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The Telecom Digest for August 12, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 171 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 02:03:02 -0400
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Only Seven Percent of TV Households Rely on Over-the-Air Signals according to CEA Study
Message-ID: <MPG.2c690a1855c1601c989e6e@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <51FE6175.311A1ED7@Guy.com>, Telco@Guy.com says...
>
> Gordon Burditt wrote:
>
> > Lots of other people with both a cable/satellite/internet source
> > of TV programming and and antenna (not necessarily on the same TV)
>
> There's your problem right there.
>
> The cable or satellite digital box is the gateway to the primary
> big-screen TV in the home. They don't make those boxes with OTA antenna
> input and incorporate OTA signals seemlessly into the channel lineup.
> [Moderator snip]
New televisions have MULTIPLE inputs - like antenna connectors, VGA,
HDMI, Composite, Component etc. My cable box connects to the TV via
HDMI now and it leaves that F connector open for an antenna should I
wish. Just push the button on the remote and you're scanning the
airwaves.
Date: Sun, 04 Aug 2013 23:34:00 -0500
From: Doug McIntyre <merlyn@dork.geeks.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Only Seven Percent of TV Households Rely on Over-the-Air Signals according to CEA Study
Message-ID: <272dneW3HPeltmLMnZ2dnUVZ_qqdnZ2d@giganews.com>
Telco Guy <Telco@Guy.com> writes:
> (7% of households feed OTA and only OTA to their TV's)
>> > "Consumers have moved away in droves from traditional broadcast
>> > television thanks to a surge in programming alternatives
>> > available through wired and wireless broadband connections.
>I question that conclusion, unless some numbers are provided showing
>what percentage of the other 93% feed the following into their TV's:
>a) A combination of OTA and pure internet (netflix/hulu/etc)
>b) or a combination of cable/IPTV/satellite and internet
>c) or pure internet (netflix/hulu/youtube/etc)
>d) or ONLY cable/IPTV/satellite
>e) or ONLY local-source material (DVD/Bluray/NAS)
>With the economy in the toilet, I thought that "cord-cutting" was
>trending up.
Nielsen tracks these numbers too..
http://www.nielsen.com/content/dam/corporate/us/en/reports-downloads/2013%20Reports/Nielsen-March-2013-Cross-Platform-Report.pdf
Many of the cord cutters reported are actually just shifting services,
trying to get better deals as well. Not all, but some pay providers
still are gaining customers, not a net loss.
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 14:31:43 -0400
From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Question about fax call-blocking (based on Station-ID?)
Message-ID: <11hpbeebfx0eh.18se9vptsu897$.dlg@40tude.net>
On Sat, 27 Jul 2013 10:42:37 -0400, Telecom Guy wrote:
> ... any fax machines or fax-software (running on
> a PC being used as a fax machine) that can block or drop incoming faxes
> based on this phone/company (station-ID) data? ...
Back in the last century, when ZyXel was the modem name to look for, some
SGI engineers had written fax software named Zfax for use with those modems
-- it used to have such capabilities as you seek.
For today, though, I'd advise trying the links that crop up when YaBinGling
: zyxel Zfax Sender ID
(or variations on that search string). HTH. Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2013 15:04:12 -0400
From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Only Seven Percent of TV Households Rely on Over-the-Air Signals according to CEA Study
Message-ID: <1tvyxmqj93j1u.f1mh7qkn92p6.dlg@40tude.net>
On Thu, 01 Aug 2013 22:15:52 -0400, Telco Guy offered his ... :
> ... impression that ... households that have no sports fans and
> live in urban areas served with many terrestrial TV stations have a
> greatly reduced reason to subscribe to cable or satellite TV. ...
No sports fans here. Nor MTV fans, nor fans of much else that has lots
of fans. But we are fans of CNN and BBC, and those seem to be
available (to us, at least) only through a "premium" $30/mo. add-on
bundle to a "basic" $70/mo. cable subscription -- not available
OTA. FWIW.
Cheers,
-- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 11:01:49 -0400
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Defeating the modern Leviathan
Message-ID: <ku890s$66h$1@dont-email.me>
Defeating the modern Leviathan of corporate-government data collection
Individuals face an unholy alliance of data-hungry private firms and
public agencies. Only citizen action can win back our privacy
by Bruce Schneier
Imagine the government passed a law requiring all citizens to carry a
tracking device. Such a law would immediately be found
unconstitutional. Yet we all carry mobile phones.
If the National Security Agency required us to notify it whenever we
made a new friend, the nation would rebel. Yet we notify Facebook Inc.
If the Federal Bureau of Investigation demanded copies of all our
conversations and correspondence, it would be laughed at. Yet we
provide copies of our email to Google Inc, Microsoft Corp or whoever
our mail host is; we provide copies of our text messages to Verizon
Communications Inc, AT&T Inc and Sprint Corp; and we provide copies of
other conversations to Twitter Inc, Facebook, LinkedIn Corp or
whatever other site is hosting them.
The primary business model of the internet is built on mass
surveillance, and our government's intelligence-gathering agencies
have become addicted to that data. Understanding how we got here is
critical to understanding how we undo the damage.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/06/corporate-government-data-collection
-or-
http://goo.gl/GI3A0G
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2013 01:34:46 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Gone in 30 seconds: New attack plucks secrets from HTTPS-protected pages
Message-ID: <p06240837ce24e9973b7f@[10.0.1.5]>
Gone in 30 seconds: New attack plucks secrets from HTTPS-protected pages
Exploit called BREACH bypasses the SSL crypto scheme protecting
millions of sites.
by Dan Goodin
Aug 1 2013
Ars Technica
The HTTPS cryptographic scheme, which protects millions of websites,
is susceptible to a new attack that allows hackers to pluck e-mail
addresses and certain types of security credentials out of encrypted
pages, often in as little as 30 seconds.
The technique, scheduled to be demonstrated Thursday at the Black Hat
security conference in Las Vegas, decodes encrypted data that online
banks and e-commerce sites send in responses that are protected by
the widely used transport layer security (TLS) and secure sockets
layer (SSL) protocols. The attack can extract specific pieces of
data, such as social security numbers, e-mail addresses, certain
types of security tokens, and password-reset links. It works against
all versions of TLS and SSL regardless of the encryption algorithm or
cipher that's used.
It requires that the attacker have the ability to passively monitor
the traffic traveling between the end user and website. The attack
also requires the attacker to force the victim to visit a malicious
link. This can be done by injecting an iframe tag in a website the
victim normally visits or, alternatively, by tricking the victim into
viewing an e-mail with hidden images that automatically download and
generate HTTP requests. The malicious link causes the victim's
computer to make multiple requests to the HTTPS server that's being
targeted. These requests are used to make "probing guesses" that will
be explained shortly.
...
http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/08/gone-in-30-seconds-new-attack-plucks-secrets-from-https-protected-pages/
***** Moderator's Note *****
This weakness is called a "known plaintext attack". If an attacker
knows what is in an encrypted communication, and where it's located
in the stream, (s)he can sometimes obtain the encryption key.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 04:44:11 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Only Seven Percent of TV Households Rely on Over-the-Air Signals according to CEA Study
Message-ID: <ku74qr$1m9k$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <ddcda473-c3f1-457c-bfea-0d9436f46ee1@googlegroups.com>,
Neal McLain <nmclain.remove-this@and-this-too.annsgarden.com> wrote:
>On Sunday, August 4, 2013 9:13:09 AM UTC-5, Telco Guy wrote:
>
>> The cable or satellite digital box is the gateway to the primary
>> big-screen TV in the home. They don't make those boxes with OTA
>> antenna input and incorporate OTA signals seamlessly into the
>> channel lineup.
>
> Several years ago, there was some talk about a converter design that
> would do exactly that. The idea was that a single converter would
> have three inputs: VHF-OTA, UHF-OTA, CATV. The tuning circuitry
> would integrate the three signals into a single channel lineup,
> switching among inputs as necessary.
Um, this is exactly what my TiVo does. It has two RF inputs, one for
an antenna and one for cable, with the requisite CableCARD slots and a
USB connection for SDV. Because I don't have reliable OTA reception
where I live, I usually have the broadcast channels disabled, but I
configure my TiVo to think I have an antenna, so that I can switch
over in just these sorts of cases.
Can you or anyone else explain, by the way, why cablecos put the HD
versions of various services (both local and national programming) on
different "channel" numbers from the downconverted SD versions? The
"channel" numbers are just arbitary digit strings, and back in the
analog days they had no difficulty remapping channels affected by
ingress interference; surely, now that everything is digital, it would
make more sense for the decoder to use one "channel" number and select
the correct program stream automatically depending on the type of
device and customer authorization. (On my TiVo I disable all of the
downconverted SD channels; if I used Comcast's equipment instead, they
would not allow me to do this.)
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
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