31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for November 18, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 270 : "text" Format
====== 31 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
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Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be
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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.
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Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 16:25:00 -0800 (PST)
From: Fred Scott <fsunaval@gmail.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: ATT and Verizon MTSOs
Message-ID: <72994ae9-420c-4e7b-9f39-0063ace1d077@googlegroups.com>
Does anyone know how many MTSOs do ATT and Verizon have all over the US?
A list of the MTSOs sites would be great.
Thanks,
Fred.
***** Moderator's Note *****
An MTSO is a Mobile Telecommunications Switching Office.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 21:42:48 -0800 (PST)
From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Papa John's faces class-action suit for alleged barrage of spam texts
Message-ID: <867bf851-7d48-45f3-a215-ccef983a9007@r5g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>
Nov 13, 10:19 pm
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> When clerks at the supermarket ask for my phone number, I always
> lie. They don't want to call me: they want to sell my buying habits,
> and I resent it.
I simply say "it's unlisted". If I absolutely positively have to give
it to someone, I give the former pay phone down the street.
Unfortunately, businesses make it harder and harder not to give in to
their intrusive questioning. I use a supermarket card because without
their prices are much higher. Likewise with the drugstore.
Some banks now charge a steep monthly fee to send out a printed
statement, so one is forced to give them an email address for e-
statements. One might suggest to switch banks. But, it's hard to
switch banks because (1) there are so fewer banks thanks to mergers
and failures, and (2) all the banks end up doing the same thing so
there's no gain in switching.
> I'm going to write a book about how our privacy was stolen, one
> molecule at a time.
A such book is sorely needed.
But it's a tough issue. Some businesses are now advertising gross
privacy invasions in the name of customer service. For instance, one
retail chain offers to track all of a customer's purchases to aid in
future buying. A cable company offers a home security system
including CCTV to monitor your kids and pets.
We consumers love the convenience of e-commerce--buying things from
web pages where they already have our credit card, email, and shipping
address on file. We like using our credit cards for everything these
days, even modest purchases.
We are worried about our personal security and submit to public safety
registration requirements.
We need to have our job, so we are forced to submit to our employers'
background checks, review of our outside lives, and scrutiny of our
activities while on the job by CCTV, badge readers, and other
monitoring.
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 09:29:29 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Papa John's faces class-action suit for alleged barrage of spam texts
Message-ID: <20121117142929.GA3167@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
On Fri, Nov 16, 2012 at 09:42:48PM -0800, HAncock4 wrote:
> Nov 13, 10:19 pm
>
> > ***** Moderator's Note *****
> >
> > When clerks at the supermarket ask for my phone number, I always
> > lie. They don't want to call me: they want to sell my buying habits,
> > and I resent it.
>
> I simply say "it's unlisted". If I absolutely positively have to give
> it to someone, I give the former pay phone down the street.
>
> Unfortunately, businesses make it harder and harder not to give in to
> their intrusive questioning. I use a supermarket card because without
> their prices are much higher. Likewise with the drugstore.
I'm lucky: around here, if I tell the clerk I forgot my "loyalty"
card, they offer to use a store card instead. I don't know if
Massachusetts has a law that mandates it, but it's nice to be able to
get the discounts while my card is hanging on the keychain that's
keeping my wife warm in the parking lot.
> Some banks now charge a steep monthly fee to send out a printed
> statement, so one is forced to give them an email address for e-
> statements. One might suggest to switch banks. But, it's hard to
> switch banks because (1) there are so fewer banks thanks to mergers
> and failures, and (2) all the banks end up doing the same thing so
> there's no gain in switching.
Not here. I don't know if that's a law either, but I'd close my
account if they tried it.
>> I'm going to write a book about how our privacy was stolen, one
>> molecule at a time.
>
> A such book is sorely needed.
Yes, but by the time it's written, the black helicopters will have
taken me away.
> But it's a tough issue. Some businesses are now advertising gross
> privacy invasions in the name of customer service. For instance, one
> retail chain offers to track all of a customer's purchases to aid in
> future buying. A cable company offers a home security system
> including CCTV to monitor your kids and pets.
>
> We consumers love the convenience of e-commerce--buying things from
> web pages where they already have our credit card, email, and shipping
> address on file. We like using our credit cards for everything these
> days, even modest purchases.
E-commerce is always a double-edged sword. It's very hard to do it
without accumulating masses of data, and once that data is
available, the merchants would be fools not to use it. This is nothing
new: Sears, Roebuck & Co. always favored customers with high account
totals, even in the days of manual paperwork when the Sears catalog
was the only mail-order market around.
The problem, in a nutshell, is that telephone numbers are a reliable,
easy-to-remember, and seldom changed index into our buying habits and,
therefore, our personal lives. Everyone balks at handing over their
SSN or other national identity number, but phone numbers, which are a
reliable way to retrieve an SSN, don't have the same "fear factor".
As fate would have it, I've just run out of my "old" checks, and have
opened a new box that have my Google Voice phone number on them. It
will be interesting to see if the supermarket sells the "new" number
to SMS marketing companies, and if they try to send me text ads.
> We are worried about our personal security and submit to public safety
> registration requirements.
On balance, submitting to the requirements of a drivers license exam
is a minor inconvenience compared to the peace of mind that comes from
knowing that other drivers had to do it as well. Fishing licenses, not
so much. Gun licenses, at least in my neighborhood, require an
exhaustive screening process, but that's OK as well: nobody ever
attacked a crowd with a fishing rod.
> We need to have our job, so we are forced to submit to our employers'
> background checks, review of our outside lives, and scrutiny of our
> activities while on the job by CCTV, badge readers, and other
> monitoring.
Some employers demand that applicants hand over their FacePage IDs and
passwords for background checks. Some applicants do it. I tell them
that I don't have a FaceTube account, and I'm old enough that they
believe it, although I have had to answer questions about a guy
named "Bill Horne" who posts regularly in some online forums about
recreational vehicles: nice guy, I'd bet, but it's scary to know that
twenty-something HR clerks don't understand that I'm not him.
BTW, I don't think I'm "forced" to submit to a potential employer's
background check: I'm not forced to eat, either; it's just a habit I
have.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me direcly)
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 20:20:01 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: alternatives to "membership cards", was: Papa John's faces class-action
Message-ID: <k88rhh$le0$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <867bf851-7d48-45f3-a215-ccef983a9007@r5g2000yqo.googlegroups.com> HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> writes:
[snippeth]
>Unfortunately, businesses make it harder and harder not to give in to
>their intrusive questioning. I use a supermarket card because without
>their prices are much higher. Likewise with the drugstore.
Fortunately, many of these stores are set up to let you
use an "alternate ID" via the keypad, typically by punching
in your phone number.
And there's no need, of course, that it be "your" phone number.
A little bit of research will uncover plenty of usable
accounts/phone numbers for many of these places. Or you
might have a friend or relative willing to let you,
so to speak, "share" theirs.
Generally there's no geographic restriction, so while
you're shopping in DC, the phone number might be in LA.
In some of these systems there's a bit of an advantage
to the real account holder as there might be a one
percent or so kickback at the end of the year. Of course,
you won't be getting it. But they will.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 22:15:16 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: alternatives to "membership cards", was: Papa John's faces class-action
Message-ID: <k8929k$abc$2@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <k88rhh$le0$1@reader1.panix.com>,
danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote:
>Generally there's no geographic restriction, so while
>you're shopping in DC, the phone number might be in LA.
Of course, these days you might live in DC and have an 818 number for
your primary phone, because that's where you lived in 2005; viz.,
http://xkcd.com/1129/
.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 01:42:07 +0000 (UTC)
From: briang@panix.com (Brian Gordon)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Papa John's
Message-ID: <k86q1e$n8q$1@reader1.panix.com>
In article <k864vd$mrc$1@reader1.panix.com>,
David Scheidt <dscheidt@panix.com> wrote:
>Doug McIntyre <merlyn@geeks.org> wrote:
>:Michael Muderick <michael@muderick.com> writes:
>:>One supermarket clerk told me that the number was needed in case there was
>:>a product recall on anything I bought....e.g. salmonella poisoning. That
>:>make sense, if it's true.
>
>:That would make a massive untennable database.
>
>It's 2012. Disk is cheap, keeping track of everything every customer
>ever buys from you isn't that hard. I'm sure that telling people
>about recalls isn't the only, or even primary, reason to do that, but
>it's certainly well in realm of possilibility that they actually do
>so. (And, anecdotally, I've heard from people that have been contacted
>about food recalls.)
>
>My answer to the request for personal information that's not required
>to complete a sale is "no." It's been several years since I've had
>to walk out without buying something because they couldn't or wouldn't
>complete the sale without it.
>
Radio Shack used to be adament about your phone number, causing me to walk out
without batteries (which were not going to be recalled :-) more than once.
They have mellowed over the years, but I rarely go there anyway -- force of
habit by now, I guess.
--
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
| Brian Gordon -->briang@panix.com<-- brian dot gordon at cox dot net |
+ brianggordon@hotmail.com Bass: Lexington "Main Street Harmonizers" chorus +
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:13:38 -0600
From: Dave Garland <dave.garland@wizinfo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Papa John's
Message-ID: <k88k4n$1dd$1@dont-email.me>
On 11/16/2012 7:42 PM, Brian Gordon wrote:
> Radio Shack used to be adament about your phone number, causing me to walk out
> without batteries (which were not going to be recalled :-) more than once.
> They have mellowed over the years, but I rarely go there anyway -- force of
> habit by now, I guess.
I always used to give them something like 555-1212. Apparently I
wasn't the only one, because the less perceptive clerks would
sometimes thank me by (the wrong) name. In any case, the clerks
didn't care, it was that the register wouldn't accept the sale without
something in the blank for phone number.
No great loss, Rat Shack is way overpriced, and it's been several
decades (or more) since they carried any kind of a selection of parts,
unless you were there to buy a cell phone. If you're after
(overpriced) batteries, someplace like BatteriesPlus will at least
have them in stock. These days, gotta go to Mouser or Digikey for parts.
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 09:38:34 -0800
From: "Harold Hallikainen" <harold@hallikainen.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Papa John's
Message-ID: <162040a62a295fe6033574620ac792c0.squirrel@louise.hallikainen.org>
What happens if you tell them you don't have a phone? Of course, this does
not work if you're on your cellphone at the time. Similarly, my wife used
to work for General Telephone. She had a Christmas sweater with a picture
of 3 birds in phone booths. It had a caption "Three calling birds." It was
cute. One day she was wearing the sweater and someone said Merry Christmas
or asked her what she was doing for Christmas. She answered, "I don't
celebrate Christmas." The looked at the sweater and gave her a puzzled
look.
Anyway, back on telecom, does "I don't have a phone" work? My grandfather
finally did get a phone, but before that, he said "if someone wants to
talk to me, they can come see me."
Harold
--
FCC Rules Updated Daily at
http://www.hallikainen.com
Not sent from an iPhone.
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:17:54 -0500
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Papa John's
Message-ID: <MPG.2b1190d037cdfae1989d47@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <k86q1e$n8q$1@reader1.panix.com>, briang@panix.com says...
>
> In article <k864vd$mrc$1@reader1.panix.com>,
> David Scheidt <dscheidt@panix.com> wrote:
> >Doug McIntyre <merlyn@geeks.org> wrote:
> >:Michael Muderick <michael@muderick.com> writes:
> >:>One supermarket clerk told me that the number was needed in case there was
> >:>a product recall on anything I bought....e.g. salmonella poisoning. That
> >:>make sense, if it's true.
> >
> >:That would make a massive untennable database.
> >
> >It's 2012. Disk is cheap, keeping track of everything every customer
> >ever buys from you isn't that hard. I'm sure that telling people
> >about recalls isn't the only, or even primary, reason to do that, but
> >it's certainly well in realm of possilibility that they actually do
> >so. (And, anecdotally, I've heard from people that have been contacted
> >about food recalls.)
> >
> >My answer to the request for personal information that's not required
> >to complete a sale is "no." It's been several years since I've had
> >to walk out without buying something because they couldn't or wouldn't
> >complete the sale without it.
> >
>
> Radio Shack used to be adament about your phone number, causing me to walk out
> without batteries (which were not going to be recalled :-) more than once.
> They have mellowed over the years, but I rarely go there anyway -- force of
> habit by now, I guess.
I remember the insanity at Radio Shack. When they'd ask for my phone
number I'd say "C-A-S-H". It got to the point where they'd just use a
default number to do the sale.
Date: Fri, 16 Nov 2012 20:30:16 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: product recalls, was: Papa John's
Message-ID: <k867oo$r1c$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <k864vd$mrc$1@reader1.panix.com> David Scheidt <dscheidt@panix.com> writes:
>so. (And, anecdotally, I've heard from people that have been contacted
>about food recalls.)
Same with me, but in my case it was a "membership club store" (Costco)
which sent credit notices to people who had purchased some of the
early LED lamps.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Sun, 11 Nov 2012 19:50:43 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: The Smart TV Viewer's Bill Of Rights
Message-ID: <20121112005043.GA20513@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 09:41:23AM -0600, Neal McLain wrote:
>
> Quoting the article:
>
> > 4. The Right to Quality. I didn't buy a 60-inch TV to watch cats,
> > babies and skateboard wipeouts in my living room. That's what my
> > office PC is for.
> >
> > 5. The Right to Free TV. Our parents watched three channels and
> > paid nothing. I watch five channels and pay $150 a month. Don't
> > charge me even more for programs that come from the Internet.
>
> This sounds like the latest iteration of the old cable TV "a-la-carte"
> discussion: pay for only the channels you watch. The market for
> television programming doesn't work that way. If you subscribe to cable
> or satellite TV, you're part of the audience for every channel on the
> dial even if you only watch five of them.
>
> Advertising rates are based on "net paid circulation," and every
> subscriber is part of the circulation for every channel. The advertiser
> is paying for the right to reach you even if you never watch his
> advertisements. Not surprisingly, then, programmers all want their
> programs carried on the basic tier, and they contractually prohibit
> anything that smells like a-la-carte.
I don't think that makes sense these days: AFAIK, most set-top boxes
report the channel being watched. That gives cable-tv operators very
accurate data on who is watching what, and when, and for how long: why
don't advertisers just pay only for the sets that are actually tuned
in while their commercial is playing?
> In any case, internet TV blows up the whole business model. There's no
> such thing as "basic" service; every program has to stand on its own as
> a separate retail product. So of course the programmer is going to
> charge more for each program.
Maybe not: the Internet TV supply-on-demand model must, by its nature,
keep track of who orders what program, and since there's a charge for
the service, the viewing choices are usually made by adults (at least
during prime time), which means that advertisers can get much better
feedback about which programs interest the "buying audience" that has
money to spend. A program owner doesn't need to charge more for each
program if (s)he knows that the offering draws a better class of
viewer: after all, 1,000 upper-income homes are a much better audience
for most discretionary purchases than 100,000 random TV sets that are
likely to be on another channel anyway.
> Bottom line: you're not going to get internet TV programming at the same
> per-program price that you pay when it's part of a larger package.
That depends on several things, not the least of which is what we
think of as the "price" of a program. I took my wife out to the movies
the other day: on a cash basis, I paid a lot more than I would have if
I wait for the movie (ARGO, btw) to appear on TV or Netflix,
etc. That, however, is not the point: I didn't just pay for the
movie, but for a quiet interlude free of cell phones, emails, and
expectations. The "price" is relative, and it's not just money.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Sat, 17 Nov 2012 20:29:28 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Was "Wall Street" ever out of service?
Message-ID: <k89dls$pr3$1@dont-email.me>
Thanks for reading this: I have a question for the historians on the list.
My brother says he read (somewhere) that the ESS telephone exchanges
that serve Wall Street in New York City were out of service for several
days at some time in the distant past.
I say that never happened and he read an urban legend.
Was there ever a long-term failure in an ESS that served Wall Street?
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
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