---------------------------------------------------------------------- Message-ID: <c614656e6c9f9c01ed8d1a802de4548d.squirrel@email.fatcow.com> Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 00:43:11 -0500 From: "Neal McLain" <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com> Subject: Comcast calls out Google Fiber's Threat Comcast calls out Google Fiber's threat to give up Nashville FTTH roll out By Sean Buckley, FierceCable, Aug 23, 2016 A Nashville-based Comcast lobbyist called out a Google Fiber representative's comments that the service provider could pull out of the market altogether if the city does not change its pole attachment policy. A letter from lobbyist James Weaver to two Nashville Metro Council committee members challenged remarks made by Chris Levendos, head of network deployment and operations of Google Fiber. Levendos, according to a report in The Tennessean, told the Nashville city council during a special joint council committee meeting last Monday night that not passing the ordinance could prompt Google Fiber bypass Nashville. http://tinyurl.com/ha8zrbg I understand Google's problem. I encountered similar pole attachment problems many times during years in the cable industry. As the third company attaching to a pole, we had to deal with two other companies: power and telco. Google's problem is even more complicated: it has to deal with three other companies. If the last company seeing an attachment is lucky, the pole will already have enough space for the new attachment without conflicting with any other company's facilities. However if there are conflicts with existing attachments, the last company has to pay the current pole occupants to make room for the new attachment ("makeready"). Sometimes this is a simple process: move an existing attachment, move a streetlight, remove abandoned equipment, tighten up sagging wires, convert existing open-wire power drops to triplex. But sometimes it can be more complicated. I've seen many poles that were beyond hope -- one glance and I knew we wouldn't even apply for that pole. We'd do something else: change the design to avoid that pole, put the cable underground to bypass the problem pole, or even set a new pole. The owner of the pole is the final arbiter of who does what. In most cases the owner is the power utility, although phone companies and cable companies sometimes own poles. The power utility may be an investor-owned for-profit corporation, a non-profit cooperative, or a governmental entity. In Nashville's case the power utility is Nashville Electric Service, formerly owned by the City of Nashville, and now owned by Metropolitan Government of Nashville and Davidson County. Google is asking for something unprecedented: it wants the right to have its own contractors move other company's attachments, rather than paying the owners of those companies to move their attachments. No surprise that Comcast doesn't want its future competitor to get a better deal that it got. The two polelines shown in the header photo in FierceCable article are power- only poles -- no telco, to cable TV, no fiber. Not exactly the best photo to illustrate the content of the article. For more on utility poles see: http://www.annsgarden.com/poles/poles.htm Neal McLain ------------------------------ Message-ID: <A0A97922-C036-4DEC-A95F-E22F5E645AC6@roscom.com> Date: Wed, 24 Aug 2016 10:16:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> Subject: Why you STILL can't trust password strength meters Why you STILL can't trust password strength meters by Mark Stockley I'm worried about password strength meters. In March 2015 I tested five popular password strength meters in a simple experiment that was designed to show if they could actually spot weak passwords. They all failed. It's been almost eighteen months since my original test and during that time password cracking has moved on, authentication standards have moved on and password best practice has moved on. I wondered if password strength meters had too. https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2016/08/17/why-you-still-cant-trust-password-strength-meters/ ------------------------------ ********************************************* End of telecom Digest Thu, 25 Aug 2016