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Message Digest
Volume 28 : Issue 279 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: FCC Chairman: Bandwidth Shortage Threatens Future of Cell Phones
Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Re: Does Google index audio files?
Comcast takes steps against botnets
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Date: Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:55:55 -0700
From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: FCC Chairman: Bandwidth Shortage Threatens Future of Cell Phones
Message-ID: <hap44r$rq4$1@news.eternal-september.org>
Sam Spade wrote:
> Steven wrote:
>> Sam Spade wrote:
>>
>>> John Mayson wrote:
>>>
>>>> SAN DIEGO - The chairman of the Federal Communications Commission
>>>> warned Wednesday of "a looming spectrum crisis" if the government
>>>> fails to find ways to come up with more bandwidth for mobile devices.
>>>>
>>>> Julius Genachowski said the government is tripling the amount of
>>>> spectrum available for commercial uses. The problem is that many
>>>> industry experts predict wireless traffic will increase 30 times
>>>> because of online video and other bandwidth-heavy applications.
>>>>
>>>> More at... http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,562420,00.html
>>>
>>>
>>> Maybe it will all die a natural death, then folks can rediscover
>>> wireline service.
>>>
>>> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>>>
>>> There will be a couple of generations before cellular users get tired
>>> of their electronic leash: as I've been saying for a long time, the
>>> only thing money can really buy is the right to be left alone.
>>>
>>> I don't know if the backlash will start because of the cellular
>>> generation getting older and wiser, or because some efficiency expert
>>> will prove how much being constantly turned on impairs real
>>> productivity - but it will happen.
>>>
>>> Bill Horne
>>> Moderator
>>>
>> And we will be going back to SXS, regulation and The Bell System.
>>
> Well, we are already headed back to the Bell System, wireline or
> wireless. Regulation? I think not except perhaps more cops to stop the
> highway deaths from wireless "communications."
>
> SXS? Are you even remotely serious? If so, then we can exchange modern
> cars for Model Ts and perhaps the highway deaths from the inane use of
> wireless will dramatically decrease. (tongue embedded in cheek mode)
>
It took skills to install and work in them, a monkey could run an
electronic office, in fact with the problems I have had lately I think
they are.
--
The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2009 I Kill Spammers, inc, A Rot in Hell. Co.
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:05:48 -0500
From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Message-ID: <-aGdnZtiG72RRk3XnZ2dnUVZ_vadnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications>
In article <6510daff-2212-4697-9304-faab0d2dd42e@g1g2000vbr.googlegroups.com>,
<hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>
> An enormous number of people in NYC are on their cell phones at any
> given moment. Even with today's technology I suspect the volume of
> calls and callers would be too high to be tracked.
snicker
>On TV cops routinely get landline and cellphone detailed call records.
>Do they do that in real life?
Yup. Telcos have staff people that do nothing -but- handle those
requests from L.E. It takes a court order, but in any big city, there
are judges spend almost all their time approving those, and other
similar, routine subpoena requests. Total turn-around time is
typically 'same day', from starting to prepare the request for the
subpoena to 'data in hand'.
> Are local landline calls, especially from unlimited lines, tracked
> by the phoneco in such detail for a long period of time?
Yup. Retained "on-line" for at least 6 months. Accessible from
"off-line" storage for considerably longer.
> I would think that data would be too large to economically be stored
> and not necessary for billing purposes?
Wrong. A fully-populated exchange (10,000 lines), with an -average-
of 100 calls/day/line (laughably high), generates 1 million call
records/day. assume an average of 80 bytes/record (which is really
high, since you can get source number in 32 bits, called number in
another 32, start time and end time in 32 bits each, and have 32 bits
of flags in only 20 bytes) . That's 80 megabytes/day/exchange. A
-year- of that data will fit on a 16gb thumb drive. At a retail
cost of $30 or less. In perspective, that is $0.003 per line,
per year . The biggest part of the cost is indexing the physical
storage, so that one knows where to find the media with the desired
records on it. This may amount to a few hundred dollars per C.O., per
year. An actual retrieval from that stale data will likely cost
hundreds of dollars -- most of it in the manual labor needed to get
the stuff out of 'dead storage' and to somewhere it can be
machine-processed.
> In the old days they weren't stored, rather, a counter associated
> with each phone line would click off usage and that would be billed
> as message units.
Well, if you mean the 1950's or so, that may have been correct.
ANYTHING with 'Centrex'-type capabilities could generate SMDR-type
records for every call, incoming or outgoing. If a switch can do it
for Centrex service, it can do it for all users as well. And,
historically, did . And still does.
Only a small minority of land-line phone service is 'flat rate' based,
even today -- business service is all 'metered'. and to 'audit' such
a bill for accuracy, you have to show when, and to where , each and
every call was made.
There is an entire industry out there based on doing this kind of
double- checking, for the purpose of keeping the telco 'honest' in
their charges.
Doing this for 'local' calling is as important for a business with a
large local customer base as it is for one with a national base.
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:27:16 -0500
From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Message-ID: <nfGdnSf4msWJfU3XnZ2dnUVZ_sOdnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications>
In article <pan.2009.10.09.05.36.36.159967@NOSPAM.myrealbox.com>,
David Clayton <dcstar@NOSPAM.myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
> There is an infamous murder case in Australia where one vital piece
> of evidence was the (apparent) identification of the convicted
> person by having his cell phone register on a particular antenna
> covering an area at an exact time that discredited his alibi that he
> was on the other side of town and placed him possibly within the
> vicinity of the crime.
>
> It has since emerged that the base station antenna pattern of the
> GSM tower used in the court evidence could well have registered his
> phone at the location he said he was in - because of the
> characteristics of the radiation pattern that still has some
> functionality in the opposite direction that the main gain area is -
> but the court just got a simplistic technical explanation of how
> these things work.
It would take a truly freak set of circumstances for that kind of
gross 'location error' to happen.
The base-stations engage in constant inter-communication, with regard
to who 'hears' which phones with what strength. And the 'best tower'
wins. AND when 'who hears best' changes -- as when the phone
moves -- the phone will be 'handed off' to the new 'best tower'.
In order for a phone to lock up with a 'distant' tower, for basic
'housekeeping' purposes, it would require that every 'closer' tower
be getting a poorer signal.
Without knowing the 'actual facts' in the case, "across town" would
imply that the alibi location was several cells removed from the
location of the tower that was communicating with his phone. IF that
is the case, the odds of his phone being where he said he was are
vanishingly small.
Now, it is possible for a call connection to be handled by
something other than the 'closest' tower -- for instance when all the
voice slots on the close tower are already in use. But there is a
-clear- trail showing anything of that sort in the cell-system
internal logs. (This kind of stuff is "critical" info for planning
purposes, with regard to determining when a cell needs to be 'split'.)
***** Moderator's Note *****
Freak circumstances abound in the radio world, and it's entirely
possible that a cell site that's not physically "closest" to a phone
might be the one with the best signal strengh.
As far as the signal from the phone to the cell tower, something as
trivial as a reflector in the near field could dramatically raise the
signal strengh at a distant tower while lowering the strength at
"close" towers. in addition, various "ducting" effects from the
buildings that line a street, aircraft reflections, race conditions in
the data network and control logic, and channel loading factors all
affect which tower is the "best" choice for a given call at any given
instant. It's certainly possible.
As far as the signal from the tower to the cell phone, I don't
know. They're definitely NOT the same thing: spread-spectrum
receiver design is where the big boys play, and their sandboxes are at
the labs of the major equipment manufacturers. I'm not an expert in
the field, but it stands to reason that there will be substantial
variations between the receiver quality from one manufacturer to
another, and that means that the handset must play a role in the tower
selection process, because otherwise it's possible to get a problem
called "Hidden Transmitter Syndrome", where an "Aligator" (Large
mouth, no ears) handset can interfere with a channel that it can no
longer receive.
Expert advice needed.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 14:49:04 -0500
From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: NYPD knows who you've been talking to. And where you've been..
Message-ID: <D7ednbaTvKqteE3XnZ2dnUVZ_tCdnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications>
In article <Pine.NEB.4.64.0910081518260.18920@panix5.panix.com>,
danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> wrote:
>
> Question to our knowledgable folk here: is enough of the phone's ID
> transmitted in the clear when it does the periodic "here I am" ping
> that people could track it? (Aside from the cellco, of course).
>
> In other words, could the NYPD, now that it's got this database, use
> its own receivers to keep maps of everyone's travel?
Disregarding a bunch of 'practical' constraints, "yes". <grin>
It'd take a sh*tload of receivers -- ideally one that is co-located
with each cell base station, with an antenna of equal (or nearly so)
quality.
If the various wireless carriers (the actual license holders) are
co-located, you can get away with only one receiver in that location.
OTOH, if they're at different locations, you need one set-up for
each carrier's base station.
And then there are the legal issues.
Again, as a practical matter, it's easier to have the cell carrier
do it for for you. IF law-enforcement has a legitimate need to track
a particular phone, one that they can demonstrate to a judge, then
CALEA access should provide the necessary data.
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 16:36:11 -0700
From: Richard <rng@richbonnie.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Does Google index audio files?
Message-ID: <ff62d556iakbhji4ionmeoj4bc3ue0u8d8@4ax.com>
On Tue, 6 Oct 2009 23:45:05 -0400 (EDT), AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
wrote:
> Google has POG ("Plain Old Google"). Google Video, Google Images, Google
> Scholar, and numerous others. Is there a "Google Audio", or something
> similar, that will index downloadable MP3 and other audio files?
>
> I've just started looking into this, and not many such files seem to
> appear in basic POG (note: I'm after things like seminar talks and
> lectures, much more than music files).
>
> [And apologies if this is not the right NG for this query, but it seems
> telecom related, and I'm not sure where else to go.]
You can search through binary files posted to Usenet newsgroups with
sites like http://binsearch.info/
Date: Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:39:11 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Comcast takes steps against botnets
Message-ID: <siegman-FB1841.10391110102009@news.stanford.edu>
An Associated Press story in this morning's paper by Deborah Yao
headlined "Pop-ups warn of infections" describes a warning service being
tested in Denver starting this week in which Comcast automatically
alerts customers whose PCs they believe may have been co-opted by a
botnet that this may be the case, and offers them a site with tips on
how to remove virus infections.
I'm just a garden-variety computer user, not an Internet security
expert, but if this effort is being undertaken in good faith by Comcast,
this seems to me to be a hopeful sign and a commendable effort.
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End of The Telecom digest (6 messages)
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