From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Mar 8 17:41:06 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j28Mf5a12777; Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:41:06 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:41:06 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503082241.j28Mf5a12777@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #101 TELECOM Digest Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:40:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 101 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Richard Clarke: Real ID's, Real Dangers (NY Times) (Marcus Didius Falco) Voip in Northern KY (Kevin) SPRING VON: Vonage CEO Slams VOIP Blocking (Jack Decker) Ohio Law Require Auction License for eBay Sellers (Lisa Minter) Qualcomm Picks New CEO (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Hackers Wreck Christian Family Group Web Site (Lisa Minter) Home PBX Info: Switching Between Landline and VOIP (Lee Sweet) Re: Vonage's Citron Says VoIP Blocking Is 'Censorship' (DevilsPGD) Re: Vonage's Citron Says VoIP Blocking Is 'Censorship' (Lisa Hancock) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Vonage (Tony P.) Re: New Monopoly in Dept Stores; Federated and May to Merge (Goudreau) Re: New Monopoly in Dept Stores; Federated and May to Merge (wesrock) Re: Last Laugh! was Re: Reporter's Name (wesrock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 07 Mar 2005 19:01:41 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Richard Clarke: Real ID's, Real Dangers (NY Times) From the New York Times -- http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/06/magazine/06ADVISER.html THE SECURITY ADVISER Real ID's, Real Dangers By RICHARD A. CLARKE Have you ever wondered what good it does when they look at your driver's license at the airport? Let me assure you, as a former bureaucrat partly responsible for the 1996 decision to create a photo-ID requirement, it no longer does any good whatsoever. The ID check is not done by federal officers but by the same kind of minimum-wage rent-a-cops who were doing the inspection of carry-on luggage before 9/11. They do nothing to verify that your license is real. For $48 you can buy a phony license on the Internet (ask any 18-year-old) and fool most airport ID checkers. Airport personnel could be equipped with scanners to look for the hidden security features incorporated into most states' driver's licenses, but although some bars use this technology to spot under-age drinkers, airports do not. The photo-ID requirement provides only a false sense of security. Congress is debating the Real ID bill in part because many states have been issuing real driver's licenses, complete with the hidden security features, to people who have established their identities using phony birth certificates or fake Social Security cards. Indeed, some 9/11 hijackers obtained real driver's licenses using false documents. The Real ID bill has, however, provoked negative reaction from those who think it has little to do with terrorism and a lot to do with making life difficult for illegal immigrants. While the bill has passed the House, it faces difficulty in the Senate. If portions of it do pass, it will mean that the next time you apply for a driver's license, you may need substantial proof that you are who you claim to be. The Real ID legislation has caused the right and the left of the political spectrum to worry again that a national ID card is in the offing. Since we use licenses as de facto national ID's now, we should make them difficult to counterfeit and relatively easy to verify. With existing technology, that can be done. The Homeland Security Department is testing ''smart cards'' (credit-card-size devices with computer chips and embedded biometric information, like fingerprints) for all workers in the transportation industry and is also experimenting with voluntary smart cards for expedited passage through airport security. President Bush has directed that all federal employees, starting later this year, carry smart cards for access to federal buildings and computer networks. Industry analysts estimate that tens of millions of Americans will be using government-issued smart cards in a few years. Should we feel safer or be concerned about Big Brother government and the loss of privacy? Since we are already widely using government- issued ID's for a variety of purposes, employing cards that are difficult to counterfeit seems on its face like a good idea. Verifiable, secure ID's will certainly reduce some crimes (nine million Americans were victims of identity theft last year, according to the Federal Trade Commission) and may create an impediment to terrorism. I would voluntarily give up credit and other information for a card to avoid long airport lines, but I am not sure the Internal Revenue Service should have access to that data. Moreover, the government's performance to date with anti-terrorism laws does not inspire trust; the new authorities in the Patriot Act, which we readily gave the government to fight terrorists, are now being used for a variety of other purposes. For example, reports suggest that federal agents have been persuading courts to order that personal records be turned over regardless of whether there is any suspicion about the person involved and regardless of whether the crime being investigated is linked to terrorism. If Americans are going to have to carry smart cards, we will want fellow citizens whom we trust ensuring the data collected are not used by the wrong people or for the wrong purposes. Technology will not help us there; we will need strict privacy rules, truly independent oversight and tough punishment for government abuse. Only then will we be comfortable using the new security technologies, which actually can make us safer. The National Intelligence Reform Act of last year provided for a new Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which could do the necessary work to restrain the government's tendencies to overreach. The quality of President Bush's nominees for that board will show how serious he is about protecting freedoms in America while he is promoting them abroad. Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, New York Times Company For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml John F. McMullen http://www.westnet.com/~observer BLOG: http://johnmacrants.blogspot.com/ ------------------------------ From: Kevin Subject: Voip in Northern KY Organization: Comcast Online Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 15:46:51 GMT Hi, Does anyone know if there's any VOIP service in Northern KY/Cincinnati area? Per the vonage website, I can't get a number with any of the local area codes. I don't know if that means that I can still sign up and get a number with another area code ... which doesn't make any sense but I guess it's possible. Thanks, Kevin ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 08:53:59 -0500 Subject: SPRING VON: Vonage CEO slams VOIP blocking http://www.itworld.com/Net/3303/050308vonagevoip/ Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service, San Francisco Bureau The top executive of VOIP (Voice over IP) provider Vonage Holdings Corp. is satisfied with regulators' response to a carrier that blocked Vonage's service but sees a broader danger ahead with technology for detecting the data service that customers are using. In an interview Monday at the Spring VON (Voice on the Net) trade show in San Jose, California, Vonage Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Jeffrey Citron also said traditional carriers can't afford to compete all-out with Vonage and other VOIP upstarts despite having greater resources. [.....] "I think it's a technical issue that extrapolates itself into a First Amendment issue," Citron said. Service providers that own infrastructure and deliver content or services over it now have the capability to look into the packets going to and from a customer's connection and determine what kind of service they are using and even the content of those packets, he said. It is technically possible for network operators to read e-mail, block e-mail messages based on content and limit access to Web sites, Citron said. In addition to anti-competitive moves against VOIP companies and other content and service providers, the problem raises censorship issues, he said. "What happens when the media property that owns distribution is owned by a religious group?" Citron asked. Laws should be brought up to date to prevent abuse, he said. Full story at: http://www.itworld.com/Net/3303/050308vonagevoip/ How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 09:52:34 PST From: Lisa Minter Subject: Ohio Law Would Require Auction License for eBay Sellers CNN, via Yahoo News on Tuesday reports that the State of Ohio has become very unfriendly toward online sellers using E-Bay. According to CNN-Money, State of Ohio now requires an auction license of people who want to sell on E-Bay, as well as a one-year training class required of sellers _and_ a fifty thousand dollar security bond. The auction license costs two hundred dollars. If you fail to do these things, they have some jail time waiting for you. Their excuse is they want to 'cut back on internet fraud using E-Bay'. http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/07/technology/ohio_ebay/index.htm ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 13:26:36 EST From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: Qualcomm Picks New CEO Telecom dailyLead from USTA March 8, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=19903&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * Qualcomm picks new CEO BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Cox Communications may sell four cable systems * Siemens decides to keep mobile business unit open * McKinsey: Telecoms must automate customer service * Analyst: Stand-alone VoIP providers may face hurdles * Vonage's Citron sour on cable's triple play * DirecTV president Stern resigns; CEO Carey to assume duties USTA SPOTLIGHT * Calling ALL Carriers Ready to Explore! EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Nokia tests mobile TV service REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Jurors review videos of Ebbers Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=19903&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Hackers Deface Christian Family Group Web Site Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 14:11:08 -0500 http://www.wlbz2.com/newscenter/article.asp?id=20748 ------------------------------ From: Lee Sweet Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 15:20:57 -0500 Subject: Home PBX Info: Switching Between Landlines and VoIP I've got an application that may apply to many with VoIP. I've got two home landlines (one for myself, and one for my wife). I also have a Vonage line for LD and Fax. We are keeping the landlines for the usual reasons, including inability to port, E-911, etc. Now, what I want to do is have all outbound LD calls go out on the Vonage line automatically. Right now, I have a separate cordless phone for that line, but that's not the optimal answer! :-) \ I'd like to have the various corded and cordless phones and the three lines hooked to some sort of home PBX where, either by dialing the required '1' (best answer) or perhaps an '8', calls are connected to the Vonage line. Else, they go out the (correct) landline. (I assume each handset could know its 'proper' outbound landline for local traffic if each input phone jack on the PBX can be programmed to use the appropriate outbound line.) Now, before PAT jumps in with his PBXtra recommendation :-) , I've discussed this with Mike Sandman, and he really doesn't recommend it for this application. I'll bet a lot of people have Vonage as an extra LD/Fax line, still have landlines, and would like to do this. Any recommendations/pointers about home PBX info? Thanks! Lee Sweet Datatel, Inc. Manager of Telephony Services and Information Security How higher education does business Voice: 703.968.4661 Fax: 703.968.4625 Cell: 703.932.9425 lee@datatel.com www.datatel.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I _know_ what Mike Sandman says about PBXs in general as opposed to multi-button phones with all the features such as holding, call transfer, flash, etc on individual buttons. He has never yet met a PBX he liked, and Lee, he told me that you called last week and he explained 'why PBXtra would not be suitable.' I talk to Mike on the phone a couple times per week. Mike's complaints can be summarized thusly: (1) People cannot be trained to do a proper flashhook, therefore as often as not cutting off the person. (2) People cannot be trained to correctly dial the number they want to reach, and forget the 9 or 8 or whatever at the start of the call. (3) People do not usually have their houses wired in a 'star' configuration (needed for using PBX) although their office may be thus wired. Mike seems to feel a phone with umpty-dozen buttons (for line selection and feature use) is a better deal, even though to install/move such a phone requires many pairs of wires and is quite labor-intensive to install/move/replace. That's Mike's opinion, to which he is certainly entitled. If I have overlooked other complaints by Mike, perhaps you or he will permit me to stand corrected. Oh, and we have talked off and on about 'custom calling features' such as hookflash to three way call, hookflash to answer call waiting, and hookflash to interject other features in the middle of a call, such as forward to voicemail, etc but he does not think all that matters; its just the dreaded hookflash used on PBX transfers, etc which he dislikes so much. PBXtra works perfectly well in small applications like mine: more than one phone instrument in a large (geographic space) house; a person who is a wee bit handicapped like myself getting to a phone in time to anwer it before the caller disconnects; a situation where there are a bunch of computers, each of them has their own 'extension' and modem, in addition to a phone in my bedroom, my parlor/dining area, the computer room, a phone where Lisa sits to work, etc. The traffic both inbound and outbound is very slow here, so the PBXtra being 'virtually non-blocking' is almost an overkill. The phone in my bedroom (ext. 104) and the one in my parlor (ext. 105) are both wireless headset style phones, with a range of about half a city block, which I guess is also an overkill. I put all my long distance calls via Vonage (dial 8 +) and all my local calls over Prairie Stream (dial 9+) and answer incoming calls from either line by dialing *70 (forced pickup from the 'operator' line). The modem ability (between computers or in/out from wherever to a computer is about 28.8). Not the best, but okay, since I usually use the cable for the computers, not the modems. Do as you wish, Lee, but Mike Sandman is just one voice in the wilderness here, mine is another voice. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Vonage's Citron Says VoIP Blocking Is 'Censorship' Date: Sun, 06 Mar 2005 22:40:00 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote: >> Yes Pat, but it didn't do it on the basis of the 1st Amendment. As I >> understand it, the fine was to preserve "Net Freedom" (Powell's term) >> and although I like it, I still don't understand the legal basis for >> this action. It seems to me the Telco's ought to be concerned about >> this because if there is now a "must carry" rule for VoIP traffic, what >> happens when they start to offer TV/video? Will they be forced to allow > In the end, the only reason VoIP is so cheap is that it passes the > costs off to other sectors. Not exactly. The difference isn't that VoIP is "passing the cost", but rather, that with VoIP, the customer is providing the connection from their premises to the telco. Back in my ISP days, the ISP I worked for provided DSL over dry copper pairs. We were selling 2.5Mb/1Mb and later 7Mb/1.5Mb before either the telco or cableco were offering any soft of connectivity. We gave customers a choice: Either provide your own copper pair from your location to the nearest CO, or pay us more and we'll cover the loop costs (As well as handle the installation and whatnot) VoIP is similar. You can either pay a telco to bring the service to your door, or you can pay a cheaper rate if you provide the last mile yourself. VoIP is virtually always more expensive then traditional telco services if you include the cost of the internet connection. However, since I already have an internet connection, I don't include the cost of my internet connection in the cost of VoIP service. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That is what I said yesterday. It is unfair to amortize the entire cost of the connectivity off to VOIP since you have the connection there already. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Vonage's Citron Says VoIP Blocking Is 'Censorship' Date: 8 Mar 2005 06:57:27 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Isaiah Beard wrote: >> My local convenience store and drugstore carry certain newspapers, but >> not all for my area. Does that mean they are _censoring_ the ones >> they don't sell? According to Vonage they are. > You comparison is overbroad and overreaching, and compares apples to > oranges. > I would think of it more this way: let's say that your phone company > provider, be it Verizon or other LEC, decided that profanity should no > longer be used on its phone lines, and installs special filters to > capture and "bleep out" such speech. Would that be acceptable? Actually, I think a more proper analogy would be them not letting me call certain destinations, rather than the content of the call itself. I want to clarify some confusion I had -- I misunderstood that the blockage was done by an ISP, not apparently a telephone company. ISPs are totally free market and they can do what they choose, blocking or not. Local telephone companies are regulated "critical service" carriers and as such have more obligations. Charles Cryderman wrote: > I totally agree with this. But remember the courts do as they > please. A case in point. A very religious married couple in Ann Arbor, > Michigan owned a apartment building. Because of their religious > beliefs, chose not to rent to un-married persons. Now this was private > property and their religious beliefs told them not to, but the courts > ruled that they were in violation of the law. So in essence the court > said, your right to do as you wish with you private property and to > follow your religious teaching do not exists. What takes precedent, > the Constitution or laws made by Congress? I was taught that nothing > supersedes the Constitution yet the courts do it all the time. That's a good point. Actually, in your specific example, court decisions have gone both ways. In some cases a 'mom and pop' apt owner, say of a duplex, can exercise their religion to deny to a unmarried or gay couple; but that's a pretty isolated narrow situation. > See this a misconception that the VoIP providers do not have to follow > some regulations. What they want to insure is that they do not have to > collect a bunch of crap taxes and fees per line. In my opinion none of > the companies should be forced to do this. But these providers do pay > into these. For the lines that they install to terminate to they are > paying E911, sales tax and into the universal service fund. Just not > for the customer access side. Why? because the law requires these fees > based on a telephone line, not access to making telephone calls. Not paying into those 'taxes' saves them a heck of a lot of money and allows them to undercut their competition. Given that benefit, it's wrong for them to turn around and demand that same competition help them. To me it's like I set up a hot dog cart in the parking lot of a convenience store (that also sells hot dogs) and I get the govt to say it's ok for me not to pay taxes for my spot that the host store has to pay. Now I'm demanding the host store provide me with hot dogs as well for me to sell. Perhaps another analogy would be people who ride on the bumper of a bus for free, and then complain if the bus is discontinued for lack of ridership. > Did you notice as well, Pat that all along we have been talking about a > ISP doing this. It wasn't, it was a regulated telephone company that did > it. So all the brew-ha-ha about ISPs wanting freedom from regulation had > nothing to do with it after all. I correct myself on this -- a regulated local telephone company has different obligations than an ISP. But to me it's still cream skimming. ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 06:46:26 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > In article , Danny Burstein > Unfortunately, the actualy duration of the problem was several hours; > Vonage is, quite simply, lying. And the problem recurred on two > successive days. No doubt about it. It caused major problems for me. > If Vonage were a regulated entity -- which it's gone to great lengths > to not be -- there would be significant penalties not just for this > sort of service failure (note that Vonage hasn't exactly contacted its > customers and offered to refund any of their money for the time that > their phones were out of service) -- but also for lying about it. What this proves is that Vonage is simply not a viable replacement for wireline service. I've been a Vonage user from the beginning, suffering through echos and quality issues for the first several months. I figured it was all worth it for the unlimited, inexpensive "out WATS." But, now that SBC offers unlimited nation-wide toll for a competitive price, it makes me think about using only my wireline (which I never got rid of). The only advantage Vonage offers today are virtual numbers. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Vonage Organization: ATCC Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 19:09:28 -0500 In article , johnl@iecc.com says... >> They definitely have some problems in different parts of the country >> but my service in the northeast has been rock solid. I wonder -- I >> know I'm on a Paetec switch so is it a Focal issue? > No, my service which became unsuably bad was switched by Paetec, too. Must be some accident of living in RI then. All I can say is I've been extremely fortunate that my only outages both involved snow/ice storms. The same kind of storms that would probably have knocked my Verizon service out of commission. ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: New Monopoly in Dept Stores; Federated and May to Merge Date: Mon, 7 Mar 2005 22:59:42 -0500 [Please remove my email address.] Lisa Hancock wrote: >> More to the point, the Bell system monopoly was actually sanctioned by >> the government. No analogous situation has ever existed in US >> retail, thankfully. > I don't know of anything major, but Pennsylvania's liquor stores (wine > and hard stuff) were and remain the sole source of that for within > Pennsylvania. Yes, we have a similar setup here in NC: state Alcoholic Beverage Commissions are the only sellers of hard liquor (though not beer and wine). But as you mentioned in an earlier Digest, the repeal of Prohibition gave states special and unique constitutional powers with respect to alcohol. > At the end of WW II the govt had a monopoly on reactor by-products > used for medical and physics research. I'm having a little trouble thinking of reactor by-products as retail items that would be bought by consumers :-). I was thinking more along the lines of the experience my wife's East German-born sister-in-law (who unfortunately passed away two weeks ago) had when she escaped the iron curtain in the early 1980s and first encountered a West German retail store, with its exhilarating but confusing array of choices, so very different from the limited selection of crappy products available in the state-run retail outlets of East Germany. > As I said, the railroads were FORBIDDEN by the govt to do what you > suggest, and ORDERED to divest what things they had done. I think you missed my point. They could have chosen to divest the entire regulated railroad business instead (in the way that AT&T chose to give up the local telco business in the early 1980s), leaving the now-separate rump company to concentrate exclusively on rail while the new successor company (which would have purchased the non-rail assets) chased the newer markets. Instead, the execs chose to stay with the rump themselves. They bet on the wrong pony. Of course, sometimes the ho-hum legacy business turns out to be the winning horse after all. It now looks like that's what happened with AT&T; the Baby Bells seem to have been the winning choice there, while AT&T's grandiose plans to make money in the computer business came to naught (twice!). >> People just don't particularly need department stores any more in >> order to purchase their clothes and furnishings. They can buy their >> clothes and furnishings elsewhere, and they increasingly are doing so, >> which is why the department store chains are having so much trouble in >> the first place. > I would be curious: take men's dress suits. What is the breakdown for > men buying suits? I doubt Walmart/Kmart are that big. One > discounter, Today's Man, went out of business. I think the main issue here is that demand for men's suits has been gradually declining for a few decades. Not quite buggy-whip status (yet), but casual clothing is far more prevalent in the workplace than it was in the 1950s or 1960s. I've never heard of Today's Man, but perhaps the competition from the likes of Men's Wearhouse was too much for them in the overall slow-growing (or even shrinking) market for men's suits. TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Henry: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have seen mentions of Sears, Roebuck >> occasionally in this thread. Back in the 1920's, Sears Roebuck was a >> very large chain of stores. The radio station they started >> acknowledged this fact by its call sign: >> 'W'(orlds)'L'(argest)'S'(tore), >> based in Chicago. WLS is on AM radio 890 kc... > Interesting. I knew a different version of the 'World's Largest Store' > story. The way I heard it, the radio station was owned by the same > outfit that owned the Merchandise Mart (also in Chicago). Our esteemed Editor is correct, according to http://www.wlshistory.com/WLS20/. The Merchandise Mart was a spinoff of Marshall Field's. See http://www.merchandisemart.com/marchitecture/history.html. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 16:50:47 EST Subject: Re: New Monopoly in Dept Stores; Federated and May to Merge In a message dated 7 Mar 2005 13:15:01 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com writes: > As I said, the railroads were FORBIDDEN by the govt to do what you > suggest, and ORDERED to divest what things they had done. For > example, the railroads set up bus lines to more efficiently serve > light-volume areas, but the govt ordered them out. Railroads were > regulated, just like the phone company, and the phone company was > tightly limited into what communication product markets it could > enter. (Western Electric had sound systems they had to discontinue.) It was the Motor Carrier Act of 1935 that prohibited railroads from owning motor carriers. Such operations that were in existence before the passage of that act were grandfathered. The Santa Fe Trail Transportation Company was perhaps the dominant freight and passenger motor carrier in many parts of the western Midwest/Southwest region. The Santa Fe Trail Transportation Company's bus operation, known as Santa Fe Trailways, was one of the core companies that first former the National Trailways Bus System, and then many of the largest, dominated by Santa Fe Trailways, merged to form Transcontinental Bus Systerm, Inc., which continued to use the name of its large Texas (non-railroad-owned) component, Continental Trailways. There were a number of such major motor carriers, both freight and passenger, organized before 1935 by major railroads, which continued in operation for many decades; their successors may continue to be in operation. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 16:55:02 EST Subject: Last Laugh! was Re: Reporter Name Pat wrote: > The newspapers make that mistake now and then when writing > about former president 'Harry S Truman'. His middle name, in fact, was > merely the initial /S/ and there shouldn't be a period after a complete > name. There were many conjectures over the years about what the 'S' stood > for in his name. His wife Bess and his daughter Margaruite both confirmed > it meant nothing at all. Just 'S'. PAT] Scholarly works have been written on this subject. Harry S (or S.) Truman often signed documents without the period, also signed many with the period. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #101 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Mar 9 03:42:16 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j298gGF18606; Wed, 9 Mar 2005 03:42:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 03:42:16 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503090842.j298gGF18606@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #102 TELECOM Digest Wed, 9 Mar 2005 03:42:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 102 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Harvard Applicants Breached Security / Applicants' Behavior (M Solomon) On EBay, E-Mail Phishers Find a Well-Stocked Pond (Monty Solomon) Cablevision's Voom Gets a Reprieve (Monty Solomon) Credit Information Stolen From DSW Stores (Monty Solomon) New Approaches to Television Archiving (Monty Solomon) Vari, Varo and Varc -parameters for Ericsson MD110 BC9 (Ben) Dead Phone at New House, Short Circuits Say SBC! (Japple) Re: Ohio Law Would Require Auction License for eBay Sellers (LB@notmine) Re: Ohio Law Would Require Auction License for eBay Sellers (Tony P.) Re: Richard Clarke: Real ID's, Real Dangers (NY Times) (Thomas Horsley) Re: Richard Clarke: Real ID's, Real Dangers (NY Times) (Steve Sobol) Re: DoJ: VoIP Providers Avoiding CALEA Mandate (Tony P.) Re: Best Phone to Use For Radio Telephone Interviews? (Tony P.) Re: Voip in Northern KY (John Levine) Re: New Monopoly in Dept Stores; Federated and May to Merge (Wesrock) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage (Tony P.) Re: Hackers Deface Christian Family Group Web Site (Ed Clarke) Re: Home PBX Info: Switching Between Landlines and VoIP (Soren Rathje) Re: "Broadcast Flag", was Re: My New DVR From Cable One (Tony P.) Re: A Great Phone, Tied Down (Tony P.) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (Tony P.) Re: Voip in Northern KY (Christopher Sabine) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 18:34:06 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Harvard Applicants Breached Security / Applicants' Behavior Harvard rejects 119 accused of hacking Applicants' behavior 'unethical at best' By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | March 8, 2005 Harvard Business School will reject the 119 applicants who hacked into the school's admissions site last week, the school's dean, Kim B. Clark, said yesterday. "This behavior is unethical at best -- a serious breach of trust that can not be countered by rationalization," Clark said in a statement. "Any applicant found to have done so will not be admitted to this school." A half dozen business schools were swamped by a wave of electronic intrusions Wednesday morning, after a computer hacker posted instructions on a BusinessWeek Online message board. Harvard is the second school to say definitively that it will deny the applications of proven hackers. The first was Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business, where only one admission file was targeted. ... http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/03/08/harvard_rejects_119_accused_of_hacking_1110274403/ Harvard applicants breached security Tried via computer to learn status By Hiawatha Bray and Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | March 4, 2005 http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/03/04/harvard_applicants_breached_security/ ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 18:54:13 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: On EBay, E-Mail Phishers Find a Well-Stocked Pond By IAN AUSTEN Donald Jay Alofs got a call last fall at home asking if he had recently bought several thousand dollars worth of electronics. Mr. Alofs had not, and he had a good reason for not being on a spending spree: he was in the hospital at the time. Things got worse for Mr. Alofs, a coin collector and dealer who buys and sells on eBay. His inbox was soon filled with e-mail messages from irate buyers: someone had used his eBay account to sell about $780,000 worth of coins -- about five times the online business Mr. Alofs had done over several years -- and many of the coins offered for sale never existed. Adding insult to injury, fees for hosting photos for the fraudulent auctions had been financed with $300 from Mr. Alofs's account with PayPal, eBay's online payment service. The source of the trouble, he believes, was that his eBay and PayPal accounts were hijacked through what is known as phishing, a type of online fraud that collects victims' account passwords and other information, after he responded to an e-mail that appeared to come from a legitimate business. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/technology/07ebay.html?ex=1267851600&en=961346a7f16ccb24&ei=5090 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 21:45:50 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cablevision's Voom Gets a Reprieve By SETH SUTEL AP Business Writer NEW YORK (AP) -- Cablevision Systems Corp., a New York-area cable television provider, has reached a deal with its own chairman to keep a satellite TV venture running through the end of the month while he continues trying to assemble a deal that would keep the business afloat. The announcement late Tuesday signaled a cease-fire in a bitter family feud that has rocked the country's sixth-largest cable company. Cablevision CEO James Dolan had earlier sided with other board members against his father Charles, the company's chairman and founder, in voting to shut down the startup satellite venture, called Voom. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=47514074 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 22:13:23 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Credit Information Stolen From DSW Stores COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Credit card information from customers of more than 100 DSW Shoe Warehouse stores was stolen from a company computer's database over the last three months, a lawyer for the national chain said Tuesday. The company discovered the theft of credit card and personal shopping information on Friday and reported it to federal authorities, said Julie Davis, general counsel for the chain's parent, Retail Ventures Inc. The Secret Service is investigating, she said. DSW was alerted by a credit card company that noticed suspicious activity, she said. Customers should check their credit card statements and report any irregularities, Davis said. She did not know how many customers might be affected. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=47512557 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 23:12:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New Approaches to Television Archiving by Jeff Ubois http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_3/ubois/ Abstract Worldwide, more than 30 million hours of unique television programming are broadcast every year, yet only a tiny fraction of it is preserved for future reference, and only a fraction of that preserved footage is publicly accessible. Most television broadcasts are simply lost forever, though television archivists have been working to preserve selected programs for fifty years. Recent reductions in the cost of storage of digital video could allow preservation of this portion of our culture for a small fraction of the worldwide library budget, and improvements in the distribution of online video could enable much greater collaboration between archival institutions. Contents Non-commercial broadcasters, educational institutions, and libraries For-profit organizations with television archives Governmental institutions Fans and amateurs Collaborative possibilities Cataloging Technical standards and low-cost approaches to preservation and access Legal strategies Building a social consensus about television archiving http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_3/ubois/ ------------------------------ From: ben.smans@excite.com (Ben) Subject: Vari, Varo and Varc -parameters for Ericsson MD110 BC9 Date: 8 Mar 2005 15:25:59 -0800 Does anyone can provide me the VARI, VARO and VARC parameters for analog routes (TL11/TL39) in BC90C for Ericsson MD110? If possible, i'd like the options for the digits. Thanks in advance. ------------------------------ From: Japple Subject: Dead Phone at New House, Short Circuits Say SBC! Date: 8 Mar 2005 23:34:49 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello, I just moved to a new house and I tried getting the phone line set up, and no dialtone. So SBC sent someone out and they said that of the four jacks in the house, three were shorted out ... it's an older house and he couldn't figure out where the short was. (except at $55 per 20 minutes) The three lines ran into the crawl space, and I don't know how they were spliced. He was able to get one line working, but the other three are dead. Now, I'm stuck, either trying to figure out where the shorts are or rewiring the other three jacks ... I just don't understand how three lines were shorted when the previous owners just moved out. Because they did previously have service! What's the best way to figure out where the short is? Any ideas? If I do rewire the other jacks, and run new cable, the SBC guy recommended running all new wires, one wire per jack to get the best connection ... what do you think about this? And how do I connect four wires to the phone box? connect them each directly, or splice them right to the main two wires that are already connected? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: LB@notmine.com Subject: Re: Ohio Law Would Require Auction License for eBay Sellers Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 19:40:20 -0500 Organization: Optimum Online Lisa Minter wrote: > CNN, via Yahoo News on Tuesday reports that the State of Ohio has > become very unfriendly toward online sellers using E-Bay. > According to CNN-Money, State of Ohio now requires an auction license > of people who want to sell on E-Bay, as well as a one-year training > class required of sellers _and_ a fifty thousand dollar security > bond. The auction license costs two hundred dollars. If you fail to > do these things, they have some jail time waiting for you. Their > excuse is they want to 'cut back on internet fraud using E-Bay'. > http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/07/technology/ohio_ebay/index.htm For those that care there is large discussion of this in the group alt.marketing.online.ebay LB ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Ohio Law Would Require Auction License for eBay Sellers Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 20:47:31 -0500 In article , lisa_minter2001 @yahoo.com says: > CNN, via Yahoo News on Tuesday reports that the State of Ohio has > become very unfriendly toward online sellers using E-Bay. > According to CNN-Money, State of Ohio now requires an auction license > of people who want to sell on E-Bay, as well as a one-year training > class required of sellers _and_ a fifty thousand dollar security > bond. The auction license costs two hundred dollars. If you fail to > do these things, they have some jail time waiting for you. Their > excuse is they want to 'cut back on internet fraud using E-Bay'. > http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/07/technology/ohio_ebay/index.htm Tax revenue. That's what every state is about. On a related note -- a couple years ago I get notice from the state of RI that I never filed my 1990 taxes and owe them $1,300 between fines, etc. So the past few years they snatched my refunds. This year I decided I want receipts from this point forward, and I'll keep my tax records for more than three years so I can prove I filed. Turns out the RI Division of Taxation won't give a receipt. I got the woman to stamp my copy with their "RECEIVED - RI DIV TAX" verbiage with the date and all. Hopefully the state will lose one more of my returns -- then I can bring the receipted version to the news hounds and watch as the sparks fly. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Richard Clarke: Real ID's, Real Dangers (NY Times) From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 01:10:09 GMT Here's a thought: Combine two hot button issues into one -- if they are gonna force us to have national ID cards, then they should also force all the ChoicePoint and Eqifaxes of the world to only release information when the person they are releasing it to has verified proof of our consent via our smart cards. >>==>> The *Best* political site >>==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Richard Clarke: Real ID's, Real Dangers (NY Times) Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 18:33:09 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > Have you ever wondered what good it does when they look at your > driver's license at the airport? Let me assure you, as a former > bureaucrat partly responsible for the 1996 decision to create a > photo-ID requirement, it no longer does any good whatsoever. The ID > check is not done by federal officers but by the same kind of > minimum-wage rent-a-cops who were doing the inspection of carry-on > luggage before 9/11. And that's why the extra security measures being taken by the Feds in many cases are stupid. The airports have needed real security *forever*, but even after 9/11, we don't have it because the Feds were half-assed about it. I personally feel that the current measures do little to actually enhance security. But hey, they make good window dressing. > hijackers obtained real driver's licenses using false documents. The > Real ID bill has, however, provoked negative reaction from those who > think it has little to do with terrorism and a lot to do with making > life difficult for illegal immigrants. Well, I'd sure hope that we'd make life difficult for illegal immigrants. I wonder how many of the idiots complaining live where I live (Southern California). I don't want them here. They leech off the system. I'm not against people taking the time to move here and become legal, naturalized citizens ... people doing it the *right* way. Just people trying to take shortcuts. Anyone remember the drive (pardon the pun) to give illegals driver licenses? JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: DoJ: VoIP Providers Avoiding CALEA Mandate Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:24:43 -0500 In article , Jack Decker says: > http://www.americasnetwork.com/americasnetwork/article/articleDetail.jsp?id=121788 > Source: Warren Publishing, Inc. > COMMUNICATIONS DAILY via NewsEdge Corporation : FBI and Justice > Dept. officials told the House Telecom Subcommittee Wed. that there > have been difficulties establishing wiretaps through some VoIP > carriers. While members emphasized the importance of law enforcement > having access to VoIP communications, some had questions about DoJ's > and FBI's problems with access and if updates to the Communications > Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) were needed. While the DoJ > and FBI said they were trying to "work with" VoIP providers, they also > said many products were introduced without thought to CALEA, though > they declined to provide any specifics. > Some members wanted more information about the problems FBI and DoJ > officials face from VoIP providers when trying to obtain a > wiretap. Laura Parsky, DoJ deputy asst. attorney general, said the > information about specific problems was too sensitive. "We don't want > terrorists migrating to these networks," she said. Marcus Thomas, FBI > deputy asst. director, said it didn't appear to be "disingenuous effort" > that prevented law enforcement access to networks. Rather, he said, > many have deployed networks without giving much thought to law > enforcement access. Thomas said CALEA was supposed to create an > atmosphere where innovators factored CALEA standards into its > development, but that atmosphere never developed. Rep. Buyer (R-Ind.) > told law enforcement witnesses that they should do a better job of > articulating their concerns, since they appeared to be rather > vague. Parsky said more information could be given in a classified > forum. I'm pretty sure that most VoIP providers encrypt from the terminal adapter back to the server. But everything is based on IP aware telephone switches so it isn't a problem to tap at the switch. It's because law enforcement by and large is ignorant when it comes to technology. Even the FBI, the leading agency in the U.S. trips over it's own feet when it comes to information technology. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Best Phone to Use For Radio Telephone Interviews? Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:28:09 -0500 In article , kludge@panix.com says: > JayKay wrote: >> I get called fairly often by radio stations for commentary. My current >> phone, AT&T 2-line 962, apparently doesn't cut it and I often find >> myself calling the studios back from the fax phone (a little better) >> or (after hooking it up) from a 25-year old rotary phone for call >> clarity (even better). >> But I'd like to get a new office phone that would be OK for these >> talk/news people. >> Any suggestions? > As far as audio quality goes, I honestly have not used anything that > sounds better than an old 500-set on the other end. Your next step up > is probably a hybrid and dedicated mike. A WE or AE touch tone set will give the best overall quality. They still make knock offs of each but just get on ebay and pick one up. I've got a bid in on a yellow 2500 set as I speak. ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 2005 00:03:17 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Voip in Northern KY Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > Does anyone know if there's any VOIP service in Northern KY/Cincinnati > area? Lingo, AT&T Callvantage, and Packet8 all have Cincinnati numbers. Callvantage and Packet8 also have Covington numbers. I dumped Vonage for Lingo last month, largely because Vonage's reliability collapsed and their customer service disappeared. See my web page on the topic at http://net.gurus.com/phone which has some signup links with coupons if you want to sign up. R's, John ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 20:37:45 EST Subject: Re: New Monopoly in Dept Stores; Federated and May to Merge In a message dated Mon, 7 Mar 2005 22:59:42 -0500, Bob Goudreau writes: > I think you missed my point. They could have chosen to divest the > entire regulated railroad business instead (in the way that AT&T chose > to give up the local telco business in the early 1980s), leaving the > now-separate rump company to concentrate exclusively on rail while the > new successor company (which would have purchased the non-rail assets) > chased the newer markets. Instead, the execs chose to stay with the > rump themselves. They bet on the wrong pony. This seems to ignore the reality that the railroads are thriving businesses today. Intercity bus services has been declining and many cities are without any intercity bus service at all. The motor freight business more and more is turning to the railroads to carrying their long-haul freight in trailers or containers. J.B. Hunt, the nation's largest trucking company, is one of the largest customers of the railroads. I believe UPS is the largest single customer of the railroads. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 20:48:37 -0500 In article , Tim@Backhome.org says: > Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: >> In article , Danny Burstein >> Unfortunately, the actualy duration of the problem was several hours; >> Vonage is, quite simply, lying. And the problem recurred on two >> successive days. > No doubt about it. It caused major problems for me. >> If Vonage were a regulated entity -- which it's gone to great lengths >> to not be -- there would be significant penalties not just for this >> sort of service failure (note that Vonage hasn't exactly contacted its >> customers and offered to refund any of their money for the time that >> their phones were out of service) -- but also for lying about it. > What this proves is that Vonage is simply not a viable replacement for > wireline service. I've been a Vonage user from the beginning, > suffering through echos and quality issues for the first several > months. > I figured it was all worth it for the unlimited, inexpensive "out > WATS." But, now that SBC offers unlimited nation-wide toll for a > competitive price, it makes me think about using only my wireline > (which I never got rid of). The only advantage Vonage offers today > are virtual numbers. I'd like to know what part of $88 you consider reasonable. That's what Verizon was getting from me for unlimited national/local. ------------------------------ From: Ed Clarke Subject: Re: Hackers Deface Christian Family Group Web Site Date: 9 Mar 2005 02:11:40 GMT Organization: Ciliophora Associates, Inc. Reply-To: clarke@cilia.org On 2005-03-08, Lisa Minter wrote: > http://www.wlbz2.com/newscenter/article.asp?id=20748 This is the second time it's happened. They claim that "thousands of dollars worth of intellectual property" was destroyed. No backups? After it happened before?? This sounds like the punch line of a joke -- "How'd it happen? Well, I stuck my hand under the press like this and ..." This signature left blank. ------------------------------ From: Soren Rathje Subject: Re: Home PBX Info: Switching Between Landlines and VoIP Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 08:42:59 +0100 Organization: Organized... Who me? Lee Sweet wrote: [snip] > Now, what I want to do is have all outbound LD calls go out on the > Vonage line automatically. Right now, I have a separate cordless > phone for that line, but that's not the optimal answer! :-) \ [snip] > Lee Sweet > Datatel, Inc. > Manager of Telephony Services > and Information Security > How higher education does business > Voice: 703.968.4661 > Fax: 703.968.4625 > Cell: 703.932.9425 > lee@datatel.com > www.datatel.com The short answer is: Asterisk (www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk) The long answer: ... I use Asterisk with 1 Danish VoIP, 1 UK VoIP and 1 US VoIP provider as well as 1 regular PSTN line. The dialprefix tells Asterisk which way to go :) Incoming calls go either direct to an extension or into a ACD where all phones ring. Unanswered calls go to VoiceMail. Conferences can be hosted if family meetings are required. Asterisk can do regular FXO/FXS using hardware from Digium (inventors site), ISDN-BRI from various sources or T1/E1 equipment from various sources. Protocols are limited to OSP, Enum, Dundi, ADSI, SIP, H.323, MGCP, SCCP (Cisco Call Manager), IAX. Other projects (there are many) available for install are: Nortel native protocol support, FAX send/receive and SS7. The smallest system for Asterisk reported so far is an X-Box, I've heard of people working on Sony PS/2 implementation and also builds ment for install on LinkSys WBR's so basically anything bigger goes, AMD, Intel or PowerPC running some form of Unix; Linux, BSD, OS X, Solaris ... (pending hardware support) Anyway, for my last homesystem, I downloaded the Asterisk@Home ISO, made a CD, put it in the pc and powered up. The @home project will format the disk, install CentOS-3 (stripped down RedHat Enterprise), install Asterisk PLUS additional tools so in fact you will (almost) never need to telnet to the box, you can do mostly everything from a browser. I had it up and running in a usable state in a couple of hours. http://sourceforge.net/projects/asteriskathome/ Really good reading is here, especially the WiKi is a goldmine of information! www.asterisk.org www.digium.com www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk /Soren ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: "Broadcast Flag", was Re: My New DVR From Cable One Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:29:35 -0500 In article , jkelly@newsguy.com says: > On Mon, 13 Sep 2004 15:35:53 -0000, pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) > wrote: >> Danny Burstein writes: >>> Nope. He was just given given advance warning. New recording equipment >>> is supposed to recognize a "do not record" flag that gets sent >>> over-the-air along with the signal. Periodically a couple of the >> Except that it isn't sent over the air, and the flag is part of their >> licensing agreement with macrovision. Cable one was just passing along >> FUD. > Not FUD. The flag is sent over the air, and it has nothing to do with > Macrovision. > Unfortunately, Hollywood pulled a hold-up. It threatened to derail the > DTV transition by withholding "high-value content" from over-the-air > DTV, unless the FCC imposed "content protection" (aka DRM) on all > future televisions and related devices. The idea was that content > owners would implant a "broadcast flag" into DTV programming. When > devices detect the flag, they have to "protect" (i.e., lock up in DRM > jail) the programming. > Sadly, the FCC bought it. Thanks to an FCC ruling, as of July 2005, > it will be illegal to manufacture or import DTV tuners unless they > include DRM technologies mandated by the FCC. > See more at: http://www.eff.org/IP/Video/HDTV/ But if you read the FCC documents about it, they make it clear that anyone with a little technical knowledge can easily defeat the DRM functions. The courts are going to slap down on the FCC anyhow. First they pushed the V-Chip, now the DRM. I can see the FCC devolving into what it should have been in the first place, a bandwidth manager. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: A Great Phone, Tied Down Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:32:41 -0500 In article , monty@roscom.com says... > Ten O'Clock Tech > by Arik Hesseldahl > But a week ago I swerved in new direction and dropped about $300 for > an upgrade to the v710, which appears to be Motorola's highest-end > phone that works on Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) networks, > namely that of Verizon Wireless, a joint venture of Verizon and > Vodafone. > But then I learned that the phone can't do this via Bluetooth. I've > been syncing my PalmOne Tungsten T handheld with my Mac for about year > now using Bluetooth without difficulty. Exactly why this phone > couldn't do the same thing seemed ridiculous. > It turns out Verizon has had certain features in the phone disabled. > Full Bluetooth support is one of them. This rules out the phone > connecting to any Bluetooth devices other than a headset, such as a > wireless keyboard or a printer or indeed another Bluetooth-enabled > phone. > Another missing feature is the ability to move a photo from the phone > directly to a computer via Bluetooth or a data cable. When you take > pictures on this phone, the only way to save them on a computer is to > send them by e-mail over Verizon's wireless network, for which there > is a charge. > The network works just fine and sending pictures in this way is more > or less flawless. But it's irritating to know that when you just want > to take a picture and save it for yourself, you can't just move it > directly from the phone to a computer. And Verizon operates a Web > service called Pix Place, where you can send pictures and then > download them to a PC. But why add an extra step to a process that > should be simple? > A Verizon Wireless spokeswoman tells me this is standard operating > procedure across its camera phone lines. Verizon's product is not the > phone, she says, but rather the network itself. Indeed. > http://www.forbes.com/personaltech/2004/09/13/cx_ah_0913tentech.html You answered your own question. It's because they charge to email it. If you could just suck the pictures off the unit with Bluetooth it would erode their revenue stream. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 17:39:44 -0500 In article , johnl@iecc.com says... >> The single 5E in town, where there was once two xbars, handles eight >> LEC exchanges and at least three CLEC exchanges. > Really? I've heard of Bell handling switching for tiny independents > (VZ North for Naushon Island, for example), but I've never heard of a > LEC selling switching to a CLEC. Space! ESS and DMS systems also sit on a smaller footprint than SxS and X-bar systems. Got to maximize revenue somehow. BTW, the DMS-100 in my city handles 51 exchanges. In addition there are several other switches in the building. I note the map feature is interesting. There's a whole cluster of switches in Providence. ------------------------------ From: Christopher Sabine Subject: Re: VOIP in Northern KY Date: Tue, 8 Mar 2005 18:04:50 -0500 Kevin, You can get another number from Vonage in Cincinnati. It just means that Vonage doesn't have any local numbers in Cincinnati. I use Vonage is a secondary line and have numbers in Columbus and Salt Lake City that I use. Chris ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #102 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Mar 9 15:12:05 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j29KC4R23239; Wed, 9 Mar 2005 15:12:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 15:12:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503092012.j29KC4R23239@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #103 TELECOM Digest Wed, 9 Mar 2005 15:10:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 103 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson FCC Chief Warns VoIP-Backers of Rock Star Syndrome (Jack Decker) Powell: VoIP Already Changing Perceptions (Jack Decker) Google Window-Shops for VoIP (Jack Decker) "Take Action," Vonage CEO Citron Tells VoIP Industry (Jack Decker) VOIP / NonVOIP Small Questions (gallwapa@gmail.com) Cell Phone Radiation Dangers (Dean) How to Insert Newline Into 3com RAS 1500 Message? (Tree by the river) Walkie Talkie (Jason) AOL's Got VoIP (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Re: Dead Phone at New House, Short Circuits Say SBC! (HorneTD) Re: Dead Phone at New House, Short Circuits Say SBC! (Lisa Hancock) Re: Dead Phone at New House, Short Circuits Say SBC! (Allen McIntosh) Re: Harvard Applicants Breached Security/Applicants' Behavior (jtaylor) Re: New Monopoly in Dept Stores; Federated and May to Merge (B Goudreau) FCC Says: Consumers Can Put an End to Port Blocking (Jack Decker) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday (Randy Hayes) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage (John Levine) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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. 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Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:19:01 -0500 Subject: FCC Chief Warns VoIP-Backers of Rock Star Syndrome http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050308/wr_nm/telecoms_fcc_voiceoverinternet_dc_3 Tue Mar 8, 5:55 PM ET By Eric Auchard SAN JOSE, Calif. (Reuters) - The outgoing chief regulator of U.S. communications markets on Tuesday said phone calls via the Internet have become a fact of life but warned the emerging industry not to become cocky in its success. In his last public speech as chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites), Michael Powell told Internet-based phone service providers that the industry has been secured against efforts to use regulation to defeat it. "There is something about the voice over 'net industry that has really taken root, that won't be uprooted," Powell told an audience at the Voice on the Net (VON) conference. Powell made protecting Internet services from traditional phone regulations a touchstone issue in his eight-year stint at the FCC (news - web sites), first as a Republican member of the commission, and for the last four years, as chairman. But his legacy remains in question if opponents of the free-wheeling Internet industry succeed in bringing it under the existing regulatory regime. "The future is so bright for voice over the net," Powell said, then warned: "But you won't be a rock star forever." He said that the industry's growing success made it vulnerable to critics who will increasingly hold it responsible for service outages, security breakdowns or other disruptions. Powell compared the position of Internet communications to a decade ago when the mobile phone industry became a mainstream communications technology. Flush with success, the wireless industry ignored customer complaints about network reliability and invited increased government regulation, he said. Full story at: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050308/wr_nm/telecoms_fcc_voiceoverinternet_dc_3 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:04:05 -0500 Subject: Powell: VoIP Already Changing Perceptions http://www.newtelephony.com/news/53h8142739.html By Charlotte Wolter Posted on: 03/08/2005 In his final public speech as chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell told an appreciative audience at the Voice on the Net (VON) conference in San Jose, Calif., the industry has done much already to change how the world, and regulators, view VoIP. He said this will lead to less regulation and more protection for VoIP, citing the FCC's recent decision against Madison River Telephone Company LLC's blockage of VoIP as an example. "But we're not naive," he added. "We know that danger still lurks in the weeds. We recognize that the owners of broadband distribution platforms might have motive and incentive to play with your bits to filter them or block them." Full story at: http://www.newtelephony.com/news/53h8142739.html ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 12:29:34 -0500 Subject: Google Window-Shops for VoIP http://news.com.com/Google+window-shops+for+VoIP/2100-7352_3-5605025.html By Ben Charny Staff Writer, CNET News.com SAN JOSE, Calif.--A team of Google honchos met this week with several Net telephone service providers, sources familiar with the talks told CNET News.com, renewing speculation that the search giant may be exploring a move into the fast-growing market. "They were fairly aggressive about getting our opinions," said one Internet phone executive who facilitated several meetings between Google and Net phone interests here at Spring 2005 Voice on the Net. The executive requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the meetings. [.....] The meetings offer further confirmation of the view that as the Net phone business starts to take off, search giants and Web portals such as Yahoo may not be far behind. Among the announcements at VON, America Online said it plans to unveil a VoIP service in the next month, heightening speculation that Yahoo, Microsoft's MSN and Google -- its biggest Web rivals -- may be exploring similar moves. Full story at: http://news.com.com/Google+window-shops+for+VoIP/2100-7352_3-5605025.html ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:05:50 -0500 Subject: "Take Action," Vonage CEO Citron Tells VoIP Industry http://www.newtelephony.com/news/53h8142038.html By Charlotte Wolter Posted on: 03/08/2005 Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron today urged the VoIP community to get involved politically by contacting Congress and urging legislation that is favorable to VoIP. Citron says Vonage is looking to expand its service to new territories in the coming year, referring specifically to Mexico City and London, although he said the company also is looking at Europe and Asia as potential areas of growth. Speaking at the Voice on the Net (VON) conference in San Jose, Calif., Citron told a large audience during the keynote address, "All of you should write your Congresspersons and let them know that you want a network bill of rights to protect your right to use communications like Vonage (Holdings Corp.)." Citron was referring to the broadband bill of rights articulated by departing FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Powell has advocated that consumers have the right to connect any device to the network that does not harm the network; be able to download and run any application that is legal and paid for; and be able to access any legal content; and get information about the features of any service. Full story at: http://www.newtelephony.com/news/53h8142038.html ------------------------------ From: gallwapa@gmail.com Subject: VOIP / NonVOIP Small questions Date: 9 Mar 2005 10:15:55 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Excuse my lack of knowledge, but telecom isn't my specialty. We're currently investigating claims with regard to G.729A and G.729B and VoIP. As far as I can tell, these codecs do not affect VoIP conversations over our Data WAN? We currently have 40+ sites connected by T1s to carry data across those networks. The T1s are provided by QWEST, and again excuse my lack of knowledge please. Thanks! ------------------------------ From: Dean Subject: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers Date: 9 Mar 2005 08:56:41 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com A while back some on this list engaged in a lively debate about cell phone radiation risks. This article may have some information of interest to those of you who think this issue isn't dead yet. The cell phone industry: Big Tobacco 2.0? By Molly Wood, senior editor, CNET.com Tuesday, March 8, 2005 http://www.cnet.com/4520-6033-5741203-1.html Regards, Dean ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 16:56:34 GMT From: tlode@nyx.net (the tree by the river) Subject: How to Insert Newline Into 3com RAS 1500 Message? Organization: Nyx Net, Free Internet access (www.nyx.net) I'm setting up a 3com RAS 1500 remore access server and need to configure a custom initial welcome message and login prompt. There are special codes like $date, $hostname, $port, etc., for inserting those values into the message text, but I can't find any mention of how to insert a newline, even one at the end of the message. The result is that the welcome message and prompt all run together. The factory default message does include a newline at the end, so it is obviously possible for the system to have one stored as part of the field, but I can't figure out how to get it in there. Anyone know the secret? Seems like you'd always want to do this, and surely I can't be the first person ever to set custom welcome messages and prompts. soc.singles FAQ [ Nyx Net, free ISP ] Misc.Fitness.Weights page www.trygve.com/ssfaq.html [ http://www.nyx.net ] www.trygve.com/mfw.html the Furbeowulf Project - build your own supercomputer for less than $79.95: http://www.trygve.com/furbeowulf.html ------------------------------ From: jason Subject: Walkie Talkie Date: 9 Mar 2005 00:38:56 -0800 Hello all, I need to know more about walkie talkie and how the frequency range work. Let'say a walkie talkie with frequency range work from 2400 to 2500 Mhz, while the IF is 5 Mhz. So how will the channels be allocated for transmitting and receiving if it is a single duplex type? Can anyone enlighthen please. Any helpful link or docment is appreciated. Thanks a lot in advance. Regard and thanks. Jason ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 12:51:00 EST From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: AOL's Got VoIP Telecom dailyLead from USTA March 9, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=19934&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * AOL's got VoIP BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Alltel enters deal with EchoStar * Comcast, Motorola forge alliance, extend set-top deal * Fiber market gets back on its feet * Dolan gets more time to save Voom * Microsoft unveils communication convergence software * Analysis: MCI must weigh long-term, short-term goals USTA SPOTLIGHT * IP Telephony Principles and Applications EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Samsung takes wraps of seven-megapixel phone REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Powell touts VoIP in VON speech * Chicago mulls Wi-Fi network Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=19934&l=2017006 Legal and Privacy information at http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp SmartBrief, Inc. 1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000 Washington, DC 20005 ------------------------------ From: HorneTD Subject: Re: Dead Phone at New House, Short Circuits Say SBC! Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:21:02 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Japple wrote: > Hello, > I just moved to a new house and I tried getting the phone line set up, > and no dialtone. So SBC sent someone out and they said that of the > four jacks in the house, three were shorted out ... it's an older > house and he couldn't figure out where the short was. (except at $55 > per 20 minutes) > The three lines ran into the crawl space, and I don't know how they > were spliced. He was able to get one line working, but the other three > are dead. Now, I'm stuck, either trying to figure out where the > shorts are or rewiring the other three jacks ... > I just don't understand how three lines were shorted when the previous > owners just moved out. Because they did previously have service! > What's the best way to figure out where the short is? > Any ideas? > If I do rewire the other jacks, and run new cable, the SBC guy > recommended running all new wires, one wire per jack to get the best > connection ... what do you think about this? And how do I connect four > wires to the phone box? connect them each directly, or splice them > right to the main two wires that are already connected? > Thanks. There is no easy way to find these shorts without special equipment. You will have to trace the lines physically. The most likely culprit is a common point on the wires that serve all three jacks. If the three jacks are connected from one to the other, called daisy chained, or they are served by a common splice a single fault at any jack will down them all. The advice to run new lines is sound. I would suggest that you use a 66M block to do your splicing. The reason for that is that you use readily removable bridging clips to connect each jacks line to your network interface device. Removing the bridging clips isolates the associated jack for trouble shooting and repair. Do you have a place to mount your telephone splicing block that will be out of the way and yet reasonably convenient? There are weather proof housings available that are designed to protect 66 blocks. One of these can be mounted on the outside of the home adjacent to your Network Interface Device (NID) if you do not have a convenient place indoors. http://www3.sympatico.ca/bparker/index1.html#03 is a pretty good sight for telephone basics. http://www.homephonewiring.com/ is an excellent sight for techniques and tools. It also has supplies available for purchase. http://www.siemon.com/int/installation_instructions/pdf/S66_Field-Terminated_M_Series_Blocks.pdf is a manufacturers site on wiring 66 blocks. Tom H ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Minter) Subject: Re: Dead Phone at New House, Short Circuits Say SBC! Date: 9 Mar 2005 07:18:27 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Japple wrote: > I just moved to a new house and I tried` getting the phone line set up, > and no dialtone. So SBC sent someone out and they said that of the > four jacks in the house, three were shorted out ... it's an older > house and he couldn't figure out where the short was. (except at $55 > per 20 minutes) That's a common problem. Either it's a full short, or worse, an intermittent break or leakage which degrades voice quality and hurts dial up computer use. I'm not an expert, but I'd say wiring technique is more critical today than in the past for plain voice service because data transmission is much more sensitive to things like crosstalk or interwire capacitance or plain old static. Perhaps another reader could offer suggestions. My recommendation is to abandon all old phone wiring and rewire the house using modern standards that will give the best quality for high speed data transmission and multi-line phone service. Others can give tips on the best way to do this. When we needed new wiring, we had the phone company do it for us. Not cheap but reliable. I presume a qualified electrician familiar with modern phone requirements could do so as well, possibly cheaper. ------------------------------ From: Allen McIntosh Reply-To: nospam@mouse-potato.com Subject: Re: Dead Phone at New House, Short Circuits Say SBC! Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 08:10:46 -0500 Organization: Optimum Online > I just don't understand how three lines were shorted when the previous > owners just moved out. Because they did previously have service! > What's the best way to figure out where the short is? It is possible that the previous owners shorted out the jacks so you couldn't make phone calls the day the house traded hands (when the calls might have been on their account). I happened to me once -- had to replace several phone jacks. In your shoes, I'd start by looking at all the phone jacks, and disconnecting any that didn't look right (after writing down how they were wired, of course). ------------------------------ From: jtaylor Subject: Re: Harvard Applicants Breached Security / Applicants' Behavior Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 08:55:45 -0400 Organization: MCI Canada News Reader Service Monty Solomon wrote in message news:telecom24.102.1@telecom-digest.org: > Harvard rejects 119 accused of hacking > Applicants' behavior 'unethical at best' > By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | March 8, 2005 > Harvard Business School will reject the 119 applicants who hacked into > the school's admissions site last week, the school's dean, Kim > B. Clark, said yesterday. Now, as soon as this item became news, I wondered if they would do this. Which brings up a possible scenario -- hire a hacker to find out the status of EXCEPT yourself ... ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: New Monopoly in Dept Stores; Federated and May to Merge Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 08:37:28 -0500 Wes Leatherock wrote: > This seems to ignore the reality that the railroads are thriving > businesses today. Intercity bus services has been declining and many > cities are without any intercity bus service at all. The motor > freight business more and more is turning to the railroads to carrying > their long-haul freight in trailers or containers. J.B. Hunt, the > nation's largest trucking company, is one of the largest customers of > the railroads. I believe UPS is the largest single customer of the > railroads. The few railroad companies that *survived* are currently doing well, though their business is now all freight and no passengers. (Not counting Amtrak here, since it is *not* doing well financially and is not exactly a traditional corporation either.) However, most of the railroads that were around 50-60 years ago could not survive the brutal consolidation of the industry; they were liquidated or sold to competitors. Today's railroads collectively are a much smaller slice of the overall economy than were their prewar predecessors. It looks like the telcos are going through the same sort of shakeout right now themselves. Eventually, there won't be a "telephone business" any more; there will just be a "communications business" within which voice will be one application (albeit still a popular one). It's already started with the landline telcos as customers like me drop their RBOC service and choose to funnel their voice traffic over their broadband connection. In a few years it's going to spread even to mobile telephony as technology advances and the wireless internet becomes ubiquitous. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am wondering about a few passenger trains I have ridden in the past and wonder what they are doing now, if they are even still in business: Around 1970 or so, I went with a friend of mine from Chicago on the City of New Orleans to the Mardis Gras in New Orleans. We left about 4 in the afternoon and got into New Orleans about 9 the next morning. It was a wonderful train ride. Then, about 1950 or so I rode the train by myself (or actually with my cousin Ken, who is four years younger than myself). We took the Santa Fe train between Independence and Chicago. I do not remember much about that trip except that my grandmother fixed a *huge* sack of food for Ken and I to eat on the trip, and my grandfather gave each of us a silver dollar coin to use for our 'expenses' on the way. We landed at the Dearborn Station in Chicago about a day later, where my parents picked us up. I just barely remember three years before that, in 1947, when my mother and grandmother took me on the same Santa Fe train between Coffeyille and Chicago to meet my father and grandfather at Dearborn Station. They had already come to Chicago area to live, and we had gone there to live with them. I don't know why I just now remembered those train trips. I do remember at the time they were all quite elegant trains, and I do remember that when my younger cousin and I rode the train back to Chicago, the conductor gave us quite a tour through the entire train, including the area where newspapers and mail were conveyed. The train went very slow at one point and almost came to a halt; the conductor took a huge stack of newspapers which were tied up and handed them off the train to a man waiting next to the track with a car who grabbed up all the papers, put them in the car and drove away, then the train took up speed and off we went again. I doubt any of those things even exist any longer. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:23:04 -0500 Subject: FCC: Consumers Can Put End to VOIP Port Blocking http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1773983,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594 By Mark Hachman, ExtremeTech SAN JOSE, Calif. Members of the Federal Communications Commission claim market forces, not regulation, will likely prevent a repeat of an ISP blocking voice-over-IP traffic. In a "town hall" meeting Monday night at the VON Conference & Expo here, Jeffrey Carlisle, chief of the FCC's Wireline Competition Bureau, and Robert Pepper, chief of policy development at the FCC, answered audience questions on regulatory issues. A key topic was the recent blocking of VOIP traffic by Madison River Communications, a wholly owned subsidiary of Madison River Telephone Company LLC, and whether that scenario could repeat itself with other ISPs. PointerVOIP port blocking draws congressional interest. Click here to read more. According to Carlisle, consumers are becoming more savvy about their broadband providers and will notice if services such as those provided by Vonage Holdings Corp. stop working. The industry is going through a "frontier period," Carlisle said, where corporations could press the limits of the law. "Consumers will know if they're not able to get something," Carlisle said. "If I see a Vonage box in the store, [bring it home], and I can't get Vonage, I'm going to know about that." In that case, consumers will simply choose another broadband provider that provides the services that they're looking for, he said. [COMMENT: Well, heck, yes, if I don't like what my current broadband provider is doing I'll simply go down to the local broadband service store and select another provider from among the multitude of choices there. Riiiiiight. Sounds like some people at the FCC still need to get a clue!] Full story at: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1773983,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:02:35 -0600 From: Randal Hayes Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday Whenever a communications technology outage is reported and the cause is attributed to some problem with a software load or other maintenance work performed *in the middle of a workday* I always ask myself, "What were they thinking, performing this type of work during a busy period?!?" I do not know what the peak hours for Vonage are, but even with a customer base that is currently more residential in nature, and, acknowledging that a global environment complicates what a carrier's busy-hours are (it may be 4:00 AM CST in the U.S., but it's primetime for those in the U.S. calling Europe, etc.), one would have to believe a Thursday afternoon would not be the wisest time to perform non-emergency, but potentially intrusive work on the network! Vonage, or even the VOIP environment are not unique here; for several years some of the largest carriers have experienced outages during some of their busiest periods due to scheduling non-emergency software loads and upgrades during peak periods ... what idiocy! Is common sense a thing of the past for some people, or is the belief in performing quality work a thing of the past for some people..or both? Randy Hayes University of Northern Iowa randal.hayes@uni.edu ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 05:58:29 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications Tony P. wrote: > In article , Tim@Backhome.org > says: >> Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: >>> In article , Danny Burstein >>> Unfortunately, the actualy duration of the problem was several hours; >>> Vonage is, quite simply, lying. And the problem recurred on two >>> successive days. >>> No doubt about it. It caused major problems for me. >>> If Vonage were a regulated entity -- which it's gone to great lengths >>> to not be -- there would be significant penalties not just for this >>> sort of service failure (note that Vonage hasn't exactly contacted its >>> customers and offered to refund any of their money for the time that >>> their phones were out of service) -- but also for lying about it. >> What this proves is that Vonage is simply not a viable replacement for >> wireline service. I've been a Vonage user from the beginning, >> suffering through echos and quality issues for the first several >> months. >> I figured it was all worth it for the unlimited, inexpensive "out >> WATS." But, now that SBC offers unlimited nation-wide toll for a >> competitive price, it makes me think about using only my wireline >> (which I never got rid of). The only advantage Vonage offers today >> are virtual numbers. > I'd like to know what part of $88 you consider reasonable. That's what > Verizon was getting from me for unlimited national/local. Well, compared to long-distance bills I had of $1,100 per month in the mid-1970s, which would equate to $,4000 or $5,000 per month today, $88 seems quite reasonable. You are comparing Vonage's total cost with SBC's total cost. I guess if wireline, E911, commercial power protection, etc., is not worth much to you then go with Vonage and the unpredictable outages. I have a critical conference call later this morning. I'll use my Vonage, but my SBC phone is close at hand in the event the Vonage connection zaps 45 minutes, or so, into the conference call. That has happened twice in the past two months. ------------------------------ Date: 9 Mar 2005 16:17:02 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I'd like to know what part of $88 you consider reasonable. That's what > Verizon was getting from me for unlimited national/local. SBC now charges $49, same as Vonage, except that SBC thows in a phone wire and offers E-911 as part of the deal. Regards, John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #103 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Mar 10 05:55:16 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2AAtGf29243; Thu, 10 Mar 2005 05:55:16 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 05:55:16 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503101055.j2AAtGf29243@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #104 TELECOM Digest Thu, 10 Mar 2005 05:55:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 104 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Canadian Security Co's Speak Out Against Anti-Circumvention (M Falco) "Hollywood Hacking Bill" Author Named Dem. Liaison (Marcus Didius Falco) Cell Phones Do Much More Than Make Calls (Monty Solomon) TiVo Patent Suit Advances on Federal Court Denial of Echostar (Solomon) Vonage Being Blocked -- Again (Jack Decker) Phone Doesn't Disconnect (cyklone006@gmail.com) Shooting Victim Gets to Pay Phone (Carl Moore) Re: "Broadcast Flag", was Re: My New DVR From Cable One (Dan Lanciani) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday (DevilsPGD) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday (Brian Inglis) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage (Lisa Hancock) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 23:26:40 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Canadian Security Co's Speak Out Against Anti-circumvention ------ Forwarded Message From: Michael Geist < > Date: Tue, 08 Mar 2005 17:30:17 -0500 To: Subject: Canadian Security Co's Speak Out Against Anti-circumvention Legislation Dave, A substantial group of Canada's security technology companies have sent a public letter to the Industry and Heritage Ministers to express concern about the potential for DMCA-like legislation in Canada. Years of discussions and no one bothered to ask these guys what they think. The public letter has been posted online at A release and backgrounder are at http://www.cippic.ca/en/news/documents/Press_Release_-_Security_Businesses.pdf http://www.cippic.ca/en/news/documents/Backgrounders_of_Participants.pdf This might be a sign of Canada's technology community waking up to the implications of copyright reforms that directly impact their businesses. Best, MG March 8, 2005 BY COURIER The Honourable David L. Emerson, P.C., M.P. Minister of Industry 235, Queen Street, 11th Floor, East Tower Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H5 The Honourable Liza Frulla, P.C., M.P. Minister of Canadian Heritage and Status of Women 15 Eddy Street Gatineau, Quebec K1A 0M5 Dear Minister Emerson and Minister Frulla: Re: Proposals to include Anti-Circumvention Rights in A Bill to Amend the Copyright Act We write to you as leaders of Canada's security research business community. We understand that the Canadian government in the near future will introduce legislation to amend the Copyright Act to introduce rights to prohibit the circumvention of technological protection measures, or "TPMs". Any such amendment will have profound negative consequences for security researchers and businesses that commercialize such research. The business community involved with security research and related services has a great deal at stake in this legislation, both economically and technologically. Despite these considerations, the government has yet to consult with us. We urge the government to take our concerns into account prior to implementing any such amendment. Legal protection for TPMs is the equivalent of making screw-drivers illegal because they can be used to break and enter. Good legislation targets the illegal act, not the legal tools the crook might use. Canada is already well-served by laws protecting copyright. Outlawing the technological tools - the screw-drivers of the technology community - undermines Canada's commitment to fostering an economy built on innovation and opportunity. Understand that the science and business of digital security implicates the practical application of circumvention technologies. To understand security threats, researchers must understand security weaknesses. We are not in the business of circumventing technological safeguards for the purposes of exploiting the weaknesses we find; rather, we are in the businesses of finding and addressing those weaknesses. In this way, our work offers crucial support to the business interests of those who seek to protect their copyrighted works through technology. Indeed, technological protection measures and digital rights management systems themselves are practical applications of the work of this research community. We observe that in other jurisdictions, rights holders have often sought to enforce anti-circumvention rights for reasons other than copyright protection. Anti-circumvention rights have anti-competitive applications. These have been well documented and should be familiar to you. We won't dwell on them here. More troubling from a public policy perspective, however, are those attempts to assert anti-circumvention rights to silence critical research into security holes. Such attempts are at base motivated by a desire to maintain control over security research in respect of particular platforms or applications. Centralized control over security research does not make for good public policy. Security weaknesses are best found - and addressed - when a variety of security researchers examine a platform or application. The odds of one party devising the best response to a security issue are slim; the likelihood of an optimal response improves significantly when a community of security researchers has the opportunity to examine and test a platform or application. Anti-circumvention laws throw a shroud of legal risk over that community, and dampen security research at the edges. Simply, anti-circumvention laws that provide for excessive control make for bad security policy. The American experience under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the "DMCA") should be instructive in this regard. Professor Ed Felton of Princeton University was threatened with litigation (as were conference organizers) for attempting to present his findings on security holes in the work of the Secure Digital Music Initiative industry working group. Dmitri Sklyarov, a Russian programmer, was jailed for travelling to the United States and presenting the results of his work on a software tool that could be used to read Adobe's "e-book" files. American security researchers are choosing to avoid research with DMCA implications. Global experts on security now avoid traveling to the United States. Richard Clarke, former White House cybersecurity and counterterrorism adviser, has observed that the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions have had a "chilling effect on vulnerability research." The DMCA has had a demonstrably negative impact on security research in the United States. Canada has historically been a global leader in the science of cryptography. Canada is now turning to apply that strength to the business of digital security. The Canadian government should support this emerging industry, not erect market barriers or create new risks of legal liability. In the late nineties, the Canadian government made online connectivity a priority with the goal of making Canada "the most connected nation in the world". Consistent with that goal, Canada released its Cryptography Policy in 1998, envisioning digital security as key to "building Canada's information economy and society", and making a commitment to fostering the development of the digital security business sector. In 1998, the Canadian government recognized the importance of this business sector to securing reliable electronic commerce. In the context of anti-circumvention laws, these considerations have barely merited a mention. Proponents of anti-circumvention laws protest that these laws do not target "legitimate" security research, and that laws may be crafted with exceptions for such research. With respect, the DMCA carries such exceptions. They have proven both inadequate and ineffective in protecting security researchers from threats of litigation. Moreover, such exceptions offer little security against the threat of litigation. Rights-holders have not hesitated to assert anti-circumvention rights against researchers to maintain control over public dissemination of security research implicating their applications and platforms, even where such claims have only the most tenuous basis in fact. Nonetheless, such threats create a "liability chill". Security researchers and businesses generally lack the time and resources to defend such claims, with the result that the mere threat achieves the claimant's objective. The mere threat of liability for circumvention is a mischief itself that may only be addressed by not creating the basis for the threat in the first place. In our view, the best policy would be to introduce no change to the law at all. Rights-holders are well protected by traditional rights under the Copyright Act. An infringement remains an infringement regardless of whether or not a TPM is circumvented. TPMs themselves provide a second layer of protection sufficient to deter all but the most sophisticated would-be infringers. Legally privileging TPMs would add a third layer of protection; however, we seriously question whether the marginal value of this legal protection outweighs the severe impairment it causes to legitimate security research. We welcome the opportunity to discuss the matters addressed in this letter with you. We look forward to being consulted by the government on future developments in this area. Yours truly, Brian O'Higgins Chief Technology Officer Third Brigade, Ltd. Brian Flood Chief Executive Officer VE Networks, Inc. Bob Young, Co-founder and Director, Red Hat, Inc. Founder and CEO of Lulu, Inc. Owner, Hamilton Tiger-Cats Football Team Hugh Ellis Chief Executive Officer Cinnabar Networks Inc. John Detombe Director AEPOS Technologies Corporation Austin Hill President Synomos Inc. John Alsop Founder and Chairman Borderware Technologies Inc. Michael Kouritzin Chief Executive Officer Random Knowledge Inc. Dr. Stefan Brands President Credentica Carl C. Bond President Innusec, Inc. Djenana Campara Chief Technology Officer Klocwork Inc. Randy Sutton, President Elytra Enterprises Inc. Professor Michael A. Geist Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law University of Ottawa Law School, Common Law Section ------ End of Forwarded Message ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 00:41:40 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Hollywood Hacking Bill Author Named Dem. Liaison From Declan's list ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Subject: "Hollywood Hacking Bill" Author Named as Democrat Liaison to Entertainment Industry From: Richard Forno This is beyond absurd. Howard Berman is the Congresscritter who, a few years ago, wanted to enact laws that would let the entertainment industry "hack" private computers in their quest for copyright investigations.....his proposed law would also indemnify the entertainment cartels if those actions resulted in problems for the folks being "hacked" -- even if the "hack" resulted in not finding any "infringing" materials. As of today, the Democrats have the glaringly-ignorant shill of the entertainment industry (Berman) working for the greedy entertainment industry itself. How very convenient for all sides. Except the public (and many artists) of course. Anyway, some info on the old Berman Bill that shows how his mind works: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-945923.html?tag=3Dfd_lede ... and the new press release from today ... Pelosi Appoints Berman as Chief Liaison to the Entertainment Industry http://democraticleader.house.gov/press/releases.cfm?pressReleaseID=886 Washington, D.C House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi today announced the appointment of California Congressman Howard L. Berman as chief liaison between the House Democratic Caucus and the entertainment industry. Berman, a senior California lawmaker who has worked closely and productively with the film industry for years, will hold a more regular and institutionalized dialogue with industry representatives on issues vital to those who make and market films, music, and other copyrighted materials. Berman is the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Courts, the Internet and Intellectual Property. "Howard Berman has long been a leader on copyright enforcement and stopping Internet piracy," Pelosi said. "He understands the business and creative interests of the entertainment industry, which comprises the largest and fastest growing sector of the U.S. economy and creates a surplus balance of trade. This appointment will put in place a process for even greater communication and mutual understanding between House Democrats and the entertainment industry." "Entertainment is my hometown industry," said Berman, "and it's one I've been working with closely for all the years I've been in Congress. I welcome this new way to emphasize its issues to the Democratic leadership." _______________________________________________ Politech mailing list Archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Moderated by Declan McCullagh (http://www.mccullagh.org/) John F. McMullen http://www.westnet.com/~observer ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 22:45:08 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cell Phones Do Much More Than Make Calls By MATT MOORE AP Business Writer HANOVER, Germany (AP) -- The mobile phone is a phone no more. The new models unveiled at the CeBIT technology show Wednesday let users do far more than just call a friend to catch up. How about sending them a brief film clip of you standing by a fountain in Rome? Or perhaps a photo of the Eiffel Tower with an image quality so fine it could be blown up and placed in a 10x14-inch frame. Between a new Samsung handset that sports a seven-megapixel camera _ better resolution than most nonprofessional digital cameras _ and a wide range of mobiles that download and stream music like an MP3 player, cell "phones" are now a lot more than just a keypad and three hours of talk time. The slew of new features on phones is an astounding leap from just two years ago, when an integrated camera that took fuzzy images was an attention-getter. And since 2002, music and mobiles has meant much more than just ringtones. All these new bells and whistles have become a big selling point, not just for the makers, but for the carriers who want to increase their revenue. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=47544259 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 22:47:06 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Patent Suit Advances on Federal Court Denial of Echostar ALVISO, Calif., March 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- TiVo Inc. (Nasdaq: TIVO), the creator of and a leader in television services for digital video recorders (DVRs), today announced that the federal district court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division has denied motions to dismiss and transfer TiVo's patent infringement case against Echostar Communications Corporation (ECC) and affiliated companies. In that case, TiVo has alleged that ECC and certain subsidiaries are violating a key TiVo patent (U.S. Patent No. 6,233,389 issued to TiVo in May 2001, known as the "Time Warp" patent). The defendants had sought to transfer the case out of Texas, and two of the defendants argued that they were not subject to jurisdiction in Texas. The Court denied both motions. Key TiVo inventions protected by this patent include a method for recording one program while playing back another; watching a show as it is recording; and a storage format that supports advanced capabilities -- such as pausing live television, fast-forwarding, rewinding, instant replays, and slow motion. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=47542335 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 21:53:56 -0500 Subject: Vonage Being Blocked -- Again Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=159400250 Vonage Being Blocked -- Again March 9, 2005 Vonage Holdings Corp. said it is investigating a new potential incident of its Voice over IP service being blocked, this time by a cable television company that also provides Internet services. By Paul Kapustka - Advanced IP Pipeline Vonage Holdings Corp. said it is investigating new potential incident of its Voice over IP service being blocked, this time by a cable television company that also provides Internet services. Brooke Schulz, Vonage's vice president for corporate communications, confirmed that the company is "investigating a new instance" of service interruption that appears to be another case of port blocking. Schulz said the incident involves Vonage customers who use high-speed Internet services provided by a cable operator, somewhere in the Midwest U.S. [.....] Over the past two weeks, industry sources who declined to be named said they had heard rumors that some Vonage customers in the Midwest were having their services blocked. On Wednesday, Schulz confirmed that Vonage is "investigating an instance [of service outages] on a cable operator's system in the Midwest." Full story at: http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=159400250 How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: cyklone006@gmail.com Subject: Phone Doesn't Disconnect Date: 9 Mar 2005 17:30:50 -0800 Hello. I am having problems with people -- usually telemarketers calling my home. When I hang up the phone, and wait a few seconds, and then pick it up again, they are still on the line. How is this done? Can I do something about it? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You need to wait a few more seconds. Give it about a full minute to make sure the line disconnects, but it usually should not take that long. And of course, make sure all of your numbers -- landline, cellular and VOIP are listed on the federal and (your) state 'do not call' lists as well. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 15:23:33 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: Shooting Victim Gets to Pay Phone A story dated yesterday got onto the WPVI-TV web site (channel 6, "Action News", Philadelphia), entitled "Shooting Outside Logan Restaurant". It says a man was shot and "He was able to walk to a nearby pay phone and call 911". I'm letting you know because of previous blurbs in this Digest about fewer pay phones due to cell phones being so popular. For as long as it's good, here is the reference: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/030805_nw_loganshooting.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 00:40:32 EST From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: "Broadcast Flag", was Re: My New DVR From Cable One kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net (Tony P.) wrote: > But if you read the FCC documents about it, they make it clear that > anyone with a little technical knowledge can easily defeat the DRM > functions. So have they given up on the (complicated but fairly robust) encryption/ authentication/key-revocation scheme for digital interconnects that was being bandied about in the beginning? (The actual OTA signal would have been in the clear in any case, but building an ATSC receiver probably takes more than a little technical knowledge and even then isn't what I'd call easy. Unless of course someone comes up with a good GNUradio cookbook. :) > The courts are going to slap down on the FCC anyhow. We live in hope ... Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:34:23 -0700 Organization: Disorganized In message Randal Hayes wrote: > Vonage, or even the VOIP environment are not unique here; for several > years some of the largest carriers have experienced outages during > some of their busiest periods due to scheduling non-emergency software > loads and upgrades during peak periods ... what idiocy! > Is common sense a thing of the past for some people, or is the belief > in performing quality work a thing of the past for some people ... or > both? Personally, I do most of the maintenance work on my servers during "peak hours" Why? Well, two reasons: 1) My system is redundant enough that users don't notice the outage. 2) If something blows up and I need assistance (usually in the form of a hardware failure in a remote data center), I can get that support during the day. At night it's hit and miss. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 07:03:05 GMT From: Brian Inglis Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday Reply-To: Brian.Inglis@SystematicSW.ab.ca Organization: Systematic Software On Wed, 09 Mar 2005 13:02:35 -0600 in comp.dcom.telecom, Randal Hayes wrote: > Vonage, or even the VOIP environment are not unique here; for several > years some of the largest carriers have experienced outages during > some of their busiest periods due to scheduling non-emergency software > loads and upgrades during peak periods ... what idiocy! > Is common sense a thing of the past for some people, or is the belief > in performing quality work a thing of the past for some people..or > both? It works, ship it ... we're all beta test sites now! Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis@CSi.com (Brian[dot]Inglis{at}SystematicSW[dot]ab[dot]ca) fake address use address above to reply ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 01:34:04 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications Randal Hayes wrote: > Is common sense a thing of the past for some people, or is the belief > in performing quality work a thing of the past for some people ... or > both? Maybe creative lying is more of a thing of the past. ;-) So far as I know the wireline LECs still do major generic loads at 200 AM on Saturday morning. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday, was: Vonage Date: 9 Mar 2005 12:06:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Tony P. wrote: > I'd like to know what part of $88 you consider reasonable. That's > what Verizon was getting from me for unlimited national/local. My Verizon charge for that is about $40 (with discount for combining cell phone), and also gives a package of features. FCC line cost, etc. extra but the total cost is much less than $88. There are other wireline competitors with cheap packages, too. Note that many people may be paying close to that already just to have a regional-wide free calling area. I had that it and it was another only $15 to go unlimited national. I don't make that many toll calls but it paid for me; plus I have the convenience of not watching the clock anymore or worrying about toll calls. I also can call back other callers so they don't run up their bill, so my friends save money too. A lot of people who use VOIP still keep a wireline in reserve or for other uses. There is still a cost for that. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management (MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35 credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the skills necessary to manage telecommunications networks, including data, video, and voice networks. The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum. Classes are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning. Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at 405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at http://www.mstm.okstate.edu ************************ In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #104 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Mar 10 17:50:04 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2AMo3A04466; Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:50:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:50:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503102250.j2AMo3A04466@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #105 TELECOM Digest Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:50:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 105 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New Orleans Installs Surveillance Cameras (Monty Solomon) LexisNexis: 32,000 Consumers' Data Stolen (Monty Solomon) U.S. Citizens' Data Possibly Compromised (Monty Solomon) Elite Computer Pirates Plead Guilty in Bootlegging Crackdown (M Solomon) Rejected Harvard Applicants say School's Reaction to Web Page (Solomon) MIT Says it Won't Admit Hackers (Monty Solomon) Drug-Error Risk at Hospitals Tied to Computers (Monty Solomon) QuickerTek 27db Transceiver for AirPort (Monty Solomon) Motorola Postpones iTunes Phone Debut (Monty Solomon) BT Strikes Long-Term Network Deal With Reuters (Telecom dailyLead USTA) Draytek Router Problem: Class C Address Only on LAN Interface (paulfoel) Long Distance Carrier Verification (Michael Muderick) Comunications ATA 186 to ATA 186 (Without Gatekeeper, CallManager)(SoGo) Vonage Outage Last Thursday (Randal Hayes) Motorola Says It Is Working on More iTunes Phones (Lisa Minter) LexisNexis Says 32,000 Profiles Stolen (Lisa Minter) Microsoft Gives First Key Details on New Xbox (Lisa Minter) AOL Jumps Into VoIP Service (Jack Decker) Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers (Joseph) Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers (Isaiah Beard) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday (Robert Bonomi) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday (Lisa Hancock) Re: Home PBX Info: Switching Between Landlines and VoIP (Robert Bonomi) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 07:28:57 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: New Orleans Installs Surveillance Cameras By Mary Foster, Associated Press | March 9, 2005 NEW ORLEANS -- The man marched down the street in daylight, armed with a paintball rifle that had been converted to shoot with lethal force. He then blasted a newly installed camera in hopes of ridding the drug-ridden neighborhood of police surveillance. But the shooter's image was saved on the camera's hard drive. "All it did was get him arrested," said New Orleans' chief technology officer, Greg Meffert, with a chuckle. "The camera immediately notified the police and tracked him until he was caught." And when they got him, they found he was wanted on a murder warrant. The arrest was the first success story from a new crime-fighting system of cameras that New Orleans is installing citywide. The bulletproof cameras can monitor an eight-block area, communicate with the authorities, and provide evidence in court. Police hope the system will catch criminals in the act and serve as a deterrent in a city long plagued by drugs and murders. http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/03/09/new_orleans_installs_surveillance_cameras/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 07:27:47 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: LexisNexis: 32,000 Consumers' Data Stolen By Jeffrey Goldfarb and Andy Sullivan LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Data broker LexisNexis on Wednesday said that identity thieves have gained access to profiles of 32,000 U.S. citizens, prompting calls for better consumer protections after a rash of similar break-ins. The U.S. Secret Service said it is investigating the incident, while a company spokeswoman said the FBI has also launched an investigation. The announcement comes amid heightened scrutiny of data brokers and other companies that handle consumer information, after rival ChoicePoint Inc. said last month that thieves had gained access to at least 145,000 consumer profiles. U.S. lawmakers plan at least two hearings over the coming week and are considering new regulations. LexisNexis, a subsidiary of Anglo-Dutch Reed Elsevier , said a billing complaint by a customer of its Seisint unit in the past week led to the discovery that an identity and password had been misappropriated. The information accessed included names, addresses, Social Security and driver's license numbers, but not credit histories, medical records or financial information. LexisNexis, which bought Seisint last year, said it is contacting the 32,000 people affected and offering them credit monitoring and other support to detect any identity theft. The company is also changing the way it handles passwords and other security features, said Kurt Sanford, president and CEO of the company's corporate and federal markets division. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/03/09/consumer_data_stolen_from_reed_elsevier/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For the complete report on this incident involving LexisNexis, see the article by Lisa Minter elsewhere in this issue of the Digest, and also review our supplementary news section http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 07:28:22 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S.Citizens' Data Possibly Compromised By Ellen Simon, Associated Press Writer | March 9, 2005 NEW YORK --Using stolen passwords from legitimate customers, intruders accessed personal information on as many as 32,000 U.S. citizens in a database owned by the information broker LexisNexis, the company said. The announcement Wednesday comes on the heels of a series of similar high-profile breaches, the most serious affecting another large data broker, ChoicePoint Inc. in which scores of identities were stolen. The ChoicePoint case, as well as other data losses including one affecting some 1.2 million federal employees with Bank of America charge cards, have prompted an outcry for federal oversight of a loosely regulated commercial sector. In the data-brokering business, sensitive data about nearly every adult American is bought and sold. The first in a series of Capitol Hill hearings are scheduled for Thursday. At LexisNexis, criminals found a way to compromise the logins and passwords of a handful of legitimate customers to get access to the database, said Kurt Sanford, the company's chief executive, told The Associated Press. The database that was breached, called Accurint, sells reports for $4.50 each that include an individual's Social Security number, past addresses, date of birth and voter registration information, including party affiliation. No credit history, medical records or financial information were accessed in the breach, LexisNexis parent company Reed Elsevier Group PLC said in a statement. The Accurint database is part of the Seisint unit, which LexisNexis bought in August. Sanford said a team examining Seisint's data security routines in February noticed abnormal usage patterns and suspicious billing on some accounts. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/03/09/us_citizens_data_possibly_compromised/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Also see the article by Lisa Minter in this issue of the Digest. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 07:27:50 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Elite Computer Pirates Plead Guilty in Bootlegging Crackdown By Matt Apuzzo, Associated Press Writer | March 8, 2005 HARTFORD, Conn. -- Three top members of a global computer piracy network admitted Thursday that they shuttled millions of dollars in computer games, movies and software around the world through a coded system of Web sites and chat rooms. The men pleaded guilty in U.S. District court to federal copyright charges, becoming the first Americans convicted in what the Justice Department said was the largest-ever investigation of software piracy. All said they made no money off the conspiracy and U.S. Attorney Kevin O'Connor said they considered themselves "the Robin Hoods of cyberspace." But investigators said the bootlegged software ended up on the streets of foreign countries, selling for pennies on the dollar. The investigation -- dubbed "Operation Higher Education" because many pirates use computers at universities -- spanned across the United States and about a dozen foreign countries. FBI agents in New Haven said the case broke open when they infiltrated the clandestine "warez" community on the Internet. http://www.boston.com/news/local/connecticut/articles/2005/03/08/feds_crack_down_on_internet_software_piracy_sites/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 07:29:20 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Rejected Harvard Applicants say School's Reaction to Web Excessive Rejected Harvard applicants say school's reaction to Web page "hack" excessive By Jay Lindsay, Associated Press Writer | March 8, 2005 BOSTON --His decision came late at night, with his laptop propped in front of him in bed. Instructions on a Web site promised business school applicants an early online look at whether they'd been accepted. Intrigued, he began typing. A minute later he'd accessed the Harvard Business School's admission site, though all he saw was a blank page. That split-second decision cost the 28-year-old New Yorker a chance to attend Harvard Business School this year. On Monday, Harvard became the second school, after Carnegie Mellon, to announce its blanket rejection of any applicant who used a method detailed in a BusinessWeek Online forum to try to get an early glimpse at admissions decisions in top business schools. On Tuesday, some of the 119 applicants denied Harvard admission because they visited the site said the school overreacted, and disputed that accessing a public Web page with their own identification numbers was either a "hack" or "unethical," as Harvard Business School Dean Kim Clark said in a statement. The applicant said he spent months completing Harvard's rigorous application process. http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/articles/2005/03/08/harvard_applicants_who_hacked_into_system_rejected_for_admission/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 07:28:24 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: MIT Says it Won't Admit Hackers Business school joins Harvard in decision By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | March 9, 2005 The dean of MIT's Sloan School of Management yesterday said Sloan will join Harvard Business School in rejecting applications from prospective students who hacked into a website last week to learn whether they had been admitted before they were formally notified. Stanford's Graduate School of Business, meanwhile, asked its own applicant-hackers to come forward and explain their actions, in a sign that the California school soon may take tougher action as well. Thirty-two applicants apparently sought an early peek at the confidential data in their admission files at Sloan, while 41 files were targeted at Stanford and 119 at Harvard. Harvard on Monday became the second victimized business school to say outright it would not admit proven hackers. The first was Carnegie Mellon's Tepper School of Business, where one admission file was violated. Those schools, along with Dartmouth's Tuck School of Business and Duke's Fuqua School of Business, all use an independent website run by ApplyYourself Inc. of Fairfax, Va., to receive applications and, in some cases, manage communications with applicants. After midnight last Wednesday, hundreds of business school admission files were targeted by computers around the globe when a hacker posted detailed instructions on a BusinessWeek Online forum. Most of the hackers saw only blank screens, though some who accessed admission files at Harvard viewed preliminary decision information. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/03/09/mit_says_it_wont_admit_hackers/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 07:28:47 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Drug-Error Risk at Hospitals Tied to Computers By Scott Allen, Globe Staff | March 9, 2005 Hospital computer systems that are widely touted as the best way to eliminate dangerous medication mix-ups can actually introduce many errors, according to the most comprehensive study of hazards of the new technology. The researchers, who shadowed doctors and nurses in a Philadelphia hospital for four months, found that some patients were put at risk of getting double doses of their medicine while others get none at all. Doctors at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania identified 22 types of mistakes they have made because of difficulty using computerized drug-ordering, such as failing to stop old medications when adding new ones or forgetting that the computer automatically suspended medications after surgery. Some doctors interviewed for the study said they made computer-related mistakes several times a week. The findings underscore the complexity of improving safety in US hospitals, where the Institute of Medicine estimates that errors of all kinds kill 44,000 to 98,000 patients a year. The University of Pennsylvania researchers stressed that computers hold great potential, but said many systems are overhyped and hard to use, prompting one Los Angeles hospital to turn off its drug-ordering system altogether. http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2005/03/09/drug_error_risk_at_hospitals_tied_to_computers/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 12:21:10 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: QuickerTek 27db Transceiver for AirPort http://www.quickertek.com/27dbtrans.html 27db Transceiver for AirPort Base Station; Adds up to 1/2 Mile Line-of-Sight Range! If you have Wi-Fi range issues, this is the solution for you . Plus, the user can add one of these to each end of the network if needed. The transceiver is also great for point-to-point systems, college dorms, distant AP's like house boats trying to connect to wireless access points etc. Typical installations would include classrooms or fixing range problems with your ITunes and AirPort Express by adding this to the PowerBook or Desktop. The 27db transceiver operates on all 2.4GHz, Wi-Fi systems. The transceiver is Wi-Fi compliant, supporting both 802.11g and 802.11b. and works with both OS9.x and OS10.x systems. This product is designed especially for Apple's Airport Extreme wireless systems and allows the maximum power output allowed by the FCC. Apple wireless products have RF output of 30mW; our product is 500mW. This transceiver works on Apple Base Stations (Graphite, Snow, and both Extremes models). It comes with a 2.2Dbi antenna, but all other QuickerTek omni and directional Base Station antennas can be added. http://www.quickertek.com/27dbtrans.html http://www.quickertek.com/pr/2005_08_02_27DbiTrans.pdf http://www.quickertek.com/faq.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 12:23:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Motorola Postpones iTunes Phone Debut By MATT MOORE AP Business Writer HANOVER, Germany (AP) -- Motorola Inc. postponed plans Thursday to unveil a cell phone that can buy and play songs from Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes download service, a sudden decision which may reflect tensions with cellular companies who also want to sell music to mobile phone users. The company briefed reporters on the new offering earlier in the week and planned to unveil the phone at the big CeBIT technology show here. Motorola's two-story exhibition booth included a display of iMacs running iTunes, but the new phones weren't there. Motorola spokeswoman Monica Rohleder said in Chicago that the company remains in discussions with a number of wireless carriers regarding the first iTunes phone and will announce it "when it's ready to go," close to its expected release time this summer. She asserted that the last-minute change in plans was no reflection of a dispute with carriers who offer Motorola phones in their handset lineups. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=47560470 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 13:05:15 EST From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: BT Strikes Long-term Network Deal With Reuters Telecom dailyLead from USTA http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=19974&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * BT strikes long-term network deal with Reuters BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Verizon sets fiber rollout in Comcast's back yard * Motorola delays iTunes phone announcement * Vonage alleges more port-blocking * AT&T to forge ahead with SoIP plans despite SBC deal * Report: Africa's mobile phone market booming * Nokia may snare lead in 3G race before long * Comcast gets access to CA with Motorola deal USTA SPOTLIGHT * Telecom Crash Course -- The must-have book for telecom professionals EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Sony bets big on mobile PlayStation REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * Two names emerge as possible replacements for Michael Powell * Jurors in Ebbers trial seek clarification, guidance Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=19974&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: paulfoel Subject: Draytek Router Problem - Class C Address Only on LAN Interface? Date: 10 Mar 2005 06:31:53 -0800 Now this is really weird ... Set up network Draytek 2600+ as ADSL router connecting to broadband. Local LAN port was given the address of 10.0.0.254 with a netmask of 255.255.0.0. This is because we have all the DHCP stuff on 10.0.1.x, servers on 10.0.2.x, printers on 10.0.3.x etc. Should work, yeh ? Trouble is if you pinged say 10.0.2.10 from the Draytek you got 50% packet loss ... Speaking to Draytek it seems they only support class C addresses on the LAN port. It totally ignores the first three octets and only looks at the last ... So, if we've got a server 10.0.2.10, and a DHCP allocated PC with 10.0.1.10 the router gets confused when trying to ping 10.0.2.10 because it only looks at the last .10. Got round it by changed the DHCP range to start at 50 (there are less than 50 servers etc) to make sure the last octet is unique on the lan. Pretty disappointed with the draytek router. We tried a cheap netgear router and this handled the subnets fine ... Any comments ??? ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:57:28 -0500 From: Michael Muderick Subject: Long Distance Carrier Verification Has anyone tried 700-555-4141 lately to verify long distance carrier? It's still a published number, but in the Phila. area, I keep getting a busy signal. Is there a new number available? Michael Muderick ------------------------------ From: frsanchez@gmail.com (SoGo) Subject: Comunications ATA 186 to ATA 186 (Without Gatekeeper/CallManager) Date: 10 Mar 2005 08:11:00 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have two customer. Both connected to Internet (ADSL) Each customer has an IP fixes and an equipment with ATA 186. The configuration would be: Customer 1: extension 1000 Customer 2: extension 2000 When client 1 dialing 2000, they call to VoIP phone of customer 2 ... and vice versa. This simple configuration can be made without having to use a Gatekeeper (Asterisk, CallManager, ...) The solution seems to be in that ATA of customer 1 puts as gateway ATA of customer 2, and vice versa. I was not able to find answers in the Cisco documentation. Would know somebody like doing it? Would you have any url/link that explained it? I really need help. Thanks. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:59:25 -0600 From: Randal Hayes Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday DevilsPGD wrote about Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday on Wed, 09 Mar 2005 17:34:23 -0700 > Personally, I do most of the maintenance work on my servers during > "peak hours" > Why? Well, two reasons: > 1) My system is redundant enough that users don't notice the outage. > 2) If something blows up and I need assistance (usually in the form of a hardware failure in a remote data center), > I can get that support during the day. At night it's hit and miss. A) We're talking about carriers here ... not internal support for a company. B) From a corporate/institutional standpoint, for a scheduled upgrade, I always, and I mean always, have all my ducks in a row with the vendor such that I've never, in 23 years in this business, had a problem getting immediate vendor support, even at 4:00 AM; it's called extremely good planning. Randy Hayes ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 2005 03:45:38 -0800 From: Lisa Minter Subject: otorola Says It Is Working on More iTunes Phones HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) - Motorola said on Thursday it is working on several mobile phones that are compatible with Apple's iTunes music service and some of which can store eight hours of songs. One model, the E790, was initially scheduled for a European launch this summer, but that introduction has been delayed after discussions with operators, Motorola said at the fringes of CeBIT, the world's biggest electronics fair here. The model is a surprise as it was originally planned ahead of the ROKR, which is also a music phone with iTunes and which Motorola has banged the drum about, but has not yet shown. The ROKR is expected to be unveiled later this month at a music event in Florida. Rival Sony Ericsson showed its first phone with a built-in Sony Walkman last week. "Over the course of the year, you'll see more (iTunes) devices," said Alberto Moriondo, Motorola's global director of entertainment for mobile devices. Major handset makers have started collaborating with online digital music stores. Sony Ericsson said its first Walkman phone will be on the market around August or September. Nokia which said it will use Microsoft's music technology alongside other standards, has yet to unveil a dedicated music phone. Motorola hopes to benefit from its association with Apple, which makes the world's most popular digital player iPod and runs the world's most popular music store, iTunes Music Store. "The Walkman for the 21st century is the Apple brand," Moriondo said. The fact that some iTunes phones can store eight hours of music or more is different from initial announcements last year that Motorola phones would only carry a small number of songs. Motorola's E790 handset will work on second-generation mobile networks, and not the faster, third-generation (3G) systems. Motorola at CeBIT also unveiled two more phones for third-generation networks, one medium-priced flip phone model and a slightly higher-priced handset which has taken some design features from the popular RAZR model. The Schaumberg, Illinois-based company has said it will launch 16 handsets for 3G networks this year. Motorola also introduced new flip phone handsets for the entry-level segment of the market, to be available in the second half of 2005. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters News Service. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 2005 03:46:49 -0800 From: Lisa Minter Subject: LexisNexis Says 32,000 Profiles Stolen By Jeffrey Goldfarb and Andy Sullivan LONDON/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Data broker LexisNexis on Wednesday said that identity thieves have gained access to profiles of 32,000 U.S. citizens, prompting calls for better consumer protections after a rash of similar break-ins. The U.S. Secret Service and the FBI said they were investigating the incident. The announcement comes amid heightened scrutiny of data brokers and other companies that handle consumer information, after rival ChoicePoint Inc. said last month that thieves had gained access to at least 145,000 consumer profiles. U.S. lawmakers plan at least two hearings over the coming week and are considering new regulations. LexisNexis, a subsidiary of Anglo-Dutch Reed Elsevier (ELSN.AS), said a billing complaint by a customer of its Seisint unit in the past week led to the discovery that an identity and password had been misappropriated. The information accessed included names, addresses, Social Security and driver's license numbers, but not credit histories, medical records or financial information. LexisNexis, which bought Seisint last year, said it is contacting the 32,000 people affected and offering them credit monitoring and other support to detect any identity theft. The company is also changing the way it handles passwords and other security features, said Kurt Sanford, president and CEO of the company's corporate and federal markets division. "LexisNexis sincerely regrets these circumstances and continues to work aggressively and expeditiously to minimize the impact of this incident to consumers and our customers," Sanford said in a statement. A spokesman declined further comment. Seisint, based in Boca Raton, Florida, uses property records and other public data to build profiles on millions of U.S. consumers, which it sells to law-enforcement agencies and financial institutions. A Seisint-created criminal-information database called Matrix came under fire when it provided government officials with the names of 120,000 people whose personal information supposedly fit the profile of a terrorist. GROWING PROBLEM Identity theft is a growing problem as criminals use stolen personal information to run up charges, costing companies and individuals billions of dollars each year. Until recently identity thieves could find credit-card numbers and other sensitive information on customer receipts, bills and other easy-to-obtain forms, but have recently turned their attention to companies that hold such information in bulk. "As the value of what you're trying to steal increases, so does the effort that the bad guys will put into it," said Paul Beechey, a security expert with UK defense group QinetiQ. Along with LexisNexis and ChoicePoint, financial group Bank of America Corp. and discount-store owner Retail Ventures Inc have reported lost or stolen personal information on customers in recent weeks. The only reason the public is aware of these incidents is because of a California law that requires companies to disclose them, said Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, a Washington public-interest group. Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson who has introduced a bill that would impose tougher regulations on the industry, learned about the Seisint breach Wednesday morning as he spoke about identity theft on the Senate floor. "Are we going to do anything about it? I sure hope so, and I hope that we are going to have Congress start to take action," Nelson said. Reed Elsevier, which bought Seisint in July 2004 for $745 million, reaffirmed financial targets in the wake of the theft. The company's shares in London closed down 1.87 percent at 537 1/2 pence. Though Seisint represents only about 1.5 percent of Reed Elsevier's revenues, analysts said the situation could harm management's credibility and acquisition track record. (Additional reporting by Emma Thomasson and Theo Kolker in Amsterdam and Adam Pasick in London) NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters Limited/Tech Tuesday. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: So 32 thousand people get their records ripped off due to the clumsiness of Lexis/Nexis and their management's main concern is 'this may make it harder for *them* to aquire still another company'. My heart really bleeds for them. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 2005 03:47:32 -0800 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Microsoft Gives First Key Details on New Xbox In a speech at the Game Developers Conference here, J Allard, the Microsoft executive overseeing the software development tools for the new Xbox, said the new streamlined interface would help draw more users to the platform. "We've got to create a consistent experience so that consumers can enter our worlds much more easily," he told a packed convention center audience. "If we want to get to 10 or 20 million subscribers we've got to create some consistency." Microsoft is expected to release the new Xbox in time for the 2005 holidays, but the company has kept mum so far on both timing and the name of the new device. Among the features Allard demonstrated was an on-screen "Gamer Card" that gives information other players can see on a gamer's location, achievements in various games, time playing specific games and level of skill. Other features include a custom music player and a "store" where players could make small purchases, for pennies or a few dollars, of new characters, parts for virtual racing cars and the like. The theme of Allard's speech was the "HD Era," which he described as a time when all games are in high-definition, players are constantly connected through mobile phones, instant messaging and the Internet and gamers can personalize their environments to suit their tastes. "The HD consumer needs more than a hi-definition Super Bowl," Allard said. "The opportunity is real and now, but make no mistake we have the power to blow it." Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters Limited. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 13:32:50 -0500 Subject: AOL Jumps Into VoIP Service http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/000548.html Posted by Aoife McEvoy Tuesday, March 08, 2005, 02:27 PM (PST) Big news from one of the big dogs: AOL is yet another company to jump on the Voice-over-IP bandwagon (albeit a little late in the game). AOL's setup will mimic the services from companies like Vonage, VoicePulse, Lingo, and BroadVoice, where you connect an adapter to your broadband router and telephone. You don't even need to turn on your PC to reach out and call someone. Full story at: http://blogs.pcworld.com/staffblog/archives/000548.html How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 06:11:58 -0800 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 9 Mar 2005 08:56:41 -0800, Dean wrote: > A while back some on this list engaged in a lively debate about cell > phone radiation risks. This article may have some information of > interest to those of you who think this issue isn't dead yet. They've brought out this pony for a couple decades now and haven't found anything. Why should we believe this latest scare? ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 14:51:37 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Dean wrote: > A while back some on this list engaged in a lively debate about cell > phone radiation risks. This article may have some information of > interest to those of you who think this issue isn't dead yet. > The cell phone industry: Big Tobacco 2.0? > By Molly Wood, senior editor, CNET.com > Tuesday, March 8, 2005 Oh, C|Net. Now we KNOW it's quality journalism. Consider that Ms. Wood readily admits she has an agenda (she has an axe to grind with cell phone manufacturers over what she perceives as "iron-clad control over phone releases and pricing, its ever-lengthening contracts, and the annoying habit it has of crippling Bluetooth phones so that [she] can't use them the way [she wants] to"). I would thus take this with a heavy handful of salt. E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 16:27:20 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Randal Hayes wrote: > Whenever a communications technology outage is reported and the cause > is attributed to some problem with a software load or other > maintenance work performed *in the middle of a workday* I always ask > myself, "What were they thinking, performing this type of work during > a busy period?!?" Methinks the visible problems do _not_ occur *during* the loading of the new software or other maintenance work. Rather, that the problem manifests itself only "when the conditions are right" to provoke the failure. Which, not surprisingly generally occurs during times of peak activity. And, that once the manifestation is apparent, the "cause of the problem" is traced back to a flaw in the new software or other maintenance work. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday Date: 10 Mar 2005 08:40:52 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Randal Hayes wrote: > Whenever a communications technology outage is reported and the cause > is attributed to some problem with a software load or other > maintenance work performed *in the middle of a workday* I always ask > myself, "What were they thinking, performing this type of work during > a busy period?!?" When the Bell System was trying out prototype ESS gear, they had a real central office served by their new switch. They had to make some changes and planned to do so at 3am. However, they hesitated about taking the switch down at that time, since if a call did come through, it likely would've been an emergency. Sure enough, a call did come up and it was indeed an emergency. The engineers realized 24 hr service had to be truly 24 hour service. I don't know about today, but ESS was originally built with two CPUs. One was handling calls and one was reserved in case of failure or to do maintenance. Early ESS turned out to be extremely reliable -- the longest outage was on account of a failed air conditioner. (IIRC this was the Morris IL test). One of things the big Bell System was able to do was 'beta test' new hardware and software under very controlled conditions before rolling it to the whole country. A small community would be selected, residents notified and trained accordingly, and the system tested. Not everything passed the test -- certain call features weren't popular and their initial tone ringers were disliked. The experience the engineers gained from seeing and maintaining their switch in real service serving real people was invaluable. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Home PBX Info: Switching Between Landlines and VoIP Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 12:51:18 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Lee Sweet wrote: > I've got an application that may apply to many with VoIP. I've got > two home landlines (one for myself, and one for my wife). I also have > a Vonage line for LD and Fax. We are keeping the landlines for the > usual reasons, including inability to port, E-911, etc. > Now, what I want to do is have all outbound LD calls go out on the > Vonage line automatically. Right now, I have a separate cordless > phone for that line, but that's not the optimal answer! :-) \ > I'd like to have the various corded and cordless phones and the three > lines hooked to some sort of home PBX where, either by dialing the > required '1' (best answer) or perhaps an '8', calls are connected to > the Vonage line. Else, they go out the (correct) landline. (I assume > each handset could know its 'proper' outbound landline for local > traffic if each input phone jack on the PBX can be programmed to use > the appropriate outbound line.) > Now, before PAT jumps in with his PBXtra recommendation :-) , I've > discussed this with Mike Sandman, and he really doesn't recommend it > for this application. > I'll bet a lot of people have Vonage as an extra LD/Fax line, still > have landlines, and would like to do this. > Any recommendations/pointers about home PBX info? Thanks! Any _real_ PBX can do what you're looking for. With minimal systems, you implement an outside line access code for each line -- say '7' for His, '8' for Hers, and '9' for long distance. Smarter systems support 'call routing', where the outgoing line used is selected by the first digit(s) of the number being called. This allows you to route international calls differently from domestic long distance, handle different areacodes differently, handle toll-free calls differently from toll calls, etc., etc. As mentioned in another response, the lowest cost approach is Asterix. free software, an old PC (a 486 box is plenty fast enough), and some inexpensive 'line cards' for the telephony interfaces. More features and capabilities than you can *possibly* use, but you don't pay anything for those "surplus" capabilities. I've only played with it a *little* bit -- don't know off-hand if it will do 'call routing' on a per extension basis out of the box. BUT, if it doesn't, it would be a fairly simple matter for a programmer to _add_ that capability -- one of the *big* advantages of a system where you have the source code. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #105 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Mar 11 00:35:18 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2B5ZH706941; Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:35:18 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:35:18 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503110535.j2B5ZH706941@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #106 TELECOM Digest Fri, 11 Mar 2005 00:35:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 106 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Google Lets Users Customize News Site (Lisa Minter) Online Payment Company Settles Privacy Charges (Lisa Minter) Jail Sentence For Phone Line "Denial of Service" (Danny Burstein) FCC to Cellcos: Clean up Your Bills and Invoices (Danny Burstein) Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (emb120skw@aol.com) Technion (Choreboy) Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification (No Spam) Re: Drug Error Risk Tied to Computers (LB) Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification (bhamilton) Re: Phone Doesn't Disconnect (bhamilton) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in USA? (bhamilton) Re: Home PBX and VoIP Tie-In (Lee Sweet) 107-Year-Old Woman From Independence (Wesrock@aol.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 10 Mar 2005 19:10:13 -0800 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Google Lets Users Customize News Site SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Web search leader Google Inc. on Thursday said it added tools to its news site that lets users customize the stories they see. The move from Silicon Valley-based Google and Microsoft Corp.'s MSN Internet unit added features to make it easier for their users to create personalized welcome pages tailored with the information they want to receive. With the new tools, users of Google News can create customized pages on the site that gathers news stories from around the Web, the company said. Google News users can now prioritize existing news topics such as top stories, health, entertainment or sports to change the look of the site's front page. Users also can create new categories to capture news stories that contain certain key words. Google News is available on mobile phones and handheld devices that can read Web pages. News customization is now available only on personal computers. Separately, Yahoo announced on Thursday that it had given its mobile users the ability to access all of their personalized My Yahoo headlines and the first part of related stories, including those that come from RSS and Atom feeds, on most mobile phones and handheld devices in the United States. My Yahoo recently added support for open content syndication standards like Really Simple Syndication and Atom, which allow users to receive content from sources such as news organizations and blogs. Google gets the lion's share of its revenue from Web search advertising, but does not show ads on its news site. "It's something that we'll consider. We're not making any decisions at this time," Director of Consumer Web Products Marissa Mayer said when asked whether the company plans to add ads to its news site. Google's news aggregation site is still in testing as the company builds out its features. Mayer added that Google was not trying to offer a personalized home page like those from competitors, which allow users to view news or information such as horoscopes or stock quotes and quickly connect to other services such as e-mail. "We're not trying to make this be your one-stop shop on the Web," Mayer said. Shares of Google closed down $1.37, or 0.8 percent, to $79.98 on the Nasdaq. Yahoo shares finished off 41 cents, or 1.3 percent to $31.91 also on Nasdaq. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters News Service. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: 10 Mar 2005 19:12:15 -0800 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Online Payment Company Settles Privacy Charges WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An Internet payment company has agreed to return the money it earned from selling a list of nearly 1 million customers to telemarketers and junk mailers without permission, federal regulators said on Thursday. Utah-based CartManager International sold the names, addresses, phone numbers and purchase history of consumers who used its "shopping cart" software to make purchases on thousands of Web sites, the Federal Trade Commission said. Many of those Web sites told visitors that any personal information they provided would be kept private, the FTC said. CartManager said that it would retain "full ownership" of consumer data, but buried that notice in a lengthy online agreement and did not explain how it intended to use that information. CartManager parent company Vision I Properties LLC agreed to pay back the $9,000 it earned from the sale of customer data and clearly disclose when it intends to sell customer data in the future. The company faces increased penalties if does not abide by the agreement. CartManager was not immediately available for comment. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters Limited/Tech Tuesday. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Jail Sentence for Phone Line "Denial of Service" Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 21:17:30 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC Fascinating ... could this be extended to spammers? Please? Looks close enough to be worth a looksee ... "Ex-GOP Party Head Charged in Phone Jamming" "By ERIK STETSON Associated Press Writer March 10, 2005, 1:23 PM EST" "CONCORD, N.H. The former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican Party was sentenced Thursday to seven months in prison for jamming Democratic telephone lines during the 2002 election. "Chuck McGee pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to make anonymous calls with the intent to annoy or harass. He was also fined $2,000 and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service." ... "The computer-generated calls -- more than 800 in all -- lasted for about an hour and a half and also disrupted a union phone line." rest at (watch for line wrap): http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-gop-phone-jamming,0,1684971,print.story?coll=sns-ap-nationworld-headlines [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I am not sure if they would warrant _jail_ time or not. It would depend on the judge's interpretation of the facts; most spammers and/or telemarketers simply go through a list of email addresses and/or phone numbers. A nusiance yes, but not the sort of willful and deliberate behavior of Chuck McGee. Or even if you say that spammers/telemarketers are a little bit deliberate and willful, they do not single out one person or organization as this man did. I am reminded of the same situation happening to Jerry Falwell's "Moral Majority" organization, in Lynchburg, VA several years ago. Someone living in the Atlanta area programmed his computer to dial the 800 number for Falwell exactly once per minute, around the clock for several weeks. The phone room operators in Lynchburg kept receiving these 'dead calls' (total silence) but because of the volume of calls, no one detected anything unusual, just that they had a 'lost call', i.e. a call where the caller 'hung up' (so they thought) before an operator was available to take the call. Finally an operator during the slower overnight hours wised up to the fact that these spurious 'lost calls' were coming once per minute at times when there was absolutely no reason for them at all ... Their first thought was to blame the 'telephone company' and a call to the Bell repair techs brought a couple of techs out to investigate. This was a very large account for Bell, after all, with inbound 800 traffic totalling several hundred thousand dollars per month. The techs wanted to appease the customer, and they got in that centrex ACD (automatic call distributor) cabinet and over a couple days tried to isolate the problem. Their main hassle was it was very difficult to 'busy out' certain lines to test; the volume of 'regular' calls was so heavy the techs had a hard time getting a line isolated to busy it out, there was one seizure after another, often times several seizures at the same instant. Finally, Bell came to the conclusion there was nothing wrong with the customer premise equipment. About the same time, someone on Dr. Falwell's staff in charge of reconciling and paying the phone bill each month noticed that the same phone number was showing up 'quite a lot of the time', and Bell started looking in that direction, still trying to appease the customer. Telco back-tracked it through AT&T to Atlanta, and telco there filled in the blanks, and when telco security representatives and Atlanta Police showed up with a search warrant, they found the computer busy at its task, dialing 800-MoralMajority once per minute, sitting there several seconds, then disconnecting and doing it again. Bell told Falwell they would write it off as long as he (Falwell) okayed them filing charges. If he would not file charges, they they would sue him for payment instead. Falwell agreed to let the telco handle it for him (obviuously!) and the total damage was a little over a million dollars in bogus 800 charges, over the several months it had been going on. I guess the guy wound up getting a jail term of six months or so, and had to make a couple thousand dollars in restitution as part of his parole agreement. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: FCC to Cellcos: Clean up Your Bills and Invoices Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 17:12:02 -0500 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC "FCC Extends Truth-in-Billing Rules to Wireless Phones; Seeks Comment on Additional Measures to Increase Ability of Consumers to Make Informed Choices ... "Federal Communications Commission has expanded the federal consumer protection rules that apply to consumers=D5 wireless phone bills. It has also asked for comment on additional measures to facilitate the ability of telephone consumers to make informed choices among competitive telecommunications service offerings. "The actions come in response to consumer concerns with the billing practices of wireless and other interstate providers, outstanding issues from the FCC=D5s 1999 Truth-in-Billing Order and a petition filed by the National Association of State Utility Consumer Advocates (NASUCA). rest at: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257319A1.txt [a] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257319A1.doc [b] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257319A1.pdf [c] with further info at: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257319A2.txt [a] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257319A2.doc [b] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257319A2.pdf [c] and http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257319A3.txt [a] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257319A3.doc [b] http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257319A3.pdf [c] [a] mangled ascitt/txt [b] Word Doc [c] pdf (Most FCC material is available in all three ways. URLs are identical except for trailing extension.) _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: emb120skw@aol.com Subject: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack Date: 10 Mar 2005 19:21:37 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, I would like to wire one jack for two lines. Here is the setup of the wires after opening the jack. The red screw terminal has two blue and 1 orange wires connected to it. The green screw terminal has 2 white/blue and 1 white/orange wire connected to it. I'm just curious as to why there are 3 wires connected per terminal. The yellow an black screw terminals are not connected to any wires. Now what should I do to be able to access a second line? Thank you! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Red/green is traditionally one pair; and yellow/black is traditionally the second pair. You want to use the unused yellow/black screw terminals for your second line. Can you tell us more about the _type of phone instrument_ currently in use on your (I presume) working single line? With no other knowledge it is difficult to answer your question; was this/is this part of a business phone arrangment? Does the pair which is 'wired' at present go to a working instrument? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Choreboy Subject: Technion Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 19:18:35 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com This afternoon I rushed into the room to answer a call on the third ring. "This is Tell Nants calling on behalf of Bell South in regards to telemarketing. Sorry we missed you. If you have any questions, call 1-866..." It's pretty bad when somebody programs a robot to call homes and hang up without saying what it's about. The call came from 954 443 9404, which is Technion Communications. On the web I've found complaints that their telemarketing robots will bombard a Bell South customer day after day. Apparently the law doesn't apply if the victim has a business relationship with the client, in this case Bell South. Two hours later I found a similar message on my answering machine, again telling me to call Bell South at the 866 number. Because the robot was programmed start speaking immediately, I didn't get the whole message. That could lure the victim into calling in case it was important. (On the web I've found a document where Technion argues to the FCC that the law doesn't apply if they can lure the victim into making the call.) It seems like harassment to me. Can I do anything to stop it? Choreboy ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:12:52 -0500 From: No Spam Subject: Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification At 05:50 PM 3/10/05, Michael Muderick wrote to inquire: > Has anyone tried 700-555-4141 lately to verify long distance carrier? > It's still a published number, but in the Phila. area, I keep getting > a busy signal. Is there a new number available? > Michael Muderick I'm sure someone will chime in with the 'official' word, but in practice I've always used 700-555-4141 as the inTER-lata PIC verification, and 700-555-4242 as the inTRA-lata PIC verification (not applicable in all markets). That having been said, your carrier of choice still has to have translations set up for that to work. I believe historically the LEC's would send anything in NPA 700 to the PIC'd carrier. It worked from my home phone about two months ago (Philly suburban), and it does work from my Focal (clec) provided service here as well. The other thing you can do is try 'double 0' to get to the PIC'd LD operator. That might tell you something, but if the PIC'd carrier is a reseller, you could end up anywhere. Good luck! Joshua my opinions are my own and not necessarily those of my employer but sometimes we agree ------------------------------ From: LB@notmine.com Subject: Re: Drug-Error Risk at Hospitals Tied to Computers Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:41:59 -0500 Monty Solomon wrote: > By Scott Allen, Globe Staff | March 9, 2005 > Hospital computer systems that are widely touted as the best way to > eliminate dangerous medication mix-ups can actually introduce many > errors, according to the most comprehensive study of hazards of the > new technology. The researchers, who shadowed doctors and nurses in a > Philadelphia hospital for four months, found that some patients were > put at risk of getting double doses of their medicine while others get > none at all. > Doctors at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania identified > 22 types of mistakes they have made because of difficulty using > computerized drug-ordering, such as failing to stop old medications > when adding new ones or forgetting that the computer automatically > suspended medications after surgery. Some doctors interviewed for the > study said they made computer-related mistakes several times a week. > The findings underscore the complexity of improving safety in US > hospitals, where the Institute of Medicine estimates that errors of > all kinds kill 44,000 to 98,000 patients a year. > The University of Pennsylvania researchers stressed that computers > hold great potential, but said many systems are overhyped and hard to > use, prompting one Los Angeles hospital to turn off its drug-ordering > system altogether. > http://www.boston.com/yourlife/health/other/articles/2005/03/09/drug_error_risk_at_hospitals_tied_to_computers/ Some of those problems are the result of poor design and/or programming as well as poor testing and quality control. LB ------------------------------ From: bham Subject: Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification Date: 10 Mar 2005 19:57:18 -0800 If you are getting a busy signal this means that there is most likely trouble with your local phone company. Whenever you call that number and you get the name of your long distance company or some other type of message then the trouble is usually with your long distance carrier. I would call your local phone company's repair line and advise them that you are getting a busy signal on the 700 number and they can check the routing for you. This is really a problem if you are getting a fast busy which you didn't indicate. ------------------------------ From: bham Subject: Re: Phone Doesn't Disconnect Date: 10 Mar 2005 20:01:26 -0800 Normally should take between 3-15 seconds to disconnect a call. If trouble persists, disconnect all phones except for one and see if it still happens. If it doesn't happen anymore the trouble is with one of the phones you unhooked. If you are still having the trouble see if you get your dialtone back after 15 seconds. If not, call repair service at your local phone company to have your line tested to make sure nothing is wrong. There are a number of issues that could cause this type of problem that an electronic line test might find out. ------------------------------ From: bham Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Date: 10 Mar 2005 20:05:22 -0800 The bells are totally digital. I was told a few years ago that US West (Qwest) had the last XBAR offices around in Wyoming and now those are gone. Most large telcos are now in the process converting their older 1ESS switches to either 5ESS or DMS. ------------------------------ From: Lee Sweet Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 16:57:47 -0500 Subject: Re: Home PBX and VoIP Tie-in Soren Rathje responded to me: > Lee Sweet wrote: [snip] > Now, what I want to do is have all outbound LD calls go out on the > Vonage line automatically. Right now, I have a separate cordless > phone for that line, but that's not the optimal answer! :-) Soren Rathjes said ... The short answer is: Asterisk (www.voip-info.org/tiki-index.php?page=Asterisk) > 88 > and Lee Sweet adds: > You took the words out of my about-to-reply mouth, and thanks for the > added sourceforge info! Last night I google'd "home pbx" and > Asterisk and Digium were near the top. By purchasing one FXS > (station) and one FXO (telco analog line) card for a PC, I figure I > can do all I want. Sounds great from what I've read, and this week I'll download the tarball and look at the docs. Thanks for the second opinion! (And, for PAT's response re PBXtra, it could *almost* do what I want, but I need CLID info, and that's not there.) Lee Sweet Datatel, Inc. Manager of Telephony Services and Information Security How higher education does business Voice: 703.968.4661 Fax: 703.968.4625 Cell: 703.932.9425 lee@datatel.com www.datatel.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The way I get Caller-ID was by first suspending the DISA (the PBXtra was otherwise grabbing calls on the first half-ring and providing its own ringing tone meaning caller-ID never had a chance to get transmitted (between first and second rings). You suspend DISA by using program code 508000 and another string of numbers, then 'saving' the program code with 50911. Henceforth the line(s) just ring until they get answered. To get the caller-ID I tapped both incoming lines (Prairie Stream and Vonage) into an AT&T two-line splitter and sent the output to the (1) single caller-ID display unit and (2) a common audible or 'side ringer'. By suspending the DISA (thus preventing the PBXtra from doing 'call supervision' it also permits me to use my _own_ answering machine/voicemail (which cuts in after a reasonable number of rings) rather than having PBXtra grab the incoming call on the first ring and processing it itself and the two CO's (Vonage and Prairie Stream) thinking the call was answered. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 18:48:32 EST Subject: 107-Year-old Woman From Independence Pat, Not telecom related at all, as far as I know, but on the front page of the Oklahoman Today there was a photo of a 107-year-old woman, now in an old folks home in McLoud, Oklahoma, who was born in Independence in 1898. It was her birthday party. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com wleathus@yahoo.com ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #106 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Mar 11 20:53:29 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2C1rTr16089; Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:53:29 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:53:29 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503120153.j2C1rTr16089@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #107 TELECOM Digest Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:52:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 107 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson NEC NEAX IPX (phillip) Mike Wendland: Phone Over Internet is Last Nail in (Jack Decker) Michael Powell on Charlie Rose Tonight 3/11/05 (Monty Solomon) Remote Physical Device Fingerprinting (Monty Solomon) FCC Approves National Standard For Cell Phone Bills (Telecom dailyLead) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (LB@notmine.com) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (Clark W. Griswold, Jr.) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (Robert Bonomi) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (Carl Navarro) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (Brad Houser) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (John Beaman) Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification (Dave Garland) Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification (Bill Matern) Re: Technion (Robert Bonomi) Re: Technion (sean) Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers (Dean) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday (Steve Sobol) A Push to Explain Cell Phone Costs (Carl Moore) Re: Other Firmware For Linksys wrt54g? Satori (gary) Re: Jail Sentence for Phone Line "Denial of Service" (Robert Bonomi) Re: FCC to Cellcos: Clean up Your Bills and Invoices (Lisa Hancock) Re: DoJ: VoIP Providers Avoiding CALEA Mandate (Sean) Iraq's 'Saviors' Guilty of Vandlism (Patrick Townson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: phillip Subject: NEC NEAX IPX Date: 11 Mar 2005 08:57:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Has anyone using a NEC NEAX IPX telephone switch run across telephone lines mysteriously becoming unforwarded from voicemail? BTW, the voicemail system we are using is Cisco Unity. This is a random occurance that is becoming a hot issue. Also what are the experiences with integrating this switch with Cisco Unity. We are having issues there as well. ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:58:06 -0500 Subject: Mike Wendland: Phone Over the Internet is Last Nail in Coffin Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwendland11e_20050311.htm MIKE WENDLAND: Phone over the Internet is last nail in landline coffin BY MIKE WENDLAND FREE PRESS COLUMNIST The most basic way the world communicates -- by telephone -- is rapidly moving to the Internet. The technology is called Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP. Just as cell phones started us down the road of replacing our traditional landline phones, so VoIP will eventually cut the wired connection. Oh, there will still be landline phones, just like some people still have rotary dial phones. But in the next few years, many of us will be making our calls via the Internet. This week, America Online, arguably the most influential Internet service in the world, announced that it will start to bring VoIP service to its customers within a month. Full story at: http://www.freep.com/money/tech/mwendland11e_20050311.htm How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 08:57:26 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Michael Powell on Charlie Rose Tonight 3/11/05 MICHAEL POWELL Chairman, Federal Communications Commission The Charlie Rose Show http://www.charlierose.com/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:00:59 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Remote Physical Device Fingerprinting http://www.caida.org/outreach/papers/2005/fingerprinting/ Remote physical device fingerprinting To be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, May 8-11, 2005 Tadayoshi Kohno Department of Computer Science and Engineering University of California, San Diego Andre Broido and kc claffy Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis - CAIDA San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California, San Diego We introduce the area of remote physical device fingerprinting, or fingerprinting a physical device, as opposed to an operating system or class of devices, remotely, and without the fingerprinted device's known cooperation. We accomplish this goal by exploiting small, microscopic deviations in device hardware: clock skews. Our techniques do not require any modification to the fingerprinted devices. Our techniques report consistent measurements when the measurer is thousands of miles, multiple hops, and tens of milliseconds away from the fingerprinted device, and when the fingerprinted device is connected to the Internet from different locations and via different access technologies. Further, one can apply our passive and semi-passive techniques when the fingerprinted device is behind a NAT or firewall, and also when the device's system time is maintained via NTP or SNTP. One can use our techniques to obtain information about whether two devices on the Internet, possibly shifted in time or IP addresses, are actually the same physical device. Example applications include: computer forensics; tracking, with some probability, a physical device as it connects to the Internet from different public access points; counting the number of devices behind a NAT even when the devices use constant or random IP IDs; remotely probing a block of addresses to determine if the addresses correspond to virtual hosts, e.g., as part of a virtual honeynet; and unanonymizing anonymized network traces. http://www.caida.org/outreach/papers/2005/fingerprinting/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 12:21:03 EST From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: FCC Approves National Standard for Cell Phone Bills Telecom dailyLead from USTA March 11, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=19980&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * FCC approves national standard for cell phone bills BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Dolan to use own coin to fund Voom * FCC chief calls for return of civil discourse * EchoStar faces accounting investigation, report says USTA SPOTLIGHT * At SUPERCOMM: Register today for the IP Video Conference EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Tokyo plans citywide WiMAX network * Wireless companies display wares at CeBit VOIP DOWNLOAD * Report: VoIP key to wireless growth * Search players next to enter VoIP space? * Cox embraces VoIP * Q-and-A with Vonage's chief REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * SEC plans charges against former Qwest CEO Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=19980&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: LB@notmine.com Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 06:21:25 -0500 Organization: Optimum Online emb120skw@aol.com wrote: > Hi, > I would like to wire one jack for two lines. Here is the setup of the > wires after opening the jack. > The red screw terminal has two blue and 1 orange wires connected to > it. The green screw terminal has 2 white/blue and 1 white/orange wire > connected to it. I'm just curious as to why there are 3 wires > connected per terminal. > The yellow an black screw terminals are not connected to any > wires. Now what should I do to be able to access a second line? > Thank you! > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Red/green is traditionally one pair; > and yellow/black is traditionally the second pair. You want to use > the unused yellow/black screw terminals for your second line. Can > you tell us more about the _type of phone instrument_ currently in > use on your (I presume) working single line? With no other knowledge > it is difficult to answer your question; was this/is this part of > a business phone arrangment? Does the pair which is 'wired' at > present go to a working instrument? PAT] As Pat says red-green and black-yellow are what you care about. You (actually the telco does this when you sign up) would normally add the extra line to the yellow-black at the box where the phone enters the premises. The extra wires sound like they go to extra phones. If that box (with extra wires) is outside the premises you might want to ask the telco or the cops unless those wires clearly go to extra phones or devices you know about. ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:56:10 -0700 emb120skw@aol.com wrote: > I would like to wire one jack for two lines. Here is the setup of the > wires after opening the jack. > The red screw terminal has two blue and 1 orange wires connected to > it. The green screw terminal has 2 white/blue and 1 white/orange wire > connected to it. I'm just curious as to why there are 3 wires > connected per terminal. I think you will find that your house was not wired "home run" to each jack. In other words, one pair goes back to the demarc block and the two other pairs go to other jacks in the house. > The yellow an black screw terminals are not connected to any > wires. Now what should I do to be able to access a second line? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Red/green is traditionally one pair; > and yellow/black is traditionally the second pair. You want to use > the unused yellow/black screw terminals for your second line. Can > you tell us more about the _type of phone instrument_ currently in > use on your (I presume) working single line? With no other knowledge > it is difficult to answer your question; was this/is this part of > a business phone arrangment? Does the pair which is 'wired' at > present go to a working instrument? PAT] The colors don't really matter other than for keeping track of what's going on. You need to start at the demarc and select an unused pair for the second line. When you get to the phone jack, you need to know if your phone is a single line or dual line phone. If its a dual line phone, then Pat's advice is correct. Wire line 1 to the inner pair of the jack (red/green on some jacks) and wire line 2 to the outer pair (yellow/black). If the phone is a single line phone and you want it to access Line 2, you will need to wire Line 2 to the inner pair. ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 15:49:36 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , wrote: > Hi, > I would like to wire one jack for two lines. Here is the setup of the > wires after opening the jack. > The red screw terminal has two blue and 1 orange wires connected to > it. The green screw terminal has 2 white/blue and 1 white/orange wire > connected to it. I'm just curious as to why there are 3 wires > connected per terminal. Because your wiring is a 'spider web'. The 3 pairs of wires go to three different places. Two of them go to other jacks, or where other jacks 'used to be'. The other pair goes "towards" where the phone line comes into your house. Maybe 'directly", or may to another jack that is 'closer' to the entry-point. > The yellow an black screw terminals are not connected to any > wires. Now what should I do to be able to access a second line? You need another pair of wires from the telco entry-point (or wherever the 2nd line originates) to that jack. connected to the black/yellow terminals. Of course, this implies that you _have_ a "second line", from the telephone company, or 'somebody else' (e.g. a VoIP provider). Then, obviously, you have to have a "two line capable" telephone instrument, or some sort of a 'switch' (as in a simple mechanical "DPDT" device) between the phone and the wall jack. ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 17:03:52 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On 10 Mar 2005 19:21:37 -0800, emb120skw@aol.com wrote: > Hi, > I would like to wire one jack for two lines. Here is the setup of the > wires after opening the jack. > The red screw terminal has two blue and 1 orange wires connected to > it. The green screw terminal has 2 white/blue and 1 white/orange wire > connected to it. I'm just curious as to why there are 3 wires > connected per terminal. > The yellow an black screw terminals are not connected to any > wires. Now what should I do to be able to access a second line? If you haven't already guessed, the blue pair in a cable is the first line and the orange par is the second. The reason for 3 wires is that one jack is feeding another one or two jacks somewhere else in the building. If you carefully tag the 3 cables that go to the jack, you can remove one at a time until you don't get dial tone, or remove them all and put them back one at a time until you get dial tone. That is the feed pair to that jack and if you search, you'll find that 2 or more other jacks are now dead. The trick is to find the closest jack to the demarc and hope that it is the one that feeds dial tone to the whole building. Get out your toner and probe and start testing :-) or just do it by trial and error. When you're finished, you'll bring the second dial tone into the building on the orange pair and wire that orange pair to the black/yellow wires on the jack. If you need to send that dial tone to another location, you'll need to put 2 or 3 pairs down on every jack just as they did with the first line. I would guess that the reason for the orange pair is because the previous tenant either had DSL, or a broken blue pair on that cable. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: Brad Houser Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 11:52:59 -0800 Organization: Intel Reply-To: Brad Houser wrote in message news:telecom24.106.5@telecom-digest.org: > Hi, > I would like to wire one jack for two lines. Here is the setup of the > wires after opening the jack. > The red screw terminal has two blue and 1 orange wires connected to > it. The green screw terminal has 2 white/blue and 1 white/orange wire > connected to it. I'm just curious as to why there are 3 wires > connected per terminal. > The yellow an black screw terminals are not connected to any > wires. Now what should I do to be able to access a second line? Many homes were wired with a "daisy chain" or loop. The Blue/Blue-White lines are probably going off in two directions, no way of telling from your description, but it could be one to the demarc and one to another jack. The Orange/Orange-White pair could also be going to one of the first two locations, or to a third location. There may even be yet another Orange pair that isn't connected that could be used for line two. You need to figure out what is available for use, if you don't want to change any of the other phones. You can do this by trial and error or by "toning" the lines. (Ask your Home Depot electrical guy if you don't have one of these.) You could also have a situation where the lines are "home run" but someone added a jack by extending a line from that jack to another. Brad Houser ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 08:55:16 -0600 From: John Beaman Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack emb120skw@aol.com wrote to inquire about Wiring Two Lines on One Jack on 10 Mar 2005 19:21:37 -0800: > Hi, > I would like to wire one jack for two lines. Here is the setup of the > wires after opening the jack. > The red screw terminal has two blue and 1 orange wires connected to > it. The green screw terminal has 2 white/blue and 1 white/orange wire > connected to it. I'm just curious as to why there are 3 wires > connected per terminal. > The yellow an black screw terminals are not connected to any > wires. Now what should I do to be able to access a second line? > Thank you! Greetings, Sounds to me like your residence is wired with CAT3 (4 pair) cable instead of the old standard wiring used for phone jacks. It would also seem that your phone jacks are "daisy chained" together instead of each being wired directory from the demark (star topology). I am also assuming that the orange pair is wired to the terminals because there is an open in one of the blue pairs, and someone just grabbed the next available pair as a workaround. Or, they could be used as some sort of intercom / door access system. Please see the attached chart documenting the relationship Standard wire Cat 3 Tip- Green -----Line 1----- Blue Ring- Red -----Line 1----- White/Blue stripe Tip- Black -----Line 2----- Orange Ring-Yellow ----Line 2----- White/Orange stripe With that in mind, there is no reason you cannot use the green or brown pair for your second line. Provided that they are not in use at any other jacks. I would highly recommend opening up the other phone jacks, and see if you can find another jack where the orange pair is in use. While that would not be conclusive, it would further substantiate my guess about the orange pair being used in place of the blue pair. JB The Evangelical Lutheran Good Samaritan Society. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 23:34:32 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when Michael Muderick wrote: > Has anyone tried 700-555-4141 lately to verify long distance carrier? Works fine here (Minneapolis, with LDC Lightyear). ------------------------------ From: Bill Matern Subject: Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 12:49:10 -0500 Organization: MV Communications, Inc. When I worked on a 700 number service, the number was 700-555-1212 to find out about your IXC. This was over 10 years ago. However, when I just tired it in Salem, NH it did not work, but you may want to try this alternative number. On Verizon's site, they indicate the 700-555-4141 number so it probably has changed in that time. This number did not work either for me. Bill Some info on 700 numbers (from http://www.nanpa.com/faq/sitefaq.html) Area code 700 was assigned in 1983 on the eve of the introduction of long distance competition in the US. The intent was that interexchange carriers could use 700 numbers to implement new services quickly. When a 700 number is dialed, the local exchange carrier processing the call routes it to the presubscribed interexchange carrier, unless the caller has overridden presubscription by dialing 101XXXX before the number. Thus each interexchange carrier has access to all 7.92 million 700 numbers. 700 numbers are different from all other North American Numbering Plan numbers because the destinations are not unique, and, in fact, depend on the network the caller has selected. Michael Muderick wrote in message news:telecom24.105.12@telecom-digest.org: > Has anyone tried 700-555-4141 lately to verify long distance carrier? > It's still a published number, but in the Phila. area, I keep getting > a busy signal. Is there a new number available? > Michael Muderick ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Technion Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 16:26:38 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Choreboy wrote: > This afternoon I rushed into the room to answer a call on the third > ring. "This is Tell Nants calling on behalf of Bell South in regards > to telemarketing. Sorry we missed you. If you have any questions, > call 1-866..." > It's pretty bad when somebody programs a robot to call homes and hang > up without saying what it's about. > The call came from 954 443 9404, which is Technion Communications. On > the web I've found complaints that their telemarketing robots will > bombard a Bell South customer day after day. Apparently the law > doesn't apply if the victim has a business relationship with the > client, in this case Bell South. The language of the statute (47 USC 227) does *NOT* support that interpretation. It gives a free pass if the _caller_ has a "prior business relationship" with the party being called. There is nothing to indicate that the party with the prior business relationship can "delegate" that right to a third party. See: Particularly sections (a) (3) (B), and (a) (4) (B) > Two hours later I found a similar message on my answering machine, > again telling me to call Bell South at the 866 number. Because the > robot was programmed start speaking immediately, I didn't get the > whole message. That could lure the victim into calling in case it was > important. (On the web I've found a document where Technion argues to > the FCC that the law doesn't apply if they can lure the victim into > making the call.) > It seems like harassment to me. Can I do anything to stop it? Consider a small-claims lawsuit for 'statutory damages' ($500) under 47 USC 227. File a formal complaint with the Federal *TRADE* Commission, for violation of the 'telemarketing rule". Get on the federal "Do Not Call" list, if you're not there already. The FTC rules make it clear that 3rd-party telemarketing agencies have to scrub against that list -- even if their client is 'exempt' from regulation. Dunno about Bell South, but SBC -- who is *really* egregious with their telemarketing --_will_ flag a customer account for "do not call for marketing purposes", upon request. I betcha Bell South will too. The law *requires* that companies maintain their _own_ internal Do not call list -- for *anyone* who has expressly requested that "that company" not call them. The 'prior business relation- ship' exemption does *not* trump the company-maintained 'do not call' list for marketing calls. Note: When requesting (demanding) addition to the company DNC list, the companies are prone to tell you that it will take some period of time before that request becomes effective. Reply that the only delay sanctioned by law is for a number entered on the *NATIONAL* Do Not Call registry. that there is *NO* provision in law for any delay in implementing a company-specific "do not call" request. For a telco, require that they put in the account 'notes' that "customer has directed that his number be put on the company-maintained do-not-call list, and that therefore, in compliance with federal statute, all telemarketing calls cease IMMEDIATELY." The telco _is_ "responsible" (as in 'legally liable') for the actions of any 'agent' or contract marketing service that violates the law. This opens the door for small-claims action against *both* the actual telemarketer, and the telco. subpoenaing the records for when _anyone_ "requested" addition to the company-maintained do-not-call list, when the add was _actually_ made, and the date/time of the last call each such number, does wonders for showing 'knowing and wilful' violation --- allowing for treble damages to be collected. ------------------------------ From: sean Subject: Re: Technion Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 12:27:33 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Choreboy wrote: > This afternoon I rushed into the room to answer a call on the third > ring. "This is Tell Nants calling on behalf of Bell South in regards > to telemarketing. Sorry we missed you. If you have any questions, > call 1-866..." > It's pretty bad when somebody programs a robot to call homes and hang > up without saying what it's about. > The call came from 954 443 9404, which is Technion Communications. On > the web I've found complaints that their telemarketing robots will > bombard a Bell South customer day after day. Apparently the law > doesn't apply if the victim has a business relationship with the > client, in this case Bell South. > Two hours later I found a similar message on my answering machine, > again telling me to call Bell South at the 866 number. Because the > robot was programmed start speaking immediately, I didn't get the > whole message. That could lure the victim into calling in case it was > important. (On the web I've found a document where Technion argues to > the FCC that the law doesn't apply if they can lure the victim into > making the call.) > It seems like harassment to me. Can I do anything to stop it? > Choreboy Give em a dose of their own medicine: Get a cheap PC and a cheap modem, and set up a script to repeat dial the 800 number over and over and over, with a recorded message saying that auto dial robots are illegal. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But _your_autodial robot is _also_ illegal. People have tried that, thinking they would not get caught, but they do get caught, and frequently punished, sometimes severely. ------------------------------ From: Dean Subject: Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers Date: 10 Mar 2005 22:08:55 -0800 Isaiah Beard wrote: > Dean wrote: >> A while back some on this list engaged in a lively debate about cell >> phone radiation risks. This article may have some information of >> interest to those of you who think this issue isn't dead yet. >> The cell phone industry: Big Tobacco 2.0? >> By Molly Wood, senior editor, CNET.com >> Tuesday, March 8, 2005 > Oh, C|Net. Now we KNOW it's quality journalism. > Consider that Ms. Wood readily admits she has an agenda (she has an > axe to grind with cell phone manufacturers over what she perceives as > "iron-clad control over phone releases and pricing, its > ever-lengthening contracts, and the annoying habit it has of crippling > Bluetooth phones so that [she] can't use them the way [she wants] > to"). I would thus take this with a heavy handful of salt. > E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. > Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. OK OK, I'm not saying there's anything absolutely definitive in that article. But it seems certainly prudent to use a headset and try to keep the antenna at a certain distance -- just as she suggests toward the end of the article. (although I think I read somewhere that the cord of the headset can have some adverse effect too - one can only take so many precautions and still be reasonable:-) Regards, Dean PS As for Ms Wood's honesty, I am certainly not qualified to offer an opinion (haven't read her enough). But the evidence you mention is hardly enough to dismiss her as biased. If I had to guess, I would say that her grievances are shared by the vast majority of people interested in telecom, and I don't think too many of us want to see phone manufacturers brought to their knees by unwarranted lawsuits. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday Date: Thu, 10 Mar 2005 22:52:53 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Brian Inglis wrote: > It works, ship it ... we're all beta test sites now! Given this discussion of apparent Vonage incompetence, their whining about their traffic being blocked is quite funny. Seems they are quite capable of blocking their own traffic, if inadvertently. ;) JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 10:24:01 EST From: Carl Moore Subject: "A Push to Explain Cell Phone Costs" For as long as it's good: http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/news/31105-bb-cellphones.html Story starts "Have trouble understanding how all those fees add up on your cellphone bill?" In the path I furnished above, notice "bb", which stands for "Bizarre Bazaar" -- strange but true stories. ------------------------------ From: gary Subject: Re: Other Firmware For Linksys wrt54g? Satori Date: 11 Mar 2005 07:35:47 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com pattyjamas@hotmail.com wrote: > I have put in a few wireless routers but never got into the internals. > I now have one in my home and will be adding a Range Extender. > I possess a WRT54G, running Windows 2000 and uploaded the latest > firmware (version 3+ dated Dec 2004 I think) from Linksys.com. > In reading the latest PC Mag, I ran across an interesting article on > the Satori firmware and extra options it adds. (www.linksys.org) > A few questions: > 1. Is this the best choice of stable firmware for my WRT54G to add new > options, perhaps increase signal power (if it really works) and tweak > other necessary parameters for best performance/range? > 2. Are there other firmware vendors worth looking at on linksys.org? > Thank you, > Patty Patty, Look on the bottom of your router, on the sticker that has your s/n and mac address, it should have you hardware version. (WRTG54g vx.x) If your version is 2.2 or greater you will probably have to subscibe to sveasoft.com for $20/yr and use the Alchemy release as I have. If your version is 2.0 or lower then you should be able to load the older versions like Satori(available without subscription) or openwrt(only supports through v2.0) The signal power increase does work, but so do better antennas ------------------------------ From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Subject: Re: Jail Sentence for Phone Line "Denial of Service" Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 15:39:37 -0000 Organization: Widgets, Inc. In article , Danny Burstein wrote: > Fascinating ... could this be extended to spammers? Please? Looks close > enough to be worth a looksee ... No chance. unfortunately. The statute involved (47 USC 223) is *expressly* limited to _telephone_calls_ made with the intent to harass or annoy. > "Ex-GOP Party Head Charged in Phone Jamming" > "By ERIK STETSON Associated Press Writer March 10, 2005, 1:23 PM EST" > "CONCORD, N.H. The former executive director of the New Hampshire > Republican Party was sentenced Thursday to seven months in prison for > jamming Democratic telephone lines during the 2002 election. > "Chuck McGee pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiring to make > anonymous calls with the intent to annoy or harass. He was also fined > $2,000 and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service." ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: FCC to Cellcos: Clean up Your Bills and Invoices Date: 11 Mar 2005 09:41:32 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Danny Burstein wrote: > "FCC Extends Truth-in-Billing Rules to Wireless Phones; Seeks > Comment on Additional Measures to Increase Ability of Consumers to > Make Informed Choices ... I wonder if this will make bills _harder_ to understand. As a result of all the "fair disclosure" laws, companies now send out whole books in fine print on their numerous policies. They're impossible for a lay person to understand, and they're constantly changing. Overloading someone with detail is an easy way to fraud someone. Years ago our electric bill was on a postcard. Name, address, KWH hours used, total cost. Now it's several pages of graphs and charts. Our phone bill used to be one small slip of paper -- fixed costs on one side, toll charges on the other. Now it's so thick it requires extra postage -- and I don't even have toll charges! (And it's on double-sided paper too!) I'm pretty sure it was the PUCs that ordered the breakouts of toll/non-toll and basic/non-basic data blocks. Further, all imposed charges, ie 911, FCC line, should be rolled up in service and equipment; all taxes rolled into one item just as the old days. Can anyone justify mailing out the Encyclopedia Britannica for a monthly utility bill? ------------------------------ From: sean Subject: Re: DoJ: VoIP Providers Avoiding CALEA Mandate Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:26:59 -0500 Tony P. wrote: > I'm pretty sure that most VoIP providers encrypt from the terminal > adapter back to the server. But everything is based on IP aware > telephone switches so it isn't a problem to tap at the switch. Most do NOT encrypt. That is what makes this so funny. It's extremely easy to tap VOIP. All one needs to tap SIP based voip is the latest vesrion of ETHEREAL - capture the packets, and it will save the sip streams as .au files that can be played in windows media player! I have verified this works for tapping Vonage calls. > It's because law enforcement by and large is ignorant when it comes to > technology. > Even the FBI, the leading agency in the U.S. trips over it's own feet > when it comes to information technology. ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: Iraq's 'Saviours' Guilty of Vandalism Date: Fri, Mar 11 2005 00:00:00 GMT A very sad story about a bit of 'collateral damage' in the historically significant country called Iraq. Now it seems, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, the 'Hanging Gardens' has been irreparably damaged by Iraq's 'saviors'; American troops have ruined it. I thought I read somewhere they were trying to take care of the museums and other historical artifacts in this part of the world where so much of the Old Testament was based. I guess I thought wrong, but what else is old? http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1106088610017&call_pageid=968256290204&col=968350116795 PAT ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #107 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Mar 12 01:04:56 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2C64u017789; Sat, 12 Mar 2005 01:04:56 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 01:04:56 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503120604.j2C64u017789@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #108 TELECOM Digest Sat, 12 Mar 2005 01:05:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 108 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Swedish Raid on ISP Called Major Blow to Piracy (Lisa Minter) GOP Party Head Sentenced to Seven Months in Phone Jamming (M Solomon) Apple Can Demand Names of Bloggers, Judge Says (Monty Solomon) EFFector 18.4: EFF Announces New Privacy Tool (Monty Solomon) EFFector 18.5: EFF Asks Court to Protect Online Journalists (M Solomon) EFFector 18.6: Action Alert - Help Save the Orphan Works! (M Solomon) EPIC Alert 12.04 (Monty Solomon) EPIC Alert 12.05 (Monty Solomon) Privacy Self-Regulation, A Decade of Disappointment (Monty Solomon) Need PC Based Call Attendant/Answering Service (pgrogan@gmail.com) Re: How to Make Skype Wireless? (summitcircle) Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification (Diamond Dave) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (Marcus Didius Falco) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 11 Mar 2005 21:10:27 -0800 From: Lisa Minter Subject: Swedish Raid on ISP Called Major Blow to Piracy By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The U.S. film industry on Friday hailed a raid by Swedish police against an Internet service provider as a major blow to European piracy of movies and music on the Web. The raid was carried out on Thursday at the Stockholm offices of Bahnhof, Sweden's oldest and largest ISP, which U.S. copyright protection experts have considered a haven for high-level Internet piracy for years. "This was a very big raid," said John Malcolm, worldwide anti-piracy operations director at the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which represents Hollywood's major studios. "The material that was seized contained not only evidence of a piracy organization operating in Sweden but of online piracy organizations operating throughout all of Europe," he told Reuters. Bahnhof, the first major ISP raided by the Swedes without advance notice, was home to some of the biggest and fastest servers in Europe, the MPAA said in a statement. Authorities in Sweden seized four computer servers -- one reputed to be the biggest pirate server in Europe -- containing enough digital film and music content for up to 3-1/2 years of uninterrupted play, the organization said. Malcolm said authorities in Scandinavian countries had been reluctant to take such action in the past but were recently cracking down on piracy. About 20 individuals suspected of Internet piracy have been the targets of smaller raids by Swedish authorities during the past month. The servers seized during the operation contained a total of 1,800 digital movie files, 5,000 software application files and 450,000 digital audio files -- amounting to 23 terabytes of data. The MPAA says the film industry loses $3.5 billion a year to videotapes and DVDs sold on the black market, but it has no estimate for how much Internet piracy costs the industry. Reuters/VNU NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters/VNU News Service. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: GOP Party Head sentenced to Seven Months in Phone Jamming Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 21:45:41 -0500 By Erik Stetson, Associated Press Writer | March 10, 2005 CONCORD, N.H. -- The former executive director of the state Republican Party was sentenced Thursday to seven months in prison for jamming Democratic telephone lines during the 2002 general election. Chuck McGee pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to make anonymous calls to annoy or harass. He also was fined $2,000 and ordered to perform 200 hours of community service. He faced up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hampshire/articles/2005/03/10/ former_gop_party_head_sentenced_to_seven_months_in_phone_jamming/ ------------------------------ From: Monty Solomon Subject: Apple Can Demand Names of Bloggers, Judge Says Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:24:36 -0500 By LAURIE J. FLYNN SAN FRANCISCO, March 11 - A California judge ruled Friday that Apple Computer has the right to subpoena the names of sources and documents relating to confidential company information that was published late last year by three Web sites. Judge James P. Kleinberg of the Santa Clara County Superior Court in San Jose, Calif., said in a 13-page ruling that Apple's interest in protecting its trade secrets outweighed the public's right to information about Apple and the right of bloggers to disseminate that. The ruling skirted the question of whether the Web sites were protected by the same laws that protect professional journalists, as civil liberties groups had argued, and focused on the notion that the published information included trade secrets and was essentially stolen property. The ruling came in the three-month-old lawsuit brought by Apple against the unnamed individuals, presumably Apple employees, who reportedly leaked information about new music software, code-named Asteroid, which the company said constituted a trade secret. Under California law, divulging trade secrets is subject to civil and criminal penalties. That information was published on three Apple enthusiast Web sites, Apple Insider, Think Secret and PowerPage. The Web sites were not named in the suit. In the course of discovery, Apple served a subpoena on Nfox.com, the e-mail service provider for PowerPage, seeking information and documents that might identify the source of the disclosure of Apple's new product. The Web sites sought to block that subpoena. The case has been closely watched for its potential impact on the publishers of Web sites and bloggers, who say the privilege of reporters to protect their confidential sources should extend to online writers. But Judge Kleinberg wrote that assuming Apple's accusations are true, the information is "stolen property, just as any physical item, such as a laptop computer containing the same information on its hard drive (or not) would be." http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/12/technology/12blog.html? hp&ex=1110603600&en=65f05a7ccf104a46&ei=5094 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: To read New York Times on line each day with no login or registration requirements, read it here at our site at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html . Hundreds of new items each day. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:55:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 18.4: EFF Announces New Privacy Tool EFFector Vol. 18, No. 4 February 11, 2005 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 320th Issue of EFFector: * EFF Announces New Privacy Tool * EFF Urges Congress to Vote "No" on Real ID Bill * Mandatory Student IDs Contain RFIDs * BayFF Event: EFF Celebrates Innovation, Feb. 22 * EFF Seeks Summer Interns * MiniLinks (17): RIAA Sues Dead People * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/18/04.php ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:56:24 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 18.5: EFF Asks Court to Protect Online Journalists EFFector Vol. 18, No. 5 February 18, 2005 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 321st Issue of EFFector: * EFF Asks Court to Protect Online Journalists * RFID Tracking Program Ended in Sutter School * EFF Warns Consumers about the Dangers of EULAs * BayFF Event: EFF Celebrates Innovation, Tuesday, Feb. 22 * EFF Seeks Summer Interns * MiniLinks (18): European Parliament Rejects Software Patents * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/18/05.php ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:55:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EFFector 18.6: Action Alert - Help Save the Orphan Works! EFFector Vol. 18, No. 6 February 25, 2005 donna@eff.org A Publication of the Electronic Frontier Foundation ISSN 1062-9424 In the 322nd Issue of EFFector: * Action Alert: Help Save Orphan Works! * Online Journalists Get Their Day in Court * Fight the Broadcast Flag From Your Armchair * Patent Threats Hurt Scientific Research * Texas E-voting Forum Open to the Public * EFF, Public Knowledge to Hold Press Conference on Grokster Case, March 1 * CFP 2005: Panopticon - April 12-15 * MiniLinks (10): FCC "Can't Regulate Washing Machines" * Administrivia http://www.eff.org/effector/18/06.php ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:54:47 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Alert 12.04 ====================================================================== E P I C A l e r t ====================================================================== Volume 12.04 February 26, 2005 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_12.04.html ====================================================================== Table of Contents ====================================================================== [1] EPIC Urges ChoicePoint To Give Access to 145,000 Victims [2] California School Drops RFID Tracking Program After EPIC Protest [3] EPIC Opposes Sharp Increase in TSA Surveillance Spending [4] EPIC Comments on DC Metro's Public Access to Records Policy [5] Bipartisan Legislation Introduced to Enhance Open Government [6] News in Brief [7] EPIC Bookstore: Michael Chesbro's Privacy Handbook [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_12.04.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:54:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: EPIC Alert 12.05 ======================================================================== E P I C A l e r t ======================================================================== Volume 12.05 March 11, 2005 ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Published by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) Washington, D.C. http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_12.05.html ======================================================================== Table of Contents ======================================================================== [1] EPIC Launches West Coast Office, Continues to Probe ChoicePoint [2] New Report: FTC Market Approach Fails to Protect Consumer Privacy [3] "Spotlight on Surveillance" Highlights Federal Spending on Snooping [4] EPIC Urges Careful Scrutiny of Proposed Federal Profiling Agency [5] Comments Outline Voter Registration Problems in the 2004 Election [6] News in Brief [7] EPIC Bookstore: William S. Hubbartt's Workplace Privacy [8] Upcoming Conferences and Events http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_12.05.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:56:07 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Privacy Self-Regulation, A Decade of Disappointment Excerpt from EPIC Alert 12.05 http://www.epic.org/alert/EPIC_Alert_12.05.html EPIC Report: Privacy Self-Regulation, A Decade of Disappointment: http://www.epic.org/reports/decadedisappoint.html A high-resolution PDF version of the report features advertisements for personal data sold by major companies, including Victoria's Secret and 1-800-FLOWERS: http://www.epic.org/reports/decadedisappoint.pdf ------------------------------ From: pgrogan@gmail.com Subject: Need PC Based Call Attendant/Answering Service Date: 11 Mar 2005 21:20:14 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm looking for an inexpensive (under 400) software/hardware solution that will act as an answering service/call attendant. Preferably something that can run off of a PC and with Vonage (VoIP). Here are the features that I need: -Multiple Mailboxes -Ability to transfer caller to my cell phone (if caller chooses this option) Any ideas? This software package seems like it might work, but I have never heard of them: http://www.nch.com.au/ivm/index.html TIA Ron ------------------------------ From: summitcircle Subject: Re: How to Make Skype Wireless ? Date: 11 Mar 2005 18:07:57 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Tina, There are plenty of companies that sell phones made specifically for Skype. Some of these phones are wireless. One of the more popular ones that I have noticed can be found at http://www.dualphone.net/ If you are interested in all the other vendors who have created phones for Skype you can the directory of Skype phone vendors that I have created at http://www.summitcircle.com/ Louis Philip ------------------------------ From: Diamond Dave Subject: Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification Organization: The BBS Corner / Diamond Mine On-Line Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 21:31:07 -0500 On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 10:57:28 -0500, Michael Muderick wrote: > Has anyone tried 700-555-4141 lately to verify long distance carrier? > It's still a published number, but in the Phila. area, I keep getting > a busy signal. Is there a new number available? Have you done the obvious and dialed it as 1-700-555-4141 ? Dave ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 11 Mar 2005 21:34:59 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack LB@notmine.com responded to emb120skw@aol.com on the topic of Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack on Fri, 11 Mar 2005 06:21:25 -0500 > emb120skw@aol.com wrote: >> Hi, >> I would like to wire one jack for two lines. Here is the setup of the >> wires after opening the jack. >> The red screw terminal has two blue and 1 orange wires connected to >> it. The green screw terminal has 2 white/blue and 1 white/orange wire >> connected to it. I'm just curious as to why there are 3 wires >> connected per terminal. >> The yellow an black screw terminals are not connected to any >> wires. Now what should I do to be able to access a second line? >> Thank you! >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Red/green is traditionally one pair; >> and yellow/black is traditionally the second pair. You want to use >> the unused yellow/black screw terminals for your second line. Can >> you tell us more about the _type of phone instrument_ currently in >> use on your (I presume) working single line? With no other knowledge >> it is difficult to answer your question; was this/is this part of >> a business phone arrangment? Does the pair which is 'wired' at >> present go to a working instrument? PAT] > As Pat says red-green and black-yellow are what you care about. You > (actually the telco does this when you sign up) would normally add > the extra line to the yellow-black at the box where the phone enters > the premises. The extra wires sound like they go to extra phones. > If that box (with extra wires) is outside the premises you might > want to ask the telco or the cops unless those wires clearly go to > extra phones or devices you know about. Many years ago the standard was somewhat different, and the yellow wire was sometimes used as a ground. Then, for a time, I think the yellow wire was used to power the lights on princess phones. Almost certainly the yellow wire is either dead or shorted to one of the other wires. Check this with a volt meter. In any event, with modern equipment you can use the red-green and yellow-black pairs as described by others. As others have said, your wiring is almost certainly from jack to jack in a loop topology (not a star pattern). That is, there are one or two loops of wire through the house, originating and terminating at the service entrance. Each wire is normally continuous. If a wire is not continuous, but is a sort of spur, this can work for telephone, but will sometimes act as an antenna and put noise on the line. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #108 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Mar 12 16:03:20 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2CL3KD24166; Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:03:20 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:03:20 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503122103.j2CL3KD24166@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #109 TELECOM Digest Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:03:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 109 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Billing (Choreboy) Skype Phone Numbers (UK) Re: Need PC Based Call Attendant/Answering Service (LB@notmine.com) Re: Need PC Based Call Attendant/Answering Service (Tony P.) Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers (Tony P.) Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers (Tim Keating) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday (Tony P.) Re: FCC to Cellcos: Clean up Your Bills and Invoices (Tony P.) Re: How to Make Skype Wireless ? (John Levine) Re: How to Make Skype Wireless ? (Phillip LeNir) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (Paul Coxwell) Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification (Steve Sobol) Re: Technion (Choreboy) Re: Privacy Self-Regulation, A Decade of Disappointment (Peter Pearson) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Choreboy Subject: AT&T Billing Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 13:52:41 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Robert Bonomi wrote: > The telco _is_ "responsible" (as in 'legally liable') for the actions > of any 'agent' or contract marketing service that violates the law. That reminds me of a string of bad experiences with AT&T. Five or six years ago I had another carrier. Then an AT&T agent phoned and offered a plan with no monthly charge and two hours free. I agreed. When the letter came a couple of weeks later, it said there would be a $5 monthly charge and there was no mention of free minutes. I phoned AT&T, whose representative said they were not responsible for lies their agents told. The representative said he'd put me on a plan with no monthly charge and send me a calling card for my two free hours. I read the document that came with the card. There was no mention of free minutes. Instead, it said I'd be billed 35 a minute. I would have been billed $42 for the two "free" hours the AT&T representative had promised. I never used AT&T and no charge appeared on my telephone bill. My bills were paid by automatic bank draft. I didn't check them promptly because they were always the same. After five years or so, I saw on my bank statement that my phone bill had jumped $8.50. AT&T was now charging me. By now we were two days into AT&T's third billing cycle, so it would cost me $25.50. Their representative said they had sent me a card six months ago informing me of their increase, so there was nothing I could do. She offered to switch me to an account with no monthly charge but not refund any money. I wanted to know why I had been switched *from* an account with no monthly charge. She spoke as if I'd agreed to it by receiving the post card. I had saved that card. It said that in the future they would abide by state law if they changed their rates. If that was an announcement that they would change my account, it was deceptive. Anyway, it said continuing to use or pay for an AT&T service would constitute acceptance of the "agreement." I hadn't used or paid for any AT&T service in years. I said I wanted to cancel any account I had. AT&T required me to jump through hoops with them and Bell South. If AT&T had signed me up for a different kind of account without even notifying me, that sounded like slamming. I complained to the FCC. They said as long as AT&T had not stolen me from another carrier, they could do as they pleased with me. Eventually, AT&T refunded two months' charges. They did not explain why they refused to refund the third month. AT&T seems like a criminal enterprise to me. Choreboy [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note Yet, Traditional Bell and its apologists keep talking complaining about what a bum deal telco is getting from the alternative services such as the CLECs and VOIP, etc. This is just IMO, but I think AT&T, SBC, etc have mostly brought on their own troubles over the years. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Alan Burkitt-Gray Subject: Skype Phone Numbers Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 11:50:07 -0000 Knowing Digest readers' interest in VoIP and Skype, I thought you might like to see the item we published in our free email newsletter, Global Telecoms Business Top 5 Daily, yesterday. Incidentally, if anyone wants to get on our mailing list, drop me an email directly. It goes out at around 12.30 UK time, 7.30am ET, Mon-Fri. Alan Burkitt-Gray Editor, Global Telecoms Business aburkitt@euromoneyplc.com tel +44 20 7779 8518 or +1 212 224 3880 Skype launches real phone numbers at Eur30 a year Peer-to-peer phone operator Skype is beta-testing its SkypeIn service, offering customers real phone numbers from 30 area codes in the US as well as London and Hong Kong, plus non-geographic French numbers. Customers can buy up to three numbers for their Skype account at Eur30 (about $40) a year each, with no charges for incoming calls and with free voicemail. There's been no formal announcement of any launch, but details have just appeared on the company's site, with the warning: "Right now we're just testing the service, so there might be some kinks and it might not be entirely stable all the time." Meanwhile Skype's CEO Niklas Zennstrm said yesterday that one million users have bought SkypeOut, enabling them to call regular phone numbers around the world at Eur0.017 a minute. The minimum pre-pay amount is Eur10. ------------------------------ From: LB@notmine.com Subject: Re: Need PC Based Call Attendant/Answering Service Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 02:37:09 -0500 Organization: Optimum Online pgrogan@gmail.com wrote: > I'm looking for an inexpensive (under 400) software/hardware solution > that will act as an answering service/call attendant. Preferably > something that can run off of a PC and with Vonage (VoIP). Here are > the features that I need: > -Multiple Mailboxes > -Ability to transfer caller to my cell phone (if caller chooses this > option) > Any ideas? This software package seems like it might work, but I have > never heard of them: > http://www.nch.com.au/ivm/index.html > TIA > Ron A search in Google for answering service call attendant software returned 146,000 hits. http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=answering+service+call+attendant+software LB ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Need PC Based Call Attendant/Answering Service Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:59:04 -0500 In article , pgrogan@gmail.com says: > I'm looking for an inexpensive (under 400) software/hardware solution > that will act as an answering service/call attendant. Preferably > something that can run off of a PC and with Vonage (VoIP). Here are > the features that I need: > -Multiple Mailboxes > -Ability to transfer caller to my cell phone (if caller chooses this > option) > Any ideas? This software package seems like it might work, but I have > never heard of them: > http://www.nch.com.au/ivm/index.html Asterisk PBX -- runs on pretty much any Linux distribution. The software doesn't cost anything. It's the hardware that will cost you. I know that Digium (Who curiously produces Asterisk - nice business model if you ask me.) produces a bunch of FXO and FXS cards, I think a four port FXS will run you about $300 or so. And an FXO add on for that is about $100. You don't mention number of CO lines or stations so what I've recommended is a 4:1 ratio. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:44:30 -0500 In article , cjmebox- telecomdigest@yahoo.com says: > Isaiah Beard wrote: >> Dean wrote: >>> A while back some on this list engaged in a lively debate about cell >>> phone radiation risks. This article may have some information of >>> interest to those of you who think this issue isn't dead yet. >>> The cell phone industry: Big Tobacco 2.0? >>> By Molly Wood, senior editor, CNET.com >>> Tuesday, March 8, 2005 >> Oh, C|Net. Now we KNOW it's quality journalism. >> Consider that Ms. Wood readily admits she has an agenda (she has an >> axe to grind with cell phone manufacturers over what she perceives as >> "iron-clad control over phone releases and pricing, its >> ever-lengthening contracts, and the annoying habit it has of crippling >> Bluetooth phones so that [she] can't use them the way [she wants] >> to"). I would thus take this with a heavy handful of salt. >> E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. >> Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. > OK OK, I'm not saying there's anything absolutely definitive in that > article. But it seems certainly prudent to use a headset and try to > keep the antenna at a certain distance -- just as she suggests toward > the end of the article. (although I think I read somewhere that the > cord of the headset can have some adverse effect too - one can only > take so many precautions and still be reasonable:-) > Regards, The problem is that many of the headsets are now Bluetooth enabled. Those put out signals on what, 2.4GHz at relatively low power. ------------------------------ From: Tim Keating Subject: Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 12:27:01 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 06:11:58 -0800, Joseph wrote: > On 9 Mar 2005 08:56:41 -0800, Dean > wrote: >> A while back some on this list engaged in a lively debate about cell >> phone radiation risks. This article may have some information of >> interest to those of you who think this issue isn't dead yet. > They've brought out this pony for a couple decades now and haven't > found anything. Why should we believe this latest scare? Because the technology has change dramatically over time. A couple of decades ago: A. Cell phones were fairly rare and air time was expensive. (short and infrequent calls). B. Used benign handsets. Most where trunk or bag units with antenna mounted on the exterior of motor vehicles. (Increased Distance from RF radiator). C. Operated in or around the 900 Mhz band.. The human body is more transparent to lower frequency RF energy. D. Volume of tissue which absorbed RF energy was much greater, thus overall exposer per in^3 was way lower. The danger has increased because: a. Self contained hand unit proximity to users head. (Inverse square law.. increases exposer dramatically.) b. Higher operating frequencies. (1.8 to 2.0 Ghz). (Overall RF absorption gets concentrated into a relatively small volume centered above the users ear.). c. People are using them wit greater frequency and talking for long periods. http://www.willthomas.net/Investigations/Articles/cellphones.htm Care to roll the dice again?? ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 09:30:11 EST Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack In a message dated Fri, 11 Mar 2005 21:34:59 -0500, Marcus Didius Falco writes: > Many years ago the standard was somewhat different, and the yellow > wire was sometimes used as a ground. Then, for a time, I think the > yellow wire was used to power the lights on princess phones. Almost > certainly the yellow wire is either dead or shorted to one of the > other wires. Check this with a volt meter. The yellow wire was indeed used for ground, required for the generally used type of party-line ringing, and also for calling party identification when DDD came along. Two wires were required, as for all electrical circuits, for the lights on Princess and Trimline phones. They were normally on yellow-black. Usually a wall war was used, but there were also separate plug-in transformers with binding post terminals that could be put in an inconspicuous location and multipled (normally on the yellow-black) to several Princess or Trimline phones. Later examples of Trimline phones got the power for the lights from the phone pairs (another task for the C.O. battery). Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Vonage Outage Last Thursday Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:49:09 -0500 In article , sjsobol@JustThe.net says: > Brian Inglis wrote: >> It works, ship it ... we're all beta test sites now! > Given this discussion of apparent Vonage incompetence, their whining > about their traffic being blocked is quite funny. Seems they are quite > capable of blocking their own traffic, if inadvertently. ;) I've had Vonage for 5 months now and haven't had any outages at all that were caused by their alleged incompetence. One was ISP related where the cable service for a good chunk of Providence went dark during a snow storm. The other was a chunk of ice damaging a piece of cable on the outside of the house. Seems the methods employed by the previous building owner weren't held to exacting standards. They've got the siding off the building now so I should tack down a section of CAT-5 and replace the damaged wire. But why should I? I don't own the building and it only affected the phone in the bedroom. It also severed by connection to the NID which means there's no chance of getting a reverse voltage on my VoIP line. I think that many of the problems people are having in the mid-west are ISP related. Therefore I understand Vonage whining about being denied access to certain ports necessary for their service to function. Maybe I've had good luck. Who knows. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: FCC to Cellcos: Clean up Your Bills and Invoices Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:55:15 -0500 In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > Danny Burstein wrote: >> "FCC Extends Truth-in-Billing Rules to Wireless Phones; Seeks >> Comment on Additional Measures to Increase Ability of Consumers to >> Make Informed Choices ... > I wonder if this will make bills _harder_ to understand. > As a result of all the "fair disclosure" laws, companies now send out > whole books in fine print on their numerous policies. They're > impossible for a lay person to understand, and they're constantly > changing. Overloading someone with detail is an easy way to fraud > someone. > Years ago our electric bill was on a postcard. Name, address, KWH > hours used, total cost. Now it's several pages of graphs and charts. > Our phone bill used to be one small slip of paper -- fixed costs on one > side, toll charges on the other. Now it's so thick it requires extra > postage -- and I don't even have toll charges! (And it's on > double-sided paper too!) > I'm pretty sure it was the PUCs that ordered the breakouts of > toll/non-toll and basic/non-basic data blocks. Further, all imposed > charges, ie 911, FCC line, should be rolled up in service and > equipment; all taxes rolled into one item just as the old days. > Can anyone justify mailing out the Encyclopedia Britannica for a > monthly utility bill? There are certain details that shouldn't be rolled up under one fee. I suspect that in the days of the Bell System the equipment rental charges were actually subsidizing certain elements of service. But you're right about the electric bills. I don't so much object to the graphs but the increased fees ever since de-regulation took place. You see, now we have a separate distribution and generation charge. Theoretically you could choose the source for your electricity but the cost differential is inconsequential for residential users. Instead the de-regulation benefits business. I don't for a moment think the Narragansett Electric was going to walk away owning just the distribution network and not make people pay top dollar for it. All this at the time that our electric system infrastructure is crumbling. There are echoes of Enron all over the place. Now you just have to dig a bit deeper to find them. ------------------------------ Date: 12 Mar 2005 16:20:50 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: How to Make Skype Wireless ? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > There are plenty of companies that sell phones made specifically for > Skype. Some of these phones are wireless. One of the more popular ones > that I have noticed can be found at http://www.dualphone.net/ These all seem to be phones that have a base unit plug into your computer's USB port, and handsets that talk to that base unit. Has anyone seen (or even heard rumors of) a usable WiFi phone for Skype that talks to your LAN rather than to a proprietary base? Zyxel makes a phone for normal SIP but it doesn't seem to be compatible with Skype. Regards, John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 11:36:11 PST From: Philip LeNir Subject: Re: How to Make Skype Wireless ? John, I have not actually found any products that can be purchased right now ... however ... I've noticed a series of press releases that indicate a variety of companies are headed in this direction and that Skype is organizing partnerships that will make it attractive for Hardware vendors to produce these types of devices. I certainly believe that Skype is creating a business ecosystem around itself, and as such provide value for its customers that it could not do on its own. Title: "Skype alights on Broadreach hotspots" http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/70029/skype-alights-on-broadreach-hotspots.html "Anyone with a wireless-ready device can now use Broadreach hotspots for free to make Skype voice calls, which are also free. What's the catch? There isn't one. Broadreach has configured its hotspots to recognise the Skype protocol and allow that traffic to connect. Any of the Skype services - eg instant messaging - can be used in this way." My opinion: This makes a Skype enabled WiFi phone more attractive to users. It also sets a precedent that wireless providers cannot be happy with... it is completely free...you do not have to pay the WiFi provider any money what so ever to make wireless calls to anywhere in the world (assuming the callee has Skype.. otherwise 2 cents per minute with SkypeOut). See related article below regarding Motorola's acquisition of MeshNetworks. Title: "i-mate & Skype form global partnership" http://www.skype.com/company/news/2005/imate.html "Newly manufactured i-mate PDA2K and i-mate PDA2 handsets will be produced with Skype's award-winning software preloaded, enabling i-mate owners to use Skype immediately on start-up of their device. Both handsets are dual mode GSM/GPRS Wifi handsets that, with Skype included, allow users to make free, superior quality voice calls wherever they are worldwide." My opinion: I haven't had a chance to read too deeply into this, but I figure it will probably work over a home area WiFI network. Title: "Motorola launches Skype alliance" http://news.zdnet.co.uk/communications/wireless/0,39020348,39187936,00.htm "The handset manufacturer is developing Wi-Fi compatible mobiles, and will bundle popular VoIP application Skype with the planned devices" My opinion: I think that Motorola is covering its bases and making a wise bet on the future. Title: "Motorola Extends Broadband Wireless Technology Portfolio with Acquisition of MeshNetworks" http://www.motorola.com.cn/en/news/2005/01/0202_01.asp Title: "Motorola Mesh Networks Solution Transforms The Way Minnesota Town Communicates" http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050228/cgm031_1.html My opinion: I don't think it will take Motorola long to combine the technology they got with MeshNetworks, Skype enabled WiFi phones, as well as the various pushes to completely WiFi enabled entire cities (as a public service ... Philadelphia, San Franscisco, Taipei are three examples I know of) and thus threaten Cell phone providers. Philip. Find a Skype phone, Skype add-on or Skype community at http://www.summitcircle.com/ --- John Levine wrote: >> There are plenty of companies that sell phones made specifically for >> Skype. Some of these phones are wireless. One of the more popular ones >> that I have noticed can be found at http://www.dualphone.net/ > These all seem to be phones that have a base unit plug into your > computer's USB port, and handsets that talk to that base unit. > Has anyone seen (or even heard rumors of) a usable WiFi phone for > Skype that talks to your LAN rather than to a proprietary base? Zyxel > makes a phone for normal SIP but it doesn't seem to be compatible with > Skype. > Regards, > John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 > +1 607 330 5711 > johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, > Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against > Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: Paul Coxwell Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 19:25:51 -0000 > John Beaman wrote: > Standard wire Cat 3 > Tip- Green -----Line 1----- Blue > Ring- Red -----Line 1----- White/Blue stripe > Tip- Black -----Line 2----- Orange > Ring-Yellow ----Line 2----- White/Orange stripe Other way around for the tip and ring colors in the last column. Conductors with a white base color are tip, those with blue or orange base are ring. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Long Distance Carrier Verification Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 08:45:48 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Bill Matern wrote: > When I worked on a 700 number service, the number was 700-555-1212 to > find out about your IXC. This was over 10 years ago. However, when I > just tired it in Salem, NH it did not work, but you may want to try > this alternative number. > On Verizon's site, they indicate the 700-555-4141 number so it > probably has changed in that time. This number did not work either > for me. Apple Valley, CA, March 12th: 700-555-4141 works just fine with VZ as the ILEC and Sprint as the IXC. Has worked everywhere else I've tried it, too. I've never seen -1212 advertised as the IXC number. JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: Choreboy Subject: Re: Technion Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 13:52:51 -0500 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Robert Bonomi wrote: > In article , > Choreboy wrote: [...] >> It seems like harassment to me. Can I do anything to stop it? [...] > I betcha Bell South will too. The law *requires* that companies > maintain their _own_ internal Do not call list -- for *anyone* who has > expressly requested that "that company" not call them. The 'prior > business relation- ship' exemption does *not* trump the > company-maintained 'do not call' list for marketing calls. Thanks. I seem to be on Technion's DNC list now. ------------------------------ From: Peter Pearson Subject: Re: Privacy Self-Regulation, A Decade of Disappointment Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 11:26:54 -0800 Monty Solomon wrote: > EPIC Report: Privacy Self-Regulation, A Decade of Disappointment: > http://www.epic.org/reports/decadedisappoint.html Summary: Freedom is ugly. The FTC should do something. The "specifics", if you can call them that, of the "something" are: (1) abandon its faith, (2) reexamine something, (3) reexamine something else, (4) investigate something, (5) investigate something else, and (6) develop a mechanism for opting out. Peter Pearson To get my email address, substitute: nowhere -> spamcop, invalid -> net ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #109 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Mar 12 22:52:48 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2D3qlO26610; Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:52:48 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:52:48 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503130352.j2D3qlO26610@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #110 TELECOM Digest Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:53:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 110 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Qwest Cost Creep (jared) FCC Wants Comments Re: Should VoIP co's Get Numbers Direct (Jack Decker) Enron Update, was: FCC to Cellcos: Clean up Your Bills (Danny Burstein) Satellite Radio as "Broadcast Audio Internet"? (AES) Re: Privacy Self-Regulation, A Decade of Disappointment (Peter Pearson) A Decade of Disappointment - Part I (Patrick Townson) Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack (Tony P.) Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers (Steve Sobol) Re: AT&T Billing (Tim@Backhome.org) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:25:15 -0700 From: jared@nospam.au (jared) Subject: Qwest Cost Creep In the middle of last year I changed to QWEST and a plan that reduced my monthly charges to about $33. Now in March it's up to > $50. Even a simple phone line with no features is apparently $28 per month ... that's only twice what QWEST advertises (i.e., before fine print). One of the tricky changes was to start charging a monthly fee for long distance that had been bundled in the plan. No notice, just a few dollars more. I asked the customer service representative why and all she could say was that they didn't know that there was going to be a charge for long distance with that plan. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That's a problem (one of several) I had with SBC: I'd call to complain the bill had gone up, they would review it and say "if we do thus and so, the bill will go down to be X dollars." I'd say okay, then the next month the bill would arrive and be higher still. I'd have to talk to two or three different people (with a wait on hold for each of them) to get the promised adjustment. None of them knew anything about what the others had said or promised. Once they transferred me to a man 'in Topeka, who is our employee but he deals with state regulatory matters'. The man talked to me for about thirty minutes, detirmined I was 'eligible for lifeline service' (a program of reduced rates for handicapped/elderly people) and told me absolutely what my new monthly rate would be after he had audited my entire bill. Guess what? When the next bill arrived it was **no where close** to that amount. Bell said the reason the bill was 25 pages long that month was because they had to prorate it since the 'guy in Topeka' had re-rated me. The next month's bill _was_ a few pages (not many!) smaller, but the bottom line total was still higher. Then, according to the service rep they had detirmined I was not eligible for lifeline rates unless I would send them once again send them notes from doctor, SRS (Kansas medicaid public assistance) and some other paperwork. When I finally fled to Prairie Stream and Cable One (since SBC would not allow Prairie Stream to handle my DSL), they had me up to $140 per month; I was choking on the phone bill. And the lies they tell about their various service offerings ... their claims ... just incredible. I was so happy to get out of their noose. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 18:07:40 -0500 Subject: FCC Wants Comments Re: Should VoIP co's Get Numbers Direct? The following is an excerpt from an FCC public notice, which can be read in full at: PDF: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-663A1.pdf DOC: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-663A1.doc TEXT: http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-05-663A1.txt The basic issue here is whether VoIP companies will be allowed to obtain numbers directly from NANPA. Right now, when a VoIP company wants a block of numbers, they have to go to a CLEC that has numbers assigned to them, and use numbers out of the CLEC's number pool. The problem with this is that the CLEC then owns the numbers rather than the VoIP company. Consider the case of where a CLEC is giving poor service or goes out of business; calls to customers may not complete properly and it may not be the VoIP company's fault, but rather the fault of the CLEC that owns the number. So, allowing this change would let the VoIP company to own their own numbers, and therefore they would have both more flexibility and more responsibility. When a CLEC that the VoIP company partners with isn't completing calls properly, the VoIP company could move the termination point for the numbers to another CLEC. I think allowing this change would allow VoIP companies to provide better service to customers, and by the way it would also probably remove the current impediments for customers wanting to take their phone number from one VoIP provider to another (or to a landline or cellular company, for that matter -- in other words, local number portability for VoIP numbers would probably be a reality). Maybe I'm missing something but I don't see any real downside to this. Those that just don't like VoIP will probably find some reason to oppose it but I think that if VoIP companies had control of their own number space, rather than using numbers out of the various CLEC's pool, it would make thing far easier for everyone. Note this has nothing to do with whether they would still use the CLEC's for actual call completion, it only addresses who owns the block of numbers out of which customer numbers are assigned. Comments are due by April 15 and those who wish to send a comment can go to http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/ecfs/ for details. Instructions for sending an e-mail comment are at: http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/ecfs/email.html or you can send a brief comment to the FCC using the online form at http://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/ecfs/upload_v2.cgi . You will need the Proceeding number, which is 99-200 (this is called a "CC Docket No." on the Public Notice). Here is the excerpt: PUBLIC NOTICE Federal Communications Commission 445 12th St., S.W. Washington, D.C. 20554 News Media Information 202 / 418-0500 Internet: http://www.fcc.gov TTY: 1-888-835-5322 DA 05-663 March 11, 2005 WIRELINE COMPETITION BUREAU SEEKS COMMENT ON RNK, INC. D/B/A RNK TELECOM, NUVIO CORPORATION, UNIPOINT ENHANCED SERVICES D/B/A POINTONE, DIALPAD COMMUNICATIONS, INC., VONAGE HOLDINGS CORPORATION, AND VOEX, INC. PETITIONS FOR LIMITED WAIVER OF SECTION 52.15(g)(2)(i) OF THE COMMISSION'S RULES REGARDING ACCESS TO NUMBERING RESOURCES PLEADING CYCLE ESTABLISHED: CC Docket No. 99-200 Comment Date: April 11, 2005 Reply Comment Date: April 26, 2005 RNK, Inc. d/b/a RNK Telecom (RNK), Nuvio Corporation (Nuvio), Unipoint Enhanced Services d/b/a PointOne (PointOne), Dialpad Communications, Inc. (Dialpad), Vonage Holdings Corporation (Vonage), and VoEX, Inc.(VoEX) have filed petitions with the Commission for a limited waiver of section 52.15(g)(2)(i) of the Commission's rules. The petitions request a limited waiver of the Commission's numbering rules to allow RNK, Nuvio, PointOne, Dialpad, Vonage, and VoEX to obtain numbering resources from the North American Numbering Plan Administrator (NANPA) and/or the Pooling Administrator (PA). RNK, Nuvio, Point One, Dialpad, Vonage, and VoEX seek the same relief that the Commission granted in an Order allowing SBCIS to obtain numbering resources directly from the NANPA and/or the PA until the Commission adopts final numbering rules for IP-enabled services. We invite comment on the Petitions for Limited Waiver. Pursuant to applicable procedures set forth in sections 1.415 and 1.419 of the Commission's rules, interested parties may file comments on or before April 11, 2005; and reply comments on or before April 26, 2005. Comments may be filed using the Commission's Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) or by filing paper copies. See Electronic filing of Documents in Rulemaking Proceedings, 63 Fed. Reg. 24121 (1998). [End of excerpt] I have Gmail invites available if anyone needs one -- e-mail me. If I think there's a chance you might be a spammer, I'll probably ignore your request. How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Enron Update, was: FCC to Cellcos: Clean up Your Bills Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:55:57 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Tony P. writes: > I don't for a moment think the Narragansett Electric was going to > walk away owning just the distribution network and not make people pay > top dollar for it. All this at the time that our electric system > infrastructure is crumbling. > There are echoes of Enron all over the place. Now you just have to dig > a bit deeper to find them. Speaking of Enron: "Federal regulators handed a major victory Friday to Western utilities and cities trying to escape exorbitant contracts they made with disgraced energy giant Enron Corp. during the power crunch of 2000-01. "In a six-page order issued Friday evening, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission determined that Enron was engaging in illegal activity at the time it entered the contracts with the utilities - and that therefore, a hearing should be held to determine whether Enron should be allowed to collect profits it would have received had those contracts been fulfilled. http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111060370422077742,00.html?mod=home_whats_news_us (paid subscription Comment: fascinating that this was released by the feds Friday evening, eh? That time, as we all know, is used when you want a story to be buried ... _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: AES Subject: Satellite Radio as "Broadcast Audio Internet"? Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 13:31:06 -0800 Organization: Stanford University Random thoughts re satellite radio (as it might be, not necessarily as it is): 1) Think of a satellite radio system in technical terms as basically a couple of hundred one-way high-audio-quality phone lines coming into your house, office or car, no matter where you are. If you buy the service and get your radio authorized, you can listen to any line you want, any time you want. There is however no way for any line to "ring your phone" individually, and no way for the system to determine what you're actually listening to, or to charge you on an individual basis for listening to any individual line. In other words, it's kind of a one-way broadcast audio Internet. 2) Suppose a commercial firm wanted to build and provide such a satellite radio service with about the same technical capabilities and the same current or likely magnitude of customer base as XM or Sirius at present or in the foreseeable future, but with no content ­­ in other words a kind of "common carrier" service ­­ with income derived from (a) listener subscriptions and (b) selling channels to content providers. What might this cost? ­­ that is, what might be a subscriber's monthly "phone bill", and what might be the cost to a content provider to buy a channel, just to cover the operating costs of the system, plus a modest profit for the provider? 3) Obviously this depends on how the system's costs are allocated between these two sources, but might the subscriber's cost be about the same as XM or Sirius subscription rates at present, and channel costs to content providers be maybe thousands or tens of thousands per month, not millions per month? 4) That would be an interesting system. "Broadcasters" ­­ aka "content providers" ­­ could purchase channels, provide content (e.g., music), and cover their costs of buying the channel and generating the content by selling advertising, although without further technical developments they'd have trouble determining just how much audience they were delivering to their advertisers, and thus what they could charge for the ad slots on their channel. 5) But if the channels were cheap enough a large number of "interest groups" of all types ­­ political, religious, ethnic, athletic, social, religious, academic, educational, environmental, you name it ­­ Could buy (or share) channels, and send content to their members, or to broader audiences, supported by their own membership or their donors or sponsors in the manner of KPFA, KQED, WBAI, the Sierra Club, and so on. That would be a socially interesting and socially valuable/desirable situation, at least IMHO. In fact, maybe that's the way satellite radio should be required (legislatively) to operate . . . ? 6) What if any of the above aspects does satellite radio have now? Does or will XM or Sirius sell a channel to a content provider and/or interest group now (disclaiming any responsibility for what's on it)? If they sell to some content providers now, can they be required to sell to any and all providers willing to pay? Assuming they get up to some acceptable level of subscribers, can or could subscriber fees similar to those at present cover their basic operating costs (i.e., just for providing the empty channels) and modest profit? Or are they counting on advertising revenues for a major portion of their future profits? (as do essentially all other forms of commercial media, radio, TV and print, at present) 7) My personal take or viewpoint on all this is summed up in: "Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely." British philosopher Lord Acton around 1890. "Dependence on advertising tends to corrupt. Total dependence on advertising corrupts totally." Today's version. The second line is my view of the situation in essentially all areas of journalism and broadcast media today. The right kind of satellite radio could be a way around it. ------------------------------ From: Peter Pearson Subject: Re: Privacy Self-Regulation, A Decade of Disappointment Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 11:26:54 -0800 Monty Solomon wrote: > EPIC Report: Privacy Self-Regulation, A Decade of Disappointment: > http://www.epic.org/reports/decadedisappoint.html Summary: Freedom is ugly. The FTC should do something. The "specifics", if you can call them that, of the "something" are: (1) abandon its faith, (2) reexamine something, (3) reexamine something else, (4) investigate something, (5) investigate something else, and (6) develop a mechanism for opting out. Peter Pearson To get my email address, substitute: nowhere -> spamcop, invalid -> net [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I went to that web site and read entirely the essay mentioned (A Decade of Disappointment) and found it well worth the time to reprint here for inclusion in our archives. But it is _quite large_ so it will appear in two parts; much of it will appear in this issue, the balance in the next issue. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Patrick Townson Subject: A Decade of Disappointment - Part I Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:43:22 -0600 Privacy Self Regulation: A Decade of Disappointment By Chris Jay Hoofnagle March 4, 2005 A hi-resolution version report is available in PDF (2.5 MB). [Front Cover: Lists of personal information for sale from website registrations.] [Inside Front Cover: Letter forwarded to EPIC explaining that an individual has no rights in personal information held by the company, Locateplus.com.] Summary The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is capable of creating reasonable and effective privacy protections for American consumers. There is no better example of this than the Telemarketing Do-Not-Call Registry. The Registry, which was created and is now run by the FTC, makes it easy for individuals to opt-out of unwanted telemarketing. Now, more than 80 million numbers now no longer ring at the dinner hour. Prior to the creation of the Registry, the telemarketing industry created self-regulatory protections that were largely useless. One had to write a letter to opt out of telemarketing, or pay to opt out by giving their credit card number to the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). The industry's self-regulatory efforts didn't even cover all telemarketers-only those that were members of the DMA. At its peak, the self-regulatory opt-out system had less then 5 million enrollments. FTC's success in the telemarketing field demonstrates that it can protect Americans' privacy effectively and fairly. However, telemarketing was a 20th century problem. This report argues that it is time for the agency to move into the 21st century. It is time for the agency to apply the principles of telemarketing privacy regulation into the online world. The FTC can protect privacy better than the industry can with self-regulation. We now have ten years of experience with privacy self-regulation online, and the evidence points to a sustained failure of business to provide reasonable privacy protections. New tracking technologies exist that individuals are unaware of, and old tracking technologies continue to be employed. Some companies deliberately obfuscate their practices so that consumers remain in the dark. Spyware has developed and flourished under self-regulation. Emerging technologies represent serious threats to privacy and are not addressed by self-regulation or law. Self regulation has failed to produce easy to use anonymous payment mechanisms. And finally, the worst identification and tracking policies from the online world are finding their way into the offline world. In other words, the lack of protection for privacy online not only has resulted in a more invasive web environment, but has also started to drag down the practices of ordinary, offline retailers. EPIC calls upon the Federal Trade Commission and Congress to seriously reconsider its faith in self-regulatory privacy approaches. They have led to a decade of disappointment; one where Congress has been stalled and the public anesthetized, as privacy practices steadily worsened. We call on the government to create a floor of standards for protection of personal information based on Fair Information Practices. I. The FTC Registry Is Better Than Market Alternatives The Federal Trade Commission's (FTC) Telemarketing Do-Not-Call Registry was a stunning privacy success. Americans enrolled 10 million numbers in the Registry in its first day of operation. Now, the phone has stopped ringing on the more than 60 million numbers that were enrolled by the public. The nuisance of telemarketing will now be a thing of the past. Those who wish to receive telemarketing may still do so, but others have an easy option to preserve the dinner hour from interruption. When one analyzes the decisions made by the FTC, it reveals that the agency took steps to effect consumers' desires. The FTC publicized the existence of the Registry and gave it a simple name and URL on the Internet. The FTC allowed people to enroll free by telephone or by the Internet. The FTC minimized "authentication" burdens. That is, the FTC made it easy for people to enroll by not requiring the consumer to jump through unnecessary hoops. Some from the industry suggested that only the line subscriber-not even a spouse or roommate-could enroll. The Do-Not-Call Registry was a success because the FTC took the opposite approach from the self-regulatory system created by the Direct Marketing Association (DMA). In every respect, the FTC ensured that the Registry would be easy to use and fair, while the DMA's opt-out mechanism was difficult to use and relatively unknown. For starters, the DMA's system only applied to the industry association's members. Telemarketers who had not joined the group were not bound to comply with consumers' desire to opt-out. The FTC's approach applied to a much broader group of telemarketers. Second, the DMA's list was named the "Telephone Preference Service." The name and acronym, "TPS," had no meaning to the public. To some, it could mean a list of people who preferred to be telemarketed. The FTC approach, on the other hand, was sensibly named and assigned a easy to remember URL, http://donotcall.gov, on the Internet. Third, the DMA's list required the consumer to actually write a letter for free enrollment. To enroll online, the consumer had to pay a fee and give their credit card number to the DMA. The FTC's approach allows free Internet, mail, and telephone enrollment. The FTC's Registry is universal, free, and easy to use. Individuals could enroll online or by phone. The DMA's only applied to its members, cost money to enroll online, and was difficult to find. It's no wonder why the DMA's list only had 5 million enrollments, while the FTC's has more than 80 million. These forces combined to make the DMA's market approach to telemarketing ineffective. The numbers speak for themselves. USA Today commented in 2002 that: "In 17 years, just 4.8 million consumers have signed up with the DMA's do-not-call list. By contrast, just five states -- New York, Kentucky, Indiana, Florida and Missouri -- have signed up roughly the same number in far less time."[i] Today's self-regulatory approaches to Internet privacy are much like the failed ones employed by the DMA for telemarketing. They are difficult to use, confusing, and often offer no real protection at all. This report details the current state of privacy on the Internet, and illustrates the myriad ways in which threats to privacy are becoming ever more grave, as new technologies are developed, new practices become commonplace, and companies are not held accountable for disregarding privacy risks. Collection of personal information on the Internet runs rampant, both through direct and indirect means, both in the open and in secret. It is imperative that the FTC act now to correct these market failures. The FTC effectively and fairly corrected the failures of a 20th century nuisance-telemarketing. It is time for the agency to move into the 21st century and correct the failures of self-regulation to meaningfully protect Internet privacy. II. Ten Years of Self-Regulation and Still No Privacy In Sight EPIC has completed three Surfer Beware reports assessing the state of privacy on the Internet. "Surfer Beware I: Personal Privacy and the Internet," a 1997 report, reviewed privacy practices of 100 of the most frequently visited web sites on the Internet. It checked for collection of personal information, establishment of privacy policies, cookie usage, and anonymous browsing. The inquiry found that few sites had easily accessible privacy policies, and none of these policies met basic standards for privacy protection. However, at that time, most of the sites surveyed allowed users to access web content and services without disclosing any personal data. The report ended with a recommendation of continuing support for anonymity and the development of both good privacy policies and practices. In 1998, EPIC produced "Surfer Beware II: Notice Is Not Enough," a report based on a survey of the privacy practices of 76 new members of the Direct Marketing Association ("DMA"), a proponent of self-regulation of privacy protection. The DMA released guidelines in 1997 that would require all future members of the DMA to publicize privacy policies and provide an opt-out capability for information sharing. Of the 76 new members surveyed, only 40 had web sites, and only 8 of these sites had policies satisfying the DMA's requirements. The report concluded that DMA's self-regulation efforts were not effective. The 1999 report "Surfer Beware III: Privacy Policies without Privacy Protection" assessed the privacy practices of the 100 most popular shopping web sites on the Internet. It examined whether these sites complied with common accepted privacy principles, used profile-based advertising, and employed cookies. The survey determined that 18 of the sites had no privacy policy displayed, 35 of the sites used profile-based advertising, and 86 of the sites used cookies. None of the companies adequately addressed Fair Information Practices, commonly-accepted responsibilities covering collection, access to, and control over personal information. Surfer Beware III concluded that current practices of the online shopping industry provided little meaningful privacy protection for consumers. The Federal Trade Commission ("FTC") has given self-regulation a decade to produce reasonable privacy protections online. The FTC first visited online privacy in 1995, and with minor fluctuations since then, has adopted a policy that embraces the idea that self-regulation is "the least intrusive and most efficient means to ensure fair information practices online, given the rapidly evolving nature of the Internet and computer technology."[ii] It certainly is the least intrusive approach for companies exploiting personal information, but it has not efficiently ensured Fair Information Practices. Of the five Fair Information Practices[iii] endorsed by the FTC-notice, choice, access, security, and accountability-only notice can be said to be present as a result of privacy statements. The first fluctuation in the FTC's commitment to self-regulation occurred in 1998, after the agency's survey of online practices showed that the lowest level of protection for consumer, notice of privacy practices, was not widely implemented. In a survey of 1400 web sites conducted by the Commission, 92% of the commercial sites collected personal information but only 14% had privacy notices. Of the commercial sites, only 2% had a "comprehensive" privacy policy.[iv] In reaction to these findings, the FTC was "still hopeful" that industry efforts would produce adequate privacy protections.[v] At the time, Chairman Pitofsky recommended that Congress pass legislation if self-regulation failed to produce significant progress.[vi] A year later in testimony to Congress, the FTC renewed its faith in self-regulation, noting that many web sites had adopted privacy policies. But protections beyond mere disclosure of practices lagged behind. Only a small number of surveyed sites had incorporated choice, access, and security into their practices. No meaningful avenue for enforcement existed at all. Commissioner Sheila Anthony concurred with the report's findings but dissented from its recommendations, noting, "industry progress has been far too slow since the Commission first began encouraging the adoption of voluntary fair information practices in 1996. Notice, while an essential first step, is not enough if the privacy practices themselves are toothless. I believe that the time may be right for federal legislation to establish at least baseline minimum standards." "Notice, while an essential first step, is not enough if the privacy practices themselves are toothless." In 2000, a 3-2 majority of the FTC formally recommended that Congress adopt legislation requiring commercial web sites and network advertising companies to comply with Fair Information Practices.[vii] However, a year later with the appointment of a new FTC Chairman, the FTC embraced self-regulation again. Chairman Muris decided to focus the Commission's attention on enforcing existing laws rather than create new legislative protections for online privacy.[viii] Chairman Muris indeed has expanded privacy protections through the creation of a do-not-call list and with application of the agency's powers to prevent unfair and deceptive trade practices. The overall effect of the FTC's approach has been to delay the adoption of substantive legal protection for privacy. The adherence to self-regulatory approaches, such as the Network Advertising Initiative that legitimized third-party Internet tracking and the Individual References Service Group principles that concerned sale of SSNs, allowed businesses to continue using personal information while not providing any meaningful privacy protection. Ten years later, online collection of information is more pervasive, more invasive, and just as unaccountable as ever-and increasingly, the public is anesthetized to it. It doesn't have to be this way. The FTC has been effective in protecting privacy when dealing with 20th century nuisances. It's time for the FTC to apply the lessons from telemarketing and other efforts to address the 21st century problem of Internet privacy. III. Today's Tracking Methods Are More Pervasive and Invasive Seven years ago, EPIC's report Surfer Beware I reviewed the status of Internet users' privacy rights and protections on the 100 most frequently visited web sites. The report was concerned primarily with the solicitation, collection, use, and protection of personal information obtained either from user-input forms or cookies. Today, there are many more methods through which users can be tracked, profiled, and monitored in the online world. Cookie technology has matured-cookies are widespread and new uses have been developed. Entirely new technologies have emerged as well, some of which are all but unknown to consumers. Few of these methods are regulated, either internally by industry or externally by government. Without privacy legislation to protect Internet users from improper use of the information collected on the web, companies are unlikely to voluntarily cease privacy-invasive practices. Cookies Surfer Beware I discussed an Internet tracking technology over which there was "a great deal of controversy"-cookies. It found that about a quarter of the most frequently visited web sites used cookies. Today, many websites use cookies for one reason or another. In addition, there are several new wrinkles in the use of this tracking technology. Third Party Cookies Today, websites that a user explicitly visits are not the only entities which place cookies in your web browser-many web sites contain advertising served by outside commercial providers, and these providers may also send a cookie to your browser. These are known as "third party cookies." Some web browsers, such as Firefox allow users to block third party cookies. Many web pages today have arrangements with third party ad servers that serve advertisements to their pages. For example, the MSN Privacy Statement lists two dozen third party ad networks that may place cookies in a user's browser.[ix] Privacy policies (such as MSN's) tend to frame these third party cookies as a benefit to the user, allowing advertisers to "deliver targeted advertisements that they believe will be of most interest to you." Persistent Cookies A persistent cookie is one that remains on a user's computer after she has quit the browser. These cookies can be used to set and remember a user's web site preferences, settings, and passwords from one browser session to the next, but can also be used for tracking and monitoring purposes. A troubling recent trend is to design these cookies to remain not just for many browser sessions, but for many years. Google's search cookie, for example, will not expire until January 17, 2038. This kind of long range tracking of users raises significant privacy risks. Web Bugs A web bug is a graphic on a web page that allows tracking and monitoring of visitors to that page. Web bugs are usually invisible, "clear" images only 1-by-1 pixel in size. They are capable of transmitting, back to the bug's originating server your Internet Protocol ("IP") address, the page you visited, the time you visited, browser information, and information from existing cookies in the browser. For market approaches to work, consumers must grasp both technology and practices. But in a Pew Internet Report, 56% surveyed couldn't identify a cookie.[x] Web bugs are sometimes used for the innocuous purpose of counting how many times a particular page is viewed and gathering statistics about browser usage and web site usage. There are, however, much more invasive uses, such as compiling a detailed web-browsing profile of a particular user. Web bugs are designed specifically to be secret and invisible. Many Internet users today are aware of cookies, and may perceive them from the appearance of visible advertisements. There are also tools to manage cookies. Web bugs, however, can transmit information and set cookies even when there is no telltale banner advertisement on the website tipping off a user that information might be collected about them. Furthermore, just one "allowed" cookie from an ad network opens the door for all web bugs within that network to collect browsing information about that user. With companies such as DoubleClick, providing advertising to countless web sites, this risk is significant. For instance, if a user with a DoubleClick cookie in their browser loads a web page with a DoubleClick web bug on it, that bug can grab the identifying information in the cookie and transmit it back to the server along with the other information collected by the bug. Google's Gmail Content Extraction On April 1, 2004, Google announced the launch of their new Gmail service. Gmail is a web-based e-mail service offering one-gigabyte of e-mail storage to users. Gmail is supported by advertisers who buy keywords, much like the Google search engine's AdWords advertising program, which lead to targeted advertisements displayed alongside an e-mail message in a Gmail user's inbox. Gmail uses "content extraction" (a term from Google's patents) on all e-mails sent to and from a Gmail account in order to target the advertising to the user. "If Google ogles your e-mail, will Ashcroft be far behind?"[xi] Many privacy advocates hold the position that the Gmail service violates the privacy rights of both Gmail users and non-subscribers. Non-subscribers who e-mail a Gmail user have "content extraction" performed on their e-mail even though they have not consented to have their communications monitored, nor may they even be aware that their communications are being analyzed. This is a significant development in Internet tracking technology because it is one of the first with the capacity and the structure to monitor and record not just transactional data and personal information, but the content of private communications. Spyware Spyware and adware are extremely invasive and annoying technologies that have flourished in the self-regulatory world of Internet privacy. Both can be broadly described as pieces of software placed on a user's computer by a third party that perform unwanted functions. Spyware and adware collect information about the user, sometimes in complete secrecy without the knowledge of the user. Some programs display pop-up ads on the user's monitor, while others track and record everything the user does online. Information is sometimes collected by the programs for the sole purpose of sending that data back to an advertiser, and other times used to immediately serve pop-up ads to the user. Users often inadvertently download and install spyware and adware along with other desired computer programs, most commonly file-sharing applications. McAfee, an Internet security firm that sells popular virus protection and other personal computer security programs, reported more than 2.5 million "potentially unwanted programs" on its customers' computers, as of March 2004.[xii] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In the next issue of the Digest, we will begin with Part IV of this essay, discussing even more nefarious schemes to invade your privacy getting started. PAT ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Wiring Two Lines on One Jack Organization: ATCC Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:58:25 -0500 In article , Wesrock@aol.com says... > In a message dated Fri, 11 Mar 2005 21:34:59 -0500, Marcus Didius Falco > writes: >> Many years ago the standard was somewhat different, and the yellow >> wire was sometimes used as a ground. Then, for a time, I think the >> yellow wire was used to power the lights on princess phones. Almost >> certainly the yellow wire is either dead or shorted to one of the >> other wires. Check this with a volt meter. > The yellow wire was indeed used for ground, required for the generally > used type of party-line ringing, and also for calling party > identification when DDD came along. > Two wires were required, as for all electrical circuits, for the > lights on Princess and Trimline phones. They were normally on > yellow-black. Usually a wall war was used, but there were also > separate plug-in transformers with binding post terminals that could > be put in an inconspicuous location and multipled (normally on the > yellow-black) to several Princess or Trimline phones. Yep -- I remember that setup well. There were different wall warts depending on the configuration being set up. Our house had one but the current was higher because there were two Trimlines and one Princess in use. > Later examples of Trimline phones got the power for the lights from > the phone pairs (another task for the C.O. battery). Yep, got one of those on my desk right now. A yellow Trimline to be specific. Has green LED's to provide the lighting. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One thing I have noticed which is different between the older Trimline phones (with a separate power supply) and the newer units is that the newer units (with an LED to light the buttons) run from telco battery instead of an external power supply. The old units would stay lighted all the time unless you flipped the switch to turn off the light bulb. The newer units (with an LED powered from telco battery) are dark when the phone is on hook and also go dark for a few seconds as the buttons are pressed. That is unfortunate, because the older units also made very nice 'night lights' in a darkened room. With the newer (telco battery powered LED) units, you can not see the phone in a dark room until you have already found it and have it off hook. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 14:02:03 -0800 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Tony P. wrote: >>> Consider that Ms. Wood readily admits she has an agenda (she has an >>> axe to grind with cell phone manufacturers over what she perceives as >>> "iron-clad control over phone releases and pricing, its >>> ever-lengthening contracts, and the annoying habit it has of crippling >>> Bluetooth phones so that [she] can't use them the way [she wants] >>> to"). I would thus take this with a heavy handful of salt. If Miss Wood thinks that retail phone pricing and contracts are the fault of the MANUFACTURERS, she's probably too stupid to carry a cell phone in the first place. I doubt the removal of certain functions is done by the manufacturers on their own, either. > The problem is that many of the headsets are now Bluetooth enabled. > Those put out signals on what, 2.4GHz at relatively low power. So? My phone runs on 1.9GHz ... I still haven't heard anything definitive either way, either that cell phones DO or DON'T cause illness. JustThe.net - Apple Valley, CA - http://JustThe.net/ - 888.480.4NET (4638) Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / sjsobol@JustThe.net / PGP: 0xE3AE35ED "The wisdom of a fool won't set you free" --New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle" ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: AT&T Billing Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:17:32 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note Yet, Traditional Bell and its apologists > keep talking complaining about what a bum deal telco is getting from the > alternative services such as the CLECs and VOIP, etc. > This is just IMO, but I think AT&T, SBC, etc have mostly brought on > their own troubles over the years. PAT] No doubt about it. They were the most arrogant suits in town in the 1950s and 60s. Had they been able to reason objectively they would have never let Carterfone get out of hand. Then again, their history from the late 1800s, on through WWII, made them feel they were more powerful than the U.S. Government or any mere private enterprise domestic corportation. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #110 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Mar 12 23:53:17 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2D4rHI27159; Sat, 12 Mar 2005 23:53:17 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 23:53:17 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503130453.j2D4rHI27159@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #111 TELECOM Digest Sat, 12 Mar 2005 23:53:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 111 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson A Decade of Disappointment - Part II (Patrick Townson) Re: Ohio Law Would Require Auction License on eBay (Gene S. Berkowitz) Why Pay to be an Identity Thief? CMU Will Show You How (Marcus Falco) Hackers Target U.S. Power Grid (Marcus Didius Falco) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Patrick Townson Subject: A Decade of Disappointment - Part II Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 15:43:22 -0600 This is part 2 in a 2-part essay written by Chris Jay Hoofnagle on Privacy. The first part appeared in the issue before this. The two parts will be merged into a longer essay for the Telecom Archives. Privacy Self Regulation: A Decade of Disappointment By Chris Jay Hoofnagle March 4, 2005 IV. More Invasive Tracking Mechanisms Are on the Horizon There are several new and emerging technologies that have the potential to present significant privacy problems as they become more advanced and more widely used. Digital Rights Management "Digital copyright management systems.are not some remote, futuristic nightmare.they will enable an unprecedented degree of intrusion into and oversight of individual decisions about what to read, hear, and view."[xiii] Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems use technical means to protect an owner's interest in software, music, text, film, artwork, etc. DRM can control file access (number of views, length of views), altering, sharing, copying, printing, and saving, through either the software or hardware of a computer or device. Some DRM technologies are being developed with little regard for privacy protection. These systems require the user to reveal his or her identity in order to access protected content. Upon authentication of identity and valid rights to the content, the user can access the content. Widespread use of DRM systems could lead to an eradication of anonymous consumption of content. DRM systems could lead to a standard practice where content owners require all purchasers of media to identify themselves. DRM can also link or tie certain content inextricably to one particular user. Windows Media Player, for example, has an embedded globally-unique identifier that can track users and the content they are viewing. Trusted Computing Trusted computing is a platform for pervasive DRM in personal computers. The Trusted Computing Group, an industry consortium with members Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett Packard, and Advanced Micro Devices, is overseeing the creation of industry-wide specifications for trusted computing hardware and software. Computer freedom itself is at stake here. DRM can convert a flexible, user-controlled computer into an inflexible, copyright-owner-controlled surveillance device. Your next computer may really be a TV that watches you. Trusted computing systems combine hardware and software elements to create a platform that gives software vendors an incredible amount of control over what users do with their computers. These systems have been developed to protect the security of the computer from its owner when she uses proprietary or copyrighted information. While trusted computing does enable a number of important security and privacy-enhancing functions, it also creates new threats to privacy and anonymity that should be seriously considered. For example, by augmenting the security functions already present on personal computers, trusted computing may offer greater protection from malicious programs or remote exploits. On the other hand, Trusted Computing could make it difficult or impossible for users to access content anonymously. As trusted computing technology develops, it could have significant impact on computer users' privacy in the digital and online world. Single Sign On Services "Project Liberty" is an online identification and authentication system. It allows individuals to use a single sign-on in order to access many different web pages, and is being developed by a coalition of companies. A similar system has been designed by Microsoft, known as Passport or .NET Passport. Identification and authentication systems present privacy risks for individuals. They can become virtual tollbooths for the Internet, requiring identity before one can view web pages. This violates a fundamental principle of privacy-the idea of collection limitation. It is illegitimate to collect information unless it is actually necessary to complete some function. However, with a proliferation of authentication systems, it becomes easier to compel individuals to identify themselves for no legitimate reason. These systems also enable profiling, which results in more spam, direct mail, and telemarketing for individuals. V. The Privacy Friendly Are Mimicking the Privacy Invasive In Surfer Beware I, EPIC noted that news web sites usually did not require disclosure of personal information in order to access their content, a practice that enhances privacy. The report stated that many of the top web sites allow "users to visit without giving up personal information. Anonymity plays a particularly important role for those sites.that are providing news and information to the on-line community." EPIC thought that it was especially appropriate for news sites not to attempt to identify site visitors, as anonymous access to political information shields individuals from law enforcement scrutiny and politically-motivated retribution. But the ability to view the news anonymously is dramatically limited now. More and more news websites are requiring disclosure of personal information in various forms in order to access news articles. EPIC conducted a survey of the websites of the top twenty-five US newspapers (by daily circulation).[xiv] Thirteen of these top twenty-five sites require disclosure of some personal information in order to access content. Seven newspapers (including three of the top five) actually require "registration." All seven of these sites require disclosure of personally identifiable information. The other five sites require only disclosure of information which is not, on its own, personally identifiable (gender, postal code/country, and birth year). Internet users are becoming increasingly frustrated with the prevalence of registration requirements on Internet sites. Evidence suggests that users will go out of their way to avoid divulging personal information on news sites. Many users who don't want to divulge personal information in order to read the news online are engaging in "privacy self defense," as they enter false information in registration pages, or turn to services such as Bugmenot.com. Bugmenot is a website through which users can "share" personal login information, and as of August, 2004, claims to have "liberated" more than 18,000 pages from the confines of required registration. Online users have strong reservations about the use and abuse of their personal information. Surveys show that people value anonymity, especially on the Internet, and simply don't want to give up their information. A 2003 Annenberg Survey found that 57% of those polled believed that if a company has a privacy policy, the company will not share information with other entities.[xv] The mere existence of a "privacy policy" also does not ensure that a person's information will remain "private" in the common sense of the word-both the LA Times and Chicago Tribune websites do not allow users to opt out of information sharing, advertising and communications from the newspapers and their "affiliates" (although you can opt out of sharing of your information with their advertisers and other third parties). There is also some indication that some newspapers have been checking the data provided at registration against third party commercial databases for accuracy.[xvi] Compulsory site registration is likely to become a "vicious cycle" of privacy violations-increasing prevalence of privacy self-defense through providing "bad" or incorrect information might result in an increased tendency on the part of newspapers to require more invasive information from users, and to compare this information to commercial databases to ensure accuracy. VI. Previous Self-Regulatory Initiatives Have Failed Instead of driving towards legally accountable privacy frameworks, the FTC has a predilection towards self-regulatory initiatives. One notable effort was the NAI-The Network Advertising Initiative. The NAI was announced in 1999 shortly after DoubleClick, an online target advertising company, was the subject of a FTC investigation. The investigation was spawned by reports that the company was planning to link its anonymous surfing data with detailed offline customer profiles from Abacus Direct. Public protest led them to suspend their plans to merge their anonymous data with the personal information they had purchased. Strong public opposition to online profiling caused Congress and the FTC to make efforts to address the practice. In November 1999, the FTC and Department of Commerce announced the formation of the NAI at a Workshop on Online Profiling. Less than a year later and with little involvement from consumer and privacy groups, the self-regulatory NAI principles were publicized. The NAI standards were too weak to provide privacy commensurate with surfers' expectations. They encompassed only notice, opt-out, and "reasonable" security. NAI members could transfer information amongst themselves to an unlimited degree, so long as it is used for advertising. No meaningful enforcement mechanism was incorporated. Even where the NAI set privacy standards, they were burdensome for individuals to exercise. For instance, users who didn't want to be tracked by DoubleClick's cookies had to download and leave an "opt-out cookie" in their browser. For those who think that deleting their cookies enhances their privacy protections, they will have to repeatedly remember to download the cookie. Further contributing to the irrelevance of NAI is the fact that its membership has depleted to two: DoubleClick and Atlas DMT. New Tracking Methods Undermine the Already Weak NAI Provisions Behavioral targeting is becoming increasingly popular with web ads that follow users as they browse the web. These ads can be targeted to a visitor's online habits. Many of these ads rose in popularity from keyword searches, however, more omniscient tactics are also at work. Revenue Science, for instance, offers their customers web bugs to collect user information. Individual sites can determine which data gets used for targeting and the information collected does not get shared among different sites using the service. Customers of Revenue Science include ESPN, Reuters, Dow Jones, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal and many others. As more network advertisers benefited from electronic espionage, the relevancy of the NAI dwindled as the two member companies no longer controlled the industry. Companies such as Google, Overture, Aquantive and Omniture are all influential stakeholders in the targeted advertising market and profiling business. Although they are not NAI members, the common theme of self-regulation has remained popular. Not surprisingly, the core of the weak NAI principles can still be identified throughout the privacy policies of the major network advertisers. The NAI Principles Didn't Provide Privacy Then and Don't Provide it Now The NAI principles have not contributed to an environment where privacy is protected. Only notice has effectively been conveyed online. Although consent varies depending on opt-out/opt-in policies, most advertisers operate on a no consent or opt-out model. While access is often provided for, a user is often only given access to the information that they have voluntarily provided to the company. However, in order for meaningful access to be attained, a user must able to receive the same electronic profile that is of value to the marketer. Accountability and enforcement are equally meaningless concepts without a central authority to monitor and impose the standards. Without enforceable rights, Internet users will continue to be tracked and profiled as they become pawns of the advertising industry. IRSG: Freeing the Commercial Data Brokers From Privacy Responsibilities The Individual Reference Services Group (IRSG) Principles were developed by commercial data brokers in the late 1990s in order to manage fomenting criticism regarding their business model. These data brokers sold Social Security Numbers and detailed dossiers on Americans to marketers, insurers, private investigators, landlords, and law enforcement. The IRSG Principles set forth a weak framework of protections. They allowed companies to sell non-public personal information "without restriction" to "qualified subscribers." The problem is that everyone with an account is "qualified." Under the IRSG Principles, individuals can only opt-out of the sale of personal information to the "general public," but commercial data brokers don't consider any of their customers to be members of the general public. For instance, data broker ChoicePoint gives individuals no right to opt out and claims that "We feel that removing information from these products would render them less useful for important business purposes, many of which ultimately benefit consumers." The IRSG Principles have been carefully crafted in order to ensure maximum flexibility for data brokers. They represent another self-regulatory failure that has resulted in easy access to detailed dossiers on Americans by both commercial and law enforcement interests. By turning a blind eye to the commercial sector, Congress allowed commercial data brokers to become "Big Brother's Little Helpers." They have created a national data center of personal information for law enforcement.[xvii] NAI and IRSG Were Successful-For Those Invading Privacy These self-regulatory initiatives served their purpose-to stop Congress from creating real, enforceable rights while allowing privacy-invasive activities to continue. They placated the FTC, causing Congress not to act. The end result has been that the FTC hasn't taken action to address traditional network advertisers or newer forms of privacy invasive tracking. Similarly, since Congress didn't act on data brokers, the IRSG has dissolved, and its member companies continue to sell personal information widely. VII. Anonymous Purchasing Options: Another Market Failure A list of Internet shoppers who paid with an American Express card. The company offering the list, American List Counsel, offers to segment the consumers by age, estimated income, dollar amount per order, and annual purchase amount. Even if a given online retailer extends strong privacy protections to customers, popular payment methods are not anonymous and provide an avenue for online profiling. Credit card companies use and sell personal information for target marketing, and provide an easy trail for law enforcement access to purchasing information. Currently, there are not ubiquitous and easy to use anonymous online purchasing mechanisms. Companies in recent years have offered anonymous purchasing services based on various models, but these approaches tend to be cumbersome and costly. In testimony to Congress in 1997, the Federal Trade Commission discussed anonymous payment systems and recommended that: "federal government should wait and see whether private industry solutions adequately respond to consumer concerns about privacy and billing dispute resolution issues that arise with the growth of electronic payment systems, and then step in to regulate only if those efforts -- be they market-created responses, voluntary self-regulation or technological fixes, or some combination of these -- are inadequate."[xviii] How much longer does the consumer have to wait for user-friendly, ubiquitous anonymous payment options? VIII. Information [In]Security One of the five fair information practices endorsed by the FTC is security-the responsibility that data collectors take reasonable steps to assure that information collected from consumers is secure from unauthorized use.[xix] Collection of personal information creates security risks for individuals. As companies amass personal information or send it elsewhere for processing, the databases become attractive targets for malicious actors. It is difficult for individuals to assess the security and integrity of data collectors' systems. And recent events indicate that security in the data collection and processing industries falls fall short of being "reasonable." A recent case in point involves Acxiom, a publicly-traded corporation that sells personal data and processes it for client companies. In a written statement to the FTC in June 2003, Acxiom's CEO assured that its security practices were "exceptional" and multi-leveled: ".it must be noted that Acxiom undertakes exceptional security measures to protect the information we maintain.and around the information we process for our clients to ensure that information will not be made available to any unauthorized person or business."[xx] A month after making this statement, Acxiom was informed by law enforcement officials that an Ohio man was able to download and crack Acxiom's password database. The method of stealing the personal information shows that Acxiom did have extraordinary security measures-the problem was that they were extraordinarily sloppy. The man, using FTP access operated for Acxiom's clients, was able to browse around Acxiom's system and download a single file containing all the passwords.[xxi] In the course of the Ohio investigation, Acxiom learned that a second man used the same technique to access over 8 gigabytes of personal information from April 2002 to August 2003.[xxii] Acxiom did have extraordinary security measures-they were extraordinarily sloppy. And, while the SSNs and credit card numbers of 20 million were accessed, the identities of companies that provided the personal information to Acxiom remain secret. Other indications of information insecurity abound thanks to a California law that took effect in July 2003. That law requires data collectors to notify individuals when their data has been stolen. As a result, the public has heard of many information security breaches that normally would have been kept secret. The first publicized notice of a security breach involved a banking consultant who had financial details on his computer. An office burglar stole the computer, which had credit line information, Social Security Numbers, and other bank account information.[xxiii] Since then, news of security breaches routinely appear in the national media. IX. Bad Online Practices Are Leeching into the Offline World The trend of collecting personal information and monitoring purchase habits is not strictly limited to the on-line environment. Increasingly, merchants are requiring consumers to produce identification or reveal personal information at the point of sale or when they wish to return or exchange an item. What's Your Phone Number? Increasingly, cashiers are asking individuals for their phone numbers. This places individuals at risk that they will receive telemarketing based on the most trivial of purchases in the offline world. Consumers don't realize that giving a phone number to a cashier invites telemarketing under the "established business relationship" loophole to the Telemarketing Do-Not-Call Registry. But the problem extends beyond a cashier's request for information, rather, it is the presumption that the disclosure of personal information has become a precondition of sale. While a customer may feel uneasy about revealing this information, many do not know that this disclosure is voluntary. And because individuals want to shield their personal information from disclosure, some data companies have developed stealth information collection techniques for offline retailers. For instance, Trans Union, a credit reporting agency, offered "Translink / Reverse Append," a product that gave retailers name and address information from credit card numbers collected at the register.[xxiv] Consumers are not actually asked for their address, and probably are not aware that their address is discoverable. The exact purpose for this information collection varies from store to store. Nine West asks for customer information in order to create a database of transaction histories for each customer, containing shoe size and width. Victoria's Secret has recently begun asking customer's for their telephone numbers so that they may be informed of promotions. Sometimes, it is difficult to find out how the information is being used. Grocers Get Loyalty and We Get Less Frequent shopper or loyalty card programs vary depending on the type of retailer or service. Generally, grocery stores will offer loyalty cards where a customer reveals a significant amount of personal information in exchange for a card which makes them eligible for in-store discounts. There is a high privacy risk associated with these cards as a great deal of personal data is revealed and all purchased are tracked. Consumers are led to believe that they saving money when in reality, the prices at non-savings card stores are often lower. The Wall Street Journal reported that, ".according to industry experts.[loyalty] cards are designed to make customers feel like they got a bargain, without actually lowering prices overall." A 2003 Wall Street Journal study found that "most likely, you are saving no money at all [from supermarket shopping cards]. In fact, if you are shopping at a store using a card, you may be spending more money than you would down the street at a grocery store that doesn't have a discount card."[xxv] The Wall Street Journal study surveyed card and non-card grocery stores in five different American cities and concluded that "In all five of our comparisons, we wound up spending less money in a supermarket that doesn't offer a card, in one case 29% less."[xxvi] The author further wrote that ".according to industry experts, our shopping experience was typical, because cards are designed to make customers feel like they got a bargain, without actually lowering prices overall. 'For many customers, the amount of money saved has not risen,' says Margo Georgiadis, a specialist in loyalty programs at McKinsey & Co. The difference is that stores now make you carry a card to get the discounts, whereas before they just offered plain old sale prices."[xxvii] Making a Return? Your Papers Better Be in Order A receipt from H&M, a popular clothing store, which now requires government issued photo identification for all returns. A review of the return policies of select retailers indicates that asking for identification for returns, even when an original receipt is present, is becoming a common practice. In some situations, this requirement is even printed on the receipt while other merchants fail to post any notice of this condition. While some retailers simply take the identification to match the name and contact information, others go as far as to enter the driver's license number into their computer system. Often, a customer might not even know that this is occurring, or they may feel as though the recording of their driver's license number is a necessary step. Given the sensitivity of the information contained on a driver's license, when combined with credit card information that is often available at a return, this practice places the customer at risk of identity theft. Consumer Returns Database Some point of sale return information is being added to a little-known system known as the "Consumer Returns Database."[xxviii] The database is offered by The Return Exchange which offers a standardized return system to retailers. It operates in real-time by monitoring consumer return patterns it helps merchants identify fraudulent or abusive customers. It is unclear what standards are applied to identify an abusive customer, or the rights that a customer has to access and correct the database. A list of the retailers who participate in the database is not publicly available. By the time a customer is aware that negative information exists about them in the database, it is because they have already been branded as a fraudulent or abusive returner. Firing the Customer Combined, collection of returns information and loyalty behavior can tip the balance of power between the consumer and the retailer. Left unchecked, this data will be used for customer exclusion. As the Boston Globe recently put it, slow service or unattractive prices are being used "as a behavior modification tool to transform an unprofitable customer into either a profitable customer or a former customer."[xxix] "Filene's banned two sisters from all 21 of its stores last year after the clothing chain's corporate parent decided they had returned too many items and complained too often about service."[xxxiii] There is a growing movement in the "customer relationship management" or profiling industry where businesses are encouraged to eliminate customers who complain or who return goods. Jim Dion, president of retail consulting firm Dionco Inc., recently urged storeowners to create disincentives for certain customers.[xxx] Dion characterized 20% of the population as "bottom feeders," who complain and have low-levels of loyalty. Businesses, he argues, should try to eliminate these customers: "It'd be cheaper to stop them at the door and give them $10 not to come in."[xxxi] An article in DMNews quotes Dion as suggesting that retailers "should consider a preferred-customer database-prefer that they don't shop here."[xxxii] And major businesses are adopting these recommendations. Best Buy's consumer exclusion tactics were recently detailed by the Wall Street Journal. Literally, Best Buy is trying to eliminate its most savvy customers, ones that recognize good deals, in favor of less thrifty customers that the company can charge more.[xxxiv] Other companies engage in consumer exclusion in more subtle ways, for instance, Harrah's casinos automatically identifies callers and charges them for hotel rooms based on their perceived profit potential.[xxxv] The company hides the profiling system because consumers, if fully informed, would find the practices creepy. First-Degree Price Discrimination "First-degree price discrimination," a practice where businesses attempt to "perfectly exploit the differences in price sensitivity between consumers," is a growing problem resulting from collection of consumer information.[xxxvi] As Professor Janet Gertz has explained: "By profiling consumers, financial institutions can predict an individual's demand and price point sensitivity and thus can alter the balance of power in their price and value negotiations with that individual. Statistics indicate that the power shift facilitated by predictive profiling has proven highly profitable for the financial services industry. However, there is little evidence that indicates that any of these profits or cost savings are being passed on to consumers. For this reason, and because most consumers have no practical ability to negotiate price terms for the exchange of their data, many characterize the commercial exploitation of consumer transaction data as a classic example of a market failure."[xxxvii] First-degree price discrimination is a goal of some in the information business. CIO Insight Magazine recently published an article discussing pricing ceilings where price discrimination is described as a goal for the industry: "The ideal strategy? To capture the value of the product or service for a particular customer or customer segment."[xxxviii] X. Recommendations The FTC has to move into the 21st century and meaningfully address Internet privacy. Ten years of self-regulation has led to serious failures in this field. The online privacy situation is getting worse, so bad that offline retailers are emulating the worst Internet practices. The FTC certainly is capable of protecting privacy online. It has to rise to the challenge and exercise more skepticism in the market as a proxy for consumer interest. Sometimes the market advances consumer interests, but when it comes to privacy, the market has been a driving force in eroding both practices and expectations. In order to rise to the challenge of effectively protecting individuals' privacy, we recommend the following: a.. The FTC should abandon its faith in self-regulation. Self-regulatory systems have served to stall Congress while anesthetizing the public to increasingly invasive business practices. Self-regulation has only been reliable in promoting privacy notices, the least substantive aspect of privacy protection. The public's, and even the FTC's own conception of Fair Information Practices, commands a broader array of privacy protection including access, choice, security, and accountability. b.. The FTC should reexamine the Network Advertising Initiative in light of the agreement's dwindling membership and the existence of new, more invasive tracking measures. c.. The FTC should reexamine the IRSG Principles to ensure that they provide some measure of meaningful privacy. d.. The FTC should investigate the emerging technologies identified in this report, including digital rights management, trusted computing, and single sign on services. e.. The FTC should investigate the emerging offline business practices identified in this report, including unnecessary requests for information at point of sale or return, customer return databases, customer exclusion, and first degree price discrimination. f.. The FTC should work with the banking agencies to develop a unified mechanism for opting out under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley and Fair Credit Reporting Acts. Just as it made no sense for individuals to opt-out of every telemarketing call, it currently makes no sense for an individual to have to contact every single financial institution separately to protect privacy. *This report was written with assistance from EPIC Internet Public Interest Opportunity Program (IPIOP) Clerks Dina Mashayekhi, Tara Wheatland, and Amanda Reid. [i] Consumers deserve stronger shield against telemarketers, USA Today, Sept. 17, 2002. In just one year, the New York DNC list amassed 2 million enrollments. Telemarketing's Troubled Times, CBS News, Apr. 1, 2002, at http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/04/01/eveningnews/main505124.shtml. [ii] Self Regulation and Privacy Online, Before the House Commerce Subcomm. on Telecom., Trade, and Consumer Protection, 106th Cong., Jul. 13, 1999, available at http://www.ftc.gov/os/1999/07/pt071399.htm. [iii] FTC, Staff Report: Public Workshop on Consumer Privacy on the Global Information Infrastructure, Dec. 1996, available at http://www.ftc.gov/reports/privacy/privacy1.htm. [iv]FTC, Privacy Online: A Report to Congress, Jun. 4, 1998, available at http://www.ftc.gov/reports/privacy3/index.htm. [v]FTC, Self-regulation Is the Preferred Method of Protecting Consumers' Online Privacy; Jul. 21, 1998, available at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/1998/07/privacyh.htm. [vi] Consumer Privacy on the World Wide Web, Before the House Comm. on Commerce Subcomm. on Telecommunications, Trade, and Consumer Protection, 105th Cong. (Jul. 21, 1998) (statement of the FTC), available at http://www.ftc.gov/os/1998/07/privac98.htm. [vii]FTC, Online Profiling:A Report to Congress Part 2 Recommendations, Jul. 2000, available at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2000/07/onlineprofiling.htm. [viii] Timothy J. Muris, Protecting Consumers' Privacy: 2002 and Beyond, Remarks delivered at the Privacy 2001 Conference, Oct. 4, 2001, available at http://www.ftc.gov/speeches/muris/privisp1002.htm. [ix] Ad4Ever; AdCentric Online; Ad Dynamix; AdSolution; Avenue A; BlueStreak; BridgeTrack; DoubleClick; efluxa; Enliven; Flycast; i33; Mediaplex; PlanetActive; Pointroll; Profero; Qksrv; RealMedia; RedAgency; TangoZebra; TargetGraph; TrackStar; Travelworm; Unicast. [x]Pew Internet & American Life Project, Trust and Privacy Online: Why Americans Want to Rewrite the Rules, Aug. 20, 2000. [xi] Company Needs to Engage Privacy Advocates in a Thorough Debate, San Jose Mercury News, Apr. 15, 2004. [xii] David McGuire, States Speed up Spyware Race, Wash. Post, May 13, 2004, available at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24746-2004May13.html [xiii] Julie E. Cohen, A Right to Read Anonymously: A Closer Look at "Copyright Management" in Cyberspace, 28 Conn. L. Rev. 981 (Summer 1996). [xiv]BurrellesLuce, Top 100 Daily Newspapers in the U.S. by Circulation 2004. [xv] Joseph Turow, Americans and Online Privacy: The System is Broken, Annenberg Public Policy Center, June 2003. [xvi] Rachel Metz, We Don't Need No Stinkin' Login, Wired Jul. 20, 2004, available at http://wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,64270,00.html [xvii] Chris Jay Hoofnagle, Big Brother's Little Helpers, 29 N.C.J. Int'l L. & Com. Reg. 595 (Summer 2004). [xviii]FTC, Wait, Watch Closely and See is Right Stance for Government on Privacy Issues for Electronic Payment Systems, Says FTC Official, Sept. 18, 1997, available at http://www.ftc.gov/opa/1997/09/medine.htm. [xix]FTC, Online Profiling:A Report to Congress Part 2 Recommendations, Jul. 2000, available at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2000/07/onlineprofiling.htm. [xx] Information Flows, Before the FTC, Jun. 18, 2003, available at http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/workshops/infoflows/present/030618morgan.pdf. [xxi] Robert O' Harrow, Jr., No Place to Hide 71-72, Free Press (2005). DOJ, Milford Man Pleads Guilty to Hacking Intrusion and Theft of Data Cost Company $5.8 Million, Dec. 18, 2003, available at http://www.usdoj.gov/criminal/cybercrime/baasPlea.htm. [xxii]DOJ, Florida Man Charged with Breaking Into Acxiom Computer Records, Jul. 21, 2004, available at http://www.usdoj.gov/opa/pr/2004/July/04_crm_501.htm. [xxiii] Customer Data Was on Stolen PC, Wells Fargo Says, Reuters, Nov. 21, 2003. [xxiv] In re Trans Union, 2000 FTC LEXIS 23 (2000). [xxv] Katy McLaughlin, The Discount Grocery Cards That Don't Save You Money, Wall Street Journal, Jan. 21, 2003, at http://wsj.com/article/0,,SB1043006872628231744,00.html. [xxvi] Id. [xxvii] Id. [xxviii] http://www.thereturnexchange.com/ [xxix] Bruce Mohl, Facing their demons: To face demons, firms dump maxim, Boston Globe, Jul. 27, 2003. [xxx] Mickey Alam Khan, Technology Creates Tough Environment for Retailers, DMNews, Jan. 13, 2003. [xxxi] Id. [xxxii] Id. [xxxiii] Joshua Freed, The customer is always right? Not anymore, San Fran. Chron., Jul. 5, 2004. [xxxiv] Gary McWilliams, Analyzing Customers, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 8, 2004. [xxxv] Christina Binkley, Taking Retailers' Cues, Harrah's Taps Into Science of Gambling, Wall Street Journal, Nov. 22, 2004. [xxxvi] Anthony Danna & Oscar H. Gandy, Jr., All That Glitters is Not Gold: Digging Beneath the Surface of Data Mining, 40 Journal of Business Ethics 373, 381 (2002). [xxxvii] Janet Dean Gertz, The Purloined Personality: Consumer Profiling in Financial Services, 39 San Diego L. Rev. 943, 964-5 (Summer 2002). [xxxviii] Amy Cortese, Price Flexing: How the Web Adds New Twists, CIO Insight, at http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,3959,43528,00.asp. [Inside Back Cover: Personal information sold by magazines. Some segment their subscribers by age, sex, religion, and whether there are children in the household.] [Back Cover: More lists of personal information sold based on Internet registrations. List brokers sell personal information en masse segmented by age, sex, sexual orientation, and race.] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This report came to us from EPIC, and you can examine the several good reports at their web site: http://www.epic.org, or read the original report at its URL: Page URL: http://www.epic.org/reports/decadedisappoint.html . In the archives, these two parts (last issue and current issue) will be merged into one. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Ohio Law Would Require Auction License for eBay Sellers Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:20:53 -0500 In article , kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net says: > In article , lisa_minter2001 > @yahoo.com says: >> CNN, via Yahoo News on Tuesday reports that the State of Ohio has >> become very unfriendly toward online sellers using E-Bay. >> According to CNN-Money, State of Ohio now requires an auction license >> of people who want to sell on E-Bay, as well as a one-year training >> class required of sellers _and_ a fifty thousand dollar security >> bond. The auction license costs two hundred dollars. If you fail to >> do these things, they have some jail time waiting for you. Their >> excuse is they want to 'cut back on internet fraud using E-Bay'. >> http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/07/technology/ohio_ebay/index.htm > Tax revenue. That's what every state is about. > On a related note -- a couple years ago I get notice from the state of > RI that I never filed my 1990 taxes and owe them $1,300 between fines, > etc. So the past few years they snatched my refunds. > This year I decided I want receipts from this point forward, and I'll > keep my tax records for more than three years so I can prove I filed. > Turns out the RI Division of Taxation won't give a receipt. I got the > woman to stamp my copy with their "RECEIVED - RI DIV TAX" verbiage > with the date and all. > Hopefully the state will lose one more of my returns -- then I can > bring the receipted version to the news hounds and watch as the sparks > fly. Haven't you ever heard of Certified Mail / Return Receipt? I have signed, stamped return post cards for every Fed & State return since I started filing. --Gene ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:43:29 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Why Pay to be an Identity Thief? CMU Will Show You How ------ Forwarded Message From: Steven Cherry < > Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 02:33:41 -0500 To: "David J. Farber" < > Subject: Why Pay to be an Identity Thief? Dave, We just posted an article I think of interest to IP: Why Pay to be an Identity Thief? Experimental Software Makes It Free By Steven Cherry Thieves purchased sensitive personal data from ChoicePoint, but a Carnegie Mellon University researcher can get the same information free on the Web Steven Cherry, +1 212-419-7566 Senior Associate Editor IEEE Spectrum, 3 Park Ave, New York, NY 10016 ------ End of Forwarded Message Why Pay to be an Identity Thief? Experimental Software Makes It Free By Steven Cherry Thieves purchased sensitive personal data from ChoicePoint, but a Carnegie Mellon University researcher can get the same information free on the Web 11 March 2005 -- The U.S. database industry is under a legal microscope following the pilfering of information that could allow thieves to steal the identities of hundreds of thousands of people. In a hearing yesterday, senators threatened legislation to regulate large brokers of financial and other data such as Lexis Nexis, Bank of America, and Choicepoint all of which have disclosed problems in the last two months. It was the incident at Alpharetta, Ga.-based ChoicePoint that kindled the current concern in Washington, D.C. In mid-February the firm, whose data is used to check the legitimacy of the potential customers of other companies, revealed that it had been tricked into selling the records of 145 000 people to thieves posing as legitimate ChoicePoint customers. But why should an identity thief bother with an expensive charade? Carnegie-Mellon University associate professor of computer science, Latanya Sweeney, has found an even simpler way than paying a company in the personal database industry, which critics say is underregulated. She's found a way to extract all the data she wants for free from the World Wide Web. For over a decade, Sweeney has been exploring the intersection of technology and privacy. Her latest work builds on earlier Web-searching tools that create software agents to extract names, address, birth dates, and Social Security numbers from resumes posted online; everything you need to apply for a new credit card in someone else's name. Sweeney will report= her findings at a symposium devoted to national security sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and held at Stanford University, in California, 21 - 23 March. With her software, Sweeney can gather the key data with just a little Web surfing. She starts with a filter that searches for documents likely to be resumes and then extracts the key data values: name, social security number, address, and date of birth. R=E9sum=E9s are found in a two-part process: first, a program Sweeney wrote last year finds long lists of names. Then a specialized Google search filter looks for resumes associated with those names that contain Social Security numbers. Social Security numbers and the other needed fields, such as birth date, are isolated using a combination of techniques. For example, dates can be formatted in several different ways, but there are now standard techniques for parsing them. If a resume has all the needed data except a birth date, the software grabs it from one of the many sites that offer them, such as Anybirthday.com. Social Security numbers have a distinctive format: nnn-nn-nnnn. Another program of Sweeney's, SSN Watch, checks the numbers that are found. How important are those Social Security numbers? Last September, the commissioner of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission told Congress that they play "a pivotal role in identity theft. Identity thieves use the Social Security number as a key to access the financial benefits available to their victims." Obviously, if people are posting their Social Security numbers to the Web, and if doing so leaves them highly vulnerable to identity theft, then they ought to stop. Sweeney's work addressed that issue. The Identity Angel project, which she launched earlier this year, looks for e-mail addresses in those resumes, and sends individuals automated notices that their identity information was found online. She says a follow-up study showed that more than 90 percent of the people subsequently removed the information from the Web. Nonetheless, even with a digital Samaritan patrolling the ether, U.S. identities remain at risk. A November study by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that "Social Security numbers appear in any number of records exposed to public view almost everywhere in the nation, primarily at the state and local levels of government." The GAO reported that many states and hundreds of the nation's 3141 counties put Social Security numbers directly on the Internet and that "this could affect millions of people." The agency concluded that the risk of exposure for Social Security numbers in public records "is highly variable and difficult for any one individual to anticipate or prevent." That risk is much lower across the Atlantic, where a 1995 European Union directive on data privacy ensures that personal data is kept secret by default. According to Stephen J. Kobrin, a professor of multinational management at the University of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia, this represents a fundamental difference between the United States and Europe. "In America privacy is seen as an alienable commodity subject to the market," he wrote in 2002 report. In contrast, he says, in Europe, privacy is considered to be "a fundamental human right." Not only do explicit privacy statutes exist there, but they are also enforced by dedicated regulatory agencies. In other words, the current U.S. crisis of identity theft is a result of policy choices that Americans have made, sometimes implicitly, sometimes explicitly. They are choices that can be revisited anytime. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, IEEE Spectrum and Steven Cherry. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 22:44:07 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Hackers Target U.S. Power Grid * Original: FROM..... Dave Farber BTW Pat Wood is a very good person who actually wanted to be at the FCC Dave ------ Forwarded Message From: Fred Langa < > Date: Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:33:57 -0500 Subject: "Hackers target U.S. power grid" (wash post) Describing his reaction to the demonstration [of how easily hackers might break into electrical grid computers] Patrick H. Wood III, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said: 'I wished I'd had a diaper on.'" http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7152899 Fred Langa Current Projects/Affiliations Info: http://www.langa.com/about_fred.htm Free Newsletter ("The LangaList"): subscribe@langa.com Free LangaList Link Exchange: http://www.langa.com/code.htm Hackers target U.S. power grid Government quietly warns utilities to beef up computer security By Justin Blum The Washington Post Updated: 8:33 a.m. ET March 11, 2005 WASHINGTON - Hundreds of times a day, hackers try to slip past cyber-security into the computer network of Constellation Energy Group Inc., a Baltimore power company with customers around the country. "We have no discernable way of knowing who is trying to hit our system," said John R. Collins, chief risk officer for Constellation, which operates Baltimore Gas and Electric. "We just know it's being hit." Hackers have caused no serious damage to systems that feed the nation's power grid, but their untiring efforts have heightened concerns that electric companies have failed to adequately fortify defenses against a potential catastrophic strike. The fear: In a worst-case scenario, terrorists or others could engineer an attack that sets off a widespread blackout and damages power plants, prolonging an outage. Patrick H. Wood III, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, warned top electric company officials in a private meeting in January that they need to focus more heavily on cyber-security. Wood also has raised the issue at several public appearances. Officials will not say whether new intelligence points to a potential terrorist strike, but Wood stepped up his campaign after officials at the Energy Department's Idaho National Laboratory showed him how a skilled hacker could cause serious problems. Wood declined to comment on specifics of what he saw. But an official at the lab, Ken Watts, said the simulation showed how someone could hack into a utility's Internet-based business management system, then into a system that controls utility operations. Once inside, lab workers simulated cutting off the supply of oil to a turbine generating electricity and destroying the equipment. Describing his reaction to the demonstration, Wood said: "I wished I'd had a diaper on." Growing concerns Many electric industry representatives have said they are concerned about cyber-security and have been taking steps to make sure their systems are protected. But Wood and others in the industry said the companies' computer security is uneven. "A sophisticated hacker, which is probably a group of hackers ... could probably get into each of the three U.S. North American power [networks] and could probably bring sections of it down if they knew how to do it," said Richard A. Clarke, a former counterterrorism chief in the Clinton and Bush administrations. Clarke said government simulations show that electric companies have not done enough to prevent hacking. "Every time they test, they get in," Clarke said. "It's nice that the power companies think that they've done things, and some of them have. But as long as there's a way to get into the grid, the grid is as weak as its weakest company." Some industry analysts play down the threat of a massive cyber-attack, saying it's more likely that terrorists would target the physical infrastructure such as power plants and transmission lines. James Andrew Lewis, director of technology policy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in the District, said a coordinated attack on the grid would be technically difficult and would not provide as much "bang for the buck" as high-profile physical attacks. Lewis said the bigger vulnerability may be posed not by outside hackers but by insiders who are familiar with their company's computer networks. But in recent years, terrorists have expressed interest in a range of computer targets. Al Qaeda documents from 2002 suggest cyber-attacks on various targets, including the electrical grid and financial institutions, according to a translation by the IntelCenter, an Alexandria firm that studies terrorist groups. Power grid seen as vulnerable A government advisory panel has concluded that a foreign intelligence service or a well-supported terrorist group "could conduct a structured attack on the electric power grid electronically, with a high degree of anonymity, and without having to set foot in the target nation," according to a report last year by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress. Cyber-security specialists and government officials said that cyber-attacks are a concern across many industries but that the threat to the country's power supply is among their top fears. Hackers have gained access to U.S. utilities' electronic control systems and in a few cases have "caused an impact," said Joseph M. Weiss, a Cupertino, Calif.-based computer security specialist with Kema Inc., a consulting firm focused on the energy industry. He said computer viruses and worms also have caused problems. Weiss, a leading expert in control system security, said officials of the affected companies have described the instances at private conferences that he hosts and in confidential conversations but have not reported the intrusions publicly or to federal authorities. He said he agreed not to publicly disclose additional details and that the companies are fearful that releasing the information would hurt them financially and encourage more hacking. Weiss said that "many utilities have not addressed control system cyber-security as comprehensively as physical security or cyber-security of business networks." The vulnerability of the nation's electrical grid to computer attack has grown as power companies have transferred control of their electrical generation and distribution equipment from private, internal networks to supervisory control and data acquisition, or SCADA, systems that can be accessed through the Internet or by phone lines, according to consultants and government reports. That technology has led to greater efficiency because it allows workers to operate equipment remotely. Other systems that feed information into SCADA or that operate utility equipment are vulnerable and have been largely overlooked by utilities, security consultants said. Some utilities have made hacking into their SCADA systems relatively easy by continuing to use factory-set passwords that can be found in standard documentation available on the Internet, computer security consultants said. The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry-backed organization that sets voluntary standards for power companies, is drafting wide-ranging guidelines to replace more narrow, temporary precautions already on the books for guarding against a cyber-attack. But computer security specialists question whether those standards go far enough. Officials at several power companies said they had invested heavily in new equipment and software to protect their computers. Many would speak only in general terms, saying divulging specifics could assist hackers. "We're very concerned about it," said Margaret E. "Lyn" McDermid, senior vice president and chief information officer for Dominion Resources Inc., a Richmond-based company that operates Dominion Virginia Power and supplies electricity and natural gas in other states. "We spend a significant amount of time and effort in making sure we are doing what we ought to do." Executives at Constellation Energy view the constant hacking attempts -- which have been unsuccessful -- as a threat and monitor their systems closely. They said they assume many of the hackers are the same type seen in other businesses: people who view penetrating corporate systems as fun or a challenge. "We feel we are in pretty good shape when it comes to this," Collins said. "That doesn't mean we're bulletproof." Old equipment may be a threat The biggest threat to the grid, analysts said, may come from power companies using older equipment that is more susceptible to attack. Those companies many not want to invest large amounts of money in new computer equipment when the machines they are using are adequately performing all their other functions. Security consulting firms said that they have hacked into power company networks to highlight for their clients the weaknesses in their systems. "We are able to penetrate real, running, live systems," said Lori Dustin, vice president of marketing for Verano Inc., a Mansfield, Mass., company that sells products to companies to secure SCADA systems. In some cases, Dustin said, power companies lack basic equipment that would even alert them to hacking attempts. O. Sami Saydjari, chief executive of the Wisconsin Rapids, Wis.-based consulting firm Cyber Defense Agency LLC, said hackers could cause the type of blackout that knocked out electricity to about 50 million people in the Northeast, Midwest and Canada in 2003, an event attributed in part to trees interfering with power lines in Ohio. He said that if hackers destroyed generating equipment in the process, the amount of time to restore electricity could be prolonged. "I am absolutely confident that by design, someone could do at least as [much damage], if not worse" than what was experienced in 2003, said Saydjari, who was one of 54 prominent scientists and others who warned the Bush administration of the risk of computer attacks following Sept. 11, 2001. "It's just a matter of time before we have a serious event." Copyright 2005 The Washington Post Company NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Washington Post Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #111 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Mar 13 18:44:30 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2DNiTT04753; Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:44:30 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:44:30 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503132344.j2DNiTT04753@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #112 TELECOM Digest Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:44:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 112 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson A Spiritual Connection (Marcus Didius Falco) Behind the Digital Divide (Marcus Didius Falco) Re: FCC Wants Comments was Re: Should VoIP Get Numbers Direct? (Tim) Re: Draytek Router Problem - Class C Address Only on LAN? (Geoff Welsh) Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers (Tony P.) Re: Ohio Law Would Require Auction License for eBay Sellers (Tony P.) Re: Satellite Radio as "Broadcast Audio Internet"? (John McHarry) Re: Need PC Based Call Attendant/Answering Service (andrew@voicent.com) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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. 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Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 03:48:51 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: A Spiritual Connection from Economist.com http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3D3713955 A spiritual connection Mar 10th 2005 From The Economist print edition Technology and society: Around the world, mobile phones seem to have a spiritual or supernatural dimension that other forms of technology lack. THOSE who go into the priesthood are said to have a calling from God. Now the purveyors of faith the world over are using mobile phones to give believers a call in a more literal sense. Catholics can sign up for daily inspirational text messages from the pope simply by texting Pope On to a special number (53141 in Ireland, for example). The Irish Jesuits offer a service called Sacred Space, accessible via smartphone, which encourages users to spend ten minutes reflecting on a specially chosen scripture for the day. In Taiwan, limited-edition phones made by Okwap, a local handset-maker, offer Matsu wallpaper and religious ringtones, along with a less tangible feature each one has been specially blessed at a temple to Matsu. And Muslims around the world can use the F7100 handset, launched last July by LG of South Korea, both to remind them of prayer times (the phone has an alarm system that works in 500 cities) and to find the direction of Mecca using the handset's built-in Mecca indicator compass (see picture). Mobile phones also make it easy to donate money to religious groups. In Britain, a company called MS Wireless Marketing offers a TXT & Donate Islamic Prayer Alert service for .25 ($0.48) per day. The profits go to Muslim charities such as Muslim Hands and Islamic Relief. There are also dozens of Christian charities that accept text-message donations. Phones and religious beliefs do not always mix smoothly, however. Finnish authorities shut down a service which claimed to offer text messages from Jesus for 1.20 ($1.55) each, and bishops in the text-mad Philippines put a stop to people attending confession and receiving absolution via text messages. That technology and religion can be so intertwined is not new. After all, the first book to roll off Gutenberg's new-fangled printing press was the Bible. But unlike the personal computer, which has remained paradoxically impersonal, the mobile phone has transcended its pragmatic beginnings as a yuppie business tool and has burrowed its way into popular consciousness, says Mizuko Ito, an anthropologist at the University of Southern California. Fashion models don them like jewellery and strut the catwalk, teenage girls in Japan use them as lockets, sticking photographs of their friends into their battery compartments, and some Ghanaians even choose to be buried in giant mobile-phone coffins. Mobile phones are a uniquely personal form of technology, thanks in large part to their mobility. When you leave the house, you probably take your keys, your wallet and your phone. Laptop computers are carried by far fewer people, and do not have the same personal associations. Mobile phones provide scope for self-expression, through the choice of ringtone and screen wallpaper. At the same time, mobile phones' ability to communicate with unseen, distant people using invisible radio waves is almost magical. Indeed, the notion that phones might be capable of supernatural or spiritual communication goes right back to the inventor of the telephone himself, Alexander Graham Bell. According to Avital Ronell, a professor of philosophy at New York University and the author of The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, and Electric Speech , Bell was just as interested in using his invention to contact the dead as he was in talking to his associate Thomas Watson. Bell and Watson had attended regular seances in Salem, says Dr Ronell. Bell even drew up a contract with his brother, agreeing that whoever lived the longest should try to contact the other. For his part, Watson was an avid medium who spent hours listening to the weird hisses and squeals of early telephone lines in case they proved to be the dead trying to make contact. AFP Answering the call The telephone still maintains such ghostly connections. In China, people celebrating the Hungry Ghost Festival burn life-sized paper effigies of everything from televisions to mobile phones so that the dead can enjoy them in the afterlife. These phone offerings enable the dead to call each other, rather than the living. Why shouldn't the dead be as technologically advanced as we are? asks Genevieve Bell, an anthropologist who works for Intel, the world's largest chipmaker. She spent two years in Asia conducting field research about attitudes to technology in different countries. In parts of southern China, she found, it is customary to take your mobile phone to a local Buddhist monk for blessing. Even phone numbers can have supernatural connotations. In Beijing, a man recently paid $215,000 for a lucky phone number. In Cantonese, the number four sounds like the word for death, and is therefore unlucky, while the number eight sounds like the word for fortune, and is therefore lucky. It's not uncommon even for migrant workers to pay up to a month's salary for a lucky telephone number, says James Katz, professor of communications at Rutgers University. Since phones are the most personal of all high-tech devices, it is hardly surprising that their use should reflect the entire spectrum of personal beliefs. Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Economist Group. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 03:54:13 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Behind the Digital Divide Economist.com http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3D3714058 REPORTS Reuters Development: Much is made of the digital divide between rich and poor. What do people on the ground think about it? IN THE village of Embalam in southern India, about 15 miles outside the town of Pondicherry, Arumugam and his wife, Thillan, sit on the red earth in front of their thatch hut. She is 50 years old; he is not sure, but thinks he is around 75. Arumugam is unemployed. He used to work as a drum-beater at funerals, but then he was injured, and now he has trouble walking. Thillan makes a little money as a part-time agricultural labourer about 30 rupees ($0.70) a day, ten days a month. Other than that, they get by on meagre (and sporadic) government disability payments. In the new India of cybercafes and software tycoons, Arumugam and Thillan, and the millions of other villagers around the country like them, seem like anachronisms. But just a few steps outside their section of the village a section known as the colony , where the untouchables traditionally live the sheen of India's technology boom is more evident in a green room equipped with five computers, state-of-the-art solar cells and a wireless connection to the internet. This is the village's Knowledge Centre, one of 12 in the region set up by a local non-profit organisation, the M. S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF). The centres, established with the aid of international donor agencies and local government support, offer villagers a range of information, including market prices for crops, job listings, details of government welfare schemes, and health advice. A conservative estimate of the cost of the equipment in the Embalam centre is 200,000 rupees ($4,500), or around 55 years' earnings for Thillan. Annual running costs are extra. When asked about the centre, Thillan laughs. I don't know anything about that, she says. It has no connection to my life. We're just sitting here in our house trying to survive. Scenes like these, played out around the developing world, have led to something of a backlash against rural deployments of new information and communications technologies, or ICTs, as they are known in the jargon of development experts. In the 1990s, at the height of the technology boom, rural ICTs were heralded as catalysts for leapfrog development , information societies and a host of other digital-age panaceas for poverty. Now they have largely fallen out of favour: none other than Bill Gates, the chairman of Microsoft, derides them as distractions from the real problems of development. Do people have a clear view of what it means to live on $1 a day? he asked at a conference on the digital divide in 2000. About 99% of the benefits of having a PC come when you've provided reasonable health and literacy to the person who's going to sit down and use it. That is why, even though Mr Gates made his fortune from computers, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, now the richest charity in the world, concentrates on improving health in poor countries. The backlash against ICTs is understandable. Set alongside the medieval living conditions in much of the developing world, it seems foolhardy to throw money at fancy computers and internet links. Far better, it would appear, to spend scarce resources on combating AIDS, say, or on better sanitation facilities. Indeed, this was the conclusion reached by the recently concluded Copenhagen Consensus project, which brought together a group of leading economists to prioritise how the world's development resources should be spent (see articles). The panel came up with 17 priorities: spending more on ICTs was not even on the list. Still, it may be somewhat hasty to write off rural technology altogether. Charles Kenny, a senior economist at the World Bank who has studied the role of ICTs in development, says that traditional cost-benefit calculations are in the best of cases an art, not a science . With ICTs, he adds, the picture is further muddied by the newness of the technologies; economists simply do not know how to quantify the benefits of the internet. The view from the ground Given the paucity of data, then, and even of sound methodologies for collecting the data, an alternative way to evaluate the role of ICTs in development is simply to ask rural residents what they think. Applied in rural India, in the villages served by the MSSRF, this approach reveals a more nuanced picture than that suggested by the sceptics, though not an entirely contradictory one. Villagers like Arumugam and Thillan older, illiterate and lower caste appear to have little enthusiasm for technology. Indeed, Thillan, who lives barely a five-minute walk from the village's Knowledge Centre, says she did not even know about its existence until two months ago (even though the centre has been open for several years). When Thillan and a group of eight neighbours are asked for their development priorities a common man's version of the Copenhagen Consensus they list sanitation, land, health, education, transport, jobs the list goes on and on, but it does not include computers, or even telephones. They are not so much sceptical of ICTs as oblivious; ICTs are irrelevant to their lives. This attitude is echoed by many villagers at the bottom of the social and economic ladder. In the fishing community of Veerapatinam, the site of another MSSRF centre, Thuradi, aged 45, sits on the beach sorting through his catch. I'm illiterate, he says, when asked about the centre. I don't know how to use a computer, and I have to fish all day. But surely technology can provide information for the likes of Thuradi, even if he does not sit down in front of the computers himself? Among other things, the centre in this village offers information on wave heights and weather patterns (information that Thuradi says is already available on television). Some years ago, the centre also used satellites to map the movements of large schools of fish in the ocean. But according to another fisherman, this only benefited the rich: poor fishermen, lacking motorboats and navigation equipment, could not travel far enough, or determine their location precisely enough, to use the maps. Such stories bring to mind the uneven results of earlier technology-led development efforts. Development experts are familiar with the notion of rusting tractors a semi-apocryphal reference to imported agricultural technologies that littered poor countries in the 1960s and 1970s. Mr Kenny says he similarly anticipates a fair number of dusty rooms with old computers piled up in them around the countryside. That may well be true, but it does not mean that the money being channelled to rural technology is going entirely unappreciated. Rural ICTs appear particularly useful to the literate, to the wealthier and to the younger those, in other words, who sit at the top of the socio-economic hierarchy In the 12 villages surrounding Pondicherry, students are among the most frequent users of the Knowledge Centres; they look up exam results, learn computer skills and look for jobs. Farmers who own land or cattle, and who are therefore relatively well-off, get veterinary information and data on crop prices. I'm illiterate, says one fisherman. I don't know how to use a computer, and I have to fish all day. Outside the Embalam colony, at a village teashop up the road from the temple, Kumar, the 35-year-old shop owner, speaks glowingly about the centre's role in disseminating crop prices and information on government welfare schemes, and says the Knowledge Centre has made his village famous . He cites the dignitaries from development organisations and governments who have visited; he also points to the fact that people from 25 surrounding villages come to use the centre, transforming Embalam into something of a local information hub. At the centre itself, Kasthuri, a female volunteer who helps run the place, says that the status of women in Embalam has improved as a result of using the computers. Before, we were just sitting at home, she says. Now we feel empowered and more in control. Some economists might dismiss such sentiments as woolly headed. But they are indicators of a sense of civic pride and social inclusiveness that less conventional economists might term human development or well-being. A question of priorities Given the mixed opinions on the ground, then, the real issue is not whether investing in ICTs can help development (it can, in some cases, and for some people), but whether the overall benefits of doing so outweigh those of investing in, say, education or health. Leonard Waverman of the London Business School has compared the impact on GDP of increases in teledensity (the number of telephones per 100 people) and the primary-school completion rate. He found that an increase of 100 basis points in teledensity raised GDP by about twice as much as the same increase in primary-school completion. As Dr Waverman acknowledges, however, his calculations do not take into account the respective investment costs and it is the cost of ICTs that makes people such as Mr Gates so sceptical of their applicability to the developing world. AFP Now that's what I call antivirus technology Indeed, Ashok Jhunjhunwala, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in Chennai (formerly Madras), argues that cost is the deciding factor in determining whether the digital divide will ever be bridged. To that end, Dr Jhunjhunwala and his colleagues are working on a number of low-cost devices, including a remote banking machine and a fixed wireless system that cuts the cost of access by more than half. But such innovation takes time and is itself expensive. Perhaps a more immediate way of addressing the cost of technology is to rely on older, more proven means of delivering information. Radios, for example, are already being used by many development organisations; their cost (under $10) is a fraction of the investment (at least $800) required for a telephone line. In Embalam and Veerapatinam, few people actually ever sit at a computer; they receive much of their information from loudspeakers on top of the Knowledge Centre, or from a newsletter printed at the centre and delivered around the village. Such old-fashioned methods of communication can be connected to an internet hub located further upstream; these hybrid networks may well represent the future of technology in the developing world. But for now, it seems that the most cost-effective way of providing information over the proverbial last mile is often decidedly low-tech. On December 26th 2004, villagers in Veerapatinam had occasion to marvel at the reliability of a truly old-fashioned source of information. As the Asian=20 tsunami swept towards the south Indian shoreline, over a thousand villagers were gathered safely inland around the temple well. About an hour and a half before the tsunami, the waters in the well had started bubbling and rising to the surface; by the time the wave hit, a whirlpool had formed and the villagers had left the beach to watch this strange phenomenon. Nearby villages suffered heavy casualties, but in Veerapatinam only one person died out of a total population of 6,200. The villagers attribute their fortuitous escape to divine intervention, not technology. Ravi, a well-dressed man standing outside the Knowledge Centre, says the villagers received no warning over the speakers. We owe everything to Her, he says, referring to the temple deity. I'm telling you honestly, he says. The information came from Her. Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3D3713955 NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, the Economist Group. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Tim@Backhome.org Subject: Re: FCC Wants Comments Re: Should VoIP co's Get Numbers Direct? Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 04:03:09 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications Jack Decker wrote: > point for the numbers to another CLEC. I think allowing this change > would allow VoIP companies to provide better service to customers, and > by the way it would also probably remove the current impediments for > customers wanting to take their phone number from one VoIP provider to > another (or to a landline or cellular company, for that matter -- in > other words, local number portability for VoIP numbers would probably > be a reality). What is scary is that the FCC has allowed Vonage and others to claim true LNP when that presently simply isn't the case based on what you are stating. So, someone who has trusted Vonage (or other VoIPs) by switching perhaps a coveted number to Vonage has, in fact, placed ownership of that number in potential, if not actual, jepordy. ------------------------------ From: Geoffrey Welsh Subject: Re: Draytek Router Problem - Class C Address Only on LAN Interface? Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 09:49:39 -0500 paulfoel wrote: > Pretty disappointed with the draytek router. We tried a cheap netgear > router and this handled the subnets fine ... Most 'residential' broadband routers support only a class C address range on their LAN port. Geoffrey Welsh Ambidextrous? No, I said I'm ambinonscattous - I don't give a crap either way! ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Cell Phone Radiation Dangers Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 10:43:27 -0500 In article , sjsobol@JustThe.net says: > Tony P. wrote: >>>> Consider that Ms. Wood readily admits she has an agenda (she has an >>>> axe to grind with cell phone manufacturers over what she perceives as >>>> "iron-clad control over phone releases and pricing, its >>>> ever-lengthening contracts, and the annoying habit it has of crippling >>>> Bluetooth phones so that [she] can't use them the way [she wants] >>>> to"). I would thus take this with a heavy handful of salt. > If Miss Wood thinks that retail phone pricing and contracts are the > fault of the MANUFACTURERS, she's probably too stupid to carry a cell > phone in the first place. I doubt the removal of certain functions is > done by the manufacturers on their own, either. >> The problem is that many of the headsets are now Bluetooth enabled. >> Those put out signals on what, 2.4GHz at relatively low power. > So? My phone runs on 1.9GHz ... I still haven't heard anything > definitive either way, either that cell phones DO or DON'T cause > illness. Go and read up on Part 97 of the FCC rules for Amateurs. It was scary enough for them to require certifications of RF safety. But then, we hams are allowed to run 1500W in the HF bands and a couple hundred in the 2M and 70CM bands so I guess the RF exposure is a little more intense at those levels. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Ohio Law Would Require Auction License for eBay Sellers Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 10:47:36 -0500 In article , first.last@comcast.net says: > In article , > kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net says: >> In article , lisa_minter2001 >> @yahoo.com says: >>> CNN, via Yahoo News on Tuesday reports that the State of Ohio has >>> become very unfriendly toward online sellers using E-Bay. >>> According to CNN-Money, State of Ohio now requires an auction license >>> of people who want to sell on E-Bay, as well as a one-year training >>> class required of sellers _and_ a fifty thousand dollar security >>> bond. The auction license costs two hundred dollars. If you fail to >>> do these things, they have some jail time waiting for you. Their >>> excuse is they want to 'cut back on internet fraud using E-Bay'. >>> http://money.cnn.com/2005/03/07/technology/ohio_ebay/index.htm >> Tax revenue. That's what every state is about. >> On a related note -- a couple years ago I get notice from the state of >> RI that I never filed my 1990 taxes and owe them $1,300 between fines, >> etc. So the past few years they snatched my refunds. >> This year I decided I want receipts from this point forward, and I'll >> keep my tax records for more than three years so I can prove I filed. >> Turns out the RI Division of Taxation won't give a receipt. I got the >> woman to stamp my copy with their "RECEIVED - RI DIV TAX" verbiage >> with the date and all. >> Hopefully the state will lose one more of my returns -- then I can >> bring the receipted version to the news hounds and watch as the sparks >> fly. > Haven't you ever heard of Certified Mail / Return Receipt? I have > signed, stamped return post cards for every Fed & State return since I > started filing. When one works right across the street from the building that taxation is in (It's part of Dept. of Administration) it's easier to just walk in and drop it off as I have other business in that building many times per month. ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Satellite Radio as "Broadcast Audio Internet"? Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 04:13:26 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net I don't think the inability to directly measure audience is much more of a problem for satellite content providers than it is for AM and FM broadcasters. About all they have to work with is Arbitron and the like, which is pretty dicey for smaller markets. At least the satellite broadcasters would have national data. I have thought for some time that XM and Sirius are likely to start leasing channels, or even timeshares of channels, rather than to keep trying to fill all their channels themselves. Some of the content looks a lot like that now, although I have no idea what the business arrangements are. ------------------------------ From: andrew@voicent.com Subject: Re: Need PC Based Call Attendant/Answering Service Date: 12 Mar 2005 21:42:54 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com If you are a developer than you can use Voicent Gateway to create your own voice mail software. Voicent Gateway is an open standard based VoiceXML gateway that works on a PC with a voice modem. The shareware version, as well as autodialer and reminder products, are available for free download at http://www.voicent.com/download. Thanks, Andrew Voicent Smart AutoDialer Software - Easy to use and affordable http://www.voicent.com ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #112 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Mar 13 23:07:44 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2E47iC06375; Sun, 13 Mar 2005 23:07:44 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 23:07:44 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503140407.j2E47iC06375@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #113 TELECOM Digest Sun, 13 Mar 2005 23:05:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 113 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Outsourcing Innovation -- and Why Apple Doesn't (Marcus Didius Falco) Vonage or Lingo Allow For Faxing? (zcarenow@yahoo.com) Cell Phone Reception (bumblebee4451@yahoo.com) Re: Qwest Cost Creep (J Kelly) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 21:36:09 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Outsourcing Innovation -- and Why Apple Doesn't Some excerpts from the latest Business Week 'Technology' issue: From Business Week: http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_12/b3925601.htm Outsourcing Innovation First came manufacturing. Now companies are farming out R&D to cut costs and get new products to market faster. Are they going too far? As the Mediterranean sun bathed the festive cafs and shops of the Cte d'Azur town of Cannes, banners with the logos of Motorola (MOT ), Royal Philips Electronics (PHG ), palmOne (PLMO ), and Samsung fluttered from the masts of plush yachts moored in the harbor. On board, top execs hosted nonstop sales meetings during the day and champagne dinners at night to push their latest wireless gadgets. Outside the city's convention hall, carnival barkers, clowns on stilts, and vivacious models with bright red wigs lured passersby into flashy exhibits. For anyone in the telecom industry wanting to shout their achievements to the world, there was no more glamorous spot than the sprawling 3GSM World Congress in Southern France in February. Yet many of the most intriguing product launches in Cannes took place far from the limelight. HTC Corp., a red-hot developer of multimedia handsets, didn't even have its own booth. Instead, the Taiwanese company showed off its latest wireless devices alongside partners that sell HTC's models under their own brand names. Flextronics Corp. demonstrated several concept phones exclusively behind closed doors. And Cellon International rented a discrete three-room apartment across from the convention center to unveil its new devices to a steady stream of telecom executives. The new offerings included the C8000, featuring eye-popping software. Cradle the device to your ear and it goes into telephone mode. Peer through the viewfinder and it automatically shifts into camera mode. Hold the end of the device to your eye and it morphs into a videocam. HTC? Flextronics? Cellon? There's a good reason these are hardly household names. The multimedia devices produced from their prototypes will end up on retail shelves under the brands of companies that don't want you to know who designs their products. Yet these and other little-known companies, with names such as Quanta Computer, Premier Imaging, Wipro Technologies (WIT ), and Compal Electronics, are fast emerging as hidden powers of the technology industry. They are the vanguard of the next step in outsourcing -- of innovation itself. When Western corporations began selling their factories and farming out manufacturing in the '80s and '90s to boost efficiency and focus their energies, most insisted all the important research and development would remain in-house. But that pledge is now pass. Today, the likes of Dell (DELL ), Motorola, (MOT ) and Philips are buying complete designs of some digital devices from Asian developers, tweaking them to their own specifications, and slapping on their own brand names. It's not just cell phones. Asian contract manufacturers and independent design houses have become forces in nearly every tech device, from laptops and high-definition TVs to MP3 music players and digital cameras. "Customers used to participate in design two or three years back," says Jack Hsieh, vice-president for finance at Taiwan's Premier Imaging Technology Corp., a major supplier of digital cameras to leading U.S. and Japanese brands. "But starting last year, many just take our product. Because of price competition, they have to." While the electronics sector is furthest down this road, the search for offshore help with innovation is spreading to nearly every corner of the economy. On Feb. 8, Boeing Co. (BA ) said it is working with India's HCL Technologies to co-develop software for everything from the navigation systems and landing gear to the cockpit controls for its upcoming 7E7 Dreamliner jet. Pharmaceutical giants such as GlaxoSmithKline (GSK ) and Eli Lilly (LLY )are teaming up with Asian biotech research companies in a bid to cut the average $500 million cost of bringing a new drug to market. And Procter & Gamble Co. (PG ) says it wants half of its new product ideas to be generated from outside by 2010, compared with 20% now. Competitive Dangers Underlying this trend is a growing consensus that more innovation is vital -- but that current R&D spending isn't yielding enough bang for the buck. After spending years squeezing costs out of the factory floor, back office, and warehouse, CEOs are asking tough questions about their once-cloistered R&D operations: Why are so few hit products making it out of the labs into the market? How many of those pricey engineers are really creating game-changing products or technology breakthroughs? "R&D is the biggest single remaining controllable expense to work on," says Allen J. Delattre, head of Accenture Ltd.'s (ACN ) high-tech consulting practice. "Companies either will have to cut costs or increase R&D productivity." The result is a rethinking of the structure of the modern corporation. What, specifically, has to be done in-house anymore? At a minimum, most leading Western companies are turning toward a new model of innovation, one that employs global networks of partners. These can include U.S. chipmakers, Taiwanese engineers, Indian software developers, and Chinese factories. IBM (IBM ) is even offering the smarts of its famed research labs and a new global team of 1,200 engineers to help customers develop future products using next-generation technologies. When the whole chain works in sync, there can be a dramatic leap in the speed and efficiency of product development. The downside of getting the balance wrong, however, can be steep. Start with the danger of fostering new competitors. Motorola hired Taiwan's BenQ Corp. to design and manufacture millions of mobile phones. But then BenQ began selling phones last year in the prized China market under its own brand. That prompted Motorola to pull its contract. Another risk is that brand-name companies will lose the incentive to keep investing in new technology. "It is a slippery slope," says Boston Consulting Group Senior Vice-President Jim Andrew. "If the innovation starts residing in the suppliers, you could incrementalize yourself to the point where there isn't much left." Such perceptions are a big reason even companies that outsource heavily refuse to discuss what hardware designs they buy from whom and impose strict confidentiality on suppliers. "It is still taboo to talk openly about outsourced design," says Forrester Research Inc. (FORR ) consultant Navi Radjou, an expert on corporate innovation. The concerns also explain why different companies are adopting widely varying approaches to this new paradigm. Dell, for example, does little of its own design for notebook PCs, digital TVs, or other products. Hewlett-Packard Co. (HPQ ) says it contributes key technology and at least some design input to all its products but relies on outside partners to co-develop everything from servers to printers. Motorola buys complete designs for its cheapest phones but controls all of the development of high-end handsets like its hot-selling Razr. The key, execs say, is to guard some sustainable competitive advantage, whether it's control over the latest technologies, the look and feel of new products, or the customer relationship. "You have to draw a line," says Motorola CEO Edward J. Zander. At Motorola, "core intellectual property is above it, and commodity technology is below." Wherever companies draw the line, there's no question that the demarcation between mission-critical R&D and commodity work is sliding year by year. The implications for the global economy are immense. Countries such as India and China, where wages remain low and new engineering graduates are abundant, likely will continue to be the biggest gainers in tech employment and become increasingly important suppliers of intellectual property. Some analysts even see a new global division of labor emerging: The rich West will focus on the highest levels of product creation, and all the jobs of turning concepts into actual products or services can be shipped out. Consultant Daniel H. Pink, author of the new book A Whole New Mind, argues that the "left brain" intellectual tasks that "are routine, computer-like, and can be boiled down to a spec sheet are migrating to where it is cheaper, thanks to Asia's rising economies and the miracle of cyberspace." The U.S. will remain strong in "right brain" work that entails "artistry, creativity, and empathy with the customer that requires being physically close to the market." You can see this great divide already taking shape in global electronics. The process started in the 1990s when Taiwan emerged as the capital of PC design, largely because the critical technology was standardized, on Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT ) operating system software and Intel Corp.'s (INTC ) microprocessor. Today, Taiwanese "original-design manufacturers" (ODMS), so named because they both design and assemble products for others, supply some 65% of the world's notebook PCs. Quanta Computer Inc. alone expects to churn out 16 million notebook PCs this year in 50 different models for buyers that include Dell, Apple Computer (AAPL ), and Sony (SNE ). Now, Taiwanese ODMs and other outside designers are forces in nearly every digital device on the market. Of the 700 million mobile phones expected to be sold worldwide this year, up to 20% will be the work of ODMs, estimates senior analyst Adam Pick of the El Segundo (Calif.) market research firm iSuppli Corp. About 30% of digital cameras are produced by ODMs, 65% of MP3 players, and roughly 70% of personal digital assistants (PDAs). Building on their experience with PCs, they're increasingly creating recipes for their own gizmos, blending the latest advances in custom chips, specialized software, and state-of-the-art digital components. "There is a lot of great capability that has grown in Asia to develop complete products," says Doug Rasor, worldwide strategic marketing manager at chipmaker Texas Instruments Inc. TI often supplies core chips, along with rudimentary designs, and the ODMs take it from there. "They can do the system integration, the plastics, the industrial design, and the low-cost manufacturing, and they are happy to put Dell's name on it. That is a megatrend in the industry," says Rasor. Taiwan's ODMs clearly don't regard themselves as mere job shops. Just ask the top brass at HTC, which creates and manufactures smart phones for such wireless service providers as Vodafone and Cingular as well as equipment makers it doesn't identify. "We know this kind of product category a lot better than our customers do," says HTC President Peter Chou. "We have the capability to integrate all the latest technologies. We do everything except the Microsoft operating system." Or stop in to Quanta's headquarters in the Huaya Technology Park outside Taipei. Workers are finishing a dazzling structure the size of several football fields, with a series of wide steps leading past white columns supporting a towering Teflon-and-glass canopy. It will serve as Quanta's R&D headquarters, with thousands of engineers working on next-generation displays, digital home networking appliances, and multimedia players. This year, Quanta is doubling its engineering staff, to 7,000, and its R&D spending, to $200 million. Why? To improve its shrinking profit margins -- and because foreign clients are demanding it. "What has changed is that more customers need us to design the whole product," says Chairman Barry Lam. For future products, in fact, "it's now difficult to get good ideas from our customers. We have to innovate ourselves." Sweeping Overhaul India is emerging as a heavyweight in design, too. The top players in making the country world-class in software development, including HCL and Wipro, are expected to help India boost its contract R&D revenues from $1 billion a year now to $8 billion in three years. One of Wipro's many labs is in a modest office off dusty, congested Hosur Road in Bangalore. There, 1,000 young engineers partitioned into brightly lit pods jammed with circuit boards, chips, and steel housings hunch over 26 development projects. Among them is a hands-free telephone system that attaches to the visor of a European sports car. At another pod, designers tinker with a full dashboard embedded with a satellite navigation system. Inside other Wipro labs in Bangalore, engineers are designing prototypes for everything from high-definition TVs to satellite set-top boxes. Perhaps the most ambitious new entrant in design is Flextronics. The manufacturing behemoth already builds networking gear, printers, game consoles, and other hardware for the likes of Nortel Networks (NT ), Xerox (XRX ), HP, Motorola, and Casio Computer. But three years ago, it started losing big cell-phone and PDA orders to Taiwanese ODMs. Since then, CEO Michael E. Marks has shelled out more than $800 million on acquisitions to build a 7,000-engineer force of software, chip, telecom, and mechanical designers scattered from India and Singapore to France and Ukraine. Marks's splashiest move was to pay an estimated $30 million for frog design Inc., the pioneering Sunnyvale (Calif.) firm that helped design such Information Age icons as Apple Computer Inc.'s original Mac in 1984. So far, Flextronics has developed its own basic platforms for cell phones, routers, digital cameras, and imaging devices. His goal is to make Flextronics a low-cost, soup-to-nuts developer of consumer-electronics and tech gear. Marks has an especially radical take on where all this is headed: He believes Western tech conglomerates are on the cusp of a sweeping overhaul of R&D that will rival the offshore shift of manufacturing. In the 1990s, companies like Flextronics "completely restructured the world's electronics manufacturing," says Marks. "Now we will completely restructure design." When you get down to it, he argues, some 80% of engineers in product development do tasks that can easily be outsourced -- like translating prototypes into workable designs, upgrading mature products, testing quality, writing user manuals, and qualifying parts vendors. What's more, most of the core technologies in today's digital gadgets are available to anyone. And circuit boards for everything from cameras to network switches are becoming simpler because more functions are embedded on semiconductors. The "really hard technology work" is migrating to chipmakers such as Texas Instruments, Qualcomm (QCOM ), Philips, Intel, and Broadcom (BRCM ), Marks says. "All electronics are on the same trajectory of becoming silicon surrounded by plastic." Why then, Marks asks, should Nokia (NOK ), Motorola, Sony-Ericsson, Alcatel (ALA ), Siemens (SI ), Samsung, and other brand-name companies all largely duplicate one another's efforts? Why should each spend $30 million to develop a new smartphone or $200 million on a cellular base station when they can just buy the hardware designs? The ultimate result, he says: Some electronics giants will shrink their R&D forces from several thousand to a few hundred, concentrating on proprietary architecture, setting key specifications, and managing global R&D teams. "There is no doubt the product companies are going to have fewer people design stuff," Marks predicts. "It's going to get ugly." Granted, Marks's vision is more than a tad extreme. True, despite the tech recovery, many corporate R&D budgets have been tightening. HP's R&D spending long hovered around 6% of sales, but it's down to 4.4% now. Cisco Systems' (CSCO ) R&D budget has dropped from its old average of 17% to 14.5%. The numbers also are falling at Motorola, Lucent Technologies (LU ), and Ericsson. In November, Nokia Corp. said it aims to trim R&D spending from 12.8% of sales in 2004 to under 10% by the end of 2006. Close to the Heart Still, most companies insist they will continue to do most of the critical design work -- and have no plans to take a meat ax to R&D. A Motorola spokesman says it plans to keep R&D spending at around 10% for the long term. Lucent says its R&D staff should remain at about 9,000, after several years of deep cuts. And while many Western companies are downsizing at home, they are boosting hiring at their own labs in India, China, and Eastern Europe. "Companies realize if they want a sustainable competitive advantage, they will not get it from outsourcing," says President Frank M. Armbrecht of the Industrial Research Institute, which tracks corporate R&D spending. Companies also worry about the message they send investors. Outsourcing manufacturing, tech support, and back-office work makes clear financial sense. But ownership of design strikes close to the heart of a corporation's intrinsic value. If a company depends on outsiders for design, investors might ask, how much intellectual property does it really own, and how much of the profit from a hit product flows back into its own coffers, rather than being paid out in licensing fees? That's one reason Apple Computer lets the world know it develops its hit products in-house, to the point of etching "Designed by Apple in California" on the back of each iPod. Yet some outsourcing holdouts are changing their tune. Nokia long prided itself on developing almost everything itself -- to the point of designing its own chips. No longer. Given the complexities of today's technologies and supply chains, "nobody can master it all," says Chief Technology Officer Pertti Korhonen. "You have to figure out what is core and what is context." Lucent says outsourcing some development makes sense so that its engineers can concentrate on next-generation technologies. "This frees up talent to work on new product lines," says Dave Ayers, vice-president for platforms and engineering. "Outsourcing isn't about moving jobs. It's about the flexibility to put resources in the right places at the right time." It's also about brutal economics and the relentless demands of consumers. To get shelf space at a Best Buy (BBY ) or Circuit City often means brand-name companies need a full range of models, from a $100 point-and-shoot digital camera with 2 megapixels, say, to a $700 8-megapixel model that doubles as a videocam and is equipped with a powerful zoom lens. On top of this, superheated competition can reduce hit products to cheap commodities within months. So they must get out the door fast to earn a decent margin. "Consumer electronics have become almost like produce," says Michael E. Fawkes, senior vice-president of HP's Imaging Products Div. "They always have to be fresh." Such pressures explain outsourcing's growing allure. Take cell phones, which are becoming akin to fashion items. Using a predesigned platform can shave 70% of development costs off a new model, estimates William S. Wong, a senior vice-president for marketing at Cellon. That can be a huge savings. As a rule of thumb, it takes around $10 million and up to 150 engineers to develop a new cell phone from scratch. If Motorola or Nokia guess wrong about the market trends a year into the future, they can lose big. So they must develop several versions. With most of its 800 engineers in China and France, Cellon creates several basic designs each year and spreads the costs among many buyers. It also has the technical expertise to morph that basic phone into a bewildering array of models. Want a 2-megapixel camera module instead of 1-megapixel? Want to include a music player, or change the style from a gray clamshell to a flaming-red candy-bar shape? No problem: Cellon engineers can whip up a prototype, run all the tests, and get it into mass production in a Chinese factory in months. Moving Up the Food Chain Companies are still figuring out exactly what to outsource. PalmOne Inc.'s collaboration with Taiwan's HTC on its popular Treo 650 smart phone illustrates one approach. Palm has long hired contractors to assemble hardware from its own industrial designs. But in 2001, it decided to focus on software and shifted hardware production to Taiwanese ODMs. PalmOne designers still determine the look and feel of the product, pick key components like the display and core chips, and specify performance requirements. But HTC does much of the mechanical and electrical design. "Without a doubt, they've become a part of the innovation process," says Angel L. Mendez, senior global operations vice-president at palmOne. "It's less about outsourcing and more about the collaborative way in which design comes together." The result: PalmOne has cut months off of development times, reduced defects by 50%, and boosted gross margins by around 20%. Hewlett-Packard, a company with such a proud history of innovation that its advertising tag line is simply "invent," also works with design partners on all the hardware it outsources. "Our strategy is now to work with global networks to leverage the best technologies on the planet," says Dick Conrad, HP's senior vice-president for global operations. According to iSuppli, HP is getting design help from Taiwan's Quanta and Hon Hai Precision for PCs, Lite-On for printers, Inventec for servers and MP3 players, and Altek for digital cameras. HP won't identify specific suppliers, but it says the strategy has brought benefits. Conrad says it now takes 60% less time to get a new concept to market. Plus, the company can "redeploy our assets and resources to higher value-added products" such as advanced printer inks and sophisticated corporate software, he says. How far can outsourced design go? When does it get to the point where ODMs start driving truly breakthrough concepts and core technologies? It's not here yet. Distance is one barrier. "To be a successful product company requires intimacy with the customer," says Azim H. Premji, chairman of India's Wipro. "That is very hard to offshore in fast-changing markets." Another hurdle is that R&D spending by ODMs remains relatively low. Even though Premier develops most of its own cameras and video projectors, "the really core technology," such as the digital signal processors, is invented in the U.S., says vice-president Hsieh. Premier's latest wallet-size video projector, for example, was based on a rough design by Texas Instruments, developer of the core chip. With margins shrinking fast in the ODM business, however, Premier and other Taiwanese companies know they need to move up the innovation food chain to reap higher profits. That's where Flextronics and its design acquisitions could get interesting. Inside frog's hip Sunnyvale office, designers are working to create a radically new multimedia device, for an unnamed corporate client, that won't hit the market until 2007. The plan, says Patricia Roller, frog's co-CEO, is to use Flextronics software engineers in Ukraine or India to develop innovative applications, and for Flextronics engineers to design the working prototype. Flextronics then would mass-produce the gadgets, probably in China. Who will ultimately profit most from the outsourcing of innovation isn't clear. The early evidence suggests that today's Western titans can remain leaders by orchestrating global innovation networks. Yet if they lose their technology edge and their touch with customers, they could be tomorrow's great shrinking conglomerates. Contractors like Quanta and Flextronics that are moving up the innovation ladder, meanwhile, have a shot at joining the world's leading industrial players. What is clear is that an army of in-house engineers no longer means a company can control its fate. Instead, the winners will be those most adept at marshaling the creativity and skills of workers around the world. By Pete Engardio and Bruce Einhorn With Manjeet Kripalani in Bangalore, Andy Reinhardt in Cannes, Bruce Nussbaum in Somers, N.Y., and Peter Burrows in San Mateo, Calif. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_12/b3925608.htm Outsourcing Commentary: Apple's Blueprint for Genius Handling its own design work is one reason for best-sellers reason for best-sellers like the iPod and Shuffle. Steve Jobs is the other By Peter Burrows "Designed by Apple in Cupertino." The words are printed in such small type on the back of Apple's (AAPL ) tiny new iPod Shuffle MP3 player that you have to squint to read them. But they speak volumes about why Apple is standing so far out from the crowd these days. At a time when rivals are outsourcing as much design as possible to cut costs, Apple remains at its core a product company -- one that would never give up control of how those products are created. In this age of commodity tech products, design, after all, is what makes Apple Apple. This focus is apparent to anyone who has used one of its trailblazing products. While the Silicon Valley pioneer sells only a few dozen models, compared to the hundreds offered by many of its rivals, many of those "designed in Cupertino" products are startling departures from the norm -- and they often set the directions for the rest of the industry. Examples abound, from the iPod, to the flat screen look of the new iMac, to the simple smallness of the new Mac mini PC. What's the secret? The precise details are almost impossible to get, because Apple treats its product-development processes like state secrets -- going so far as to string black drapes around the production lines at the factories of the contract manufacturers it hires to assemble its products. In one case, says a source who once worked on an Apple project, the outfit even insisted that its wares be built only on the midnight shift, when fewer prying eyes might be around. "INSANELY GREAT." But the general themes are clear. Most CEOs are focused on achieving their financial and operational goals, and on executing a strategy. But Apple's Steve Jobs believes his company's ultimate advantage comes from its ability to make unique, or as he calls them, "insanely great" products. Jobs's entire company is focused on that task. That means while rival computer makers increasingly rely on so-called outsourced design manufacturers (ODMs), for key design decisions, Jobs keeps most of those tasks in-house. Sure, he relies on ODMs to manufacture his products, but the big decisions on Apple products are made in Silicon Valley. Jobs himself is a crucial part of the formula. He's unique among big-time hardware CEOs for his hands-on involvement in the design process. Even product-design experts marvel at the power of the Jobs factor. FIRST, AN IDEA. "I've been thinking hard about the Apple product-development process since I left," says design guru Donald Norman, co-founder the design consultants Nielsen Norman Group, who left Apple in 1997. "If you follow my [guidelines], it will guarantee good design. But Steve Jobs doesn't want good design. He wants great design, and my method will never give you that. That takes a rare leader, who can bring both the cohesion and commitment and style. And Steve has it." Many executives believe that outsourcing design allows them to lower the salaries they must pay, and lets them have engineers working on the products across all time zones. Jobs thinks that's short-sighted. He argues that the cost-savings aren't worth what you give up in terms of teamwork, communication, and the ability to get groups of people working together to bring a new idea to life. Indeed, with top-notch mechanical, electrical, software, and industrial designers all housed at Apple's Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino, Calif., the company's design capability is more vertically integrated than almost any other tech outfit. Typically, a new Apple product starts with a big idea for an unmet customer need. For the original iPod, it was for an MP3 player that, unlike earlier models, could hold and easily manage your entire music collection. Then, Apple's product architects and industrial designers figure out what that product should look like and what features it should have -- and, importantly, not have. "Apple has a much more holistic view of product design," says David Carey, president of design consulting firm Portelligent. "Good product design starts from the outside, and works its way inside." HALF MEASURE. Already, that's different from the process by which the bulk of tech products are made. Increasingly, tech companies meet with ODMs to see what designs they have cooked up. Then, the ODMs are asked to tweak those basic blueprints to add a few features, and to match the look and feel of the company's other products. That's where the "design" input might end for most companies. But since it's almost always trying to create one-of-a-kind products, Apple has to ask its own engineers to do the critical electrical and mechanical work to bring products to life. In the iPod Shuffle, for example, designers cut a circuit card in two and stacked the pieces, bunk-bed style, to make use of the empty air space created by the height of the battery in the device. "They realized they could erase the height penalty [of the battery] to help them win the battle of the bulge," says Carey, whose company did a detailed engineering analysis of the iPod Shuffle. SCREW-FREE. Even more important, Apple's products are designed to run a particular set of programs or services. By contrast, a Dell (DELL ) or Gateway (GTW ) PC must be ready for whatever new features Microsoft (MSFT ) comes out with, or whatever Windows program a customer opts to install. But Apple makes much of its own software, from the Mac operating system to applications such as iPhoto and iTunes. "That's Apple's trump card," says one Apple rival. "The ODMs just don't have the world-class industrial design, the style, or the ability to make easy-to-use software -- or the ability to integrate it all. They may some day, but they don't have it now." Of course, Apple also sets its self apart by designing machines that are also little works of art -- even if it means making life difficult for manufacturers contracted to build those designs. During a trip to visit ODMs in Asia, one executive told securities analyst Jim Grossman of Thrivent Investment Management about Steve Jobs's insistence that no screws be visible on the laptop his company was manufacturing for Apple. The executive said his company had no idea how to handle the job and had to invent a new tooling process for the job. "They had to learn new ways to do things just to meet Apple's design," says Grossman. TOUGH CUSTOMER. That's not to say Apple is completely bucking the outsourcing trend. All its products are manufactured by ODMs in Asia. Just as it buys chips and disk drives from other suppliers, sources say Apple lets ODMs take some role in garden-variety engineering work -- but not much. "This is an issue for Apple, because the A-team engineers [at the ODMs] don't like working with Apple. It's like when you were a kid, all your dad let you do was hold the flashlight, rather than let you try to fix the car yourself," says an executive at a rival MP3 maker. In fairness, Apple's reliance on a smaller number of products than its rivals and go-it-alone design means it's always a dud or two from disaster. But at the moment, it's proving that "made in Cupertino" is a trademark for success. Burrows is Computer editor in BusinessWeek's Silicon Valley bureau http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_12/b3925611.htm OUTSOURCING INNOVATION/Online Extra R&D Jobs: Who Stays, Who Goes? A recent in-depth outsourcing study of a hypothetical 1,000-person team found only 722 needed to be kept. Others say that's way too many After decades of streamlining and downsizing practically every aspect of their businesses, corporate budget-cutters and efficiency wonks are zeroing in on one of the most sacrosanct areas of the organization: research and development. R&D can account for anywhere from 5% to 18% of the costs of a major electronics company. Human considerations aside, the task is fraught with risk. Do nothing, and a company could end up at a severe disadvantage against nimbler, lower-cost rivals that have mastered the art of using networks of contractors, design partners, and technology providers in India, China, or Eastern Europe. But cut too deeply, and the whole product-development process could go out of whack. Over the long run, a company could even lose its ability to generate future breakthrough products. "PORTABLE" POSITIONS. So how to assess which jobs must remain in-house and which ones can safely take place more cheaply and efficiently offshore? This is a red-hot question in management circles today, with consultants busily applying cold calculus to each step of the product-development process. "R&D used to be treated as one big black box," says Vivek Paul, CEO of Indian info-tech services giant Wipro Technologies (WIT ), whose contract R&D service employs 8,000 engineers. "Now, companies are deconstructing the whole R&D chain, sorting out what's strategic and what's not." To help provide answers, Parametric Technology (PTC), a Needham (Mass.) producer of collaborative design software for 31,000 clients worldwide, commissioned a study of a typical R&D workforce of a typical electronics company. It concluded that about 30% of the jobs were "portable," meaning companies could shift them offshore. The PTC study used two basic questions: First, how critical is a particular job to the company's competitive advantage? Second, how easy is it to physically transfer that taskn to a remote location? CREATING CRITERIA. More specifically: Does an employee add enough value to the company to justify the higher cost of keeping that slot on the U.S. payroll, or is the employee doing more routine, low-value work that an offshore worker could accomplish for much less pay? Is the staffer mainly upgrading or reducing costs of existing product lines, or devoted to future products? Is he or she integral to creating technology that the company regards as part of its strategic core, or can the intellectual property be purchased on the market? Deciding whether a job can move also involves even deeper issues: Can it be digitalized and done entirely on a computer, or does it require close personal contact with customers or other members of a team? Can the entire task fit into one distinct piece, or "module," that can be plugged in or out of a product-development project, much as a chassis or seat assembly can be bolted onto a car? If so, can that entire module of work move out of the company? Does a staffer have special institutional knowledge of the corporation's culture, needs, and history that any outsider lacks? Using such criteria, the PTC study classified each R&D position as "most critical," "moderately critical," or "less critical." It then estimated how many of the jobs in each category were easily transportable. Starting with an R&D operation of 1,000 engineers, PTC's details its opinion as to whittling down the operation: Most critical: Only about 150 staffers fall into this category. It includes product managers who develop and guide strategies for product lines, and program or project managers who monitor development milestones, schedules, and budgets. Systems engineers, who define a product in its broadest terms, also rank as critical. They set specific performance standards, for example, for core components such as certain digital displays, microprocessors, and software platforms. Only 9 of the 150 positions can be outsourced, the PTC study estimates. Head count: 991. Moderately critical: Mechanical analysts who determine if designs hold up to certain levels of stress and electrical engineers who scrutinize the performance of a circuit board fall into the moderately critical category. So do engineers who translate conceptual designs into working prototypes as well as computer engineers who supply the information-technology systems needed to develop a product. Of the 600 jobs in this category, PTC tags 144 for outsourcing. Head count: 847. Less critical: Here's where the real downsizing can take place. Those who can go: designers of auxiliary systems the company can purchase from the outside and "value engineers" who mainly upgrade products already on the market or find ways to reduce their manufacturing costs. "Documentation specialists," who do detailed schematic drawings for the factory, write operating manuals, or compile lists of components also come under this category. Some 250 of the 1,000 workers do these types of jobs, and 135 of them can be outsourced. Final head count of R&D staff: 722. Of course, many other analysts find this figure conservative. Wipro's Paul believes anywhere from 40% to 60% of an electronics company's R&D jobs can be farmed out overseas. One thing that's clear: R&D jobs may not stick around, but outsourcing them will. Copyright 2000-2004, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. John F. McMullen http://www.westnet.com/~observer BLOG: http://johnmacrants.blogspot.com/ NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Business Week, McGraw-Hill. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: zcarenow@yahoo.com Subject: Vonage or Lingo Allow For Faxing? Date: 13 Mar 2005 18:57:54 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Do any of these services allow the capability for me to use my fax machine to fax out and receive faxes from others? Thanks. ------------------------------ From: bumblebee4451@yahoo.com Subject: Cell Phone Reception Date: 13 Mar 2005 18:38:13 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have been having problems with my cell phone (LG) dropping calls in my home. Seems like you talk for a few minutes and the call is dropped. Getting tired of this and thinking it was my phone, I went to Verizon since I was near the end of my contract and got 2 new LG 6100 camera phones (one for me and one for my son). I paid over $200 -- there is a rebate. Well don't you know it the same thing happens with this phone. I did some testing and find that the signal bars are very weak in my area (suburban), its not just my house ( a regular wood house) but seemingly a few miles area the signal is weak. I drove about a mile east and the signal bars got stronger and then they got the strongest a few miles a way. The phone worked fine there. So does this mean my area is in a dead zone? What can be done? How can Verizon put someone in a contract if it knows that cell reception will be poor in there area? Why doesn't Verizon fix this so we all could get uniform service. It seems a rip off if I can't use my cell phone in my home. ------------------------------ From: J Kelly Subject: Re: Qwest Cost Creep Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 18:06:17 -0600 Organization: http://newsguy.com Reply-To: jkelly@*newsguy.com On Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:25:15 -0700, jared@nospam.au (jared) wrote: > In the middle of last year I changed to QWEST and a plan that reduced > my monthly charges to about $33. Now in March it's up to > $50. Even a > simple phone line with no features is apparently $28 per month > ... that's only twice what QWEST advertises (i.e., before fine print). > One of the tricky changes was to start charging a monthly fee for long > distance that had been bundled in the plan. No notice, just a few > dollars more. I asked the customer service representative why and all > she could say was that they didn't know that there was going to be a > charge for long distance with that plan. I'm no fan of Qwest, but I haven't had the cost creep you mention since buying into their unlimited long distance plan quite some time back. The sent me a letter to explain the new plan they had, which was 5 cents a minute, with a $20 cap, a better deal than the $20 unlimited for people that may use less than 400 minutes in some months. They also sent me a letter later on stating that their would now be a monthly fee if useage was under a certain amount, but I always use more than 400 minutes per month so always end up at the $20 max that they charge for LD anyway. I guess I can't recall ever having them just raise my rate without notice, and I've been a Qwest/US West customer since 1993. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V24 #113 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Mar 14 17:22:05 2005 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id j2EMM5q13948; Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:22:05 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:22:05 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200503142222.j2EMM5q13948@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V24 #114 TELECOM Digest Mon, 14 Mar 2005 17:21:00 EST Volume 24 : Issue 114 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Technology & Development: The Real Digital Divide (Marcus Didius Falco) Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds (Monty Solomon) Payroll Website Still Not Secured (Monty Solomon) European Telecom Market Heats Up (Telecom dailyLead from USTA) Industry Officials Debate Policies For Internet Telephony (Jack Decker) Notes From The Ebbers Trial (Eric Friedebach) Offering USA (ASR-80%) (Phil Lall) Re: Vonage or Lingo Allow For Faxing? (sean) Re: Vonage or Lingo Allow For Faxing? (DevilsPGD) Re: Vonage or Lingo Allow For Faxing? (John Levine) Re: Vonage or Lingo Allow For Faxing? (Tim@Backhome.org) Re: Vonage or Lingo Allow For Faxing? (ukcats4218016@yahoo.com) Re: Hackers Target U.S. Power Grid (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com) Re: Cell Phone Reception (LB@notmine.com) Re: Cell Phone Reception (Gene S. Berkowitz) Re: Cell Phone Reception (Justin Time) Re: Draytek Router Problem - Class C Address Only on LAN? (paulfoel) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson 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 the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 03:55:57 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Technology and Development: The Real Digital Divide Cute picture of an African boy holding a "phone" made of clay at: http://economist.com/images/20050312/1105LD1.jpg http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3D3742817 Technology and development The real digital divide Mar 10th 2005 From The Economist print edition Encouraging the spread of mobile phones is the most sensible and effective response to the digital divide. IT WAS an idea born in those far-off days of the internet bubble: the worry that as people in the rich world embraced new computing and communications technologies, people in the poor world would be left stranded on the wrong side of a digital divide . Five years after the technology bubble burst, many ideas from the time that eyeballs matter more than profits or that internet traffic was doubling every 100 days have been sensibly shelved. But the idea of the digital divide persists. On March 14th, after years of debate, the United Nations will launch a Digital Solidarity Fund to finance projects that address the uneven distribution and use of new information and communication technologies and enable excluded people and countries to enter the new era of the information society . Yet the debate over the digital divide is founded on a myth that plugging poor countries into the internet will help them to become rich rapidly. The lure of magic This is highly unlikely, because the digital divide is not a problem in itself, but a symptom of deeper, more important divides: of income, development and literacy. Fewer people in poor countries than in rich ones own computers and have access to the internet simply because they are too poor, are illiterate, or have other more pressing concerns, such as food, health care and security. So even if it were possible to wave a magic wand and cause a computer to appear in every household on earth, it would not achieve very much: a computer is not useful if you have no food or electricity and cannot read. Yet such wand-waving through the construction of specific local infrastructure projects such as rural telecentres is just the sort of thing for which the UN's new fund is intended. How the fund will be financed and managed will be discussed at a meeting in September. One popular proposal is that technology firms operating in poor countries be encouraged to donate 1% of their profits to the fund, in return for which they will be able to display a Digital Solidarity logo. (Anyone worried about corrupt officials creaming off money will be heartened to hear that a system of inspections has been proposed.) This sort of thing is the wrong way to go about addressing the inequality in access to digital technologies: it is treating the symptoms, rather than the underlying causes. The benefits of building rural computing centres, for example, are unclear (see the article in our Technology Quarterly in this issue). Rather than trying to close the divide for the sake of it, the more sensible goal is to determine how best to use technology to promote bottom-up development. And the answer to that question turns out to be remarkably clear: by promoting the spread not of PCs and the internet, but of mobile phones. Plenty of evidence suggests that the mobile phone is the technology with the greatest impact on development. A new paper finds that mobile phones raise long-term growth rates, that their impact is twice as big in developing nations as in developed ones, and that an extra ten phones per 100 people in a typical developing country increases GDP growth by 0.6 percentage points (see article). And when it comes to mobile phones, there is no need for intervention or funding from the UN: even the world's poorest people are already rushing to embrace mobile phones, because their economic benefits are so apparent. Mobile phones do not rely on a permanent electricity supply and can be used by people who cannot read or write. Phones are widely shared and rented out by the call, for example by the telephone ladies found in Bangladeshi villages. Farmers and fishermen use mobile phones to call several markets and work out where they can get the best price for their produce. Small businesses use them to shop around for supplies. Mobile phones are used to make cashless payments in Zambia and several other African countries. Even though the number of phones per 100 people in poor countries is much lower than in the developed world, they can have a dramatic impact: reducing transaction costs, broadening trade networks and reducing the need to travel, which is of particular value for people looking for work. Little wonder that people in poor countries spend a larger proportion of their income on telecommunications than those in rich ones. The digital divide that really matters, then, is between those with access to a mobile network and those without. The good news is that the gap is closing fast. The UN has set a goal of 50% access by 2015, but a new repor from the World Bank notes that 77% of the world's population already lives within range of a mobile network. And yet more can be done to promote the diffusion of mobile phones. Instead of messing around with telecentres and infrastructure projects of dubious merit, the best thing governments in the developing world can do is to liberalise their telecoms markets, doing away with lumbering state monopolies and encouraging competition. History shows that the earlier competition is introduced, the faster mobile phones start to spread. Consider the Democratic Republic of Congo and Ethiopia, for example. Both have average annual incomes of a mere $100 per person, but the number of phones per 100 people is two in the former (where there are six mobile networks), and 0.13 in the latter (where there is only one). Let a thousand networks bloom According to the World Bank, the private sector invested $230 billion in telecommunications infrastructure in the developing world between 1993 and 2003 and countries with well-regulated competitive markets have seen the greatest investment. Several firms, such as Orascom Telecom (see article) and Vodacom, specialise in providing mobile access in developing countries. Handset-makers, meanwhile, are racing to develop cheap handsets for new markets in the developing world. Rather than trying to close the digital divide through top-down IT infrastructure projects, governments in the developing world should open their telecoms markets. Then firms and customers, on their own and even in the poorest countries, will close the divide themselves. Copyright 2005 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. http://economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3D3713955 NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . Hundreds of new articles daily. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Economist Newspaper Group. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 13 Mar 2005 23:55:31 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds A national Kaiser Family Foundation survey found children and teens are spending an increasing amount of time using "new media" like computers, the Internet and video games, without cutting back on the time they spend with "old" media like TV, print and music. Instead, because of the amount of time they spend using more than one medium at a time (for example, going online while watching TV), they're managing to pack increasing amounts of media content into the same amount of time each day. The study, Generation M: Media in the Lives of 8-18 Year-olds, examined media use among a nationally representative sample of more than 2,000 3rd through 12th graders who completed detailed questionnaires, including nearly 700 self-selected participants who also maintained seven-day media diaries. http://www.kff.org/entmedia/entmedia030905pkg.cfm ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 00:44:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Payroll Website Still Not Secured By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | March 1, 2005 Boston software entrepreneur Aaron Greenspan, who revealed serious security flaws in the website of Tennessee payroll company PayMaxx Inc. last week, said yesterday that the site remains insecure. Greenspan said that a computer hacker still could use the site to obtain the Social Security numbers of hundreds of Americans. Greenspan called the management of PayMaxx incompetent, and urged Congress to investigate the company. "They have no idea what they're doing," he said. Greenspan's company, Think Computer Corp., had its payrolls prepared by PayMaxx, of Franklin, Tenn., until late last year. After ending their relationship, Greenspan found that his name, address, Social Security number, and other personal data were still available on the PayMaxx website, which could be accessed by entering zeroes in the site's login windows. Greenspan also found that he could obtain the same information about other PayMaxx customers by typing random numbers into the browser's address window. He estimated that up to 100,000 files could be accessed this way. http://www.boston.com/business/globe/articles/2005/03/01/payroll_website_still_not_secured/ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are so many real idiots out there working on websites, etc. I am _hardly_ a brilliant web designer, but don't any of these fools know simple security measures they can take to thwart all but the most detirmined hackers? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 12:39:45 EST From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: European Telecom Market Heats Up Telecom dailyLead from USTA March 14, 2005 http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20043&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * European telecom market heats up BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * Qwest ups ante in battle for MCI * Malone gets cozy with Cablevision * AT&T tests WiMAX service * Leap agrees to sell licenses to Verizon Wireless * China Telecom gets license to operate Internet cafe chain USTA SPOTLIGHT * Calling ALL Carriers Ready to Explore! EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * RIM adds IM to BlackBerry * New breed of mobiles do more than just voice REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * SEC filing details severance package for AT&T's Dorman Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=20043&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 14 Mar 2005 12:46:55 -0500 Subject: Industry Officials Debate Policies For Internet Telephony http://www.vonage-forum.com/article1727.html Industry Officials Debate Policies For Internet Telephony March 9, 2005 By Drew Clark A regional Bell telephone company, a rural carrier, a cable company and an Internet phone company disagreed Wednesday about the obligations and prices that communications companies must pay when they offer Internet telephony to rural America. Speaking at a telecommunications forum hosted by a task force of the Congressional Rural Caucus, Vonage CEO Jeffrey Citron said subsidies between long-distance and local telephone service must be eliminated. Kevin Hess, vice president of federal affairs for the rural firm TDS Telecom, disagreed and said the current inter-carrier subsidization systems "remain the appropriate mechanism of compensation." Hess also said voice-over-Internet protocol (VoIP) providers like Vonage must contribute equally to the universal service fund (USF), which is designed to finance phone service to all Americans. Reps. Charles (Chip) Pickering, R-Miss., and Rick Boucher, D-Va., also addressed the task force, and each outlined their bills to pre-empt state