33 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981Copyright © 2015 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.The Telecom Digest for Jul 2, 2015
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| I am oppressed with a sense of the impropriety of uttering words on this occasion. If silence is ever golden, it must be here, beside the graves of fifteen thousand men, whose lives were more significant than speech, and whose death was a poem, the music of which can never be sung. With words we make promises, plight faith, praise virtue. Promises may not be kept, plighted faith may be broken, and vaunted virtue be only the cunning mask of vice. We do not know one promise these men made, one pledge they gave, one word they spoke: but we do know they summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus resolved all doubts, and made immortal their patriotism and their virtue. |
| James Garfield |
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| Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 07:19:24 -0400 From: "Elmo P. Shagnasty" <elmop@nastydesigns.com> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Robocalls - the next level Message-ID: <elmop-9F367A.07192430062015@88-209-239-213.giganet.hu> In article <mmpe4s$o37$1@speranza.aioe.org>, Don Y <anonymous@invalid.telecom-digest.org> wrote: > There are lots of ways of dealing with authentication -- by NOT looking > at it as a "one size fits all" proposal. Tailor the mechanism to the > "value" of that particular authentication (we routinely engage in > multiple-factor authentication and don't balk at it -- or the > added "complexity" that it imposes on our exchanges: can I have your > Costco membership card? And, could you please verify your street address?) > > The trick is to decide the problem can be solved (without requiring > legislation, etc.) and then approaching it with that in mind. But phone voice communication involves multiple entities--the sender, the receiver, and the carrier--and the problem can't be solved by simply the receiver. Receiver-only tools end up nullifying the usefulness of the phone call. You might as well not have a voice communication instrument like that. Just go with Apple Facetime or MS Skype or similar. There's your verification, right there--intelligent human interaction and facial recognition. |
| Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 09:08:25 -0400 From: Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Robocalls - the next level Message-ID: <hs45patgjtsqk7ihs5a7kj611qbq4vnjd3@4ax.com> Per Michael Dunn: >I simply don't understand all the concern expressed here. With all >the IMPORTANT things going on in a person's life (diet, disease, >lifestyle and longevity improvement, etc.) for the very life of me I >can't fathom this level of concern with such a simple thing. > >If the phone rings, answer it. If you don't like what the caller has >to say, hang up, or mess with he/she if you like. > >But for heaven's sake, what is truly the earth-shattering big deal >about this? >... >I don't get it. I get the impression that you do not get that many telephone solicitors or robocalls. Our ratio of junk to legitimate calls seems quite high. "Seems" because I have not been reduced to counting.... yet. But if I had to put a number on it I would say three or four junk calls for every legitimate call. Some days, we get a half-dozen or more robocalls - and we are not always sitting next to the phone, so that means interrupting a task, walking into the house or another room... Day-after-day.... that's a significant deal to me.... The way I see it these bottom feeders have undermined the utility of my phone to a considerable extent. -- Pete Cresswell |
| Date: Wed, 1 Jul 2015 10:42:21 -0400 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Robocalls - the next level Message-ID: <20150701144221.GA2334@telecom.csail.mit.edu> On Tue, Jun 30, 2015 at 09:08:25AM -0400, Pete Cresswell wrote: > The way I see it these bottom feeders have undermined the utility of > my phone to a considerable extent. I see it in a more severe light: those bottom feeders have undermined my quiet enjoyment of my home and leisure time, and have presumed on my middle-class status and social training by expecting me to be courteous to strangers whom are trying to lie to me and con me. Bill -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly) |
| Date: Tue, 30 Jun 2015 06:24:30 -0700 From: Don Y <anonymous@invalid.telecom-digest.org> To: telecomdigestsubmissions.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Robocalls - the next level Message-ID: <mmu59o$rmb$1@speranza.aioe.org> On 6/27/2015 6:57 AM, Michael Dunn wrote: > In re: the very actively discussed topic of, essentially, one's phone ringing: > > I simply don't understand all the concern expressed here. With all > the IMPORTANT things going on in a person's life (diet, disease, > lifestyle and longevity improvement, etc.) for the very life of me I > can't fathom this level of concern with such a simple thing. It's for exactly that reason that the issue generates so much concern! There are far more important and interesting things to do with one's life than answer unwanted phone calls, read unsolicited emails, greet uninvited guests, etc. > If the phone rings, answer it. If you don't like what the caller has > to say, hang up, or mess with he/she if you like. Does your email agent provide you with an indication of the sender and subject matter of each message? How would you react if all email in your inbox was labeled as "From: Undisclosed; Subject: Unknown"? Would you open each email, read a few sentences/paragraphs and then decide to delete it as "unsolicited"? Do you (or your email provider) employ spam filtering? Why not open EVERY incoming piece of email and "if you don't like what the [sender] has to say, hang up"? Does your front door have a peep hole? Do you use it to decide when to greet visitors and when to just ignore them? Why not "open it and, if you don't like what the [visitor] has to say, [close] it"? [Yeah, it may be a safety issue but, I suspect, 99.999% of the time it is used to filter out unwanted visitors, not "guys with shotguns!"] How much time do you give to each piece of junk (snail) mail that you receive? Each piece of spam email that makes its way through your filters? Each political canvasser, businessman or religious zealot who wanders through your neighborhood? I think most people consider these uninvited distractions -- which take them away from "all the IMPORTANT things going on" in their lives. The fact that there was a perceived need for a Do Not Call registry and so many complaints about its ineffectiveness suggests this is far from a minor inconvenience to most/many people. No one is forcing you to screen/filter/CID your calls, etc. If you are comfortable keeping your phone on your person (or perpetually within arm's reach) AND responding to each chirp, then you should feel free to continue this usage method -- no one is requiring you to pay for a service, inconvenience your callers, etc. OTOH, for folks who don't wear their phones and don't want to have to reach each time Pavlov rings a bell, there's no reliable OTS way of avoiding this -- despite mechanisms that were allegedly created for this express purpose. Nearly every individual that I telephone has some mechanism in place to try to cut down on these unwanted contacts: - subscribe to a "CID required" service from the telco - "memorizing" the numbers of desirable callers that appear on cheap CID's - real-time screen calls with an answering machine - unconditionally route calls to an answering machine (delayed screening) - unlisted/mislisted numbers - "never" answer incoming calls (or, leave voicemail perpetually "full") - "toys" that try to convince callers that their line is out of service, etc In my case, the screening function is a consequence of the authentication mechanism that is needed for "access control": so select callers can do and see things in my home, remotely. Why not extend that list of do-able things to include "calling me"? :> |
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