The Telecom Digest for July 26, 2010
Volume 29 : Issue 201 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
====== 28 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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===========================
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Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2010 21:06:04 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: WPA2 vulnerability found
Message-ID: <p0624083ac8713e1fb86a@[10.5.11.42]>
WPA2 vulnerability found
'Hole 196' means malicious insiders could spoof WI-Fi packets,
compromise WLAN
Wireless Alert By Joanie Wexler, Network World
July 23, 2010 12:59 PM ET
Perhaps it was only a matter of time. But wireless security
researchers say they have uncovered a vulnerability in the WPA2
security protocol, which is the strongest form of Wi-Fi encryption
and authentication currently standardized and available.
Malicious insiders can exploit the vulnerability, named "Hole 196" by
the researcher who discovered it at wireless security company
AirTight Networks. The moniker refers to the page of the IEEE 802.11
Standard (Revision, 2007) on which the vulnerability is buried.
Hole 196 lends itself to man-in-the-middle-style exploits, whereby an
internal, authorized Wi-Fi user can decrypt, over the air, the
private data of others, inject malicious traffic into the network and
compromise other authorized devices using open source software,
according to AirTight.
The researcher who discovered Hole 196, Md Sohail Ahmad, AirTight
technology manager, intends to demonstrate it at two conferences
taking place in Las Vegas next week: Black Hat Arsenal and DEF CON 18.
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) derivative on which WPA2 is
based has not been cracked and no brute force is required to exploit
the vulnerability, Ahmad says. Rather, a stipulation in the standard
that allows all clients to receive broadcast traffic from an access
point (AP) using a common shared key creates the vulnerability when
an authorized user uses the common key in reverse and sends spoofed
packets encrypted using the shared group key.
Ahmad explains it this way:
...
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/wireless/2010/072610wireless1.html
***** Moderator's Note *****
This puts my weekend world on its head. I'm now in danger of having my
neighbors on this otherwise-quiet suburban street find out my ultimate
secret ...
... that my life really is that boring.
This kind of security "exploit" is tailor-made for the ever-shorter
news cycle: a flash in the electronic pan perfectly timed to grab the
(admittedly minute) imaginations of our nations' "reporters", and just
awesome fer-shur as a "tease" for the evening news: a helping hand
extended to the lizardlike programming directors of our
information-spigot-spinners after Washington's spin-masters have
called it quits for the weekend.
News flash: if it's in the docs, it's NOT an exploit.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:09:41 +1000
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Overlay acceptance
Message-ID: <pan.2010.07.25.01.09.38.604098@myrealbox.com>
On Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:21:37 -0500, John Mayson wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 23, 2010 at 10:51 AM, David Lesher <wb8foz@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> MD did one of the first overlays, and there was a hue & cry not to be
>> believed; you have thought the state's children were being bundled up &
>> sent to the Soylent Green plant.
>
> I agree. I remember hearing time and again how difficult 10-digit numbers
> would be on "our children" as if we were collectively rearing the nation's
> millions of children and these children were incapable of remembering
> anything longer than seven digits.
Back in the 1990's in Australia the whole numbering plan was rationalised
to a standard 2 digit area code + 8 digit local area number (for
"Geographic numbers") and at the time the usual "the world will end, old
people won't be able to make calls" hoo-haa was aired by the usual
suspects.
54 different Area Codes were reduced to just 4, and everyone changed to a
standard 8 digit number:
http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_2466
At this time people hardly remember that the change happened, and the
dialling plan in fact simplified things for a lot of people and will
hardly need changing into the foreseeable future.
Sometimes people just have to stop continually complaining and accept that
there are actually experts in a particular field that are doing things for
everyone's long-term interests.
--
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.
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 17:43:03 +0200
From: Marc Haber <mh+usenetspam1002@zugschl.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Overlay acceptance
Message-ID: <i2hm28$5f5$1@news1.tnib.de>
David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>Back in the 1990's in Australia the whole numbering plan was rationalised
>to a standard 2 digit area code + 8 digit local area number (for
>"Geographic numbers")
Old numbers were preserved or not?
Greetings
Marc
--
-------------------------------------- !! No courtesy copies, please !! -----
Marc Haber | " Questions are the | Mailadresse im Header
Mannheim, Germany | Beginning of Wisdom " | http://www.zugschlus.de/
Nordisch by Nature | Lt. Worf, TNG "Rightful Heir" | Fon: *49 621 72739834
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 09:31:39 -0700
From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Overlay acceptance
Message-ID: <i2hotd$a2v$1@news.eternal-september.org>
On 7/24/10 6:09 PM, David Clayton wrote:
.
>
> Back in the 1990's in Australia the whole numbering plan was rationalised
> to a standard 2 digit area code + 8 digit local area number (for
> "Geographic numbers") and at the time the usual "the world will end, old
> people won't be able to make calls" hoo-haa was aired by the usual
> suspects.
>
> 54 different Area Codes were reduced to just 4, and everyone changed to a
> standard 8 digit number:
>
> http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_2466
>
> At this time people hardly remember that the change happened, and the
> dialling plan in fact simplified things for a lot of people and will
> hardly need changing into the foreseeable future.
>
> Sometimes people just have to stop continually complaining and accept that
> there are actually experts in a particular field that are doing things for
> everyone's long-term interests.
>
> --
> 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.
>
What I have never understood is why the NPA did not just throw out the
plan at the time and go to a European dialing plan, adding a digit to
the AC and or another one to the exchange, to me it would have been no
more trouble then having to reprogram the switches to handle 11 digits.
After it was in place I don't thing new area codes would ever have to
be placed into service.
--
The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2010 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co.
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 19:57:36 -0500
From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Overlay acceptance
Message-ID: <AANLkTinQ4STwvrAMb6wo=Fwx_2hP9y77=5J9hWW20=-w@mail.gmail.com>
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com> wro
te:
> What I have never understood is why the NPA did not just throw out
> the plan at the time and go to a European dialing plan, adding a
> digit to the AC and or another one to the exchange, to me it would
> have been no more trouble then having to reprogram the switches to
> handle 11 digits. Â After it was in place I don't thing new area
> codes would ever have to be placed into service.
Despite leaving Atlanta in 1992 I have continued to have strong
personal ties to the area. There was a some anxiety over the 404/770
split in 1995 and the fact 10-digit dialing would be mandatory. My
idea was to have phone numbers go to this format:
+1 (40) 4555-1212
+1 (77) 0555-1212
Within the metro area people would dial 8 digits while those outside
would continue to dial the area as they always have before. Of course
such a plan would NEVER have flown, but it's certainly an idea. Isn't
this more or less how it works in Europe, phone number length can
vary?
John
--
John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 20:01:36 -0700
From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Overlay acceptance
Message-ID: <i2itqj$umm$1@news.eternal-september.org>
On 7/25/10 5:57 PM, John Mayson wrote:
> On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 11:31 AM, Steven<diespammers@killspammers.com> wro
> te:
>
>> What I have never understood is why the NPA did not just throw out
>> the plan at the time and go to a European dialing plan, adding a
>> digit to the AC and or another one to the exchange, to me it would
>> have been no more trouble then having to reprogram the switches to
>> handle 11 digits. � After it was in place I don't thing new area
>> codes would ever have to be placed into service.
>
> Despite leaving Atlanta in 1992 I have continued to have strong
> personal ties to the area. There was a some anxiety over the 404/770
> split in 1995 and the fact 10-digit dialing would be mandatory. My
> idea was to have phone numbers go to this format:
>
> +1 (40) 4555-1212
> +1 (77) 0555-1212
>
> Within the metro area people would dial 8 digits while those outside
> would continue to dial the area as they always have before. Of course
> such a plan would NEVER have flown, but it's certainly an idea. Isn't
> this more or less how it works in Europe, phone number length can
> vary?
>
> John
>
Yes is how most of Europe has their system set up. One reason that is
was possible was after WWII the system had to be built from the bottom
up and a lot of the rebuilding was done by the British and the Germans.
Adding on digit in the Exchange would add thousands of numbers to each
exchange and the problem with requiring callers to dial 1 xxx-xxx-xxxx.
It would have required a major over hall of the system, but callers
having to dial 11 digits still required a lot of changes.
--
The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2010 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co.
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:58:22 -0500
From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Overlay acceptance
Message-ID: <AANLkTimNH27Uw-zOuzAFX_G5sG8C-A+K5K1VZ8wT2F1d@mail.gmail.com>
On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 8:09 PM, David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> Sometimes people just have to stop continually complaining and accept that
> there are actually experts in a particular field that are doing things for
> everyone's long-term interests.
I don't know what attitudes are like in Australia, but here people
have knee-jerk reactions calling such plans "elitist" or "socialist"
and nothing gets any better. And this is coming from someone who's
never voted for a Democrat.
I'm not trying to start a political flame war, but rather validating what
Mr. Clayton had to say.
John
Date: Sat, 24 Jul 2010 19:10:50 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lisa or Jeff <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Paul Rosen, 88, helped develop the high-speed modem
Message-ID: <b770a338-075a-4246-a6fe-d3be71d1bf8b@i31g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 24, 4:39 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:
> Their invention, "Method of Land Line Pulse Transmission,"
> helped expand computer networks nationwide by significantly
> accelerating the flow of data over phone lines.
Could someone explain in layman's terms what exactly his invention
did? I checked the article but it didn't say. It mentioned that the
Bell System was able to make minor changes and utilize his invention
without royalty.
Thanks.
***** Moderator's Note *****
I think that the inventors were the first to realize that baud rate
and bit rate didn't have to be synonymous: i.e., that it was possible
to have more than two signal states ("Mark" and "Space") in a phone
line.
In other words, they were able to increase the bit transfer rate by
increasing the symbol store available to carry the bits; a change
that allowed the higher throughputs without banging our electronic
heads on the Nyquist (or is it Shannon?) limit.
Bill "Clear as Mud" Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 10:57:09 -0600
From: Reed <reedh@rmi.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Paul Rosen, 88, helped develop the high-speed modem
Message-ID: <br-dnRQ3Ge1l8dHRnZ2dnUVZ_v-dnZ2d@earthlink.com>
Lisa or Jeff wrote:
> On Jul 24, 4:39 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> Their invention, "Method of Land Line Pulse Transmission,"
>> helped expand computer networks nationwide by significantly
>> accelerating the flow of data over phone lines.
>
> Could someone explain in layman's terms what exactly his invention
> did? I checked the article but it didn't say. It mentioned that the
> Bell System was able to make minor changes and utilize his invention
> without royalty.
>
The basic problem was this. How to send digital data from then-new
computers over an existing standard telephone circuit. The network was
designed to carry analog voice signals of varying frequency and
amplitude. Digital data generally is a fixed frequency and amplitude.
So something was needed to convert one to the other. Hence modems, or
MOdulator/ DEModulators.
see here for Rosen's own explanation
http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Paul_Rosen_Oral_History#Modem_design
also here for more on a Bell 103 modem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_103 for more detail)
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 11:08:12 -0600
From: Reed <reedh@rmi.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Paul Rosen, 88, helped develop the high-speed modem
Message-ID: <18WdnbMXNJgN8tHRnZ2dnUVZ_oOdnZ2d@earthlink.com>
Lisa or Jeff wrote:
> On Jul 24, 4:39 pm, danny burstein <dan...@panix.com> wrote:
>
>> Their invention, "Method of Land Line Pulse Transmission,"
>> helped expand computer networks nationwide by significantly
>> accelerating the flow of data over phone lines.
>
> Could someone explain in layman's terms what exactly his invention
> did? I checked the article but it didn't say. It mentioned that the
> Bell System was able to make minor changes and utilize his invention
> without royalty.
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> I think that the inventors were the first to realize that baud rate
> and bit rate didn't have to be synonymous: i.e., that it was possible
> to have more than two signal states ("Mark" and "Space") in a phone
> line.
>
> In other words, they were able to increase the bit transfer rate by
> increasing the symbol store available to carry the bits; a change
> that allowed the higher throughputs without banging our electronic
> heads on the Nyquist (or is it Shannon?) limit.
>
> Bill "Clear as Mud" Horne
> Moderator
>
Bill,
The SAGE project that Rosen was working on was the first large scale
requirement for sending digital data over analog circuits for long
distances. He found a modulation scheme to do that basic function.
"Encoding" of "multiple bits per baud" came later as more robust
modulation schemes were developed (PSK, QAM, etc) that allowed for
more than 2 symbol states.
--reed
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:24:37 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Verizon: Apple's iPhone made us think different about mobile apps, data
Message-ID: <p0624083ec871672054a3@[10.5.11.42]>
Verizon: Apple's iPhone made us think different about mobile apps, data
By Daniel Eran Dilger
July 22, 2010
Years after Verizon Wireless shunned Apple's iPhone because it wanted
more control over the device, a company representative has
acknowledged that the iPhone App Store was a "watershed" event in the
mobile industry.
At the January 2007 introduction of the original iPhone, Verizon
executive Jim Gerace told USA Today that his company has passed up
the opportunity to parter with Apple because the two companies could
not agree on a variety of issues.
At stake in the negotiations were retail distribution issues (Apple
initially didn't want to sell the iPhone through WalMart and Best
Buy), customer support handling (Apple wanted to support device
issues through AppleCare), and the reinstallation of Verizon software
and store elements.
Verizon had already been operating its "GetItNow" store as a way to
sell its wireless subscribers ringtones and rental apps, most of
which were built using Qualcomm's BREW, a proprietary mobile
development platform cousin of JavaME. Apple had no interest in
supporting BREW or Java on the iPhone.
Apple also wanted to integrate the iPhone with its iTunes Store just
as it had with the iPod, and arguably intended from the beginning to
launch its own App Store of software as well, although many pundits
insist that the company didn't even conceive the concept of third
party software until shortly before the launch of iPhone 2.0, as if
the entire iOS software platform were simply a reaction to
developers' lack of enthusiasm for web apps.
In the three years since the iPhone's launch--and two years after the
unveiling of the iPhone App Store--Verizon is now admitting that it
misjudged the opportunity it had passed up with Apple. In April,
Verizon's chief executive Ivan Seidenberg said he informed Apple that
his company would like to carry the iPhone, and alluded to talk that
Apple was working on a handset compatible with the carrier's network
technology.
Verizon is now admitting that Apple's entry into the mobile phone
market has indelibly rewritten the rules of the cellular phone
industry in such a way that has even forced carriers who don't sell
the iPhone to think differently about how they accommodate
independent software stores and how they sell and allocate data
services.
...
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/10/07/22/verizon_apples_iphone_made_us_think_different_about_mobile_apps_data.html
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:24:37 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: The Web Means the End of Forgetting
Message-ID: <p06240846c8723ddca8ff@[10.5.11.42]>
The Web Means the End of Forgetting
By JEFFREY ROSEN
The New York Times
July 19, 2010
Four years ago, Stacy Snyder, then a 25-year-old teacher in training
at Conestoga Valley High School in Lancaster, Pa., posted a photo on
her MySpace page that showed her at a party wearing a pirate hat and
drinking from a plastic cup, with the caption "Drunken Pirate." After
discovering the page, her supervisor at the high school told her the
photo was "unprofessional," and the dean of Millersville University
School of Education, where Snyder was enrolled, said she was
promoting drinking in virtual view of her under-age students. As a
result, days before Snyder's scheduled graduation, the university
denied her a teaching degree. Snyder sued, arguing that the
university had violated her First Amendment rights by penalizing her
for her (perfectly legal) after-hours behavior. But in 2008, a
federal district judge rejected the claim, saying that because Snyder
was a public employee whose photo didn't relate to matters of public
concern, her "Drunken Pirate" post was not protected speech.
When historians of the future look back on the perils of the early
digital age, Stacy Snyder may well be an icon. The problem she faced
is only one example of a challenge that, in big and small ways, is
confronting millions of people around the globe: how best to live our
lives in a world where the Internet records everything and forgets
nothing - where every online photo, status update, Twitter post and
blog entry by and about us can be stored forever. With Web sites like
LOL Facebook Moments, which collects and shares embarrassing personal
revelations from Facebook users, ill-advised photos and online
chatter are coming back to haunt people months or years after the
fact. Examples are proliferating daily: there was the 16-year-old
British girl who was fired from her office job for complaining on
Facebook, "I'm so totally bored!!"; there was the 66-year-old
Canadian psychotherapist who tried to enter the United States but was
turned away at the border - and barred permanently from visiting the
country - after a border guard's Internet search found that the
therapist had written an article in a philosophy journal describing
his experiments 30 years ago with L.S.D.
According to a recent survey by Microsoft, 75 percent of U.S.
recruiters and human-resource professionals report that their
companies require them to do online research about candidates, and
many use a range of sites when scrutinizing applicants - including
search engines, social-networking sites, photo- and video-sharing
sites, personal Web sites and blogs, Twitter and online-gaming sites.
Seventy percent of U.S. recruiters report that they have rejected
candidates because of information found online, like photos and
discussion-board conversations and membership in controversial groups.
Technological advances, of course, have often presented new threats
to privacy. In 1890, in perhaps the most famous article on privacy
ever written, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis complained that
because of new technology - like the Kodak camera and the tabloid
press - "gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the
vicious but has become a trade." But the mild society gossip of the
Gilded Age pales before the volume of revelations contained in the
photos, video and chatter on social-media sites and elsewhere across
the Internet. Facebook, which surpassed MySpace in 2008 as the
largest social-networking site, now has nearly 500 million members,
or 22 percent of all Internet users, who spend more than 500 billion
minutes a month on the site. Facebook users share more than 25
billion pieces of content each month (including news stories, blog
posts and photos), and the average user creates 70 pieces of content
a month. There are more than 100 million registered Twitter users,
and the Library of Congress recently announced that it will be
acquiring - and permanently storing - the entire archive of public
Twitter posts since 2006.
In Brandeis's day - and until recently, in ours - you had to be a
celebrity to be gossiped about in public: today all of us are
learning to expect the scrutiny that used to be reserved for the
famous and the infamous. A 26-year-old Manhattan woman told The New
York Times that she was afraid of being tagged in online photos
because it might reveal that she wears only two outfits when out on
the town - a Lynyrd Skynyrd T-shirt or a basic black dress. "You have
movie-star issues," she said, "and you're just a person."
We've known for years that the Web allows for unprecedented
voyeurism, exhibitionism and inadvertent indiscretion, but we are
only beginning to understand the costs of an age in which so much of
what we say, and of what others say about us, goes into our permanent
- and public - digital files. The fact that the Internet never seems
to forget is threatening, at an almost existential level, our ability
to control our identities; to preserve the option of reinventing
ourselves and starting anew; to overcome our checkered pasts.
In a recent book, "Delete: The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital
Age," the cyberscholar Viktor Mayer-Schönberger cites Stacy Snyder's
case as a reminder of the importance of "societal forgetting." By
"erasing external memories," he says in the book, "our society
accepts that human beings evolve over time, that we have the capacity
to learn from past experiences and adjust our behavior." In
traditional societies, where missteps are observed but not
necessarily recorded, the limits of human memory ensure that people's
sins are eventually forgotten. By contrast, Mayer-Schönberger notes,
a society in which everything is recorded "will forever tether us to
all our past actions, making it impossible, in practice, to escape
them." He concludes that "without some form of forgetting, forgiving
becomes a difficult undertaking."
It's often said that we live in a permissive era, one with infinite
second chances. But the truth is that for a great many people, the
permanent memory bank of the Web increasingly means there are no
second chances - no opportunities to escape a scarlet letter in your
digital past. Now the worst thing you've done is often the first
thing everyone knows about you.
...
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25privacy-t2.html
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 15:24:37 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: One nation, online / The push to make broadband access a civil right
Message-ID: <p06240840c872307f874e@[10.5.11.42]>
One nation, online
The push to make broadband access a civil right
By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow | June 20, 2010
If you're one of the millions of Americans who use broadband Internet
at home, you probably take for granted how deeply it's woven into
your life. It has transformed the way we pay our bills, seek romance,
procrastinate, and keep abreast of politics and the lives of friends.
The pre-Google era has become a distant, hazy memory.
If anything, many of us often half-wish we could escape the
Internet's clutches. The constant connectivity can be a shackle as
much as a convenience. Our habits have even triggered a serious
debate about whether all that clicking and toggling is warping our
brains.
But as the Internet grows more and more important to modern life,
some are now asking a different kind of question: Should broadband
access be a civil right?
It may seem strange to put the technology that brought us Facebook in
the august category where we place voting, or trial by jury. But
increasingly, activists, analysts, and government officials are
arguing that Internet access has become so essential to participation
in society - to finding jobs and housing, to civic engagement, even
to health - that it should be seen as a right, a basic prerogative of
all citizens. And in cases where people don't have access, whether
because they can't afford it or the infrastructure is not in place,
the government should have the power - and perhaps the duty - to fix
that.
The idea is already gaining traction both overseas and in the United
States. In 2009, Finland passed a law requiring telecom companies, as
of next month, to make broadband available to all citizens, even in
remote areas. UN conferences have featured discussion of an
international "Internet Bill of Rights" that would include the right
to affordable access; a Pew survey of attendees at the 2007 UN
Internet Governance Forum in Rio found that a majority of the
respondents supported the idea of such a bill. And the notion is not
confined to the progressive spheres of Europe and the UN: In
Washington, at least two of the five commissioners at the Federal
Communications Commission, Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn, have
said that broadband needs to be seen as a civil right.
As Internet use becomes ever more widespread, advocates say, it
becomes an indispensable venue for activities like speech and
political participation. More and more government functions are
gravitating online; a vast and growing segment of social and cultural
life now unfolds on the Web. The Internet, these advocates argue, has
not only created a new world, its prevalence has also made it a
prerequisite for full membership in the old one.
...
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2010/06/20/one_nation_online/
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 13:47:07 -0700 (PDT)
From: Zayde <phdfromic@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Need help reconnecting two phone lines
Message-ID: <844f7178-8e65-4916-83b1-69871d9718e3@e5g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
I have 4-wire jacks thoughout my house, which I have been using for
two phone lines - one analog, one digital - from two different
companies. A careless (or possibly vicious) technician who came to
fix a loss of dial tone connected the analog service to both lines in
part of the house so I lost the digital service.
In principle I should be able to disconnect one line and reconnect the
digital service, but over many years changes to the phone services
have left a jungle of phone wires in my basement - some ancient
fossils, some alive - leading to different parts of the house.
How can I check connectivity to find where the incoming lines are
connected to particular jacks ?
***** Moderator's Note *****
Zayde,
The only connectivity you need to check is the connection to the
complaint department at the company that allowed a technician to make
the mistake. Get them back out and tell them to fix it.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 16:07:01 -0700 (PDT)
From: Zayde <phdfromic@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Need help reconnecting two phone lines
Message-ID: <2d263cf6-8fc3-4cb5-9c14-1373d607169e@l14g2000yql.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 25, 4:47 pm, Zayde <phdfro...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I have 4-wire jacks thoughout my house, which I have been using for
> two phone lines - one analog, one digital - from two different
> companies. A careless (or possibly vicious) technician who came to
> fix a loss of dial tone connected the analog service to both lines in
> part of the house so I lost the digital service.
>
> In principle I should be able to disconnect one line and reconnect the
> digital service, but over many years changes to the phone services
> have left a jungle of phone wires in my basement - some ancient
> fossils, some alive - leading to different parts of the house.
>
> How can I check connectivity to find where the incoming lines are
> connected to particular jacks ?
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> Zayde,
>
> The only connectivity you need to check is the connection to the
> complaint department at the company that allowed a technician to make
> the mistake. Get them back out and tell them to fix it.
>
> Bill Horne
> Moderator
Bill, Yes that does seem obvious, but they are not going to reconnect
the service of a different company. The technician got surly when I
told him what he did and reported the case as closed. Rather than
get into a big fight and possibly extra charges, it may be easier to
fix it myself.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Sometimes fights are inevitable. You don't have to get into one if you
don't choose to, but I recommend that you involve your state's Public
Utility Commission. They're usually fairly effective with matters like
this.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 2010 21:51:10 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: A Joke iPhone Sticker Turns Into a Business
Message-ID: <p0624084fc8729a3e838c@[10.5.11.42]>
A Joke iPhone Sticker Turns Into a Business
By NICK BILTON
July 21, 2010
After Apple's iPhone 4 press conference last week, Szymon Weglarski
and Jon Dorfman, two designers from Brooklyn, decided they would have
a little fun with the iPhone 4's antenna problem.
They designed tiny bandages that fit perfectly around the edge of the
iPhone, opened a store on the marketplace site Etsy, and named their
new product Antenn-aid. Now the two partners are rushing to keep up
with orders.
...
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/21/a-joke-iphone-sticker-turns-into-a-business/
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