appeared on his site, Justin felt torn, knowing that these adolescents were on the path that had hurt him so badly. Justin was now 18, a legal adult. He had crossed the line from under-age victim to adult perpetrator. A Look Behind the Secrecy In June, Justin began communicating online with someone who had never messaged him before. The conversations involved many questions, and Justin feared his new contact might be an F.B.I. agent. Still, when a meeting was suggested, Justin agreed. He says part of him hoped he would be arrested, putting an end to the life he was leading. They met in Los Angeles, and Justin learned that the man was this reporter, who wanted to discuss the world of Webcam pornography with him. After some hesitation, Justin agreed. At one point, asked what he wanted to accomplish in his life, Justin pondered for a moment and replied that he wanted to make his mother and grandmother proud of him. The next day, Justin began showing the inner workings of his online world. Using a laptop computer, he signed on to the Internet and was quickly bombarded with messages from men urging him to turn on his Webcam and strip. One man described, without prompting, what he remembered seeing of Justin's genitals during a show. Another asked Justin to recount the furthest distance he had ever ejaculated. Still another offered an unsolicited description of the sexual acts he would perform on Justin if they met. "This guy is really a pervert," Justin said. "He kind of scares me." As the sexual pleadings continued, Justin's hands trembled. His pale face dampened with perspiration. For a moment he tried to seem tough, but the protective facade did not last. He turned off the computer without a final word to his online audience. In the days that followed, Justin agreed in discussions with this reporter to abandon the drugs and his pornography business. He cut himself off from his illicit life. He destroyed his cellphone, stopped using his online screen name and fled to a part of the country where no one would find him. As he sobered up, Justin disclosed more of what he knew about the Webcam world; within a week, he revealed the names and locations of children who were being actively molested or exploited by adults with Webcam sites. After confirming his revelations, The Times urged him to give his information to prosecutors, and he agreed. Justin contacted Steven M. Ryan, a former federal prosecutor and partner with Manatt, Phelps & Phillips in Washington. Mr. Ryan had learned of Justin's story during an interview with The Times about a related legal question, and offered to represent him. On July 14, Mr. Ryan contacted the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section of the Justice Department, informing prosecutors that he had a client with evidence that could implicate potentially hundreds of people. By then, Mr. Ryan had learned that some of Justin's old associates, disturbed by his disappearance, were hunting for him and had begun removing records from the Internet. Mr. Ryan informed prosecutors of the dangers to Justin and the potential destruction of evidence. Two weeks passed with little response. Finally, in late July, Justin met in Washington with the F.B.I. and prosecutors. He identified children who he believed were in the hands of adult predators. He listed the marketers, credit card processors and others who supported Webcam child pornography. He also described the voluminous documentary evidence he had retained on his hard drives: financial information, conversation transcripts with his members, and other records. But that evidence would not be turned over, Mr. Ryan said, until Justin received immunity. The meeting ended, followed by weeks of silence. Word came back that prosecutors were wrestling with Justin's dual role as a victim and a perpetrator. Justin told associates that he was willing to plead guilty if the government would save the children he had identified; Mr. Ryan dissuaded him. By September, almost 50 days had passed since the first contact with the government, with no visible progress. Frustrated, Mr. Ryan informed prosecutors that he would have to go elsewhere, and contacted the California attorney general. That proved unnecessary. Prodded by the F.B.I. and others in the Justice Department, on Sept. 7, prosecutors informed Mr. Ryan that his client would be granted immunity. A little more than four weeks after his 19th birthday, Justin became a federal witness. A Final Online Confrontation Five days later, on the third floor of a lakeside house in Dublin, Va., Greg Mitchel -- Justin's 38-year-old business partner on his pornography Web site -- rested on his bed as he chatted online with others in his illicit business. Ever since Justin's disappearance weeks before, things had been tense for Mr. Mitchel. Some in the business already suspected that Justin might be talking to law enforcement. One associate had already declared to Mr. Mitchel that, if Justin was revealing their secrets, he would kill the boy. But this night, Sept. 12, the news on Mr. Mitchel's computer screen was particularly disquieting. An associate in Tennessee sent word that the F.B.I. had just raided a Los Angeles computer server used by an affiliated Webcam site. Then, to Mr. Mitchel's surprise, Justin himself appeared online under a new screen name and sent a greeting. Mr. Mitchel pleaded with Justin to come out of hiding, inviting the teenager on an all-expense-paid trip to Las Vegas with him and a 15-year-old boy also involved in Webcam pornography. But Justin demurred. "You act like you're in witness protection," Mr. Mitchel typed. "Are you?" "Haha," Justin replied. Did Mr. Mitchel think he would be on the Internet if he was a federal witness? he asked. Justin changed the subject, later asking the whereabouts of others who lived with Mr. Mitchel, including two adolescents; Mr. Mitchel replied that everyone was home that night. In a location in the Southwest, Justin glanced from his computer screen to a speakerphone. On the line was a team of F.B.I. agents who at that moment were pulling several cars into Mr. Mitchel's driveway, preparing to arrest him. "The kids are in the house!" Justin shouted into the phone, answering a question posed by one of the agents. As agents approached the house, Justin knew he had little time left. He decided to confront the man who had hurt him for so long. "Do you even remember how many times you stuck your hand down my pants?" he typed. Mr. Mitchel responded that many bad things had happened, but he wanted to regain Justin's trust. "You molested me," Justin replied. "Don't apologize for what you can't admit." There was no response. "Peekaboo?" Justin typed. On the screen, a message appeared that Mr. Mitchel had signed off. The arrest was over. Justin thrust his hands into the air. "Yes!" he shouted. In the weeks since the first arrest, F.B.I. agents and prosecutors have focused on numerous other potential defendants. For example, Tim Richards, identified by Justin as a marketer and principal of justinsfriends.com, was arrested in Nashville last month and arraigned on child pornography charges. According to law enforcement officials, Mr. Richards was stopped in a moving van in his driveway, accompanied by a young teenage boy featured by Mr. Richards on his own Webcam site. Mr. Richards has pleaded not guilty. Hundreds of thousands of computer files, including e-mail containing a vast array of illegal images sent among adults, have been seized from around the country. Information about Justin's members has been downloaded by the F.B.I. from Neova.net, the company that processed the credit cards; Neova and its owner, Aaron Brown, are targets of the investigation, according to court records and government officials. And Justin has begun assisting agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who hope to use his evidence to bring new charges against an imprisoned child rapist. Justin himself has found a measure of control over his life. He revealed the details of his secret life to his family, telling them of all the times in the past that he had lied to them. He has sought counseling, kept off drugs, resumed his connection with his church and plans to attend college beginning in January. In recent weeks, Justin returned to his mother's home in California, fearing that -- once his story was public -- he might not be able to do so easily. On their final day together, Justin's mother drove him to the airport. Hugging him as they said goodbye, she said that the son she once knew had finally returned. Then, as tears welled in her eyes, Justin's mother told him that she and his grandmother were proud of him. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more articles each day from New York Times, National Public Radio and the Christian Science Monitor, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ From: Ken Abrams Subject: Re: U.S. Now Says All Porn is Child Porn Unless Proven Otherwise Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:55:33 GMT Spam Daily News wrote > From Spam Daily News > All pornography in the US is now effectively classified as child > pornography, unless providers can prove the ages of everyone taking > part. > SOURCE: The Register; Wired; Washington Blade > Copyright 2005 Spam Daily IMHO, the way this is presented it has the feel of an "urban legand". Exactly what rule, regulation or statute is being referenced here? Have any of the sources been verified? Even if they have, are they reputable? While this is somewhat interesting (if true), how is it (directly) related to spam? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: It is directly related to spam because of the _huge_ amounts of pornography -- much of it involving children -- which is in email each day. Whether it is a 'joe job' or a real 'honest' spammer sending it does not matter. Its still child porn being emailed around the net. As for verification, the two gay publications/web sites quoted i.e. Washington Blade and http://gay.com are both well known and highly respected gay publications, both the net version and in their paper editions. I am just beginning to get familiar with 'Spam Daily' at the present time. And whatever you may think of http://yahoo.com and http://msn.com and their whorish ways where their respective 'Messenger' and 'matchmaking' programs are concerned, you probably would agree they are legitimate. A number of years ago, under President Clinton's first administration as memory serves me, Congress did pass a law requiring 'adult' magazines to keep records for examination by authorties of all persons whose images and likenesses were displayed in the magazine. In June of this year, 'someone' in Our Nation's (drug and crime-infested) Capitol had the bright idea that the aforemetioned law should apply not only to the print media, but to internet media as well. I think it was about the time the young man mentioned elsewhere in this issue -- Justin Berry -- started talking to federal investigators about his internet exploits. Any of our Washington DC lawyer/readers here want to examine the federal code for the exact line numbers, etc? I know on my own blog http://ptownson/blogspot.com the only picture I have is a .jpg of myself, although I am told my tin foil hat (as the crabby scientist among us requires of me) makes me look a lot younger, but certainly older than 18, but I have seen some other Google Blogs which are not so -- err - modest as my own. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 20 Dec 2005 21:00:18 -0500 From: Ron Chapman Subject: Re: Missing ABN Amro Tape With Two Million Names Found In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > Update: Missing ABN Amro tape with 2 million names found. The tape was > lost while DHL was transporting it to a credit reporting service I call bullshit. Let's analyze this: 2 million names and addresses and mortgage information and SS numbers. And DHL lost it. The letters went out last Friday, 12/16, and got to people Monday, 12/19. The letters offered a 90 day complimentary subscription to TransUnion's credit monitoring service, to help prevent identity theft. I called ABN Monday night at 8:30 and told them, no good. I want a year on that subscription. (It took me 20 minutes of busy signals before I got through). He said, sorry -- 90 days is what's being offered. He said they'll probably extend it past 90 days if they don't find the tape, but 90 days it is. I hung up. I went to ABN's web site, signed in, and sent them a "contact me" letter stating I want a year's subscription. Tuesday morning at 8:30, 12 hours later, I called ABN to see what another rep said. And guess what? ABN's tape recorded message said: * magically, the day everyone got his letter from ABN and called ABN (no doubt a day of hell for them), DHL found the tape and delivered it back to ABN Amro. * "We are extended the credit monitoring subnscription to a year, due to customer feedback." I call bullshit on this one. I predict that they don't have the tape, that they're lying to make themselves look good. Recovering the tape the day everyone receives the letter? Too coincidental. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Then I do a little sleuthing in Google news. ABN lost this tape on NOVEMBER 18, a month ago. It wasn't until December 16 that they mailed the letters out to customers. ABN is also claiming that this tape they lost was "scheduled" to be the last physical delivery like this, that they had already begun to implement a secure electronic delivery of this information, slated to begin this month. I REALLY call bullshit on this now. The meter is pegged. They're reporting too many "happy" coincidences. I say that they lost it on November 18, and on November 19 began implementing secure electronic delivery of the information. And they delayed telling anyone about this because they had NO contingency plan in place for this situation. They spent a month negotiaing the deal with TransUnion to provide credit monitoring. Potentially, your information was out there for an entire month, being used, without your knowledge, thanks to ABN Amro. And potentially, it's still out there being used -- because I don't believe that ABN got that tape back yesterday. I believe they're lying. It's just too coincidental. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, it is _possible_ that ABM got the missing tape back after a month or so. More than likely ABM had their shipment through DHL insured to a maximum value, and when an _insured_ shipment gets somehow lost in transit, the package tracers will look high and low, even a month or more to find it rather than have to pay off on the loss. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Dumb Question About "Do Not Call" Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 02:25:18 GMT Randall wrote: > Three times a day, every day, the phone rings and a female robot voice > says "Hello, this is not a sales call. This is about an important > business matter. Again, this is /not/ a sales call, this is an > Important Business Matter!" > Then the damn thing hangs up. > There is no CLID info with the calls -- they come through as "Unknown" > or "Unavailable" -- despite the fact that this line is /supposed/ to > reject anonymous calls. > Been going on for three weeks or so. > Three calls, every day. > If I'm here when it rings and I see "Unknown" or "Anonymous", I just > pick the receiver up and set it back down. They'll call back. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is no such thing as a dumb > question around here, Randall. Just ask many of our users. With > my tin-foil hat and diseased brain, I am likely to say almost > anything as I bring discredit and shame to the entire net. > The 'reject anonymous calls' condition only applies if the caller > _deliberatly_ inserted *67 to withhold his number. That condition will > not work if the failure to deliver ID is due to a telco shortcoming, > such as the type of switch used by the sending telco, etc. The 'reject > anonymous' condition relies on the sending telco specifically saying > 'do not say who is calling'. In your case the sending telco is not > saying that, it just does not know who the caller is or else the > details somehow got lost in the switching matrix on the way. But it > did not _deny_ or _hide_ anything at the caller's request. > You still have a way around it however. Subscribe through your telco > to *60 (I think that is called 'reject these callers' in many places). > *60 answers you and says 'enter the number to be rejected' or words to > that effect and from that point on _that_ caller gets a message saying > you are not taking calls at this time. > Now I heard your next question already: if you do not know _who_ is > calling, how are you supposed to block them? Good question. The *60 > recording also tells you 'to reject the last call you received, > whether or not you know the number, press (some) key.' I think around > here it is '01' or something. You press whatever you were told, and > the Operator-Bot responds, "Thank you! That number is a _private_ > entry." But none the less it has been blocked. Your telco has a 'local > cache' of the last call you placed/received and it uses that entry to > do the blocking. If your telco offers 'return last call' service (*68 > I think) then you can also use that service to return the last call > and find out what the 'important business matter' is all about. Both > 'return last call' and 'reject this caller' service are sold by most > telcos these days. PAT] Or you have one of those Radio Shack CID boxes that allow you to program numbers into it to block. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But Steven, recall that the man's caller ID box reported 'unavailable'. Radio Shack's Caller ID number blocker would not be able to help with that ... _what_ number to block? I think the man is going to have to rely on telco's magical cache of 'block last number even if you don't know who called you' arrangment. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. 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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 #572 ****************************** TELECOM Digest Wed, 21 Dec 2005 16:51:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 573 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Million Dollar per Day Fine (Larry McShane) NYC Steps up Pressure on Transit Workers (David Carruso) Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (Howard S. Wharton) Europe on Guard Against Bogus Tamiflu 'Drugs' (Tom Armitage) Reaching Firms From Outside the USA (Carl Moore) Teen Pleads Guilty After Blog Confession (Orlando Sentinal) Cellular-News for Wednesday 21st December 2005 (Cellular-News) Siemens Predicts IPTV Surge (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Missing ABN Amro Tape With Two Million Names Found (Ron Chapman) Re: Through His Webcam, a Teenage Boy Joins Sordid Online World (R Chapman) Re: Dumb Question About "Do Not Call" (Lena) The Letter From valent@mailrus.ru (Philip Taylor) Last Laugh! Police Have to Convince Woman She Did Win Lottery (Reuters) 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Larry McShane Subject: Million Dollar per Day Fine Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 00:23:15 -0600 By LARRY McSHANE, Associated Press Writer Commuters trudged through the freezing cold, rode bicycles and shared cabs Tuesday as New York's bus and subway workers went on strike for the first time in more than 25 years and stranded millions of riders at the height of the Christmas rush. A judge slapped the union with a $1 million-a-day fine. The sanction was levied against the Transport Workers Union for violating a state law that bars public employees from going on strike. The city and state had asked that the union be hit with a "very potent fine." "This is a very, very sad day in the history of labor relations for New York City," State Justice Theodore Jones said in imposing the fine. The union said it would immediately appeal, calling the penalty excessive. The strike over wages and pensions came just five days before Christmas, at a time when the city is especially busy with shoppers and tourists. The heavy penalty could force the union off the picket lines and back on the job. Under the law, the union's 33,000 members will also lose two days' pay for every day they are on strike, and they could also be thrown in jail. The courtroom drama came midway through a day in which the walkout fell far short of the all-out chaos that many had feared. With special traffic rules in place, the morning rush came and went without monumental gridlock. Manhattan streets were unusually quiet; some commuters just stayed home. The nation's biggest mass-transit system ground to a halt after 3 a.m., when the union called the strike after a late round of negotiations with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority broke down. The subways and buses provide more than 7 million rides per day. New Yorkers car-pooled, shared taxis, rode bicycles, roller-skated or walked in the freezing cold. Early morning temperatures were in the 20s. Mayor Michael Bloomberg joined the throngs of people crossing the Brooklyn Bridge by foot. "Hey, can I get a ride?" Jay Plastino asked a neighbor near his home in the northern tip of Manhattan. Plastino, who was headed to his midtown job, was angry at the union: "This is a big city. Don't they realize that?" By Tuesday's evening rush hour, crowds were thick at both Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal as commuters waited for trains on the two suburban rail lines, where ridership had soared earlier in the day. The Long Island Rail Road, operating out of Penn Station, carried 50,000 more passengers above its usual 100,000. Gov. George Pataki said the union acted illegally and "will suffer the consequences." But union attorney Arthur Schwartz accused the MTA of provoking the strike. No negotiations were scheduled between the two sides, although a mediator from a state labor board was meeting with both union and MTA officials Tuesday afternoon. The MTA asked the Public Employment Relations Board to formally declare an impasse, the first step toward forcing binding arbitration of the contract, said James Edgar, the board's executive director. It was the city's first transit strike since an 11-day walkout in 1980, which happened in much warmer April weather. The effect this time, however, was tempered by the advent of personal computers, which enabled many commuters to stay home and work via the Internet. Others boarded water taxis along the Hudson River, or jumped into carpools. Many lined up in the cold to await private buses arranged by their employers, or shared yellow cabs with strangers. There was a minimum $10 fee for cab riders. "The city is functioning, and functioning well considering the severe circumstances," the mayor said. The union "shamefully decided they don't care about the people they work for, and they have no respect for the law. Their leadership thuggishly turned its back on New York City. This strike is costing us." Jack Akameiza, 66, was trying to figure out a way to go the nine miles from Manhattan to Coney Island. "I cannot go to work," he said. "I cannot take care of my family." Some commuters were upset at the union, others with management. Some, as they made their way to work, blamed both sides. "It's two arrogant groups not caring that 7 million people are inconvenienced," said Kenny Herbert, 45, of Brooklyn, who took the train to work Monday night but needed a water taxi across the East River to get home. On the picket lines, transit workers expressed outrage at the MTA. "We're tired of being treated like we're the garbage of the city," said Angel Ortiz, 32, standing on the Bronx-Manhattan border with hundreds of other striking transit workers beneath an elevated rail line that carried no trains. The International TWU, the union's parent, had urged the local not to go on strike. Its president, Michael O'Brien, reiterated Tuesday that the striking workers were legally obligated to resume working. The only way to a contract, he said, is "not by strike but continued negotiation." The first day of the strike was expected to cost the city $400 million in revenue, with an additional loss of $300 million per day afterward, according to the city comptroller's office. Countless stores and restaurants were affected. The mayor put into effect a sweeping emergency plan, including a requirement that cars entering Manhattan below 96th Street have at least four occupants. Lorraine Hall came to New York expecting a lighthearted celebration of her 65th birthday, but the lack of mass transit put a damper on the occasion. She was determined to make the best of it until her departure on Friday. "I didn't come up here to sit in a hotel room, and as long as my two feet are letting me push it, I'm going to push it," said Hall, who lives in Lancaster, S.C. The union said the latest MTA offer included annual raises of 3 percent, 4 percent and 3.5 percent. Pensions were another major sticking point in the talks, particularly involving new employees. "Were it not for the pension piece, we would not be out on strike," union President Roger Toussaint said Tuesday in an interview with the New York-based all-news channel NY1. "All it needs to do is take its pension proposal off the table." The contract expired Friday at midnight, but the two sides had continued talking through the weekend. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Associated Press headline news and audio (optional) go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: David B. Caruso Subject: NYC Steps up Pressure on Transit Workers Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:52:35 -0600 By DAVID B. CARUSO, Associated Press Writer The city stepped up its pressure on striking transit workers Wednesday in hopes of forcing them back to work as millions of New Yorkers trudged to work in another bone-chilling commute without subways and buses. Michael A. Cardozo, New York City's corporation counsel, said the city would ask a judge Wednesday to issue a temporary restraining order directing union members to return to work. If the order is granted, Cardoza said, the city could ask for the $25,000-a-day fines -- a punishment that goes beyond the docked-pay penalty that workers already are experiencing for the illegal strike. "We're doing everything possible to make the union obey the law," he said, adding that union members need to "realize the economic conse- quences of their actions." According to various estimates by the city and business analysts, the strike was expected to cost city government and the economy hundreds of millions of dollars per day. On Tuesday, a judge fined the Transport Workers Union $1 million for each day of the strike for violating a state law that bars public employees from striking. Union lawyer Arthur Schwartz said the fine could deplete the union's treasury in the matter of days. In addition, the TWU's 33,000 members already face the loss of two days pay for every day they are on strike, meaning a prolonged walkout could quickly eat up any increased pay they would get with a new contract. Transit officials said about 1,000 transit workers crossed pickets Tuesday and were put to work cleaning and doing paperwork. The two sides were scheduled to meet with a mediator again Wednesday. The White House also spoke out on the strike Wednesday. "It is unfortunate. We hope that the two sides can resolve their differences so that the people in New York can get to where they need to go," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. Crowds of pedestrians, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, bundled up in heavy coats, hats and mittens against the 24-degree temperature, and hiked across the Brooklyn Bridge into lower Manhattan on Wednesday. Volunteers waited with hot chocolate. Some people had to walk miles. Others shared cabs and car pools, caught water taxis, biked, skated or hitchhiked. "A nightmare, disorganized, especially going home," Aleksandra Radakovic said Wednesday morning in describing her commute. Bloomberg urged the union to end the strike. "All the transit workers have to do is listen to their international (union) that's urged them to go back to work, listen to the judge who ordered them back to work, and look at their families and their own economic interests," he said. "They should go back to work. Nobody's above the law, and everyone should obey the law." The strike over wages and pensions began Tuesday morning, during the height of the Christmas shopping and tourist season. Wednesday's headlines on the city's tabloid newspapers reflected the attitude of some commuters. "Mad as Hell," proclaimed the Daily News. "You Rats," the New York Post said of the striking transit workers. Striker Bill McRae, a bus driver since 1985, said Wednesday he thought negotiations should have continued -- but he still backed the walkout. "The union executives called for a strike, and we have to do what we have to do," McRae said on Manhattan's West Side. Police reported only two minor incidents related to the strike. A cab driver was arrested for allegedly assaulting a woman in his cab in an argument over the fare, causing minor injuries. A police officer was accidentally bumped by a truck at a traffic checkpoint. New York retailers, restaurants and bars are expected to bear much of the brunt of the strike. The week before Christmas historically accounts for up to 20 percent of many stores' holiday sales, and consumers who must pay higher taxi fares or face long walks could reduce their spending. The union said the latest MTA offer included annual pay raises of 3 percent, 4 percent and 3.5 percent. Pensions were another major sticking point in the talks, particularly involving new employees. In its last offer before negotiations broke down, the MTA had proposed increasing employee contributions to the pension plan from 2 percent to 6 percent, said union lawyer Walter Meginniss Jr. He added that such a change would be "impossible" for the union to accept. "Were it not for the pension piece, we would not be out on strike," union president Roger Toussaint said in an interview with NY1. "All it needs to do is take its pension proposal off the table." The International TWU, the union's parent, urged the local not to go on strike. Its president, Michael O'Brien, reiterated Tuesday that the striking workers were legally obligated to resume working. The only way to a contract, he said, is "not by strike but continued negotiation." The nation's largest mass transit system counts each fare as a rider, giving it more than 7 million riders each day -- although many customers take a daily round trip. Associated Press writers Verena Dobnik and Anne D'Innocenzio contributed to this report. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Associated Press News Reports, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Howard S. Wharton Subject: Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 09:13:27 -0500 Organization: The University at Buffalo In NYS, strikes by public employees are illegal under the state Taylor Law. How we may feel about the stirke, it's still illegal. I agree that they should be treated with respect. The NYCTA which runs the cities busses, subways and the Staten Island Rapid Transit is under the control of the MTA. Employees do get disciplined for the most minor infractions. I agree with them on what they are asking. But like it or not, the strike is still illegal. There are many who would like to change the Taylor Law. There are many points to the law that protects the public employee. We cannot pick or choose what laws we want to obey. Howard S. Wharton Fire Safety Technician Occupational and Environmental Safety Services State University of New York at Buffalo [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know Howard, that's the same line many folks in the Confederate States of America used to say before and during the Civil War in the 1860's. "No matter what you may think about slavery, it is the law here (in this southern state) and you have to obey it, and anyway, most of us try to treat our slaves in a good, humane fashion." And even the Supreme Court agreed with the southern people now and then, especially in one very notorious case before the court. Here is a piece of advice for you: the transit workers do not belong to the citizens of New York nor the politicians. If the residents of New York are so damned inconvenienced by the strike (and I am sure they are) then their wrath should be taken out on the lousy political adminsitration and transit system who forced the workers to go out on strike to start with; either go on strike or lose much of their pensions; get cuts in pay, etc. How much money has NYTA lost through theft by its own workers and general ineffeciency? Clean up its own house, _then_ talk about any percieved need to cut back pensions and salaries. As I have mentioned here before, Chicago Transit Authority lost literally _millions of dollars_ due to employee theft and mangement's overall ineffeciency. I am sure NYTA is not a lot different. Oh, and by the way, in the 1960's strike by transit workers, it was the same deal: A NYC judge blustered about it, fined them umpteen jillion dollars per day in fines, and when the court _tried_ to collect the fines the day the strike finally ended, the union's posture was "we still have umpteen millions more in our treasury, let's continue the strike a few more days until the money is totally gone ... who will be the ultimate loser? If the city (when it gets fined by some higher government) resolves the matter by casually budgeting the money (needed to pay the fine) each year but then _continues to do things as they always have_ we can do the same. To hell with you! We can go to jail also; isn't that where we belong while muggers and rapists roam the streets freely?" The court reconsidered its imposition of a fine, and forgave the whole debt, and the workers went back to work the same day. Read the court transcripts from the strike 25 years ago. I think this time around will be a lot the same way. Anyway, Howard, aren't you from around Buffalo somewhere? I thought in general the people in upstate New York hated the 'city people'. What do you care if/when/how they settle the transit strike? This message is brought to you by the Tin-Foil Hat man, who stands ready to humiliate, mortify, and discredit the entire net whenever the solor rays hit his brain, as the Scientist would say. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tom Armitage Subject: Europe on Guard Against Bogus Internet Tamiflu 'Drugs' Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:59:36 -0600 By Tom Armitage The little white bottle claims to hold 75 milligrams of oseltamivir phosphate -- the generic name for the flu drug Tamiflu. But consumers hoping their purchases over the Internet will help them survive a possible bird flu outbreak are being warned that rather than Tamiflu they might simply be buying vitamin C. U.S. authorities this week seized 51 packages of counterfeit Tamiflu, a treatment for flu made by Roche Holding AG that governments have stockpiled to ward off deadly avian flu. Counterfeit versions of Tamiflu have also now cropped up in Britain and the Netherlands, the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products, Swissmedic, said on Wednesday. "Initial laboratory tests have shown that the products contained vitamin C instead of the active ingredient oseltamivir," Swissmedic said in a statement. The batches in question had been ordered over the Internet from suppliers in the United States and Asia, it said. A spokeswoman for Roche in Basel confirmed that there had been one case reported in the Netherlands where someone bought a product falsely claiming to be Tamiflu on the Internet. "The product came in a strange bottle saying generic Tamiflu," the spokeswoman said. However, while Roche has entered into talks with various southeast Asian countries and companies about producing generic versions of Tamiflu, no officially sanctioned version of the drug has yet been made. Swissmedic said that no bogus Tamiflu had made its way into the official supply chain -- something Roche says would be very unlikely anyway, given the security features included in its packaging. Britain's Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency said it had identified around 20 Internet sites that were illegally advertising Tamiflu, four of them in the UK, and was analysing test purchases from the sites for bogus ingredients. Roche has repeatedly warned consumers not to buy the medicine over the Web, not least because it requires a prescription from a doctor, but also because you may not receive your medicine at all, or just some bogus stuff. An Internet search throws up scores of sites advertising generic Tamiflu, alongside drugs purporting to be copycat versions of impotence treatments Viagra and Cialis, as well as the sleeping pill Ambien. (additional reporting by Ben Hirschler in London) 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headlines and news from Reuters, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 15:04:06 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Reaching Firms From Outside the U.S. I just looked through a catalog which said to use AT&T direct in APO, FPO and U.S. possessions to reach a 1-800 telephone number. A different catalog had a non-toll-free number which was listed (for international callers) as 1-xxx-xxx-xxxx. As has been noted several times, the leading 1 is the country code or the "long-distance" (usually toll?) indicator, depending on what context it's used in. ------------------------------ From: Orlando Sentinal Subject: Teen Pleads Guilty After Blog Confession Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 13:01:47 -0600 An 18-year-old passenger who caused a fatal crash by pulling on the steering wheel pleaded guilty to DUI manslaughter after prosecutors discovered a confession on his online blog. Blake Ranking wrote "I did it" on his blurty.com journal three days after the October 2004 crash that caused a friend's death and left another seriously injured. He had previously told investigators he remembered nothing of the crash and little of its aftermath. Blake was sitting in the back seat as he and then-17-year-old friends Jason Coker and Nicole Robinette left a party when he pulled the steering wheel as a prank, causing the car to somersault off the road. His blood alcohol content after the crash measured 0.185, more than double the legal limit. Robinette, who was driving and had no traces of drugs or alcohol in her system, was seriously injured. Coker lay in a coma at Orlando Regional Medical Center until he died Jan. 11. "It was me who caused it. I turned the wheel. I turned the wheel that sent us off the road, into the concrete drain ..." Ranking wrote in the blog. "How can I be fine when everyone else is so messed up?" Ranking later retracted his words, deleting them from the blog and penning an explanation. "People say I 'contradict' myself since I 'already admitting pulling the wheel.' I didn't 'ADMIT' anything. I went on a guilt trip, and I posted the story that I WAS TOLD ... Nicole told me I pulled the wheel, I believed her," he wrote. Still, the confession forced him to lead guilty Monday to manslaughter charges. He could have gotten 15 years in prison, but defense lawyer John Spivey and Assistant State Attorney Julie Greenberg recommended five years in prison, 10 years of probation and a permanent license suspension. Circuit Judge Mark Hill agreed to impose the sentence Dec. 28. Greenberg said she had planned to use the blog as evidence, a first for the office covering Lake, Citrus, Hernando, Marion and Sumter counties, but almost certainly not the last. "Anytime a defendant confesses, that is very relevant and important," she said. Ranking posted the lyrics to Eric Clapton's "Tears in Heaven" the day of Coker's funeral, but prosecutors said his remorse was not always apparent in his blogs, which included entries railing at Coker's mother because she asked him to stop calling and coming to the hospital. "He lost the best friend he ever had," Spivey said in Ranking's defense. Ken Coker, Jason's father, said his family never wanted prison time for Ranking, but they wished Ranking would stop writing about them because they felt the blog was insensitive. He said Ranking would benefit more from psychiatric counseling. "There's not enough forgiveness in the world," he said. Information from: Orlando Sentinel, http://www.orlandosentinel.com 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Wednesday 21st December 2005 Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 08:18:18 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ 3G ]] Orange Reports 100,000 3G Subscribers in Israel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15330.php Israel's Partner Communications, which trades under the Orange brand name says that it now has approximately 100,000 3G subscribers. Partner's CEO, Amikam Cohen, expressed his satisfaction from the rate of subscribers joining the 3G network, and stat... [[ Financial ]] Toshiba: No Plans To Build US$6 Billion Singapore Chip Plant http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15317.php Japan's Toshiba Corp. Tuesday denied a media report that it may build a Nand flash chip plant in Singapore, a company spokesman told Dow Jones Newswires. ... Telekom Malaysia: Not In Talks To Partner India's Aircel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15320.php Government-controlled Telekom Malaysia Bhd. Tuesday said it's not in talks to partner Indian cellular network operator Aircel. ... Etisalat: Deal Reached On Pakistan Telecom Sale http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15322.php United Arab Emirates-based Emirates Telecommunications Corp. said Tuesday it has reached an agreement with the government of Pakistan on completing its purchase of 26% in Pakistan Telecom. ... EU OKs Ericsson To Buy Most Of Marconi Assets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15323.php The European Commission Tuesday cleared Swedish telecommunications equipment manufacturer L.M. Ericsson to buy most of the assets of Marconi PLC, a U.K. peer. ... Sprint Locks Up Largest Affiliate With Nextel Partners Buy http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15328.php Sprint Nextel has finally agreed to buyout terms with affiliate Nextel Partners, ending a bitter dispute and locking up the largest remaining affiliate for the wireless company. ... [[ Interviews ]] INTERVIEW:Egypt's MobiNil Faces Up To New Entrant Threat http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15318.php PREMIUM - The imminent arrival of a third mobile network player in Egypt may force down prices, but won't be a threat to the growth of the current market leader, The Egyptian Company for Mobile Services, its Chief Executive said Monday. ... [[ Legal ]] PRESS: Kyrgyzstan's Bitel stops collecting money after seizure http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15324.php Kyrgyz mobile operator Bitel has stopped collecting money from subscribers after a recent seizure of the company's head office by little-known Russian company Rezervspetsmet, Russian business daily Kommersant said Tuesday. PRESS: Russia's SMARTS hires famous law firm to defend vs Sigma http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15325.php Russia's regional mobile operator SMARTS has hired law firm Yegorov, Puginsky, Afanasyev and Partners to defend its interests to prevent a hostile takeover bid by Sigma investment group, a source with SMARTS said, Russian business daily Kommersant sa... Ukrainian mobile operators appeal to president for help http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15329.php ive Ukrainian mobile operators have appealed to the country's President Viktor Yushchenko for help saying their problems with the government's backing of state-owned telecommunication companies, as well as with back taxes and antitrust hurdles wa... [[ Mobile Content ]] Football Video Chat show on Mobiles http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15331.php O2 UK is launching a sports talk show that will be broadcast to GPRS and 3G handsets. The new interactive audio-video format has been created by Buongiorno to exploit the audio and video capabilities of mobile technology. Soccer Addicts creates a for... Big Fine for Crazy Frog http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15334.php The UK's Premium rate services regulator ICSTIS has fined the Crazy Frog service provider mBlox US$71,000 and ordered it to pay refunds to all those who complained to the regulator. The sanctions have been imposed after ICSTIS found the promotions fo... [[ Network Operators ]] PRESS: Russia's MegaFon hands out free subscription packages http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15326.php Russia's third largest mobile operator MegaFon has launched a marketing campaign whereby two pre-paid subscription packages are sold for the price of one, Russian business daily Vedomosti said Tuesday citing Anna Smolnyakova, director of the advert... TeliaSonera assumes total responsibility for ABB's telephony http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15333.php The industrial services group, ABB has handed TeliaSonera with total responsibility for its telephone services in Sweden. The term of the agreement is three years and its value approximatelyUS$19 million. The agreement includes upgrading the technica... [[ Statistics ]] China Mobile Adds 3.92 Million Subscribers In November http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15319.php China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd., the listed arm of China's largest mobile operator, said Tuesday it added 3.92 million subscribers in November, up slightly from 3.90 million additional users in October. ... Irish Mobile Phone Penetration Hits 100%- Regulator http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15327.php Ireland's communications industry regulator ComReg Tuesday said Irish mobile penetration hit 100% in September, while broadband subscriptions more than tripled in the 12 months to September. ... Saudi Arabian Operator Passes Subscriber Landmark http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15332.php Saudi Telecom Company (STC) says that it now has just over 11 million subscribers. STC continued its organic proportionate growth until mid November and in the past fifty days alone it has gained a record breaking 1.4 million new customers and has gr... [[ Technology ]] How RFID Chips Track Lost Airline Baggage http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15321.php Bag it, then tag it. That could be the European airline industry's new mantra as costs and penalties soar for lost or misplaced luggage under new European Union rules. ... UltraWideband Interoperability Testing Sucessful http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15335.php UWB silicon providers - Alereon, Staccato Communications and Wisair have announced their initial attempts at interoperability were successful. At TDK Test Services, the three companies performed interoperability testing of their pre-production PHY si... Virgin Mobile Data Trial Boosts ARPU http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15336.php Virgin Mobile UK has been trialing Zi Corp's. internet information portal, and they have announced that preliminary results from the trial indicate significant increased usage levels on the mobile phones involved -- from simple voice calls to SMS, MMS... ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 12:27:02 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Siemens Predicts IPTV Surge USTelecom dailyLead December 21, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AwqkatagCCmSqFDGpQ TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Siemens predicts IPTV surge BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * IBM acquires Micromuse * Sprint Nextel buys Nextel Partners * AOL-Google deal includes shared sales force * Nortel loses CMO USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Get your IP Video Conference recordings TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Market for 3G gear could soar in 2006 REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * U.S. government indicts former Qwest CEO * Aussie competition watchdog rejects Telstra proposals Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AwqkatagCCmSqFDGpQ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 07:08:01 -0500 From: Ron Chapman Subject: Re: Missing ABN Amro Tape With Two Million Names Found In article , Ron Chapman wrote: > And potentially, it's still out there being used -- because I don't > believe that ABN got that tape back yesterday. I believe they're > lying. It's just too coincidental. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, it is _possible_ that ABM got the > missing tape back after a month or so. More than likely ABM had their > shipment through DHL insured to a maximum value, and when an _insured_ > shipment gets somehow lost in transit, the package tracers will look > high and low, even a month or more to find it rather than have to pay > off on the loss. PAT] No question, Pat, but let's look at the facts: 1) they lost the tape; 2) they were forced to tell their customers that they lost the tape; 3) the VERY DAY that their customers receive their letters, this tape MAGICALLY reappears. This and the other coincidences are too much to bear. The bullshit meter is pegged. And: 4) we have no way, nor will we ever have a way, of verifying that they're telling us the truth. Frankly, I have to assume the worst. This is identity theft we're dealing with here; ABN's exposure is tremendous. Sure they're going to tell everyone they got the tape back. They hope that six months from now, everyone has forgotten about it -- and that any issues arising from this will be ascribed to something else. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 07:13:52 -0500 From: Ron Chapman Subject: Re: Through His Webcam, a Teenage Boy Joins a Sordid Online World In article , Kurt Eichenwald wrote: > The 13-year-old boy sat in his California home, eyes fixed on a > computer screen. He had never run with the popular crowd and long ago > had turned to the Internet for the friends he craved. But on this day, > Justin Berry's fascination with cyberspace would change his life. > Weeks before, Justin had hooked up a Web camera to his computer, > hoping to use it to meet other teenagers online. Instead, he heard > only from men who chatted with him by instant message as they watched > his image on the Internet. To Justin, they seemed just like friends, > ready with compliments and always offering gifts. > Now, on an afternoon in 2000, one member of his audience sent a > proposal: he would pay Justin $50 to sit bare-chested in front of his > Webcam for three minutes. The man explained that Justin could receive > the money instantly and helped him open an account on PayPal.com, an > online payment system. > "I figured, I took off my shirt at the pool for nothing," he said > recently. "So, I was kind of like, what's the difference?" > Justin removed his T-shirt. The men watching him oozed compliments. > So began the secret life of a teenager who was lured into selling > images of his body on the Internet over the course of five years. Am I alone in being *flabbergasted* that a 13 year old boy has that kind of private time with a computer? Especially to the point that it got that far? Where were his parents during all of this? No matter; this kind of thing has been going on forever -- where the parents are totally oblivious to what's going on in their childrens' lives. This is no different than Columbine, for example. So it happened with a computer instead of homemade bombs -- it's still a parental issue at heart, and we as a society need to step up to the plate and scorn the parenting styles that create this and the parents who use such parenting styles. The computer was the tool or outlet in this particular case, but this isn't about computers and the internet. This is about horrible parents, plain and simple. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When that article first came across the New York Times RSS newsfeed on Tuesday, that subject line 'Teenage Boy Joins a Sordid Online World' got me to thinking; maybe one of his, ummm ... 'patrons' had exposed or pursuaded the boy to read my blog http://ptownson.blopspot.com or seduced him into reading http://telecom-digest.org where he would see a picture or ten-minute video of the Tin Hat Man as he caused embarassment and mortification for all the 'right thinkers' on the internet. But you are right, Ron; Columbine, and a few other such incidents such as Justin Berry's case go right back squarely to the parents. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: Dumb Question About "Do Not Call" Date: 21 Dec 2005 06:18:42 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com This might work: http://www.privacycorps.com/products/?id=20 It's from Privacy Corps, but it costs $100. It clams to block "anonymous and unidentified numbers" Been tempted to try it, and then the telemarketers go away, so I forget about it. There is also the configuration problem; how does it block all the phones in the house. Can I mount it where the line comes in, and then tie all the phones to it? They sell "remotes", but that drives the cost up. Verizon has this "iobi" service that appears to have the ability to block unwanted calls. It costs $4.95 per month when added to a "Freedom" package ($7.95 without). More flexibility, it seems, than the Privacy Corps Caller ID. Lena ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 14:50:27 +0000 From: Philip TAYLOR Subject: The Letter From valent@mailrus.ru > In article , TELECOM Digest > Editor noted in response to a message from Valentin > : >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought about this message for quite >> a while, and although it would probably qualify as spam (by virtue of >> how many copies were distributed, I personally do not think it is a >> scam. > It's spam. > Spam is theft. > Therefore, it's a scam. > If he's so hard up, where did he get the resources to spam with? > Wasn't there just a thread on why spam continues, because so many > idiots send money to spammers? Some are suckers for bigger bodyparts, > others for free money, others for helping the needy. All of those are > reasons that spam continues. > Seth It may be spam. It may even be a scam. Or it may be genuine. If it's genuine, then we -- the recipients -- are in a position to help soneone in genuine need. If it's a scam, then we may end up a little poorer, and the scammer a little richer, but on balance, does it matter? It's hardly in the same league as the Nigerian scam (and anyone who falls for that needs their brains tested), so isn't it worth risking losing a few rubles /kopeks/whatever ? I think it is. Philip Taylor ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Time Warner's AOL and Google to Expand Strategic Alliance Time Warner's AOL and Google to Expand Strategic Alliance - Dec 20, 2005 06:10 PM (BusinessWire) MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. & NEW YORK & DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Dec. 20, 2005--Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX): -- Creating Global Advertising Partnership -- Google to Invest $1 Billion for a 5% Stake in AOL -- Companies to Collaborate on Online Video Offering and Make More AOL Content Available to Google Users -- Google Talk Instant Messaging Software to Communicate with AIM users Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) and America Online, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX), today announced that they are expanding their current strategic alliance. The agreement creates a global online advertising partnership, makes more of AOL's industry-leading content available to Google users, and includes a $1 billion investment in AOL by Google. This strategic alliance expands on the original relationship between the two companies launched three years ago. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=54120928 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:23:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Treo 650 to Support BlackBerry Connect BlackBerry Connect and Treo 650 http://www.palm.com/us/enterprise/products/blackberry_connect.html Press Release http://www.palm.com/us/company/pr/news_feed_story.epl?reqid=768097 Announcement Webinar https://www108.livemeeting.com/cc/palmone/view?id=FMQ4XR Palm Treo 650 smartphone with BlackBerry Connect http://www.blackberry.com/products/connect/treo650.shtml BlackBerry Connect for Palm OS http://www.blackberry.com/products/connect/palmOS.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 23:15:26 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cellphone 911 Calls Failed in Big Storm / Verizon Promises Verizon promises to ferret out why system broke down By Douglas Belkin, Globe Staff | December 21, 2005 At the height of a blinding afternoon snowstorm almost two weeks ago, the state's enhanced 911 cellphone system failed, leaving motorists stuck on highways unable to reach police easily. State authorities said the glitch, which appears to have been in the Verizon network that routes all cell 911 calls, lasted as long as 40 minutes. The result: Users who called 911 around 3 p.m. on Dec. 9 heard only a busy signal. "Something jammed the system. The calls never got through," said Edward M. Merrick Jr., the chairman of the standards committee for the Statewide Emergency Telecommunications Board, which oversees the system. "It's a serious concern." The breakdown coincided with a Northeaster that barrelled across Massachusetts, icing roads, crippling traffic, and decreasing visibility to just a few feet. Parts of the state received 15 inches of snow and experienced wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour. The hour before the storm hit, the State Police enhanced 911 center in Framingham answered about 500 calls. But between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m., operators received fewer than 200. It is not clear how many calls failed, but it appears a switch that controls which cell calls enter the 911 system was overwhelmed and shut down. Land-line calls still went through. Merrick was aware that call volume had lessened during the storm, but until he was contacted by the Globe, he attributed it to not having enough operators on duty. It was only after some inquiries, and 10 days after the storm, that Merrick learned the problem may have been on Verizon's end. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/12/21/cellphone_911_calls_failed_in_big_storm/ ------------------------------ From: Peter N. Spotts Subject: Laboratory Ethics: What Makes Scientists Lie and Cheat? Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:51:20 -0600 from the December 22, 2005 edition - http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/1222/p02s01-stss.html Questionable stem-cell research in a South Korea case may be the latest in a series of ethical lapses in 2005. By Peter N. Spotts | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor Is it a matter of shoddy work in the lab? A problem of excessive deference by junior researchers to senior scientists? Or does the case of the suspect stem-cell experiments in South Korea - an episode that is shaking the biomedical field worldwide - point to a severe lapse of research ethics? With a probe at Seoul National University just beginning, it is likely to be some time before investigators can explain what led to apparent flaws in research -- once celebrated as groundbreaking -- by scientist Hwang Woo-Suk. His work involved cloning human embryos to garner highly prized stem cells specific to individual patients -- an ability seen as an advantage in any future stem-cell therapies. In the meantime, the case is prompting a closer look at how scientific journals screen research reports before publication, as well as forcing a deeper recognition of the intense pressures scientists can experience while working on cutting-edge, high-stakes research. "Scientists are not a special breed of human being," says Thomas Murray, president of the Hastings Center, a bioethics institute in Garrison, N.Y. "But they function in a special environment ... They are bright people working in a community where the best ideas rise to the top. If you're not in first place, you're no place." South Korea's probe at the dawn of what some dub "the biotech century" caps a year of research-ethics challenges. . Late last month, a US district court judge in Albany, N.Y., sentenced a former Veterans Administration cancer researcher to 71 months in jail for criminally negligent homicide. Paul Kornak admitted that he had forged medical records, opening the way for people to take part in drug trials who should have been excluded because of existing medical conditions. One participant whose records were altered died during the experiment. . In October, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology fired a young biologist and promising immunology researcher. MIT officials say Luk Van Parijs was dismissed after he admitted to school investigators that he fabricated and altered evidence in research papers to support grant applications. MIT, in speaking with the Christian Science Monitor was succinct in stating their case: "No liars nor cheaters need apply here. We just won't deal with it." . In March, a University of Vermont obesity scientist admitted faking data in order to buttress grant applications. (He netted $3 million in government grants.) Under a deal with US prosecutors, Eric Poehlman agreed to plead guilty to criminal fraud and to retract or correct several research papers. Meanwhile, the National Institutes of Health has tightened its rules for NIH researchers who also serve as consultants to drug companies. The NIH is trying to walk a tightrope between avoiding conflicts of interest and ensuring that scientists can engage in the open give and take today's complex research efforts require. In a survey of NIH- funded scientists, released in June, only 1.5 percent of 3,000-plus respondents acknowledged having falsified or plagiarized information. But 15.5 percent admitted to altering their research approach under pressure from funding sources, and 12.5 percent admitted to looking the other way when colleagues used flawed data. Surveys show that the public consistently holds scientists in high esteem, perhaps leading many people to assume an unrealistic ethical purity among them. If lapses happen in business, "the public says, 'Well, what did you expect?' " says Mark Frankel, director of Scientific Freedom, Responsibility, and Law at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes the journal Science. The public tends to be more surprised when the violators are scientists - although public esteem remains high despite the lapses, he adds. Biomedical research in particular is a hotbed of economic and scientific competition. Several countries, including South Korea, are vying with the US for leadership. So the pressure to lead can be huge. Dr. Hwang's request last week to withdraw his team's paper on stem-cell work, published in May in Science, has spurred editors at the journal to ask whether their peer-review process of evaluating papers for publication could have caught problems in the Hwang submission. "A paper that apparently achieves a result that others have tried to get and failed is subject to especially careful scrutiny," says Donald Kennedy, Science's editor. "I expect a certain amount of skepticism" among reviewers as they give papers the once-over. "On the other hand, I think reviewers generally tend to trust explicit representations" of the information in the papers. Science is generally self-correcting, says the Hasting Center's Dr. Murray. If a paper is published and other scientists fail to reproduce the results, it is likely to get relegated to the trash bin. In the end, no system is infallible, ethicists note. "If you have someone determined to fabricate evidence, no screening system will catch that," says Alto Charo, a law professor at the University of Wisconsin who specializes in biomedical and research ethics. "You have to rely on the integrity of the individual." In the past decade, federal funding agencies have put more emphasis on ethical research practices, requiring grant recipients to take ethics courses or giving grants to scientists at universities with ethics classes for graduate students, notes the AAAS's Dr. Frankel. These courses have undergone little evaluation for effectiveness, but several cases that made headlines this year came to light after fellow researchers or young protégés became suspicious of data being used and blew the whistle on their errant colleagues. Copyright 2005 www.csmonitor.com and the 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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 For news headlines each day from the Christian Science Monitor's RSS Feed along with New York Times and National Public Radio, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html Never any login nor registration requirements. ------------------------------ From: Deepti Hajela Subject: Technology Helps People Weather NYC Transit Strike Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:43:27 -0600 By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer The last time the city had a transit strike, in 1980, a fax machine was considered cutting-edge. Fast forward 25 years, and it is a world of wireless laptops, Internet-enabled cell phones and telecommuting from your living room. And that, some say, is a big reason the bus and subway strike has not caused the utter chaos that many people had expected. "We're open for business as usual," said Selena Morris, spokeswoman for Merrill Lynch & Co. The financial management company had some employees working from home, while others could go to various regional offices if getting into Manhattan was too difficult. "It makes it a lot easier for people to function when you have a crisis like this, just to log in from wherever you are," she said. "It's inconvenient, obviously, but I think we've been able to work around it." Commuters have also Internet technology to find rides or a couch to sleep on, and to fire off e-mails from home or the car. Clearly, there are a lot of jobs in New York City for which working from home is not an option, such as in retail and the service industry. But for segments like the financial industry, technology makes a big difference, said Frank Lichtenberg, professor of economics at Columbia Business School. The strike "does still represent a significant disruption," he said, but "clearly this information technology has reduced the cost of this kind of disruption and made it somewhat easier to bear." Commuters have posted ads on Web sites like Craigslist, looking for or offering rides to meet the four-person-per-car rule for cars entering a large portion of Manhattan, and offering to rent out space to anyone looking for a place to crash for the night. A one-bedroom apartment near Times Square was being offered for $140 per night, while a studio near Grand Central Terminal was going for $145. Dennis C. Fleischmann, managing partner of the Bryan Cave law firm's New York office, said the strike was having a "minimal" effect, with most employees able to get in and others working from home. "These days in our business, between e-mail and voice mail, you can function reasonably well from a remote location," he said. "In terms of productivity we don't really lose very much." Associated Press Writer Anick Jesdanun contributed to this report. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Associated Press headlines and audio reports, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Kathy Colvin, US Department of Justice Subject: Dallas Woman Arrested in FEMA Fraud Scheme Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:46:23 -0600 Contact: Kathy Colvin, 214-659-8600 Web: http://WWW.USDOJ.GOV/USAO/TXN DALLAS, Dec. 21 /U.S. Newswire/ -- United States Attorney Richard B. Roper announced that Lakietha Hall was arrested Wednesday morning by federal authorities in Dallas on charges outlined in a federal criminal complaint filed on December 16, 2005 and unsealed this afternoon. The complaint charges Hall with knowingly and willfully stealing money from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and knowingly using, without lawful authority, the means of identification of another person during and in relation to a felony, that is, the theft of public funds. A search warrant was also executed this morning at Hall's residence and more than $10,000 in cash was seized. Hall, age 35, made her initial appearance in federal Court this afternoon before the Honorable Paul D. Stickney, United States Magistrate Judge, who found her not to be an immediate danger to the communith and released her on bond with conditions. According to the affidavit filed in support of the criminal complaint and search warrant, Lakietha Hall made numerous fraudulent claims for hurricane disaster relief. As part of her scheme, Hall would file the fraudulent claims over the telephone and online with FEMA and the Louisiana Department of Labor by using the identities, including the names and social security numbers, of other persons without their knowledge or consent. Hall would often use the identities of other persons with the surname "Hall." Hall would provide FEMA and the Louisiana Department of Labor with a mailing address that she controlled. Hall has received approximately $65,000 in fraudulently obtained Hurricane Katrina disaster benefits and there is no evidence to indicate that Lakietha Hall has ever lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. Daniel S. Cortez, U.S. Postal Inspector In Charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Fort Worth Division, said, "The mission of the United States Postal Inspection Service is to protect the nation's mail system from criminal misuse. Any type of fraud, especially charity, identity theft, insurance and government -- related to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita are a priority for the Postal Inspection Service. When a case is identified our agency will move quickly to disrupt the criminal activity perpertrated through this type of mail fraud scheme." Gordon S. Heddell, Inspector General, Department of Labor, said, "Fraud schemes in the programs that assist the victims of the natural disasters are unconscionable. This case demonstrates the commitment of federal law enforcement and state workforce agencies to work together to protect these programs from fraud. We will continue to work closely with our state and federal partners to uncover identity theft schemes and fraud in the unemployment insurance system." U.S. Attorney Roper praised the investigative efforts of the Department of Labor -- Office of Inspector General, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the Department of Homeland Security -- Office of Inspector General and the Louisiana Department of Labor. The case is being prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Tammy Reno. http://www.usnewswire.com/ ------------------------------ From: Anick Jesdanun Subject: Tim Berners-Lee Starts a Blog Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:36:57 -0600 Creator of World Wide Web Starts Blog By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer World Wide Web creator Tim Berners-Lee has started a blog just in time for the 15th anniversary of his invention. In his first entry, Berners-Lee remarked on how the Web took off as a publishing medium rather than one in which visitors not only read but also contributed information. "WWW was soon full of lots of interesting stuff, but not a space for communal design, for discource through communal authorship," he wrote. That has changed lately with the growing popularity of blogs, which are online diaries that often let visitors submit comments, and wikis, which are sites in which visitors can add, change and even delete what they see. Their popularity "makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space," wrote Berners-Lee, who added that he decided to start a blog to get a chance to play with blogging tools. Berners-Lee first proposed the Web in 1989 while developing ways to control computers remotely at CERN, the Geneva-based European Organization for Nuclear Research. He never got the project formally approved, but quietly tinkered with it anyway, making the first browser available at CERN by Christmas Day 1990. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from Associated Press with NPR Audio (usually classical music and NPR news programs), please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/KOSU.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: FYI, anyone interested, this Digest is thought to be the _oldest, continually published Digest on the internet. From our beginning in August, 1981, for the first fourteen years we were only a text-based publication, with a mailing list and Usenet circulation base. We started on the web in 1995-96, so early next year is our tenth anniversary on the web, but our twenty-fifth anniversary as an internet publication. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Boston Globe Editorial Subject: A Free, But Fair Web Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:38:48 -0600 GLOBE EDITORIAL A free, but fair, Web December 16, 2005 THE VENERABLE NEWSMAN John Seigenthaler had it about right when he explained last weekend why he decided not to take legal action against a rogue Internet user who had posted defamatory -- and false -- claims about him in the popular open-source research tool, Wikipedia. "I still believe in free expression," Seigenthaler said. "What I want is accountability." Seigenthaler has been badly maligned by charges added to the Wikipedia entry about him, saying that he "was thought to have been directly involved" in the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy. The 78-year-old former editor of the Nashville Tennessean, who has won numerous awards for courage in publishing, was a pallbearer at RFK's funeral. On Friday the man who posted the addendum, Brian Chase, confessed -- once he realized his identity was about to be unveiled by a cyber-sleuth -- claiming it all was a prank. Seigenthaler's response was more principled than Chase had any right to expect, sticking to his First Amendment principles but calling on Wikipedia to do a better job policing its own content. The incident touched off the always-simmering debate over the limits, if any, of material posted on the Web. Champions of a freewheeling Internet often claim that it is self-correcting, since hundreds of 'editors', or readers, visit websites and will catch errors. But the slander against Seigenthaler sat on the Wikipedia site for four months. Other supporters say the Web is more transparent than other anonymous sources, because postings can be traced -- with enough diligence or with a subpoena. The very fact that an Internet watchdog was able to track Chase's electronic fingerprints to his workplace shows the system is working, they claim. But Wikipedia seems to thrive on drive-by postings; its guidelines offer hints for how users can shield their identities, including avoiding company computers. Wikipedia, a non-profit, all-volunteer effort, is a phenomenal success, with millions of listings in 82 languages. But its idealistic mission to be a 'global digital commons' is easily undercut by sloppy or unscrupulous contributors. Given its immense reach, a disclaimer notice and caveat emptor don't seem good enough. One step in the right direction is Wikipedia's decision to require all of its contributors to register with the site. Another would be to give better play to 'editors' who are willing to sign their work. Rather than holding Wikipedia or other sites liable for the actions of the unruly masses, which could chill the vigorous, free exchange the Internet should be, websites need to find ways to be more accountable. Even the global village needs to police its town common. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company, originally Boston Globe. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: BBC News Wire Subject: Vonage Has Fresh Backing; Says it Has Raised $250 Million Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:40:52 -0600 Fresh backing for web phone firm Broadband phone company Vonage has said it has raised $250m (£142m) to help finance the expansion of its network. The US firm, which enables people to make calls over the web using their home phones, said it acquired the funds from a group of private investors. Vonage is one of a number of companies focusing on internet telephony, known as Voice Over Internet Protocol (VoIP). The financing could be the private firm's last before it goes public, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday. Growth prospects Vonage managers are understood to be exploring the possibility of floating the company on the stock market. However, a deal which could see the firm sold to a separate buyer could also materialise, the newspaper said. Vonage has more than a million customers in the US and recently launched operations in the UK. Investors are increasingly excited at the prospects for growth among VoIP companies, which offer users phone calls at substantially lower prices than traditional fixed-line firms. In September, online auction giant eBay agreed to buy internet telephone firm Skype Technologies for $2.6bn. The latest round of investment in Vonage brings the total amount raised by the company to $658m. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/4542340.stm Published: 2005/12/19 14:01:21 GMT Copyright 2005 BBC 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from BBC, along with BBC World Service Audio, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra.BBC.html ------------------------------ From: kimi Subject: VOIP Learning Date: 21 Dec 2005 19:22:46 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com For VOIP learning, check out our web site at: http://www.freewebs.com/voipformula/VoIP-HOWTO.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 15:20:34 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga Subject: Caller ID/etc. (Dumb Question on Do Not Call) *** PAT: PLEASE MASK MY EMAIL ADDRESS! *** > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > The 'reject anonymous calls' condition only applies if the caller > _deliberatly_ inserted *67 to withhold his number. That condition > will not work if the failure to deliver ID is due to a telco > shortcoming, such as the type of switch used by the sending telco, > etc. The 'reject anonymous' condition relies on the sending telco > specifically saying 'do not say who is calling'. In your case the > sending telco is not saying that, it just does not know who the > caller is or else the details somehow got lost in the switching > matrix on the way. But it did not _deny_ or _hide_ anything at the > caller's request. So far, so good. > You still have a way around it however. Subscribe through your telco > to *60 (I think that is called 'reject these callers' in many > places). *60 answers you and says 'enter the number to be rejected' > or words to that effect and from that point on _that_ caller gets a > message saying you are not taking calls at this time. Well, still so good for now. > Now I heard your next question already: if you do not know _who_ is > calling, how are you supposed to block them? Good question. The *60 > recording also tells you 'to reject the last call you received, > whether or not you know the number, press (some) key.' I think > around here it is '01' or something. You press whatever you were > told, and the Operator-Bot responds, "Thank you! That number is a > _private_ entry." But none the less it has been blocked. Your telco > has a 'local cache' of the last call you placed/ received and it > uses that entry to do the blocking. But this too works ONLY if the terminating telco has that number delivered to it along the way. IF the calling number is simply "not available" because of the various reasons you above itemized, you won't be able to "Call Block" that last incoming number. However, IF that caller deliberately used *67 to suppress delivery of their number at the called end, as long as the telcos along the line have that number, you can use "Call Block". However, in most cases, this will ONLY work on Intra LATA numbers. The number has to be deliverable via the SS7 signaling network, (although the number might be suppressed for "final delivery", at the calling party's *67 request) for the called party to be able to add that "last incoming number" or specifically entered number on to their "Call Block" list. And the list is limited to anywhere from six to twelve entries, depending on local telco policy or your type of local switching equipment equipment (Lucent 5ESS vs. Nortel DMS-100, and even differences with different "generics"). > If your telco offers 'return last call' service (*68 I think), It's *69 in most places in the US and Canada, not *68. > then you can also use that service to return the last call and find > out what the 'important business matter' is all about. Both 'return > last call' and 'reject this caller' service are sold by most telcos > these days. PAT] In most places, *69 will quote the number of the last incoming number if it isn't flagged as "private" with *69; AND the number must also have been properly "delivered" via the SS7 signaling network -- i.e., it can not be "unavailable" or "unknown" or "out of area". You are also allowed a "conenct back" option after the quote, by pressing or dialing (or saying?) "one", but this "connect back" will not work if the calling number was inter LATA. I don't know if the "connect back" option works if the calling number was flagged as "private" or "blocked" with *69. Adding numbes to a "Call Block" list or doing a *69 "connect back" might also NOT be allowed on certain classes of lines/numbers, even if the "number" was delivered. Many times, such calling numbers (which have been delivered/deliverable) as payphones, cellphones, PBX lines (and various types of PBX lines, such as outbound trunk lines, billing number only lines, actual PBX extensions, etc), centrex lines, CLEC numbers, etc. are NOT allowed to be "queue'd back for a *69 connect back" nor to be added to a "Call Block" list. You might be able to get a "quote back" (of some kind) on *69, and you might be able to see "some" kind of number on your CID box, but don't expect perfect inter-operation with *60 Call Blcck or *69 Quote-back/Connect-Back. And to even be "possible" to work, the number must be SS7-delivered (even if the calling party did *69 or their line is flagged as a *69 type line), and it must usually be intra-LATA, to be able to fully work. About the only thing that MIGHT work on "unavailable" or "unknown" or "out-of-area" numbers (and remember that calls from overseas are usually flagged as "out of area" unless you have full ISDN or similar features as well as everyone else down the line too), is to get "Privacy Manager". This will divert the call to the local terminating telco's platform asking the calling party to enter their ten-digit telephone number, etc. Of course, I assume you remember that even this has drawbacks, such as invalid ten-digit strings (invalid area codes, invalid format c.o.codes, etc) being able to "pass through" the Privacy Manager restricor. Thus, a totally invalid number such as 000-000-0000 or 999-888-7777 or whatever can still bypass "Privacy Manager" and ring your phone! Anthony [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: An intertesting experiment to try is to 'ping' a distant number and see if it is in the type of central office where this can be done. Using the *60 function, dial some random number in anther area code on the opposite coast of the country, three thousand miles away. Please note how the equipment will sit there a bit longer than if it was in your own area. Apparently your central office has to 'ping' the other end to wake it up and see what it is about: After typically 15-20 seconds (a much longer time than if you were calling somewhere in your telco's operating territory) the Operator-Bot will return and say one of these things: (1) either you have, indeed, blocked out the requested number [in which case you can turn around and immediatly unblock it, if it matters] or (2) "I am sorry, but that number cannot be blocked" or (3) "I am sorry, that number cannot be blocked _at this time_, please try again in a few minutes." I think what response #3 means is that your telco went and knocked on the door there, was told at some previous point that yes, those numbers could be blocked, but the distant central office did not respond 'quick enough' to the 'ping message' and your central office got tired of waiting and walked away. But ask again, in a minute or two, your central office will be glad to go over there and knock on the door again, and maybe make it that time. It sort of reminds me of how many years ago when the internet was newer and still in need of tweaking now and then, a large mailing list like this one (in the olden, text-message only days of email/Usenet, I had _thousands_ of names on the telecom list in the bcc area [still have several hundred readers via email, but many/most of you now read this on the 'web'])I would encounter difficulty in mailing. I'd get back notices from the postmaster-bot saying delivery had failed, during 'user open with' which meant that some site somewhere had opened its gate to let me and my list in, but before the entire list to that location got in the door, the other site got tired of waiting and closed the gate on me. I'd have to break the list into a few parts and mail specifically to that site only as a separate thing. When MCI Mail was a big thing, I had three or four hundred readers via MCI Mail which was notorious for closing the gate before all the readers at that site could get their copies. I also had the same trouble with Usenet sometimes: I'd get to some 'backbone site' to drop off the current comp.dcom.telecom messages and in the middle of my posting of the new messages, a second or two after I got there, let's say UUNET as an example, some other newsgroup moderator with five or ten times as many messages that day as I had would arrive. The way the system was set up, the 'last' newsgroup to arrive inbound with new messages always took control of the process, so I could not get out of there and move on to my next stop until _he_ was finished with his drop as well. And sometimes it took _him_ a long time to make his drop; I had to sit and tap my toes waiting for him to finish his drop. Where many large-volume Usenet message posters (such as group moderators) drop everything in the stream at one location (where they work out of) and let it float down the news stream on its own, for quite a few years I have used software called 'nntpxmit' which speeds me along rapidly to the large Usenet distribution points where I have permission to post directly, the theory being that it is quicker to get back a response of 'SEEN IT' a dozen times to the new messages [because one of my other distribution points was quick and beat me to the punch in delivery before I could get to the next place on my own] than it is to say 'I HAVE' (message serial number) a dozen times and wait for acknowlegement from the other end. Even so, sometimes even today, I will fire up NNTPXMIT and start it making its rounds, get to one stop, tell it IHAVE (number), it will sit there looking at it for a couple seconds, some other newsgroup arrives, bumps me aside, takes over the process, and I may be awhile getting my deliveries done, in which case I just do and start over hoping for faster delivery. I get all the way around the world to my primary Usenet sites in less than a minute if I am lucky. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: The Letter From valent@mailrus.ru Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 02:15:13 GMT Philip TAYLOR wrote: >> In article , TELECOM Digest >> Editor noted in response to a message from Valentin >> : >>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought about this message for quite >>> awhile, and although it would probably qualify as spam (by virtue of >>> how many copies were distributed, I personally do not think it is a >>> scam. >> It's spam. >> Spam is theft. >> Therefore, it's a scam. >> If he's so hard up, where did he get the resources to spam with? >> Wasn't there just a thread on why spam continues, because so many >> idiots send money to spammers? Some are suckers for bigger bodyparts, >> others for free money, others for helping the needy. All of those are >> reasons that spam continues. >> Seth > It may be spam. It may even be a scam. Or it may be genuine. If > it's genuine, then we -- the recipients -- are in a position to help > soneone in genuine need. If it's a scam, then we may end up a little > poorer, and the scammer a little richer, but on balance, does it > matter? It's hardly in the same league as the Nigerian scam (and > anyone who falls for that needs their brains tested), so isn't it > worth risking losing a few rubles /kopeks/whatever ? I think it is. > Philip Taylor Most if not all of the Nigerian scams have moved to the East European countries like Russia and Romania, and those people are really nasty, I let loose on one with some nasty language and got a threat back from them before Yahoo France pulled the plug on the e-mail address. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Mexican Officials Say Bush Fence Blocking Plan is Stupid Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 20:12:21 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Will Weissert wrote: > Mexico's foreign secretary Monday leveled his country's sharpest > criticism yet at U.S. proposal for a fence along parts of its southern > border, condemning it as "stupid" and "underhanded." And they've hired a Dallas PR firm to convince Americans that illegal immigration is OK. Today, KFI-AM 640 (Los Angeles) interviewed Rob Allyn, owner of the PR firm in question. Allyn was mostly evasive, and when KFI's John and Ken asked what made it ok for Mexico to punish illegal immigrants but insist that we not punish theirs, he refused to answer. He repeatedly called John and Ken racist and xenophobic even after they pointed out that they were only opposed to ILLEGAL immigration, not all immigration. http://www.kfi640.com/ http://johnandkenshow.com/ On the show's website there is a link to archived shows. I hope they post the interview. It was ... enlightening. Apparently the attitude of many immigrants -- that Americans owe them something - trickles down from Mexico City, because the Mexican federal government seems incensed that we are proposing erecting a fence to make it harder for the illegals to cross our borders. > Reacting Sunday to the bill's approval, Mexican President Vicente Fox > said "this wall is shameful," What's Fox doing to improve his own economy and bring up his own citizens' standard for living? That's the real question. Incidentally, Rob Allyn's corporate web site is http://www.allynco.com Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Dumb Question About "Do Not Call" Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 20:13:29 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Lena wrote: > It clams to block "anonymous and unidentified numbers" Been tempted to > try it, and then the telemarketers go away, so I forget about it. > There is also the configuration problem; how does it block all the > phones in the house. Can I mount it where the line comes in, and then > tie all the phones to it? They sell "remotes", but that drives the > cost up. Verizon has this "iobi" service that appears to have the > ability to block unwanted calls. It costs $4.95 per month when added > to a "Freedom" package ($7.95 without). More flexibility, it seems, > than the Privacy Corps Caller ID. iobi is supposed to do quite a bit more than just block unwanted calls. As far as telemarketing is concerned, I put us on the federal DNC list and that seems to have worked quite well for us. Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Police Had to Convince Lottery Winner it was Real Organization: Symantec Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 17:33:53 -0500 In article , Reuters News Wire A lottery company had to call the police to convince an elderly German > woman that she had hit the jackpot, police said Tuesday. Most of the lottery mail is obviously a scam because they claim you won a lottery that you never actually entered. If this woman won something, she must have really purchased a lottery ticket, in which case it's reasonable to assume that the jackpot is real. Also, the scams ask the "winner" to pay some fee to secure their winnings. A real lottery would not, so there's nothing to worry about in those mails. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** *** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group *** ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #574 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Dec 22 19:39:11 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 59AA014EE7; Thu, 22 Dec 2005 19:39:10 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #575 Message-Id: <20051223003910.59AA014EE7@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 19:39:10 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.9 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR,OPTING_OUT autolearn=unavailable version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 22 Dec 2005 19:40:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 575 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Huge Waves, Flooding in Southern California (Associated Press News Wire) Disney and Zazzle Work Together (Gina Keating) Luxury E-tailers Waiting For Christmas Rush (Alexandria Sage) Spam Wars Still Rage, Critics Say (Grand Gross, IDG News Service) EU Threatens Microsoft with Fines (Paul Taylor) France Lawmakers Endorse File Sharing (Laurence Frost) Cellular-News for Thursday 22nd December 2005 (Cellular-News) Cell Phone Extenders? (AES) Ericsson Seeks New Growth in Telecom Services (USTelecom dailyLead) Major Milestone Reached in IETF Administrative Restructuring (Peter Godwin) Re: Through His Webcam, a Teenage Boy Joins a Sordid Online World (Hancock) Re: VOIP Learning (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (Howard S. Wharton) 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: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Disney Launches Web Personalization with Zizzle Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 22:35:15 -0600 By Gina Keating The Walt Disney Co.'s online shopping site on Wednesday launched its first "You design it" feature in a move aimed at riding the fast- growing trend toward giving choosy Internet shoppers exactly what they want. Disney partnered with online customization site Zazzle.com, which licenses thousands of images from Warner Bros., Marvel Comics Inc., Lucasfilm Ltd. and 20th Century Fox, among others, and also allows users to sell their own art for use on personalized T-shirts, greeting cards and postage stamps. It took Disney, which aggressively protects its copyrights, about two years to figure out how to open its vast art archives, while controlling how consumers could use its characters. "Disney very much wanted to create the Disney experience and insure products we ultimately sell to consumers protect the brand and reinforce a lot of what it stands for," Zazzle co-founder and Chief Executive Robert Beaver said. "That was our challenge from an engineering standpoint." Zazzle's Disney boutique, which can be accessed via disneyshopping.com and disneyinkshop.com, allows consumers to select a Disney character, T-shirt style and color and to add a name or phrase from an approved list. The 4,000-plus Disney images can also be used on stamps or greeting cards on Zazzle. Disney, which has long allowed customers to add their names to items sold at its stores and theme parks, is "constantly looking to add personalized items for guests," said David Barad, Disney's vice president of marketing for Disneyshopping.com. "Everything we look at we are now looking at ways to let the guest make it their own," Barad said. Online holiday shopping was expected to reach $26 billion in 2005, an 18 percent increase over 2004, according to JupiterResearch. Sales of Disney personalized products were expected to rise 25 percent to 35 percent over last year's holiday quarter, Barad said. Personalized products made up 10 percent to 12 percent of Disney Shopping's overall business last year and were expected to grow to 15 percent, he said. "Of the items that we have for personalization, over 90 percent (of consumers) personalize them," Barad said. "That is telling us pretty powerfully that they want to personalize it." The partnership with Zazzle allows Disney to market its secondary characters, which usually are not licensed by traditional retailers and to tap into emerging, consumer-driven trends, Barad said. "That's the great thing with the Zazzle business -- we can try to take advantage of characters we didn't see (as pop culture icons)," he said. Warner Bros. is a unit of Time Warner Inc. and 20th Century Fox is owned by News Corp. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Alexandria Sage Subject: U.S. Luxury E-tailers Await Last Minute Shoppers Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:39:20 -0600 By Alexandria Sage Online diamond and jewelry retailer Blue Nile Inc. knows a thing or two about waiting until the last minute to buy those opulent holiday gifts. Last year, a mere 14 minutes before the shipping deadline to guarantee delivery by Christmas, a procrastinating shopper clicked to buy his soon-to-be fiancee's engagement ring. "We're here to save all those guys who are shopping at the last minute," said Blue Nile spokesman John Baird, who expects men to procrastinate just as much this year as they have in the past until the final days before Christmas loom. But industry analysts are mixed over how luxury online retailers are faring this holiday season. Providing a boost may be mall-averse men -- a National Retail Federation survey found that 18 percent of them hadn't started their holiday shopping as of last weekend -- together with consumers' increasing comfort level with shelling out hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars on Internet purchases. Others note that high-end online gift buying is being supplanted by visits -- even among the rich -- to online portals of discounters like Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Tracking firm comScore Networks found that luxury goods and jewelry sites were the fastest-growing Internet shopping category last month with 16.4 million visitors, a 39 percent jump over October. There is no way to know what percentage were browsing and how many actually ended up making purchases. "We're seeing a very strong season again online," said comScore Chairman Gian Fulgoni, citing 30 percent more high speed Internet connections over last year and improved faith in Internet security. "With the Internet, (consumers) are starting to buy in a broader range of categories." Through December 19, holiday sales in the jewelry and watch category grew 13 percent over last year, he said, below the overall increase of 24 percent, while apparel, home and garden, and furniture have all grown more than 30 percent over last year. Analysts agree that consumers are gradually finding the idea of buying a $123,000 Blue Nile diamond, a $1,400 cashmere wrap from NeimanMarcus.com or a $900 Coach.com python purse all the more natural. "Consumers start out with books and as they become more comfortable buying on the Internet, they climb the average selling price ladder," said Scott Devitt, analyst with Stifel Nicolaus. "Before you know it, they're buying expensive jewelry on the Internet." CROSS-CURRENTS Heather Dougherty, analyst at Nielsen/NetRatings, said the online luxury category is particularly strong at the holidays "because of the way it reflects on the gift giver and recipient -- someone cared enough to buy this upscale gift." But some point out that the online winners this year are discounters, who have wooed not only lower-income shoppers, but the affluent to boot. A survey by Internet measurement firm Hitwise found that unique visits to 15 luxury online retailers for the week ending December 17 were relatively flat over last year. Exceptions included Bergdorf Goodman, owned by Neiman Marcus Group Inc., where online visits jumped 159 percent. Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer said that consumers who earn over $100,000 make up a quarter and a fifth of traffic at Costco.com and Overstock.com, respectively. At Wal-Mart.com, the demographics of shoppers are more upscale than the average consumer in the stores, said comScore's Fulgoni, attributing the difference to "less of a stigma" attached to shopping online. Nevertheless, Blue Nile this holiday expanded their high-ticket product line, offering 50 items above $10,000 compared with a mere dozen last Christmas. For the first three quarters of 2005, Blue Nile said, sales of items priced above $20,000 increased 72 percent over last year. And the biggest quarter is the fourth, since 40 percent of engagements occur between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day. Blue Nile Chief Executive Mark Vadon said the company's goal this holiday is to keep the right merchandise stocked and ready for shipment in the last days before Christmas. "What we're trying to do is keep shipping up to that last minute and allow people in that final week to still be online and not go into the store," Vadon 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Grant Gross Subject: Spam Wars Still Rage, Critics Say Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:42:02 -0600 Grant Gross, IDG News Service WASHINGTON-- Some antispam vendors and computer users don't see the same picture the Federal Trade Commission viewed in its recent report that many people now get less unsolicited commercial e-mail in their inboxes than two years ago. The spam problem isn't shrinking, said Ray Everett-Church, counsel for the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail and author of the new book, "Fighting Spam for Dummies." "Technology has improved incrementally in the last year, but spam volumes remain at all-time highs by most measures," Everett-Church said. FTC Claims Success The FTC, in a report to Congress on Tuesday, said antispam filtering technology and a two-year-old federal law have contributed to less spam showing up in inboxes. The total amount of spam being sent appears to be "leveling off," if not declining, but spam filters are catching most of it, the FTC said. The CAN-SPAM Act, signed into law in late 2003, has also helped fight spam, by setting standards for mass e-mail marketing and by allowing about 50 lawsuits against spammers that were filed by the FTC, law enforcement agencies and Internet companies in the last two years, the FTC said. CAN-SPAM has given law enforcement agencies and ISPs "tools to deal with outlaw spammers," said Lydia Parnes, director of the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection. Spam-filtering technology is also a reason computer users are seeing less spam, according to the FTC. Asked CAN-SPAM's contribution compared to spam filters, Parnes said Tuesday she didn't know. "It's very difficult to parse out the effect of the law versus the technological advances," she said. "The act has given us a set of best practices for companies that use commercial e-mail. That is very important." Bulging Inboxes Others question the FTC's conclusions. "The FTC might be seeing less spam, but I'm not!" Don Smutny, a Web site administrator and software developer, wrote in an e-mail reacting to the FTC report. "I get just as much spam today as I did two years ago, it's just not all from people that want to sell me pharmaceuticals. Now, they want me to give them bank account and credit card information to 'verify my account.'" Smutny, from Kansas City, Missouri, said he's seen a big increase in "phishing" e-mail trying to trick recipients into giving up their personal information. Smutny's employer uses spam-filtering technology that catches about 75 percent of spam, but the amount of spam coming into the company has not decreased, he said. "I don't know just how the FTC measured the amount of spam being sent, but they didn't measure it at the ISP level," Smutny added. "This is where a tremendous portion of spam is filtered out, and the ISPs' customers never even see it. That doesn't mean it wasn't sent, however." While the FTC focused more on the amount of spam hitting inboxes instead of the total amount of spam being sent, the unfiltered volume of unsolicited messages is a problem, Everett-Church said. Filtering has provided incremental improvements for end users, but it doesn't make the problem go away," he said. "The costs are still there, being borne by the ISPs and businesses." Everett-Church called for technology vendors to push harder for efforts to add user authentication to the e-mail system. "Today's technology improvements are eking a few more horsepower out of an already overworked engine," he said. "We need a new, better engine, but nobody is willing to make the investment yet." Vendors Skeptical Two antispam vendors agreed with the FTC that filtering is largely working, but question the effectiveness of CAN-SPAM, which stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing. It's difficult to argue CAN-SPAM had "any kind of real impact" on the volume of spam, said Scott Chasin, chief technology officer for MX Logic. MX Logic found that 68 percent of e-mail traffic it scanned in 2005 was spam, down from 77 percent in 2004. But only 4 percent of unsolicited commercial e-mail complied with CAN-SPAM in 2005, up from 3 percent in 2004, the company said earlier this month. CAN-SPAM requires that commercial e-mail include several items, such as a working return e-mail address, a valid postal address for the sending company, a working opt-out mechanism and a relevant subject line. "Overall, the vast majority of [e-mail] traffic on the Internet -- about 85-90 pecent -- is still spam-related content," Chasin said. Chasin did call CAN-SPAM necessary, saying it has helped educate legitimate e-mail marketers about acceptable practices. Jordan Ritter, founder and chief technology officer of antispam vendor Cloudmark, agreed, but noted that only legitimate marketers have followed CAN-SPAM's rules. Although the FTC said no changes to CAN-SPAM are needed, Ritter called for additions to the law to better define spam and good practices. "The problem is the people who aren't following the law can't be found," Ritter added. Chasin, however, said better technology is the answer to continued spam problems. "The road map from the technology side in fighting the spam problem will continue to evolve," he said. "However, the road map of the spammers will continue to evolve as well." Copyright 2005 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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 ------------------------------ From: Paul Taylor Subject: EU Threatens Microsoft with Fines Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:43:25 -0600 By Paul Taylor Europe's competition regulator threatened U.S. software giant Microsoft with daily fines on Thursday for failing to comply with antitrust sanctions a year after a top European Union court ruled it must obey. The European Commission said it may fine Microsoft up to 2 million euros ($2.37 million) a day unless it complies with an order to provide key information to allow rivals' group servers to work with its ubiquitous Windows operating system. "I have given Microsoft every opportunity to comply with its obligations. However, I have been left with no alternative other than to proceed via the formal route to ensure Microsoft's compliance," EU Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes said in a statement. Shares in Microsoft fell 18 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $26.55 in midday Nasdaq trading while the Nasdaq Composite index was up 0.4 percent. The Brussels EU executive said Microsoft had five weeks, until January 25, to reply and show it was in compliance with the EU demands. Any fines would be retroactive to December 15, it said. Microsoft called the move unjustified and said it was doing its best to obey the European antitrust watchdog's landmark March 2004 ruling, but that Brussels kept piling on new demands. The company vowed to contest the latest decision to the full extent allowed by EU law including by demanding an oral hearing, which can take months to organize, stringing out the procedure. Alan Davis, a technology analyst with brokers McAdams Wright Ragen in New York, said the threatened fine could come to about $600 million a year after taxes and would cut his full-year earnings forecast of $1.33 by 5.5 cents a share or 4 percent. "It would be significant, but not devastating," Davis told Reuters. But he added that he expected Microsoft to act at the last minute to avoid having to pay the fine. "They've tended to do things at the 11th hour," he said. "It's a cat and mouse game with Microsoft. I doubt that it will happen." Oracle Corp. a business software maker and one of Microsoft's most vocal critics, applauded the EU decision. "We are very pleased with the Commission's decision," Oracle spokesman Bob Wynne said in a statement. The Commission ruled in 2004 Microsoft had abused its global dominance by leveraging its near monopoly in the market for PC operating systems and for media players to squelch rivals. It imposed a record 497 million euro fine and forced Microsoft to sell a version of Windows without the Windows Media Player software used to watch films and listen to music, giving rivals a fairer chance to compete. At stake now is a part of that decision requiring Microsoft "to disclose complete and accurate interface documentation which would allow non-Microsoft work group servers to achieve full interoperability with Windows PCs and servers." GOAL POSTS Microsoft said in a statement the Commission's latest demand "can open the door to the production of clones of parts of the Windows operating system" and went beyond the scope of the original EU decision. "We have now responded to more than 100 requests from the Commission. We continue working quickly to meet the Commission's new and changing demands. Yet every time we make a change, we find that the Commission moves the goal post and demands another change," said Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith. The Commission said that in its view, supported by two reports from a Monitoring Trustee appointed by mutual agreement, Microsoft had not yet provided full specifications. The Court of First Instance, the EU's second-highest court, rejected Microsoft's appeal to suspend the measures last December and warned it would face a daily fine if it did not comply with its obligation by December 15, 2005. The software giant's appeal against the substance of the EU antitrust case is still pending and the Court of First Instance hopes to hold a hearing by early spring. EU Competition spokesman Jonathan Todd said Microsoft would also have a right to appeal any fines to the EU courts. It was the first time the EU executive had made use of new powers enacted last year to impose daily penalties for noncompliance in antitrust cases, he told a news conference. "CAT AND MOUSE GAME" The Commission said that Microsoft had indeed revised the interopera- bility information it was obliged to disclose, but the data was incomplete and inaccurate. The Monitoring Trustee had found that "any programmer or programming team seeking to use the Technical Documentation for a real development exercise would be wholly and completely unable to proceed on the basis of the documentation." "Overall, the process of using the documentation is an absolutely frustrating, time-consuming and ultimately fruitless task," the Commission quoted the trustee, British Professor Neil Barrett, as saying. Todd said the company could ask for an extension of the deadline as well as an oral hearing, which would be open to member states and all interested parties. Asked whether an oral hearing would delay the imposition of fines, Todd told reporters: "The deadline is five weeks. ... If they don't comply, they'll have to pay the fine every day." He said other issues remained open in its appraisal of the Microsoft case, including the royalties charged by Microsoft for interoperability information. (Additional reporting by Marie-Louise Moller and Marcin Grajewski in Brussels and Jim Finkle 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Laurence Frost Subject: France Lawmakers Endorse File Sharing Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:45:37 -0600 By LAURENCE FROST, AP Business Writer A French government crackdown on digital piracy backfired Thursday as lawmakers rebelled by endorsing amendments to legalize the online sharing of music and movies instead of punishing it. The vote by members of France's lower house dealt a setback to Culture Minister Renaud Donnedieu de Vabres, who introduced the draft legislation. Showbiz and cultural celebrities protested the latest move, an indication that the amendments' supporters may eventually have to back down. Under the original proposals, those caught pirating copy-protected material would have faced $360,000 in fines and up to three years in jail. An 11th-hour government offer to give illegal downloaders two warnings prior to prosecution was not enough to stem the rebellion. Instead, the amendments voted would legalize file-sharing by anyone paying a monthly royalties duty estimated at $8.50. Music labels and movie distributors have suggested the amendments would break international laws on intellectual property, and French actors and musicians lined up to condemn the surprise vote. "To legalize the downloading of our music, almost free of charge, is to kill our work," venerable rocker Johnny Hallyday said in a statement. The actors' and musicians' branch of France's largest trade union, the CFDT, said the plan "would mean the death of our country's music and audiovisual industries." The proposed royalties duty amounts to a "Sovietization" of the arts, said Bernard Miyet, president of the French music composers' and publishers' organization SACEM. "You're talking about an administered price, set by a commission without regard to the music and film economy," Miyet said. But UFC-Que Choisir, France's largest consumer group, said the plan would create a "new area of freedom allowing Internet users access to cultural diversity and fair payment for creators." Days before the parliamentary debate, consumer activists delivered a 110,000-signature petition to the culture ministry criticizing the draft bill. The right of consumers to make copies of their music and videos for private use is enshrined in European law, and media companies have faced legal action in France for selling copy-protected CDs and DVDs. The ruling conservatives' parliamentary leader, Bernard Accoyer, rejected government demands for a fresh vote Thursday, saying lawmakers will first take time to listen to all sides, "in particular the artists and creators." The final lower-house vote is not expected until after Jan. 17, when deputies return from their winter break. The bill requires only one further vote in the Senate to become law, under the emergency procedure invoked by the government to comply with a 2001 European Union directive on digital piracy. Associated Press Writer Emmanuel Georges-Picot contributed to this report. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news and headlines from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Thursday 22nd December 2005 Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 08:46:54 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com [[ Financial ]] Swiss Government Sets New Swisscom Ground Rules http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15345.php The Swiss government Wednesday said incumbent telecommunications operator Swisscom will be allowed to take on a maximum of CHF5 billion in debt for acquisitions and investments as long as it doesn't buy foreign companies with a universal service obli... KDDI: Eyes Digital Service Ties With Broadcasters -Nikkei http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15339.php Japan's KDDI Corp. hopes to form a business tie-up with broadcasting stations when starting a new digital service rather than a capital alliance with them, KDDI President Tadashi Onodera said Wednesday. ... Japan's NTT DoCoMo To Buy 2.6% Stake In Fuji TV http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15340.php NTT DoCoMo Inc. said Wednesday it will take a 2.6% stake in Fuji Television Network Inc., as part of its preparations for a new digital broadcasting service for cellphone users. ... Russia's MTS brings its stake in Sibintertelecom to 100% http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15342.php Russia's largest mobile operator Mobile TeleSystems, or MTS, has increased its stake in Russia's regional mobile operator Sibintertelecom to 100% by purchasing a 6.3% stake from regional telecommunications company Sibirtelecom and a 0.17% stake f... Yevtushenkov criticizes Russia's MTS management http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15343.php During a conference call late Tuesday AFK Sistema's CEO Vladimir Yevtushenkov criticized the management of Russia's largest mobile operator MTS for the company's flat share price performance this year, Aton Capital said in its daily report for inve... Alcatel's Chinese unit to open representative office in Belarus http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15346.php China's Alcatel Shanghai Bell, a subsidiary of French telecom equipment producer Alcatel, plans to set up a representative office in Belarus, Alexander Popov, director of Alcatel's representative office in Belarus, told reporters Wednesday. ... Telefonica Moviles Buys Remaining 8% Stake Of Mexico Unit http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15347.php Spanish mobile phone operator Telefonica Moviles, Wednesday said it has agreed to acquire the 8% stake in its Mexican unit that it didn't already own, for EUR177 million. ... [[ Interviews ]] INTERVIEW: Ericsson Sees Quick Integration Of Marconi http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15348.php Telefon AB LM Ericsson expects to integrate Marconi PLC into the company quickly and aims to complete most of the process in the first half of next year, a senior executive told Dow Jones Newswires Wednesday. ... Altimo's CEO says won't sell Russian, CIS telecom assets http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15351.php Russia's Altimo, or Alfa Telecom International Mobile, which manages the telecommunications assets of its parent company Alfa Group, does not plan to sell any of its Russian, CIS or other assets, Altimo's CEO Alexei Reznikovich said in an interview, ... [[ Legal ]] German Banker Awaits Word On Possible Mannesmann Retrial http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15338.php BERLIN (AP)--Germany's most prominent banker awaited a decision Wednesday on whether he and five others would face retrial over large payments to executives during the 2000 takeover of Mannesmann AG by Vodafone Group PLC. ... German Court Overturns Verdict In Mannesmann Case http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15341.php A German federal court Wednesday overturned the verdict in the so-called Mannesmann trial, meaning the defendants likely face retrial. ... [[ MVNO ]] SingTel Declines Comment On Virgin Mobile Australia Talks http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15337.php Singapore Telecommunications Ltd. declined to comment Wednesday on a report that said it is close to announcing a deal to buy the 75% of Virgin Mobile Australia it does not already own. ... [[ Personnel ]] Polish Polkomtel CEO Jaroslaw Pachowski Resigns http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15349.php Chief executive officer at Poland's third-largest mobile telephone operator Polkomtel, Jaroslaw Pachowski, resigned Wednesday, the company's supervisory board chairman Andrzej Szczepek told Dow Jones Newswires. ... [[ Statistics ]] M6 Beats 200,000 Subscriber Target For Mobile Services http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15344.php M6 mobile, the mobile phone service of French private television M6-Metropole Television and France Telecom's mobile operator Orange said Wednesday that it beat its own target of 200,000 subscribers. ... Russia's MegaFon Northwest user base up 35% on year http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15350.php The subscriber base of Russia's third largest national GSM mobile operator MegaFon in the Northwest Federal District increased 35% on the year to 5.4 million users this year, the commercial director of the company's Northwest branch Nikolai Demen... ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 09:00:06 -0800 Organization: Stanford University I'd appreciate any practical, specific advice on the feasibility of a modest-cost cell phone extender for a private residence in a weak signal location in the Stanford University area of the San Francisco peninsula: Details are: Verizon service, 3 family members on a family plan, all with inexpensive low-end Samsung phones, resident in a one-story house in a low spot on the back edge of Stanford campus (along JSB below the "Big Dish", for those who know the area). We generally get zero or one flickering tower and phones are pretty much unusable inside the house, though they will sporadically ring; we can get 1 tower weakly and sometimes make or receive calls successfully by going outside on the roof or all the way to the back or front edges of the lot. Web surfing for cell phone extenders brings up a lot of not very clear information, and prices for "repeaters" seem to be in the $300 range. So: 1) Recommendations on trying or not trying one of these? Specific brands? 2) Would more expensive higher-end phones have any better sensitivity or chance of working? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My experience has been (and I think this is true of most _transmitting_ radios) the antenna is 90 percent of the task. With that in mind, why don't you try an external antenna at least when the phone is not in use. For instance, I have my cell- socket device (for battery charging purposes, and to 'extend' the use of the cell phone to a 'regular' wired phone in my house. Plugged into the cell socket is a 5/8 wave antenna which sets on a pedastle in the corner of one room right near a window. If your phone has an optional jack on it somewhere (like Nokia 5165 does) you can plug in the coax cable there and see if the external antenna makes it work better. I do not think a more expensive phone would make a lot of difference. I have seen _really cheap_ transmitting radios which when outfitted with a _properly tuned, well placed_ antenna started working quite well. As you have found, being outdoors helps a lot; having an external antenna with a couple DB of gain (I suggest 5/8 wave are best for this) placed close to a window inside should help you a lot. I am assuming your phone has some kind of external antenna hookup. To get such an antenna, Mike Sandman sells them, pedastle, base, coax and all. He'll need to know about your phone plug of course. The URL is http://sandman.com . He also has a sort-of 'repeater' device. This 'repeater' mounts outside your house (like under the roof on your porch or on the roof) and _retransmits_ the signal in both directions on the proper frequency to the cell phone which is wherever. On the 'repeater' thing, a directional antenna points to the nearest tower. He uses that for his personal Nextel phone I think. Ask him for advice before you waste a lot of money on this project. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 12:36:23 EST From: US Telecom Subject: Ericsson Seeks New Growth in Telecom Services The SmartBrief team -- and our inspirational genius -- wish you the best this holiday season. Thanks to our partners, advertisers and -- most importantly -- you and the thousands of other subscribers, we've had a very good year. Your comments and suggestions throughout 2005 helped to make us and our publication even smarter. We're looking forward to 2006; we can't promise to make you an Einstein, but we will keep you informed and save you valuable time. Happy holidays! USTelecom dailyLead December 22, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ACsYatagCCxRfBZIEz TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Ericsson seeks new growth in telecom services BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Nortel sets sights on router acquisition * Orascom takes stake in Hutchison Telecom * BT signs deals with four vendors for 21CN * RIM reports solid Q3 profit * The top telephony stories of 2005 USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * dailyLead and membership -- USTelecom prepares you for What's NEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Industry trends: What to expect in 2006 REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * NYC to study plans to spread broadband * Swiss government allows Swisscom to make foreign acquisitions Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ACsYatagCCxRfBZIEz ------------------------------ From: Peter Godwin Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 11:10:33 +0100 Subject: Major Milestone Reached in IETF Administrative Restructuring Reston, VA - 22nd December 2005 - After nearly twenty years of existence, the Internet Engineering Task Force has assumed oversight over the services that support the operations of the world's leading Internet standards development group. A new agreement with NeuStar Secretariat Services LLC marks a major milestone in efforts to ensure that the IETF administrative support infrastructure will meet the future needs of the expanding IETF community. The agreement (signed on December 15) was the outcome of extensive discussions and consultations between the IETF community and the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA) -- a group created in April 2005 to examine ways of improving the IETF's administrative operations in support of the IETF standards process and technical activities. A two-year Services Agreement with NeuStar Secretariat Services (NSS) was then executed on behalf of IASA by Lynn St. Amour, President and CEO of the Internet Society. Mark Foster, Senior Vice President and CTO of NeuStar, Inc., represented NSS in the transaction. Under the terms of the agreement, NeuStar Secretariat Services will begin work immediately on managing the IETF's secretariat, meetings, and document and data management services. Speaking after signing the agreement with NeuStar, Lynn St. Amour said "The Internet Society is delighted to be able to bring this new level of support to the IETF." Earlier in the day, NeuStar had reached agreement with the Corporation for National Research Initiatives (CNRI), to acquire the assets of CNRI subsidiary Foretec Seminars Inc - the incumbent secretariat service provider. The IETF Trust was created at the time of the closing to ensure the utilization, maintenance, preservation and protection of IETF intellectual property for the benefit of the IETF. The agreement document was executed by CNRI President and CEO, Robert Kahn, and Lynn St. Amour as settlors, on behalf of their respective organizations. Members of the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee and the IETF Administrative Director will serve as trustees. CNRI and the Internet Society donated their IETF related Intellectual Property to the Trust at its creation; the IETF also transferred its rights to its intellectual property to the Trust. Following the Trust's first business meeting, a Trust Licensing Agreement was executed by and between the Trust and NeuStar Secretariat Services for its use of certain specified IETF intellectual property appropriate or necessary to its delivery of services to the IETF community in accordance with the Services Agreement. "The IETF is not just getting older, it's growing up," said Leslie Daigle, IAB Chair and a leader in the IETF restructuring initiative. "Today marks the convergence of many hours and weeks of thoughtful discussion all around - we are coming together to set the IETF on a new administrative foundation to continue its technical work." ABOUT THE IETF The IETF (http://www.ietf.org) is a large open international community of network designers, operators, vendors, and researchers concerned with the evolution of the Internet architecture and the smooth operation of the Internet. It is open to any interested individual. ABOUT ISOC The Internet Society (http://www.isoc.org) is a not-for-profit membership organization founded in 1992 to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. With offices in Washington, DC, and Geneva, Switzerland, it is dedicated to ensuring the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world. ISOC is the organizational home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and other Internet-related bodies who together play a critical role in ensuring that the Internet develops in a stable and open manner. For over 13 years ISOC has run international network training programs for developing countries and these have played a vital role in setting up the Internet connections and networks in virtually every country connecting to the Internet during this time. FOR FURTHER DETAILS: Peter Godwin Communications Manager, Internet Society E-mail: godwin@isoc.org 4, rue des Falaises 1205 Geneva Switzerland ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Through His Webcam, a Teenage Boy Joins a Sordid Online World Date: 22 Dec 2005 12:08:44 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Ron Chapman wrote: > Am I alone in being *flabbergasted* that a 13 year old boy has that > kind of private time with a computer? Especially to the point that it > got that far? I don't agree at all. How much time was required for a peep show -- maybe an hour? It's not uncommon for computer geek kids to spend hours in front of their machine. Even in my day some kids spent hours after school at the computer center. And kids did "porn" that parents didn't know about, even if it merely naked or risque pictures done on a line printer. I doubt mothers would be pleased if they knew. Instant-Messaging is very popular among ALL kids today, as it the Internet over all. > Where were his parents during all of this? The article discussed this. The father was absent, then disappeared. Later on the father returned and got involved with the kid's activities. The father also severely physically abused the boy when he was younger and that may have played a role; kids who are abused are more likely to get into this kind of behavior when they're older. Clearly the father deserves much of the blame. The mother, a single mom trying to earn money to support her family, thought it was good her son was involved with computers. Better than being out on the streets. When I was in high school kids spent a lot of time on the computer (Teletypes in those days). Parents had no idea what they were doing. They were more concerned about coming home late on night from being out on the streets rather than _why_ they was coming home late. Some kids I knew in school were pioneer hackers via the Teletype. > No matter; this kind of thing has been going on forever -- where the > parents are totally oblivious to what's going on in their childrens' > lives. Yes and no. Once the kid enters junior high, the parents must accept that their child now must have some independence. They can't watch over the kid as they did when he was younger. It's not healthy for a kid to be supervised so closely; they need some space to learn how to make their own decisions and grow up. This distancing continues in high school. These days it's extremely difficult for a parent to monitor what their kid is doing on a computer. The very nature of an all-purpose digital computer and the Internet makes it hard. Virtually no parent is a systems programmer with the skills to put on filters and monitors (the way employers do), and none of that stuff is foolproof anyway. BTW, there were boys who got National Geographic subscription as a present, and promptly disappear into their bedrooms with it. Were their parents or the gift-giver aware of the naked pictures the N/G had in those days that boys enjoyed? Plenty of boys had Playboy hidden in their rooms, did their parents know? Jeez, even in my day stuff went down at co-ed parties for 13 y/o's that parents wouldn't be pleased to know about. Don't be so quick to blame the parents. > This is no different than Columbine, for example. So it happened with > a computer instead of homemade bombs -- it's still a parental issue at > heart, This is totally different than Columbine. This kid was involved in software and primarily victimizing _himself_ not a whole school. AFAIK, he did NOT bring his friends (he was a loner) into his room and get them to perform for the webcam, so there was no parade of strange people for his parents to see. He was not stocking large physical items. Software takes up very little room. There's a heck of a big difference coming home with a trailing stream of computer printout and a high powered rifle and strange friends. (Plus I think there's a lot of about Columbine we don't know about.) > The computer was the tool or outlet in this particular case, but this > isn't about computers and the internet. This is about horrible > parents, plain and simple. Wrong. It is about _computers_, plain and simple. The whole invention of the modern computer was for it to be a _general purpose_ device. Earlier machines and even computers were designed for specifics like calculations, cataloging, business document preparation (paychecks, bills, etc), or communications. Mixing all these functions together was the ultimate goal and now we have it. Today's computer lets people put together a lot of different functions that greatly magnifies its power. Kids always had cameras, and theorectically a kid could've taken nude shots of himself and sold them, but it would've been very cumbersome to find buyers and complete the transaction. Electronic networks and modern software -- like credit card services and PayPal -- make it very easy. As the article mentioned, perverts love the Internet. Remember how the kid started -- he put up a single picture, requests for just a little bit more came in, and so forth. The anonymity of the computer made it so easy for it to happen. I strongly doubt this kid would've willingly posed in person for such pictures and taken direct cash, but the webcam and Internet changed all that. At some point in the history of the automobile it was recognized that autos had to be registered as did the drivers. Drivers had to take a test, autos had to meet standards. Laws were passed regulating their use. To put it another way, the law doesn't let 13 y/o kids drive cars or drink alcohol or buy cigarettes, but the law lets them do anything they please with a computer or network. Indeed, many people claim cigarette ads encourage kids to smoke by creating a desirable mystique. Maybe the computer world is creating too much of a mystique for kids in a simialr manner. Teenagers like adventure and often don't understand the real risks of their activities. Computers located in the safety of their bedroom seem very safe, but we know that is not true. All of the adults who particpated in this enterprise were breaking very serious laws. But the anonymity of today's computers makes it hard to catch and prosecute them. The credit card payments apparently get filtered through multiple layers making them difficult or impossible to trace. Remember the kid was paid through gifts made to on-line retailers, which helped keep the transactions at an arms length. I frankly don't know what the answer is. But I take great offense if the technology community washes it hands of any responsibility for things like this. It's just like the automobile industry refusing to put in safety features during the 1950s when it was clear they were needed. In other threads we talked about the massive frauds and abuse that the Internet has created. I might point out that in the 1960s many people used dial telephones to harass other people. This wasn't the telephone company's "fault", but the phone co none the less had to work out solutions to curb the abuse. ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: VOIP Learning Date: 22 Dec 2005 17:50:15 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , kimi wrote: > For VOIP learning, check out our web site at: > http://www.freewebs.com/voipformula/VoIP-HOWTO.html It's an ad farm, with a few hundred words of common knowledge sprinkled throughout pages of Google ads. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for doing that evaluation for us. Still, those 'few hundred words of common knowledge' are probably new wisdom for many on the net. Fifteen or twenty years ago -- had VOIP been in common useage back then -- there'd have been no excuse for a page like that, but as the numbers of people on the net continue to grow, the amount of collective ignorance continues to grow with it. And the Google Scorecard -- that is all that matters for many website owners these day; how much revenue can be bought in each month from click-throughs. Remember how we used to say the 'death of the internet' would come from certain opinionated netters (back in the times when we old-timers were all very elitist). More of late, the theme has been the 'death of the internet' would come from all the spam/scam/fraud going on (which may be very true); but I think now the 'death of the internet' may come with the assistance of that great enabler of spam/scam/fraud/ignorance/nonsense in general, the Almighty Google Scorecard' i.e. how much is there for me this month? I really feel the Google Scorecard (or report of hits [page views] and ratio of click throughs to hits and how much Google will deign to pay us for the month) has done more to 'dumb us down' on the net than anything else. I guess I should complain about it, eh? I really wonder if all the folks who felt that of necessity the net had to go commercial if it was to survive at all stopped to think about this collateral damage we have seen: the gradual 'dumbing down' of the net and so many web sites being run by idiots, present case excepted, but of course. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Howard S. Wharton Subject: Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 13:13:20 -0500 Organization: The University at Buffalo The striking workers are employess of a public authority governed under the provisions of the New York State Employees Fair Employment Act known as the Taylor Law. If you allow the transit workers as public workers to strike then you better allow fire and police to do the same. See what happens then. One of the provisions of the law is to prohibt strikes by public employees. For the record, I'm a state employee. I worry about politicians messing with our pension. The state controller who is elected is the sole administrator of the public employee's pension. And there are those who think that we we retire, we get a generous pension and it should be changed. I agree with with what they are asking. But there are resolutions of contract disputes under the Taylor Law which the local did not do. Even the parent union disagrees with the srtike. The law has been on the books since 1967. I may live in Buffalo now, but I'm orginally from the city and still have friends and family done there. I still keep tabs on whats going on there. And in closing, I do would like to wish you and everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah and a Happy New Year! Howie Howard S. Wharton Fire Safety Technician Occupational and Environmental Safety Services State University of New York at Buffalo [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: By and large I agree with your sentiments, at least where the holidays are concerned. Where I disagree however is your statement "If you allow public workers to strike then be prepared if police/firemen walk off the job you will see what happens ... " Just FYI, they (emergency first responders) _do_ sometimes walk off the job. Chicago firemen went on strike a number of years ago for two or three days. I guess, Howard, I disagree with you on the legitimacy of government. I happen to feel the _only legitimate_ function of government is to do those things we cannot _conveniently_ do for ourselves, (such as, for example, fire protection and (maybe) police services. I think almost everything else should be based on economics. I know that may sound foolish to you, considering I -- of all people -- rely on Social Security Disability, Meals on Wheels and a nurse/housekeeper courtesy of the State of Kansas, and one dollar taxicab rides anywhere in town courtesy of City of Independence. But _someone_ has to pay for what I consume; like most people alive today, I was raised up in an enviroment where I grew slothful, plus which the 'system' would not allow me to take care of myself; it insisted on doing things for me. The amount I have paid in taxes over the years would have well provided for my needs in my old age _had I been given the opportunity to do so_. And how we are going to change the 'system' now I do not know. The shell game has gone on so long, a lot of people would feel cheated (and rightly so) if the rules were changed in their lifetime. Plus, there are many people who feel that (this illegitimate form of) government actually 'owes them' many things. I confess to feeling the same way at times in my weaker moments. But seriously, this shell game, or whatever needs to stop sometime. otherwise the balloon is going to eventually explode. Government should NOT be in the transportation business. They are not into transport where private automobiles are concerned (although they are trying hard to do so), nor in taxicabs, nor in airplanes or intercity busses. Why should they be into local busses and subways? In the 1930-40's, Chicago had a perfectly workable system of _private__ bus and elevated train lines. Six different companies were involved. Then in 1947 government decided they should take over. It has been a disaster ever since. Until 1939 we had perfectly workable _private_ housing, then Miss Jane Addams (in Chicago's instance) came along and decided govenment should run the housing, and the Chicago Housing Atrocity was born. It also has been a disaster ever since. Is the publicly owned housing in New York in any better condition? I think not! Literally _everything_ the government decides to take over from the private sector (transportation, housing, etc) is like the old story of King Midas; in his case everything he touched turned to gold, but in the government's case, everything they touch turns into shit. And the education of children; we have been brainwashed into thinking that public schools serve a good community purpose; no one wants a bunch of ignorant children; after all those children will be our country in a few years; so we have to have public schools to insure a good education. Are the public schools in New York any different than those in Chicago? Somehow I doubt it. So just imagine if our overall tax payments were about two percent of what they are now (let's refer to it as the 'adminstrative fee' to run what the government has the legitimate right to run) and with the rest of the money we educated our own children, provided for our own housing, and managed to somehow drag our own asses to work each day? Would things be any better or worse than they are now, in a system of _commercial_ transportation lines, _commercially_ owned housing, and _commercially_ owned/operated schools? I for one am tired of seeing the government thinking _it_ can do a better (and more noble, more honest and all that rot) job than the public can do on its own. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #575 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 23 14:09:27 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 4B4DD14E14; Fri, 23 Dec 2005 14:09:27 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #576 Message-Id: <20051223190927.4B4DD14E14@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 14:09:27 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.2 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, INFO_TLD,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 23 Dec 2005 02:25:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 576 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New York's 3-Day Transit Strike Ends (Deepti Hajela) Sunset Ends Transit Strike (New York Newsday Staff Writers) Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (Seth Breidbart) Jews for Jesus Files Suit Against Google Blog (Reuters News Wire) Amid New Orleans Ruins Churches Step in to Help (Kongsmark & Hampton) Blackberry: A High-Tech Ball and Chain (Monty Solomon) Re: Spam (was FTC Do Not Call List) (Seth Breidbart) Re: Letter From Russia (Seth Breidbart) Re: The Letter From valent@mailrus.ru (Seth Breidbart) Re: Missing ABN Amro Tape With Two Million Names Found (Seth Breidbart) Re: Dumb Question About "Do Not Call" (Seth Breidbart) A Mother's Love: Food For Baby Chick (Michael Casey, C.S. Monitor) 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: Deepti Hajela Subject: New York's 3-Day Transit Strike Ends Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 21:53:43 -0600 By DEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer Faced with mounting fines and the rising wrath of millio ns of commuters, the city transit union sent its members back to work without a new contract Thursday and ended a crippling, three-day strike that brought subways and buses to a standstill. Union members were told to return to their jobs and start preparing to restore service. Buses were expected to roll around midnight, and most trains were expected to be running by the Friday morning rush, just two days before Christmas. "I'm ecstatic that it's over, but I'm still really mad that they did it," said Jessica Cunningham, 21, who was in town for the holiday. "I really think it's screwed up that they decided to strike the week before Christmas." The breakthrough came after an all-night session with a mediator. Around midday, leaders of the 33,000-member Transport Workers Union overwhelmingly voted to return to work and resume negotiations with the transit authority on a new three-year contract. "We thank our riders for their patience and forbearance," said union local president Roger Toussaint. While the deal put the nation's largest mass transit system back in operation, it did not resolve the underlying dispute -- pension contributions were the main sticking point -- meaning there could be another walkout if the negotiations fail. The strike cost the city untold millions in police overtime and lost business and productivity at the very height of the Christmas rush and forced millions of commuters, holiday shoppers and tourists to carpool, take taxis, ride bicycles or trudge through the freezing cold. But the strike did not cause the utter chaos that many had feared, and traffic in many parts of town was surprisingly light. "In the end, cooler heads prevailed," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "We passed the test with flying colors. We did what we had to do to keep the city running, and running safely." The walkout, which began early Tuesday, was New York's first citywide transit strike in more than 25 years. The workers left their jobs in violation of a state law prohibiting public employees from striking. The return to work was announced just minutes before Toussaint and two of his top deputies were due in a Brooklyn courtroom to answer criminal contempt charges that could have landed them in jail. Earlier this week, state Justice Theodore Jones fined the union $1 million a day for striking. And under the state no-strike law, the rank-and-file members were automatically docked two days' pay for each day they stayed off the job. "I'm ready to work the rush hour this afternoon if they let me," bus driver Ralph Torres said from the picket line as the breakthrough was announced. The strike left bitter feelings across the city. "I think it was all for nothing," said commuter Lauren Caramico, 22, of Brooklyn. "Now the poor people of the TWU are out six days' pay, and nothing gained." Gov. George Pataki warned there was no possibility of amnesty for the striking workers who were penalized financially. The fines "cannot be waived. They're not going to be waived," he said. Just before the deal was announced, an off-duty firefighter was critically injured when he was struck by a private bus while riding his bicycle to work. It was the first serious strike-related injury. A chief sticking point in the talks was a Metropolitan Transportation Authority proposal to require new hires to contribute 6 percent to their pensions, up from the current 2 percent for all employees. The pension proposal remained on the table despite the end of the walkout. The vote to return to work was blasted by TWU dissidents who felt the union had caved in. "This was a disgrace," said TWU vice president John Mooney. "No details were provided to the executive board. (Toussaint) wants us to discuss the details after Christmas." After workers returned to the job, the judge overseeing the dispute adjourned all further action in the case until Jan. 20. "I'm pleased on behalf of the people of the city of New York," Jones said. "Hopefully, we'll be able to salvage Christmas." On the Net: Metropolitan Transportation Authority: http://www.mta.info/ Transport Workers Union: http://www.twulocal100.org 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Associated Press headlines and audio news, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: New York Newsday Staff Writers Subject: Sun Sets on Transit Strike Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 21:56:50 -0600 BY HERBERT LOWE, GRAHAM RAYMAN, RAY SANCHEZ and JAMSHID MOUSAVINEZHAD STAFF WRITERS To the relief of millions of commuters, the city's transit workers' union ended its 2 1/2-day strike, and bus and subway employees began returning to work. "This was a big test for this city, and I think it passed with flying colors," Mayor Bloomberg said. "It wasn't easy, and certainly serious economic harm was inflicted, but we did what we had to do to keep the city running and running safely." "It can't be turned on and off with a flip of a switch," Bloomberg said of the mass transit system. "The city will be back to normal as of midnight," with regard to dismantling the contingency plan. Buses are expected to get rolling by about 10 p.m. tonight and taxis should begin using meters at midnight. Subway trains will hit the rails overnight, transit officals said, adding that tomorrow morning's rush hour should be fairly normal. The union has already posted on its website, under the headline "STRIKE OVER: REPORT TO WORK", instructions for workers to report to work immediately if their scheduled shift has already started, or to report per usual if they're working a later shift. "We thank our riders for their patience and forebearance," said Transport Workers Union president Roger Toussaint. Bloomberg, who had been incensed by what he termed the "thuggish" behavior of striking, was more restrained at an afternoon news conference. Though he reiterated that the untion was wrong to strike, he said "this time they acted responsibly, and for that I am appreciative. When asked about what might have led to the end of the walkout, the mayor said: "Cooler heads prevailed." He credited the union for calling off the strike, but said they were wrong to go on strike in the first place. He noted that the strike had been costly for the city with an estimated $10 million in police overtime and $12 million less in tax revenues. "People who are struggling to make ends meet are really hurt by this work stoppage," the mayor said. Bloomberg took pains to differentiate between union leaders and the rank-and-file members. "I described the behavior of the union leadership, which hurt this city," he said. He encouraged angry commuters to be civil as they prepare to face members of the TWU for the first time since the strike upset travel within the city. "If you want to say something to the employees as you go by, what about 'Glad you're back, I missed you,'" he said. The Transport Workers Union Local 100's executive board gave the final okay for the back-to-work order around 2:30 p.m., ending the crippling strike that had stranded New Yorkers and hit businesses at the height of the holiday season. Thirty-six members of the 43-member executive board voted to end the strike, five voted against and two abstained, said Eladio Diaz, a member. "This was a disgrace," said TWU vice president John Mooney. "No detils were provided to the executive board. [Toussaint] wants us to discuss the details after Christmas." Toussaint earlier had agreed to send striking transit workers back to work while talks with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority resumed, an arbitrator said. "Both parties have a genuine desire to resolve their differences," said Richard Curreri, head of a three-member state mediation panel. "They have agreed to resume negotiations while the TWU takes steps to return its membership." Curreri, who spoke at a news conference at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, said talks held separately with each side since the strike began on Tuesday had been "fruitful," but an agreement on a new contract for bus and subway employees "remains out of reach at this time." Although they didn't formally negotiate, union and MTA representatives met face-to-face this morning for a discussion before Toussaint recommended ending the strike, a source close to the situation said. That set the stage for productive talks to resume once the union agreed to go back to work. Meanwhile, union attorney Arthur Schwartz told state Supreme Court Justice Theodore Jones of Brooklyn that he had been advised by mediator Richard Curreri to seek an adjournment until 4 p.m. of a hearing originally scheduled for 11 a.m. Later in the day, the judge postponed a hearing on whether to impose more fines until January 20. Yesterday, Jones had ordered Toussaint, secretary treasurer Ed Watt and recording secretary Darlyne Lawson of TWU Local 100 to come to court and answer a criminal contempt charge for violating a court order he issued last week -- raising the possibility that he would consider ordering jail time for the union leaders. New York City's corporation counsel Michael Cardozo and James Henly from state attorney general's office consented to the adjournment. Jones responded that "our overwhelming concern is a return to work by the members of the union." He said that it was his hope that by 4 p.m., when the hearing resumes, the situation would have advanced to a point "which would make a lot of the questions that are before this court moot." Despite the postponement, Schwartz brought to court a copy of the union's opposition to Cardozo's motion filed yesterday asking the judge to issue another order directing union members to return to work. "No New York court has ever recognized claims of the sort asserted by the city here," it read. "The city's request for injunctive relief, like the underlying lawsuit, has no basis in the law, runs in fact contrary to the law and should not be entertained by the court." Earlier in the day, union members picketing outside the courthouse in Columbus Park said they hadn't heard much more than what media members told them. Joe Gifford, 52, said he was hopeful that the resolution would end the strike and send workers back to their duties. "Our families are also suffering," said the station agent. "They're also walking over the bridge." "We're from the neighborhoods that are suffering the most," he said. Jeffrey Chapman, who works 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the supply and logistics department at Livingston Plaza, said it was probably too late for him to go back to work today, but he would go back tomorrow if told to. "We support our union leaders," said the Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn resident. "If they say that we should go back to work and will continue to negotiate, then that's what we'll do. We have faith in him [Toussaint]. That's why we went out on strike." The reaction from commuters to news of the possible end of the strike was swift, and for the most part predictable. "It makes me happy," said Ansuya Patel, owner of a newshop next to the entrance to the LIRR station in Forest Hills, reflecting the views of others. The long line in front of the station the last few days had cut off customer access to the store, she said, with her husband saying business has been "very bad, down 90%". Nathan Orzeo, 47, waiting on the Forest Hills LIRR platform to go into his job in the Diamond District, said while it was a good thing the strike may be ending, he understood the union's motivation in striking -- "everyone wants to make more money." But this being New York, there were some contrarians. Marcos DeSillas, who grew up in Spain under a dictatorship, said he hoped the strike would "continue a few days more -- to break the unions." DeSillas said the additional inconvenience to commuters would be worth it in his opinion, to "put an end to the nonsense" once and for all. Daniel Wraga, 22, who is originally from Poland was spotted coming off a LIRR train in Penn Station wearing rollerblades. He said he liked the strike, because he likes "something different, like the blackout." He's been rollerblading from Penn Station to the West Village, and enjoying it so much he said he may keep rollerblading even after the strike was over. In his announcement, Curreri said the MTA had not pulled its pension offer -- one of the main sticking points in the contract talks -- off the table, but said the agency was willing to consider other savings in health costs. The MTA and the union have agreed to a self-imposed media blackout for the duration of the talks, Curreri said. "We have suggested and they have agreed to resume negotiations while the TWU takes steps to returning to work," Curreri said. No formal negotiations had been set immediately, he said. "But we anticipate they will be scheduled in short order." Newsday staff writer Michael Rothfeld contributed to this report. Copyright 2005 Newsday 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and stories go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: BlackBerry: A High-Tech Ball and Chain For Lawyers Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 23:00:00 December 22, 2005 Perhaps the lawyers at Burns & Levinson don't know it's nicknamed the CrackBerry. That might explain why a partner at the Boston firm recently e-mailed a stern memo to his department, reminding lawyers that their BlackBerries -- the ubiquitous and addictive wireless handhelds that can send e-mail and make phone calls -- should be kept on after hours, on weekends, and, in the case of ''essential" attorneys, during vacations. "They are not just accessories or collectors' items," Brian D. Bixby, cochairman of the firm's private clients group, wrote in his memo, which became public after being sent anonymously to Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly. "They are not to be used only when you feel like sending an e-mail. They are supposed to make you more accessible for receiving e-mails after hours and on weekends." http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2005/12/22/blackberry_a_high_tech_ball_and_chain_for_lawyers/ ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 03:43:25 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This strike is only against the law in > NYC because the city of New York passed a law claiming it was > 'wrong'. First, it's a state law. Second, it's the _same_ state law that permitted public employees to have unions in the first place. Prior to that, the state would not recognize public employee unions. > I suggest that the city is condoning indentured slavery. There's no slavery involved, because nobody has said the employees can't just _quit_. What they aren't allowed to do is (1) not work and (2) keep their jobs. > No one can be _forced_ to work at a job they do not want to work at. That's right; they can quit any time they want. > If the city feels public transportation is so important, the way to > demonstate that is by treating the employees who are doing that work > in a respectful way, not by being even more oppressive with laws > which require your work and fine or imprison you for failing to work, > as is the case in Bloomberg's administation. Oh, and Bloomberg has little to do with it. The Transit Authority is a _state_ agency. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > Here is a piece of advice for you: the transit workers do not belong > to the citizens of New York nor the politicians. If the residents > of New York are so damned inconvenienced by the strike (and I am > sure they are) then their wrath should be taken out on the lousy > political adminsitration and transit system who forced the workers > to go out on strike to start with; either go on strike or lose much > of their pensions; get cuts in pay, etc. Does it matter whether or not they're overpaid? Or that nobody is losing any pension, but rather *new hires* will get less generous benefit? > How much money has NYTA lost through theft by its own workers The ones on strike now? > and general ineffeciency? You mean, the inefficiency required by the union? > A NYC judge blustered about it, fined them umpteen jillion dollars per > day in fines, and when the court _tried_ to collect the fines the day > the strike finally ended, the union's posture was "we still have > umpteen millions more in our treasury, let's continue the strike a few > more days until the money is totally gone ... who will be the ultimate > loser? And the judge didn't immediately issue a Court Order freezing the union's bank accounts? Why not? Besides, a judgment doesn't disappear just because the defendant has no money at the time. The fine could be collected at any future time, including taking union dues as they're paid by the TA (withheld from employees' paychecks, turned over directly in payment of the fine). Seth [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For someone who has no control over the matter (as you claim about Bloomberg) he sure does a lot of talking about the strike and taking credit for ending it Thursday afternoon. Why don't we hear him saying, "Sorry, that's not my department, you will need to talk to the transit workers and their managers."? And yes, I _know_ the one is a state agency and the other is a municipal government ... duh! But you should know that when Bloomberg says 'jump' everyone asks 'how high?', etc. Things like the difference between a 'state agency' and a 'municipal government' in this instance is just thinly veilled bullshit, just as with Chicago Transit Authority. That was how the politicians years ago wanted to set it up, I have no idea why. The union does not require ineffeciency, or no more so than the government bosses. And why didn't the court immediatly freeze the union's bank account? Obviously you did _not_ do your homework assignment yesterday (read the transcripts of the 1960's court proceeding when the union was last on strike.) At that point in time, the reason the strike lasted eleven days instead of only two or three was because the judge was a total blowhard, a real jerk with his fines and punishments, etc. Yes, the 1960's judge did threaten to freeze the treasury, freeze the employee's salaries, etc. _But the union warned him against continuing that approach_, teling him in effect "freeze our members wages to collect your silly fine, I'll tell everyone of them not present now to hear me say it in person, "resign your employment and walk off the job permanently as of now. See how soon you have a transit system running again." The union in those days was _tough_ and the judge sort of wishy-washy and very much inclined to only please the people who put him in office who wanted the strike to end. Once cooler heads prevailed, he agreed to forgive the fine, etc. I think the same thing will happen in this case when the court reconvenes on January 20 after the requested adjournment today. All the fines and the nasty language will be forgotten about. My competitor the New York Times and the other newspapers will print a tiny little one paragraph thing on page 79 announcing that the court agreed to forgive all the fines. You know, Seth, your cute little distinction between 'state agency' versus municipal government and how, oh boo hoo, Bloomberg had no control over it, etc sort of reminds me of how when I call ICANN to task around here, invariably one or more readers will conveniently forget how although damn near everyone considers ICANN to be in control of the net, they will say the opposite, that ICANN 'has no control, they are just an agency to (fill in the blank.)' And although technically, that is true, there are many people further up the line who tell ICANN how to march and sing. Ditto the transit agency and Bloomberg I suspect. Let's deal with realities, not theoreticals if you don't mind. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Jews For Jesus Files Suit Against Google Over Blog Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 22:01:13 -0600 The Christian evangelical group Jews for Jesus is suing Google Inc., saying a Web log hosted through the Internet search leader's Blogspot service infringes its trademark. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in New York on Wednesday, seeks to force Google to give Jews for Jesus control of the site as well as unspecified monetary damages. "We have a right to our own name and Google has allowed the use of our name on Blogspot without our permission," said Susan Perlman, associate executive director with Jews for Jesus. "Our reputation is at stake," Perlman told Reuters. Google's Blogspot and Blogger services allow people to set up Web logs, or online journals known as "blogs" for short, for free. A Google spokesman declined to comment, saying the firm had not yet reviewed the lawsuit. The disputed blog, http://jewsforjesus.blogspot.com, was started in January 2005 by someone taking the name "Whistle Blower" and airing critical views of the San Francisco-based organization, which seeks to convert Jews to Christianity. The site has only three entries, the last of which was made on May 9. Comments on the blog showed that Jews for Jesus attempted to persuade Whistle Blower to transfer the domain to the group but was rebuffed. Perlman said the critical tone was not behind the suit. "One of the wonderful things about the Internet is that there is freedom of expression, but there should be a protection ... so that organizations like ours can represent ourselves," Perlman 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Anne Konigsmark & Rick Hampton Subject: Amid New Orleans Ruins, Volunteers are Emerging as Heroes Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 22:08:58 -0600 By Anne Rochell Konigsmark and Rick Hampson, USA TODAY In his 67 years, Howard Peterson had never seen a Mennonite. But 11 days before Christmas he stood in the ruins of his kitchen, watching a crew of them gut and clean his flood-ravaged house. Peterson is a retired African-American barber who lives on disability payments. His eyes are sad, his movement listless, his voice weak. His helpers were strapping white men from Lancaster County, Pa., dressed in dark pants, collared shirts, suspenders and black straw hats. Peterson and his wife couldn't afford to pay a contractor several thousand dollars to gut the one-story house, which sat in water for weeks after Hurricane Katrina inundated the working-class Gentilly district. So Peterson, who looks too frail to do spring cleaning, began trying to clear out the house himself. Then the Mennonites came by and offered a hand. "I can't thank them enough," he says. But he also wonders when the professionals - city, state and federal agencies - will do their part. "They should be trying to repair the city." The Gulf Coast in general and New Orleans in particular have at times felt abandoned by the American government. But they haven't been abandoned by Americans, who have volunteered by the thousands to clear out houses, collect trash, fight mold, cover roofs, feed the hungry, tend to the sick and help in any way they can. Now, as disaster relief gives way to rebuilding, volunteers are renovating and constructing homes, restocking libraries, surveying historic structures, tracking down voters and helping communities plan for the future. Partly because politicians continue to dither, bicker and accuse, non-governmental organizations -- "NGOs" ranging from large, non-profit agencies to church youth groups -- are emerging as heroes of the recovery effort. While the government is still trying to sort out who should do what and fighting about it, many kind individuals have stepped in to take over the burden. Habitat for Humanity, whose Operation Home Delivery has been building houses across the nation for shipment to the Gulf Coast, received an 85% "positive" rating for its post-hurricane work in a national Harris Poll released in November. FEMA, in contrast, got a 72% "negative" rating. In New Orleans' devastated Lower 9th Ward, FEMA is so unpopular that its workers have been heckled and threatened. Some stopped wearing anything that identifies their agency. Past crises generally have established the limits of non-government action; private charity proved insufficient to cope with the Great Depression, for example. This crisis seems to have a different lesson: Volunteers, outsiders and amateurs can help fill a void created by what Amy Liu, an urban policy expert at the Brookings Institution, calls "a total lack of leadership from President Bush and downward, across all levels of government." "There's a general sense that the charitable sector has the touch needed, a better feel for the communities affected," says Paul Light, a New York University government analyst. Small steps, massive need Pride in what non-profits are doing to help the Gulf Coast recover is tempered by the universal acknowledgment that there will be no recovery without a massive government effort, and it would appear for now that President Bush does not intend to do that. Charitable contributions for victims of Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma total about $3 billion. That's less than what the Bush administration says is needed just to fix the Mississippi River levees that protect New Orleans. "Habitat (for Humanity) will build you a house, and it will build 500 other houses," Light says. "It won't build 10,000 houses." And it won't rebuild the levees. However, in New Orleans alone, the volunteer effort has been impressive: . The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), an advocacy group that works in low-income areas, is organizing the city's scattered residents to give them a voice in planning their neighborhoods' future. . National Trust for Historic Preservation volunteers are canvassing thousands of flood-damaged historic houses and encouraging owners to restore, not raze. . The Preservation Resource Center, another historic preservation group, is handing out "flood buckets" with materials for cleaning up buildings and offering classes for homeowners on how to repair flood damage. . Oprah Winfrey's Oprah's Angel Network is donating 50 houses for people left homeless. . Common Ground, a coalition of activist groups founded after Katrina, was among the first to go into the Upper 9th Ward, where it runs a health clinic, a legal aid office, a homeless shelter, a free kitchen, a "tool lending library" and a solar-powered shower. Religious denominations are focusing on their traditional specialties in disaster relief. They include Southern Baptists (chain sawing for debris removal), United Methodists (tracking the needs of families), Seventh Day Adventists (warehousing supplies) and Church of the Brethren (emergency child care), according to Kevin King of the Mennonites (building trades). ECUSA -- the Episcopal Church in the United States has _poured_ tons of money into the effort, through the other church organizations, etc. Volunteers include Old Order Amish, who shun modern conveniences and still dress as they did centuries ago; hippies of the Rainbow Family, a 1960s-style, back-to-the-land group that established a soup kitchen and medical tent in a park east of the French Quarter; and planners from the Urban Land Institute, a non-profit research group that waived its usual fee to study rebuilding New Orleans. Outside help a godsend Local non-profits do what they can, but outsiders are taking the lead. "Everyone who lives here is maxed out dealing with their own situation," says Patty Gay of the Preservation Resource Center. The out-of-towners, she adds, "are so good for morale. It's easy to be depressed." Even NGOs that usually work overseas, such as Oxfam, the International Rescue Committee and the Mennonite Central Committee, have sent help. Although the role of NGOs in disaster recovery has grown over the years, Katrina is a watershed, says Brenda Phillips, professor of emergency management at Oklahoma State University: "We're seeing how important they are to our country in a way we never have." She and other analysts cite several reasons: . Government lost the public's confidence after the hurricane and will have a hard time regaining it. "That leaves the non-profits," says Tiziana Dearing of Harvard's Hauser Center for Non-profit Organizations. . The disaster's scope stretches even well-functioning government agencies, inviting involvement by NGOs that normally focus on the neediest victims -- the poor and elderly. . Lacking government's power, money and size, non-profits often are more sensitive to people's needs. "We listen before we do anything," King says. . NGOs are relatively nimble -- an important asset if, as seems likely, the Gulf Coast will recover a block or a neighborhood at a time. "It's easier for light-footed individuals to move things forward than a government bureaucracy," says Greta Gladney, a community activist whose home in the Lower 9th Ward has been rehabbed by ACORN volunteers. A call to action "True evangelical faith cannot lie dormant -- It clothes the naked. It feeds the hungry. It comforts the sorrowful. It shelters the destitute." - Menno Simons, 1539 The Mennonites, the denomination Simons helped found, are known mostly today for their belief in adult baptism, pacifism and simple Christian living. Some of the 400,000 Mennonites in North America favor old-fashioned dress. Women who dropped by the Gentilly work site wore dresses and bonnets. From the start, Mennonites were persecuted in Europe. The account of such trials, Martyrs' Mirror, is a thick volume. Yet their reaction has not been to hate others, but to try to help them. Katrina was a call to the action demanded by their founding fathers, who "emphasized doing something about our faith -- putting it into practice," says Werner Froese, a Canadian who supervises New Orleans projects for the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS). "So we want to get people back into their homes as soon as we can." Since early October, more than 600 MDS volunteers have worked on 200 projects along the Gulf Coast. They've donned masks, boots and gloves to do the dirtiest, most basic jobs -- ripping out moldy drywall and picking through wreckage. In Peterson's house, the flood line was halfway up the wall. The smell of rot and mold was nauseating. A recipe for chicken salad was still taped to a kitchen cabinet, but little else was salvageable. "It's dirty work," says Jerry Weaver of East Earl, Pa. "But it's worth it. The homeowners appreciate it." Much more work will be needed before Peterson can move back in. Brenda Wise, a widowed teacher who lives around the corner from Peterson, says the Mennonites were her only hope. She felt betrayed by her insurance company, which said her flood insurance was inadequate and homeowner's insurance did not cover her belongings, and by the Orleans Parish school system, which laid her off. Wise has been living in Houston, but says she must move back into her house. She can't afford anything else. The Mennonites are readying the house for her return -- and lifting her spirits. "When I first saw my house, all I could do was just turn around and come out," she says. "I thought nothing was salvageable. I couldn't see beyond the destruction." But the Mennonites carefully set aside dishes, pots, pans, photographs and other items that could be cleaned and saved. Just a week earlier, the Mennonites' mission was in doubt. King, executive coordinator of Mennonite Disaster Service, and five board members had spent the day touring the city and talking with residents. By 10:30 that night they were exhausted, but King insisted they discuss a disturbing question: Should they commit tens of thousands of volunteer hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars to a community that might not survive the next big storm? Some Mennonites favored concentrating on other parts of the Gulf Coast and writing off New Orleans. By helping people rebuild in the city, they argued, we might only be setting them up for the next disaster. Nothing King saw or heard that day challenged such pessimism, especially the residents' despair over government inaction and their uncertainty over the condition and future of the levees that are supposed to protect the city from flooding. But as they sat around a table in a small, second-floor conference room at an Hispanic church, he and the directors kept thinking about the desolation they'd seen in Gentilly and the 9th Ward. The situation was desperate -- so desperate they decided in the end that they should stay. "We have to do something," King says. "People here are desperate for hope, the government has apparently abandoned them, so we'll take a risk with them and walk with them." The Mennonites expect to stay for at least two years and continue to import work teams from around the USA and Canada each week. King says that if New Orleans is a lost cause, it is one for which there are many volunteers: "We're booked through March." Copyright 2005 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headline stories from USA Today, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Episcopal Bishop for Kansas, Dean Wolfe visited our church -- Epiphany Church here in Independence and asked the vestry (local church overseers) to please 'partner' with a totally devastated housing project and church in Biloxi, MS. Our vestry agreed to the commitment, despite the fact that we are having problems of our own. _The major_ Episcopal Church in Kansas (Christ Church in Overland Park, Kansas, and about 40 percent of the statewide budget) about a year ago decided to split and go with the more conservative Anglican Communion, I guess you know the main reason. Dean asked us to do the best we could anyway. PAT] ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Spam (was FTC Do Not Call List) Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 02:19:02 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , David Wolff wrote: > In article , Seth Breidbart > wrote: >> In article , >> Jim Haynes wrote: >>> One scheme that seemed to me to have some promise was to detect spam >>> in the SMTP receiving program and deliberately delay its responses >>> to the sending program. So that the transaction of sending a message >>> is stretched out far longer than normal. >> That's called tarpitting. It would work against spammers who use >> their own resources to send. Those who use armies of zombies wouldn't >> care. > I would think that at least it cuts down on the amount of spam, if > enough of the zombies get stuck in tarpits. It would, if access to zombies were the limiting factor. It isn't. Also, a lot of spam engines are written so that tarpitting doesn't slow them down (but the machine doing the tarpitting never gets the message, so there's some benefit there). Seth ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Letter From Russia Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 02:23:39 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Seth Breidbart wrote: > In article , TELECOM Digest > Editor noted in response to a message from Valentin > : > It's spam. > Spam is theft. > Therefore, it's a scam. > If he's so hard up, where did he get the resources to spam with? > Wasn't there just a thread on why spam continues, because so many > idiots send money to spammers? Some are suckers for bigger bodyparts, > others for free money, others for helping the needy. All of those are > reasons that spam continues. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I suppose he probably got the resources > to send the spam from the local public library, where he said he > looked up other information. He lied. There's no way he "looked up" all that information on so many people. > Many libraries are not set up on their public terminals to block > spam from going out. And some aren't. Besides, my copy came from blueyonder.co.uk, probably via a zombie in their network. > And do you consider the occassional 'call for papers' > printed here and at other sites to be 'spam'? If they're posted to an appropriate newsgroup, and (more importantly) not in excessive quantity each, they're not spam. > Or the monthly notices > or minutes of meetings from the EFF, ICANN and similar? Those are > unsolicited also, yet they keep coming out to the entire net. PAT] They do? The EFF only started mailing me stuff when I requested it. ICANN never mailed me anything (not even answers to my complaints). Posting stuff on their own website certainly isn't spam. Seth [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: How many people were there he looked up information on, Seth? PAT] ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: The Letter From valent@mailrus.ru Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 04:08:35 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Philip TAYLOR wrote: >> It's spam. >> Spam is theft. >> Therefore, it's a scam. >> If he's so hard up, where did he get the resources to spam with? >> Wasn't there just a thread on why spam continues, because so many >> idiots send money to spammers? Some are suckers for bigger bodyparts, >> others for free money, others for helping the needy. All of those are >> reasons that spam continues. >It may be spam. It may even be a scam. Or it may be genuine. No, it's not genuine. Where would a broke Russian get an account at blueyonder.co.uk? > If it's genuine, then we -- the recipients -- are in a position to > help soneone in genuine need. If it's a scam, then we may end up a > little poorer, and the scammer a little richer, but on balance, does > it matter? Yes, it does, if you care about the Internet mail system melting down with this sort of spam. > It's hardly in the same league as the Nigerian scam (and anyone who > falls for that needs their brains tested), Sure it is. Spam is spam. What do you want to bet about anybody who's foolish enough to actually send money having his email address sold as a "live one" to all the other scammers around? > so isn't it worth risking losing a few rubles /kopeks/whatever ? I > think it is. I don't think it's even worth risking your money on. Seth ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Missing ABN Amro Tape With Two Million Names Found Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 03:54:32 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Ron Chapman wrote: > No question, Pat, but let's look at the facts: 0) They didn't encrypt their outgoing tapes. > 1) they lost the tape; Fact 0 is at best criminal-grade negligence. Seth ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Dumb Question About "Do Not Call" Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 03:56:47 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Randall wrote: > Three times a day, every day, the phone rings and a female robot voice > says "Hello, this is not a sales call. This is about an important > business matter. Again, this is /not/ a sales call, this is an > Important Business Matter!" > Then the damn thing hangs up. I suspect it's programmed to speak to answering machines only. Try saying "beeeeeep" while it's talking at you. There's a way to report the call to the phone company, which costs a little money and you only get somewhere if you follow up via the police. Seth ------------------------------ From: Michael Casey Subject: A Mother's Love: Food For A Baby Chick Date: Thu, 22 Dec 2005 22:05:30 -0600 Bird Flies 2,500 Miles for Baby's Food By MICHAEL CASEY, Christian Science Monitor Talk about a working mother. A Christmas Island frigate bird named Lydia recently made a nonstop journey of just over 26 days and covering nearly 2,500 miles -- across Indonesian volcanoes and some of Asia's busiest shipping lanes -- in search of food for her baby. The trip, tracked with a global positioning device by scientists at Christmas Island National Park, is by far the longest known nonstop journey by one of these critically endangered seabirds. Previously, the black-and-white scavengers with distinctive pink beaks and wingspans of up to 8 feet were known only to fly a few hundred miles from their nesting sites, staying away for just a few days at a time, officials said. "It's a real revelation," said David James, coordinator of biodiversity monitoring for Christmas Island National Park, the birds' only known breeding ground. "The thing that really surprised me is that it was a long, nonstop journey, and that she crossed overland over volcanoes," James said. "Normally, you would expect the seabirds to fly over the sea." Lydia's trip started Oct. 18 from Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean about 310 miles south of Indonesia's capital, Jakarta, and 1,600 miles northwest of Perth, in western Australia. Leaving a baby chick in the care of her partner, Lydia headed south over open waters -- probably to steal fish from other seabirds, a common habit among frigate birds. She then circled back on Oct. 26 and flew between Indonesia's Java and Sumatra islands. From there, she headed across Borneo island on Nov. 9 before flying back over Java and returning on Nov. 14 to her nesting site, where she likely regurgitated a meal for her chick. Though the journey was a record for a frigate bird, it falls short of the top trip among birds monitored by scientists -- a 46-day round-the-world trek by a gray-headed albatross, according to Birdlife International, a Britain-based conservation group that keeps track of threatened species. Lydia is one of the first four Christmas Island frigate birds to be fitted with a satellite tracking device. Funded by a grant from the American Bird Conservancy, the devices -- metal boxes about 2.5 inches long and 1 inch wide, with an eight-inch antenna -- are attached by harnesses. They give scientists much needed data on the flight paths and feeding patterns of frigate birds. Previously, most such data came courtesy of bird watchers, who have reported frigate birds turning up mostly in Asia, but as far away as Kenya in east Africa. Officials hope the new satellite data will help improve conservation efforts. "With only around 1,200 pairs confined to this small island in the Indian Ocean, the Christmas Island frigate bird is one of the worlds most threatened seabirds," said Ed Parnell, spokesman for Birdlife International. "This new satellite tracking data will add enormously to our knowledge of the species." James said the distance Lydia traveled raises some serious questions about efforts to stem the decline of the birds, whose numbers have fallen by 10 percent over the past 20 years. "We're surprised she would have spent that long away from her nest when she had a chick," he said. "That begs the question: Why does she need to go that far? It raises the suspicion that fish resources around Christmas Island are not currently adequate. That might explain the slow and gradual decline of the bird." James and Birdlife officials said Lydia's route also raised concerns, since it covered industrial areas, mining sites and waters popular with commercial fishing fleets. "It is tragically ironic that while Lydia nests on one the world's most remote and pristine islands, she makes her living in some of the most degraded seas on the planet," James said. "Fishing pressure is huge and marine pollution is severe." 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more daily headlines and news from Christian Science Monitor, New York Times and National Public Radio with no registration nor login requirements, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #576 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 23 17:12:03 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 92C0D14DEB; Fri, 23 Dec 2005 17:12:02 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #577 Message-Id: <20051223221202.92C0D14DEB@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 17:12:02 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 23 Dec 2005 17:15:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 577 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson As Decency Issue Boils, Comcast Sets a Family Tier (Monty Solomon) Another Claim of Phone Scams, Excess Billings and, Terrorists (D. Burstein) Cellular-News for Friday 23rd December 2005 (Cellular-News) Old Western Union Building Becomes a Condo (Lisa Hancock) BT Takes Aim at Skype (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Rik) Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously (James Carlson) Re: NYC Transit Strike (Henry) Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (John Levine) Re: Cold Weather and Christmas (Henry) Re: Sun Sets on Transit Strike (Lena) 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, 23 Dec 2005 10:37:40 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: As Decency Issue Boils, Comcast Sets a Family Tier By Keith Reed, Globe Staff Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable provider, said yesterday it will offer a package of family-friendly channels in 2006, following increasing pressure on the industry from legislators and regulators to curb access to violent and sexually explicit content. The family tier will be composed of 16 children's, news and other networks including the Disney Channel, CNN Headline News, Nickelodeon and the Food Network, but must be bought along with Comcast's basic package of about 30 local broadcast, Spanish-language and public access channels. It will also require a $4.50 per-month digital set-top box rental. In total, the package will cost roughly $29.45 per month in Massachusetts and will allow subscribers now taking more expensive Comcast packages to pay less and take fewer channels. It might also help the cable industry stave off proposals to force it to offer a la carte pricing, which it has resisted, and could help Comcast and Time Warner Corp. complete a major deal that needs the approval of the Federal Communications Commission, analysts said. Together the companies have bid $17.6 billion for the assets of Adelphia Communications, in a deal that if approved could see one-tenth of the cable subscribers in the country get new providers. Time Warner's cable unit said earlier this month that it would offer a family tier of its own. "That's why the family tier is suddenly being announced by those two companies. This is a good way to get some brownie points" with regulators, said Adi Kishore, director of media research at Boston consultancy the Yankee Group. Media companies broadly have faced a crackdown on sexual and violent content, led by conservative legislators and regulators, since singer Janet Jackson's breast was infamously exposed for a fraction of a second on live, prime-time television during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime performance. The FCC has leveled stiff obscenity fines against TV and radio broadcasters who use public airwaves, but doesn't have the same authority over how cable companies package content for consumers. That hasn't stopped its chairman, Kevin Martin, and some conservative senators, notably powerful Alaska Republican Ted Stevens, from suggesting legislation that would impose indecency standards or even a la carte on the industry if it did not address their concerns. Cable companies have scrambled to mount a response since a Nov. 29 hearing before the Senate Commerce Committee, which Stevens chairs. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/12/23/as_decency_issue_boils_comcast_sets_a_family_tier/ ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Another Claim of Phone Scams, Excess Billings and Terrorists Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 06:57:18 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC [ note the source, Michelle Malkin. She's very biased about this sort of thing, but is usually (usually...) correct when dealing with factual matters. ] http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004123.htm (referring to [watch for line wrap]: http://www.engadget.com/2005/12/19/terrorists-clone-phones-but-customers-expected-to-foot-the-bill/ HEZBOLLAH'S CANADIAN PHONE SCAM By Michelle Malkin December 21, 2005 04:04 PM Via Engadget: Canadian telecom service provider Rogers Communications has been the victim of numerous number-cloning operations by the terrorist group Hezbollah in which even the phone number of CEO Ted Rogers was 'borrowed' but steadfastly refused to address consumer complaints about the problem, insisting that customers were liable for outsized bills. However, all that changed after aggrieved consumer (and law professor) Susan Drummond who was stuck with a bill for over $10,000 for calls to countries such as Libya, Pakistan, Russia and Syria recorded comments made by a Rogers security exec, who admitted that the company had suffered cloning problems at the hands of Hezbollah going back as far as 1997 ... Wonder if this is going on here, too. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [To foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Subject: Cellular-News for Friday 23rd December 2005 Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 07:37:04 -0600 From: Cellular-News Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com Seasonal Break Cellular-news is taking a holiday break next week and will not send out the daily newsletters. News will still be updated on the website as it occurs, and a single update will be sent out next Friday. We will return to full service on January 2nd. Happy Holidays [[ 3G ]] Tests Achieve 3.6 Megabits per Second Call With HSDPA Datacard http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15375.php Option and Nortel have completed the industry's first successful demonstration of live HSDPA data card calls reaching a wireless transmission rate of 3.6Mbps -- faster than the majority of current broadband connections. The test calls were carried out... [[ Financial ]] RIM Co-CEO:Seeing Strong Growth In Subscribers Outside USA http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15360.php Shares of Research In Motion Ltd. (RIMM) are up after hours Wednesday, as the BlackBerry maker's third-quarter earnings exceeded expectations. ... France Telecom To Cut Fixed To Mobile Tariffs http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15362.php France Telecom said late Wednesday it will cut tariffs for calls from fixed lines to mobile phones for residential clients starting Jan. 2. ... EU Clears Telenor To Purchase Vodafone Sverige http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15364.php The European Commission Thursday cleared Norwegian telecommunications company Telenor ASA to purchase Swedish telecommunications company Vodafone Sverige from Vodafone Group PLC. ... EBRD, banks to lend $100 mln to Kazakhstan's KaR-Tel http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15365.php The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and a syndicate of commercial banks jointly led by the EBRD and Citigroup, are to lend U.S. $100 million to the second largest GSM mobile phone network operator in Kazakhstan KaR-Tel, the EB... Medion, Aldi Mobile Discount Offer Exceeds Expectations http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15366.php German telecommunications company Medion AG said Thursday it sold 300,000 starter packs during its 14-day mobile phone offer with discount retailer Aldi, exceeding the company's expectations. ... Lucent Accelerates Poison Pill Expiration To Dec 31 http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15368.php Lucent Technologies will end its "poison pill" three months before the planned expiration date of March 31, 2006, the company disclosed Thursday. ... Orascom Buys Stake in Hutchison Telecom http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15374.php Egypt's Orascom Telecom has purchased a 19.3% interest in Hutchison Telecom from its parent company, Hutchison Whampoa for a total purchase price of US$1.3 Billion. The two companies have also signed a co-operation agreement to align their respective... [[ Handsets ]] Russia's VimpelCom grants Tsifrograd national dealer status http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15369.php Russia's second-largest mobile operator VimpelCom and have signed an agreement granting handset retail chain Tsifrograd national dealer status, VimpelCom said Thursday. ... Big Threat To Chinese Handset Vendors http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15371.php Analysys International recently predicted that 30% of China's handset makers will be washed out by the end of year 2006 due to the segmentation and centralization of China's handset market in its recently released report. Analysis International also ... [[ Legal ]] Lucent: Sees $300 Million Charge After Losing Winstar Ruling http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15367.php Lucent Technologies plans to take a fiscal first-quarter charge of $300 million after a federal bankruptcy court ruled against the company in a suit brought in 2001 by Winstar Communications. ... [[ Mobile Content ]] KDDI, Qualcomm Plan JV To Map Out New Cellphone Service http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15361.php Japan's KDDI Corp. said Thursday it is planning to launch a joint venture later this month with U.S. wireless communications giant Qualcomm Inc. to map out a broadcasting service for cellphone users. ... [[ Network Contracts ]] Nokia Gets Networks Order From Hutchison 3G Austria http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15363.php Finland's Nokia Thursday said it received an order to supply its mobile softswitch solution for optimizing Hutchison 3G Austria's mobile network. ... Upgrading Regional Operator Billing Platform http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15372.php Comptel says that it is delivering its mediation and provisioning solutions to Easterbrooke Cellular Corporation, a mobile service provider in West Virginia, USA. According to the agreement, Comptel is delivering its Comptel EventLink solution for ev... [[ Offbeat ]] Nazi Ringtone Leads to Jail Sentence http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15370.php A 20 year old man in Austria has been found guilty of breaking a law against displaying Nazi Propaganda when he used a Nazi salute as a ring tone on his mobile phone. Police came across the ringtone purely by accident after they called him into a pol... Tegic Reveals the Year's Most Buzzworthy Additions to T9 Dictionary http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15373.php Did you know that a Puggle is a new breed of dog crossed between a Pug and a Beagle? Or that Vlogs (video blogs) are the latest rage? Language is constantly evolving, with new words becoming part of our culture every day. These and other words have b... [[ Regulatory ]] New Zealand Watchdog Keeps Regulation View On Mobile Phone Charges http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15359.php Competition watchdog New Zealand Commerce Commission said Thursday it still wants mobile phone termination rates to be regulated, following a request by the country's government to reconsider its stance. ... Bahrain Confirms Base Station Emission Within Limits http://www.cellular-news.com/story/15376.php The Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) has confirmed that the radiation from antennas used by telecommunications companies for mobile telephony in the Kingdom of Bahrain is in compliance with internationally accepted standards for electrom... ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Old Western Union Building Becomes a Condo Date: 23 Dec 2005 09:15:37 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com A former Western Union Telegraph Co building in center city Philadelphia has been converted into luxury condos (per Real Estate section, Phila Inquirer, 12/23/05). It was built in the 1920s and used until the late 1960s. Sale prices range from $346k to $2.6 million. http://www.westernunionbuilding.com A number of old industrial and commercial buildings in downtown Philadelphia are being converted into residences. A former major Bell Telephone building at 1835 Arch St was sold, and I believe the former 1960's Bell of Pa headquarters at One Parkway was sold too. (I always thought One Parkway was an ugly example of 1960's style.) Good thing for them I'm not living there. I'd get on the Condo Board and make it "authentic" Western Union, with Teletypewriters in each unit and maybe even a Morse code key/sounder. Imagine the residents when they discover their 1920s style telephone set is not for decoration but rather the phone they have to use, and their Internet* access is by Model 28 Teletype at 75 baud. Seriously, I have mixed feelings about all these building conversions. On the one hand it is good because otherwise empty buildings are being put to good use and the people buying them are affluent and the city desperately needs them. But on the other hand I'd rather see these buildings used for their original purpose -- to create wealth. Economic wealth is created when we take raw materials and convert them into a useable finished product. Merely moving finished goods and money from one place to another doesn't create anything. Where do the goods that were once made in these buildings now come from? This is a factor our foreign balance of trade deficit is so high -- we have outsiders do our manufacturing for us. * As an aside, is "Internet" properly capitalized or not? I'm not sure how the word usage falls into the rules of grammar. When we speak of something generically, as in 'I'm taking the train to work today", we use lower case for train. But if speaking of a specific brand, "I'm taking the Santa Fe Railroad to work today", the word "Railroad" is capitalized because it is part of the Santa Fe name. We don't capitalize computer as in "I'm working on the computer". But should we capitalize the internet ("I'm working on the Internet)? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The same thing happened in Chicago. The old Illinois Bell headquarters building at 225 West Randolph and 212 West Washington Street (different sides to the same block-wide building) I am told was converted to condominiums. I do not know, having not been in downtown Chicago since 1999 except for one occassion in late 2001 when I went to the 'sing-along Messiah' at Orchestra Hall that Christmas. I did not stick around afterward, just went and got my bus at Greyhound to come back to Independence. And you asked how to properly case the word 'internet'. Actually Lisa, there are two different words, each spelled the same way and pronounced the same way, but different. There is upper-case /I/ Internet and lower-case /i/ internet. Originally, upper-case Internet was the connecting mechanism between sites in the network of sites which formed the Internet, a collection of ARPA sites and (what we now refer to as EDUcational ('.edu') sites but they were not called 'whatever.edu' in those days; just 'whatever'. So 'whatever' and 'whatever else' and 'somewhere else' were connected to other places in the MILitary network ('.mil) and GOVernment networks ('.gov') [but they did not call those '.mil' or '.gov' either in those days; they were part of the {A}dvanced {R}esearch -- ARPA thing.] ARPA and those universities connected through the upper-case Internet. There was also BITnet ([B]ecause [I]'s [T]ime Network which was another bunch of of schools. BITnet did not interconnect with Internet except through a few 'gateway' locations. That was late 1970's through middle 1980's. To get this Digest out each day, I did it on a machine called 'eecs at nwu' which was Northwestern University in Evanston, IL because Evanston was within my unlimited calling package from Illinois Bell. From eecs I could 'rlogin' to the predessor of massis which was a machine called 'xx' as I recall. But I had to have an entry on my mailing list called 'telecom at nwu.bitnet' so that the BITnet subscribers could get their copies. Many _very major_ corporations (such as IBM) also were on BITnet. All the above comprised the upper case /I/nternet. Around 1993-94 when the guy passed on who was more or less the coordinator for the whole thing, VP Al ('the bore') Gore invented the lower case /i/ internet which was to interconnect with the upper case /I/ Internet and anything else which came along down the stream. The original ARPA had an Acceptable Spam -- err, Use Policy which dictated what people could and could not do on ARPA sites, and by extension, the Internet. All that fell by the wayside once the guy was dead and out of the way; Al Gore and his bastard child ICANN took over the newly created lower case /i/ internet. Once the lawyers in that firm in Washington, DC gave birth to ICANN, the rule was changed to 'anything goes' on internet, since as any right-thinking person would explain to you, 'we cannot dictate what anyone does on their site'. There was no more room to have an AUP because that would involve dictating what people were 'allowed to do.' So the short answer to your question is that 'Internet' was the older, and original interconnection between sites, and 'internet' is what we are stuck with now. Both casings of the word are acceptable, IMO. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 12:19:26 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: BT Takes Aim at Skype USTelecom dailyLead December 23, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AFBoatagCDdqyVwJqg TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * BT takes aim at Skype BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Bain invests $6.5M in Skyhook * Lucent ordered to pay Winstar creditors * Year in review: The broadband revolution * Comcast to offer family tier USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * VoIP now available on demand! TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * EVDO poised to break out at CES * Nortel demonstrates Super 3G in France VOIP DOWNLOAD * Covad bets on VoIP * Santa Cruz Networks links Skype, Google Talk REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * FCC chief to look at a number of issues for 2006 * Senate confirms Tate for FCC, ends Democratic majority * China takes another step toward 3G EDITOR'S NOTE * The dailyLead will not be published Monday Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AFBoatagCDdqyVwJqg ------------------------------ From: Rik Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 23 Dec 2005 06:26:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com These devices are illegal to install and operate. Only a licensee is authorized by the FCC to install these devices. The fact that they are easily purchased does not make them legal to use. They are frequently the source of interference to commercial wireless systems and more importantly, they are frequently the source of interference to Public Safety radio systems. There have been recent instances of law enforcement showing up at a location where one of these devices is in use and demanding it be disabled to stop interference to their radio system. ------------------------------ From: James Carlson Subject: Re: Using Two ADSL Internet Connections Simultaneously Date: 23 Dec 2005 13:56:04 -0500 Organization: Sun Microsystems bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: > The rest of the problem description that you chose not to quote gave a > concrete example of the problem -- using a first user with a streaming > audio stream, and a bunch of other people then doing something as > simple as having multiple HTTP requests ("keepalive" protocol option) Of course there are pathological cases. That wasn't at issue. Here's the original question, in full: > I have two telephone lines. I want to make both of these lines ADSL > connections to the internet and use these connections to provide > internet access to several wireless laptop computers. A maximum of > about 20 laptops would be connected to the system at once. I would > like the laptops to be able to use both lines simultaneously so that I > don't have one line overloaded and one underloaded (ie: I want to > balance the traffic on the lines at any given time). > Anyone have any suggestions on how to set up something like this? The answer is yes, you can do that. In fact, there are commercial products designed to solve exactly this problem. E.g.: http://www.xrio.co.uk/product-c800.asp Unsplittable flows are certainly a hazard with *any* network layer load balancing scheme, including one like this. There's nothing much you can do about it as long as the links are independent. If you want to avoid that problem, you'll need to use an L2 mechanism that fragments datagrams across multiple links, such as MP (RFC 1990) or IMA. Doing this requires cooperation with your ISP and you certainly can't do it across two separate ISPs. James Carlson, KISS Network Sun Microsystems / 1 Network Drive 71.232W Vox +1 781 442 2084 MS UBUR02-212 / Burlington MA 01803-2757 42.496N Fax +1 781 442 1677 ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: NYC Transit Strike Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 09:32:24 +0200 Organization: Elisa Internet customer > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > The court reconsidered its imposition of a fine, and forgave the whole > debt, and the workers went back to work the same day. Read the court > transcripts from the strike 25 years ago. I think this time around will > be a lot the same way. Well, it seems that the times they have a-changed. > New York's 3-Day Transit Strike Ends > Friday December 23, 2005 4:46 AM > By DEEPTI HAJELA > Associated Press Writer > NEW YORK (AP) - Faced with mounting fines and the rising wrath of > millions of commuters, the city transit union sent its members back to > work without a new contract Thursday and ended a crippling, three-day > strike... [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, but read the part of the story where it says "futher court proceedings [i.e. discussion of fines and punishments] have been adjourned until January 20, 2006." That is when they will meet to to decide what to do about the whole mess. My thinking is at that point they will all be friends again and any discussion of fines and punishments will be forgotten about. No doubt that little fact will be reported in a paragraph on page 79 of the next day's newspaper. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 23 Dec 2005 18:58:08 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > And yes, I _know_ the one is a state agency and the other is a > municipal government ... duh! But you should know that when > Bloomberg says 'jump' everyone asks 'how high?', etc. Things like the > difference between a 'state agency' and a 'municipal government' in > this instance is just thinly veilled bullshit, just as with Chicago > Transit Authority. Ah, Pat, I think it would be a good idea to stop speculating here about areas that are unrelated to Telecom and about which you know nothing. New York is not Illinois, the relationship between NYC and NYS is not the same as that between Chicago and Illinois, and NYC most definitely does not control the MTA. > Obviously you did _not_ do your homework assignment yesterday (read > the transcripts of the 1960's court proceeding when the union was > last on strike.) At that point in time, the reason the strike lasted > eleven days instead of only two or three was because the judge was a > total blowhard, a real jerk with his fines and punishments, etc. Well, actually, the last strike was in 1980, but why should we let facts get in our way? In the 1960s strike, union leader Mike Quill had heart failure and was negotiating from his hospital bed by waving fingers. That kind of slowed things down. R's, John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Please forgive my typo. On the one hand I said 'twenty-five years ago' which would be 1980 _which is what I meant_ and on the other hand a reference to '1960s'. Please go by what I meant, not what slipped out in the typing. PAT] ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Cold Weather and Christmas Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 09:32:24 +0200 Organization: Elisa Internet customer > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: > And the education of children; we have been brainwashed into thinking > that public schools serve a good community purpose; no one wants a > bunch of ignorant children; after all those children will be our > country in a few years; so we have to have public schools to insure > a good education. Are the public schools in New York any different > than those in Chicago? Somehow I doubt it. So just imagine if our > overall tax payments were about two percent of what they are now (let's > refer to it as the 'adminstrative fee' to run what the government > has the legitimate right to run) and with the rest of the money we > educated our own children ... > Would things be any better or worse than they are now,...? Just because things _are_ the way they are doesn't mean that they _have to be_ the way they are. For a counter-example to your pessimism, take a look at Finland, one of the infamous high-tax (boo! hiss!) 'Nordic welfare states' so cavalierly disparaged by the wingnuts. Except that ... erm ... Finland just happens to have the BEST SCHOOLS IN THE WORLD, far far better than those in the US. This article from last May by Robert Kaiser of the _Washington Post_ http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/23/AR200505 2301622_pf.html provides a glimpse into how it can be done. It's not (only) a question of money (but of course it takes money). It's primarily a question of attitude. And, when it comes to spending money on something they cannot eat, drink or otherwise immediately consume, Americans have a very bad attitude. (Before you newbies get on your high-horse ... I can say this because, as Pat and long-time readers here know, I am an American -- although I have been living in Finland for a good few years now.) Americans don't like to pay taxes and I think it is basically because they get so little to show for their money. It costs 87 gazillion dollars for one BX hyper-bomber and when it falls out of the sky no one gets any benefit except Grumman-Northrup and their political friends. Certainly not the working people who paid for it. A man-in-the-street poll here asked the following question: In order for us to have lower taxes, the government needs to spend less money. In what area(s) could and should the government spend less? Many people were hard pressed to think of an answer and a fair proportion (I don't remember exactly but I believe it was something like 1 in 3 or 1 in 4) said 'If the government spends less, then we get less. So I'm happy paying the taxes that I do'. Like I said, it's the attitude. Cheers, Henry ------------------------------ From: Lena Subject: Re: Sun Sets on Transit Strike Date: 23 Dec 2005 03:57:57 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com What it boils down to is that Toussaint is all mouth and no mettle, and didn't want to park his butt in jail for the benefit of the transit workers from whom he extorts dues. Lena ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #577 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Dec 24 19:19:48 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 8CCC914D8B; Sat, 24 Dec 2005 19:19:48 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #578 Message-Id: <20051225001948.8CCC914D8B@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 19:19:48 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAD_CREDIT, BAYES_00,MAILTO_TO_SPAM_ADDR autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 24 Dec 2005 17:21:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 578 Inside This Issue: Merry Christmas!! Avoiding Post-Holiday Online Shopping Blues (Jim Finkle) Netflix Wins First Round in DVD Rental War (Gina Keating) Florida Attorney General: My Email Are Not Spam! (Reuters News Wire) IE Bug Allows Hackers to Phish via Your Google Desktop (Robert McMillan) College Has a Cell Phone Movie Contest (William Kates) Internet History Re-Opening Soon (TELECOM Digest Editor) Google's AOL Investment May Lead to IPO (Michael Leidtke) Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report (Monty Solomon) Re: Sun Sets on Transit Strike (Henry) Re: Sun Sets on Transit Strike (Steve Sobol) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (AES) Re: As Decency Issue Boils, Comcast Sets a Family Tier (Seth Breidbart) Merry Christmas For a Dog Who was Frozen to Railroad Track (AP News Wire) 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: Jim Finkle Subject: Avoiding Post-Holiday Online Shopping Blues Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:36:53 -0600 By Jim Finkle Shopping online from the comfort of your sofa may be convenient, but it can lead to hassles after the holiday purchases are delivered. As retailers set more strict return policies, unwanted gifts can cause headaches on both sides. Online retailers may receive more complaints over returns this year, if only because they are poised to post record sales. U.S. online holiday sales will jump roughly 24 to 25 percent this year, according to projections from two major market research firms. That growth rate dwarfs forecasts for overall holiday spending, which analysts expect will rise between 5 and 7 percent. Online retailers who were able to ship last-minute orders may have gotten a boost from the New York transit strike, which affected the mobility of about 7 million commuters. "The ability to order online ... was a major attraction to New York area residents when it was difficult to reach their favorite retail stores," says Tal Zamir, director of the market research firm comScore Networks. But in some cases, New Yorkers eager to shop online may have ended up accepting return policies that are stricter than those at stores where they normally shop. One of the biggest frustrations is having to foot the bill to send back unwanted items, says JupiterResearch analyst Patti Freeman Evans. Somebody returning a heavy desktop computer with a $400 price tag could end up paying more than $150 in shipping fees. "I don't want to get stuck having to send things back," says Rebecca Miller, an administrative assistant at a Boston law firm who does most of her holiday shopping online. Online retailers frequently charge a restocking fee for taking back opened items -- especially computers, digital cameras and other electronics products. They average about 15 percent, but can be higher. Some traditional retailers also impose such fees. They include The Apple Store, Best Buy, Circuit City and Target. Costco, which is known for having what may be the industry's most liberal customer satisfaction guarantees, is one of several chains that do not charge restocking fees. To avoid unpleasant surprises, Miller prefers buying from familiar sites such as Macys.com, PotteryBarn.com and WilliamsSonoma.com -- places where she shopped before they opened online stores and which will allow the return of goods at local outlets. But she shuns the Web when it comes to electronics -- products like iPod digital music players and computers. She wants to look a salesperson in the eye, ask questions and know that she can bring the item back. "I just need more help," she says. Her approach has helped her to avoid getting caught up in one of the biggest traps on Web shopping -- dealing with retailers that don't accept returns under any circumstances. Outpost.com advertises a 30-day money-back guarantee on most items. But there can be exceptions, conditions and/or restrictions. Its Web site says that in some cases it has the right to outright refuse returns on merchandise from Apple, Axis, Casio, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Micron or Toshiba, among others. J&R.com charges restocking fees, but its site doesn't say how much. Charges are determined on a case-by-case basis, depending on the condition of the goods and packaging material. Amazon.com says it charges a 50 percent restocking fee on returns of CDs, DVDs, VHS tapes, software and video games that have been taken out of their plastic wrap. To avoid some of these problems, consumers can look to shopping sites for advice. PriceGrabber.com, Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com, and YahooShopping.com offer ratings on Web retailers, along with reviews from individual shoppers. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Gina Keating Subject: Netflix Wins First Round in DVD Rental War Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:38:59 -0600 By Gina Keating When the head of Netflix Inc. said rival Blockbuster Inc. threw "everything but the kitchen sink at us," the world's largest video rental chain responded by sending him ... a kitchen sink. The message from last January's interchange was clear: Blockbuster, with $6 billion in 2004 revenue and 5,500 domestic stores, intended to own online DVD rental, an $8 billion industry pioneered by Netflix. "This year was about Blockbuster taking a run at us," Netflix Chief Executive Reed Hastings told Reuters at the company's Beverly Hills offices. "They chopped price. They emptied their balance sheet." But despite Blockbuster's costly offensive, Hastings said Netflix was on track for net subscriber additions of 1.5 million for 2005 for a total of 4.1 million -- the midpoint of its target range. Meanwhile, Blockbuster, which has been roiled by management and debt problems, saw the subscriber base at its 16-month-old online service stall at 1 million. Chief Executive John Antioco told Reuters that Blockbuster Online was "proud of what it has accomplished in 2005 with over 1 million subscribers in over a year after it was launched." Antioco had threatened earlier this year to leave the company -- and take a $54 million severance package with him -- during a proxy fight launched by dissident investor Carl Icahn. TRADING PLACES The companies also switched places in market value over the course of an intense, yearlong price war, with Netflix -- which has no debt -- now worth $1.5 billion, compared with Blockbuster at $684 million and more than $1 billion in debt. "Online rental is the only thing we do, and (our) advantage is focus and desperation," Hastings said. "So we have nowhere to go, right? It was win or die, and that's very focusing." Citigroup, which initiated coverage of Netflix this week with a "buy" rating, said the company "should put added pressure on in-store rentals, causing more locations to close. "This creates a chain reaction that should further help (Netflix) sign new subscribers, as consumers increasingly find themselves having to travel farther to find an in-store rental location," the Citigroup note said. Citigroup put a $39 price target on Netflix shares, which now trade in the $27 range. A year ago, Hastings had seen the price plunge from $39 to $9 on his decision to run at break-even and spend heavily to quickly add subscribers. The company plans to maintain this approach for at least the short-term. "We're feeling confident of another strong quarter," Hastings said. "We're investing very heavily in marketing this quarter. Our view is that a very aggressive marketing investment now will help widen the competitive gap between us and Blockbuster." Netflix is testing lower prices in all its subscription plans to see if the resulting subscriber growth makes up for the reduction, he said. NO SHOPPING PLANS Despite holding $182 million in cash, Netflix has no plans to go shopping in the coming year, Hastings said. "You (make) acquisitions if your current market does not look like it has enough room for you to grow, and our current market look enormous," he said. Growth will come at the expense of stores operated by Blockbuster, Movie Gallery Inc. and smaller chains, Hastings said. These companies saw their collective rental revenue decline by nearly 12 percent in the third quarter, prompting them to accelerate store closings. Netflix itself has had setbacks. The appearance of Blockbuster Online and the threat of Amazon.com Inc. entering the U.S. Internet rental market forced Netflix to halt its expansion into the United Kingdom. The company also had to withdraw its plans to launch a limited online delivery service for movies because of problems obtaining licenses for films from Hollywood studios. The competitive landscape improved in May, when Wal-Mart Stores Inc. got out of online DVD rental and agreed to direct its subscribers to Netflix for rental services. As for Amazon, whose online video rental presence is limited to the UK, Citigroup agreed with Hastings that Netflix's growth and market dominance are increasing the barriers to entry in the United States. "It was the shortest, most intense competitive squall that I have ever seen," Hastings said. "The last thing on my mind was walking away from it. I would have ridden it down to the very bottom, still fighting." 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html More news headlines can be found at: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:41:08 -0600 Florida's attorney general has spearheaded an aggressive campaign against unsolicited e-mails, or spam. But as a candidate for governor, he appears to be generating some unwanted Internet clutter himself. Charlie Crist was a staunch defender of a tough anti-spam law passed by the state legislature last year, under which violators can be fined up to $500 for every e-mail they send. But a report in Thursday's St. Petersburg Times said Crist, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, had annoyed some residents of the state by sending them unwanted e-mails promoting his candidacy and soliciting campaign donations. Joe Spooner, a 41-year-old investment adviser, told the newspaper he had no idea how the Crist campaign got his e-mail address but repeatedly tried to unsubscribe. After his fifth request to be removed, Spooner sent the Crist campaign an e-mail of his own. He accused Crist of hypocrisy because of the way he seemed to have forgotten all about his vocal crackdown on spammers. 'Do I need to file a complaint with the attorney general's office?" Spooner wrote. The newspaper quoted other people who had received unsolicited e-mails from Crist's campaign. Crist was not immediately available for comment. But Vivian Myrtetus, a spokeswoman for his gubernatorial campaign, denied that he was somehow holding himself to different standards than other e-mailers. "This is not spam. This is truthful, it's straight forward. We're honest. To be spam it has to be, under Florida law, defined as being deceptive," Myrtetus. "The attorney general does not consider this spam and is, as you know, at the forefront of protecting citizens against that." 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines, along with a classical music background, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/KOSU.org ------------------------------ From: Robert McMillan Subject: IE Bug Lets Hackers Phish With Google Desktop Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:44:14 -0600 Hacker could scan your hard drive and steal sensitive info. Robert McMillan, IDG News Service A bug in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser gives phishers a way to scan the hard drives of Google Desktop users, according to an Israeli hacker. Because of a flaw in the way IE processes Web pages, a malicious Web site could use the attack to steal sensitive information like credit card numbers or passwords from the hard drives of its visitors. "Google Desktop users who use IE are currently completely exposed," wrote hacker Matan Gillon in an e-mail interview. "An experienced attacker can covertly harvest their hard drives for sensitive information such as passwords and credit card numbers. Since Google also indexes e-mails which can be read in the Web interface itself, it's also possible to access them using this attack." The Details Gillon has posted an extensive description of how such an attack would work, along with a proof of concept exploit, on his blog. The IE bug concerns the way Microsoft's browser processes Web page layout information using the CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) format. The CSS format is widely used to give Web sites a consistent look and feel, but attackers can take advantage of the way that IE processes CSS to get Google Desktop to reveal sensitive information. Hackers would first need to trick users into visiting a malicious Web site for the attack to be successful, Gillon says. The attack works with IE 6 and Google Desktop version 2, and may also work on other versions of Microsoft's browser, but not on non-Microsoft browsers like Firefox or Opera, he adds. Turn Off JavaScript Users can nullify the attack by turning off JavaScript in their browsers, Gillon says. This can be done by disabling "Active scripting" in IE's Internet Options menu. JavaScript is a popular scripting language used by Web developers to make their sites more dynamic. Users need to be particularly wary of the Web sites they visit these days, because of another unpatched IE vulnerability that could be used to take over a user's PC. Hackers posted sample code that exploited this problem over a week ago, and Microsoft said that hackers are already using the code in attacks. As with the new CSS problem, users must first be tricked into visiting a malicious Web site for this IE bug to be exploited. Some security experts believe that Microsoft is in the process of rushing out a patch to fix this problem before these attacks become more widespread. These attacks can also be avoided by disabling JavaScript in IE, or by using an alternative browser. Microsoft executives were unavailable to comment on the CSS bug, but a spokeswoman for the company's public relations agency said the issue is being investigated. Microsoft is not aware of any attacks resulting from the hole, she said. Copyright 2005 IDG News Service ------------------------------ From: William Kates Subject: College Launches Cell Phone Film Contest Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:45:50 -0600 By WILLIAM KATES, Associated Press Writer An Ithaca College dean is encouraging students to instead think small -- and she's offering a $5,000 prize to do it. The school has invited high school and college students across America to submit a 30-second movie shot entirely with a cell phone. It may come off like a gimmick, but Dean Dianne Lynch has no doubts about the contest's academic value. In today's media marketplace -- where cell phones can take pictures, play music and games and connect to Web sites -- it's all about thinking small and mobile. "Historically, we've always had students thinking bigger and bigger. It's gone from radio to television to the movie screen, to the era of blockbuster films. All of a sudden, things have reversed and everything is getting smaller," said Lynch. The submission deadline is Jan. 10. A winner will be chosen from among 10 finalists and announced online Jan. 30. The idea came to Lynch last year while she was in New York City attending an industry conference. One of the topics was the future of mobile delivery of content. Disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the July bombings in London showed what cell phone cameras are capable of, as everyday people used them to provide TV stations and the Internet with vivid images of the devastation. Bigger houses, bigger cars, bigger portions at the local fast food joint. In America, the guiding maxim is to think big -- really big. There are an estimated 2 billion mobile phone subscribers worldwide and 194.5 million in the United States, according to the Washington, D.C.-based CTIA The Wireless Association. About 130 million Americans own cell phones with camera capabilities and approximately half of those camera phones also shoot video, said Roger Entner, an analyst with Ovum, a Boston-based technology consulting firm. This fall, MTV launched "Head and Body," a comedy series of eight programs created exclusively for cell phone users. Last year, Zoie Films, an Atlanta-based producer of independent films and festivals, ran what it billed as the world's first cell-phone film festival. And in October, the Forum des Images in Paris held its first Pocket Film Festival, which included everything from 30-second shorts to mini-soap operas to full-length features. "It's exciting. We were discussing this last year in film club," said Sasha Stefanova, an Ithaca College junior from Kazanlak, Bulgaria, who is majoring in photography and visual arts. As soon as she heard about Lynch's contest, "I went immediately to the dean's office and said, `How can I enter?' I love old films, and old-school techniques. The challenge here is how to get a meaningful idea into such an everyday tool." Stefanova is still pondering her entry. She is traveling home to Bulgaria for the holidays and plans to shoot scenes during her travels. "It will be about my generation's mobility and the falling down of borders," she said. Sudhanshu Saria is a senior in filmmaking and likes the novel challenges presented by working with a cell phone and a 1- to 2-inch screen. "There are definitely visual limitations. You have to be able to tell a quick story. You can't really make it character-based," said Saria, from Siliguri, India. "With a super small screen, you can't have wide shots or crowd scenes. The images have to be visually simple. You can sustain closeups better than on a huge screen but some images may need to be exaggerated to compensate for the small size of the screen," Saria said. Saria's initial reaction was that the contest "could be gimmicky ... But I hope people studying film will take it as my generation's chance to provide a new language, a new way of thinking." The rules of the contest are simple. There must be a story, a narrative and sound, and the film must be shot on a cell phone. The movies can be edited digitally on a computer or a cell phone that has editing functions. The technical quality of the movies will depend on the cell phones, some of which can film with greater resolution than others. To ensure fairness, all submissions will be judged in basic VGA (video graphic array) quality, Lynch said. The submissions will be reviewed by a panel of film students and faculty, who will select 10 finalists. Those entries -- which can be viewed on the contest Web site -- will be judged by a panel of faculty and professional filmmakers. "The challenge is, can you capture an audience member's attention in 30 seconds and hold it an environment where not only is the delivery system small, but the time frame is short?" Lynch said. "Every single frame matters. There's no excess. That's an incredible discipline to develop." On the Net: http://www.cellflixfestival.org 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headlines from Assciated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html (audio news hourly report) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html or http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/TDNewsradio.html (Digest News Radio 24/7) ------------------------------ Subject: Internet History Re-Opening Soon Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 15:32:43 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) I am expecting to have the Internet History page open again <>, probably by January 1, 2006. I think you will be pleased with the change in appearance, etc. A little work remains to be done. ***************************************** I NEED TO HAVE THE GENTLEMAN WHO HAS BEEN HELPING ME ON THIS PLEASE GET IN TOUCH WITH ME IMMEDIATLY ABOUT A SERIOUS PROBLEM AT THIS POINT IN TIME. PLEASE CALL ME ON MY PRIVATE NUMBER WHICH I HAVE GIVEN TO YOU IN EMAIL IN THE PAST. TODAY IF POSSIBLE! THANKS! ***************************************** PAT ------------------------------ From: Michael Liedtke Subject: Google's AOL Investment May Lead to IPO Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:47:24 -0600 By MICHAEL LIEDTKE, AP Business Writer Google Inc.'s $1 billion investment in America Online could lead to an IPO in 2008, giving the online search engine leader and AOL parent Time Warner Inc. an opportunity to capitalize on an Internet advertising boom that they hope to fuel through their partnership. The possible timeline for an initial public offering by AOL emerged in a Friday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The documents provide additional details about a deal announced earlier this week that extends the business ties that Google and AOL formed when they began working together in 2002. Although Google will hold only a 5 percent stake in AOL, it retains the right to demand an IPO beginning in July 2008, according to the SEC documents. If Time Warner doesn't want to pursue an IPO then it could buy back Google's stake based on a fair market appraisal, the filing says. Time Warner has been under pressure from a group of shareholders led by hedge fund investor Carl Icahn to lift its stock, which has fallen by 9 percent this year to continue a prolonged slide. To help get the stock moving, AOL co-founder Steve Case said he proposed pursuing a spin-off three months before his October resignation from Time Warner's board of directors. In an interview earlier this week, Time Warner Chairman Dick Parsons declined to discuss whether the Google investment might be paving AOL's path toward an IPO. He described the Google alliance as the best way to increase AOL's market value, which stands at $20 billion, based on the Google investment. Google has had a golden touch since its own August 2004 IPO, raising investor hopes that it can help AOL become more valuable. Google's market value has increased from about $23 billion at the time of its IPO to $125 billion today. AOL was among the biggest beneficiaries of Google's IPO. When the two companies first became business partners in 2002, Google awarded AOL stock warrants that were later converted into 7.4 million shares - a stake that Time Warner sold for $1.1 billion. Google's shares fell $1.11 Friday to close at $430.93 on the Nasdaq Stock Market and Time Warner's shares dipped 2 cents to close at $17.68 on the New York Stock Exchange. Under the new five-year deal announced earlier this week, AOL will now have the right to use Google's search technology on its own and also will receive a $300 million credit to advertise its content and services through Google's vast marketing network. Google in turn is depending on AOL to sell more graphical ads to diversify the search engine beyond the text-based ads that generate most of its profits. Google also will be able to draw upon AOL's huge video library -- a resource that could help boost traffic to its own Web site. AOL's Internet-leading instant messaging service will become compatible with Google's 4-month-old service next year, but Google's users will have to register with AOL to gain access to the expanded network, according to Friday's filing. While most analysts have applauded Google's investment in AOL, the response among some search engine users has been less enthusiastic. Web logs, or blogs, are filled with comments expressing fears that Google will begin giving preferential treatment to AOL content in its search engine. Those concerns have been exacerbated by a provision of the deal requiring Google to help AOL make its material easier to index. Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user content, sought to reassure the search engine's users in a posting on the company's own blog. "Business partnerships will never compromise the integrity or objectivity of our search results," Mayer wrote. "If a partner's page ranks high, it's because they have a good answer to your search, not because of their business relationship with us." 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news of interest, check out our tech news area: http://telecom-digrdy.ord/td-extra/tech-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 12:26:55 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN December 24, 2005 WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials. The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said. As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said. The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter. "There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that." Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda. What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation. The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/24/politics/24spy.html?ex=1293080400&en=016edb46b79bde83&ei=5090 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you ever wondered how N.S.A. first got started and why, the next issue over the Christmas weekend will tell you all about it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Sun Sets on Transit Strike Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 01:05:36 +0200 Organization: Elisa Internet customer Lena wrote: > What it boils down to is that Toussaint is all mouth and no mettle, > and didn't want to park his butt in jail for the benefit of the > transit workers from whom he extorts dues. Here comes Lena Anonymous, another one with the loaded agenda: 'extorts', eh? How pathetic. Cheers, Henry Larsen ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Sun Sets on Transit Strike Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 11:23:03 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Lena wrote: > What it boils down to is that Toussaint is all mouth and no mettle, > and didn't want to park his butt in jail for the benefit of the > transit workers from whom he extorts dues. The way I understand it, the union was being advised by its own legal counsel to settle, and the union leaders ignored the advice. (How accurate is that? I haven't been following the story.) Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Fri, 23 Dec 2005 16:25:55 -0800 Organization: Stanford University In article , Rik wrote: > These devices are illegal to install and operate. Only a licensee is > authorized by the FCC to install these devices. The fact that they are > easily purchased does not make them legal to use. > They are frequently the source of interference to commercial wireless > systems and more importantly, they are frequently the source of > interference to Public Safety radio systems. > There have been recent instances of law enforcement showing up at a > location where one of these devices is in use and demanding it be > disabled to stop interference to their radio system. I had no idea this was the case -- and maybe it explains why Googling on the topic brought up such a mixed bag of mostly not very useful responses. So, here's a Verizon customer, sitting at the north end of Silicon Valley, not way out in the hills, just a mile or two from downtown Palo Alto -- and less than one tower in the display on my phone. Any advice on how to approach Verizon about this? ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: As Decency Issue Boils, Comcast Sets a Family Tier Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 04:07:56 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > By Keith Reed, Globe Staff > Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable provider, said yesterday it > will offer a package of family-friendly channels in 2006, following > increasing pressure on the industry from legislators and regulators to > curb access to violent and sexually explicit content. When are they going to stop sending porn spam to a 12-year-old account? Seth [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I assume you meant an email account which has been open for twelve years, _not_ a twelve year old person. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: A Merry Christmas For a Helpless Dog Who was Frozen Outside Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:53:30 -0600 Men Rescue Dog Frozen to Railroad Tracks CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis. (AP) -- He's missing a lot of hair, but a Siberian husky has a new name and a new life, thanks to a construction worker and police officer who rescued him from a railroad track minutes before a train arrived. Jeremy Majorowicz thought it was a little strange that the dog had been sitting on the track for an hour-and-a-half in the cold, and stranger still that he wouldn't accept a bite of muffin. "I have two dogs myself, so I didn't want to leave the dog if there was something wrong," Majorowicz said, so he called police. Officer Tim Strand said the dog was "shivering unmercifully" when he arrived Monday and would not come to him, so he called animal control officer Al Heyde, who also couldn't get the dog to budge. "I lifted his tail and hind quarters, and saw he was literally frozen to the tracks," Strand said. Strand pulled hard on the dog's tail and was able to release him, but the dog lost a lot of hair. "He gave a heck of a whelp," he said. Just 10 minutes later, a train came down the track. "If the dog would have seen that train I'm afraid it would have been the end of the pupster," Strand said. The dog was taken to the Chippewa County Humane Association, where workers named him "Ice Train." Copyright The Associated Press. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And ... happy holidays to all our readers here as well. Seasons greetings to one and all! PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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. 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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 #578 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Dec 24 21:51:13 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id E8A7314DAC; Sat, 24 Dec 2005 21:51:12 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #579 Message-Id: <20051225025112.E8A7314DAC@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 21:51:12 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.3 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, LONGWORDS autolearn=no version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 24 Dec 2005 21:54:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 579 Inside This Issue: Happy Holiday Greetings! Government Spying: The Birth of N.S.A. (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: A Merry Christmas For a Helpless Dog Who was Frozen Outside (Wesrock) Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (Seth Breidbart) Re: As Decency Issue Boils, Comcast Sets a Family Tier (Seth Breidbart) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Steven Lichter) 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, 24 Dec 2005 21:12:26 EST From: ptownson@telecom-digest.org Subject: Government Spying: The Birth of N.S.A. A long time ago, spying on US citizens got started through the NSA, the National Security Agency. It seems like these federal agencies just pile on on top of each other; any one of them (FBI, NSA, Homeland Security, others) would be enough, but the deal is, whenever some incident occurs, the government response seems to be to start a new agency to deal with the problem. That was the case in 1952, the height of the 'communist scare' in the USA, and the National Security Agency was born. In this issue of the Digest, I include for your examination the (fomerly, about 15 years ago) secret charter for NSA. It was unsealed in 1990 and almost immediatly printed here in TELECOM Digest. It is being reprinted here today. Please note the reference to 'BITNET' which was discussed here yesterday in a message from Lisa Hancock to the Digest. Received: from CWRU.BITNET by nuacc.acns.nwu.edu; Sat, 10 Feb 90 23:12 CST Date: Sun, 11 Feb 90 00:03 EST From: CJS%cwru.bitnet@eecs.nwu.edu Subject: FOIA Jewel: Original Charter of the National Security Agency To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Message-Id: X-Original-To: security,telecom,sloan,jamie X-Envelope-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Resent-Date: Sun, 11 Feb 90 9:56:08 CST Resent-From: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Resent-To: ptownson@gaak.LCS.MIT.EDU Status: R At 12:01 ON the morning of November 4, 1952, a new federal agency was born. Unlike other such bureaucratic births, however, this one arrived in silence. No news coverage, no congressional debate, no press announcement, not even the whisper of a rumor. Nor could any mention of the new organization be found in the Government Organization Manual of the Federal Register or the Congressional Record. Equally invisible were the new agency's director, its numerous buildings, and its ten thousand employees. Eleven days earlier, on October 24, President Harry S Truman scratched his signature on the bottom of a seven-page presidential memorandum addressed to secretary of State Dean G. Acheson and Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett. Classified top secret and stamped with a code word that was itself classified, the order directed the establishment of an agency to be known as the National Security Agency. It was the birth certificate for America's newest and most secret agency, so secret in fact that only a handful in the government would be permitted to know of its existence. -James Bamford, The Puzzle Palace (1982) at 15. ***************************************************************** A 20707 5/4/54/OSO NSA TS CONTL. NO 73-00405 COPY: D321 Oct 24 1952 MEMORANDUM FOR: The Secretary of State The Secretary of defense SUBJECT: Communications Intelligence Activities The communications intelligence (COMINT) activities of the United States are a national responsibility. They must be so organized and managed as to exploit to the maximum the available resources in all participating departments and agencies and to satisfy the legitimate intelligence requirements of all such departments and agencies. I therefore designate the Secretaries of State and Defense as a Special Committee of the National Security Council for COMINT, which Committee shall, with the assistance of the Director of Central Intelligence, establish policies governing COMINT activities. and keep me advised of such policies through the Executive Secretary of the National Security Council. I further designate the Department of Defense as executive agent of the Government, for the production of COMINT information. I direct this Special Committee to prepare and issue directives which shall include the provisions set forth below and such other provisions as the Special Committee may determine to be necessary. 1. A directive to the United States Communication Intelligence Board (USCIB). This directive will replace the National Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 9, and shall prescribe USCIB's new composition, responsibilities and procedures in the COMINT fields. This directive shall include the following provisions. a. USCIB shall be reconstituted as a body acting for and under the Special Committee, and shall operate in accordance with the provisions of the new directive. Only those departments or agencies represented in USCIB are authorized to engage in COMINT activities. b. The Board shall be composed of the following members: (1) The Director of Central Intelligence, who shall be the Chairman of the Board. (2) A representative of the Secretary of State. (3) A representative of the Secretary of Defense (4) A representative of the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. (5) The Director of the National Security Agency. (6) A representative of the Department of the Army. (7) A representative of the Department of the Navy. (8) A representative of the Department of the Air Force. (9) A representative of the Central Intelligence Agency. c. The Board shall have a staff headed by an executive secretary who shall be appointed by the Chairman with the approval of the majority of the Board. d. It shall be the duty of the Board to advise and make recommendations to the Secretary of Defense, in accordance with the following procedure, with respect to any matter relating to communications intelligence which falls within the jurisdiction of the Director of the NSA. (1) The Board shall reach its decision by majority vote. Each member of the Board shall have one vote except the representatives of the Secretary of State and of the Central Intelligence Agency who shall each have two votes. The Director of Central Intelligence, as Chairman, will have no vote. In the event that the Board votes and reaches a decision, any dissenting member of the Board may appeal from such decision within 7 days of the Special Committee. In the event that the Board votes but fails to reach a decision, any member of the Board may appeal within 7 days to the Special Committee. In either event the Special Committee shall review the matter, and its determination thereon shall be final. Appeals by the Director of NSA and/or the representatives of the Military Departments shall only be filed with the approval of the Secretary of Defense. (2) If any matter is voted on by the Board but - (a) no decision is reached and any member files an appeal; (b) a decision is reached in which the representative of the Secretary of Defense does not concur and files an appeal; no action shall be taken with respect to the subject matter until the appeal is decided, provided that, if the Secretary of Defense determines, after consultation with the Secretary of State, that the subject matter presents a problem of an emergency nature and requires immediate action, his decision shall govern, pending the result of the appeal. In such an emergency situation the appeal may be taken directly to the President. (3) Recommendations of the Board adopted in accordance with the foregoing procedures shall be binding on the Secretary of Defense. Except on matter which have been voted on by the Board, the Director of NSA shall discharge his responsibilities in accordance with his own judgment, subject to the direction of the Secretary of Defense. (4) The Director of NSA shall make such reports and furnish such information from time to time to the Board, either orally or in writing, as the Board my request, and shall bring to the attention of the Board either in such reports or otherwise any major policies or programs in advance of their adoption by him. e. It shall also be the duty of the Board as to matters not falling within the jurisdiction of NSA; (1) To coordinate the communications intelligence activities among all departments and agencies authorized by the President to participate therein; (2) To initiate, to formulate policies concerning, and subject to the provision of NSCID No. 5, to supervise all arrangements with foreign governments in the field of communications intelligence; and (3) to consider and make recommendations concerning policies relating to communications intelligence of common interest to the departments and agencies, including security standards and practices, and, for this purpose, to investigate and study the standards and practices of such departments and agencies in utilizing and protecting COMINT information. f. Any recommendation of the Board with respect to the matters described in paragraph e above shall be binding on all departments or agencies of the Government if it is adopted by the unanimous vote of the members of the Board. Recommendations approved by the majority, but not all, of the members of the Board shall be transmitted by it to the Special Committee for such action as the Special Committee may see fit to take. g. The Board will meet monthly, or oftener at the call of the Chairman or any member, and shall determine its own procedures. 2. A directive to the Secretary of Defense. This directive shall include the following provisions: a. Subject to the specific provisions of this directive, the Secretary of Defense may delegate in whole of in part authority over the Director of NSA within his department as he sees fit. b. The COMINT mission of the National Security Agency (NSA) shall be to provide an effective, unified organization and control of the communications intelligence activities of the United States conducted against foreign governments, to provide for integrated operational policies and procedures pertaining thereto. As used in this directive, the terms "communications intelligence" or "COMINT" shall be construed to mean all procedures and methods used in the interception of communications other than foreign press and propaganda broadcasts and the obtaining of information from such communications by other than intended recipients, but shall exclude censorship and the production and dissemination of finished intelligence. c. NSA shall be administered by a Director, designated by the Secretary of Defense after consultation with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who shall serve for a minimum term of 4 years and who shall be eligible for reappointment. The Director shall be a career commissioned officer of the armed services on active or reactivated status, and shall enjoy at least 3-star rank during the period of his incumbency. d. Under the Secretary of Defense, and in accordance with approved policies of USCIB, the Director of NSA shall be responsible for accomplishing the mission of NSA. For this purpose all COMINT collection and production resources of the United States are placed under his operational and technical control. When action by the Chiefs of the operating agencies of the Services or civilian departments or agencies is required, the Director shall normally issue instruction pertaining to COMINT operations through them. However, due to the unique technical character of COMINT operations, the Director is authorized to issue direct to any operating elements under his operational control task assignments and pertinent instructions which are within the capacity of such elements to accomplish. He shall also have direct access to, and direct communication with, any elements of the Service or civilian COMINT agencies on any other matters of operational and technical control as may be necessary, and he is authorized to obtain such information and intelligence material from them as he may require. All instruction issued by the Director under the authority provided in this paragraph shall be mandatory, subject only to appeal to the Secretary of Defense by the Chief of Service or head of civilian department of agency concerned. e. Specific responsibilities of the Director of NSA include the following: (1) Formulating necessary operational plans and policies for the conduct of the U.S. COMINT activities. (2) Conducting COMINT activities, including research and development, as required to meet the needs of the departments and agencies which hare authorized to receive the products of COMINT. (3) Determining, and submitting to appropriate authorities, requirements for logistic support for the conduct of COMINT activities, together with specific recommendations as to what each of the responsible departments and agencies of the Government should supply. (4) Within NSA's field of authorized operations prescribing requisite security regulations covering operating practices, including the transmission, handling and distribution of COMINT material within and among the COMINT elements under his operations or technical control; and exercising the necessary monitoring and supervisory control, including inspections if necessary, to ensure compliance with the regulations. (5) Subject to the authorities granted the Director Central Intelligence under NSCID No. 5, conducting all liaison on COMINT matters with foreign governmental communications intelligence agencies. f. To the extent he deems feasible and in consonance with the aims of maximum over-all efficiency, economy, and effectiveness, the Director shall centralize or consolidate the performance of COMINT functions for which he is responsible. It is recognized that in certain circumstances elements of the Armed Forces and other agencies being served will require close COMINT support. Where necessary for this close support, direct operational control of specified COMINT facilities and resources will be delegated by the Director, during such periods and for such tasks as are determined by him, to military commanders or to the Chiefs of other agencies supported. g. The Director shall exercise such administrative control over COMINT activities as he deems necessary to the effective performance of his mission. Otherwise, administrative control of personnel and facilities will remain with the departments and agencies providing them. h. The Director shall make provision for participation by representatives of each of the departments and agencies eligible to receive COMINT products in those offices of NSA where priorities of intercept and processing are finally planned. i. The Director shall have a civilian deputy whose primary responsibility shall be to ensure the mobilization and effective employment of the best available human and scientific resources in the field of cryptographic research and development. j. Nothing in this directive shall contravene the responsibilities of the individual departments and agencies for the final evaluation of COMINT information, its synthesis with information from other sources, and the dissemination of finished intelligence to users. 3. The special nature of COMINT actives requires that they be treated in all respects as being outside the framework of other or general intelligence activities. Order, directives, policies, or recommendations of any authority of the Executive Branch relating to the collection, production, security, handling, dissemination, or utilization of intelligence, and/or classified material, shall not be applicable to COMINT actives, unless specifically so stated and issued by competent departmental of agency authority represented on the Board. Other National Security Council Intelligence Directive to the Director of Central Intelligence and related implementing directives issued by the Director of Central Intelligence shall be construed as non-applicable to COMINT activities, unless the National Security Council has made its directive specifically applicable to COMINT. /s/ HARRY S. TRUMAN I thought you might enjoy seeing this historical document, which was, until about 1990, itself a classified document. PAT ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 19:47:06 EST Subject: Re: A Merry Christmas For a Helpless Dog Who was Frozen Outside In a message dated Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:53:30 -0600, Associated Press News Wire writes: > Strand pulled hard on the dog's tail and was able to release him, but > the dog lost a lot of hair. "He gave a heck of a whelp," he said. This would be a remarkable event and of great scientific interest for a male dog to whelp, which means "to give birth." Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 19:53:17 EST Subject: Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! In a message dated Sat, 24 Dec 2005 14:41:08 -0600, Reuters News Wire < reuters@telecom-digest.org> writes: [ ... ] > Crist was not immediately available for comment. But Vivian Myrtetus, > a spokeswoman for his gubernatorial campaign, denied that he was > somehow holding himself to different standards than other e-mailers. > "This is not spam. This is truthful, it's straight forward. We're > honest. To be spam it has to be, under Florida law, defined as being > deceptive," Myrtetus. Spam has to be "deceptive"? Certainly a lot of the messages most people would define as spam may or may not be true. They are none the less annoying if they are true. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 01:49:56 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For someone who has no control over the > matter (as you claim about Bloomberg) he sure does a lot of talking > about the strike and taking credit for ending it Thursday afternoon. He's a politician, therefore he takes credit for anything he can. > Why don't we hear him saying, "Sorry, that's not my department, you > will need to talk to the transit workers and their managers."? If the strike had lasted another three weeks he would have. > And yes, I _know_ the one is a state agency and the other is a > municipal government ... duh! But you should know that when Bloomberg > says 'jump' everyone asks 'how high?', etc. Then why can't he get the commuter tax back? (There used to be a NYC Income Tax for non-residents of the city who worked there, but the state turned it off. Turning it on to lower taxes paid by city residents who vote for mayor would help Bloomberg.) > The union does not require ineffeciency, or no more so than the > government bosses. Then why do all efficiency improvements require negotiation with the union, and generally giving the union something in return? Seth ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: As Decency Issue Boils, Comcast Sets a Family Tier Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 01:51:24 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Seth Breidbart wrote: > In article , Monty Solomon > wrote: >> By Keith Reed, Globe Staff >> Comcast Corp., the nation's largest cable provider, said yesterday it >> will offer a package of family-friendly channels in 2006, following >> increasing pressure on the industry from legislators and regulators to >> curb access to violent and sexually explicit content. > When are they going to stop sending porn spam to a 12-year-old > account? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I assume you meant an email account > which has been open for twelve years, _not_ a twelve year old person. > PAT] Well, yes, but not putting it too clearly is more likely to embarrass them into maybe taking effective action. Not that I doubt the same porn spam goes to 12-year-olds, I just don't have one whose email I can check. Seth ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Sat, 24 Dec 2005 23:43:57 GMT AES wrote: > In article , Rik > wrote: >> These devices are illegal to install and operate. Only a licensee is >> authorized by the FCC to install these devices. The fact that they are >> easily purchased does not make them legal to use. >> They are frequently the source of interference to commercial wireless >> systems and more importantly, they are frequently the source of >> interference to Public Safety radio systems. >> There have been recent instances of law enforcement showing up at a >> location where one of these devices is in use and demanding it be >> disabled to stop interference to their radio system. > I had no idea this was the case -- and maybe it explains why Googling > on the topic brought up such a mixed bag of mostly not very useful > responses. > So, here's a Verizon customer, sitting at the north end of Silicon > Valley, not way out in the hills, just a mile or two from downtown > Palo Alto -- and less than one tower in the display on my phone. Any > advice on how to approach Verizon about this? You wanta bet that it is the people in the area that don't want the cell towers in their area? We had a problem in a upper coast area of Riverside, Calif. and at the time it was AirTouch. There was spotty service at the best. Finally they got so many complaints that they told the people that unless they could build sites there they would not have service. They slowed the voices down and a couple of sites were built to look like trees and a few more were put off the main highways, now service is a lot better, but still dead spots because of hills. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #579 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Dec 25 21:37:41 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id A7ABE14DB3; Sun, 25 Dec 2005 21:37:40 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #580 Message-Id: <20051226023740.A7ABE14DB3@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 21:37:40 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.3 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sun, 25 Dec 2005 21:41:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 580 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Spying on Telephone Calls is OK, Says Powell (Associated Press Newswire) Re: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report (harold@hallikainen) Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (Lisa Hancock) Entire New York Times Available On-Line (Lisa Hancock) Taxes, was: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (Burstein) Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (John Smith) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Rik) Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! (John R. Levine) Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! (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: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Spying on Telephone Calls is OK, Says Colin Powell Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 19:02:24 -0600 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Over this holiday weekend, we have given some attention to the National Security Agency and its massive intrusion into people's privacy via the telephone. In the Digest for Saturday evening, I printed (what had been) the 'secret charter' of the agency founded during President Truman's administration in 1952. It was so secret, that most people knew nothing about its formation at all for several years, and even today, not a lot is known about the NSA. What we have found out about NSA in recent months was that President Bush has used them for a lot of 'warrantless wire tapping of people suspected to be 'terrorists' as part of Bush's 'war on terrorism'. An article on the Associated Press newswire earlier Sunday quoted an interview (also earlier today) from former Secretary of State Colin Powell. Here are some excerpts from today's interview with Powell. PAT] ==================================== Powell: 'Nothing Wrong' With Eavesdropping Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Sunday supported government eavesdropping to prevent terrorism but said a major controversy over presidential powers could have been avoided by obtaining court warrants. Powell said that when he was in the Cabinet, he was not told that President Bush authorized a warrantless National Security Agency surveillance operation after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks. Appearing on ABC's "This Week" Powell said he sees "absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions" to protect the nation. But he added, "My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants. And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it." The New York Times reported on its Internet site Friday that the NSA has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States. The program bypassed the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. Powell said Congress will need to judge whether Bush is correct in his assertion that he could approve eavesdropping without first obtaining court orders. "And that's going to be a great debate," Powell said. Powell, who also is a former chairman of the military Joint Chiefs of Staff, had no reservations when asked whether eavesdropping should continue. "Of course it should continue," he said. "And nobody is suggesting that the president shouldn't do this." 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headline news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No one obects, , that is, except for all the Democratic members of Congress and quite a few of the Republican members of that body. PAT] ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Re: Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report Date: 25 Dec 2005 08:52:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com How about a new email header that identifies whether the message is terrorist related or not? That'd simplify their work a lot! Harold [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's a lot like my tongue in cheek suggestion that ICANN open a TLD for .spam and .scam. How many users do you think would tag their email as .terrorist related? Probably sbout as many would identify their writing as '.spam and in fact, later in this current issue we are going to have more comments about the Florida Atttorney General who has b.s. 'ed his way around the spammed rules by flatly declaring it does not apply in his instance. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Date: 25 Dec 2005 12:41:30 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com If you call a cellphone (without voicemail) and it doesn't answer, after a few rings an intercept recording will come on and tell you the party is not available and terminate the call. When you reach that recording, is that call chargeable? I don't think it should be since it was unanswered, but my experience is that one does get charged. A few years ago I was meeting a friend at a convention, and I was to call his cell phone from a pay phone upon my arrival. His cell phone number was long distance from that point. I called a few times using my Calling Card but couldn't reach him and I was billed for the calls. (I complained and they took it off.) Now I realize most people today have such low per-call fees (ie 10c) so this isn't an issue, but there are times from a pay phone, long distance, or peak period cell phone roaming where the per-call charge is indeed significant, even as much as a dollar or more per minute. It doesn't seem to fair to charge for unanswered calls. I don't know if traditional supervision (call answered) signals are passed back from cell phone switches. [public replies, please] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Entire New York Times Available On-Line Date: 25 Dec 2005 12:43:11 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I understand the entire New York Times going back to its beginning, is now available on-line for a modest fee. Some libraries have this for their patrons free of charge and one can access it from home. The database includes advertisements and is searchable. My question about this is _how_ did they manage to get it all on? Presumably they had some automated scanning process to read in the microfilm pages and convert them to .PDF text, but considerable human effort must have been needed to reconcile errors, deal with the random blocking of articles and ads as they appeared on a page, and the continuation of articles from one page to another. When you consider how thick the newspaper is and how long its been published, you see what a massive task that was. Also the scanning software, reading from microfilm which is pretty coarse, must have been quite sophisticated. Anyway, I've used the on-line access and it's quite a powerful and convenient tool. Sitting at one's own PC is much easier than treking to a large library and fiddling with microfilm readers. One must locate the desired dates in an index book, and check separate books for each year. Then, one must find the proper reels of microfilm. It's a bit tricky to thread the film through the reader spools and lens. Last, one must sequentially search for the specific date and article through the reel. A bit dizzying watching it spin by. While on the surface it would seem on-line access would surpass microfilm in every way, microfilm still has a few advantages: 1) On-line searching is very narrow. That is, if you're searching for articles on the Verrazano Bridge and you spell it wrong -- very easy to do with that word -- you're seach will come up empty. But in a hard copy index, as long as you have "Ver" you should find what you want. Further, while looking in the index book, you might see other entries of interest which you don't get in an on-line search. 2) You get the article and only the article from on-line. If viewing the microfilm, you get to see the whole newspaper of the time frame. Often there are sidebar articles which might be of related interest. You see how your article appeared in the paper -- as a page one headline or buried in the classifieds on page 90. You also see the advertisements of the day. In my research, I've often accidently stumbled articles of high interest that just happened to be in the paper in that time span. 3) Sometimes there are alternative resources in the library which you don't have at home. Yes, going to a major library can be a nuisance (the ones I use have parking problems). But there are other indexes, such as the Reader's Guide to Periodicals, and other publications available only on microfilm, such as Newsweek and Business Week, that may be necessary to round out your research. The New York Times is a newspaper of record and a good resource, but it is by no means the final authority on any subject and a good researcher will check alternative sources as well. 4) Microfilm access is usually free; unless your library pays for the service, on-line research has a fee. [public replies, please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are good rationales for both microfilm and online records. What I understand about the New York Times project (and the Chicago Tribune, which began in 1847) is that many of the very old pages are done in .pdf style or something similar to .jpg , that is instead of scanning all those old articles, they are taking a _photograph_ of the page and putting that photographic image on the computer. That would seem to be an easier way of handling it. Chicago Tribune started with miicrofilm of every page of every back issue from 1871 forward; between 1847 and October, 1871 they have a scattered selection of back issues (those that were not lost in the Great Fire). By using the .pdf and-or .jpg format, reasearchers get the context of the articles and the advertisements on the pages, etc. One thing I have noticed about New York Times in recent months is how you can have all you want _at no charge_ through their several RSS feeds and news wires. I put a hundred or more articles each day on the page http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html, which are available with no registration or login requirements. Just go to that URL and spend the day reading their stuff as desired. I have the top 20-25 news items each day from several news categories with their blessings. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Taxes, was: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 04:14:11 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) writes: [ Responding to TELECOM Digest Editor regarding NYC's Mayor Bloomberg's non-control of the State chartered transit system ] > Then why can't he get the commuter tax back? (There used to be a NYC > Income Tax for non-residents of the city who worked there, but the > state turned it off. Turning it on to lower taxes paid by city > residents who vote for mayor would help Bloomberg.) If you really believe that letting NYC tap additional tax revenue (from, in this case, non city residents) would lead to a corresponding decrease in other taxes, I'd suggest you're demonstrating a very rosy view of government finances. obtelecom: There's an extra special "tax" on telephone services (wired and wireless) that's applied to the dozen or so counties (that's NYC and a hefty chunk of the surrounding area) supposedely earmarked for the mass transit system. Note that I just spent a half hour going through lots and lots of financial web pages and couldn't find the actual figure ... _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: John Smith Subject: Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 08:08:27 GMT Howard S. Wharton wrote: > There are many who would like to change the Taylor Law. There are many > points to the law that protects the public employee. We cannot pick > or choose what laws we want to obey. Roger Toussaint, President of TWU Local 100, responded to Mayor Bloomberg, who had made remarks essentially the same as those above. He said, "There is a higher calling than the law and that's justice and equality. Had Rosa Parks answered the call of the law instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses today would still be in the back of the bus." In other words, there are times we MUST pick and choose what laws we will obey. Gary Novosielski "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crises, maintain their neutrality." --Dante Alighieri ------------------------------ From: Rik Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 25 Dec 2005 07:55:45 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I concur. I work for a city, managing the Public Safety radio system. I see the same thing in our city. They do not want towers, but everyone complains about coverage. Talk to Verizon. It may be also that you are on the edge of their footprint and they have to be sure they do not encroach on the neighboring carrier's area. That is a big issue here in North Carolina because Verizon is only licensed for some areas, not the entire state. Rik ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! Date: 24 Dec 2005 22:11:04 -0500 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Spam has to be "deceptive"? It does to be illegal. Thank CAN-SPAM and the DMA for that. R's, John ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 22:42:08 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net They all say that, don't they? ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #580 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 26 15:15:26 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 2CE4114F6C; Mon, 26 Dec 2005 15:15:26 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #581 Message-Id: <20051226201526.2CE4114F6C@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 15:15:26 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.2 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, WORK_AT_HOME autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 26 Dec 2005 14:19:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 581 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Internet Fosters Political Movements (Ron Fournier) Japan's TBS, Index Form Joint Venture on Internet (Reuters News Wire) Mother Decides to Fight the Music Recording Industry (Jim Fitzgerald) NY Times News Feed (John Stahl) Re: NY Times News Feed (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (John Levine) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (DevilsPGD) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? (Al Gillis) Last Laugh! Re: Email from Florida AG (Harold Hallikainen) 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: Ron Fournier Subject: Internet Fosters Local Political Movements Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 12:06:09 -0600 By RON FOURNIER, AP Political Writer Frustrated by government and empowered by technology, Americans are filling needs and fighting causes through grass-roots organizations they built themselves -- some sophisticated, others quaintly ad hoc. This is the era of people-driven politics. And politicians are understandably furious in many cases. From a homemaker-turned-kingmaker in Pittsburgh to dog owners in New York to a "gym rat" here in southwest Florida, people are using the Internet to do what politicians can't -- or won't -- do. This is their story, but it's also an American story because ordinary folks are doing the extraordinary to find people with similar interests, organize them and create causes and connections. "People are just beginning to realize how much power they have," said Chris Kofinis, a Democratic consultant who specializes in grass-roots organizing via the Internet. "At a time when we are craving community and meaning in our lives, people are using these technologies to find others with the same complaints and organize them," he said. "They don't have to just sit in a coffee shop and gripe about politics. They can change politics." Mary Shull changed her life, if not politics. A lonely and frustrated liberal, the stay-at-home mother of two joined the liberal online group MoveOn.org in 2004. Working from home, the Pittsburgh woman helped round up votes for presidential candidate John Kerry and other Democrats. On Election Day, Kerry prevailed in Pennsylvania, but failed to unseat President Bush. "I was upset with Kerry's loss, but what really devastated me was the loss of that sense of empowerment in my life, this sense of engagement, that I got with MoveOn," she said. Shull, 31, was brimming with ideas for liberal causes, but MoveOn had virtually shut down after the election and the Democratic Party was catatonic. So she took matters in her own hands, e-mailing the 1,500 contacts she had made through MoveOn and asking if they wanted to keep busy. Their first meeting drew 85 people. They got involved in local races, and Shull tended to her e-mail list -- each name coded with the person's pet issue. "This wasn't about a huge agenda. This was people gathering together and working with each other on things that interested them," she said. "It was just a way for people to connect with each other." Politicians took notice. When former Rep. Joe Hoeffel decided he might want to run for lieutenant governor, he called Shull and asked for her support. "Ten years ago, somebody like Mary would be as interested as she is in politics, but her circle of influence would not have extended beyond her home or block or even voting precinct," said Hoeffel, a Democrat who gave up his House seat in 2004 for an unsuccessful Senate bid. "Now, she's got 1,500 other self-motivated and influential people at her fingertips, and carries as much clout as half the people I've been calling." MoveOn, founded in 1997 to fend off President Clinton's impeachment, raised $60 million for liberal causes in 2004. The group put its organizing muscle behind Cindy Sheehan last summer and helped make the "Peace Mom" a symbol of the anti-war movement. Political activist Tom Hayden believes that the anti-war movement in the 1960s, which he helped organize, could have gained steam sooner had the Internet existed. "Movements happen so much faster today," he said. And they come in all shapes and sizes. ----------------- Shannon Sullivan's 9-year-old son wanted to know why Mayor James E. West used a city computer to solicit gay men over the Internet, and why nobody was doing anything about it. "He's the mayor," Sullivan replied. "Mom, you better do something." So she did. A single mother with a high school education and no political experience, Sullivan launched a recall campaign that used an Internet site to organize rallies and media events. Turns out there were thousands of other people in Spokane, Wash., who wondered why nobody was doing anything about West. "I was mad at people for not doing anything. I was mad at the system and I was mad at James West," she said after her campaign succeeded in convincing voters and the mayor was recalled. "I'm not so mad anymore. Its not gay people in politics or authority, that's fine with me and there should be more of them. It's James West who had to go." ======================= Roberta Bailey likes Pugs -- the jowly, wrinkly faced breed of dog she keeps as a pet. She also likes punk rock and people. With the help of the Internet, the Manhattan photographer found a way to combine her interests: She organized a group of Pug owners who fought to save a legendary punk venue. "I got off my butt and did something cool," she said. Using the Meetup.com Web site, Bailey organized a "Million Pug March" in Washington Square Park to show support for the venerable club CBGB. It's as close to politics as she has ever come. "Who knows what me and the Pugs can do to change the world some day," she said, giggling. Howard Dean used Meetup.com in 2003 to organize anti-war activists behind his Democratic presidential campaign. Though his candidacy petered out, the Web site continued to grow. Nearly 2 million people log into the site to find others with similar interests. There are more than 4,000 topics -- everything from witches and pagans to wine enthusiasts, working moms and divorced dads. "People really get a certain high about connecting with other human beings," said Scott Heiferman, the site's co-founder. "Because we live in such an isolated culture, when people come together with other like-minded people, there is a sense of, 'Let's organize to do something.'" =========================== Matt Margolis got tired of hearing about the rising influence of liberal blogs so he scrolled the Internet for advice on how to start an online diary of his own. He enlisted writers. He got help with designing a home page. He found somebody who knew how to write computer coding. Blogsforbush.com was born. "It took a community of people to get me going," said the 25-year-old architecture student from Boston. By the end of the 2004 election, he had a nearly 1,500 other bloggers posted on his site -- an army of Bush backers who donated time and money to his campaign and wrote letters to the editor on the president's behalf. ============================== Dave Renzella is a fitness instructor at Omni gym in Fort Myers, Fla. In his spare time, he plugs into the MoveOn Web site to get the e-mail addresses of fellow liberals and tries to organize them. "I'm not an activist at heart. I'm a gym rat," he said, "but the Internet makes it easy to combine an interest in people with an interest in politics." ================================ Eli Pariser, the 25-year-old executive director of MoveOn Political Action, said the people-driven trend is a good thing for democracy, a chance to "shift the balance of power from established interests that can raise of lot of money and lobby special interests to a bunch of bubble-up, bottom-up citizen campaigns." These newly empowered constituents are using technology to send a message to politicians. Iowa Gov. Tom Vilsack frequently hears from citizens via e-mails on his Blackberry. "It's great because it reconnects people to government. It's created a sense of community and a sense of belonging," he said. Politicians who pay little heed could find frustrated voters banding together and creating a third-party movement. "At some point this has got to reach critical mass," Kofinis said. "Nobody knows when that will happen or how that will happen, but it will literally explode into a movement." On the Net: MoveOn: http://www.MoveOn.org Meetup: http://www.meetup.com Blogs on Bush: http://www.blogsforbush.com 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and stories from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Japan's TBS, Index in Internet TV Joint Venture Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 12:03:00 -0600 Tokyo Broadcasting System Inc. (TBS), Japan's third-biggest TV broadcaster, said on Monday it will form a joint venture with mobile content provider Index Corp. and others to air TV programs over the Internet. The move, first reported by media last month, is the latest between Japan's Internet companies and TV broadcasters, many of which have become takeover targets as Internet firms seek to use advances in communications technology to deliver content via the Web. TBS, Index and satellite TV broadcaster Sky Perfect Communications Inc. said they would form a joint venture in January and plan to air 2006 FIFA World Cup programs for which Index has broadcasting rights over the Internet and cellular phones. The three firms would also ask other nationwide TV networks, including Japan's biggest broadcaster Fuji Television Network Inc., to participate in the joint venture, they said. TBS last month managed to fend off a merger proposal from Rakuten Inc., Japan's biggest Web shopping mall operator, which sought to create a media-Internet company after acquiring nearly 20 percent of TBS. TBS agreed to discuss business tie-ups with Rakuten in four areas, including TV and e-commerce, after Rakuten placed half of its stake in TBS in trust. Shares in TBS closed unchanged at 3,050 yen before the announcement. Index finished up 12.2 percent at 184,000 yen, while Sky Perfect was up 1.49 percent at 88,400 yen. The benchmark Nikkei average rose 1.04 percent. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines, please check out: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Jim Fitzgerald Subject: Mother Decides to Fight Downloading Suit on Her Own Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 12:14:48 -0600 By JIM FITZGERALD, Associated Press Writer It was Easter Sunday, and Patricia Santangelo was in church with her kids when she says the music recording industry peeked into her computer and decided to take her to court. Santangelo says she has never downloaded a single song on her computer, but the industry didn't see it that way. The woman from Wappingers Falls, about 80 miles north of New York City, is among the more than 16,000 people who have been sued for allegedly pirating music through file-sharing computer networks. "I assumed that when I explained to them who I was and that I wasn't a computer downloader, it would just go away," she said in an interview. "I didn't really understand what it all meant. But they just kept insisting on a financial settlement." The industry is demanding thousands of dollars to settle the case, but Santangelo, unlike the 3,700 defendants who have already settled, says she will stand on principle and fight the lawsuit. "It's a moral issue," she said. "I can't sign something that says I agree to stop doing something I never did." If the downloading was done on her computer, Santangelo thinks it may have been the work of a young friend of her children. Santangelo, 43, has been described by a federal judge as "an Internet-illiterate parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo, and who can barely retrieve her email." Kazaa is the peer-to-peer software program used to share files. The drain on her resources to fight the case -- she's divorced, has five children aged 7 to 19 and works as a property manager for a real estate company -- forced her this month to drop her lawyer and begin representing herself. "There was just no way I could continue on with a lawyer," she said. "I'm out $24,000 and we haven't even gone to trial." So on Thursday she was all alone at the defense table before federal Magistrate Judge Mark Fox in White Plains, looking a little nervous and replying simply, "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" to his questions about scheduling and exchange of evidence. She did not look like someone who would have downloaded songs like Incubus' "Nowhere Fast," Godsmack's "Whatever" and Third Eye Blind's "Semi-Charmed Life," all of which were allegedly found on her computer. Her former lawyer, Ray Beckerman, says Santangelo doesn't really need him. "I'm sure she's going to win," he said. "I don't see how they could win. They have no case. They have no evidence she ever did anything. They don't know how the files appeared on her computer or who put them there." Jenni Engebretsen, spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America, the coalition of music companies that is pressing the lawsuits, would not comment specifically on Santangelo's case. "Our goal with all these anti-piracy efforts is to protect the ability of the recording industry to invest in new bands and new music and give legal online services a chance to flourish," she said. "The illegal downloading of music is just as wrong as shoplifting from a local record store." The David-and-Goliath nature of the case has attracted considerable attention in the Internet community. To those who defend the right to such "peer-to-peer" networks and criticize the RIAA's tactics, Santangelo is a hero. Jon Newton, founder of an Internet site critical of the record companies, said by e-mail that with all the settlements, "The impression created is all these people have been successfully prosecuted for some as-yet undefined 'crime'. And yet not one of them has so far appeared in a court or before a judge. ... She's doing it alone. She's a courageous woman to be taking on the multibillion-dollar music industry." Santangelo said her biggest issue is with Kazaa for allowing children to download music without parental permission. "I should have gotten at least an e-mail or something notifying me," she said. Telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment from the Australia-based owner of Kazaa, Sharman Networks Ltd., were not returned. Because some cases are settled just before a trial and because it would be months before Santangelo's got that far, it's impossible to predict whether she might be the first to go to trial over music downloading. But she vows that she's in the fight to stay. "People say to me, `You're crazy. Why don't you just settle?' I could probably get out of the whole thing if I paid maybe $3,500 and signed their little document. But I won't do that." Her travail started when the record companies used an investigator to go online and search for copyrighted recordings being made available by individuals. The investigator allegedly found hundreds on her computer on April 11, 2004. Months later, there was a phone call from the industry's "settlement center," demanding about $7,500 "to keep me from being named in a lawsuit," Santangelo said. Santangelo and Beckerman were confident they would win a motion to dismiss the case, but Judge Colleen McMahon ruled that the record companies had enough of a case to go forward. She said the issue was whether "an Internet-illiterate parent" could be held liable for her children's downloads. Santangelo says she's learned a lot about computers in the past year. "I read some of these blogs and they say, `Why didn't this woman have a firewall?' she said. "Well, I have a firewall now. I have a ton of security now." On the Net: Recording Industry Association of America: http://www.riaa.com Defense lawyers' blog on RIAA cases: http://www.recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com Site focusing on peer-to-peer issues: http://p2pnet.net 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 06:00:41 -0500 From: John Stahl Subject: NY Times News Feed Hey Pat, Unless my browser is on the blink (and that could happen!) I tried the link (URL) in your latest issue to your NY Times news collection point but received a "403" error. I tried to find it but back tracking but couldn't find the NY Times (found ABC, etc.) Please check it out. Thanks. John Stahl Telecom/Data Consultant Aljon Enterprises ------------------------------ Subject: Re: NY Times News Feed Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 12:41:49 EST From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) John Stahl asked about the nytimes.html newsfeed. The _exact_ link was 'nytimes.html' _not_ uppercase 'NYtimes' so that made it appear unavailable. However, anticipating that problem in the future, I added a couple of cross links to the page just today. Now, all these work and go to the same place: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html (the original link) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/NYTimes.html (newly added) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newyorktimes.html (newly added) In the left column, a hundred and some news headlines from the current day's NY Times plus stories from yesterday and the day before. In the right column, at the top of the page, following my click through ads -- but of course! (grin) -- the top stories from the current issue of The Christian Science Monitor, and (select as desired) audio feeds from the the past couple day's of the NPR "All Things Considered" program, the current issue of Salon.com and a few assorted news headlines from CNN (Cable News Network). Any of the stories you click on on that page open to a new page with the story. I have one 'master feed' and you can read it acording to whatever audio background you want: All these begin as http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra then the URL continues with: /AP.html for Associated Press audio 5 minute summary (and the news feed). /BBC.html for a live stream from BBC World Service (and the news feed). /BBC-summary.html BBC five minute news summary (and the news feed). /Fednews.html for Associated Press 24 hour 'news radio' (and the news feed). /TDNewsrasdio.html for my own 'news radio' 24/7 (and the printed news feed). /KOSU.html for NPR audio news i.e. 'All Things Considered', others, and primarily classical music 24/7 (and the printed news feed). /newstoday.html (no audio, just the printed news feed). /nytimes.html (New York Times, Christian Science Monitor and NPR news feeds). (this last entry is not on the 'master feed'; they do their own feeds). /internet-news.html (USA Today and some tech news, also United Press International news feed (also separate, not part of the 'master news feed'). My own /TDNewsradio.html alternates every couple hours between Voice of America, NPR News, and BBC World Service. A "listener's guide" in the far right column tells you what service is on at any given time. And, there is the printed 'master news feed' as well. It is _all_ the way the net _should be_; no cookies, no logins, no registration requirements; just fun and information for everyone. PAT ------------------------------ Date: 26 Dec 2005 03:20:57 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > When you reach that recording, is that call chargeable? Of course not. > I called a few times using my Calling Card but couldn't reach him > and I was billed for the calls. I suspect your calling card was charging you for any call over N seconds rather than checking for supervision. I make test calls from my landline to my cell numbers in Luxembourg and Switzerland from time to time, hanging up once my phone starts ringing, and I don't ever recall being charged unless I answered. R's, John ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 01:03:34 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > If you call a cellphone (without voicemail) and it doesn't answer, > after a few rings an intercept recording will come on and tell you the > party is not available and terminate the call. > When you reach that recording, is that call chargeable? I don't think > it should be since it was unanswered, but my experience is that one > does get charged. In general, it's not chargeable. However, some systems get "confused" (intentionally misbill, since the consumer probably won't notice, and the company need only refund the amount of the overcharge, so there is little risk.) (TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, considering that a cell phone is normally always within its owner's reach (a holster fastened to your trousers, in your purse, in a holder near the driver of an automobile, etc) it would seem very odd that it had to ring more than three or four times, at best, unanswered. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 08:16:26 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga Reply-To: no-spam@no-spam.no-spam.spam-poison.com.remembered-you-this-time! Subject: Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones PAT: Please DELETE my email address WHERE-EVER it might appear! hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > If you call a cellphone (without voicemail) and it doesn't answer, > after a few rings an intercept recording will come on and tell you > the party is not available and terminate the call. > When you reach that recording, is that call chargeable? I don't > think it should be since it was unanswered, but my experience is > that one does get charged. > A few years ago I was meeting a friend at a convention, and I was > to call his cell phone from a pay phone upon my arrival. His cell > phone number was long distance from that point. I called a few > times using my Calling Card but couldn't reach him and I was billed > for the calls. I complained and they took it off. > Now I realize most people today have such low per-call fees (ie 10c) > so this isn't an issue, but there are times from a pay phone, long > distance, or peak period cell phone roaming where the per-call > charge is indeed significant, even as much as a dollar or more per > minute. And using a calling card from a payphone can be significant these days since the payphone owner can now "legally" extort huge charges from the long distance carrier or card provider, who will then extort those surcharges from us. > It doesn't seem to fair to charge for unanswered calls. I don't > know if traditional supervision (call answered) signals are passed > back from cell phone switches. Answer supervision is indeed passed back from cellular service switches. But remember that these days (and even in times past as well), standardization is not perfect. And it isn't always consistant as to which cellular providers will supervise back your calls to such messages. It can vary from switch to switch within the same cellular provider as to whether you are charged or not for reaching such a "subscriber not available" (vacant) message. Even with traditional landline providers, sometimes you can find a charge condition on reaching intercepts (which are really the digit by digit quote back systems), and "vacant condition" recordings. And as I said, there were times this happened even in years past, back when the telephone industry in the US was still mostly managed by AT&T and Bell. If you are concerned, make a note of such calls, and check to see if they were indeed billed when the bill arrives. And then complain to your long distance company or card provider to get a credit. ------------------------------ From: NOTvalid@Queensbridge.us Subject: Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Date: 26 Dec 2005 10:15:36 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I now use Virgin but from 1998-2004 I used SPCS I had tested from a payphone to one of my SPCS phones w/o VM and with no answer, coin was returned. Wife has VM on Virgin I do not. I should do same test with Virgin. Supervison may depend on cell carrier. Your calling card may bill based on time instead of supervison. Altho I have included USA LDX on Virgin, for international on Virgin I use OneSuite. I like OneSuite. 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/SuiteTreat Code: "FREEoffer23" for FREE time. Altho from USA payphones there is a surcharge, there is NONE from Canadian payphones. ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? Date: Sun, 25 Dec 2005 18:29:54 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Gordon Burditt wrote in message news:telecom24.570.7@telecom-digest.org: (Snip, ship, snip...) > A long time ago, when they first started allowing other people to > connect modems to a phone line, but NOT directly, there was the DAA > ("Data Access Arrangement", I think). I worked with these in the late > 1970's. You rented it from the phone company. It had a defined > interface so you could pass voice through it, take the phone off the > hook, pulse dial, detect ringing, etc. For tone dialing you'd just... (More Snippage... There was also a gizmo of much the same circuitry called a VCA -- Voice Connecting Arrangement. A VCA was used on a trunk connecting a common carrier's service to a customer owned PBX. While a stand alone VCA was pretty simple, when there were a lot of them there was a lot of stuff - equipment racks, mounting shelves, distributing frames, and who knows what other manner of monkey business. At least there was no power - as I recall these VCAs (made by TelLabs) used no external power. (A "DanRay" PBX I installed in the early '80s had nearly 300 trunks and an equal number of VCAs! These were installed in a room separate from the PBX and consumed quite a footprint). Al (Oh -- Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Thanks for helping to educate me throughout all of 2005 -- and several years before that as well!) ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Last Laugh! Re: Florida Attorney General: My Email is Not Spam! Date: 26 Dec 2005 11:29:31 -0800 I wonder how many of these emails from the AG got reported to spamcop.net? Harold ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #581 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 26 21:44:23 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id CDF771501C; Mon, 26 Dec 2005 21:44:22 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #582 Message-Id: <20051227024422.CDF771501C@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 21:44:22 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.4 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Mon, 26 Dec 2005 21:46:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 582 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Saudi Telecom Stops Text Vote for Arab Talent Show (Andrew Hammond) Mobile Phones to Announce "You've Been Indicted" (Reuters News Wire) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (Steven Lichter) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (DevilsPGD) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones (Anthony Bellanga) Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas (Lisa Hancock) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? (Steven Lichter) 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: Andrew Hammond Subject: Saudi Telecom Stops Text Vote for Arab Talent Show Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 19:17:14 -0600 By Andrew Hammond Saudi mobile operator Mobily has stopped users from text message voting for an Arab "Star Academy" competition because of an Islamic decree branding the reality show immoral, the company said on Monday. Saudi religious scholars last May condemned the hugely popular talent show aired by Lebanese channel LBC as a crime against Islam when a young Saudi returned to a hero's welcome after winning in the Lebanese capital Beirut. "The decision was taken last night because of a fatwa (religious decree) issued last year, since the program is culturally inappropriate," spokesman Humoud Alghodaini said. "It shows men and women living in one house, sometimes semi-naked and in inappropriate situations," he added. The program entered its third season last week with two 21-year-old Saudi men among the 19 contestants from around the Arab world who will share a house 24 hours a day in a bid to win a recording contract. Saudi Arabia, home to the puritan Wahhabi school of Islam, requires women to be fully covered and accompanied by a male relative in public. Mixing of unmarried men and women is forbidden. Saudi Telecommunications Co. (STC), the main mobile firm in the conservative kingdom, said last January it would block customers from voting by text message. STC has around 10 million subscribers compared to the two million of new-comer Mobily, which is owned by United Arab Emirates' telecom firm Etisalat. "We will definitely lose money, but how much, I don't know," Alghodaini said about the decision. "If we don't (stop messaging) it would backfire on us and affect our brand." April's victory by Hisham Abdulrahman triggered the closest thing to pop hysteria in ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia, as admirers rushed to shake his hand or even kiss him at a public appearance in a Riyadh shopping mall. Users in a Saudi Web chatroom often used by Islamists praised the messaging ban. "We have to say thank you to these companies for their initiative and for respecting young people," one said in a posting. Some music fans say they managed in the past to vote via the Internet, bypassing the government server which controls access. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Mobile Phones to Announce "You've Been Indicted" Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 19:19:59 -0600 South Koreans may look at their mobile phones with some trepidation in the new year because prosecutors will start telling people they have been indicted via text messages, an official said Monday. In a country where about 75 percent of the population carries mobile phones, prosecutors felt it was time to move away from sending legal notices on paper and send them electronically instead, said Lee Young-pyo, an administrative official. "Most people in South Korea have mobile phones and since the notices don't reach them immediately by regular mail, this is a more definite way for the individuals to know they have received a legal notice," Lee said. The indictments by text messages are not intended to take people by surprise. "People will receive a text message of a legal notice only after they apply for the service," he said. Prosecutors expect to save about 160 million won ($158,000) a year by shifting to the service and reducing the number of legal notices it sends through the mail. Other notices that will be sent by text messages include information on fines and penalties. The service starts Tuesday but will be fully implemented in 2006. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 20:08:43 GMT John Levine wrote: >> When you reach that recording, is that call chargeable? > Of course not. >> I called a few times using my Calling Card but couldn't reach him >> and I was billed for the calls. > I suspect your calling card was charging you for any call over N > seconds rather than checking for supervision. I make test calls from > my landline to my cell numbers in Luxembourg and Switzerland from time > to time, hanging up once my phone starts ringing, and I don't ever > recall being charged unless I answered. > R's, > John I know in the days before SS7 some companies that interconnected with the telephone netwoek did not have supervision, one was SprintNet which at the time was a dial around system where you would call toll free number and then your account # and the number you wanted to call. Some cell systems where like this and still maybe, though it would have to be a really old and small system. DevilsPGD wrote: > In message hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com > wrote: >> If you call a cellphone (without voicemail) and it doesn't answer, >> after a few rings an intercept recording will come on and tell you the >> party is not available and terminate the call. >> When you reach that recording, is that call chargeable? I don't think >> it should be since it was unanswered, but my experience is that one >> does get charged. > In general, it's not chargeable. However, some systems get "confused" > (intentionally misbill, since the consumer probably won't notice, and > the company need only refund the amount of the overcharge, so there is > little risk.) > (TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, considering that a cell phone > is normally always within its owner's reach (a holster fastened to > your trousers, in your purse, in a holder near the driver of an > automobile, etc) it would seem very odd that it had to ring more than > three or four times, at best, unanswered. PAT] I have friends that have not configured their voiced mail. I know when I first got a cell phone that had voice mail, I did not configure it and when I finally did I got so many calls to it, I reset it and it took me a long time to get around to doing it again. I tend to shut mine off when I'm off work. Anthony Bellanga wrote: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: >> If you call a cellphone (without voicemail) and it doesn't answer, >> after a few rings an intercept recording will come on and tell you >> the party is not available and terminate the call. >> When you reach that recording, is that call chargeable? I don't >> think it should be since it was unanswered, but my experience is >> that one does get charged. >> A few years ago I was meeting a friend at a convention, and I was >> to call his cell phone from a pay phone upon my arrival. His cell >> phone number was long distance from that point. I called a few >> times using my Calling Card but couldn't reach him and I was billed >> for the calls. I complained and they took it off. >> Now I realize most people today have such low per-call fees (ie 10c) >> so this isn't an issue, but there are times from a pay phone, long >> distance, or peak period cell phone roaming where the per-call >> charge is indeed significant, even as much as a dollar or more per >> minute. > And using a calling card from a payphone can be significant these > days since the payphone owner can now "legally" extort huge charges > from the long distance carrier or card provider, who will then extort > those surcharges from us. >> It doesn't seem to fair to charge for unanswered calls. I don't >> know if traditional supervision (call answered) signals are passed >> back from cell phone switches. > Answer supervision is indeed passed back from cellular service > switches. But remember that these days (and even in times past as > well), standardization is not perfect. And it isn't always consistant > as to which cellular providers will supervise back your calls to > such messages. It can vary from switch to switch within the same > cellular provider as to whether you are charged or not for reaching > such a "subscriber not available" (vacant) message. > Even with traditional landline providers, sometimes you can find a > charge condition on reaching intercepts (which are really the digit > by digit quote back systems), and "vacant condition" recordings. And > as I said, there were times this happened even in years past, back > when the telephone industry in the US was still mostly managed by > AT&T and Bell. > If you are concerned, make a note of such calls, and check to see > if they were indeed billed when the bill arrives. And then complain > to your long distance company or card provider to get a credit. I know that when I first got mine, if you let it ring more then 3 rings Pacific Telephone Cellular (later AirTouch) would charge you as it would if you let a busy tone go too long. I remember calling one of our switchroom numbers which was set for no supervision and getting charged for the call as well as a couple of times being dropped off since the originating switch was looking for supervision and when it got none it would timeout, that was before SS7 and when there was still a "C" lead in the switch. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 16:54:58 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message DevilsPGD wrote: > In message hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com > wrote: >> If you call a cellphone (without voicemail) and it doesn't answer, >> after a few rings an intercept recording will come on and tell you the >> party is not available and terminate the call. >> When you reach that recording, is that call chargeable? I don't think >> it should be since it was unanswered, but my experience is that one >> does get charged. > In general, it's not chargeable. However, some systems get "confused" > (intentionally misbill, since the consumer probably won't notice, and > the company need only refund the amount of the overcharge, so there is > little risk.) > (TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, considering that a cell phone > is normally always within its owner's reach (a holster fastened to > your trousers, in your purse, in a holder near the driver of an > automobile, etc) it would seem very odd that it had to ring more than > three or four times, at best, unanswered. PAT] Good theory, but a lot of people don't have their cell phones glued to them 24/7 (I do, but most of my family does not) In message Anthony Bellanga wrote: > And using a calling card from a payphone can be significant these > days since the payphone owner can now "legally" extort huge charges > from the long distance carrier or card provider, who will then extort > those surcharges from us. No extortion involved. If someone held a gun to your head or otherwise forced you to use the payphone, it would be extortion. Since you choose to use a payphone, you choose to absorb that cost. A cost, which is regulated, and which helps telcos continue to run pay phones at all, since they're not generally considered profitable anymore, at least around here. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 16:09:51 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga (TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, considering that a cell phone > is normally always within its owner's reach (a holster fastened to > your trousers, in your purse, in a holder near the driver of an > automobile, etc) it would seem very odd that it had to ring more than > three or four times, at best, unanswered. PAT] I dunno ... Women do put their purse down somewhere and walk off momentarily, or else they have so much sh*t stuffed into their purses they can't easily grab a ringing cellphone immediately; One might put their phone down on the table and walk off for a while, not realizing that you might get an incoming call during the period the phone is "unattended"; You forget to (or deliberately don't) take your cellphone with you when you go to the bathroom; You can't answer the phone even one within your reach because you are involved with something else at that moment; You might be on the phone with another call and just can't switch over to answer the call-waiting beep, because the first call is an important call (maybe you are on hold, and you just don't want to leave the first call in case you are taken off hold at the moment you have answered the new beeping call); and so forth. There are numerous reasons why one can't (or won't) answer their inging cellphone at the moment it rings (or beeps or vibrates). If you have to turn your phone off, most cellular carriers will immediately send the incoming call to voicemail, or in the absence of voicemail service on the called line (and there are those who never did get voicemail when they first subscribed to cellular service), the caller will be immediately sent to a "vacant" announcement indicating that the desired party is either not available, or has roamed out of any available coverage/service area. If you have your phone turned on (and are in a signal/service area), your phone will ring about four times (these days, your phone could even ring six or more times), before the call is sent to voicemail, or in the absence of voicemail, to a "vacant" type announcement described above. I don't know about all carriers, but some carriers do NOT give you a "caller-ID log" of incoming calls during the time your phone is turned off. If a caller doesn't choose to leave voicemail when my phone is turned off, I have no way of knowing that I had an attempt at an incoming call. So ... I leave my phone turned on at just about all times. I put it in "vibrate" mode if I am in a library, in a theater, at church, or other places where it would be rude for an incoming call to ring. That way, even if I don't answer an incoming "vibrating" call, and the caller doesn't leave voicemail, I can at least know that I had an incoming call from such-and-such a number (if the number is deliverable) at such-and-such a time. If I can "politely" answer the incoming vibrating call and talk in a very low voice, I will. If I need to "force" the incoming call to voicemail, the caller might hear one or two spurts of "ringing" tone before being sent on to voicemail. If I can't even do that, then the phone will quietly vibrate on my end with the calling party hearing "ringing" tone, for about six "ring" cycles, until the cell switch finally sends the call over to voicemail. The caller can choose to leave voicemail or not, but at least I have seen something about an incoming call, in the incoming Caller-ID Log, or even at the moment the call is ringing (vibrating). So, I don't consider it one bit "odd" that calls to a cellphone could ring several times unanswered, ultimately going to voicemail, or else going to a "vacant" announcement (called party is not available or has roamed outside of the coverage area). We all depend on our (and others') cellphones, but some of us do have other things we are involved with at the moment the cellphone rings, things that take precedance over a cellphone call, just like it with a a ringing landline phone. That's why there is voicemail, answering machines, and answering services. But some people might not even want these things or services on their cellphone or landlines neither. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Date: 26 Dec 2005 16:53:06 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com John Smith wrote: > Roger Toussaint, President of TWU Local 100, responded to Mayor Bloomberg, who had made remarks essentially the same as those above. He said, "There is a higher calling than the law and that's justice and equality. Had Rosa Parks answered the call of the law instead of the higher call of justice, many of us who are driving buses today would still be in the back of the bus." In other words, there are times we MUST pick and choose what laws we will obey. During WW II, the Federal Government ordered changes in qualifications for transit workers in response to a labor shortage. The existing transit motormen, conductors, and bus drivers vehmently disliked this change and went out on strike to protest. This was particularly paralyzing because during the war few people could drive and Phila was a vital war production center. It was necessary for the government to call out the Army and post men on every trolley. I presume you and Toussaint would've called this strike "a higher call to justice", right? Certainly the men who went out on strike at that time felt so. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I can tell you that I have no love lost for unions; some of them have virtually ruined American industry. But here, I am in a quandry; I do not have any love lost for American government either, and particularly things like the obnoxious Taylor Act. But, when the government insists on getting into areas where it has no business being, such as (originally) privately owned transpor- tation systems or schools or real estate, then IMO the government has to stand in line and take its chances like anyone else where labor forces and labor pools are concerned. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 20:22:27 GMT Al Gillis wrote: > Gordon Burditt wrote in message > news:telecom24.570.7@telecom-digest.org: > (Snip, ship, snip...) >> A long time ago, when they first started allowing other people to >> connect modems to a phone line, but NOT directly, there was the DAA >> ("Data Access Arrangement", I think). I worked with these in the late >> 1970's. You rented it from the phone company. It had a defined >> interface so you could pass voice through it, take the phone off the >> hook, pulse dial, detect ringing, etc. For tone dialing you'd just... > (More Snippage... > There was also a gizmo of much the same circuitry called a VCA -- > Voice Connecting Arrangement. A VCA was used on a trunk connecting a > common carrier's service to a customer owned PBX. While a stand alone > VCA was pretty simple, when there were a lot of them there was a lot > of stuff -- equipment racks, mounting shelves, distributing frames, and > who knows what other manner of monkey business. At least there was no > power -- as I recall these VCAs (made by TelLabs) used no external > power. (A "DanRay" PBX I installed in the early '80s had nearly 300 > trunks and an equal number of VCAs! These were installed in a room > separate from the PBX and consumed quite a footprint). > Al > (Oh -- Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Thanks for helping to educate me > throughout all of 2005 -- and several years before that as well!) Many years ago I had an old magneto phone on my line (before deregulation) my daughter at the time was about 1 1/2 years old and cranked it, to say the least it caused problems, first the fuses on my both sides of my line were blown, and it must have taken the protector on the frame out, PacTel was out within an hour and they were not happy with me, I pointed out it had been a phone that was made by for for The Western Electric Co., that did not seem to impress them, I was told not to put it on the line again; I did, but disables the magneto. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Probably what you should have said to the repair service people (after pointing out the Western Electric/Bell stickers on the phone) "I have been trying to get a new phone for X years, you people would never come to do it." PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 #582 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 27 20:27:09 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3681114FE5; Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:27:09 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #583 Message-Id: <20051228012709.3681114FE5@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:27:09 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.4 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MAILTO_TO_REMOVE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:31:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 583 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Spitzer Subpoenas Music Companies on Pricing (Mark Johnson) Yahoo! Phone Out? (Harvey) Payphone Inserts (AirJordan) Music Label Forsakes CDs (Monty Solomon) Nortel Snaps up Tasman (USTelecom dailyLead) Obituary: John Diebold, as in, Yes, That Company (Danny Burstein) Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (Anthony Bellanga) Answer Supervision (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? (Steven Lichter) Re: Saudi Telecom Stops Text Vote for Arab Talent Show (Steve Sobol) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Seth Breidbart) Re: Taxes, was: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather (Seth Breidbart) 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: Mark Johnson Subject: Spitzer Subpoenas Music Companies on Pricing Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 18:29:10 -0600 By MARK JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer State investigators have subpoenaed several major music companies as part of a preliminary inquiry into whether the digital music services have engaged in any illegal price-fixing activity. Darren Dopp, a spokesman for state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, said the office was seeking information on wholesale prices the music labels charge for digital music files that can be downloaded. Dopp said Tuesday that it would take months for the office to launch a full investigation, if one is warranted. Warner Music Group Corp. said in a regulatory filing Friday that the subpoena it received is part of "an industrywide investigation." "As disclosed in our public filings, we are cooperating fully with the inquiry," Amanda Collins, a spokeswoman for Warner Music Group, said in a statement. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Vivendi Universal SA's Universal Music Group had also received subpoenas. Neither company returned calls for comment. Calls to EMI Group PLC's offices in New York and London went unanswered. In September, Apple Computer Inc. CEO Steve Jobs publicly criticized music companies, calling some major labels "greedy" for pushing Apple to hike prices on its popular iTunes service. Recording company executives have scoffed at the suggestion. In a speech before an investors conference, Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr. said that Apple's 99-cent price for single tracks ignores the issue that not all songs are the same commercially and, like any other product, shouldn't be priced the same. Such discord has not kept the labels from licensing their music videos to Apple. Still, as their contracts with Apple come up for renewal, the music companies are seeking to improve their take. "All the prices do seem to move in lock step," said industry analyst Phil Leigh, who runs U.S. market research firm Inside Digital Media. "There has been talk of raising prices for several months. I'm surprised (music companies) raised the issue. It's clear the industry convention is 99 cents." The subpoenas issued this month are not the first time Spitzer, a Democrat running for governor in 2006, has looked into the music industry. In November, Warner Music agreed to pay $5 million to settle an investigation into payoffs for radio airplay of artists. In July, Sony BMG agreed to pay $10 million and stop bribing radio stations to feature artists. Spitzer also asked for documents from EMI Group and Vivendi Universal in that probe. On the Net: New York Attorney General's Office: http://www.oag.state.ny.us 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Harvey Subject: Yahoo! Phone Out? Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 20:15:15 GMT Yahoo! announced that in the next few days from Dec 8th they would offer Phone Out. I have not found it in their Messenger section. Am I missing it or is it delayed? Any expected date? Thanks ... ------------------------------ From: AirJordan Subject: Payphone Inserts Date: 27 Dec 2005 16:18:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I am searching for authentic inserts to put on a payphone that I received for Christmas for use in my home as a novelty item. I need a top and bottom insert as well as the little square piece that goes in the upper left corner. I would prefer Ameritech inserts. Any help anyone can provide would be appreciated. -Jeff ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 12:52:48 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Music Label Forsakes CDs Cost-cutting firm's young fans are online By Associated Press | December 27, 2005 LOS ANGELES -- In 1978, Devo front man Gerald Casale spotted his band's debut LP in a record store bin for the first time. He was struck by an undeniable thought: The band had made it. "It's what you've been busting your butt for and finally, it happens," Casale said. Seeing the latest release by his new group hit a virtual bin as a digital file on Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes Music Store was less than exciting. "This time it's like window shopping," Casale said. His new music is distributed by Cordless Recordings, a new breed of label that has dumped CDs and other traditional formats in favor of offering music only online. The strategy is meant to cut the cost of catapulting a new artist to fortune and fame by tapping the medium where young fans are finding music. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2005/12/27/music_label_forsakes_cds/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 12:46:04 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Nortel Snaps up Tasman USTelecom dailyLead December 27, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AJnwatagCDmNnRiLgi TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Nortel snaps up Tasman BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * RIM rivals mount a challenge to BlackBerry * China's broadband market growing fast * Google can spin off AOL stake in 2008 * Egypt's Orascom has grand ambitions USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Bookstore Bestsellers A Wise Investment HOT TOPICS * Industry trends: What to expect in 2006 * Siemens predicts IPTV surge * Report: Big changes on horizon for IP set-top market * The top telephony stories of 2005 * Vivato ends operations TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * More rural Canadian communities hooked into broadband REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Saudi mobile firm blocks SMS voting for reality show * Fiancier caught up in lawsuit over wireless spectrum sales Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AJnwatagCDmNnRiLgi ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Obituary:) John Diebold, as in, Yes, That Company Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 23:11:24 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC " John Diebold, a Visionary of the Computer Age, Is Dead at 79" By JENNIFER BAYOT December 27, 2005 " John Diebold, a visionary thinker whose early and persistent promotion of computers and other far-reaching innovations helped shape industrial development in America and beyond, died yesterday at his home in Bedford Hills, N.Y. He was 79. " The cause was esophageal cancer, said his nephew, also named John Diebold. " Mr. Diebold, who held degrees in business and engineering, was an evangelist of the future. In 1952, at a time when computers weighed five tons, his book "Automation" described how programmable devices could change the day-to-day operations of all kinds of businesses ... rest at: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/nyregion/27diebold.html Oh, one more point from the clip: " Mr. Diebold (pronounced DEE-bold).... " _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 14:02:31 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga wrote: > Anthony Bellanga wrote: >> And using a calling card from a payphone can be significant these >> days since the payphone owner can now "legally" extort huge charges >> from the long distance carrier or card provider, who will then extort >> those surcharges from us. > No extortion involved. If someone held a gun to your head or > otherwise forced you to use the payphone, it would be extortion. > Since you choose to use a payphone, you choose to absorb that cost. > A cost, which is regulated, and which helps telcos continue to run pay > phones at all, since they're not generally considered profitable > anymore, at least around here. It IS extortion at the rates they charge. While I have a cellphone, not everyone has one, and payphones with calling cards are still the way they need to place calls while not at home. The surcharge rates are *NOT* regulated! The FCC/etc. have "allowed" the payphone owners to charge these surcharges, LONG AFTER the private payphone owners first became involved in the payphone game. But the rates themselves, while "recommended" by the FCC/etc., are NOT regulated! The amounts that the payphone owners charge back to the Long Distance carriers who then pass back to the card-holder is *PURE GRAVY* for both, since the Long Distance and Card companies are most likely adding even more profit for themselves. And it is NOT the telcos who own most of the payphones these days but rather private sleaze companies which entered the payphone game with 1984 (and some illegally before 1984). The Long Distance carriers, card issuers, etc. usually have some kind of card surcharge that would apply when you are calling from either a payphone, hotel phone, or regular business (PBX or otherwise) or residential line, but if you are using your card from a payphone (and in some cases even from a hotel or hospital room PBX extension), you can be hit with quite expensive ADDITIONAL surcharges which again, is PURE GRAVY for both the (non telco) payphone owner or PBX owner, passed back to the long distance carrer/card issuer who passes it to us with a mark-up. These non-telco private payphone owners (and even many hospital/hotel PBX owners) wanted to "change the rules" in the middle of the game, and many of them weren't even playing by the original rules in the first place! Payphone service used to be a good convenient public service when telco really did own the phones. But when the non-telco owners came in, like a cancer, payphone service went to hell, with the telcos finally pulling out of the game completely in many places. I'll just use my cellphone whenever I'm not able to use my home phone, but I do feel for those who don't have cellphones and have to use remaining sleazy (non-telco) payphones. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 14:16:18 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga I know that when I first got mine, if you let it ring more then 3 > rings Pacific Telephone Cellular (later AirTouch) would charge you as > it would if you let a busy tone go too long. I remember calling one > of our switchroom numbers which was set for no supervision and getting > charged for the call as well as a couple of times being dropped off > since the originating switch was looking for supervision and when it > got none it would timeout, that was before SS7 and when there was > still a "C" lead in the switch. I assume you're referring to outbound calls FROM your cellphone, and getting billed by cellco (AirTouch, for instance) on such incompleted calls from your cellular phone. But the question here, is how cellcos will "supervise back" to the originating carrier (whether landline or wireless), on calls to an "unavailable at the moment" (or roamed out of the service area) cellphone numbers! In theory, the calling party (regardless of whether they are landline, cellular, calling card, coin, etc) should NOT have to pay for reaching such an "unavailable or roamed out of the service area" recordings when calling TO a cellphone. But even with SS7, many cellcos will cause a charge condition back to the calling party, though this won't happen in all cases. And it is not consistant even within the same cellco. Some of their switches will cause a charge condition back to the calling party, some of their switches will NOT charge for the call, within the same cellular provider! ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 02:50:10 GMT Steven Lichter wrote: > Many years ago I had an old magneto phone on my line (before > deregulation) my daughter at the time was about 1 1/2 years old and > cranked it, to say the least it caused problems, first the fuses on my > both sides of my line were blown, and it must have taken the protector > on the frame out, PacTel was out within an hour and they were not > happy with me, I pointed out it had been a phone that was made by for > for The Western Electric Co., that did not seem to impress them, I was > told not to put it on the line again; I did, but disables the magneto. > The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? > (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Probably what you should have said to > the repair service people (after pointing out the Western Electric/Bell > stickers on the phone) "I have been trying to get a new phone for > X years, you people would never come to do it." PAT] It was a metal plate. I have a friend that lives in the Topanga Canyon (old Topanga Canyon) area of LA County and he has an old Candle Stick that was installed there in the 20's when his grandfather lived there. He used it for years. Never updated his lines until about a year ago when he opted for DSL, the installer with Verizon just looked at the phone and the box and shook his head. He had to call a supervisor to see it. The phone is still in place and still works. I had a space saver type of phone (the old black ones with the dial on top) installed in a room in my parent's garage and the installer that installed it worked on the phone the better part of a day, could not get it to work, and had other installers coming by to look at it, he came back the next day and got it to work, it needed a special bell box to work. When I ordered the phone the rep had no idea what it even was, this was in Pacific Telephone area. When I moved out they never came and got it, they just left it there. I came and got it one day and it lives with my other old phone in my den. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Saudi Telecom Stops Text Vote for Arab Talent Show Date: Mon, 26 Dec 2005 19:31:09 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Andrew Hammond wrote: > Saudi mobile operator Mobily has stopped users from text message > voting for an Arab "Star Academy" competition because of an Islamic > decree branding the reality show immoral, the company said on Monday. Y'know, if Simon Cowell (from AMERICAN IDOL) was one of the judges, maybe as punishment they could have taped his mouth shut. ;) Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 23:34:56 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , AES wrote: > So, here's a Verizon customer, sitting at the north end of Silicon > Valley, not way out in the hills, just a mile or two from downtown > Palo Alto -- and less than one tower in the display on my phone. Any > advice on how to approach Verizon about this? That's the Verizon who spends more money advertising how good their network is than on making their network good? The one that once gave me "no signal" in the middle of Times Square? The one that about 50% of the time switched me to "roaming" in the middle of downtown Minneapolis? I recommend nuclear. Seth ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Taxes, was: NYC Transit Strike Midst Cold Weather and Christmas Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:07:07 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Danny Burstein wrote: > In sethb@panix.com (Seth > Breidbart) writes: > [ Responding to TELECOM Digest Editor regarding NYC's Mayor > Bloomberg's non-control of the State chartered transit system ] >> Then why can't he get the commuter tax back? (There used to be a NYC >> Income Tax for non-residents of the city who worked there, but the >> state turned it off. Turning it on to lower taxes paid by city >> residents who vote for mayor would help Bloomberg.) > If you really believe that letting NYC tap additional tax revenue > (from, in this case, non city residents) would lead to a corresponding > decrease in other taxes, I'd suggest you're demonstrating a very rosy > view of government finances. No, I believe he'd just have more to spend. But in either case, it's clear Bloomberg _wants_ the commuter tax so the fact he doesn't have it proves that NYS isn't controlled by him. Seth ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2005-06 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 #583 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 28 00:57:36 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 35DD9150CD; Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:57:36 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #584 Message-Id: <20051228055736.35DD9150CD@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:57:36 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.0 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, HOT_NASTY autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 28 Dec 2005 01:00:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 584 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Tech Trends in 2006 (Tim Gnatek) Shape of Surfing in 2005 (Tim Gnatek) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (jared) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (John Levine) What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? (advertising@adtomi.com) Re: Obituary: John Diebold, as in, Yes, That Company (Fred Goldstein) Re: Obituary: John Diebold, as in, Yes, That Company (stannc@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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Tim Gnatek Subject: Tech Trends in 2006 Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 23:03:39 -0600 Tech Trends to Watch in 2006 by Tim Gnatek - ExtremeTech With the growing number of technology-infused products and services tipping into the mainstream, even hesitant tech adopters are starting to take advantage of new ways to acquire, share and enjoy entertainment. Which items will go from conversation pieces of the digerati to must-haves for the mass market? Sizing up some of the notable entertainment technology trends of 2005 gives one perspective on the emerging status quo and what are likely the breakout technologies in 2006. Portable Entertainment PCs Laptops are more popular than ever. According to some sources, the notebook market will rise 30 percent this year, and overtake homebound units by 2010. It isn't just the anywhere access: laptops geared for entertaining make a good case for replacing both the TiVo and the big old box at home. Even ordinary laptops are going for movie screen makeovers: Research firm IDC forecasts widescreen-format displays will outpace standard screens next year. But entertainment PCs, like the Toshiba Qosmio and Fujitsu N6010, have more than just a pretty screen; they come packed with 100GB hard drives, Windows XP Media Center Edition and processors that can simultaneously record live TV, stream tunes and play movies on 17-inch letterbox LCDs. If that's not big enough, the machines also include digital outputs for connecting to larger displays like plasma screens and high definition televisions, and remote controls for on-the-couch computing. HDTV High definition televisions have gone mainstream as well. Thanks to HDTV's convincing improvement in picture quality and a growing number of available programs, more shoppers are buying into the new picture format. All the major networks provide at least some prime time programming in high definition, and many special cable and satellite channels like TNT and DiscoveryHD offer the format exclusively. Cost has always been an obstacle for these sets, which pump out nearly ten times the pixel count of standard televisions but dropping prices have caused some insiders to believe that high-definition television will be the hottest trend of the holiday season. Units like Sony's entry-level 30 inch set, the KV-30HS420, can be had for as little as $700, while bigger 45-inch living room sets like the Sharp Aquos LC-45GXSU come in under $5,000. Making Digital Video Capturing moments on film has become a lot more convenient; in addition to smaller camcorders filling the market, many of today's other portable gadgets hide miniature movie-makers that record in computer-friendly formats for sharing online. Cameras have featured movie modes for some time, and newer versions, like the pocket-sized Kodak EasyShare V530, give more attention to video-specific features. It not only records 5 megapixel photographs, the camera shoots MPEG-4 format movies with an anti-shake mode that steadies jittery hands. That even more essential carry-along, the cell phone, also has dozens of video-recording models to choose from, from Nokia's 7610, a showpiece imaging phone for early adopters that captures up to 10 minutes of film, to the more affordable Motorola V551 video phone. The captured movies may not be box office quality, but they certainly suffice, and are incredibly portable, making them just the answer to recording impromptu moments. Sharing Personal Media With all that video-making wherewithal, more people are faced with the question of what to do with their new movies. Post them on a blog? E-mail them to friends? Upload them to a peer-to-peer network? Unless you're a shameless exhibitionist, you won't want to indiscriminately share personal moments online (just see the Numa Numa dance to be reminded how embarrassing this can be). Fortunately, a spate of new file-sharing tools can help you share video with just who you want. The peer-to-peer service Grouper.com has honed itself to personal movie distribution, allowing users to control access to films or files by creating or joining private file-sharing networks. Share self-made media just among family, post videos to an online club, or release a movie to the masses. With a new software update, users can edit videos and add a soundtrack or special effects to movies before posting. Other services encourage private file sharing too: private peer-to-peer groups like Qnext turn your computer into the hub of a private network for only those you invite. The program allows members to access your hard drive like a folder on their computer, allowing access to only the files you indicate. Qnext bills their application as a do-all program; not only can you share clips with others, but with the built-in instant messaging, internet phone service and videoconferencing, you can remind friends to check them out. Video to Go Thanks to some of this season's most wished-for gifts, we've seen more ways to carry video clips around with you this year. Although the category isn't new, it has come a long way; early portable players like the Archos AV320 suffered in storage and portability compared to today's slim-lined creations like the iPod Video, which holds up to 60 gigabytes in roughly half the size. The latest devices also hide video players within other hot portable gadgets, like the Sony PSP game system. Cell phones are becoming mobile sets as well, as 3G models with video players like the Nokia 6600 rise in popularity. Already, South Korea's Digital Multimedia Broadcasting company runs a whole television network for wireless mobile devices. That may not be so far away for the U.S. -- programming from the likes of Disney, Warner Brothers and ABC television is already available for download on-demand to portable devices. Podcasts Podcasting has become a more familiar term this year, as commercial broadcasters and corporate marketers catch on to publishing radio shows over the Internet . Today, many popular radio programs, including top AM radio talk shows like "Coast to Coast AM" and "The Rush Limbaugh Show," offer Podcasts of their daily episodes to subscribers, as do many newscasts and public radio programs. Joining them this August, General Motors became the first company to issue corporate Podcasts about their product line. Podcasting has grown influential enough to take over the terrestrial airwaves, too. Adam Curry, MTV video jock and pioneer in Podcasting, now hosts a Podcast talk show on Sirius radio, while this year in San Francisco, KYOURADIO (1550 AM) became the first all-Podcast radio station; Podcasters can upload their shows to the station's Web site for later airplay. Entertained by Open Source Whether for entertainment or productivity, 2005 was another year marked by the growing popularity of open-source software programs. Free to use and modify, the community-built programs continued to challenge the commercial software industry, led by the most popular of recent adoptions, the Firefox Web browser. In just a little over a year since its debut, the Mozilla development team logged over 100 million downloads of their application, and just released an updated version with improved surfing conveniences. But it's not just the program that turns heads; since the program facilitates third-party add-ons, hundreds of developers have released their own tweaks to the tool, making it an ideal device for frittering away time. There are thousands of other open-source projects under way, many of which are skewed to entertainment and are free to try. For example, look at: http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php Juice is an open-source tool for recording Podcasts; Audacity provides a free sound editor, and Xine allows for playback of DVDs, video files and streamed multimedia online. Other open-source programs are listed at SourceForge.net. It's not just programs; you can listen to open-source audio, too. Musicians are beginning to take advantage of nontraditional copyright options like Creative Commons licenses to protect their works while allowing others to further mash up the music. Guessing the Future Will these trends someday be as common as MP3 downloads and DVD players? There's no way to really tell what the future holds (look no further than the 1950s textbooks that predicted we'd be riding flying carpets to Mars). While there are certainly signs that the masses are adopting new entertainment technologies, picking today's top trends and guessing tomorrow's is an exercise in the imagination. Yet, it's one with value; even if the guesses miss the mark, they help clarify our vision of what's to come -- truly our best guidepost to the future. Consider this for example: Hot Video Game Console Xbox 360 Platinum System Console The Xbox 360 video game and entertainment system places you at the center of the experience. Available this holiday season in Europe, Japan, and North America, Xbox 360 ignites a new era of digital entertainment that is always connected, always personalized, and always in high definition more... Tim Gnateck is a regular contibutor to the New York Times. Copyright 2005 Tech Tuesday 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more tech news, also see: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html ------------------------------ From: Tim Gnatek Subject: Shape of Surfing in 2005 Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 23:04:48 -0600 by Tim Gnatek - ExtremeTech With all the time we spend online, the Internet seems to be becoming America's favorite pastime. Recent reports record more hours spent surfing the Web than watching television, among other leisurely pursuits. So taking a look at where America travels on the information highway can provide some reasonable way to scope out our most recent pop-culture habits. Which Web sites are the most popular? According to a recent study released by Emarketer Inc., we're most often turning to Web portals, shopping sites and information pages. Yahoo! was at the top of the list for home and office surfers, with 101.3 million visitors in the month of August alone. Rounding out the top 10 sites was Microsoft's corporate site, MSN.com, Google, America Online, eBay, MapQuest, Amazon.com, RealNetworks and the Weather Channel, which helps prove that our social instinct to discuss the weather holds true in the online world, too. But most often people are going online to search for information. A new paper from the Pew Internet & American Life Project Online reported that nearly 60 million people use search engines every day, and Nielsen/NetRatings counted 5.1 billion searches just in October, bringing Internet search just behind e-mail as the second-most-popular online activity. Which have been the most popular? It is little surprise that Google, the company whose name has become synonymous with searching, would lead the list. In the Nielsen study, Google consumed 2.4 billion queries; that's nearly half of all searches. Yahoo, MSN search and AOL filled out the top four, conducting a respective 20 percent, 10 percent and 7 percent of search traffic. Ask Jeeves, which ranked fifth, charted the most dramatic rise in usage, with a 77 percent rise in traffic, which might equate with new search services, like "direct answers from search," that answers natural-language questions by culling information from the Web. Even more telling than where we've gone online is what we've been looking for. Many search engines have released their most popular search terms of the year, and the resulting lists form a snapshot of the concerns of the online world. As the lists show, the year's tragic natural disasters played a large role, but politics and entertainment piqued Web searchers' interests as well. Yahoo's top news searches of 2005: 1. Tsunami 2. Iraq 3. Michael Jackson trial 4. Natalee Holloway 5. Afghanistan 6. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie 7. Hurricane Katrina 8. Cindy Sheehan 9. President Bush 10. Tom Cruise Ask Jeeves' top news searches of 2005: 1. President Bush 2. Iraq 3. Hurricane Katrina 4. Tsunami 5. Michael Jackson 6. Britney Spears 7. Natalee Holloway 8. American Idol 9. Xbox 360 10. Angelina Jolie Google News' top searches of 2005: 1. Janet Jackson 2. Hurricane Katrina 3. Tsunami 4. xbox 360 5. Brad Pitt 6. Michael Jackson 7. American Idol 8. Britney Spears 9. Angelina Jolie 10. Harry Potter For an updated list of top searches, including most popular terms in categories like entertainment and sports, check out Yahoo!'s Buzz Index, or Google's Zeitgeist for more information. Copyright 2005 Tech Tuesday 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For other news headlines of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html (or) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 18:34:32 -0700 From: jared@netspacenospamnet.au (jared) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? As compared to the company who claim more bars? Though that company is unsure of their name, sometimes the phone comes up with the name of company they bought more than a year ago. Even GSM in the USA doesn't compare with GSM overseas in terms of how far one can be from a tower ( and over a hill, too). > That's the Verizon who spends more money advertising how good their > network is than on making their network good? > The one that once gave me "no signal" in the middle of Times Square? > The one that about 50% of the time switched me to "roaming" in the > middle of downtown Minneapolis? ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 27 Dec 2005 20:49:37 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) These devices are very illegal. They are also very poorly built and freqently sources of bizarre interference to 800 MHz trunked radio systems as well as to various military UHF comm systems. When I find them, I smash them in front of the owner, and discourage him from installing any more of them. It helps to have an MP along. In addition to being illegal interference sources and occasionally locking up cells, they also aren't very effective. You'd do much better with an analogue bag phone with a yagi on it (which is pretty much the standard home telephone in some places around here). The analogue systems have considerably better intelligibility as well. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not see what would be so illegal about hooking up an external antenna at a somewhat higher line of sight. Many phones (Nokia models for example) have a plug on the back side for just that reason. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 28 Dec 2005 01:33:34 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > It IS extortion at the rates they charge. While I have a cellphone, > not everyone has one, and payphones with calling cards are still the > way they need to place calls while not at home. > The surcharge rates are *NOT* regulated! The amount the payphone owner charges the calling card company is regulated, but you are correct that they can mark it up as much as they want. I would think that the obvious solution would be to find a calling card that doesn't. It's not like there is a shortage of options. > The Long Distance carriers, card issuers, etc. usually have some kind > of card surcharge that would apply when you are calling from either a > payphone, hotel phone, or regular business (PBX or otherwise) or > residential line, ... I get the impression you haven't used a calling card in a while. The ones I use have a flat per minute charge from normal phones, and about a 55 cent per call surcharge from payphones. > Payphone service used to be a good convenient public service when > telco really did own the phones. But when the non-telco owners came > in, like a cancer, payphone service went to hell You're utterly confusing causes and effects. Three things happened at about the same time that were bad news for traditional pay phone service. The first was the plummeting long distance rates due to IXC competition. When long distance cost 30 cents/minute and local payphone calls were a dime, there was plenty to share with the telco to compensate the payphone owner. The second was cell phones, which now carry a whole lot of calls that used to be made on pay phones. And the third, which I presume you are referring to, is COCOTs. It's true, COCOT providers have sometimes competed on the basis of how much customer revenue they can kick back to the owner of the location where the COCOT is located. But I don't see that any more -- now I typically see COCOTs that charge about the same or maybe even less than telco payphones. I see plenty of COCOTs that offer flat rates as low as 10 cpm for some international calls, something that Ma never gave us. R's, John ------------------------------ From: advertising@adtomi.com Subject: What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? Date: 27 Dec 2005 20:54:13 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm just currious what companies Vonage users to terminate calls across the country since they do not have their own true infrastructure. Any ideas? Gabriel ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 22:23:16 -0500 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Obituary: John Diebold, as in, Yes, That Company John Diebold was an important computer pioneer, but the notorious company that bears the Diebold name was founded in 1859, and has been manufacturing safes, vaults, and other "physical security" products since then. They're probably the largest manufacturer of ATMs, based on the ones I see around Boston. John Diebold was born in New Jersey and later lived in New York. Diebold Inc. is based in Ohio. Perhaps he was related to the founder. Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/ ------------------------------ From: stannc@gmail.com Subject: Re: Obituary:) John Diebold, as in, Yes, That Company Date: 27 Dec 2005 20:09:45 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Danny Burstein wrote: > " John Diebold, a Visionary of the Computer Age, Is Dead at 79" > By JENNIFER BAYOT December 27, 2005 Nope, it's not THAT company: Over the next half-century, his firm, which had no connection to electronic equipment company Diebold Inc., provided advice to AT&T, IBM, Boeing and Xerox, along with the cities of Chicago and New York and the countries of Venezuela and Jordan. The same wire story is at: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/business/1700AP_Obit_Diebold.html ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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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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 #584 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 28 18:45:37 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id BBBAF14CA6; Wed, 28 Dec 2005 18:45:36 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #585 Message-Id: <20051228234536.BBBAF14CA6@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 18:45:36 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.5 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, MORTGAGE_PITCH autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 28 Dec 2005 18:47:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 585 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests (Stewart Powell) Condi Rice Authorized NSA to Wiretap U.N. Phones, Email (Jason Leopold) Red Cross Hurricane Fraud Theft Substantial; 14 Arrested (Olivia Munoz) Desperate Meth Users Turn to ID Theft via Computers (Greg Risling) Penis Patch Top Spam in 2005 (Reuters News Wire) Businessman in EU Sues in Spam Case and Wins _and Collects_ (BBC NewsWire) Move to Airwaves to $936 Million (Jeremy Pelofsky) Reliable, Easy, and Cost Effective Way to Record Calls? (Phil Earnhardt) Covad, Verizon Settle Their Differences (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? (Rich Greenberg) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (DevilsPGD) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (DevilsPGD) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Rik) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (niallgal@yahoo.com) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (Lisa Hancock) Re: What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? (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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Stewart M. Powell Subject: Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:46:40 -0600 http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/253334_nsaspying24.html Secret court modified wiretap requests; Intervention may have led Bush to bypass panel. Saturday, December 24, 2005 By STEWART M. POWELL SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU WASHINGTON -- Government records show that the administration was encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's approval. A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four previous presidential administrations combined. The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court nearly four years ago to launch secret National Security Agency spying on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside the United States, according to James Bamford, an acknowledged authority on the supersecret NSA, which intercepts telephone calls, e-mails, faxes and Internet communications. "They wanted to expand the number of people they were eavesdropping on, and they didn't think they could get the warrants they needed from the court to monitor those people," said Bamford, author of "Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" and "The Puzzle Palace: Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence Organization." "The FISA court has shown its displeasure by tinkering with these applications by the Bush administration." Bamford offered his speculation in an interview last week. The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, adopted by Congress in the wake of President Nixon's misuse of the NSA and the CIA before his resignation over Watergate, sets a high standard for court-approved wiretaps on Americans and resident aliens inside the United States. To win a court-approved wiretap, the government must show "probable cause" that the target of the surveillance is a member of a foreign terrorist organization or foreign power and is engaged in activities that "may" involve a violation of criminal law. Faced with that standard, Bamford said, the Bush administration had difficulty obtaining FISA court-approved wiretaps on dozens of people within the United States who were communicating with targeted al-Qaida suspects inside the United States. The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps has approved at least 18,740 applications for electronic surveillance or physical searches from five presidential administrations since 1979. The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court's activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that "no orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the requested authority" submitted by the government. But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004 -- the most recent years for which public records are available. The judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection in the court's history. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said last week that Bush authorized NSA surveillance of overseas communications by U.S.-based terror suspects because the FISA court's approval process was too cumbersome. The Bush administration, responding to concerns expressed by some judges on the 11-member panel, agreed last week to give them a classified briefing on the domestic spying program. U.S. District Judge Malcolm Howard, a member of the panel, told CNN that the Bush administration agreed to brief the judges after U.S. District Judge James Robertson resigned from the FISA panel, apparently to protest Bush's spying program. Bamford, 59, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran, likens the Bush administra- tion's domestic surveillance without court approval to Nixon-era abuses of intelligence agencies. NSA and previous eavesdropping agencies collected duplicates of all international telegrams to and from the United States for decades during the Cold War under a program code-named "Shamrock" before the program ended in the 1970s. A program known as "Minaret" tracked 75,000 Americans whose activities had drawn government interest between 1952 and 1974, including participation in the anti-war movement during the Vietnam War. "NSA prides itself on learning the lessons of the 1970s and obeying the legal restrictions imposed by FISA," Bamford said. "Now it looks like we're going back to the bad old days again." Copyright 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from the daily media, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Jason Leopold Subject: Condi Rice Authorized NSA to Wiretap United Nations Phones and Email Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:49:26 -0600 Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say Filed by Jason Leopold President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show. Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency's campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote. Rice did not immediately return a call for comment. The former officials said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also participated in discussions about the plan, which involved "stepping up" efforts to eavesdrop on diplomats. A spokeswoman at the White House who refused to give her name also would not comment, and pointed to a March 3, 2003 press briefing by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer when questions about U.N. spying were first raised. "As a matter of long-standing policy, the administration never comments on anything involving any people involved in intelligence," Fleischer said. "So I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no." Disclosure of the wiretaps and the monitoring of U.N. members' email came on the eve of the Iraq war in the British-based Observer. The leak -- which the paper acquired in the form of an email via a British translator -- came amid a U.S. push urging U.N. members to vote in favor of a resolution that said Iraq was in violation of U.N. resolution 1441, asserting that it had failed to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction. News of the NSA spying on the U.N. received scant coverage in U.S. newspapers at the time. But with the explosive domestic spying report published in the New York Times last week, a closer examination of pre-war spying may shed light on whether the Bush administration has used the NSA for its own political purposes, as opposed to tracking down communications regarding potential terrorist threats against the U.S. The leaked NSA email detailing the agency's spy tactics against the U.N. was written Jan. 31, 2003 by Chief of Staff for Regional Targets Frank Koza. In the email, Koza asked an undisclosed number of NSA and British intelligence officials to "pay attention to existing non-UN Security Council Member UN-related and domestic comms (home and office telephones) for anything useful related to Security Council deliberations." One intelligence source who spoke to RAW STORY said top White House officials and some Republican members of Congress had debated in December 2002 whether to step up the surveillance of U.N. officials to include eavesdropping on home telephone and personal email accounts. Some feared that in the event it was discovered, it would further erode relations between the U.S. and the U.N. The source added that U.S. spying on the U.N. isn't new. "It's part of the job," the intelligence source said. "Everyone knows it's being done." Eavesdropping on U.N. diplomats is authorized under the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Services Act. However, it's still considered a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which says that "The receiving state shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes. The official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable." According to one former official, "The administration pushed the envelope by tapping their home phones." Koza's email, a copy of which is included at the end of this report, says the "Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc." "The whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters." Koza's email was sent out to NSA and British intelligence officials through a top secret surveillance network set up by the NSA, the British Government Communication Headquarters and similar intelligence agencies based in Australia, New Zealand and Canada known as Echelon. Moreover, the email was distributed just four days after Hans Blix filed his Iraq weapons report with the U.N. It was leaked to a handful of media outlets in the U.S. and U.K. by Katharine Tersea Gun, a former translator for British intelligence. Gun was arrested in November 2003 and charged with violating her country's Official Secrets Act. She said she felt compelled to leak the memo because she believed the U.S. and Britain were about to launch an illegal war. "Any disclosures that may have been made were justified on the following grounds: because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. Government who attempted to subvert our own security services and, to prevent wide-scale death and casualties among ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war," she said in a statement at the time. In his book "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward, deputy managing editor of the Washington Post, said the administration was also spying on Hans Blix, the U.N. weapons inspector sent to Iraq to look for WMDs. "One of the things that's gone unnoticed is national intelligence assets spying on Hans Blix," Woodward told the Council on Foreign Relations on June 9, 2004 "And Bush was getting these reports and felt that there was incongruity between what Blix was saying publicly and what he was actually doing. It makes it very clear we were wiretapping Hans Blix." In an article for Counterpunch, media critic Norman Solomon noted that the U.S. media barely covered the U.N. spying. "Nearly 96 hours after the Observer had reported it, I called Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale and asked why not," Solomon writes. "'We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting,' Smale replied. She added that 'we could get no confirmation or comment.' In other words, U.S. intelligence officials refused to confirm or discuss the memo -- so the Times did not see fit to report on it." The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to U.N," while the Los Angeles Times emphasized from the outset that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are "long-standing," Solomon wrote. Solomon says his research turned up only one story which took the spying seriously -- a Mar. 4, 2003 piece in the Baltimore Sun. The leaked NSA email which revealed the spying follows. # ======================== To: [Recipients withheld] From: FRANK KOZA, Def Chief of Staff (Regional Targets) CIV/NSA Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16 Subject: Reflections of Iraq Debate/Votes at UN-RT Actions + Potential for Related Contributions Importance: HIGH Top Secret//COMINT//X1 All, As you've likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc -- the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters. We've also asked ALL RT topi's to emphasize and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/ debates/ votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives/ insights/ whatever. We recognize that we can't afford to ignore this possible source. We'd appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you'll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels - especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState's presentation to the UNSC. Thanks for your help. # ================================== (Note: Slight edit made for clarification purposes.) 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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 ------------------------------ From: Olivia Munoz Subject: Red Cross Hurricane Fraud Quite Substantial Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:25:04 -0600 49 Accused of Defrauding Hurricane Fund By OLIVIA MUNOZ, Associated Press Writer 9 minutes ago The number of people indicted in a scheme that bilked thousands of dollars from a Red Cross fund designated for Hurricane Katrina victims has risen to 49, federal authorities said. At least 14 employees worked at a Red Cross call center in Bakersfield and are accused of helping family and friends file false claims for aid money, said Mary Wenger, a spokeswoman for U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott in Sacramento. Six have pleaded guilty to federal wire fraud charges since the first indictments were announced in October, she said Tuesday. The fake claims drained at least $200,000 from the fund, with an average payout of about $1,000, Red Cross spokeswoman Devorah Goldburg said. The total could rise as the investigation continues, she said. The Bakersfield site is the largest of three Red Cross centers set up to handle hurricane calls. Others are in Niagara Falls, N.Y., and Falls Church, Va. Operators provided qualifying victims with a personal identification number they then presented to receive aid funds from Western Union, authorities said. The Red Cross contacted the FBI after it performed an audit of the call center and discovered an unusually high number of claims were being paid out at Western Union outlets in the Bakersfield area. "It was the Red Cross that found this problem," Jack McGuire, the national group's interim president, said Wednesday on NBC's "Today." "We put into effect these call centers to speed up delivery of support to people that needed it. As part of that, we put into place mechanisms to look for fraud up front and to find fraud after the fact." None of the indicted employees worked directly for the Red Cross. Officials of Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based Spherion, which operates the call center, have said the company didn't have time to run background checks on its 1,200 workers. The indicted employees were providing PIN numbers to their friends and family who would then go to Western Union to collect the funds, Scott said in October. "Sometimes they'd give a victim a PIN number and turn around and call a buddy with the same PIN, and there'd be a race to Western Union," he said. McGuire said $200,000 was a small percentage of the approximately $1.4 billion Red Cross provided to Katrina victims. And he said Red Cross was working to improve its delivery and anti-fraud systems for the future. McGuire, executive vice president of the charity's Biomedical Services, was named to serve as interim leader after President Marsha Evans announced her resignation Dec. 13. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Greg Risling Subject: Desperate Meth Users Turn to ID Theft Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:26:50 -0600 By GREG RISLING, Associated Press Writer Stealing mail. Digging through trash. Days spent in front of a computer trying to unlock financial information. All to score methamphetamine. Authorities are discovering that more and more desperate users of the drug are turning to identity theft to pay for their habit, creating a criminal nexus costing Americans millions of dollars. The trend is sweeping the West and spreading to other parts of the country, with one hub of activity in the garages and trailer parks of Riverside and San Bernardino counties on the fringe of suburban Los Angeles. The region was the site of a third of California's nearly 500 meth lab busts in 2004 and is home to the second-highest number of identity theft victims in the nation. "It's been said the two crimes go together like rats and garbage," said Jack Lucky, a Riverside County prosecutor who nearly became a victim of ID theft himself before his personal information was found at a meth lab. The connection is posing a major challenge for authorities, who until recently tended to overlook or neglect identity theft evidence at meth labs in favor of pursuing drug charges that are easier to prove and carry stiffer penalties. "We weren't educated or sophisticated enough to spot what they were doing," said Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Steve Koller, a narcotics task force member. "It's taken us a while to catch up." U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (news, bio, voting record), D-Wash., has called on the Department of Justice to study the link further and recommend tougher penalties for those convicted of both crimes. "What we are probably going to find is that there is a stronger connection than we know right now," she said. No figures were available on just how much the link is costing consumers. Separately, however, meth use and identity theft have each taken their toll. Nearly 10 million Americans fell victim last year to identity theft, costing $5 billion. Meanwhile, the popularity of methamphetamine has grown, with an estimated 12 million people trying it at least once. Police said meth users - known as "cranksters" -- are drawn to identity theft because they can stay up for days scanning computer records or go "Dumpster diving" for discarded financial information. A drug dealer recently provided fake identities to a woman in Phoenix who allegedly used them to buy cell phones. She was paid with methamphetamine, and the phones were later used by some of the dealer's associates, authorities said. Last summer, Georgia authorities tracked at least 20 thieves -- known as the "Mailbox Meth Gang" -- who cruised housing subdivisions looking for raised flags on mailboxes that could yield checks and bank statements to exchange for meth. Investigators found 14,000 credit card numbers in a laptop computer seized from the gang, but the most success came from using the internet to steal credit card numbers and other personal information. Police said the thieves typically do not target one spot too long and often divide tasks, with different persons stealing the identity, converting it and then using it. Alameda police Sgt. Anthony Munoz said about 85 percent of the identity theft cases he investigates have a connection to methamphetamine use. In one, a defendant pleaded guilty to 56 counts of identity theft and was sentenced to just one year in county jail, he said. "Those are the type of sentences you get," said Munoz, who backs sentencing enhancements for people convicted of both crimes. Penalties for identity theft vary from state to state. In California, where legislators are trying to strengthen the laws, identity thieves can face up to three years in prison and a fine up to $10,000. "We don't have the significant sentences right now that would deter some of these individuals," Riverside County District Attorney Grover Trask said. "It's easy money." In Arizona, the connection is so prevalent that Attorney General Terry Goddard now sends an investigator with identity theft expertise to meth lab busts. Lucky, the Riverside County prosecutor, didn't realize personal information had been stolen from his mailbox until a caller said there had been fraudulent activity linked to his credit card. He got suspicious when the caller requested his Social Security number. When he asked for a supervisor, he was given a toll-free number that was no longer in service. Identity thieves later applied for credit in his name and the prosecutor didn't discover where his identity ended up until he got a call from a sheriff's deputy. "I guess we weren't really surprised they found it at a meth lab," Lucky 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Associated Press headlines and stories, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Penis Patch the Top Spam in 2005 Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:28:17 -0600 Ads mentioning real estate tycoon Donald Trump and those hawking "Penis Patch" body enhancements were among the top 10 junk e-mails in 2005, according to America Online. Noticeably absent? Porn. "Porn is passe when it comes to spam," Nicholas Graham, an AOL spokesman said, "people find it boring." Sexually suggestive e-mails took another tumble this year after slipping in popularity last year, although web sites devoted to sex increased, about half of the total web sites in 2005 dealt with sex, including pictures, etc. More than a half-trillion junk e-mails, known as spam, were blocked by AOL filters, slightly above 2004 levels, the company said. The number of junk e-mails reported by AOL's 26 million members worldwide has declined about 75 percent since 2003. E-mails using more sophisticated tactics that attempt to deceive recipients by purporting to be from a friend or a legitimate agency or bear subject lines such as "Your Mortgage Application is Ready" are also beginning to replace blatant product promotions, AOL said. Spammers "are (employing) 'back alley' tactics, and they are doing it with a specialized team that's working overtime to hide the source of their spam by employing zombie PC's, bot-nets and using other nefarious tactics," Charles Stiles, AOL's postmaster, said in a statement. In 2005, AOL blocked an average of 1.5 billion spams per day. Approxi- mately 8.5 in 10 e-mails received at its gateway were blocked as junk. AOL is a division of media conglomerate Time Warner Inc. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines of interest each day, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: BBC News Wire Subject: Businessman in EU Wins in Email Spam Case and Collects Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 00:42:43 -0600 A businessman has won what is believed to be the first victory of its kind by claiming damages from a company which sent him e-mail spam. Nigel Roberts, who lives in Alderney in the Channel Islands, took action against Media Logistics UK over junk e-mails in his personal account. Under new European laws, companies can be sued for sending unwanted e-mails. An EU spokesperson noted that "European Union is _NOT_ the United States. The amount of spam coming from the United States each day is simply incredible. They (Americans) seem unwilling to do much about it, at least anything effective. We are approaching it from a different direction." The Stirlingshire-based firm has agreed to pay 270 pounds compensation to Mr Roberts, who runs an internet business. 'Tiny victory'. Three years ago the EU passed an anti-spam law, the directive on privacy and telecommunications, which gave individuals the right to fight the growing tide of unwanted e-mail by allowing them to claim damages. Some 'technical specialists' employed by European Union will, on request, investigate the 'true source' of the questionable email and assist the users in filing appropriate, and realistic claims. Mr Roberts received unwanted e-mail adverts for a contract car firm and a fax broadcasting business and decided to take action against the company. The company filed an acknowledgement of the claim at Colchester County Court but did not defend it and a judge ruled in favour of Mr Roberts. In an out-of-court agreement Media Logistics agreed to pay Mr Roberts damages of 270 pounds plus his 30 pound filing fee, and other expenses. Mr Roberts said he had limited his claim to a maximum of 300 pounds in order to qualify to file it as a small claim. He said: "This may be a tiny victory but perhaps now spammers will begin to realise that people don't have to put up with their e-mail inboxes being filled with unwanted junk. " No-one from Media Logistics UK was available for comment. A spokesman for the Information Commissioner's Office, the watchdog who oversees the Data Protection Act, said it was the first case of its kind he had heard of. He said: "What I can say is that I haven't heard of anyone doing so and we haven't taken a case under that legislation, but things are going to be changing here in EU where spam is concerned. " Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/jersey/4562726.stm Copyright 2005 BBC MMV 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For news and stories from Europe, please listen to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC.html (World Service audio stream) or, http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/BBC-summary.html (Five minute hourly news.) ------------------------------ From: Jeremy Pelofsky Subject: Move to New Airwaves to Cost $936 Million Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:30:02 -0600 By Jeremy Pelofsky Moving U.S. Defense Department and 11 other government agencies' wireless communications to new airwaves will cost almost $936 million, according to a new government estimate released on Wednesday. The 90 Megahertz of airwaves the agencies will give up will be sold at an auction that could be held as early as June 2006. The airwaves are seen as prime real estate for companies to offer wireless services like mobile wireless high-speed Internet access. Michael Gallagher, who heads the Commerce Department's National Telecommunications and Information Administration which worked on the cost estimates, said they were less than industry estimates of several billions of dollars. "We need to make sure the industry has the resources" for new services, he said in a telephone interview. The additional airwaves will help carriers "to be the broadband competitors of tomorrow." The airwaves could also be used to expand coverage and improve cell phone service quality. It could take some agencies up to four years or longer to move 2,240 frequency assignments though most will be completed within three years, Gallagher said. There are roughly 201 million wireless subscribers in the United States and companies like Cingular Wireless and Verizon Wireless are rolling out new services like high-speed Internet and video accessible on mobile devices. The bands to be sold at auction include 1710-1755 Megahertz and 2110-2155 Mhz. The Federal Communications Commission, which conducts the auction, is currently working on the procedures for the sale. A law signed last year provides for the proceeds from the auction to cover the relocation costs for the government agencies. But the FCC sale can only be completed if the proceeds bring in at least 10 percent more than the costs to relocate the government operations. The biggest cost is expected to be moving the Defense Department, at almost $289 million, followed by the Justice Department at approximately $263 million. Other agencies switching airwaves include the Energy Department, Federal Aviation Administration and NASA, among others. The last major FCC commercial wireless airwaves sale, concluded in February, raised $2.25 billion. Cingular Wireless, the No. 1 U.S. carrier, is a joint venture of BellSouth Corp. and AT&T Inc., Verizon Wireless is the No. 2 provider and a joint venture of Verizon Communications and Vodafone Group Plc. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html Look for more news headlines and stories daily in the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times by going to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html ------------------------------ From: Phil Earnhardt Subject: Reliable, Easy, and Cost Effective Way to Record Calls? Date: 28 Dec 2005 10:36:56 -0800 Organization: Newsguy News Service [http://newsguy.com] I'm going to be doing interviews over the phone; I'd like to be able to easily and reliably record the calls. Radio Shack SKU #17-855 connects between the headphone jack of a cordless (or cellular) telephone and a headset. There is a 1/8 inch autio out plug. However, I suspect that such devices may not be tremendously reliable -- lots of connectors, batteries, etc. Are there any cell phones that allow conversations to be streemed directly to an SD card? How about a BT phone that can stream the conversation to a computer? Are there services that provide a number I can conference in that will record the call and then allow me to pull a recording of the call off of a website for $5-10/hour? Any other alternatives -- any corded phones with built-in recording capability for less than $200? TIA. --phil [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Are you sure your real name isn't Condi Rice, and 'Phil Earnhardt' isn't an alias you use for spying on the net? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 13:00:21 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Covad, Verizon Settle Their Differences USTelecom dailyLead December 28, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/APnwatagCDuiBJFcfu TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Covad, Verizon settle their differences BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Washington state regulators clear Verizon-MCI deal * Predicting the telecom and media mergers of 2006 * South, North Korea linked via phone connections * Lucent's overfunded pension plan contributes heavily to profits USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Explore the Business of Communications and Entertainment at TelecomNEXT TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Review: AT&T's CallVantage stands up to the test * Breakthrough technology takes home networks to next level * Mobile TV gathers steam REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Report: Wireless spectrum transition could cost $936M * China reveals more details about 3G plans Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/APnwatagCDuiBJFcfu ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? Date: 28 Dec 2005 08:33:55 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Steven Lichter wrote: > I had a space saver type of phone (the old black ones with the dial on > top) installed in a room in my parent's garage and the installer that > installed it worked on the phone the better part of a day, could not > get it to work, and had other installers coming by to look at it, he > came back the next day and got it to work, it needed a special bell > box to work. When I ordered the phone the rep had no idea what it > even was, this was in Pacific Telephone area. Presumably this was before divesture and the phone company still owned the telephone unit? Before divesture there were a fair amount of older phones still in service that required separate bell boxes. All candle stick and 202 ("French") telephone sets did. The 302 set (1938) was a technical advance in that no separate bell box was required. Many 202 sets still in service were modernized with an "F" (300 series) handset replacing the older one, and candle sticks got "F" transmitter and receivers; so this equipment all remained in service and was very common in the 1950s and 1960s. The Space Saver was very popular on workbenches, and even advertised for the home. Anyway, before divesture I'm surprised the phoneco had trouble working with a phone that required a bell box. Sure they were rare by the 1980s, but not so rare. Steven Lichter wrote: > Many years ago I had an old magneto phone on my line (before > deregulation) my daughter at the time was about 1 1/2 years old and > cranked it, to say the least it caused problems, first the fuses on my > both sides of my line were blown, and it must have taken the protector > on the frame out, PacTel was out within an hour and they were not > happy with me, I pointed out it had been a phone that was made by for > for The Western Electric Co., that did not seem to impress them, I was > told not to put it on the line again; I did, but disables the magneto. That was a reason -- quite legitimate -- that the phone companies (both Bell and indepedents) fought customer owned equipment, especially without protective devices. If a lot of customers had this sort of thing it would add up to a lot of service calls for the phone company, and for them considerable extra expense and aggrvation without benefit. The pre-divesture Bell System physical plant was engineered for low maintenance to minimize service calls. Customer owned equipment likely wouldn't have such high quality and be more likely to fail. The result is service calls and finger pointing. The phone company correctly realized new customer telephone sets would be cheap junk and cause false busies, shorts, and bad connections all of which were heresy to the service standards principles of the old Bell System. Once customer owned equipment was clearly here to stay, the phone companies did a 180 degree reversal, and ceased end-to-end responsibility for service. So now if you have a telephone problem, the phone company does nothing until you are absolutely sure it is not a problem in your wiring or your telephone sets; if it is, they will charge you and charge you dearly to fix it. And of course now we have fingerpointing over which side of the demarc the problem is on. The phone company added more protection in the local loop and C.O. for this sort of thing and of course we customers add to pay for it in our bills. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Everytime I get a piece of junk mail from Southwestern Bell, err, SBC, err AT&T offering some new promotion or another ("take it all for six months or a year for ten dollars per month", etc) one thing they _always_ insist has to be included in the 'deal' is Wire and Line Protection/Repair Service; they always clearly indicate this is _not_ optional. PAT] ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 15:51:18 UTC Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Steven Lichter wrote: > I had a space saver type of phone (the old black ones with the dial on > top) installed in a room in my parent's garage and the installer that > installed it worked on the phone the better part of a day, could not > get it to work, and had other installers coming by to look at it, he > came back the next day and got it to work, it needed a special bell > box to work. When I ordered the phone the rep had no idea what it > even was, this was in Pacific Telephone area. When I moved out they > never came and got it, they just left it there. I came and got it one > day and it lives with my other old phone in my den. I also had one of those many years ago. I didn't have the bell box that was normally used with it, so I took an induction coil from another phone (probably a 300 series) and wired it up. Worked fine. That was 6 houses and 40+ years ago, and I have no idea where it is now. Rich Greenberg Marietta, GA, USA richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507 Eastern time. N6LRT I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines:Val, Red & Shasta (RIP),Red, husky Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had one of those for awhile, but instead of hunting down a side-ringer I just plugged it in and used one of the other phones in my house for a ringing signal. It was easier just listen for a bell ringing somewhere else close by. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 23:05:05 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message Anthony Bellanga PAT: Please suppress my email address! THNX! > DevilsPGD wrote: >> Anthony Bellanga wrote: >>> And using a calling card from a payphone can be significant these >>> days since the payphone owner can now "legally" extort huge charges >>> from the long distance carrier or card provider, who will then extort >>> those surcharges from us. >> No extortion involved. If someone held a gun to your head or >> otherwise forced you to use the payphone, it would be extortion. >> Since you choose to use a payphone, you choose to absorb that cost. >> A cost, which is regulated, and which helps telcos continue to run pay >> phones at all, since they're not generally considered profitable >> anymore, at least around here. > It IS extortion at the rates they charge. While I have a cellphone, > not everyone has one, and payphones with calling cards are still the > way they need to place calls while not at home. Extortion is a criminal offense, which occurs when a person obtains money, behaviour, or other goods and/or services from another by wrongfully threatening or inflicting harm to this person, reputation, or property. Unless the owner of the payphone is threatening or inflicting harm upon you causing you to make a call, no extortion has been committed. Feel free to contact your AG or a local ADA and see if you can get extortion charges filed against a payphone operator or owner, if you want confirmation. > The surcharge rates are *NOT* regulated! The FCC/etc. have "allowed" > the payphone owners to charge these surcharges, LONG AFTER the private > payphone owners first became involved in the payphone game. But the > rates themselves, while "recommended" by the FCC/etc., are NOT > regulated! The amounts that the payphone owners charge back to the > Long Distance carriers who then pass back to the card-holder is *PURE > GRAVY* for both, since the Long Distance and Card companies are most > likely adding even more profit for themselves. The rate the payphone operator charges IS regulated, the rate your calling card charges you is not. If you're paying too much, get a better calling card -- There are tons of options. > Payphone service used to be a good convenient public service when > telco really did own the phones. But when the non-telco owners came > in, like a cancer, payphone service went to hell, with the telcos > finally pulling out of the game completely in many places. I'll just > use my cellphone whenever I'm not able to use my home phone, but I do > feel for those who don't have cellphones and have to use remaining > sleazy (non-telco) payphones. Not really -- Private non-telco payphones are still regulated. Things "went to hell" when payphones ceased being profitable. Making a payphone call is not a right. Your "need" to make a call does not give you the right to do so at a rate of your choosing. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Date: 28 Dec 2005 08:27:09 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com John Levine wrote: > The amount the payphone owner charges the calling card company is > regulated, but you are correct that they can mark it up as much as > they want. I would think that the obvious solution would be to find a > calling card that doesn't. It's not like there is a shortage of > options. Well, one obvious option is to require payphones to run like any other business and post its rates clearly on the phone. Today, pay phones still treat customers like the old days, where toll charges were instantly available 24/7 by asking the operator, so there was no need to post rates. Yet, they don't charge like that nor make the pricing known. That IS sleazy business to hide your costs. Another example of how modern day phone "competition" screws customers. But we're just so better off that we got rid of the evil Bell System! ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2005 23:05:05 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote: > These devices are very illegal. They are also very poorly built and > freqently sources of bizarre interference to 800 MHz trunked radio > systems as well as to various military UHF comm systems. > When I find them, I smash them in front of the owner, and discourage > him from installing any more of them. It helps to have an MP along. Sounds like a good witness when you get prosecuted for destruction of private property, MPs wouldn't want to tarnish their reputation by committing perjury. As for the devices, they're not illegal to own, only to operate (And then, they're only illegal without a license, or only if they operate outside the licensed bands) Oh, and having an MP is smart too, since they have no authority over civilians. You might as well bring FEMA and the CDC with you. *shrugs* ------------------------------ From: Rik Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 28 Dec 2005 05:44:38 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com An external antenna, being a passive device, would probably cause no problems and probably would not lead to any issues of its use even though one might argue that such an antenna could be deemed illegal on the grounds that the cellphone's FCC Type Acceptance only is for the manufacturer's supplied antenna. The argument being made here about illegality concerns the use of active BDA's. ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 28 Dec 2005 16:00:12 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Scott Dorsey wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I do not see what would be so illegal > about hooking up an external antenna at a somewhat higher line of > sight. Many phones (Nokia models for example) have a plug on the back > side for just that reason. PAT] That is not illegal, but that is not what these devices do. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: niallgal@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 28 Dec 2005 13:01:22 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com A quick web search comes up with http://www.digitalantenna.com/cellamprep_DA4000SBR.html which makes the following claims: Q: Does the owner of this equipment (installed location) require an FCC license to operate the repeater? A: No, neither the user nor the installer needs an FCC license. All of our products are FCC approved. In the instruction manual, you will find guidelines to follow to comply with all FCC requirements, such as proper separation between antennas, and persons must be 6 meters horizontally away from outside antenna. Maybe worth a try. N ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Date: 28 Dec 2005 08:36:58 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com John Levine wrote: > I suspect your calling card was charging you for any call over N > seconds rather than checking for supervision. I make test calls from > my landline to my cell numbers in Luxembourg and Switzerland from time > to time, hanging up once my phone starts ringing, and I don't ever > recall being charged unless I answered. No. At that time the Calling Card worked fine on traditional calls, using supervision. It was going to a cell phone and having the carrier answer that caused the charge. I suspect when the carrier answers supervision says the call is answered, even if it is an intercept recording. The cellphone and landline world work very differently. DevilsPGD wrote: >> And using a calling card from a payphone can be significant these >> days since the payphone owner can now "legally" extort huge charges >> from the long distance carrier or card provider, who will then extort >> those surcharges from us. > No extortion involved. If someone held a gun to your head or > otherwise forced you to use the payphone, it would be extortion. > Since you choose to use a payphone, you choose to absorb that cost. A > cost, which is regulated, and which helps telcos continue to run pay > phones at all, since they're not generally considered profitable > anymore, at least around here. Utter nonsense. It IS extortion. When you are in an emergency situation (ie in a hospital) and they don't allow cellphone use or you don't have one, you indeed are forced to use their phone and pay their charges. As others pointed out, all charges the customer pays on a pay phone are UNREGULATED. The pay phone provider can charge you whatever you wish. Unlike normal businesses, pay phone providers do not have to tell you their prices; you only find out a month later when you get the bill. Imagine going food shopping with the prices unmarked and not knowing how much you spent for food until the bill comes. Would you tolerate that? But it's perfectly fine with pay phones. > (TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, considering that a cell phone > is normally always within its owner's reach (a holster fastened to > your trousers, in your purse, in a holder near the driver of an > automobile, etc) it would seem very odd that it had to ring more than > three or four times, at best, unanswered. PAT] Actually, it is not always in reach, or the recipient isn't always in a position to promptly answer. Some people, while driving, prefer to pull over before taking a call, or our in a critical moment in traffic (navigating a busy interchange) and don't want the distraction. If the phone is stored in a purse or backpack, the bag has to be put down and searched to dig out the phone. The old Bell System always taught us to allow 10 rings to give someone time to answer, I don't see why that should be any different for a cell phone. I suspect the intercept after three rings is to save them tower and switch time, and I think it represents too much frugality on their part. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:29:36 -0500 In article , advertising@adtomi.com says: > I'm just currious what companies Vonage users to terminate calls across > the country since they do not have their own true infrastructure. Any > ideas? > Gabriel Mostly Paetec and Focal CLEC switches in various regions. Probably why they can't do proper LNP in some cases since neither Paetec or Focal have a switch in those regions. Luckily we've got a pretty much idle Paetec #5ESS here in Providence that handles things quite nicely. Vonage simply uses IP packets instead of copper pairs to haul calls to underutilized capacity on CLEC switches. Really elegant when you come right down to it. They completely bypassed the local regulatory environments. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #585 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 28 23:53:51 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 3046A150A8; Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:53:51 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #586 Message-Id: <20051229045351.3046A150A8@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:53:51 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.7 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, CELL_PHONE_IMPROVE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:55:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 586 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson NSA Puts Cookies on Your Computer (Anick Jendanun) China Gets Tough on Cell Phone Users (Reuters News Wire) Man Pleads Guilty in Computer Attack on E-Bay (Reuters News Wire) Hospitals, was: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (Danny Burstein) Marriott Customer Data For 200,000 Missing (Monty Solomon) Nerds in the Hood, Stars on the Web (Monty Solomon) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (aes) Re: Mother Decides to Fight Downloading Suit on Her Own (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (John Levine) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (Seth Breidbart) Re: What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? (Gabe) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? (Steven Lichter) 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: Anick Jesdanun Subject: NSA Puts Cookies on Your Computer Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 21:22:38 -0600 By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most of them. The first thing they do is examine your computer to see where you have been, according to other cookies. Then they implant a cookie of their own. These files, known as "cookies," disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week, and agency officials acknowledged Wednesday they had made a mistake. Nonetheless, the issue raises questions about privacy at a spy agency already on the defensive amid reports of a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States. "Considering the surveillance power the NSA has, cookies are not exactly a major concern," said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington, D.C. "But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy." Until Tuesday, the NSA site created two cookie files that do not expire until 2035 -- likely beyond the life of any computer in use today. Don Weber, an NSA spokesman, said in a statement Wednesday that the cookie use resulted from a recent software upgrade. Normally, the site uses temporary, permissible cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, he said, but the software in use shipped with persistent cookies already on. "After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies," he said. Cookies are widely used at commercial Web sites and can make Internet browsing more convenient by letting sites remember user preferences. For instance, visitors would not have to repeatedly enter passwords at sites that require them. But privacy advocates complain that cookies can also track Web surfing, even if no personal information is actually collected. In a 2003 memo, the White House's Office of Management and Budget prohibits federal agencies from using persistent cookies -- those that aren't automatically deleted right away -- unless there is a "compelling need." A senior official must sign off on any such use, and an agency that uses them must disclose and detail their use in its privacy policy. Peter Swire, a Clinton administration official who had drafted an earlier version of the cookie guidelines, said clear notice is a must, and `vague assertions of national security, such as exist in the NSA policy, are not sufficient." Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the NSA cookies, said mistakes happen, "but in any case, it's illegal. The (guideline) doesn't say anything about doing it accidentally." The Bush administration has come under fire recently over reports it authorized NSA to secretly spy on e-mail and phone calls without court orders. Since The New York Times disclosed the domestic spying program earlier this month, President Bush has stressed that his executive order allowing the eavesdropping was limited to people with known links to al-Qaida. But on its Web site Friday, the Times reported that the NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained broader access to streams of domestic and international communications. The NSA's cookie use is unrelated, and Weber said it was strictly to improve the surfing experience "and not to collect personal user data." Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass., questions whether persistent cookies would even be of much use to the NSA. They are great for news and other sites with repeat visitors, he said, but the NSA's site does not appear to have enough fresh content to warrant more than occasional visits. The government first issued strict rules on cookies in 2000 after disclosures that the White House drug policy office had used the technology to track computer users viewing its online anti-drug advertising. Even a year later, a congressional study found 300 cookies still on the Web sites of 23 agencies. In 2002, the CIA removed cookies it had inadvertently placed at one of its sites after Brandt called it to the agency's attention. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news from Associated Press please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: China Gets Tough on Cellphone Fraud and Spam Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 21:24:21 -0600 China will require all mobile phone subscribers to register using their real names next year, in a bid to curb rampant spam and growing fraud conducted over mobile services, the official Xinhua news agency said. The much talked-about move is mainly aimed at users of prepaid cellphone accounts, which can be opened easily by anyone with cash and a handset. These accounts have no monthly fee, but instead are "charged up" using prepaid cards and used until the credit runs out. The new rules, similar to those already introduced in countries such as Singapore, Switzerland, Thailand and Malaysia, will require China's 200 million users of prepaid service -- more than half the nation's total 388 million subscribers -- to register using their real names, according to Xinhua. Such registration has sparked protests from operators such as China Mobile (Hong Kong) Ltd. and China Unicom Ltd. who complain the shift will require a mountain of extra paperwork. Others say it will impose on individuals' privacy. The move is aimed at curtailing a burgeoning tide of cellphone-related fraud and spam, most conducted over cellphones using text messaging, Xinhua quoted Wang Xudong, head of China's Ministry of Information Industry, as saying. Chinese mobile users sent a whopping 274 billion text messages in the first 11 months of this year, up 26 percent from all of last year, according to official data. China's phone companies have shut down more than 10,000 accounts this year for sending illegal messages with fraudulent, harassing or erotic text, according to Xinhua, quoting MII sources. Thailand introduced compulsory registration for prepaid mobile users earlier this year in an attempt to prevent bomb attacks, saying most of some 120 bombings in the country since early 2004 had been triggered by mobile phone. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For additional news headlines, go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Man Pleads Guilty in E-bay Internet Attack Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 21:20:47 -0600 An Oregon man has pleaded guilty to using a computer worm to launch attacks against Internet auction site eBay Inc., the U.S. attorney's office handling the case said on Wednesday. Anthony Scott Clark, 21, pleaded guilty to intentionally damaging a protected computer, a crime with a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to twice any losses incurred, according to the U.S. Attorney for the northern district of California. In July and August 2003, Clark and accomplices infected about 20,000 computers with a worm, a type of malicious program that allowed them to direct the machines to visit eBay.com, overwhelming the popular Web site, the attorney's office said. EBay spokesman Chris Donlay declined to say what kind of damage the attacks caused, but welcomed news of the plea. "We take the protection of our Web site and our community of users very seriously and we think this case will send a pretty clear message that we will pursue anyone who attempts to do this kind of thing," Donlay said. Luke Macaulay, a spokesman a the attorney's office, said damages were estimated to be between "tens of thousands and millions" of dollars, and that a judge would decide on the amount during Clark's sentencing hearing in April 2006. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html Additional news headlines at: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Hospitals, was: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 03:12:16 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > When you are in an emergency situation (ie in a hospital) and they > don't allow cellphone use or you don't have one, you indeed are forced > to use their phone and pay their charges. > Unlike normal businesses, pay phone providers do not have to tell you > their prices; you only find out a month later when you get the bill. > Imagine going food shopping with the prices unmarked and not knowing > how much you spent for food until the bill comes. Would you tolerate > that? But it's perfectly fine with pay phones. Since you brought it up, I figured I'd point out there's another big group that plays this exact series of games, where they _don't_ give you a price (or even an estimate) up front, don't allow comparison shopping, and pretty much extort you at a time of need. I'm referring to the _hospital_ you just visited. Try finding out ahead of time what they'll charge you for, say, an uncomplicated broken arm. Or, a bit simpler (given the vagaries of medical care), what their average charge was for the 215 broken arms they set last year. For that matter, ask them about the 57 different varieties of ketc^h^h^h 57 different charge scales they'd choose among based on how you'd be paying for treating that aformentioned broken arm. Hint: If you're a "self-pay", the list price they'll demand from you is a _lot_ higher than the negotiated one with an insurance company. [a] Very few other industries get away with this. Even (in most jurisdictions) car repair shops have to give you at least a reasonably realistic estimate and post their hourly rates. Hospital medical care in this country tends to be (with some, fortunately few, exceptions) top notch -- at least for emergency situations. Hospital economics rank up there with Enron and MCI. _____________________________________________________ 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: Interesting you should mention it. Fortunatly, I have only had to be in our own Mercy Hospital here in Independence once. (Readers may recall when Eric Smith went on vacation and left his 'puppy' [technically a puppy in age, but in fact a huge monster of a dog here to stay with me while he was gone. It is an Australian Cattle Dog, a big fellow who lives on farms and has the duty of rounding up cows and sheep each day to get them back to the barn. Buffy is _much_ larger now, but still very playful.] At 4:00 AM one day while I was asleep, Buffy on my bed with me of course, the dog jumped off the bed and started a big ruckus. I woke up and had been told by Eric that the dog knows the word 'potty' meaning he wanted go outside. I mumbled 'potty?' the dog jumped up and down and ran over by the door. I went to open the door, I stepped outside and the dog _knocked me over, flat on my face_ in his eagerness to get out and hopefully have me come to play with him as well. It scratched up my face, and considering my age and general disabilities, the next morning Lisa Minter's mother was here and insisted I should go over to the hospital, which I did. I got out of the E.R. about two hours later and when the bill came it was for _two thousand dollars_ (some X-rays and a few other things. But this is the interesting part: the bill started out at a couple thousand, then Medicare Part A paid for quite a bit of it; another portion of the bill was marked 'adjustment' (and a credit amount) and the portion for me to pay out of pocket was all of seventy-five dollars! I asked the ladies in their office how did I get down from two thousand dollars for a couple hours in the E.R. less the part Medicare paid to only seventy-five dollars. What is the 'adjustment' which took off a large part of the bill? She said I was billed the 'going rate' for their services, less what Medicare paid for, less what Medicare _said they were allowed to bill me_ and then I got the difference. I have Part A and Part B, now starting January 1 I get Part D as well. Such a refreshing change from 1999-2000 when I went into Storemont-Vale Medical Center in Topeka and came out with a bill whose bottom line was _three hundred thousand_ dollars; not bad I guess considering I was comatose for over two months and in their rehabilitation center for a month after that. Seeing that bill for $300,000.00 almost caused me to have another heart attack/stroke on the spot. Fortunatly, Kansas SRS paid for that. 'Never again' is too soon for my return. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:10:33 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Marriott Customer Data For 200,000 Missing December 28, 2005 ORLANDO, Fla. --The timeshare unit of Marriott International Inc. is notifying more than 200,000 people that their personal data are missing after backup computer tapes went missing from a Florida office. The data relates to 206,000 employees, timeshare owners and timeshare customers of Marriott Vacation Club International, the company said in a statement Tuesday. The computer tapes were stored in Orlando, where the unit is based. The company did not say when the tapes disappeared. They contained Social Security numbers, bank and credit card numbers, according to letters the company began sending customers on Saturday. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/12/28/marriott_customer_data_for_200000_missing/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:22:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Nerds in the Hood, Stars on the Web By DAVE ITZKOFF The New York Times For most aspiring rappers, the fastest route to having material circulated around the World Wide Web is to produce a work that is radical, cutting-edge and, in a word, cool. But now a pair of "Saturday Night Live" performers turned unexpected hip-hop icons are discovering that Internet stardom may be more easily achieved by being as nerdy as possible. In "Lazy Sunday," a music video that had its debut on the Dec. 17 broadcast of "SNL," two cast members, Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg, adopt the brash personas of head-bopping, hand-waving rappers. But as they make their way around Manhattan's West Village, they rhyme with conviction about subjects that are anything but hard-core: they boast about eating cupcakes from the Magnolia Bakery, searching for travel directions on MapQuest and achieving their ultimate goal of attending a matinee of the fantasy movie "The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." It is their obliviousness to their total lack of menace - or maybe the ostentatious way they pay for convenience-store candy with $10 bills -- that makes the video so funny, but it is the Internet that has made it a hit. Since it was originally broadcast on NBC, "Lazy Sunday" has been downloaded more than 1.2 million times from the video-sharing Web site YouTube.com; it has cracked the upper echelons of the video charts at NBC.com and the iTunes Music Store; and it has even inspired a line of T-shirts, available at Teetastic.com. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/27/arts/television/27samb.html?ex=1293339600&en=1c057b9f6aaea137&ei=5090 ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 19:29:25 -0800 Organization: Stanford University In article , niallgal@yahoo.com wrote: > A quick web search comes up with > http://www.digitalantenna.com/cellamprep_DA4000SBR.html which makes > the following claims: Thanks for info, but the packaged retail version of this seems to be: DA4KSBR-50U - For Large Yachts and RVs, Home, Office MSRP $699.95 System Includes: * DA4000SBR 3W dual band 60dB gain wireless amplifier/repeater unit * 12VDC power converter * 110VAC power supply * Inside omni-directional antenna with 6¹ cable* * Outside 9dB gain omni-directional dual band cell antenna and mounting bracket* * 50¹ PowerMax DA340 ULTRA low loss coaxial cable and factory attached connectors At that price I'm afraid I'll have to wait until my financial status gets closer to the "large yacht" stage before going after one of these for my (comparatively modest) home. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Mother Decides to Fight Downloading Suit on Her Own Date: 28 Dec 2005 13:41:18 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Jim Fitzgerald wrote: > If the downloading was done on her computer, Santangelo thinks it may > have been the work of a young friend of her children. Santangelo, 43, > has been described by a federal judge as "an Internet-illiterate > parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo, and who can barely > retrieve her email." Kazaa is the peer-to-peer software program used > to share files. Interesting newsgroup attitude here: In the problem with the kid who porned himself, people said it was the parent's fault for not knowing what the kid was doing. But here apparently it's perfectly ok for the parent to be lnternet illiterate and not know what the kids were doing. We can't have a double standard. I think this case and the other illustrates the dangers of an unbridled Internet. We can argue that the motorist is ultimately responsible for how he drives the car, but that doesn't stop us from spending billions on external safety devices to protect the motorist from his own driving errors. The truth is that motorists do drift across the center line and that's why we have medial strips to protect against head-on collisions, for example. There are no seat belts, medial strips, speed bumps, or anything else on the Internet. We have people committing crimes and not even realizing it. Regarding this music download case, did the PC come equipped with the software needed to download the music? If so, why did the PC mfr provide such a tool? Why didn't the music's owner protect its site from unauthorized downloads? Why didn't the ISP warn the downloads were illegal? How did the PC user -- presumably the "innocent stupid kid" -- know where to go and how to download the illegal music? Maybe the kid isn't so innocent and is indeed a thief. Would we let the kid get off free if he stole a carton of records from a music store? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are close, Lisa, but not completely correct. You can type on a computer (as in downloading music) and an unsophisticated mother will not know _exactly_ what the kid is doing, whether she stands there for a couple minutes or all day. On the flip side, if the little guy has a camera turned on and is acting out sexually with either his friends or an older guy or whatever, if mother comes in and sees it, there will be hell to pay. I am sure mother is not _that_ unophisticated. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 28 Dec 2005 22:00:44 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Even GSM in the USA doesn't compare with GSM overseas in terms of how > far one can be from a tower ( and over a hill, too). Depends on the band. GSM most places originally ran in the 900 MHz band and has expanded to the 1800 MHZ band. Here in the US, it started on 1900 MHz and later moved down to 800 MHz, replacing the older TDMA. Lower frequencies propagate better, so if you're comparing GSM 900 to GSM 1900, you're right, 900 wins. But if you're comparing 900 to 800, they're about the same. Around here, Cingular is all GSM 800 and the coverage even in fairly rural areas is fine. R's, John ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 22:29:00 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , Anthony Bellanga wrote: > The surcharge rates are *NOT* regulated! Which surcharges? > The FCC/etc. have "allowed" the payphone owners to charge these > surcharges, LONG AFTER the private payphone owners first became > involved in the payphone game. For 800 number, the FCC set the charge the (last I checked) just under $0.30. That's paid by the recipient (who may be a long distance carrier, or any sort of company with a toll-free inbound number). > But the rates themselves, while "recommended" by the FCC/etc., are > NOT regulated! The amounts that the payphone owners charge back to > the Long Distance carriers who then pass back to the card-holder is > *PURE GRAVY* for both, since the Long Distance and Card companies > are most likely adding even more profit for themselves. So you think the payphone owner should allow those calls to tie up his payphones for free? Seth [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well Seth, in the olden, golden days of the Bell System, there was a back office function called 'Separations and Settlements' which divided up the money so both the sending and the recieving telco and any telco in the transit path all got their share of the money. And just as hotel switchboards get a commission from telco on the amount of long distance revenue they collect on telco's behalf, I think telco could have arranged to pay a commission to the COCOT owner. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gabe Subject: Re: What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? Date: 28 Dec 2005 15:34:26 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Tony P. wrote: > In article , advertising@adtomi.com > says: >> I'm just currious what companies Vonage users to terminate calls across >> the country since they do not have their own true infrastructure. Any >> ideas? >> Gabriel > Mostly Paetec and Focal CLEC switches in various regions. Probably why > they can't do proper LNP in some cases since neither Paetec or Focal > have a switch in those regions. > Luckily we've got a pretty much idle Paetec #5ESS here in Providence > that handles things quite nicely. > Vonage simply uses IP packets instead of copper pairs to haul calls to > underutilized capacity on CLEC switches. Really elegant when you come > right down to it. They completely bypassed the local regulatory > environments. "Vonage simply uses IP packets instead of copper pairs to haul calls to underutilized capacity on CLEC switches. Really elegant when you come right down to it. They completely bypassed the local regulatory environments. " What do you mean by this? Gabe ------------------------------ From: Steven Lichter Reply-To: Die@spammers.com Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc. (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co. Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 01:24:39 GMT Rich Greenberg wrote: > In article , Steven Lichter > wrote: >> I had a space saver type of phone (the old black ones with the dial on >> top) installed in a room in my parent's garage and the installer that >> installed it worked on the phone the better part of a day, could not >> get it to work, and had other installers coming by to look at it, he >> came back the next day and got it to work, it needed a special bell >> box to work. When I ordered the phone the rep had no idea what it >> even was, this was in Pacific Telephone area. When I moved out they >> never came and got it, they just left it there. I came and got it one >> day and it lives with my other old phone in my den. > I also had one of those many years ago. I didn't have the bell box > that was normally used with it, so I took an induction coil from > another phone (probably a 300 series) and wired it up. Worked fine. > That was 6 houses and 40+ years ago, and I have no idea where it is > now. > Rich Greenberg Marietta, GA, USA richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507 > Eastern time. N6LRT I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 > Canines:Val, Red & Shasta (RIP),Red, husky Owner:Chinook-L > Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had one of those for awhile, but > instead of hunting down a side-ringer I just plugged it in and used > one of the other phones in my house for a ringing signal. It was > easier just listen for a bell ringing somewhere else close by. PAT] Using that phone without its ringer box causes load on the line, low voice and such, the box has an induction coil. The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2005 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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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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 #586 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Dec 29 15:41:08 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id E4E2915077; Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:41:07 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #587 Message-Id: <20051229204107.E4E2915077@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:41:07 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Thu, 29 Dec 2005 15:45:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 587 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Phishers Nabbed (jared) AT&T Plans to Deliver 'Your World' Campaign (USTelecom dailyLead) Build Your Own PBX With a PC (Jim Haynes) Call for Papers: The 2006 IAENG Workshop on Electrical Engineering (imecs) Call for Papers: June 26 - 29 - Special Track on Wireless Tech (N Gupta) Re: NSA Puts Cookies on Your Computer (Barry Margolin) Re: NSA Puts Cookies on Your Computer (jared) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (DevilsPGD) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (Lisa Hancock) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (AES) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Rik) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (harold@hallikainen.com) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (John Levine) Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? (DevilsPGD) Re: Mother Decides to Fight Downloading Suit on Her Own (Lisa Hancock) Re: Reliable, Easy, and Cost Effective Way to Record Calls? (L Hancock) Re: What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? (John Levine) 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, 28 Dec 2005 23:58:36 -0700 From: jared@netspacenospamnet.au (jared) Subject: Phishers Nabbed NAB closes eight bogus websites overseas The National Australia Bank and federal police have moved swiftly to shut down eight overseas websites involved in an email banking scam targeting many thousands of Australians. The sites in China, Turkey, Korea and Germany - linked to a "phishing" scam operating Australia-wide -- were put out of action over the past four days. http://smh.com.au/news/technology/nab-closes-eight-bogus-websites-overseas/2005/12/29/1135732681755.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 12:39:38 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: AT&T Plans to Deliver 'Your World' Campaign USTelecom dailyLead December 29, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ASyAatagCDyXcNyeBE TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AT&T plans to deliver "Your World" campaign, logo BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Comcast enters VoIP game in Atlanta * Russia to profit from Svyazinvest selloff * Microsoft, Japan Telecom unite to offer combined service * AOL rounds up top spam headers USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Telecom Bookstore: Everything for the Telecom Professional TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Americans fall in love, break up via SMS REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Bush administration takes heat over recent phone tapping * Emergency communications system in the spotlight * Former Qwest executive pleads guilty Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/ASyAatagCDyXcNyeBE ------------------------------ Subject: Build Your Own PBX With a PC Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 17:13:41 GMT There is an article in the January 2006 issue of Linux Journal on how to make a home PBX using a personal computer and some free software. (But you have to buy some hardware) Also an article about building a Skype server for your home. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ From: imecs__2006@iaeng.org Subject: Call for Papers: The 2006 IAENG Int Workshop on Electrical Engineering Date: 28 Dec 2005 21:39:39 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com From: International Association of Engineers (IAENG) Call For Papers The 2006 IAENG International Workshop on Electrical Engineering (Part of The International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists IMECS 2006) IMECS 2006: 20-22 June, 2006, Hong Kong The IWEE'06 workshop is held as part of the International MultiConference of Engineers and Computer Scientists 2006. The IMECS 2006 is organized by the International Association of Engineers (IAENG), and serves as good platforms for the engineering community members to meet with each other and to exchange ideas. Extended version of the papers under this workshop can be included in the special issue of our journal Engineering Letters. And, further extended version can also be included in a book called "Current Trends in Electrical Engineering " to be published by IAENG. The IMECS 2006 multiconference has the focus on the frontier topics in the theoretical and applied engineering and computer science subjects. It consists of 14 workshops (see the details at IMECS website: www.iaeng.org/IMECS2006). The multiconference serves as good platforms for the engineering community members of different disciplines to meet with each other and to exchange ideas. The current conference committee of the IMECS 2006 includes over 140 workshop co-chairs and committee members of mainly research center heads, department heads, professors, research scientists from over 20 countries, while a few of the committee members are also experienced software development directors and engineers. The topics of the workshop include, but not limited to, the following: Biotechnology: such as EEG, ECG, and EKG, various other monitoring equipment Electronics: such as integrated circuit, computer, electronic amplifier Power engineering: such as electrical generators, electric power transmission. Telecommunication: such as television, radio, mobile phone, optical multiple access technologies Control engineering: such as auto pilot, cruise control, climate control, space exploration, smart bomb. Signal processing: such as electronic filter, digital filter, video and audio codec, radar, sonar, beamforming. Submission: Prospective authors are invited to submit their draft paper in abstract format (one page) or in full paper format to imecs@iaeng.org by 12 March, 2006. The submitted file can be in MS Word format, PS format, or PDF formats. The first page of the draft paper should include: Title of the paper; Name, affiliation and e-mail address for each author; A maximum of 5 keywords of the paper; Also, the name of the workshop session that the paper is being submitted to should be stated in the email. Important Dates: Proposals for special conference sessions and tutorials deadline: 30 December, 2005 Draft Manuscript / Abstract submission deadline: 12 March, 2006 Camera-Ready papers & Pre-registration due: 2 April, 2006 IMECS 2006: 20-22 June, 2006 More details about the IWEE 2006 can be found at: http://www.iaeng.org/IMECS2006/IWEE2006.html IWEE'06 Workshop Co-chairs and Committee Members: Yen-Wen Chen Associate Professor, Dept. of Communication Engineering National Central University, Taiwan Yung-Sheng Chen Professor, Electrical Engineering Department Yuan Ze University, Taiwan Jong-Sheng Cherng Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering Da-Yeh University, Taiwan ES. Chung, FIEE (co-chair) Professor, Electrical Engineering Department The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Yi-Nung Chung (co-chair) Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering Da-Yeh University, Taiwan Feng-Li Lian Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering National Taiwan University, Taiwan Chih-Min Lin (co-chair) Chair and Professor Department of Electrical Engineering Yuan-Ze University, Taiwan Prof. A.B. Rad (co-chair) Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Tsung-Han Tsai (co-chair) Associate Professor, Dept. of Electrical Engineering National Central University, Taiwan Rong-Jong Wai Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan EC. Yang Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering National ChungHsing University, Taiwan It will be highly appreciated if you can circulate these calls for papers to your colleagues. ------------------------------ From: Nitin Gupta Subject: Call for Papers: June 26 - 29 Special Track on Wireless Technologies Date: 29 Dec 2005 10:10:19 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Call for Papers Special Track on Wireless Technologies and Digital Cities. The 2006 International Conference on Security and Management (SAM'06) June 26 - 29, 2006, Monte Carlo Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA The SAM'06 Conference will be held simultaneously with a number of other international conferences and workshops, and will be sponsored by the World Academy of Sciences and co-sponsored by CSREA. This year SAM'06 will offer a Wireless Technologies and Digital Cities Track aimed at promoting discussions on industry efforts to implement digital cities using secure wireless technologies. A digital city refers to the concept of using wireless technology to integrate a city's infrastructure to promote economic development and improve the quality of citizens' lives. You are invited to submit a paper which may be about 5 pages (see below for submittal information), or a panel proposal. All accepted papers will be published in the conference proceedings. SCOPE OF THE WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES AND DIGITAL CITIES TRACK Topics of interest should be centered on Wireless technologies and Digital cities and include the following: Secure Digital City Architecture Personal Information Security and Privacy Mobile Device Security IEEE 802.1x, WiMAX, Wi-Fi, and WAPI Security Mobile Identity Management Security for Wireless Sensor Networks Mobile Lightweight Cryptography Data Federation, Security and Privacy Instant Messaging Security Secure Location Related Services Wireless Authentication and Key Exchange Privacy of GSM, CDMA, and 3G Secure Wireless Mesh Networks Secure Voice over Wireless Mobile Device Security GSM and 3G Security Secure Wireless Network Management Secure Ad-Hoc Networks SUBMISSION OF PAPERS AND PANEL PROPOSALS Prospective authors are invited to submit a draft copy of the paper (about 5 pages - single-spaced, font-size of 10 to 12) to Nitin Gupta at nitgupta@alumni.usc.edu by the due date (see schedule below). The length of the Camera-Ready papers (if accepted) will be limited to 7 (IEEE style) pages. Papers must not have been previously published or currently submitted for publication elsewhere. Panel proposals should be no longer than three pages in length, should include possible panelists, and should include an indication of which panelists have confirmed participation. The first page of the paper or the panel proposal should include: title and each author's name, affiliation, postal address, E-mail address, telephone number, and Fax number. The first page should also include the name of the author who will be presenting the paper and a maximum of 5 keywords. IMPORTANT DATES Feb. 20, 2006: Draft papers and panel proposals due March 20, 2006: Notification of acceptance April 20, 2006: Camera-ready papers and pre-registration due June 26-29, 2006: 2006 International Conference on Security and Management (SAM'06) GENERAL CHAIR WIRELESS TECHNOLOGIES AND DIGITAL CITIES TRACK Prof. H.R. Arabnia Nitin Gupta, CISSP - Intel Corporation (Chair) Please refer to http://www.world-academy-of-science.org/Home/ws for up-to-date information on the 2006 International Conference on Security and Management (SAM'06). ------------------------------ From: Barry Margolin Subject: Re: NSA Puts Cookies on Your Computer Organization: Symantec Date: Wed, 28 Dec 2005 23:54:22 -0500 In article , Anick Jesdanun wrote: > By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer > The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on > visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite > strict federal rules banning most of them. > The first thing they do is examine your computer to see where you have > been, according to other cookies. Then they implant a cookie of their > own. Cookies aren't sent to unrelated sites, so I don't see how they do "the first thing". Cookies are only sent back to the site that originally sent them. While it's possible for cooperating sites to arrange communication using cookies (e.g. a site that hosts banner ads, and the site whose pages contain the banners), a site (even the NSA) cannot simply examine all your other cookies to see where you've been. Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me *** *** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group *** ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 09:07:18 -0700 From: jared@netspacenospamnet.au (jared) Subject: Re: NSA Puts Cookies on Your Computer Nothing unique about the site ... many commercial sites, esp for the cookies that appear to support advertising, cluster in the 2036-2038 time frame. Probably lazy programming. Or the usual 'if the customer doesn't like it then ...' The cookies won't last a month using a browser that restricts the number of cookies, given the number of cookies which many sites use. By the way, Mozilla has a preference to reject cookies that either are not for the current session or that do not expire within a configurable number of days. Nice feature! > Until Tuesday, the NSA site created two cookie files that do not > expire until 2035 -- likely beyond the life of any computer in use > today. ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 04:12:59 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > John Levine wrote: >> The amount the payphone owner charges the calling card company is >> regulated, but you are correct that they can mark it up as much as >> they want. I would think that the obvious solution would be to find a >> calling card that doesn't. It's not like there is a shortage of >> options. > Well, one obvious option is to require payphones to run like any other > business and post its rates clearly on the phone. Today, pay phones > still treat customers like the old days, where toll charges were > instantly available 24/7 by asking the operator, so there was no need > to post rates. Yet, they don't charge like that nor make the pricing > known. That IS sleazy business to hide your costs. > Another example of how modern day phone "competition" screws customers. > But we're just so better off that we got rid of the evil Bell System! > Huh? Payphones do disclose their costs. The cost for a local call is usually printed right on the phone, and as soon as you dial a long distance call you'll be told (either via a display, or by a voice) what you're being charged. The costs charged by payphone operator to a calling card operator aren't any of your concern, all that you (as a consumer) need to worry about is the cost your calling card charges you. That's between you and your calling card provider, and the rates are clearly disclosed on most cards these days. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Date: 29 Dec 2005 07:35:01 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com DevilsPGD wrote: > Unless the owner of the payphone is threatening or inflicting harm > upon you causing you to make a call, no extortion has been committed. In terms of the letter of the law you are correct. But when someone is in a captive situation, such as being in a hospital and needing to call family (either as a patient or visitor) the person has no choices. In other words, when I had to take my mother to the emergency room, I had to notify both my employer and my sister of the situation. Indeed, there was a risk of physical harm -- to my mother -- if I didn't consult with my sister concerning my mother's medical situation so I could properly advise the doctors. So, actually, I would call it extortion per your definition. > Feel free to contact your AG or a local ADA and see if you can get > extortion charges filed against a payphone operator or owner, if you > want confirmation. In any event, it is certianly deceptive fraudulent behavior. Attorneys General DO go after this sort of thing and it is publicized, but it is one of only many things they must deal with. > If you're paying too much, get a better calling card -- There are tons > of options. I was using a calling card and the pay phone used the long distance carrier I used. But I didn't know I _still_ had to dial a special 800 number. After complaining, they took off the $25/minute charges. That's fraud and deceptive business practice. (BTW, there were no directions on my calling card number -- which was merely my phone number with a PIN and I've had it for many years.) Do you think a supermarket could get away with advertising a big special but charging you outrageous prices because you didn't dial an 800 number first? > Making a payphone call is not a right. Your "need" to make a call > does not give you the right to do so at a rate of your choosing. Interesting how you put it. Let's be clear about something. Until divesture, making a phone call was indeed a right under the philosophy of universal telephone service. ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 07:45:48 -0800 Organization: Stanford University In article , sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) wrote: > For 800 number, the FCC set the charge the (last I checked) just under > $0.30. That's paid by the recipient (who may be a long distance > carrier, or any sort of company with a toll-free inbound number). Asking the following just as a matter of fact checking: If I call an 800 (or 888?) number from a coin-operated payphone (e.g., in an airport concourse), does the owner or operator of that 800 number get charged 30 cents for each time I call (and they answer)? More specifically, does this apply to *all and every* 800 number owner? Or do some 800 number owners negotiate special (that is, much cheaper) deals? And do some 800 number owners -- scumbag types, maybe -- just not pay these charges? And if so, do they perhaps get away with not paying? (There's obviously a viewpoint hidden behind these questions -- but for the minute I'm just seeking to get the "true facts" of the matter.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I believe the subscriber to the 800 number charges no one anything; _he_ is the person who agreed with telco to automatically accept all incoming calls on a collect basis. (Except for the sleaze 800 operators; they will claim _they_ are merely paying for the carriage to them; _you_ are paying for whatever 'service' they render on the phone, i.e. sex talk, horoscope, whatever. [Their rationale is if a sore has an 800 line to place orders, you call to place an order; do you expect the merchandise you receive at a later time to be 'free' since the store agreed to pay for the carriage of the original phone call? The only difference they say, is that the merchandise or service was delivered on the spot, rather than at a later time _as a reaction to_ your phone call.]) Another party to the transaction, the COCOT owner has to pay _nothing_ for dialing to and connecting with the 800 number. He gets the call for 'free' since the 800 subscriber noted above has agreed to pay for it. The COCOT owner's complaint however, is he wants someone to pay him for the occupation of his instrument which becomes necessary since telco (alias AT&T) no longer includes payphones in the Separations and Settlements plan. Just as hotel switchboard operators get paid for their guarantee of payment of telco's charge for service, my feeling is that lacking some internal process for doing so, COCOT owner should get paid for his guarentee of payment to telco. Bear in mind that a hotel/rooming house guest is entitled to _universal phone service_, but it would be very difficult administra- tively for telco to meet that goal with _transient persons_. Telco cannot go string wires and install an instrument for everyone who demands it, and what about the payment afterward? So telco, as a long established practice has had a deal with hotels, rooming houses, motels, hospitals [a hospital is merely a 'motel' or 'hotel' for an ill person is it not], college dormitories [merely a transient lodging place for a studious person, is it not]: To the management of such a place, "here are your wire pairs, here is the apparatus to use, _you_ situate it as needed, provide 'universal service' to these transient persons, you guarentee the payment of the charges involved; in return you get a commission or percentage of the revenue for your troubles.' Now everyone goes away happy: telco meets its burden of universal service, (with a payment to its 'helpers'), telco does not have to worry about getting paid by the end user (presumably switchboard operator has more trustworthy credit than the transient user, etc. Switchboard operator resells a valuable service to its users it could not afford to pay for or install on its own, i.e wire pairs, central office switch, etc. And no one would stay in a hotel with no phone there to use would they? So it enhances the value of _your_ primary business as well, all for the cost of paying the monthly bill to telco, processing (reselling) the telephone calls, and diddling with some paperwork. For your labor, telco pays _you_. Everyone goes away happy. And whether or not the end user actally pays, or winds up stiffing the in-between reseller does not matter to telco, the in-between organization has _guarenteed_ the payment. So the in-between organization makes a very diligent effort to collect from the end transient user, something telco was trying to avoid in meeting its burden of universal service. With COCOTS, it should ideally be the same way: transient user demands universal service (walks up to payphone, makes his call.)COCOT operator collects for his service at rates which should be regulated, at the end of the month, collects from the coin box, and remits proceeds to telco less his 'commission', i.e. whatever is left over in the box after paying telco. COCOT owner has a few burdens which do not generally apply to other resellers (hotels, etc). His _extremely_ transient users are more likely to try and stiff him than the others. So he collects in advance, and telco helps by flagging his line as 'coin service' to prevent third party underfeeders (sleazy 800 numbers for example) from abusing him, but otherwise the principle is the same. It all went away when telco divested; the worker-hive called 'Separations and Settlements' (a huge number of employees who sat in a back-office, pushing scraps of paper worth two or three cents each back and forth at each other, busy with their adding machines, and filing cabinets, etc) -- a _terribly boring_ job if there ever was one -- a lot like credit card processing offices) was one of the first to vanish. Greed took over, everyone from telco downward wanted a bit more. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 09:25:11 GMT DevilsPGD wrote: > As for the devices, they're not illegal to own, only to operate (And > then, they're only illegal without a license, or only if they operate > outside the licensed bands) They (cellular/PCS repeaters or "enhancers") are entirely legal to own and operate as long as they are operated under authority of the licensee(s) whose signals are involved. They cannot be used legally on an independent, unlicensed basis. They are, in the eyes of the FCC, cellular or PCS transmitters. If you're a Verizon (or whoever) customer, contact Verizon (or whoever) to see if they will authorize installation of the transmitter. Absent such authorization, these are no more legal than pirate FM stations. niallgal@yahoo.com wrote: > A quick web search comes up with > http://www.digitalantenna.com/cellamprep_DA4000SBR.html which makes the > following claims: > Q: Does the owner of this equipment (installed location) require an FCC > license to operate the repeater? > A: No, neither the user nor the installer needs an FCC license. All of > our products are FCC approved. In the instruction manual, you will > find guidelines to follow to comply with all FCC requirements, such as > proper separation between antennas, and persons must be 6 meters > horizontally away from outside antenna. Well, the manufacturer seems to be playing fast and loose. The unit's FCC approval is valid only under Part 22 and 24, which require a license (i.e., you have to be the licensed cellular or PCS operator whose signal is involved), but the manual says it's approved under Part 15, which is for unlicensed operation. I have seen similar deceptive FCC "approvals" with other cellular/PCS enhancers. The test report for the unit under the Part 22/24 rules is at https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/forms/blobs/retrieve.cgi?attachment_id=440134&native_or_pdf=pdf ; the FCC certification grant is available at https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/tcb/reports/Tcb731GrantForm.cfm?mode=COPY&RequestTimeout=500&application_id=286287&fcc_id=PZODA4000SBR clearly showing authorization only under Parts 22/24. Can the company show any Part 15 (unlicensed) approval? Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (Replace "example.invalid" with "com" in my address.) ------------------------------ From: Rik Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 29 Dec 2005 05:49:46 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Manufacturers and vendors of these active devices lie about their legality. The FCC has issued written clarifications and replied in writing to inquiries. In both instances they make it clear that it is only legal for licensees to install these BDAs. There are no licenses issued just to operate a BDA. One problem is that many of these devices, especially those sold to repeat Nextel signals, also repeat the signals of many other licensed systems. Much accurate information on this subject is available here: http://www.rfsolutions.com/ I have no connection with that web site, but know the owner to be an expert on this subject. Rik Rasmussen Two Way Radio Directory http://twowayradiodirectory.com ------------------------------ From: harold@hallikainen.com Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 29 Dec 2005 07:45:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Looks like these ARE legal! Go to https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm and use PZO (letter O) for the Grantee Code. Lots of information comes up. Harold FCC Rules Updated Daily at http://www.hallikainen.com ------------------------------ Date: 29 Dec 2005 04:47:22 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > As others pointed out, all charges the customer pays on a pay phone > are UNREGULATED. The pay phone provider can charge you whatever you > wish. > Unlike normal businesses, pay phone providers do not have to tell you > their prices; you only find out a month later when you get the bill. Good lord, are you still using an ILEC calling card going to whatever ripoff AOS the payphone uses? Don't do that. I honestly don't understand why ILECs even issue calling cards any more, since even the normal rates from the ILECs and mainstream IXCs are absurdly high. There's about a bazillion cheap calling cards available, both prepaid and postpaid, all of which have an 800 access number. They cost what they cost, the payphone only sees the 800 call. Is there some reason you can't use one? R's, John ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Unanswered Calls to Cell Phones? Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 04:12:59 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > DevilsPGD wrote: >>> And using a calling card from a payphone can be significant these >>> days since the payphone owner can now "legally" extort huge charges >>> from the long distance carrier or card provider, who will then extort >>> those surcharges from us. >> No extortion involved. If someone held a gun to your head or >> otherwise forced you to use the payphone, it would be extortion. >> Since you choose to use a payphone, you choose to absorb that cost. A >> cost, which is regulated, and which helps telcos continue to run pay >> phones at all, since they're not generally considered profitable >> anymore, at least around here. > Utter nonsense. It IS extortion. > When you are in an emergency situation (ie in a hospital) and they > don't allow cellphone use or you don't have one, you indeed are forced > to use their phone and pay their charges. No. You aren't forced to make a call at all -- If you choose to make a call, then you will need to be prepared to pay for that call. > As others pointed out, all charges the customer pays on a pay phone > are UNREGULATED. The pay phone provider can charge you whatever you > wish. What a customer pays the pay phone IS regulated. What you pay your calling card is not regulated, but is disclosed by the calling card vendor up front. Read the fine print on your card (or at the point of sale) > Unlike normal businesses, pay phone providers do not have to tell you > their prices; you only find out a month later when you get the bill. > Imagine going food shopping with the prices unmarked and not knowing > how much you spent for food until the bill comes. Would you tolerate > that? But it's perfectly fine with pay phones. How exactly does the pay phone provider bill you? Unless you're putting money directly into the phone, chances are pretty good that the pay phone provider isn't even billing you directly -- your beef is with whoever is billing you. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Mother Decides to Fight Downloading Suit on Her Own Date: 29 Dec 2005 07:44:25 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Lisa Hancock: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are close, Lisa, but not completely > correct. You can type on a computer (as in downloading music) and an > unsophisticated mother will not know _exactly_ what the kid is doing, > whether she stands there for a couple minutes or all day. On the flip > side, if the little guy has a camera turned on and is acting out > sexually with either his friends or an older guy or whatever, if mother > comes in and sees it, there will be hell to pay. I am sure mother is > not _that_ unophisticated. PAT] Well, it's easy to hide a webcam by merely throwing a sock over it or putting it in a discrete corner of the desk. As to performing for the webcam, look at it this way: When a boy reaches around 13, he'll start to take up "private time" in his bedroom or bathroom. Presumably the mother is aware of this biological need and will respect his privacy. If she happens to walk in on him she'll discover him doing what other boys do in private, but she shouldn't necessarily realize he's doing it for the webcam. Years ago this practice was discouraged by parents, but not now. The TV show "Roseanne" did an episode about their son going through that phase and had a scene where the father was awkwardly trying to explain the need for discreteness to the son. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Reliable, Easy, and Cost Effective Way to Record Calls? Date: 29 Dec 2005 07:49:20 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Phil Earnhardt wrote: > I'm going to be doing interviews over the phone; I'd like to be able > to easily and reliably record the calls. My old Panasonic answering machine had a record-call feature to it, and it put out the beep tone every 15 seconds so your taping is legal. This machine used tape cassettes and I don't think they use them anymore. A better grade electronics store (not Radio Shack) might have such equipment. Radio Shack sells a suction cup with a small audio plug that works tolerably well on most handsets and tape recorders. This set up is very inexpensive. One problem is that the suction cup falls off the receiver in mid-call, and the wire from it is cumbersome. I never used the plug-in device you mentioned, but that should be all you need. Note that in some states you must have the beep tone although that seems to be rare these days. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Dec 2005 04:39:21 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I'm just currious what companies Vonage users to terminate calls > across the country since they do not have their own true > infrastructure. Any ideas? Lots of different ones. Here in upstate NY it's Paetec but they have lots of different deals with different CLECs. If you're wondering and have a lot of spare time, visit their voicemail help page at http://www.vonage.com/features.php?feature=voicemail which has a list of their voicemail access numbers which are in the same number blocks as their phone numbers. Look up the NPA-NXX of the voicemail number to see what CLEC they use in that area. Regards, John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #587 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 30 15:38:17 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 4BB5315179; Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:38:17 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #588 Message-Id: <20051230203817.4BB5315179@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:38:17 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, CELL_PHONE_IMPROVE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:42:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 588 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Amtrack Passengers Stranded in Woods in GA (Associated Press NewsWire) Patent Firm Sues Google Over VOIP Calling (Reuters NewsWire) China Shuts 598 Web Sites Due to Porn and Spam Content (Associated Press) No Demarc Point! (J Kelly) Online Holiday Shoppers Spent Total of $30.1 Billion (Monty Solomon) Court OK Sought for Proposed [Sony BMG] Settlement (Monty Solomon) Verizon's TV Service Inks Carriage Deal (USTelecom dailyLead) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Rik) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Thomas D. Horne, FF EMT) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (John Levine) Re: Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests (Thomas Daniel Horne) Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? (Rich Greenberg) Re: NSA Puts Cookies on Your Computer (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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: Amtrack Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 12:50:26 -0600 A trainload of frustrated passengers has been stuck on an Amtrak train stranded in a patch of woods in south Georgia for more than 24 hours. Amtrak Train 98 has been stalled near Georgia's border with Florida while engineers wait for a derailed CSX freight train to be removed. Meanwhile, the train's passengers -- including many cash-strapped families headed home from vacations -- are getting frustrated. "We're stuck in the woods," said Eleanor Meyer. "People have ran out of money buying food. This is unbelievable. You have to run to different cars because certain cars have run out of toilet paper." Meyer is trying to return to Poughkeepsie, N.Y., after taking her 19-year-old triplets Katherine, Christine and Janice to their first trip to Orlando, Fla. "I took this train because I'm afraid of flying," she said. "Right now flying is the only way to go." Young kids are cranky and scared, she said. The elderly are wondering how their medicine will last longer. And Meyer herself is on the last drops of the medicine treating her nasty cold. Peter Nicholson of Newtown, Penn., is returning with his wife from a visit to Orlando's theme parks. He said he's lucky he brought books to read during the delay: The mammoth Lord of the Rings trilogy. But he worries how long the passengers can hold out. "You wonder how long you have to try to spread out your money and where your food is coming from," he said. "There's nowhere to go if you needed something. If anybody got sick, I don't know what they would do." The train left Orlando on Thursday around 1 p.m. and was delayed in Jacksonville for roughly 12 hours. After moving for about two hours, it's been held up in a patch of forest outside Savannah for now about 24 hours. In all, eight Amtrak trains were affected by the delays, said Amtrak spokesman Cliff Black. Black said the CSX freight train's derailment came at a "choke point" in the north-south lines that gives trains no chance to pass. People who can't pay for food will be dealt with on a "case-by-case basis," he said. "For now, there's plenty of food on the train." "We're hopeful it will get moving very soon," he added, "We hope to have the train moving and out of there sometime Friday night or Saturday.". Back in the woods, passengers scoffed at the train's name, the Meteor. "It's not a meteor," Meyer said. "But we do need a mediator. We really need to be rescued. We were stalled there for about an hour before anyone from the crew bothered to come tell us what was going on." 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Associated Press headlines and stories, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This must certainly be one of the grander moments in the glorious history of the Toonerville Trolley. If it has not occurred to Amtrack authorities by now to (a) either split the wrecked train in two parts and clear the way or (b) considering they were already delayed 12 hours in Jacksonville, simply evacuate the trains passengers, bus them to the nearest airport and have airplanes take everyone to their home town immediatly, then I do not suppose another eight or ten hours stranded there will change anything. I mean is anyone besides me old enough to remember when we had real, honest-to-God reliable rail service in America? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Reuters News Wire Subject: Patent Firm Sues Google Over VOIP Calling Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 12:57:32 -0600 Rates Technology Inc., which holds patents for the process by which most Internet phone calls are made, confirmed on Friday that it is suing Google Inc. over its Web-based phone calling system. New York-based RTI said it estimated that damages from the lawsuit could reach $5 billion, assuming the litigation process takes four years as the market for Internet-based phone services booms. "Ordinarily we don't need to sue people to get them covered under our patents," RTI President Jerry Weinberger told Reuters. "Every once in a while we run into utter arrogance, as we are seeing with Google." RTI holds two patents in the telecommunications field and generally takes a one-time fee of up to $5 million to cover companies who provide the services or the equipment to support them. It filed the suit against Google in October. Weinberger said companies covered under RTI patents include Yahoo Inc. Microsoft Corp. and Verizon Communications. RTI is currently holding talks with Time Warner Inc. about its Internet unit AOL and with online auction site eBay for its Skype voice offering. RTI is also locked in lawsuits with Cablevision for its cable voice service and with broadband phone service company Vonage. Google confirmed it would add instant messaging and Web-based phone calling, known as Google Talk, to a growing menu of services it has added to its core Web search functions. Google officials were not immediately available to comment. Company shares fell $4.75 to $415.40 in late morning trade. 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html ------------------------------ From: Associated Press News Wire Subject: China Shuts 598 Web Sites Due to Porn and Spam Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 12:59:15 -0600 Chinese police have closed 598 Web sites in a crackdown on pornography, along with online gambling, spam and fraud which are growing, state media said Friday. The latest crackdown, launched in March, led to 25 arrests, the China Daily Newspaper said, citing figures from the Ministry of Public Security. That figure was low compared with more than 500 people arrested in a nationwide crackdown last year. China has the world's second-largest population of Internet users after the United States, with more than 100 million people online. The communist government encourages Internet use for education and business but has launched repeated campaigns to stamp out material deemed obscene or subversive, including 'useless spam and fraud'. In the heaviest reported sentence for online obscenity, a 20-year-old Web site operator in eastern China was jailed in 2004 for 15 years for selling downloads of sexually oriented movies. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more Associated Press headlines and stories, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: No Demarc Point Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 16:51:34 -0600 Organization: http://newsguy.com Reply-To: jkelly@newsguy.com Is the telco required to have a network interface box at the point of demarcartion? My house has nothing, the line comes direct into the basement. It isn't even grounded and has no lightning protector. Qwest refuses to do anything about it unless I pay for a NIB to be installed. What about grounding? Shouldn't they be required to ground the line in accordance with NEC? I thought about grounding one side of the line and calling in a repair order for hum on the line, when they come to check it at the NIB they would have to install one. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 02:28:46 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Online Holiday Shoppers Spent a Total of $30.1 Billion Online Holiday Shoppers Spent a Total of $30.1 Billion During 2005 Holiday Season, Up 30 Percent from 2004, According to the eSpending Report from Goldman Sachs, Nielsen//NetRatings and Harris Interactive - Dec 29, 2005 11:00 AM (PR Newswire) Apparel/Clothing, Computer Hardware/Peripherals and Consumer Electronics Captured the Most Online Holiday Dollars This Year, Showing Double to Triple-Digit Year-over-Year Growth; Record High in Shoppers Choosing to Buy Online vs. Other Channels ROCHESTER, N.Y. and NEW YORK, Dec. 29 /PRNewswire/ -- The Goldman, Sachs & Co., Nielsen//NetRatings and Harris Interactive(R) fifth annual Holiday eSpending Report revealed today that online holiday shopping totaled $30.1 billion, excluding travel, during the 2005 holiday season (October 29 - December 23). This season's online spending in the United States resulted in a 30 percent increase (+/- 3.1 percent margin of error) from the 2004 holiday season. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=54307898 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 02:33:48 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Court OK Sought for Proposed [Sony BMG] Settlement By LARRY NEUMEISTER Associated Press Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- A proposed settlement of lawsuits against Sony BMG Music Entertainment would let consumers receive free music downloads to compensate them for Sony including flawed software on millions of CDs, lawyers said Thursday. Lawyers said the deal requires the world's second-largest music label to stop manufacturing compact discs with MediaMax software or with extended copy protection or XCP software that could leave computers vulnerable to hackers. The proposed settlement was submitted to U.S. District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday. A judge was expected to decide in January whether to tentatively approve it. According to terms of the settlement, Sony BMG will let consumers who bought the CDs receive replacement discs without the anti-piracy technology and will let them choose one of two incentive packages. The first package allows consumers who bought XCP CDs to obtain a cash payment of $7.50 and a promotion code allowing them to download one additional album from a list of more than 200 titles. The second package permits them to download three additional albums from the list. The court papers said Sony BMG would try to offer Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes as one of the download services available to the consumers. Those who purchased MediaMax CDs would receive additional compensation to allow them to download non-content protected versions of music on their MediaMax CDs and to download one additional album. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=54320998 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 13:06:02 EST From: USTelecom dailyLead Subject: Verizon's TV Service Inks Carriage Deal With Sinclair USTelecom dailyLead December 30, 2005 http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AWsYatagCGcWcNAEIH TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Verizon's TV service inks carriage deal with Sinclair BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Vodafone beefs up product development * Intel wants to "leap ahead" with new logo * Rural telecom in dispute with hedge fund manager * India's BSNL pins future on wireless, broadband USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT * Best wishes for a safe and happy New Year from USTelecom TECHNOLOGY TRENDS * Microsoft believes gamers want to compete online VOIP DOWNLOAD * Chile's RedVoiss launches free VoIP service * Cell Wireless buys ezTEL REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * NTP gets extension to file patent defense * Time Warner Cable loses municipal fiber case EDITOR'S NOTE * The dailyLead will not publish Monday Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://r.smartbrief.com/resp/AWsYatagCGcWcNAEIH ------------------------------ From: Rik Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 30 Dec 2005 06:39:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com From FCC rules: "Sec. 90.219 Use of signal boosters. `Licensees authorized to operate radio systems in the frequency bands above 150 MHz may employ signal boosters at fixed locations in accordance with the following criteria:" So the private unlicensed owner of the legal device has no legal authority to operate it. Rik ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 30 Dec 2005 10:01:42 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) harold@hallikainen.com wrote: > Looks like these ARE legal! Go to > https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm and > use PZO (letter O) for the Grantee Code. Lots of information comes up. The devices that repeat cellphone signals inside a structure _are_ legal if properly installed and type-accepted. The devices which are basically linear amplifiers for the cellphone are _not_ legal. And a number of them have spurs in government bands including the MLS band (a personal favorite). --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: Thomas D. Horne, FF EMT Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 20:59:28 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Rik wrote: > Manufacturers and vendors of these active devices lie about their > legality. The FCC has issued written clarifications and replied in > writing to inquiries. In both instances they make it clear that it is > only legal for licensees to install these BDAs. There are no licenses > issued just to operate a BDA. > One problem is that many of these devices, especially those sold to > repeat Nextel signals, also repeat the signals of many other licensed > systems. > Much accurate information on this subject is available here: > http://www.rfsolutions.com/ > I have no connection with that web site, but know the owner to be an > expert on this subject. > Rik Rasmussen > Two Way Radio Directory > http://twowayradiodirectory.com I'm asking a question not starting a quarrel. Does it make any difference if the booster in question is connected directly to the cell phone and will only boost it's signal? I have been considering installing one in my truck in order to improve performance in marginal situations. I have been carrying an analog bag phone for that but the cost for that extra account is high since my carrier will not offer any low cost plans for analog use. -- Tom Horne Well we aren't no thin blue heroes and yet we aren't no blackguards to. We're just working men and woman most remarkable like you. ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 23:53:55 GMT harold@hallikainen.com wrote: > Looks like these ARE legal! Go to > https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm and > use PZO (letter O) for the Grantee Code. Lots of information comes up. They are legal as Part 22, Part 24, or Part 90 licensed transmitters, not as Part 15 unlicensed low-power devices. All you need to do is buy a cellular, PCS, or SMR license and you're good to go. That's not what they are portrayed as to the consumer, however. The manuals for these devices claim they are Part 15 compliant. No way. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (Replace "example.invalid" with "com" in my address.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But if you buy a cell phone and obtain service from some carrier, aren't you granted a license (on the carrier's master license) to use the phone as a transmitter? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 29 Dec 2005 21:07:09 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > If I call an 800 (or 888?) number from a coin-operated payphone (e.g., > in an airport concourse), does the owner or operator of that 800 > number get charged 30 cents for each time I call (and they answer)? Yes indeed. > More specifically, does this apply to *all and every* 800 number > owner? Or do some 800 number owners negotiate special (that is, much > cheaper) deals? It's billed through the carrier that provides the 800 number, so I would be rather surprised. I suppose the payphone owner could rebate part of the 30 cents to 800 number owners they like, but I don't know why they would. > And do some 800 number owners -- scumbag types, maybe -- just not pay > these charges? And if so, do they perhaps get away with not paying? Unlikely. It's part of the phone bill. I have a bunch of 800 numbers on my ECG bill, and when someone calls from a payphone, the call costs 55 cents more than it would otherwise and there's an "a" next to the line on the bill. I suppose there could be IXCs who don't pay their payphone charges at all, but that would affect all of the company's customers. Regards, John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wait a minute ... either an 800 call is a 'free call' to the caller or it is a chargeable call to the caller. One or the other. If it costs me 35 cents, then it should be referred to as a 'premium charge' call rather than a 'toll free' call shouldn't it? How does the recipient of the call know that the call is originating from a COCOT style phone instead of a 'regular' line? How does that fact (COCOT instead of regular) make any difference where what the carriage costs telco? Or is that 35 cents only to appease the COCOT owner? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Thomas Daniel Horne Subject: Re: Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 20:50:04 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Stewart M. Powell wrote: > http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/253334_nsaspying24.html > Secret court modified wiretap requests; > Intervention may have led Bush to bypass panel. > Saturday, December 24, 2005 > By STEWART M. POWELL > SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU > WASHINGTON -- Government records show that the administration was > encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal > surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and > order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's > approval. > A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the > 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more > wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four > previous presidential administrations combined. > The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap > requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court > nearly four years ago to launch secret National Security Agency spying > on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside > the United States, according to James Bamford, an acknowledged > authority on the supersecret NSA, which intercepts telephone calls, > e-mails, faxes and Internet communications. > "They wanted to expand the number of people they were eavesdropping > on, and they didn't think they could get the warrants they needed from > the court to monitor those people," said Bamford, author of "Body of > Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" and > "The Puzzle Palace: Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence > Organization." "The FISA court has shown its displeasure by tinkering > with these applications by the Bush administration." > Bamford offered his speculation in an interview last week. > The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, adopted by Congress in > the wake of President Nixon's misuse of the NSA and the CIA before his > resignation over Watergate, sets a high standard for court-approved > wiretaps on Americans and resident aliens inside the United States. > To win a court-approved wiretap, the government must show "probable > cause" that the target of the surveillance is a member of a foreign > terrorist organization or foreign power and is engaged in activities > that "may" involve a violation of criminal law. > Faced with that standard, Bamford said, the Bush administration had > difficulty obtaining FISA court-approved wiretaps on dozens of people > within the United States who were communicating with targeted al-Qaida > suspects inside the United States. > The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps has approved at least > 18,740 applications for electronic surveillance or physical searches > from five presidential administrations since 1979. > The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 > applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court's > operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court's > activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that "no > orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the > requested authority" submitted by the government. > But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for > court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 > of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 > and 2004 -- the most recent years for which public records are > available. > The judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for > warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection in the > court's history. > Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said last week that Bush authorized > NSA surveillance of overseas communications by U.S.-based terror > suspects because the FISA court's approval process was too cumbersome. > The Bush administration, responding to concerns expressed by some > judges on the 11-member panel, agreed last week to give them a > classified briefing on the domestic spying program. U.S. District > Judge Malcolm Howard, a member of the panel, told CNN that the Bush > administration agreed to brief the judges after U.S. District Judge > James Robertson resigned from the FISA panel, apparently to protest > Bush's spying program. > Bamford, 59, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran, likens the Bush administra- > tion's domestic surveillance without court approval to Nixon-era > abuses of intelligence agencies. > NSA and previous eavesdropping agencies collected duplicates of all > international telegrams to and from the United States for decades > during the Cold War under a program code-named "Shamrock" before the > program ended in the 1970s. A program known as "Minaret" tracked > 75,000 Americans whose activities had drawn government interest > between 1952 and 1974, including participation in the anti-war > movement during the Vietnam War. > "NSA prides itself on learning the lessons of the 1970s and obeying > the legal restrictions imposed by FISA," Bamford said. "Now it looks > like we're going back to the bad old days again." > Copyright 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer All we have of freedom, all we use or know This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law. ... So they bought us freedom not at little cost Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost, Over all things certain, this is sure indeed, Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed. Excerpted from The Old Issue by Rudyard Kipling If any substantial number of Americans begin using encryption for their ordinary emails even the NSA's Cray computers will bog down to a crawl. Since the NSA is no longer under the rule of law I have begun encrypting my ordinary emails so the NSA will not know how boring my life really is without investing computing time to find out. Even the NSA's resources are not unlimited. We can jam this genie back into it's bottle. Encrypt your personal Email today and join a new main stream civil liberties movement to protect the US from totalitarianism. Tom Horne "people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve=20 neither and will lose both" Benjamin Franklin [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would be interested in finding out if anyone could assist me in encrypting _this Digest_ each day. Could anyone help with that? Also, I _do_ need to speak with the gentleman who has helped me get the Internet Historical Society back on line. Will you please call me today or tomorrow, or email me. Thanks. PAT] ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: Physically Protecting The Local Loop Network? Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 23:42:44 UTC Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Steven Lichter wrote: > Rich Greenberg wrote: >> I also had one of those many years ago. I didn't have the bell box >> that was normally used with it, so I took an induction coil from >> another phone (probably a 300 series) and wired it up. Worked fine. >> That was 6 houses and 40+ years ago, and I have no idea where it is >> now. > Using that phone without its ringer box causes load on the line, low > voice and such, the box has an induction coil. You are correct, but note that I did wire it with an induction coil. Rich Greenberg Marietta, GA, USA richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507 Eastern time. N6LRT I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines:Val, Red & Shasta (RIP),Red, husky Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: NSA Puts Cookies on Your Computer Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2005 20:40:06 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com jared wrote: > Nothing unique about the site ... many commercial sites, esp for the > cookies that appear to support advertising, cluster in the 2036-2038 > time frame. It may have something to do with the fact that many web servers run Unix, and the latest date that can be represented by a Unix 32-bit date is sometime in 2038 (IIRC). Steve Sobol, Professional Geek 888-480-4638 PGP: 0xE3AE35ED Company website: http://JustThe.net/ Personal blog, resume, portfolio: http://SteveSobol.com/ E: sjsobol@JustThe.net Snail: 22674 Motnocab Road, Apple Valley, CA 92307 ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://www.feedrollpro.com/syndicate.php?id=308 and also http://feeds.feedburner.com/TelecomDigest ************************************************************************* * 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 2005-06 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 #588 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 30 23:56:25 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 9EE9B14F43; Fri, 30 Dec 2005 23:56:24 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #589 Message-Id: <20051231045624.9EE9B14F43@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 23:56:24 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.6 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00 autolearn=unavailable version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Fri, 30 Dec 2005 23:57:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 589 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Justice Probe Over Domestic Spy Leak (Toni Locy) Re: What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? (gabriel) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (niallgal@yahoo.com) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (Seth Breidbart) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (John Levine) Re: Payphone Surcharges to call Toll-Free Numbers (Anthony Bellanga) Re: Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests (Tony P.) Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Amtrack Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia (Robert Bonomi) Re: Amtrack Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia (Wesrock@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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Toni Locy Subject: Justice Probe Over Domestic Spy Leak Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 14:55:37 -0600 Justice Dept. Probing Domestic Spying Leak By TONI LOCY, Associated Press Writer The Justice Department has opened an investigation into the leak of classified information about President Bush's secret domestic spying program. The inquiry focuses on disclosures to The New York Times about warrantless surveillance conducted by the National Security Agency since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said. The Times revealed the existence of the program two weeks ago in a front-page story that acknowledged the news had been withheld from publication for a year, partly at the request of the administration and partly because the newspaper wanted more time to confirm various aspects of the program. White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Justice undertook the action on its own, and the president was informed of it on Friday. "The leaking of classified information is a serious issue. The fact is that al-Qaida's playbook is not printed on Page One and when America's is, it has serious ramifications," Duffy told reporters in Crawford, Texas, where Bush was spending the holidays. Catherine Mathis, a spokeswoman for The Times, said the paper will not comment on the investigation. Revelation of the secret spying program unleashed a firestorm of criticism of the administration. Some critics accused the president of breaking the law by authorizing intercepts of conversations - without prior court approval or oversight - of people inside the United States and abroad who had suspected ties to al-Qaida or its affiliates. The surveillance program, which Bush acknowledged authorizing, bypassed a nearly 30-year-old secret court established to oversee highly sensitive investigations involving espionage and terrorism. Administration officials insisted that Bush has the power to conduct the warrantless surveillance under the Constitution's war powers provision. They also argued that Congress gave Bush the power to conduct such a secret program when it authorized the use of military force against terrorism in a resolution adopted within days of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Justice Department's investigation was being initiated after the agency received a request for the probe from the NSA. Special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been conducting a separate leak investigation to determine who in the administration leaked CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to the media in 2003. Several reporters have been called to testify before a grand jury or to give depositions. New York Times reporter Judith Miller spent 85 days in jail, refusing to reveal her source, before testifying in the probe. The administration's legal interpretation of the president's powers allowed the government to avoid requirements under the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in conducting the warrantless surveillance. The act established procedures that an 11-member court used in 2004 to oversee nearly 1,800 government applications for secret surveillance or searches of foreigners and U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism or espionage. Congressional leaders have said they were not briefed four years ago, when the secret program began, as thoroughly as the administration has since contended. Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle said in an article printed last week on the op-ed page of The Washington Post that Congress explicitly denied a White House request for war-making authority in the United States. "This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas ... but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens," Daschle wrote. Daschle was Senate Democratic leader at the time of the 2001 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington. He is now a fellow at the Center for American Progress, a liberal Washington think tank. The administration formally defended its domestic spying program in a letter to Congress last week, saying the nation's security outweighs privacy concerns of individuals who are monitored. In a letter to the chairs of the House and Senate intelligence committees, the Justice Department said Bush authorized conducting electronic surveillance without first obtaining a warrant in an effort to thwart terrorist acts against the United States. Assistant Attorney General William E. Moschella acknowledged "legitimate" privacy interests. But he said those interests "must be balanced" against national security. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more headlines from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html (or) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As some of you may know, I have a blog http://ptownson.blogspot.com, where, as a crazy old man with a diseased brain who wears a tin-foil hat as I set about bringing shame and mortification on the internet each day. Earlier today, I posted on this very topic there: how typical it is of our government to (instead of) dealing with the president who broke the law by doing domestic spying on U.S. citizens; they instead twist it around and say they will find out who snitched on the president for doing it and punish _that person_ instead. Dubya has to be the worst president we have ever had since Richard Milhouse Nixon, or maybe even earlier than him. It was the same kind of thing in Nixon's instance; he and his cheering squad complained about someone tattling on Nixon, and the government tried to turn the screws on all involved. But finally the Congress of the U.S. prevailed, and Nixon received the essence of an impeachment. I do not know what will happen to Bush as a result of him being so naughty, but I would sure hate to see the whistleblower get punished instead. But that's your government for you these days. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gabe Subject: Re: What Carriers Does Vonage Use to Terminate Calls? Date: 30 Dec 2005 17:36:15 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com John Levine wrote: >> I'm just currious what companies Vonage users to terminate calls >> across the country since they do not have their own true >> infrastructure. Any ideas? > Lots of different ones. Here in upstate NY it's Paetec but they have > lots of different deals with different CLECs. If you're wondering and > have a lot of spare time, visit their voicemail help page at > http://www.vonage.com/features.php?feature=voicemail which has a list > of their voicemail access numbers which are in the same number blocks > as their phone numbers. Look up the NPA-NXX of the voicemail number > to see what CLEC they use in that area. > Regards, > John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 > johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, > Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail Awesome! You guys are great! Gabe ------------------------------ From: niallgal@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 30 Dec 2005 14:41:13 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com AES wrote: > In article , niallgal@yahoo.com > wrote: >> A quick web search comes up with >> http://www.digitalantenna.com/cellamprep_DA4000SBR.html which makes >> the following claims: > Thanks for info, but the packaged retail version of this seems to be: > DA4KSBR-50U - For Large Yachts and RVs, Home, Office > MSRP $699.95 ... > At that price I'm afraid I'll have to wait until my financial status > gets closer to the "large yacht" stage before going after one of these > for my (comparatively modest) home. The best online price I found is from http://www.boatersland.com/da4000sbr.html, about $398. As far as legality goes, caveat emptor! I have no connection with the manufacturer or the reseller and found this device while researching ways to get better cellular coverage in a rural part of Quebec! It's a project for next summer. Good luck. NIall ------------------------------ From: sethb@panix.com (Seth Breidbart) Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 01:50:41 UTC Organization: Society for the Promulgation of Cruelty to the Clueless In article , John Levine wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wait a minute ... either an 800 call is > a 'free call' to the caller or it is a chargeable call to the > caller. One or the other. It's free to the caller (that being the person at the physical phone). > If it costs me 35 cents, then it should be > referred to as a 'premium charge' call rather than a 'toll free' call > shouldn't it? The recipient pays, as always. The phone owner gets 30 cents. > How does the recipient of the call know that the call > is originating from a COCOT style phone instead of a 'regular' line? All payphone owners, not just COCOT phones, get the 30 cents. The recipient gets some information when the call is set up. It's possible to disallow receipt of those calls, too. > How does that fact (COCOT instead of regular) make any difference > where what the carriage costs telco? Or is that 35 cents only to > appease the COCOT owner? PAT] The 30 cents goes to the phone owner. Seth ------------------------------ Date: 31 Dec 2005 02:16:01 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wait a minute ... either an 800 call is > a 'free call' to the caller or it is a chargeable call to the > caller. One or the other. The telco doesn't charge the caller anything. The phone bill charges I was describing are on the 800 number bill sent to the owner of the 800 number, i.e., if you were to call my 800 number from a payphone, I would see the extra 54 cents on my phone bill. On the other hand, if you use the 800 number to access a calling card, the calling card company invariably passes along the payphone surcharge and marks it up somewhat. > How does the recipient of the call know that the call is > originating from a COCOT style phone instead of a 'regular' line? There's a pair of line type digits sent along with the ANI. That topic has been discussed in the digest at some length. > How does that fact (COCOT instead of regular) make any difference > where what the carriage costs telco? Or is that 35 cents only to > appease the COCOT owner? PAT] The latter, it's to compensate the payphone owner (either COCOT or LEC payphones) who otherwise gets no revenue for the call since separations have gone away and the caller didn't put in any coins. R's, John ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 15:41:26 -0700 From: Anthony Bellanga [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Wait a minute ... either an 800 call is > a 'free call' to the caller or it is a chargeable call to the > caller. One or the other. If it costs me 35 cents, then it should be > referred to as a 'premium charge' call rather than a 'toll free' call > shouldn't it? How does the recipient of the call know that the call > is originating from a COCOT style phone instead of a 'regular' line? > How does that fact (COCOT instead of regular) make any difference > where what the carriage costs telco? Or is that 35 cents only to > appease the COCOT owner? PAT] If you read what John Levine posted, I think he was clear that the "holder" of that 800 (or 888, 877, 866, etc) number is the one who not only pays a fee for receiving calls (usually a small per-call charge, but maybe per-minute or a maybe a "fixed" monthly fee for a "bulk" of inbound calls), as well as that "toll-free-number 'holder'" also must pay the additional per-call fee if the caller placed the call from a pay phone. The calling party (usually) does NOT pay extra to call an 800, 888, 877, 866, etc. number from a payphone, although SOME private payhone owners have been known (at least in the past) to demand an extra 25-c or whatever even though the owner of that private payphone doesn't pay a penny for the call to that toll-free 800, 888, 877, 866 number to be placed from their payphone. The toll-free number "holder", i.e., the recipient usually has no way of knowing that the call came from a payphone and that they might have to pay more to receive that call, paid to the owner of the private payphone via the long distance carrier who handles the toll-free service. But if the 800/888/877/866/etc. number "holder" is a big business with realtime delivery of ANI information, they probably also have realtime deliver of the FULL ANI which includes additional digits or parameters along with the ten-digit billing number of the calling party. These additional digits are referred to as the 'II' or Information Integers. They represent the "class of service" of the calling line, i.e., single party residential, business, ANI failure for the calling party, multi-party calling line, hotel/motel line, hospital bed, prison phone, university dorm extension, regular business PBX or Centrex, Operator Handled, coinless "credit card" phone, telco owned payphone, and privately owned (COCOT) payphone, as well as dozens of other sub-classes. Most small businesses with 800/888/877/866/etc. numbers wouldn't have realtime delivery of ANI and ANI-II data. Virtually all residential customers who have a "personal" 800/888/877/866/etc. number wouldn't require such detailed realtime information neither. However, when you get your bill, depending on your carrier for your inbound 800/888/etc. service, you should get some kind of ten-digit number of each inbound call to your toll-free number. And, as John points out, if the call originated from a payphone subject to compensation to the owner of that payphone, there is usually some kind of footnote flagging next to that number indicating such. And the cost of the call would also reflect the increased price. I don't know about all long distance carriers, but AT&T will allow a holder of an 800/888/etc. number (whether big business, small business, or a residential customer with a "personal" 800/888/etc. number), to be able to have AT&T *BLOCK* access to their toll-free number if the caller is at a payphone. This would be based on the ANI-II data that is sent from the calling payphone's telco over to AT&T. If I try calling that (payphone restricted) toll-free number from a payhone, I will get a intercepted by AT&T (or whoever) with an announcement that the called 800/888/etc. toll-free party does not accept calls from payphones, and to try to place the call from another phone. And then I'm disconnected. I'm not even given the option to "somehow pay" the extorted additional charge for calling that number. Even if I am using my own AT&T or local telco calling card to call a toll-free number (it sounds weird to try to call a toll-free number with a card but read on)... where I would "agree" to pay the extra surcharge on my calling card, AT&T won't allow that. About the only thing is that if I use an 800/888/877/866/etc. number to access a long distance carrier's card platform, or use 0+ or 0-, or 950-xxxx, to place an outgoing call to a POTS telephone number from a payphone, where I would pay the toll charges on my card rather than with coins (or collect), as the caller and user of the card (and carrier's access numbers or codes), I will incurr the payphone compensation extored surcharge via my long distance carrier / card issuer's billing, in addition to the card charge for the call. Even if I use the toll-free access number once and make several "sequence" calls on a single "session" to different destination numbers, most carriers will ding me the payphone compensation surcharge for each (completed) call. However, my simply dialing 1-800-CALL-ATT, even if I put in a card number, does not "in and of itself" ding me the extorted surcharge if none of my attempts to reach specific destination numbers don't return answer supervision -- i.e., are busy, don't answer, or reach a non supervising vacant or intercept type recording. However, I don't know if AT&T or whoever is liable for compensating the payphone owner for such non-supervised incomplete call attempts. The owner of the COCOT might keep their own "log" of all attempts to call particular 800/888/etc. toll-free numbers in the chip circuits inside the phone. Anyhow, regardless of what some might think, I would tend to think that most people who have been hit with such charges in recent years, whether they are toll-free number holders, or else calling parties making card calls from payphones, would tend to refer to this practice as extortion. I have had a very low opinion of the private (COCOT) payphone industry for many years, and if I had my way, I'd put such private payphone owners in Abu Ghraib prison for the rest of their lives! Finally, the other sleazeballs, those toll-free number "holders" who provide sex or psycho "services" and charge back to the calling party somehow ... these always seem to reject calls to their 800/888/etc. numbers that are originated from payphones altogather. Many of them were rejecting payphone originated calls long before the sleazy private payphone industry convinved the government and telco industry that they had the right to demand "tribute" money extorted from the telephone using public. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 16:09:56 -0500 In article , hornetd@mindspring.com says: > Stewart M. Powell wrote: >> http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/253334_nsaspying24.html >> Secret court modified wiretap requests; >> Intervention may have led Bush to bypass panel. >> Saturday, December 24, 2005 >> By STEWART M. POWELL >> SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER WASHINGTON BUREAU >> WASHINGTON -- Government records show that the administration was >> encountering unprecedented second-guessing by the secret federal >> surveillance court when President Bush decided to bypass the panel and >> order surveillance of U.S.-based terror suspects without the court's >> approval. >> A review of Justice Department reports to Congress shows that the >> 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more >> wiretap requests from the Bush administration than from the four >> previous presidential administrations combined. >> The court's repeated intervention in Bush administration wiretap >> requests may explain why the president decided to bypass the court >> nearly four years ago to launch secret National Security Agency spying >> on hundreds and possibly thousands of Americans and foreigners inside >> the United States, according to James Bamford, an acknowledged >> authority on the supersecret NSA, which intercepts telephone calls, >> e-mails, faxes and Internet communications. >> "They wanted to expand the number of people they were eavesdropping >> on, and they didn't think they could get the warrants they needed from >> the court to monitor those people," said Bamford, author of "Body of >> Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret National Security Agency" and >> "The Puzzle Palace: Inside America's Most Secret Intelligence >> Organization." "The FISA court has shown its displeasure by tinkering >> with these applications by the Bush administration." >> Bamford offered his speculation in an interview last week. >> The 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, adopted by Congress in >> the wake of President Nixon's misuse of the NSA and the CIA before his >> resignation over Watergate, sets a high standard for court-approved >> wiretaps on Americans and resident aliens inside the United States. >> To win a court-approved wiretap, the government must show "probable >> cause" that the target of the surveillance is a member of a foreign >> terrorist organization or foreign power and is engaged in activities >> that "may" involve a violation of criminal law. >> Faced with that standard, Bamford said, the Bush administration had >> difficulty obtaining FISA court-approved wiretaps on dozens of people >> within the United States who were communicating with targeted al-Qaida >> suspects inside the United States. >> The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps has approved at least >> 18,740 applications for electronic surveillance or physical searches >> from five presidential administrations since 1979. >> The judges modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 >> applications that were approved over the first 22 years of the court's >> operation. In 20 of the first 21 annual reports on the court's >> activities up to 1999, the Justice Department told Congress that "no >> orders were entered (by the FISA court) which modified or denied the >> requested authority" submitted by the government. >> But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for >> court-ordered surveillance by the Bush administration. A total of 173 >> of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 >> and 2004 -- the most recent years for which public records are >> available. >> The judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for >> warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection in the >> court's history. >> Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said last week that Bush authorized >> NSA surveillance of overseas communications by U.S.-based terror >> suspects because the FISA court's approval process was too cumbersome. >> The Bush administration, responding to concerns expressed by some >> judges on the 11-member panel, agreed last week to give them a >> classified briefing on the domestic spying program. U.S. District >> Judge Malcolm Howard, a member of the panel, told CNN that the Bush >> administration agreed to brief the judges after U.S. District Judge >> James Robertson resigned from the FISA panel, apparently to protest >> Bush's spying program. >> Bamford, 59, a Vietnam-era Navy veteran, likens the Bush administra- >> tion's domestic surveillance without court approval to Nixon-era >> abuses of intelligence agencies. >> NSA and previous eavesdropping agencies collected duplicates of all >> international telegrams to and from the United States for decades >> during the Cold War under a program code-named "Shamrock" before the >> program ended in the 1970s. A program known as "Minaret" tracked >> 75,000 Americans whose activities had drawn government interest >> between 1952 and 1974, including participation in the anti-war >> movement during the Vietnam War. >> "NSA prides itself on learning the lessons of the 1970s and obeying >> the legal restrictions imposed by FISA," Bamford said. "Now it looks >> like we're going back to the bad old days again." >> Copyright 1998-2005 Seattle Post-Intelligencer > All we have of freedom, all we use or know > This our fathers bought for us long and long ago. > Ancient Right unnoticed as the breath we draw > Leave to live by no man's leave, underneath the Law. > So they bought us freedom not at little cost > Wherefore must we watch the King, lest our gain be lost, > Over all things certain, this is sure indeed, > Suffer not the old King: for we know the breed. > Excerpted from The Old Issue by Rudyard Kipling > If any substantial number of Americans begin using encryption for > their ordinary emails even the NSA's Cray computers will bog down to a > crawl. > Since the NSA is no longer under the rule of law I have begun > encrypting my ordinary emails so the NSA will not know how boring my > life really is without investing computing time to find out. Even the > NSA's resources are not unlimited. We can jam this genie back into > it's bottle. Encrypt your personal Email today and join a new main > stream civil liberties movement to protect the US from > totalitarianism. > Tom Horne > "people willing to trade their freedom for temporary security deserve=20 > neither and will lose both" Benjamin Franklin > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would be interested in finding out if > anyone could assist me in encrypting _this Digest_ each day. Could > anyone help with that? > Also, I _do_ need to speak with the gentleman who has helped me get > the Internet Historical Society back on line. Will you please call me > today or tomorrow, or email me. Thanks. PAT] Oh it would drive them crazy of all of a sudden public key encryption were in use on NNTP groups. Not that pk can't be broken -- it can. It all depends on the number of bits in the key. If they want to read my email so be it. Same with my blog, my flickr site, etc. So far I've only advocated the overthrow of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, not much else. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I want the strongest encryption I can get for this Digest, if anyone will help me work on it. Maybe I will do it for all my web pages, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia Date: 30 Dec 2005 15:02:18 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This must certainly be one of the > grander moments in the glorious history of the Toonerville Trolley. > If it has not occurred to Amtrack authorities by now to (a) either > split the wrecked train in two parts and clear the way or (b) > considering they were already delayed 12 hours in Jacksonville, simply > evacuate the trains passengers, bus them to the nearest airport and > have airplanes take everyone to their home town immediatly, then I do > not suppose another eight or ten hours stranded there will change > anything. Note -- The proper spelling is "Amtrak". I doubt very much splitting the train in two would work since a key intersection is blocked. A second locomotive would be needed to take the second part of the train and with the blockade it couldn't reach the spot. I suspect passengers can't be evacuated to buses because the train is in an inaccessible area where buses couldn't reach. Normally that is done. Further, it seems to be taking CSX too long to clear the intersection. You seem to be blaming Amtrak for this incident when it is clearly the host railroad's fault, and that is CSX. In the last decade, after many mega-mergers in the railroad industry, Amtrak has had a very tough time because the host railroads refuse to properly transport Amtrak trains, indeed, they can't even run their own trains. When CSX and NS (Norfolk Southern) carved up Conrail a few years ago it was supposed to improve service but instead service is much worse. Recently fired Amtrak president David Gunn had a win-win plan to improve service. He wanted to partner Federal and freight railroad money to improve key bottleneck intersections per above so that there is additional capacity to handle more trains and run them faster. The freight lines would do better and Amtrak trains would do better. The Bush Adm fired Mr. Gunn, claiming he had no future plans. Gunn had plans to significantly increase Amtrak train speeds and reliabiltiy at modest cost by focusing on the best "bang for the buck" needs. Firing Mr. Gunn was a very stupid decision. The Bush Adm plans for Amtrak will only destroy it. IMHO, Gunn was fired because he was doing too good a job and had too many good ideas. >I mean is anyone besides me old enough to remember when we > had real, honest-to-God reliable rail service in America? PAT] The answer to that clear, but a bit complex. We had good trains before this country chose to invest many billions of our taxpayer dollars into aviation and highways. While most of their expenses are covered by user fees, a considerable amount are not. Our local property taxes, for example, pay for police/fire/rescue of motorists. Highways and airplanes use land that is tax free, railroads (such as CSX) must pay properly taxes on their tracks. Indeed, in the 1950s many towns added surcharge taxes to railroad properties to get money to build a municipal airport. Other towns had to make up for taxes lost when a highway used once taxable land. All this killed off psgr trains. Amtrak's subsidy is a single number easy to see, but highways and airways get their subsidies from multiple sources. Today, Amtrak must pay the expensive pensions of retired railroaders who never worked for Amtrak. Amtrak must pay dearly to clean up PCBs and asbestos in old facilities it never even used. This is all part of the terms of creating Amtrak--it inherited all the legacy debt. In contrast, today airlines have their debts removed by bankruptcy and won't even pay pensions for their own employees. The airlines have dumped about $15 billion of their pension funds onto the pension guaranty fund -- that's enough money to run Amtrak for ten years. In 1970 some farsighted people realized that the passenger train still had a role to play and Amtrak was created. It is documented in a book about the Nixon Adm, "The Palace Guard", that the highway interests were furious at DOT Sec Volpe for creating Amtrak and pushed for his firing. Today Amtrak critics focus literally on how many napkins food service uses, yet conveniently ignore far bigger waste in the highway and airline world -- waste that we taxpayers have to pay for. Clearly Amtrak critics are not interested in saving money, but rather pursuing an ideological battle. We just don't have the land anymore to build massive highways and airports. A passenger train can snake underground and the land above used for other purposes as is done in some cities. Obviously today the highway and airway will be the primary transport medium, but there is still a need for passenger trains. The demand is certainly there -- new Amtrak service is well patronized--but Amtrak is denied the resources to add more services. Mr. Gunn also had a corridor improvement plan, sadly that is forgotten too. [public replies, please] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Excuses, excuses! My main point was _what business does the government have in being in the Rail Road business anyway? The trains ran perfectly well by themselves, and when the government took over they just got worse and worse. PAT] ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomni.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Amtrack Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 00:03:00 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Associated Press News Wire wrote: > A trainload of frustrated passengers has been stuck on an Amtrak train > stranded in a patch of woods in south Georgia for more than 24 hours. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This must certainly be one of the > grander moments in the glorious history of the Toonerville Trolley. > If it has not occurred to Amtrack authorities by now to (a) either > split the wrecked train in two parts and clear the way or (b) First off, _AMTRAK_ can't do that. AMTRAK doesn't own the tracks. *OR* the derailed train. AMTRAK is not in control of the situation. All such "operational" decisions are made by the freight railroad that owns the tracks, and the train. Second, the railroad in that whole area is a "one lane road". *not* 'one lane _each_way_', but *one*lane* total. Again this is not AMTRAK's doing, but is a decision by the railroad company that owns the tracks. A minor screw-up on the 'one-lane road' can lead to big time delays, simply due to 'traffic jam' effects. > considering they were already delayed 12 hours in Jacksonville, simply > evacuate the trains passengers, bus them to the nearest airport and "Simply evacuate the passengers" ... you say. *HOW* do you do that? There's trains blocking the track in front of you, and behind you. There *isn't* any _road_ near the tracks where you are. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: (i.e. the Tin-Foil Hat man). Oh gosh, I keep forgetting, no one is in charge of anything; certainly not the internet (right, Robert?) and I guess not the nation's Rail Road system either. If we evacuated the train and had the people all start walking down the tracks, presumably the old people would find a drug store open somewhere along the way where they could replenish their pharmaceuticals and hope to live for another day or three, and hopefully they would find an outhouse along the way where they could filch a roll or two of toilet paper to use. Probably before they got all the way back to Our Nation's (drug and crime-ridden) Capitol -- where I guess a train from Florida northbound is headed -- they might even find a store or restaurant to take their check or ATM card so they can get some groceries to eat on the way. Instead of blaming this fiasco on the wonderful folks at Amtrak (for after all, they knew what was best for us when they turned over the Rail Road to the government long ago) probably 'since no one is in charge of anything' they could blame the doctors who did not write scripts for larger pill containers (at least a full week's worth of pills for when someone decides to ride Amtrak, or the people themselves for not thinking ahead and bringing lots of loose change to feed the rip off vending machines on board. After all, the people should have known that they would get hungry sitting in place for 24+ hours on a non- moving train, and probably brought along a couple rolls of paper; the people should have known the bathroom on the train would run out. Imagine that ... some people believe Amtrak should have had enough smarts to figure some of this out ahead of time. But who are they kidding; Amtrak is just another bunch of stupid politicians. I hope Amtrak pays dearly for this fiasco; oops, I forgot; you cannot sue the government without getting its permission to do so, since after all its motives are pure and noble and all that rot. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 20:56:05 EST Subject: Re: Amtrack Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia In a message dated 12/30/05 2:39:40 PM Central Standard Time, editor@telecom-digest.org writes: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This must certainly be one of the > grander moments in the glorious history of the Toonerville Trolley. > If it has not occurred to Amtrack authorities by now to (a) either > split the wrecked train in two parts and clear the way or (b) > considering they were already delayed 12 hours in Jacksonville, simply > evacuate the trains passengers, bus them to the nearest airport and > have airplanes take everyone to their home town immediatly, then I do > not suppose another eight or ten hours stranded there will change > anything. I mean is anyone besides me old enough to remember when we > had real, honest-to-God reliable rail service in America? PAT] Pat, It's Amtrak, not Amtrack. The AP story spelled it correctly. The freight train that derailed is a train owned by the CSX Railway, which also owns the track. It is not up to Amtrak. We have "real, honest-to-God reliable rail service in America," provided by railroads doing what they do best, handling great quantities of freight (and without government subsidies). Passenger service is no longer the important function it once was, which is why the share of passenger traffic on the few passenger trains which do exist is such a minuscule percentage of all passenger travel. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I got one other detail wrong; it is not the 'Toonerville Trolley System' it is the 'Hooterville Railroad' you know, that train which runs through Green Acres on television except for 'Kosiusko's Birthday and other more major holidays'. So, Wes, I guess you would agree with Robert Bomoni, since no one knows who to blame, the passengers will have to just sit there and make-do until if/when the derailed train gets out of the way, and hopefully make their kids quit squalling and running wild through the coaches while they find a working, stocked bathroom before it is too late. PAT ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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 #589 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Dec 31 18:20:30 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 034F514EDE; Sat, 31 Dec 2005 18:20:29 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #590 Message-Id: <20051231232029.034F514EDE@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 18:20:29 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-2.8 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, CELL_PHONE_IMPROVE autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 31 Dec 2005 18:23:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 590 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Another Critical Flaw Detected in Windows Metafile (Jay Wrolstad) Web Services Thrive, But Outages Outrage Users (Adam Pasick) White House Says Counts Visitors, Nothing Else (Anick Jesdanun) Going Back to the c:/ Prompt (Erik Larkin) Unknown Name - 803-567-3694 Call in Middle Morning (Tony) Question About VOIP (Trevor Smithson) Watching an Old Video Tape (Lisa Hancock) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Michael D. Sullivan) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Rik) Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) (DevilsPGD) Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia (Lisa Hancock) Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia (Jim Stewart) Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia (Bob Vaughan) Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia (Scott Dorsey) Cybergiving Website Accepting Final Donations 2005 (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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jay Wrolstad Subject: Another Critical Flaw Detected in Windows Metafile Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 11:19:44 -0600 Jay Wrolstad, newsfactor.com A vulnerability has been discovered in Microsoft Windows that allows hackers to remotely access PCs and install malware through an imaging-handling technology in the operating system. Microsoft acknowledged the release of exploit code that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code when someone visits a Web site that contains a specially crafted Windows Metafile (WMF) image. Security authority Secunia labeled the vulnerability "extremely critical." Malicious Graphics Files WMF images are graphical files that can contain both vector and bitmap-based picture information. Microsoft Windows contains routines for displaying such files, but a lack of input validation in one of these routines may allow a buffer overflow to occur, which in turn may allow remote code execution. The vulnerability can also be triggered from the Internet Explorer browser if the malicious file has been saved to a folder and renamed to other image file extensions such as ".jpg," ".gif," ".tif," and ".png." It has been detected on a patched system running Microsoft Windows XP SP2. Microsoft Windows XP SP1 and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 systems also are affected. Current exploits use the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer to attack any application that can handle Windows Metafiles. Disabling the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer will not eliminate the risk as the flaw exists in the Windows Graphical Device Interface library. The flaw has also raised concerns that Google Desktop may be another potential attack vector, and that various antivirus software products cannot detect all known exploits for this vulnerability. A Familiar Problem By default, Explorer on those operating systems runs in a restricted mode known as Enhanced Security Configuration, which Microsoft said mitigates this vulnerability as far as e-mail is concerned, although clicking on a link in a message would still put users at risk. Yankee Group senior analyst Andrew Jaquith characterized the vulnerability as a serious security issue that has cropped up before in browsers, including Firefox and Safari. "It's particularly nasty because the browser automatically loads images when users visit a Web site. There is no built-in protection," he said. Jaquith predicted that additional exploits of the vulnerability are expected since there is no patch available and the security hole is difficult to plug. People who use Windows are advised to be wary when opening e-mail and links in e-mail from sources they don't trust. They should not save, open or preview image files from unfamiliar sources. And, as always, people are encouraged to update the patches for their operating systems. In general, just toss out unread email you were not expecting or do not know the origin of. Microsoft vowed to investigate the vulnerability and to provide a security update when it becomes available. Customers who believe they may have been affected may contact the company's Product Support Services. Copyright 2005 NewsFactor Network, 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.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, News Factor Network. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So, start the new year right with a nasty thing in your computer. If we cannot _even read_ email from people we do not know (or in many cases, ignorant people we _do_ know who like to 'pass this along to all your friends'), and there are a lot of web sites we cannot really trust, then tell me again, what is the purpose of computers? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Adam Pasick Subject: Web Services Thrive, but Outages Outrage Users Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 11:12:42 -0600 By Adam Pasick Web sites that share blogs, bookmarks and photos exploded in popularity in 2005, but in recent weeks a number of major outages left users stranded and frustrated. The new breed of Web site includes blogging services such as TypePad, the photo site Flickr, the shared bookmark site del.icio.us and many others. They are sometimes known collectively as "Web 2.0": hosted online, relying heavily on users' submissions, and frequently updated and tweaked by their owners. Their growth in the last year has been huge. Flickr and del.icio.us were high-profile acquisitions for Internet giant Yahoo, and there are now at least 20 million blogs in existence, according to some estimates, with tens of thousands being added every day. But the surge in Web-based applications hasn't come without some serious hiccups as several notable services have crashed. Six Apart, whose TypePad service is used by many high-profile bloggers, experienced nearly an entire day of downtime on December 16, when it suffered a hardware failure. Del.icio.us had a major power failure on December 14. Services including Bloglines, Feedster and WordPress have also experienced problems. Nothing underlines the importance of these "social media" services as much as the outcry of users when the sites crash. While the services were usually back up and running within a few days at most, the outages prompted much consternation from users who were temporarily unable to share their blogs and bookmarks with the world. Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino wrote on their blog MobHappy http://mobhappy.typepad.com/ that waiting for TypePad to be fixed was like "waiting for a train to arrive, when you're sitting on a cold, damp platform. It's mildly irritating for the first 5 minutes, but then annoyance levels start to rise exponentially." "TypePad has been growing so rapidly that it is finding the hard way that scale and scalability matter," Business 2.0 technology writer Om Malik wrote on his blog (http://gigaom.com/). "Are they the only ones? Not really -- over (the) past few days Bloglines, Feedster and Wordpress.com have been behaving like a temperamental 3-year-old." The usefulness of Web 2.0 services -- which also include the collaborative Web pages known as Wikis and RSS feeds that deliver customized information to users -- is highlighted when they are abruptly taken away. "You need those services to be 'on.' I have come to expect 99.9 percent uptime, and when a service crashes there is significant frustration," said David Boxer, director of instructional technology and research at the Windward School in Los Angeles, where he runs workshops on subjects like podcasting and photoblogging. "When those services go down, then we are stuck in a ditch," he said. Boxer's students have worked on projects aimed at making them "citizen journalists" via publishing their own blogs, podcasts, documentaries and photo essays. But when those services suffer outages, everything grinds to a halt. When the Blogger Web site went down, Boxer's students lost some of their work. And when del.icio.us crashed recently, "it left me personally in a lurch," he said. "I knew that eventually a machine or software application will crash, but I always expect a third-party provider like del.icio.us will build enough redundancy into the infrastructure that it will never go down," Boxer said. It is still early days for Web 2.0, and some of the recent difficulties are likely just teething problems as companies adapt to their new popularity. However, the outages may make it harder to convince businesses and investors that blogging is ready for primetime. Boxer, for one, is willing to ride out a few outages to take advantage of the new services. "They allow for elements of personalization, content delivery and information pushing unlike any previous incarnation of the Net," he said. WEB 2.0 LINKS TypePad http://www.typepad.com/ : A paid-for service for publishing blogs and photo albums. Competitors include Wordpress http://wordpress.org/ and Google's Blogger.com http://www.blogger.com . Flickr http://www.flickr.com/: An online service for sharing and managing photos. Del.icio.us http://del.icio.us: A site for storing and sharing bookmarked Web pages. Computer book publisher Tim O'Reilly's essay on Web 2.0 http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and stories, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/newstoday.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is sort of what happened to me a bit over a week ago. I was in the process of setting up, remodeling and improving the Internet Historical Society web site. I had downloaded it all from its old location, had it in storage, and was working with a fellow who had found a quite nice (speaking in internet real-estate terms) location; was in the process of shoving things around to build its new home, and then -- the hard drive it was all stored on here, _including the passwords, the access to the new location, his name and email address, etc -- all went bye, bye. Picture if you will, you are building a new house, and it all gets destroyed, catches fire, whatever, a week or two before you are going to move in. So I spoke to the old host who had put it all in a .zip file in storage somewhere, got it once again, and now am setting about beginning it again. Obviously I will miss my anticipated start up date of January 1, as I mentioned here about a week ago. But oh well, that is life I guess. At least the majority of my links, etc can be reconstructed. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Anick Jesdanun Subject: White House Says it Counts Visitors, Nothing Else Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 11:15:43 -0600 By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer The White House said Friday its Web tracking technology is consistent with federal rules because it only counts the number of visitors anonymously and doesn't record personal information. The White House's site uses what's known as a Web bug -- a tiny graphic image that's virtually invisible -- to anonymously keep track of the number and time of visits. The bug is sent by a server maintained by an outside contractor, WebTrends Inc., and lets the traffic-analysis company know that another person has visited a specific page on the site. Web bugs themselves are not prohibited. However, under a directive from the White House's Office of Management and Budget, they are largely banned at government sites when linked to cookies, which are data files that let a site track Web visitors. Cookies are not generated simply by visiting the White House site. Rather, WebTrends cookies are sometimes created when visiting other WebTrends clients. An analysis by security researcher Richard M. Smith shows such preexisting cookies have then been read when users visit the White House site. The discovery and subsequent inquiries by The Associated Press prompted the White House to investigate. David Almacy, the White House's Internet director, said tests conducted since Thursday show that data from the cookie and the bug are not mixed - and thus the 2003 guidelines weren't violated. "The White House Web site is and always has been consistent with the OMB guidance," Almacy said, adding that the limited tracking is common among Web sites. Jason Palmer, vice president of products for Portland, Ore.-based WebTrends, said Web browsers are designed to scan preexisting cookies automatically, but he insisted the company doesn't use the information to track visitors to the White House site. Smith said the White House and WebTrends could have avoided any appearance of a problem by simply renaming the server used at WebTrends. The Clinton administration first issued the strict rules on cookies in 2000 after its Office of National Drug Control Policy, through a contractor, had used the technology to track computer users viewing its online anti-drug advertising. The rules were updated in 2003 by the Bush administration. Nonetheless, agencies occasionally violate the rules -- inadvertently, they contend. The CIA did in 2002, and the NSA more recently. The NSA disabled the cookies this week and blamed a recent upgrade to software that shipped with cookie settings already on. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines and stories from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html ------------------------------ From: Erik Larkin Subject: Going Back to the c:/ Prompt Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 11:17:35 -0600 Erik Larkin Microsoft has big plans for the trusty old C:\ prompt. For its upcoming Windows Vista operating system, the company is developing a new command-line interface, or shell -- the text-based controls typically accessed by clicking Command Prompt (under Start Menu, Programs, Accessories) in Windows XP. Code-named Monad, the new shell will enable a host of new programs known as scripts -- something at which rival Unix operating systems have historically excelled. While these new commands and scripts will interest primarily administrators and power users, less-technical types may benefit from Monad scripts that could circulate on the Internet as Unix scripts do. For example, a Monad script might quickly reorganize files and directories based on their name or creation date -- a task that can take a fair bit of manual labor in Windows Explorer. A beta version of Monad for Windows XP is available as a free download. Registration is required, and you will also need to have.Net Framework 2.0 (available at the same page) installed. Copyright 2005 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more technical news from PC World Communications and other sources please go to http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: Tony Subject: Unknown Name - 803-567-3694 Call in the Middle of the Morning Date: 31 Dec 2005 09:22:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi All, My wife received about four phone calls yesterday and it was the same guy on the other line. She said that he had (she assumes) a deep African accent and she could not understand him. First few calls she was pleasant ... call came in as unknown name, unknown number at first. She told the guy that he had the wrong number, but he would continue to call again. After 4 calls she turned the Anonymous Call Rejection on (*77) ... the calls ceased. Just this morning at 3:22 AM, we received a call and my wife answered ... she said it is the same guy ... she handed the phone to me and at first I did not say anything ... but the guy with the accent said "you need to put the money in the bank". I told him that he had the wrong number and hung up. He called again at 5:29 AM ... same number so I picked the phone up and pushed a button for about 30 seconds ... then released and listened ... he already hung up. (both AM calls showed up now as Unknown Name, with 803-567-3694. I tried to call this number and received operator message of " this is not a working number " , I assume that it is a business in Columbia, SC that does not accept inbound calls. I called my phone company and they said to file a complaint with my local Sheriff Dept ... so I did, and left a message with the Annoyance Call # 888-966-6222 and will have to wait until Tuesday to talk to a live person. Please let me know if any of you have received a call from this same number and if you were able to get them to stop. Thanks in Advance, (and Happy New Years!) Tony [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your message gave me some important clues. 'Thick African Accent' and 'during overnight/early morning hours' both point to an African origin for the calls (Nigeria, perhaps)? Many people are frankly ignorant of the difference in time zones around the world. Someone in Nigeria might have been calling at a 'reasonable hour' for them, unaware that Americans are fast asleep at those hours. Another clue worth considering is 'you better put the money in the bank'. That tells me a Nigerian phisherman many have landed something, and wanted to encourage the victim to make a hasty bank deposit. Pay no attention to what the caller ID said, if it was not outright bogus, then it may have been a translation error in the way the originating phone company presented it or in the way the carrier from overseas presented it (truncating one or two digits overflow digits from the start of the number, etc.) Caller ID is not extremely trustworthy on international calls, I have learned, nor are American telco techniques to block or avoid such calls. Or, alternatively, some American 'customer' of the phisherman may have had 'buyers remorse' at some point and gave the phisherman _your_ number (or just some random accidental number which turned out to be your number) to avoid any further hassles with the phisher-businessman. Finally, your local sheriff will probably be incompetent or unwilling to push any further on the matter, and the charge your phone company may assess you to push further on it (calls to *57 or the 888-966-6222 number [your local telco's direct number for Annoyance Bureau] typically cost $25-30 minimum for handling) will make it not worth your own expense, and anyway, the only way telco will handle it is by you agreeing in writing with them that if they get any positive results to their trace you authorize them to turn the results over to local law enforcement officials, _not to you_. Telco will explain that (a) even phisher-business-people have privacy rights and (b) that telco is not your personal detective agency. If you insist a crime has been committed, then telco says 'fine', we will tell police about the crime. And anyway, if you later found out that the 'thick African accent' was a relative or 'good friend' (a child perhaps) who likes to play with his telephone and make annoying prank phone calls -- just assume that was the result of the investigation -- would you really want police to get involved? Telco's experience has been most people do not want that, and that many people who engage their services for things like this are only taking the long way around to find out who called them, but not actually do anything. My suggestion is that _you_ take any further such overnight phone calls, and in your best African language-speak give the caller a piece of your mind; emphasize and counsel him that you and your family are _not_ the person(s) he was trying to reach -- I assume you have already closely questioned all members of your household and community of interest on this -- and that future calls from him will be dealt with harshly, then you replace the receiver, dial *60 and 'block last call recieved' and go back to sleep. I left the phone number shown as his feeble caller ID in this message so that if any other readers recieve such a call, they can give him a piece of their mind instead or maybe if it pleases them, hack _him_ to death as well. And Happy New Year to you and your family as well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Trevor Smithson Subject: Question About VOIP Date: 31 Dec 2005 04:40:49 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have VOIP service for my home and have a question about it. The company I signed up with sent me a gadget that plugs into my cable modem. Then my router is plugged into the phone company gadget, then two computers are plugged into the router. So, does having these two extra pieces of equipment, namely the router and phone company adapter, delay data packets very much? Compared with just having a computer hooked directly to the cable modem. Thank you. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Absolutely it does. Imagine a water pipe: only a certain amount can flow through the pipe at one time, no matter how much water is waiting on one side or the other. This is the same thing with cable internet and DSL. The router and the VOIP 'phone company adapter' don't delay the computer data all that much; actually it is the other way around. Having both computers going at once with large up/downloads and trying to use the phone adapter at the same time frequently causes the phone line to sound pretty awful. Have you ever noticed the phone audio appears to sometimes 'drop out' for a few seconds in a conversation, and you or the other party have to repeat what you said? That's the packets (of your voice transmission) getting lost or delayed or scrambled in the process. Some VOIP carriers send you an adapter box which _attempts_ to 'throttle' the data packets under the assumption your voice phone call should take priority over your data transmission. Sometimes it works but not always as well as desired. This involves the way you plug the the telco adapter box and the router together, having the telco adapter box plugged in 'ahead' of the router and computers, which it sounds to me is what you have done. My general rule of thumb is either transmit/recieve on the comptuer(s) or on the telephone, but not both (or all three!) at the same time. I have the same arrangement as what you have; if I am talking on my Vonage line I usually stop typing on my keyboard, even so my weather station computer once per minute sends a short little 'blip' (an FTP transfer to where it displays) and if I am on the phone I hear the phone cut off for just a second or two, and I lose a word or two of what the oher person is saying. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Watching an Old Video Tape Date: 30 Dec 2005 22:08:05 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I was bored and pulled up an old movie I taped from network TV in 1988. Some observations from watching an 18 year old tape: 1) Movie: It was a made for TV comedy about the prom "Dance till Dawn". Light stuff. Not much different than what they'd do today for that genre, although I think networks don't bother with that style anymore; they want more "soap" and drama, and far more glamourous kids. Hair and clothes styles obviously different, more 1980s, but not drastically different. Popular stars of the day were in it, some have done well since then like Alyssa Milano and Kelsey Gramar (sp?). Others had had hard times, such as Tracey Gold. 2) Commercials: car commercials looked basically the same. Texaco gasoline had several ads, I don't think oil companies run ads today. In my area, Shell has taken over Texaco stations. One major department store advertised their name and reputation for trust, which was true for them. That store was bought out and soon will change its name to the parent company. So much for reputation. Teasers for local news were quite striking. One local newsman had dark hair back then and now is fully gray (it is 18 years after all). Another local fellow, very popular, passed away at a young age from disease. There was clearly less commercials than on TV now. I can't even watch live TV these days because there are SO many commercials, I have to tape it so I can speed through them. I think networks have added 4-5 minutes of commercials per hour, and cable and syndicated shows even more, perhaps only 35 minutes of show per hour. Some TV shows advertised became classics, like Night Court, others I never heard of "Tattinger's"? 3) Technical: the tape was made on my first VCR purchased around 1985. It had a soft appearance but was ok. I couldn't freeze frame without ad lines, and adjusting the slow tracking didn't help. (My #3 VCR can't freeze frame on tapes made on my #2 VCR either, for some reason I don't understand. All are Panasonic, #2 and #3 are 4 head. #1 started crimping tapes badly and was retired some years ago. #3 came with the DVD player and is brand new.) ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 07:48:07 GMT > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But if you buy a cell phone and obtain > service from some carrier, aren't you granted a license (on the > carrier's master license) to use the phone as a transmitter? PAT] If you buy a cellphone and contract for service for that cellphone with a licensed carrier, then that carrier's license covers the operation of the phone you activated with that carrier. You can't then go out and use other phones under that contract without the carrier's consent. Likewise, you can't just build a new cellsite, operating on the carrier's frequencies, to provide coverage to your phone in an area (e.g., your entire city, neighborhood, backyard, basement, or office) where the carrier's network doesn't have a good signal. You have to have a license to build a base station or repeater, or an agreement with the licensee(s) whose signal will be transmitted that allows you to use their frequencies. An "enhancer", "booster", or "repeater" is a transmitter (it may be configured as a broadband receiver and linear amplifier, but it's still a transmitter). If it isn't very low power and compliant with Part 15 limits, it requires a license, for good reason. Even well engineered, professionally installed transmitters can cause interference, either to other parts of the same network or to other networks. When interference occurs to the same network, the interference can be managed, because the engineers can tweak the power levels and frequencies of the various transmitters under their control to minimize the effects of the interference or cause users to operate on specific frequencies in given areas. An independently operated transmitter or "booster" of more than minimal signal strength in the same band that "repeats" the signal received at a given location without the carrier's knowledge or consent can wreak havoc on signal quality for other users without the network engineers being able to manage it. Yeah, Joe Blow gets a better signal in his back yard, but causes service to suck elsewhere in the area, and the carrier can't fix it unless they find out who's got the unlicensed transmitter and make the owner turn it off. As I mentioned, even a well-installed transmitter under the carrier's control can cause interference to other networks, and obviously an independently installed transmitter may also cause interference of one sort or another out of band, especially since it won't be manufactured and installed to the same specs as a carrier's network equipment. There are any number of reasons for this, ranging from intermodulation products to desensitization of licensed transceivers. But if interference occurs to a police radio from what appears to be a cellular or SMR tranmsission, the FCC is going to look to the cellular or SMR operator to fix it -- but they can't fix problems caused by third parties using illegal cell boosters. They may have to turn down or turn off cellsites serving thousands of users, not knowing that the problem was caused by an illegal booster. Or the interference may be traced to a particular location by the FCC or the interfered-with party and the carrier is then requested to fix the interference, only to inform them that the carrier doesn't operate a cell at that location. This has actually happened. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD (USA) (Replace "example.invalid" with "com" in my address.) ------------------------------ From: Rik Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 31 Dec 2005 05:38:59 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com This petition to the FCC pretty well covers the issues on signal boosters: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/PrivateWirelessForum/files/BDA-SignalBooster-PetitionForRuleMaking.pdf Short version of that link: http://makeashorterlink.com/?Z1AA4246C FCC Part 22 rule excerpts concerning signal boosters: http://www.rfsolutions.com/part22.htm Rik ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Payphone Surcharges (was: Unanswered Cellphones) Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 02:29:25 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message AES wrote: > In article , sethb@panix.com > (Seth Breidbart) wrote: >> For 800 number, the FCC set the charge the (last I checked) just under >> $0.30. That's paid by the recipient (who may be a long distance >> carrier, or any sort of company with a toll-free inbound number). > Asking the following just as a matter of fact checking: > If I call an 800 (or 888?) number from a coin-operated payphone (e.g., > in an airport concourse), does the owner or operator of that 800 > number get charged 30 cents for each time I call (and they answer)? > More specifically, does this apply to *all and every* 800 number > owner? Or do some 800 number owners negotiate special (that is, much > cheaper) deals? > And do some 800 number owners -- scumbag types, maybe -- just not pay > these charges? And if so, do they perhaps get away with not paying? > (There's obviously a viewpoint hidden behind these questions -- but for > the minute I'm just seeking to get the "true facts" of the matter.) The tollfree owners get billed the payphone charge along with LD charges. The provider might eat the cost, but the payphone operator gets their money. Keep in mind, we're talking $0.30 here. If your calling card charges more, they're adding markup for their own. Fair enough, you don't really think they're selling anything at cost do you? If your card is charging you too much, it's because you purchased a product which is excessively priced. You can choose to use the payphone's LD service instead, where the prices are disclosed upfront. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia Date: 30 Dec 2005 21:39:00 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Excuses, excuses! My main point was > _what business does the government have in being in the Rail Road > business anyway? The trains ran perfectly well by > themselves, and when the government took over they just got worse and > worse. PAT] Not correct. The trains did NOT run "perfectly well". Rather, the railroads were losing a tremendous amount of money running them and wanted to discontinue all passenger service. Just before Amtrak, most remaining passenger train service was pretty bad. Remember the Penn Central -- they operated the majority of the country's trains. As mentioned, to save the trains Amtrak was set up as a govt agency. The infrastructure -- tracks (NEC), stations, shops, locomotives, and cars -- were old, poorly maintained, and terribly worn out. Amtrak is not perfect, but it's better than what we had in the late 1960s. (The once crack train, the 20th Century Limited, ran 12 hours late in its last years, for example). We often read about scandals involving toll road and airport government authorities. Yet no one is questioning why the govt is running them. As to your other question of "who is in charge", as others also pointed out, the CSX railroad (CSX doesn't stand for anything) is responsible. It was their derailment, after all, and their railroad. It certainly is frustrating to have people stranded so long. But in isolated areas, you just can't have people abandon their luggage and climb down to the tracks. That climb down to the lower roadbed in itself would be dangerous and difficult for elderly people. Then, in this cold weather, where are they supposed to go? I think we need some more information about the particulars before drawing conclusions. P.S. I forgot to mention that the private capital the railroads used was taxable, while the bonds used to finance roads and airports was non-taxable and often guaranteed. This made financing costs for public bodies much lower than the railroads, and gave them another advantage. Further, the govt was very heavy-handed in railroad regulation. Railroads were forced to run empty trains for years at great losses in the name of "public service". Because of that, the railroads wanted out of the psgr business even in the few places where a psgr train might be profitable. By the way, government regulation was partly to blame for the NYC telephone service crisis of the 1970s. The government ordered NY Telephone to hire unqualified people for craft positions and these people couldn't do the job (per Oslin's book). Accordingly to Oslin, adverse government regulation was largely to blame for Western Union's failure, such as ordered WU to assume the problems of the Postal Telegraph Company and give in to high union demands. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2005 21:50:31 -0800 From: Jim Stewart Reply-To: jstewart@jkmicro.com Organization: http://www.jkmicro.com Subject: Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com responded to TELECOM Digest Editor: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This must certainly be one of the >> grander moments in the glorious history of the Toonerville Trolley. >> If it has not occurred to Amtrack authorities by now to (a) either >> split the wrecked train in two parts and clear the way or (b) >> considering they were already delayed 12 hours in Jacksonville, simply >> evacuate the trains passengers, bus them to the nearest airport and >> have airplanes take everyone to their home town immediatly, then I do >> not suppose another eight or ten hours stranded there will change >> anything. > Note -- The proper spelling is "Amtrak". > I doubt very much splitting the train in two would work since a key > intersection is blocked. A second locomotive would be needed to take > the second part of the train and with the blockade it couldn't reach > the spot. > I suspect passengers can't be evacuated to buses because the train is > in an inaccessible area where buses couldn't reach. Normally that is > done. Further, it seems to be taking CSX too long to clear the > intersection. > You seem to be blaming Amtrak for this incident when it is clearly the > host railroad's fault, and that is CSX. In the last decade, after many > mega-mergers in the railroad industry, Amtrak has had a very tough time > because the host railroads refuse to properly transport Amtrak trains, > indeed, they can't even run their own trains. When CSX and NS (Norfolk > Southern) carved up Conrail a few years ago it was supposed to improve > service but instead service is much worse. > Recently fired Amtrak president David Gunn had a win-win plan to > improve service. He wanted to partner Federal and freight railroad > money to improve key bottleneck intersections per above so that there > is additional capacity to handle more trains and run them faster. The > freight lines would do better and Amtrak trains would do better. The > Bush Adm fired Mr. Gunn, claiming he had no future plans. Gunn had > plans to significantly increase Amtrak train speeds and reliabiltiy at > modest cost by focusing on the best "bang for the buck" needs. Firing > Mr. Gunn was a very stupid decision. The Bush Adm plans for Amtrak > will only destroy it. IMHO, Gunn was fired because he was doing too > good a job and had too many good ideas. >> I mean is anyone besides me old enough to remember when we >> had real, honest-to-God reliable rail service in America? PAT] > The answer to that clear, but a bit complex. We had good trains before > this country chose to invest many billions of our taxpayer dollars into > aviation and highways. Though I agree with much of what you've said, I take issue with this statement. The US had *good trains* before WWII. We wore them out during the war and never fixed them. > While most of their expenses are covered by user fees, a > considerable amount are not. Our local property taxes, for example, > pay for police/fire/rescue of motorists. Highways and airplanes use > land that is tax free, railroads (such as CSX) must pay properly > taxes on their tracks. Indeed, in the 1950s many towns added > surcharge taxes to railroad properties to get money to build a > municipal airport. Other towns had to make up for taxes lost when a > highway used once taxable land. All this killed off psgr trains. > Amtrak's subsidy is a single number easy to see, but highways and > airways get their subsidies from multiple sources. > Today, Amtrak must pay the expensive pensions of retired railroaders > who never worked for Amtrak. Amtrak must pay dearly to clean up PCBs > and asbestos in old facilities it never even used. This is all part of > the terms of creating Amtrak--it inherited all the legacy debt. In > contrast, today airlines have their debts removed by bankruptcy and > won't even pay pensions for their own employees. The airlines have > dumped about $15 billion of their pension funds onto the pension > guaranty fund -- that's enough money to run Amtrak for ten years. > In 1970 some farsighted people realized that the passenger train still > had a role to play and Amtrak was created. It is documented in a book > about the Nixon Adm, "The Palace Guard", that the highway interests > were furious at DOT Sec Volpe for creating Amtrak and pushed for his > firing. Today Amtrak critics focus literally on how many napkins food > service uses, yet conveniently ignore far bigger waste in the highway > and airline world -- waste that we taxpayers have to pay for. Clearly > Amtrak critics are not interested in saving money, but rather pursuing > an ideological battle. We just don't have the land anymore to build > massive highways and airports. A passenger train can snake underground > and the land above used for other purposes as is done in some cities. > Obviously today the highway and airway will be the primary transport > medium, but there is still a need for passenger trains. The demand is > certainly there -- new Amtrak service is well patronized--but Amtrak is > denied the resources to add more services. Mr. Gunn also had a > corridor improvement plan, sadly that is forgotten too. > [public replies, please] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Excuses, excuses! My main point was > _what business does the government have in being in the Rail Road > business anyway? The trains ran perfectly well by themselves, and when > the government took over they just got worse and worse. PAT] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Amtrak knew, or should have known what would be imposed on them when they took over the system. If the demands made upon them were unrealistic they should have never agreed to be part of the scheme. The same thing happened in Chicago when the CTA was about to take over in 1947. As word got around to the various private transportation companies that City of Chicago was about to 'municipalize' them ('municipalize' is the politically correct term for legally stealing someone else's property) the various companies deliberatly quit maintaining their equipment. Busses had bald tires on them, the CTA inherited a rolling pile of junk if there ever was one. Elevated train stations were left to go pot (of course over the next fifty years of CTA operation, they let things go the same way), and any number of vehicles were entirely unusable. Tracks went unrepaired, overhead wiring became dilapidated, etc. They said "we are not fools, city will pay us what they want, no more, no less, so get out of it what we can.". By the by, a bit of trivia for you: Most people do not know this, but CTA (Chicago Transit Authority) at one point had a _single freight customer_, and they hauled coal for that freight customer. How it happened was this. Up until sometime in the early 1960's, the old "North Shore Line" operated on tracks shared in common with CTA as far north as city limits. CTA owned the elevated (on stilts above the ground) tracks north to Lawrence Avenue (actually, from just a wee bit north of Wilson Avenue (Uptown Station, Charlie Insull's crown jewel in its time) where the stilts end and then the track runs on _elevated ground level_ the rest of the way. You Chicago riders please take note of this: You pull into Lawrence Avenue station, the stilts have ended and the earth has been graded up onto a hill the rest of the way. With that in mind, North Shore Line _was_ a freight hauler in addition to its passenger business. North Shore had a freight customer in Chicago, the "Lill Coal Company" (from back in the years when people burned coal in their furnaces instead of oil or gas). Lill was on the corner (I think) of Broadway and Montrose Avenue, and had a switch (or side track) from the main line used to deliver the coal to them which they in turn sold to their customers. The only way Lill could get their coal deliveries was from a freight train (full of coal cars) which came in on that siding track. A rule in those days was if a railroad was going to go out of business they had to insure that all their customers were cared for anyway, and the Illinois Commerce Commission required CTA (as the surviving owner in joint custody of those railroad tracks) to continue serving Lill as long as the company stayed in business. By the middle or late 1960's Lill went out of business (very little coal being purchased any longer) and CTA gratefully got rid of that customer. In the three or four year interim of no North Shore Line but Lill still around, CTA had a freight engine and several coal cars and at various times would pull a train full of coal off onto the side track at Uptown Station (Wilson Avenue), down the hill off the stilts and into Lill's coal yard. I remember seeing that only a few times, when I was in high school. That same side track went on south from Lill Coal to Graceland Cemetery and in the 1920-30's the CTA predecessor company "Chicago Rapid Transit" used to run chartered 'funeral coaches' taking the dearly departed and their families to the cemetery as needed. At the corner of Grace Avenue and Halstead Street (?) the funeral coach would disgorge its load, turn around and go back north. PAT] ------------------------------ From: techie@tantivy.tantivy.net (Bob Vaughan) Subject: Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 13:14:36 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Tantivy Associates > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Excuses, excuses! My main point was > _what business does the government have in being in the Rail Road > business anyway? The trains ran perfectly well by themselves, and when > the government took over they just got worse and worse. PAT] What business does the government have bailing out bankrupt airlines? What business does the government have running bus service? What business does the government have running commuter rail service? Would you be upset if there was no public transportation? Would you be upset if there was no way for you to get from place to place just because your town isn't big enough to justify an airport? Amtrak was created from the existing passenger rail lines, that the railroads no longer wanted to run. If Amtrak had not been created, there would be no inter-city rail service in the US today. Amtrak may not stop everywhere, nor may it stop at convienient times, but it does provide service to many areas that are out of reach of the airlines, as well as providing a comfortable alternative to driving, buses, or pressurized tubes flying thru the air. The common misconception among Amtrak bashers, is that the long-haul inter-city trains are where all the money goes, and that if those trains were cancelled, Amtrak would be in a better financial situation. In reality, while all of the trains lose money, the inter-city trains actually recover more revenue than the northeast corridor trains, which have the added expense of maintanance of one of the most expensive, and heavily used railroad properties in the world, the existence of which helps prevent the northeast portion of the country from collapsing under gridlock.. We subsidize the airlines with horribly expensive airports, we subsidize buses and cars with horribly expensive highways. We provide financial bailouts to bankrupt airlines, and yet we complain about a relatively small amount of money necessary to subsidize passanger rail operations, over a mostly privately owned rail infrastructure. I think we have some of our priorities misplaced. -- Welcome My Son, Welcome To The Machine -- Bob Vaughan | techie @ tantivy.net | | P.O. Box 19792, Stanford, Ca 94309 | -- I am Me, I am only Me, And no one else is Me, What could be simpler? -- [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I never said that Amtrak got all of the money or even a large part of it. I know they do not get much money, and are treated like a step-child many times. My question/comment was _why is government_ in any of those illegitimate (for government) businesses in the first place, not how badly some are treated nor how much favoritism is shown to some instead of others. Independence, KS is a small town (about 8000 people) but we _do_ have a privately owned airport here. Mostly it is used by executives of Amazon.com, Boeing Aircraft and other businesses here in town. They also offer unscheduled (or rather, by appointment) commercial flights to Wichita, KS and Tulsa, OK which are scheduled to 'meet' incoming flights from elsewhere or outgoing flights to other places on 'regular' airlines. In those cases, they sell 'through tickets' to wherever the passenger is going, with a ticket tear for Wichita or Tulsa, our two closest cities (110 miles northwest in one case, 80 miles south in the latter case.)I can tell you that a flight from anywhere to Kansas City or Tulsa in comparitivly much cheaper than a flight from anywhere to Wichita or for Gods sakes! a ticket all the way to Independence, even though Kansas City is only 250 miles or so away. We also have a bus station (three or four busses daily each direction between Tulsa and Kansas City) and we _used_ to have a train station with Santa Fe railroad trains between Chicago and the west coast a couple times each daily, but those went out of business many years ago, and another railroad called 'TKO' something. But I don;t think the government should have to pay to keep them running, nor subsidize our airport either. PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia Date: 31 Dec 2005 09:47:25 -0500 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Excuses, excuses! My main point was > _what business does the government have in being in the Rail Road > business anyway? The trains ran perfectly well by themselves, and when > the government took over they just got worse and worse. PAT] You say this, but you are replying to an article about a disaster that was basically caused by, and then made worse by private companies. The problem is that Amtrak doesn't own the infrastructure ... that infrastructure has NOT been taken over by the government, but is owned by private railroads, and it is falling apart. There aren't enough parallel tracks to be able to maintain schedules, because the private railroads aren't building them and are shutting some tracks down. The existing tracks are not being properly maintained; trains going into Richmond, VA, for example, have to slow down to a crawl because of the poor condition of the tracks. But it's CSX that is responsible for those tracks. If the government can be blamed for _anything_, it's letting the railway owners fall down on their part of the bargain. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't think they should do that either. Why doesn't Amtrack for example -- it is a government agency after all -- file _suit_ and force the railroads (who are its landlord, after all) to maintain its property? Amtrak got in a very bad deal when they stepped in to rescue the railroads (and aside from the fact that I do not think the government had any business doing it at all) they should have set a different tune to start with. Build up your property decently to start with if you want us to take it over. Why couldn't government learn from the earlier fiascos they have when they get into these messes? City of Chicago lost out very badly when they decided -- in their greed -- to 'municipalize' (tee hee, sly grin) the property of Chicago Rapid Transit Company, Lake Street Elevated Line, Jackson Park Elevated Line, the Loop Elevated Rail Road, the Boulevard Bus Company, and the Commercial Elevated Service (what is now called the North/Northwest/Ohare el train). No matter what rationale they give (we are nobler, purer, more honest, more utilit- arian, whatever than those other crooks) the fact remains that whatever the government gets its hands on turns to shit. I got a phone call yesterday from a lady who is a reporter (I assume) at one of my competitors, The New York Times, who had read my Editor's Note about the mess with Amtrak in the Georgia woods now going on three days. She demanded to know 'what railroad to you work for?, in other words what could you possibly know about anything? I told her I did not know very much about anything in life, but I damn sure would know to slowly and safely begin backing up all the trains caught there in that logjam one at a time until each of them had been able to reach a safe and convenient place where the passengers could be safely evacuated, properly medicated or otherwise pursed and sent on to their homes via aeroplane with my apologies for being such a screwed up outfit. And I am not a fan of air travel myself these days, given the gyrations one has to go through in the name of 'terrorism' to even get on the aeroplane. (Dump your possessions all over the floor where everyone can look at them, etc). But under the circumstances it would have worked. And I know there is a Greyhound Bus Station in Orlando. That's how I would have done it. And I wished her the best in their latest wrangle with the government which is attempting to find out who tattled on Mr. Bush so _that_ person can be severely punished, rather than Mr. Bush who needs the punishment. She terminated our call. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Cybergiving Website Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 11:24:20 -0600 Cyber Giving Week, the Last Day http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/ May I suggest on this last day of 2005 if you have not yet done so or wish to do it again, that you go to the above web site and help as best as you are able to DO GOOD in the world. Habitat for Humanity is one example, there are many others. This is the final day, and the final few hours to get it included in your 2005 tax returns. Thanks! And Happy New Year to everyone! PAT ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2005-06 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 #590 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Dec 31 23:05:45 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (Postfix, from userid 11648) id 70D8D14E91; Sat, 31 Dec 2005 23:05:44 -0500 (EST) To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #591 Message-Id: <20060101040544.70D8D14E91@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 23:05:44 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org (TELECOM Digest Editor) X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.0.4 (2005-06-05) on massis.lcs.mit.edu X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-3.1 required=2.0 tests=ALL_TRUSTED,AWL,BAYES_00, URG_BIZ autolearn=ham version=3.0.4 Status: RO TELECOM Digest Sat, 31 Dec 2005 23:08:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 591 Inside This Issue: Happy New Year to All ! Five Year Wait for Cable Service (PR Newswire) California Storm Prompts Urgent Evacuation Request (Paul Elias) Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia (Wes Leatherock) Government Prepares for Next Big Disaster (Larry Margasak) Re: Mother Decides to Fight Downloading Suit on Her Own (William Warren) Re: Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests (jmeissen@aracnet.com) Re: Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests (William Warren) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (Rik) Re: Cell Phone Extenders? (John Levine) Re: Unknown Name Call in Middle of Night (GarsDuBell@aol.com) Re: No Demarc Point (Tom Schmidt) Re: Web Services Thrive, but Outages Outrage Users (Ron Chapman) Cyber Giving Website - The Last Day for Giving This Year (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: PR Newswire Subject: Five Year Wait for Cable Service Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 18:20:07 -0600 New York Man's 5-Year Fight for Service Takes 1st Place in Worst Cable Nightmare Contest; 'Cable Dragon You Down?' Web site Theme Rings in New Year INDIANAPOLIS, Dec. 30 /PRNewswire/ -- Think your wait for the cable guy was too long? Count yourself lucky you aren't David Shapiro, who waged a five-year long battle that took him from town to state government offices before he could get affordable cable television service at his New York home. "I felt like I was the only one in the world left on dial-up," said Shapiro, who by day works on supercomputers for IBM but until October depended on spotty dial-up connections to reach the electronic world. Shapiro's saga earned him an iPod Nano and the dubious honor of submitting December's worst cable horror story to http://www.MyCableNightmare.com , a Web site that offers frustrated consumers a forum to vent about bad cable TV service. It offers the monthly contest as a consolation prize for those who have suffered the most. The Web site's current theme, "Cable Dragon You Down?" wonders if 2006 will be The Year of The Cable Rate Increase (Again.) Consumers for Cable Choice (C4CC), a national alliance of individuals and groups working for cable TV competition to control prices and to improve program offerings and customer service, sponsors the cable nightmare Web site. "David's story is a clear example of why we need competition in the cable TV market right away," said Robert K. Johnson, C4CC president. "Incumbent cable companies have no incentive to value consumers, and as a result, rates are skyrocketing while customer service is plummeting. Competition will reverse that course." Shapiro, one of the newest members of C4CC, learned firsthand about the need for regulatory reform in 2000 when he sought cable service at his home, which is in the town of Esopus near the Highland town border. Shapiro has a Highland address, but cable service was available only through Esopus. In separate offers over five years, the company authorized to serve his neighborhood offered to install cable at Shapiro's house for fees ranging from more than $18,000 to nearly $26,500. The Highland-based cable company would install for free, but it didn't have an Esopus franchise and as such, couldn't legally make the connection. Frustrated and unwilling to pay such a premium for installation, Shapiro repeatedly appealed to town officials and the New York State Public Service Commission (Case No. 427808). Finally, the Town of Esopus applied for a second cable franchise and won the state approval it needed to offer competition. In October 2005, Shapiro finally got cable service through the new provider. His installation cost: zero dollars. He bought the company's triple play of Internet/phone/television service, eliminating three land lines for phone service, along with his monthly dial-up Internet Service Provider fee. Total savings were over $100 month. "I wouldn't have been as frustrated by my lack of high-speed access if the entire area around me also couldn't get it," Shapiro said. "But around here, almost everyone else already had high speed Internet service. At work I was the only one stuck on dial-up service." Johnson said the Web site compilation of cable nightmares is designed to demonstrate to policy makers just how badly reform is needed. "If you think Dave's experience is bad -- and it is -- look at our Top Ten Cable Nightmares of 2005," Johnson said, referring to the Worst of the Worst list from 2005 available by contacting Cheryl Reed at cherylreed@synergy-mg.com . About Consumers for Cable Choice, Inc. Headquartered in Indianapolis, Ind. Consumers for Cable Choice, Inc. is a national alliance of consumer advocacy groups, private citizens and others who are committed to promoting maximum choice for consumers in cable, video and broadband services. Consumers for Cable Choice uses a combination of education and grassroots advocacy to impact change, which will result in a deregulated and pro-consumer market that stimulates fair price, more choices and better service options in the cable television industry. President Robert K. Johnson has been advocating for policies that benefit residential and small business consumers for more than 20 years. To learn more, visit http://www.Consumers4Choice.org or http://www.MyCableNightmare.com . Consumers for Cable Choice, Inc. Web site: http://www.Consumers4Choice.org/ http://www.MyCableNightmare.com/ Copyright 2005, PRNewswire Copyright 2005, InterestAlert 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 this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html To see more news of interest, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html ------------------------------ From: Paul Elias Subject: California Storm Prompts Urgent Evacuation Request Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 19:30:22 -0600 By PAUL ELIAS, Associated Press Writer A powerful storm sent rivers and creeks over their banks and into cities and set off mudslides that blocked major highways across Northern California on Saturday. At least a dozen people had to be rescued from the rushing water, and forecasters were warning of another storm on Sunday. California officials urged residents along the Napa and Russian rivers and on hillsides to collect their valuables, gather emergency supplies and get out. In the city of Napa, near the heart of wine country, the river rose 5 feet over flood stage as water surged into downtown before beginning to recede. Napa officials estimated about 1,000 homes flooded. "We had so much water in such a short amount of time that man hole covers were popping all over the city," said Napa City Councilman James Krider. The Russian River was menacing the Sonoma County town of Guerneville, where forecasters warned that the river was still rising and could reach 14 feet above flood stage, and officials were urging residents to evacuate. Farther inland, Reno, Nev., was seeing its worst flooding since New Year's Day 1997, when high water caused $1 billion in damage. The Truckee River swamped downtown buildings on Saturday, and parts of nearby Sparks were under 4 feet of water. Many businesses along the river closed and owners spent the day piling sandbags. Rescue crews also had their hands full, plucking stranded drivers from cars and flooded homes across the region. In Sonoma County alone, helicopters were used in six rescues, and firefighters rescued two more people from a mobile home park, where 4 feet of rushing water washed at least one home off its foundation. "We are just very strongly recommending that people living in the lower areas lock up everything and go to higher ground," said Linda Eubanks of Sonoma County's Office of Emergency Services. "Just because it stopped raining doesn't mean the water is going down. In fact, we are being warned there may be a bit more rain tonight and Sunday." Rick Diaz took off on his own through a flooded Petaluma neighborhood in a 14-foot Zodiac boat, ferrying residents to dry ground and rescuing their pets. "He's a hero," said a tearful Suzi Keber after the wetsuit-clad Diaz rescued two pet lizards from her home. In downtown San Anselmo, the creek overflowed into as many as 70 businesses, said town administrator Debbie Stutsman. Two people rescued from the rising water there were hospitalized with hypothermia, she said. Many business places were almost ruined. "I'm looking out of my office now at merchants bringing their damaged goods out into the street," Stutsman said. "The entire downtown area was under 4 1/2 feet of water. Some go back and forth to the stores bringing stuff out to dry; others stand guard over what is already brought out." "It's pretty bad all across town," she said. Mudslides closed several major roads, including Interstate 80 in the Sierra Nevada about 25 miles west of Reno. Six tractor-trailer rigs were caught up in one slide on the interstate early Saturday, but no injuries were reported. Troopers and others were turning motorists away, warning them of danger ahead if they continued. I-80, the major corridor linking Northern California and points east, was expected to remain closed for at least a few days, said California Department of Transportation spokesman Mark Dinger. "No work can be done until the slide stabilizes and we don't know when that will occur," Dinger said. "We won't endanger our own employees," he said. Together, the two weekend storms could add as much as 6 inches of rain to the already water-logged region, said Rick Canepa, a weather service meteorologist in Monterey. More than 2 feet of snow was also forecast in the Sierra Nevada. One woman suffered a broken leg when a mudslide destroyed her home in Santa Rosa late Friday. It took firefighters nearly an hour to free her from the mud and debris, said Santa Rosa Fire Battalion Chief Andy Pforsich. Flash flooding and landslides temporarily closed Interstate 5 both ways near the Oregon line. U.S. Highway 101 was closed by fallen trees and mud south of Crescent City. Rain also started moving into Southern California on Saturday, and flash flood watches were issued for areas scarred by wildfire in Santa Barbara, Ve ntura and Los Angeles counties. Even Pasadena's Rose Parade was in danger of rain on Monday. The parade has had dry days for half a century, but float builders were still prepared to roll out sheets of clear plastic to protect delicate flowers. "I'd hate to be selfish to ask God just for this favor, but I came far to help decorate and see the parade for the first time," said Jean Steadman, 79, of Georgetown, Texas, as she gathered yellow roses for a safari-themed float. Associated Press writers Martin Griffith in Reno, Nev.; Julia Silverman in Portland, Ore. contributed to this report. 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html More news and stories from Associated Press available at: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One of the reporters on Associated Press news radio http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/Fednews.html noted that "in the event that someday (if/when?) the earthquake predicted for slightly off the coast -- where the cracked plate is now -- comes along and brings a tsunami with it, these people in northern California tonight will have seen nothing." Even this 'little bit' they have going on there now is a distressing way to start the New Year however. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 20:31:13 EST Subject: Re: Amtrak Passengers Stranded in Woods in Georgia In a message dated Fri, 30 Dec 2005 21:50:31 -0800, editor@telecom-digest.org writes in reply to Jim Stewart : > The National Railroad Passenger Corporation, originally called > Railpax and later adopting the trade name Amtrak, was created out of > whole cloth. Many people thought then, and still do today, that it > was created to bring an end to railroad passenger service in the > U.S.A. within a few years. It was likely as much a surprise to the original managers as to the public and the rest of government that they made a go of it against all odds. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sorry Mr. Leatherock, that was not _me_, I think you were quoting Mr. Stewart talking to someone else in that message. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Larry Margasak Subject: Government Prepares For Next Big Disaster Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 19:36:17 -0600 By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press Writer Before the next big hurricane's winds howl ashore, or a tsumani washes ashore, Homeland Security officials want an emergency communications network operating, emergency medical facilities treating patients, and teams dispatched to search for victims at the likely ground zero. In the wake of congressional hearings that exposed the breathtaking failures of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration is retooling its disaster plan to react more quickly to the next catastrophe. Michael Brown, now the ex-chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, became the public face of Katrina's failure. But the administration is reviewing how other leaders also failed last August to execute a playbook approved just eight months earlier to handle such a disaster. For example, Brown's boss -- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff - did not invoke special powers in the National Response Plan that would have rushed federal aid to New Orleans when state and local officials said they were swamped. The department rejected the authority, concluding that it should be invoked only for sudden catastrophic events that offer no time for preparation and not for slow-approaching hurricanes. That will not happen next time, according to officials who described to The Associated Press some of the changes in the administration's evolving disaster response plan. "There has to be a way to apply federal resources when state and local resources are overwhelmed," said Joel Bagnal, a special assistant to the president for homeland security who is involved in the administra- tion's lessons-learned review. Chief among the changes to the original 426-page plan are several ideas for rushing federal resources to a stricken area. They include: _Dropping small military or civilian vehicles, packed with communications gear, into a disaster zone by helicopter or driving them from nearby staging areas. _Setting up portable hospitals with federal emergency medical teams to augment local facilities. _Helping local and state police catch looters and snipers by providing federal law enforcement officers if requested. White House spokesman Trent Duffy said Friday that the revamped National Response Plan is expected to be finalized in the coming weeks after meetings with hundreds of federal, state and government officials and individuals outside the government. The union representative for FEMA headquarters workers worries about how well the agency will respond next time. FEMA reacted quickly to big disasters when it operated independently, he said, but fell short in its first big test as a member of the massive Homeland Security Department. "You broke your toy and now it doesn't work," said Leo Bosner, himself a veteran FEMA disaster specialist. Those on the front lines hope to have a unified philosophy that values flexibility and quick thinking to adapt solutions to a rapidly unfolding human disaster. "When you have a disaster, nothing goes by any kind of plan," said Dr. Arthur Wallace, leader of the Oklahoma 1 FEMA medical team that was dispatched from its staging area too late to beat Katrina to New Orleans. The administration officials and responders interviewed by the AP offered a few of their own horror stories that they do not want repeated. They also help illustrate changes in the evolving plan. MEDICAL TEAMS: 36 HOURS LATE Dr. Wallace's 34-member medical team from Oklahoma left its Houston staging area Aug. 28 after receiving a request from Louisiana officials to head for the Superdome. Katrina made landfall in Louisiana just after 6 a.m. on Aug. 29, but the team did not arrive until that night. It did not receive its first patients until dawn on Aug. 30. That was 36 hours after FEMA began reporting grave medical problems in the stadium, such as 400 people with special needs, 45 to 50 patients in need of hospitalization, and a dwindling supply of oxygen. Wallace's team made it only as far as Baton Rouge the night before the storm came ashore because wind gusts had already made it impossible to reach the Superdome. The sick evacuees had to wait. "The winds were buffeting the trucks pretty bad" when the team halted in the state capital, Wallace recalled. In the future, the administration wants medical teams in position before the storm strikes. If for example, California has a major earth- quake and a lot of water, the administration wants people there on the spot. Likewise any coastal area, where a hurricane could strike on short notice. EMERGENCY COMMUNICATIONS, COMMAND AND CONTROL U.S. military communications with Louisiana and Mississippi officials were so poor that commanders were forced to use couriers to transmit messages, said Paul McHale, the assistant defense secretary for homeland defense. FEMA's "Red October" mobile command center rode out the storm at Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La., six hours from New Orleans. The oversize trailer can establish communications in a stricken area and serve as the nerve center for directing emergency relief. But it did not arrive in the city until several days after Katrina had struck. Bagnal said the administration wants to replace the "clunky" FEMA vehicles with smaller ones that could be kept nearby and either driven or flown to where they are needed. Bagnal noted that "ideally, there should be vehicles to travel easily across a desert area or through mud or even several feet of water." The lack of equipment was not the only problem. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said it took 10 to 12 days before a fully staffed, multi-agency field office for coordinating the response was operating at Katrina's ground zero. Even then, she said, the staff was thrown together with responders who hadn't worked with each other. "Going forward, we definitely need a more capable, rapidly deployed and experienced staff that works together on a routine basis -- in noncrisis situations as well as catastrophic incidents," Perino said. QUICKER DEPLOYMENT OF ACTIVE DUTY MILITARY FORCES For several days, thousands of people at the New Orleans convention center had no food, water or medical help. National Guard forces were preoccupied with rooftop rescues and lacked the manpower to feed or assist hungry refugees. "Every single resource we had from Tuesday (Aug. 30) through Thursday (Sept. 1) was committed to picking people off of rooftops and saving people," recalled Louisiana National Guard Lt. Col. Jacques Thibodeaux, a deputy U.S. marshal in civilian life. It wasn't until Friday, Sept. 2, that Thibodeaux was told to lead a rescue mission to the convention center. He cobbled together a force of 1,000 from diverse units representing five states. "We took 30 minutes to secure the area. In three hours we began feeding people. In 30 hours, we had evacuated 19,000," Thibodeaux said. The first active duty soldiers did not reach New Orleans until he evening of Sept. 3. The U.S. Northern Command, in Colorado Springs, Colo., had been tracking Katrina before the storm made landfall and could have tapped active duty assets. But the lone request the command received from federal officials during Katrina's first day was for six helicopters, spokesman Michael Kucharek said. The White House is pressing Congress to establish the exact circumstances and legal authority that would determine when the active military should take over a disaster. HELP FOR STATE AND LOCAL POLICE The 18-member, Dallas-based Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms special response team had the very skills needed to cope with looters and snipers, but its members did not arrive in New Orleans until Sept. 2. "By the time we got here, it wasn't as bad as the first nights after the storm," team leader Charles Smith said. The team was trained in serving arrest warrants and executing search warrants, hostage situations, rescues, and riot and crowd control. And Smith brought an additional asset -- he was raised and once stationed in New Orleans. The team showed its capabilities two nights after arriving when gunshots were reported in a neighborhood. Smith dispatched agents with night-vision goggles and, as a helicopter appeared overhead, the team observed a shooter in a four-unit housing project. Smith personally talked two men out of the building and arrested one without firing a shot. In the future, the administration wants such teams ready to move as soon as local law enforcement needs assistance. COMMUNICATING WITH THE PUBLIC Before Katrina struck, FEMA had dispatched a sizable public affairs contingent to Louisiana. Their mission, according to the National Response Plan, was "to coordinate a message," said Jeff Karonis, a Homeland Security public affairs specialist. "Several were experienced communicators in hurricanes of the past. They know what the issues are," he said. But the messages to the public often were confusing, leaving vital questions unanswered. When would buses rescue people from the Superdome? When would rescuers arrive at the convention center? Was crime rampant? Russ Knocke, the chief spokesman for the Homeland Security Department, said the specialists were hampered by "a significant amount of inaccurate reporting" that "added confusion and added fuel to the fire." Louisiana officials said the federal experts didn't coordinate with them. "I don't think there was ever a meeting about message. It wasn't a partnership," said Denise Bottcher, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco's spokeswoman. In the future, Knocke said, Homeland Security is "deeply committed to working and communicating with state and local officials. Now that we have internet and 'thousands' of radio and television stations, there is no reason everyone involved cannot get the same message." 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. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or) http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html For more news headlines from Associated Press, please go to: http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html (or) http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/Fednews.html (both audio with FeedSweep) ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 14:13:25 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Mother Decides to Fight Downloading Suit on Her Own Hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > Jim Fitzgerald wrote: >> If the downloading was done on her computer, Santangelo thinks it may >> have been the work of a young friend of her children. Santangelo, 43, >> has been described by a federal judge as "an Internet-illiterate >> parent, who does not know Kazaa from kazoo, and who can barely >> retrieve her email." Kazaa is the peer-to-peer software program used >> to share files. > Interesting newsgroup attitude here: > In the problem with the kid who porned himself, people said it was the > parent's fault for not knowing what the kid was doing. But here > apparently it's perfectly ok for the parent to be lnternet illiterate > and not know what the kids were doing. > We can't have a double standard. Of course we can! Double standards are one of the lubricants that keep the machinery of society spinning! I think double standards are essential to our well-being, since they allow for simple answers to complicated questions - questions asked by children not yet emotionally prepared for the "true" responses that you infer are needed. > I think this case and the other illustrates the dangers of an > unbridled Internet. We can argue that the motorist is ultimately > responsible for how he drives the car, but that doesn't stop us from > spending billions on external safety devices to protect the motorist > from his own driving errors. The truth is that motorists do drift > across the center line and that's why we have medial strips to protect > against head-on collisions, for example. Well, technically, if you want to be exactly correct, the government's responsibility is to protect a motorist from the errors of _other_ drivers. Protecting a citizen from _his own_ folly is impossible, especially in a representative democracy such as the U.S. > There are no seat belts, medial strips, speed bumps, or anything else > on the Internet. We have people committing crimes and not even > realizing it. Do I sense a concern that your children might drift over to the other side? ;-J. > Regarding this music download case, did the PC come equipped with the > software needed to download the music? That's very unlikely. > If so, why did the PC mfr provide such a tool? Why didn't the > music's owner protect its site from unauthorized downloads? > Why didn't the ISP warn the downloads were illegal? They didn't, cart before horse, and they always do: read your Terms of Service. > How did the PC user -- presumably the "innocent stupid kid" -- know > where to go and how to download the illegal music? His friends told him on the school bus -- which is where children learn about _REAL_ life :-). > Maybe the kid isn't so innocent and is indeed a thief. Would we > let the kid get off free if he stole a carton of records from a > music store? Innocence and thievery are not mutually exclusive -- read Oliver Twist -- and the punishment for stealing a carton of records (how would a child get access to a whole carton? Why would he want one?) would most likely be more fitting to the crime than the RIAA's extortionate demands for thousands of dollars as compensation for _copying_ a copyrighted work. I'll cut to the chase -- the P2P battle is just the trampled grass surrounding the ring in which the industrial elephants from the old and the new entertainment worlds are doing battle. The old world entertainment companies, panicking at the thought of losing their choke hold on the production and distribution of enter- ainment media, are waging a FUD campaign to dissuade you and me from using our computers to bypass their monopoly on the management of popular culture. The copying issue is a red herring: copying has always been, and always will be, a marginal cost to the media giants. What they're _REALLY_ afraid of is that the kid who copies a song by some overpriced, over-hyped, and overdressed "star" will eventually pick up a musical instrument, turn on a microphone, and undercut the carefully timed, tightly coordinated, and incredibly profitable explosion of the Next Big Thing(TM). After all, the kid who trades music from other artists might -- dare we think it? -- decide to create and distribute his own works in the same way, and _THAT_ is what the RIAA is afraid of: what good is a record industry if no one uses records? What good is an industry association if there's no industry to associate with? The new world elephants, i.e., the Linux/Apple/Intel/MS alliances that are used to continual change and frequent renegotiations and constantly reinventing themselves, mindful of the impossibility of competing with the Asian Govopoly in the production of dedicated- function devices such as CD or DVD players, are encouraging end users to employ general-purpose computers as distribution nodes that will bypass the studio coke heads and their vicious and ultimately doomed attempts to arrogate a 70% tax on all forms of entertainment purchased in the industrial world. Pass the peanuts: it's about to get interesting out here on the grass. William Copyright (C) 2005 William Warren. All Rights Reserved. Pat can publish this, but anyone else has to pay me royalties. I like royalties. They're like an annuity that never stops. I think everyone should copyright everything all the time and never give away anything for free. (Filter noise from my address for direct replies) ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests Date: 31 Dec 2005 19:31:17 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Tony P. wrote: > Oh it would drive them crazy of all of a sudden public key encryption > were in use on NNTP groups. Not that pk can't be broken -- it can. It all > depends on the number of bits in the key. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, I want the strongest encryption I > can get for this Digest, if anyone will help me work on it. Maybe I > will do it for all my web pages, etc. PAT] What would be the point? If you encrypt it, then no one can read it. Or everyone can read it. Think about how public key encryption works. If you encrypt with your private key, then everyone can read it via your public key. If you encrypt with your public key, then only you can read it. duh. If you use someone else's public key, then only those specific people can read it. Not very useful for a newsgroup. I suppose you could sign the postings, maybe to support automatic cancelation of spammed postings, but there doesn't seem to be much of an issue with unauthorized postings lately. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, for a long time what I did was use a mild form of encryption on the 'approved-by' line on Usenet for the comp.dcom.telecom newsgroup. It was like 'md5'. My approved-by line was always created using a group of passwords piped through md5 and then at three other major 'backbone sites' around the USA and Europe used for Usenet, those three or four News Admininstrators had the required key on their systems. I did not encrypt the entire contents of all messages, just the 'approved-by' line. Now those three or four news admins had phishermen of their own sitting there at the stream of news as it came along. Those phisher-bots had only one concern: looking for articles in the news group comp.dcom.telecom nothing more or less; it is not my concern to monitor other people's newsgroups. When an article for c.d.t. came long, the phisher-bots would look it over closely; if it had that md5 encryption and it was correct, they would toss it back in the stream and let it go on its way. If the article for c.d.t. did _not_ have the proper encryption on it the bots would fish it out of the stream and do a couple things with it. (1) They would send it in _email_ to me to look at; (2) they would issue a control: cancel on it to be forwarded far and wide; (3)they would warn the other phisher-bots elsewhere to be on the look out for it; and (4) they would destroy it entirely without any word at all to the person who polluted the stream with it to start with. When I got the email copy of the 'message' I then decided either to manually approve it and put it back in the stream but most of the time I pitched it also. I used that system for a couple years back in the early 1990's and it seemed to work rather well, as long as there were human beings upstream who knew the (automated) routine. And since the 'approved-by' encryption line was based on the entire message and the author's name, etc it was impossible for 'someone' to just take a sample message and 'cut and paste' the encryption line. I suggested it would work for almost any newsgroup which required an approved-by line. I had had a bad seige of spam in c.d.t. about that time, people would just add crazy 'approved-by' lines and get them though. But my system brought that almost entirely to a halt, although I did get a _huge_ amount of worthless junk in my own email, but the newsgroup stayed mostly clean. Then I went to my father's funeral for about a week (I lived in Chicago at the time, he and mother and grandmother lived here in Independence.) The Digest ran for that week or so on 'autopilot' and when I came back someone had dismanted the md5 encryption thing entirely. About that time I had the first of my heart attacks and a couple 'Usenet gurus' insisted my plan would not work; that it would take too many resources. It was never explained to my satisfaction why it would not work, and as for resources it did not take much time to maintain. But, that was the end of my stream-phisher-bots. I honestly feel several moderators working together like that could eliminate most Usenet spam. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 15:00:38 -0500 From: William Warren Subject: Re: Secret Court Modified Bush Wiretap Requests > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I would be interested in finding out if > anyone could assist me in encrypting _this Digest_ each day. Could > anyone help with that? Pat, I can think of at least a dozen humorous responses -- one involving the logic of putting red paint on a rectory -- but I'll give you a serious answer. If you are interested in encrypting the Digest, then you'll have to configure your publication setup so as to encrypt each issue, using a common key that all your subscribers know, and set up a mass-mailing program to send out a copy of the "secret" key you're going to use for the next n days/weeks/months so that your subscribers can decode each edition. Of course, some functionary at the acronym factory will be assigned to become a subscriber, but you'll have the satisfaction of setting an example. I don't think it's yet practical to send _individually_ encrypted copies, since the overhead of accessing individual keys, encrypting each issue for each subscriber, and sending the result would be too high. However, you might consider using PKI to distribute a key which allows subscribers to decode a centrally stored version, since that would involve encryption only of the key, not the actual publication. You'll need to do some tests to get a timeline for the number of subscribers you have: needless to say, it has to fall within some reasonable fraction of a day. FWIW. YMMV. William "Fun with Alice and Bob" Warren William Warren (Filter noise from my address for individual replies) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I still have my script here to use for encrypting the 'approved-by' lines: #!/bin/sh PASSWORD='password1 pw2 password3 password4 password5s' umask 77 for f in $*; do echo $PASSWORD > $$ sed -e '1,/^$/d' $f >> $$ # hash=`md5sum $$ | awk '{print $1}'` hash=`md5 $$ | awk '{print $NF}'` rm $$ awk "{ print } /^Sender: / { if (!h) print \"Approved: [comp.dcom.telecom/$hash]\"; h++ }" < $f > $$ mv $$ $f done Substitute real words for the five instances of 'password' above. Anyone is free to use it if it helps anyone. Don't forget to use md5 and md5sum as shown above. Just insert it where it belongs in your email or newsgroup message. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Rik Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Date: 31 Dec 2005 12:46:38 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com From the mouth of the FCC: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=47&PART=22&SECTION=527&YEAR=2002&TYPE=TEXT In case that long link breaks try: http://makeashorterlink.com/?M2006356C ------------------------------ Date: 31 Dec 2005 23:22:43 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Cell Phone Extenders? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > If you buy a cellphone and contract for service for that cellphone > with a licensed carrier, then that carrier's license covers the > operation of the phone you activated with that carrier. You can't > then go out and use other phones under that contract without the > carrier's consent. An interesting theory, although clearly nonsensical with GSM phones. I do agree that repeaters above 100 mw need a license which you don't have if you're not a cell carrier. ------------------------------ From: GarsDuBell@aol.com Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 19:45:41 EST Subject: Re: Unknown Name Call in Middle of Night Tony, If you hang up for more than 12 seconds, it should release the line, regardless of whether the caller has hung up. David W. In a message dated 12/31/2005 6:24:10 PM Eastern Standard Time,: > He called again at 5:29 AM ... same number so I picked the phone up > and pushed a button for about 30 seconds ... then released and > listened ... he already hung up ------------------------------ Reply-To: Tom Schmidt From: Tom Schmidt Subject: Re: No Demarc Point Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 21:20:35 GMT A NID, Network Interface Device, is required for all new construction, old construction is grandfathered. Here in Verizon land all you need to do is call and let them then you need a NID so you are able to modify inside wiring. If you cannot get satisfaction from the Telco might want to contact your state Public Utilities Commission. Explain the situation and see what they suggest. /tom J Kelly wrote in message news:telecom24.588.4@telecom-digest.org: > Is the telco required to have a network interface box at the point of > demarcartion? My house has nothing, the line comes direct into the > basement. It isn't even grounded and has no lightning protector. > Qwest refuses to do anything about it unless I pay for a NIB to be > installed. What about grounding? Shouldn't they be required to > ground the line in accordance with NEC? > I thought about grounding one side of the line and calling in a repair > order for hum on the line, when they come to check it at the NIB they > would have to install one. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 19:22:54 -0500 From: Ron Chapman Subject: Re: Web Services Thrive, but Outages Outrage Users In article , Adam Pasick wrote: > Six Apart, whose TypePad service is used by many high-profile > bloggers, experienced nearly an entire day of downtime on December 16, > when it suffered a hardware failure. Del.icio.us had a major power > failure on December 14. Services including Bloglines, Feedster and > WordPress have also experienced problems. > Nothing underlines the importance of these "social media" services as > much as the outcry of users when the sites crash. While the services > were usually back up and running within a few days at most, the > outages prompted much consternation from users who were temporarily > unable to share their blogs and bookmarks with the world. > Russell Buckley and Carlo Longino wrote on their blog MobHappy > http://mobhappy.typepad.com/ that waiting for TypePad to be fixed > was like "waiting for a train to arrive, when you're sitting on a > cold, damp platform. It's mildly irritating for the first 5 minutes, > but then annoyance levels start to rise exponentially." Waaaaaaaah. People in Louisiana are still trying to get back to their lives, but elsewhere spoiled brats are whining about not being able to access their silly "blog" sites for a day or two. If this is what's become of true importance in America, I'm ready to find an uninhabited island to move to. Seriously, where is the sense of proportion here? Are these whining brats really allowed out in the world to do adult things, like raise children and vote? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite correct. All of us complain about our problems, then we look at places like New Orleans or Biloxi, MS or Iraq or Iran and many other places and we should realize we have no problems at all. I look back at the years I have spent on comp.dcom.telecom and how things in the world have gotten so much more grim in recent years and I wonder "is the best thing we have to talk about today telecom topics?" PAT] ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Cyber Giving Website Date: Sat, 31 Dec 2005 11:24:20 -0600 TELECOM Digest supports Network for Good, a website that makes it easy to choose your favorite charity and donate. Join the growing number of people who donate online each year. Need giving inspiration? . Help Habitat for Humanity rebuild houses in New Orleans. . Supply needy children with important classroom materials through DonorsChoose. Do some good. Get the credit (tax that is). Donate Today Cyber Giving Week, the Last Day to make it count on your taxes for this year: http://brand.yahoo.com/cybergivingweek2005/ Thank you very much! And Happy New Year to everyone! ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications 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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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 #591 ******************************