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The Telecom Digest for December 31, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 335 : "text" Format
====== 30 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: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 01:59:14 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: The Joy of Quiet
Message-ID: <tenu9B.A.CjH.f5b_OB@telecom>
The Joy of Quiet
By PICO IYER
December 29, 2011
LAST year, I flew to Singapore to join the writer Malcolm Gladwell,
the fashion designer Marc Ecko and the graphic designer Stefan
Sagmeister in addressing a group of advertising people on "Marketing
to the Child of Tomorrow." Soon after I arrived, the chief executive
of the agency that had invited us took me aside. What he was most
interested in, he began - I braced myself for mention of some
next-generation stealth campaign - was stillness.
A few months later, I read an interview with the perennially
cutting-edge designer Philippe Starck. What allowed him to remain so
consistently ahead of the curve? "I never read any magazines or watch
TV," he said, perhaps a little hyperbolically. "Nor do I go to
cocktail parties, dinners or anything like that." He lived outside
conventional ideas, he implied, because "I live alone mostly, in the
middle of nowhere."
Around the same time, I noticed that those who part with $2,285 a
night to stay in a cliff-top room at the Post Ranch Inn in Big Sur
pay partly for the privilege of not having a TV in their rooms; the
future of travel, I'm reliably told, lies in "black-hole resorts,"
which charge high prices precisely because you can't get online in
their rooms.
Has it really come to this?
In barely one generation we've moved from exulting in the time-saving
devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from
them - often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to
connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug. Like
teenagers, we appear to have gone from knowing nothing about the
world to knowing too much all but overnight.
Internet rescue camps in South Korea and China try to save kids
addicted to the screen.
...
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/01/opinion/sunday/the-joy-of-quiet.html
***** Moderator's Note *****
The writer goes on to say:
Writer friends of mine pay good money to get the Freedom software
that enables them to disable (for up to eight hours) the very
Internet connections that seemed so emancipating not long ago.
... which seems to me to be a little bit extreme, when just unplugging
a cable does the same thing.
I've been saying for a long time that the current overload of
information has to stop: ever since the advent of commercial radio,
fast-buck artists and hucksters and barkers and advertising executives
have been thinking up New! Improved! ways of scaring the average
housewife into buying things that would have been unthinkable without
electronic media to promote them: everything from electrically melted
chemical scents to vaginal deodorants is grist for the hype mill.
Of course, the depression helps: people are cutting back on all sorts
of semi-important semi-priceless semi-desirable pieces of plastic, and
in the process, they are flipping the mental switch that allows them
to question why they once semi-thought they semi-needed them in the
first place. When they see the blurry photograph of the three-toed
boy, and the offer next to it that tells them they can see the real
thing for another fifty cents, they realize that the only real
decision was when they paid to come into the carnival in the first
place.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:34:27 -0500
From: Pete Cresswell <PeteCress@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: The Joy of Quiet
Message-ID: <56mrf7tuioa6nbuhvkqevcjhf4c6ndmoke@4ax.com>
Per Monty Solomon:
> the future of travel, I'm reliably told, lies in "black-hole
> resorts," which charge high prices precisely because you can't get
> online in their rooms.
>
> Has it really come to this?
One of the fund managers (i.e. very high-IQ, super-hard working) at a
place I used to serve has been vacationing in a "black hole" for
years: some little mom-and-pop cabin resort out in Western Penna. She
is explicit about the attraction of no TV, no phone, no internet, no
noise.
I'm probably on the lunatic fringe, but a significant attraction of
surfing for me was sitting out there in the lineup off of Waikiki or
Makaha, or the North Shore in total silence.
Ditto climbing the ridges behind the University Of Hawaii.
Once we spend two weeks in a place on Kauai: cabins, no TV, no phone,
atop Koko Head mountain where you could hike along trails through the
mists and be almost overwhelmed by the sound of your own heart
beating.
My experiences were a looooong time ago.
IMHO, there really is something to it - and it transcends the current
environment.
- -
Pete Cresswell
***** Moderator's Note *****
In the distant past, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and there were
monsters on land and in the sea, men would actually travel great
distances just to be alone; just to be "away from it all".
Now, it seems, we are realizing that those who seek solitute and quiet
aren't as dumb or backward as some people once thought.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:50:34 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon Investigates Third Data Outage in Under a Month
Message-ID: <jdkj3r$cjl$1@dont-email.me>
On 12/29/2011 7:33 PM, tlvp wrote:
> Ah, and to help pay for the convenience of having no more such outages in
> 2012, verizon will be starting up a new $2/month convenience fee -- cf.
>
>
> http://www.droid-life.com/2011/12/28/verizon-to-charge-customers-2-fee-when-paying-bills-online-starting-january-15/
>
Since Verizon seems intent on penalizing customers who dare to
actually try to deal with a human, I suggest that everyone who reads
this start paying their bills by check. That way, Verizon can find out
just how much money it is saving by accepting electronic payments, and
it will stop demanding tribute for having its employees deign to talk to
little people.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 15:09:28 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon Investigates Third Data Outage in Under a Month
Message-ID: <jdkk77$648$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <jdkj3r$cjl$1@dont-email.me> Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> writes:
>Since Verizon seems intent on penalizing customers who dare to
>actually try to deal with a human, I suggest that everyone who reads
>this start paying their bills by check. That way, Verizon can find out
>just how much money it is saving by accepting electronic payments, and
>it will stop demanding tribute for having its employees deign to talk to
>little people.
Which, of course, still means that VZ is getting your payments.
Better to just (whenever possible) vote with your feet and wallet.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 07:59:26 -0800 (PST)
From: Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon Investigates Third Data Outage in Under a Month
Message-ID: <1325260766.36483.YahooMailClassic@web111721.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
In <jdkj3r$cjl$1@dont-email.me> Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> writes:
>Since Verizon seems intent on penalizing customers who dare to
>actually try to deal with a human, I suggest that everyone who reads
>this start paying their bills by check. That way, Verizon can find out
>just how much money it is saving by accepting electronic payments, and
>it will stop demanding tribute for having its employees deign to talk to
>little people.
I have a little trouble understanding this. I never speak to a human
when I am paying my bill by phone. AT&T Wireless has *729 (*PAY) to
pay your bill and when you have paid it once by credit card it asks in
succeeding months if you want to pay by the same credit card. Press 1
if you do. Paying on their website is kind of tedious, but paying by
your phone is one of the easiest "pay bill" functions I've
encountered.
I've never tried paying it by phone using ACH, but it will probably
work, too. Won't your bank's "bill pay" function also work? All I
saw in the earlier post was a charge for paying by credit card.
Wes Leatherock
wleathus@yahoo.com
wesrock@aol.com
***** Moderator's Note *****
Verizontal is planning to levy a fee on anyone who doesn't have
automatic payments set up; i.e., on anyone who insists on retaining
control over their bank account or credit card. The reason is that
Verizontal and its minions know that they can pack the bills, cram the
extras in, and round upward without anyone noticing: after all, if the
payment is "automatic", then so is the approval. Charging every
"automatic payer" a few mills extra every month will earn some
middle-management daddy's boy a nice bonus, so Verizontal will stick a
fee to anyone who wants to have the chance to look at the amount
they're paying before they say "Yes", instead of finding out about it
after the fact.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:49:08 -0600
From: Frank Stearns <franks.pacifier.com@pacifier.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon Investigates Third Data Outage in Under a Month
Message-ID: <7emdnd9f7sYZdmDTnZ2dnUVZ_oGdnZ2d@posted.palinacquisition>
Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> writes:
>On 12/29/2011 7:33 PM, tlvp wrote:
>> Ah, and to help pay for the convenience of having no more such outages in
>> 2012, verizon will be starting up a new $2/month convenience fee -- cf.
>>
>>
>> http://www.droid-life.com/2011/12/28/verizon-to-charge-customers-2-fee-when-paying-bills-online-starting-january-15/
>>
>Since Verizon seems intent on penalizing customers who dare to
>actually try to deal with a human, I suggest that everyone who reads
>this start paying their bills by check. That way, Verizon can find out
>just how much money it is saving by accepting electronic payments, and
>it will stop demanding tribute for having its employees deign to talk to
>little people.
Yes, this is annoying, but it might be justified...
- The entire credit card system has gotten rather greedy in recent years, most
recently using "security concerns" as a new profit center. (I'm assuming for the
moment that one avenue might be to pay your bill via CC, either "live" with an
operator or through a recurring debit.)
Credit card processing markups due to "security issues" costs merchants way more
than it should. It's particularly infuriating because the domestic USA credit card
system itself is poorly designed for security. Fraud is too easy, and in most cases
only feeble bandaids have been applied thus far. Consumers and merchants take the
hit for a shabby system.
- having a live operator hand-hold as you make an electronic payment (CC, checking
transfer, etc) could be quite expensive.
What they probably want is an ACH via your online bill-pay service -- cheap and
secure, assuming you do the "push" from your checking account rather than the
merchant doing the "pull" -- lots of horror stories with the latter. (It's never
recommended that anyone is allowed to debit your account for any reason. YOU always
initiate payment from your end.)
But even paper check processing would surely be cheaper than a live operator assist,
and given the new CC rates, might even be competative.
Note that "paper" check processing doesn't stay paper for very long. If I understand
the new system correctly, at the point of deposit (the merchant bank or the
merchant's own accounting center) the check is scanned, has some OCR magic applied,
and then almost immediately becomes an ACH. Much of the old-days physical shuffling
of checks through the banks is no more, and thus check handling costs have gone way
down.
So while V might prefer ACH, they'll likely shrug and happily take your check.
As far as getting a live operator, well, good luck with that. :)
- -
***** Moderator's Note *****
I agree that check-handling costs have gone way down: the new practice
of automating check scans at ATM's or at the teller's window means
millions of dollars per day in lost "float" for account holders, which
is why banks were willing to spend the money to make it happen.
The point, however, isn't about checks or credit cards per se: it's
about Verizon's disdain for those who owe them money, and about the
corporation's let-them-eat-cake attitude toward their customers.
Verizon doesn't like anyone to have any chance to question Ma Bell's
omniscience, nor does Verizontal want any of its serfs^h^h^h^h^h
rate-payers to have to decide to pay the bill: after all, what every
monopolist wants, and has always wanted, is to be able to pick
people's pockets one penny at a time. This isn't about check
vs. credit-card payments: it's about Verizontal having the chance to
pad the bills at every turn, and to screw the "sheeple" with new fees,
new profit packs, new "compliance charges", new accounting methods,
and old-fashioned rate increases.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Moderator's Note Copyright (C) 2011 E. William Horne. All Rights Reserved.
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 14:02:14 -0500
From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon Investigates Third Data Outage in Under a Month
Message-ID: <cg8ykk2quq0k$.b91eopwcoxti.dlg@40tude.net>
On Fri, 30 Dec 2011 09:50:34 -0500, Bill Horne wrote:
> ...
> Since Verizon seems intent on penalizing customers who dare to
> actually try to deal with a human, I suggest that everyone who reads
> this start paying their bills by check. That way, Verizon can find out
> just how much money it is saving by accepting electronic payments, and
> it will stop demanding tribute for having its employees deign to talk to
> little people.
>
> Bill
Others may choose to continue using the Verizon network infrastructure, but
through the intermediation of an MVNO like Page Plus, who have no such
Mickey Mouse payment or billing fees, and whose help desk is based deep
within the bread basket of these United States :-) <pagepluscellular.com>.
Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:40:10 -0500
From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Verizon Investigates Third Data Outage in Under a Month
Message-ID: <1ebccugxa78ic.40zh65hczvx$.dlg@40tude.net>
On Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:49:08 -0600, Frank Stearns wrote:
> Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> writes:
>
> ... This isn't about check
> vs. credit-card payments: it's about Verizontal having the chance to
> pad the bills at every turn, and to screw the "sheeple" with new fees,
> new profit packs, new "compliance charges", new accounting methods,
> and old-fashioned rate increases.
Bulletin, 6:30 pm ET: VZW has evidently capitulated, being reported on PBS
as having already decided to rescind that $2 fee after all :-) .
Cheers, and Happy fee-less New Year :-) , -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 10:11:05 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Boycott forces GoDaddy to drop its support for SOPA
Message-ID: <jdkkaa$jgd$1@dont-email.me>
Here's something that some readers may not have seen in the holiday
rush: it's from Ars Technica.
Victory! Boycott forces GoDaddy to drop its support for SOPA
By Timothy B. Lee
Under intense pressure from an Internet-wide boycott, domain
registrar GoDaddy has given the open Internet an early Christmas
present: it's dropping its support for the Stop Online Piracy
Act. The change was announced in a statement sent to Ars Technica
...
http://tinyurl.com/7vd7a5v
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 12:03:51 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: 2012-2015: A Bleak Broadband Future Awaits America
Message-ID: <jdkqtn$r0t$1@dont-email.me>
Bruce Kushnick put this on the Cybertelecom-L mailing list:
2012-2015: A Bleak Broadband Future Awaits America:
Here's 14 Facts You Need to Know About.
FCC, National Broadband Plan, 2010
"The United States must lead the world in the number of homes
and people with access to affordable, world-class broadband
connections. As such, 100 million U.S. homes should have affordable
access to actual download speeds of at least 100 Mbps and actual
upload speeds of at least 50 Mbps by 2020. This will create the
world's most attractive market for broadband applications, devices and
infrastructure."
http://www.newnetworks.com/yearend2012.pdf
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
"Super-sealed lady, chrome-color clothes
You wear 'cause you have no other
But I suppose no one knows
You're my plastic fantastic lover"
- Jefferson Airplane
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:56:17 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: The outlook for the FCC and broadband: Not good
Message-ID: <jdkqfi$ou3$1@dont-email.me>
This is from the Neiman Watchdog site, where the motto is "Questions the
Press Should Ask".
The outlook for the FCC and broadband: Not good
by Bruce Kushnik
If words were actions the FCC under Obama would be a more aggressive
regulator than it was under Bush. But they aren't and it isn't. The U.S.
is way down on the list of countries in broadband performance, and
likely to stay there.
http://tinyurl.com/bvyjt5o
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
"Well I'm just a typical American boy
From a typical American town
I believe in God and Senator Dodd
And keeping old Castro down"
- Phil Ochs
Date: 30 Dec 2011 16:10:01 -0500
From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Mexican cartels build radio network for military precision
Message-ID: <jdl9b9$91d$1@panix2.panix.com>
David Clayton <dcstarbox-usenet@yahoo.com.au> wrote:
>I see the article as more of a clear message that any "bad guys" around
>the planet are now readily using available technology to either reduce (or
>even eliminate) the advantage that law enforcement once had over them -
>the access to cutting-edge communications and other technologies.
But they always have. That's the nature of technology... once it's discovered,
it rapidly becomes available to anyone willing to invest the money and effort
into it.
>Military grade technologies of all sorts seem available to anyone with
>enough money these days, and that increasingly seems to be enveloping
>people with technical skills in the particular areas involved. Perhaps the
>most lucrative career opportunity for the next generation of radio
>engineers is organised crime?
Sure, but this has been the case since time began. Radio was a powerful
tool in the hands of bootleggers during prohibition as well. You cannot
restrict a technology just to people you like and keep it out of the hands
of people you don't like. You can manage for a while, but not for long.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Date: 30 Dec 2011 17:59:16 -0500
From: "John R. Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Verizon backs down
Message-ID: <alpine.BSF.2.00.1112301757350.82848@joyce.lan>
The Wall Street Journal reports that Verizon will not, after all, charge
you $2 for the privilege of paying your bill.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204720204577130802272138184.html?mod=djemTEW_t
R's,
John
***** Moderator's Note *****
This incident is the latest in a decades long series of mitakes that
make me wonder if the most important skill the poo-bahs at Verizontal
posess is the ability to hide their mistakes. There are so many
boondoggles to choose from, it's hard to keep track, and every one of
them invites the comment "What where they thinking"?
Again and again and again, from trying to deploy an MDS system in
hilly Boston suburbs, to demanding that IS professionals with decades
of experience in COBOL and PL/I learn "C" almost overnight, to
laughable forays into the retail world, Ma Bell's missteps are
legendary. Yet, the executives at 1095 A/A keep trying to outdo each
other in their endless search for a father figure who will tell them to
stop playing and get to work.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Fri, 30 Dec 2011 23:56:31 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Mexican cartels build radio network for military precision
Message-ID: <jdlj3f$2e6g$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <jdl9b9$91d$1@panix2.panix.com>,
Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote:
>Sure, but this has been the case since time began. Radio was a powerful
>tool in the hands of bootleggers during prohibition as well. You cannot
>restrict a technology just to people you like and keep it out of the hands
>of people you don't like. You can manage for a while, but not for long.
In the days of Prohibition, the Department of Commerce and the Federal
Radio Commission had an army (well, a brigade, at least) of Radio
Inspectors and Investigators whose job was to monitor for, locate, and
confiscate unlicensed transmitters. Today, the FCC has a minuscule
budget for enforcement and spends most of its time looking for
improperly marked tower sites and malfunctioning EAS equipment --
almost no effort is put into reining in the huge numbers of unlicensed
broadcasters that infest every American city. Even when they do shut
a pirate down and confiscate his equipment, the "boot" is usually back
up and running within a matter of days; fines are rarely if ever
collected from pirates. (It's legitimate broadcasters who actually
admit to having made a mistake that bear the brunt of the FCC's power
to fine violators of its rules.)
-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
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
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