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The Telecom Digest for October 17, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 263 : "text" Format
====== 30 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
journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are
included in the fair use quote. By using any name or email address
included herein for any reason other than responding to an article
herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to that person, or email address
owner.
Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be
sold or given away without the explicit written consent of the owner of
that address. Chain letters, 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.
|
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 09:10:30 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: iOS 5 reviewed: Notifications, iMessages, and iCloud, oh my!
Message-ID: <p0624081ecabf2c0b8224@[10.0.1.9]>
iOS 5 reviewed: Notifications, iMessages, and iCloud, oh my!
By Jacqui Cheng
Ars Technica
iOS 5 is now available to the public after having been teased for
months. Unlike the last major update to the operating system (iOS 4),
we think iOS 5 could be the most significant update to the iDevice
line since the rollout of iPhone OS 3 back in 2009. Why do we say
that? Simple-because of the sheer number of new and improved features
that make the iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad more usable than ever.
We're talking significantly revamped notifications, Twitter
integration, wireless sync, iCloud, home screen improvements, and
more-so many, in fact, that we can't address everything buried within
an app or setting in a single review. What we will do, however, is
talk about the major updates as well as those tidbits that interest
us the most after having used the OS. We did run across a few
nitpicks here and there that we hope Apple addresses in future
updates. Overall, though, we think it's worth upgrading to iOS 5.
...
http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/10/ios-5-reviewed-notifications-imessages-and-icloud-oh-my.ars
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 10:38:56 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Genius Bar iPhone policies tightened to make AppleCare+ more attractive
Message-ID: <p06240836cabf4b28cd09@[10.0.1.9]>
Genius Bar iPhone policies tightened to make AppleCare+ more attractive
By Daniel Eran Dilger
October 11, 2011
After introducing a more comprehensive extended warranty option for
iPhone buyers, Apple is reportedly curtailing liberal exchange
policies in its retail stores to make the new option more attractive.
Last week, Apple introduced "AppleCare+" for iPhone buyers, a $99
replacement for its previous $69 extended warranty plan, but one that
now covers up to two incidents of accidental damage. Previous plans
did not cover accidental damage.
Under the terms of the new plan, users who experience factory defects
or problems, like a premature battery failure or problem with their
headphones, are covered for free for two years, while any accidental
damage caused by the user is covered for the same two year term with
a $49 deductible termed a "service fee."
Users also get two full years of free software support, although
according to the AppleCare+ warranty contract, such free support
excludes software described as beta, which would currently exclude
iOS 5's Siri service.
Under the terms of the revised plan, Apple will now repair or replace
an accidentally damaged device with a new or refurbished model at the
$49 price of the service fee, something that would otherwise cost
$200 outside of the warranty period.
...
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/11/genius_bar_iphone_policies_tightened_to_make_applecare_more_attractive.html
Date: 15 Oct 2011 20:32:41 -0400
From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Lightsquared being called to account
Message-ID: <j7d8n9$g9a$1@panix3.panix.com>
>Oh, yes: I forgot to point out that SkyTerra didn't "buy" the spectrum
>at anything near the going rate: they got some low-rent SATELLITE
>spectrum, never paid to orbit the required SATELLITE, and were bought
>out by an avaricious gambler who wants his going-downhill-fast hedge
>fund to profit beyond the dreams of Croesus by ruining the GPS system
>for everyone.
Hate to tell you this, but that's not exclusively a satellite allocation
there. Check the FCC frequency allocations. Satellite use is primary
but not exclusive (much like that slice at 138 MC).
>All in a day's work, by the standards of Capitol Hill: I bet he
>figures that when the bill comes due and a few lightplanes crash and
>common people like me have to buy new, improved GPS receivers to
>compensate for his greed, he'll be a both richer and gone.
>
>I'm not being too subtle here, am I?
No, and that's basically the problem. This has been turned into a
political football by nontechnical people who don't understand the
issues, and you're buying right into it.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 22:28:14 -0500
From: rpw3@rpw3.org (Rob Warnock)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Privacy alert: Verizon is now monitoring your mobile Web habits
Message-ID: <gLKdndSsecDT0gfTnZ2dnUVZ_qmdnZ2d@speakeasy.net>
In a "Moderator's Note" to Michael Moroney <moroney@world.std.spaamtrap.com>,
Bill Horne wrote:
+---------------
| ***** Moderator's Note *****
| Thanks for sending that: I've uploaded a screen shot that shows what I
| just saw when I accessed the site. Of course, I already checked the
| box (using lynx), but the screenshot shows how the "Suggestions" link is
| in the way of the checkbox.
|
| It's at
| http://www.telecom-digest.org/R5C.png
|
+---------------
If you're using Firefox, you might try "View -> Page Style -> No Style"
to turn off CSS for that page to see if that gets rid of the floater/popup.
I've had some success in using that to defeat overly-"smart" CSS that
gets my window and/or screen size totally wrong and horribly misformats
the page, e.g., using the "mobile" version for a non-mobile system and
vice-versa. [Google News is particularly bad about that!] What you see
with CSS turned off is itself quite horribly formatted, but at least
most of the interesting/useful bits are usually visible. ;-}
-Rob
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Rob Warnock <rpw3@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue
http://rpw3.org/
San Mateo, CA 94403
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:26:54 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Why Facebook Is After Your Kids
Message-ID: <p06240850cabff8393b13@[10.0.1.9]>
Why Facebook Is After Your Kids
By EMILY BAZELON
October 12, 2011
In May, Consumer Reports announced that 7.5 million kids age 12 and
younger are on Facebook. The magazine called this "troubling news,"
in no small part because their presence is at odds with federal law,
which bars Web sites from collecting personal data about kids under
13 without permission from their parents. "Clearly, using Facebook
presents children and their friends and families with safety,
security and privacy risks," Consumer Reports concluded.
Within weeks of the Consumer Reports news, Mark Zuckerberg, the
founder of Facebook, called for challenging the 1998 Children's
Online Privacy Protection Act (Coppa), which prevents Facebook from
signing up young kids legally. "That will be a fight we take on at
some point," Zuckerberg said at the NewSchools Summit in California.
And indeed, with the Federal Trade Commission poised to tighten
Coppa's regulations, Facebook has tripled its spending on lobbying,
formed a political action committee and hired former Bush and Obama
officials to push for its agenda.
We don't really know yet how joining Facebook at a tender age affects
kids socially and emotionally. There's the fun and freedom of
Facebook, and then there's the Consumer Reports finding that the site
exposed a million teenagers to bullying and harassment last year.
What is clear is that Facebook thinks it needs access to kids' lives
in order to continue to dominate its industry. The younger the child,
the greater the opportunity to build brand loyalty that might
transcend the next social-media trend. And crucially, signing up kids
early can accustom them to "sharing" with the big audiences that are
at their small fingertips.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/why-facebook-is-after-your-kids.html
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 16:28:30 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: The Apple effect: How Steve Jobs & Co. won over the world
Message-ID: <p0624086bcac0ece9cbbe@[10.0.1.9]>
The Apple effect: How Steve Jobs & Co. won over the world
UPDATE: Steve Jobs passed on Wednesday. In this cover story, first
published last month, Alan Webber explores what made Steve Jobs (and
Apple) exceptional. Apple knew what consumers didn't want and
understood the power of being itself. A look at what the company can
teach corporate America.
By Alan M. Webber, correspondent
The Christian Science Monitor
September 17, 2011
Santa Fe, N.M.
The one and only time I met Steve Jobs was back in 1991. I was
managing editor of the Harvard Business Review (HBR), and I'd made the
trip from Boston to Silicon Valley to see for myself what was going
on. I'd just wrapped up a presentation in one of the classrooms at
Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif., when Mr. Jobs materialized
and started a conversation.
"That was a great article," he told me. "One of the best things I've
ever read. It's absolutely right. It's not computers. It's computing."
He was talking about an article that we'd just published in the July
1991 issue of HBR, a piece written by Andy Rappaport and Shmuel Halevi
called "The Computerless Computer Company." It was a provocative piece
that came at a time when the United States was nervously watching
Japanese companies win more than 40 percent of the American market for
laptops, assert leadership in the production of memory chips, and
rival US companies in the production of supercomputers.
Don't worry, the piece argued. The future isn't in computers. It's in
computing. "Defining how computers are used, not how they are
manufactured, will create real value - and thus market power,
employment, and wealth - in the decades ahead," the authors wrote. "A
computer company is the primary source of computing for its
customers."
The future, in other words, is a verb, not a noun.
That insight, it seems to me, is at the heart of Apple today.
The computer is a thing, but what people want is not a thing, but to
do things.
...
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2011/0917/The-Apple-effect-How-Steve-Jobs-Co.-won-over-the-world
Remembering Steve Jobs
http://www.csmonitor.com/CSM-Photo-Galleries/In-Pictures/Remembering-Steve-Jobs
Steve Jobs: One of the greatest business leaders?
http://www.csmonitor.com/Business/2011/0826/Steve-Jobs-One-of-the-greatest-business-leaders/Henry-Ford-vision
Date: Sat, 15 Oct 2011 17:39:23 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: How Siri Works
Message-ID: <p0624084ccabfad6eb343@[10.0.1.9]>
How Siri Works
By Jeff Wofford
October 5, 2011
Once again someone has offered us incredible artificial intelligence,
and once again we are bracing for disappointment. It happened with
handwriting recognition on the Newton, which proved to be slow and
clumsy. It happened with the not-as-smart-as-they-first-appeared
creatures of Lionhead's Black and White. And remember the Kinect
debut video showing a kid interacting with an on-screen villain
effortlessly, the AI character perfectly intoning the kid's name?
Kinect brought some of the innovations promised in that early teaser,
but clearly the video implied a level of sophistication and polish
that turned to vapor in the end.
But it's Apple this time, with Siri on the iPhone 4S. And although
Apple has screwed up before-witness the aforementioned Newton-if
anyone has the motivation, the resources, and the smarts to get AI
right, the iPhone dev team is it.
Having programmed and taught artificial intelligence in video games
for almost twenty years, I am deeply skeptical-you might almost say
cynical-about claims to offer a truly useful and usable intelligent
agent. Ordinary people-those who don't study AI-have big hopes (and
fears) about AI, and marketers prey on these fantasies. In reality AI
is, on the whole, a hoax. Virtually everything we call "AI" today is
either a theatrical display of essentially scripted behavior (that's
how most game AI works), a massive database (such as Google
Suggestions and expert systems) or a vague and decidedly
unintelligent jumble of neural networks and genetic algorithms.
So-called "artificially intelligent" programs are generally either
too limited or too clumsy to be useful in helping ordinary people do
ordinary tasks. So will Siri be different?
Despite my skepticism, I actually think the answer is "yes." I think
Siri will do more or less what Apple promised yesterday.
The reason it will work is that it actually has fairly modest
ambitions-more modest than they first appear.
...
http://www.jeffwofford.com/?p=817
Date: Sun, 16 Oct 2011 10:43:35 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Online Banking Keeps Customers on Hook for Fees
Message-ID: <p0624085ecac09db13a89@[10.0.1.9]>
Online Banking Keeps Customers on Hook for Fees
By NELSON D. SCHWARTZ
October 15, 2011
Customers frustrated by banks' controversial new fees are finding out
what industry insiders have known for years: it is not so easy to
disentangle your life from your bank.
The Internet banking services that have been sold to customers as
conveniences, like online bill paying, serve as powerful tethers
that keep them from jumping to another institution.
Tedd Speck, a 49-year-old market researcher in Kent, Conn., was
furious about Bank of America's planned $5 monthly fee for debit card
use.
But he is staying put after being overwhelmed by the inconvenience of
moving dozens of online bill paying arrangements to another bank.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/business/online-banking-keeps-customers-on-hook-for-fees.html
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