29 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for May 25, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 132 : "text" Format
====== 29 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== |
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and
the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other
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Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be
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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, and other stuff of interest.
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Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 10:06:26 +0800
From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Pre-paid SIM cards in the US
Message-ID: <BANLkTikHAfQDsXkir4a3LQG-mXc7g8M9mQ@mail.gmail.com>
Here's the verdict.
Earlier this year a coworker from Malaysia went to San Jose and
neither AT&T Mobility nor T-Mobile USA would sell him a SIM card
telling him his only option was buying the prepaid phone.
A second coworker went over armed with the information you gave me
plus some digging I did.
AT&T would not sell him a SIM telling him before they could sell him
one he needed a phone number and to have a phone number he needed an
account with AT&T.
T-Mobile gladly sold him one and it works great.
John
--
John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA
Date: Mon, 23 May 2011 23:56:55 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'
Message-ID: <p06240815ca00dc804f27@[10.0.1.3]>
Why Privacy Matters Even if You Have 'Nothing to Hide'
By Daniel J. Solove
May 15, 2011
When the government gathers or analyzes personal information, many
people say they're not worried. "I've got nothing to hide," they
declare. "Only if you're doing something wrong should you worry, and
then you don't deserve to keep it private."
The nothing-to-hide argument pervades discussions about privacy. The
data-security expert Bruce Schneier calls it the "most common retort
against privacy advocates." The legal scholar Geoffrey Stone refers
to it as an "all-too-common refrain." In its most compelling form, it
is an argument that the privacy interest is generally minimal, thus
making the contest with security concerns a foreordained victory for
security.
The nothing-to-hide argument is everywhere. In Britain, for example,
the government has installed millions of public-surveillance cameras
in cities and towns, which are watched by officials via
closed-circuit television. In a campaign slogan for the program, the
government declares: "If you've got nothing to hide, you've got
nothing to fear." Variations of nothing-to-hide arguments frequently
appear in blogs, letters to the editor, television news interviews,
and other forums. One blogger in the United States, in reference to
profiling people for national-security purposes, declares: "I don't
mind people wanting to find out things about me, I've got nothing to
hide! Which is why I support [the government's] efforts to find
terrorists by monitoring our phone calls!"
The argument is not of recent vintage. One of the characters in Henry
James's 1888 novel, The Reverberator, muses: "If these people had
done bad things they ought to be ashamed of themselves and he
couldn't pity them, and if they hadn't done them there was no need of
making such a rumpus about other people knowing."
I encountered the nothing-to-hide argument so frequently in news
interviews, discussions, and the like that I decided to probe the
issue. I asked the readers of my blog, Concurring Opinions, whether
there are good responses to the nothing-to-hide argument. I received
a torrent of comments:
...
http://chronicle.com/article/Why-Privacy-Matters-Even-if/127461/
Daniel J. Solove is a professor of law at George Washington
University. This essay is an excerpt from his new book, Nothing to
Hide: The False Tradeoff Between Privacy and Security, published this
month by Yale University Press.
Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 00:10:16 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Four Ways to Make Your Battery Last Longer
Message-ID: <p06240817ca00dfab0d47@[10.0.1.3]>
Four Ways to Make Your Battery Last Longer
David Pogue
MAY 23, 2011
A good friend of mine had been complaining that her iPhone 3GS
battery was holding less and less of a charge. When we got together
at 5 p.m. one recent day, it was at 5 percent full - and it had been
fully charged that morning. She had barely used it all day. The phone
was apparently running itself dry simply by being turned on.
The single biggest battery consumer is the screen brightness. But it
wasn't especially bright on this phone.
So I suggested that she take the phone to an Apple store to get the
$60 battery replacement service. In fact, there was an Apple store
only two blocks away, so I accompanied her - and found out, upon
arrival, that there is no $60 battery replacement service! There's
one for iPods, but apparently not for the iPhone.
There are plenty of do-it-yourself and third-party
battery-replacement services that advertise online, but the Apple
store Genius, named Nicole, said none of that would be necessary. She
tested the battery and found that it was perfectly fine!
Instead, Nicole pointed out a few things that were contributing to my
friend's rapid battery depletion. I took notes and thought I'd pass
them along.
...
http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/four-ways-to-make-your-battery-last-longer/
Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 00:13:44 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Female Magazine Fans Flock to Nook Color
Message-ID: <p06240818ca00e0a447aa@[10.0.1.3]>
Female Magazine Fans Flock to Nook Color
By JEREMY W. PETERS
May 22, 2011
Even as the iPad remains the favorite son of the magazine business,
publishers are discovering that the Barnes & Noble Nook Color is a
very promising younger daughter.
The Nook Color has surprised publishers of women's magazines like O,
The Oprah Magazine, Cosmopolitan and Women's Health by igniting
strong sales that rival - and in some cases surpass - sales on the
iPad.
The success was not so easily predictable for a device that has been
on the market only since November and faces stiff competition from
Apple, Amazon and the Android-based tablets.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/business/media/23nook.html
Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 00:34:08 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: When the Internet Thinks It Knows You
Message-ID: <p0624081aca00e55861d4@[10.0.1.3]>
When the Internet Thinks It Knows You
By ELI PARISER
May 22, 2011
ONCE upon a time, the story goes, we lived in a broadcast society. In
that dusty pre-Internet age, the tools for sharing information
weren't widely available. If you wanted to share your thoughts with
the masses, you had to own a printing press or a chunk of the
airwaves, or have access to someone who did. Controlling the flow of
information was an elite class of editors, producers and media moguls
who decided what people would see and hear about the world. They were
the Gatekeepers.
Then came the Internet, which made it possible to communicate with
millions of people at little or no cost. Suddenly anyone with an
Internet connection could share ideas with the whole world. A new era
of democratized news media dawned.
You may have heard that story before - maybe from the conservative
blogger Glenn Reynolds (blogging is "technology undermining the
gatekeepers") or the progressive blogger Markos Moulitsas (his book
is called "Crashing the Gate"). It's a beautiful story about the
revolutionary power of the medium, and as an early practitioner of
online politics, I told it to describe what we did at MoveOn.org. But
I'm increasingly convinced that we've got the ending wrong - perhaps
dangerously wrong. There is a new group of gatekeepers in town, and
this time, they're not people, they're code.
Today's Internet giants - Google, Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft - see
the remarkable rise of available information as an opportunity. If
they can provide services that sift though the data and supply us
with the most personally relevant and appealing results, they'll get
the most users and the most ad views. As a result, they're racing to
offer personalized filters that show us the Internet that they think
we want to see. These filters, in effect, control and limit the
information that reaches our screens.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/23/opinion/23pariser.html
Date: 23 May 2011 19:02:18 GMT
From: Doug McIntyre <merlyn@geeks.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Letting it ring?
Message-ID: <4ddaaf3a$0$74946$8046368a@newsreader.iphouse.net>
Lisa or Jeff <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> writes:
>On May 18, 9:35 am, Pete Cresswell <nobody-h...@Invalid.telecom-
>digest.org> wrote:
>> - VOIP provider answers the phone with a recorded message:
>> "Press 1 for Sue, press 2 for Joe, press 3 for Sam, press 4
>> for Jane, press 5 for Sally, press 6 for Will, press 7 for
>> Irving, press 8 for Menachim, press 9 for Pete".
>Can't the above be accomplished with a plug-in card and software on a
>PC? That is, can't a PC be used as a mini-PBX or mini-voice-mail, and
>9 would ring your real phone for you to answer whle all other
>selections would go to voice mail or dead air?
>***** Moderator's Note *****
>There used to be combined modem/voice mail cards that would do that,
>but they required dedicated software and the companies died before
>consumers realized that they would want the product. AFAIK, they're
>not made anymore, but I'd be happy to hear from anyone who knows
>otherwise.
There's the Ovolab Phlink product..
http://www.ovolab.com/phlink/index.php
But it is for Mac OSX only, and it seems to be on autopilot now-a-days.. :(
Last release wwas Aug 2008.
Otherwise, you can setup what you are describing with Asterisk, or its
offshoots. There is even some basic hardware with Asterisk builtin
with some GUIs on the front (ie. Fortinet has a Fortigate firewall and
voice package that is essentially Asterisk on the backend).
Cisco also has a SOHO/SMB solution for setting up a small PBX type
setup with their UC products (ie. UC320/UC500).
Asterisk is probably the best bet/most cost effective, although you'll
probably have to devote an (old) PC to it and some add-on cards.
Date: Tue, 24 May 2011 09:52:12 +1000
From: David Clayton <dcstarbox-usenet@yahoo.com.au>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Letting it ring?
Message-ID: <pan.2011.05.23.23.52.08.823316@yahoo.com.au>
On Sun, 22 May 2011 18:34:13 -0700, Lisa or Jeff wrote:
> On May 18, 9:35 am, Pete Cresswell <nobody-h...@Invalid.telecom-
> digest.org> wrote:
>
>> - VOIP provider answers the phone with a recorded message: "Press 1
>> for Sue, press 2 for Joe, press 3 for Sam, press 4 for Jane, press 5
>> for Sally, press 6 for Will, press 7 for Irving, press 8 for
>> Menachim, press 9 for Pete".
>
> Can't the above be accomplished with a plug-in card and software on a PC?
> That is, can't a PC be used as a mini-PBX or mini-voice-mail, and 9 would
> ring your real phone for you to answer whle all other selections would go
> to voice mail or dead air?
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> There used to be combined modem/voice mail cards that would do that, but
> they required dedicated software and the companies died before consumers
> realized that they would want the product. AFAIK, they're not made
> anymore, but I'd be happy to hear from anyone who knows otherwise.
>
I used to use Dialogic cards years ago for PC based Voice Mail systems
with analog line connections, they still seem to be available (don't know
the cost, though):
http://www.dialogic.com/products/tdm_boards/media_processing/diva-analog.htm
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
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