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Message Digest Volume 28 : Issue 54 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Re: The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives Re: TeleTrap from TelTech Systems Re: Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems Re: Giving Up the Cellphone Contract Re: Giving Up the Cellphone Contract Free Internet-Calling Services Join the Cellphone App Market Can the Cellphone Industry Keep Growing? Time for a muzzle / The online world of lies and rumor grows ever more vicious. Is it time to rethink free speech? Select the smartest phone for you ====== 27½ years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by 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, and other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 18:52:09 +1100 From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: The Cellphone, Navigating Our Lives Message-ID: <pan.2009.02.22.07.52.07.880457@myrealbox.com> On Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:13:40 -0500, Sam Spade wrote: > David Clayton wrote: > >> And so many of these things rely on a fully functional GPS system, how >> long until those who want to bring down Western civilization figure out >> a way to cripple this system by knocking out a satellite? > > Not an easy task. There are spares on orbit right now. There [are] > several spares awaiting launch. > > Someone would have to destroy several widely separated satellites before > they would knock out the system. With our technology we would figure > out quite quickly where the destruction was coming from. That would be > a major act of war. A few missiles that can reach the orbit altitude and blow up leaving suitably sized debris that would eventually collide with those satellites would probably do the job (although with the amount of garbage now in orbit it may happen anyway......is there any environment that humans can reach that they don't pollute in one form or another?) And even if you found out where the missiles came from, would those who sent them really care? Put enough debris into orbit - with malicious intent or otherwise - and sooner or later the whole resource will be severely degraded if not made unusable, and that would have a major impact on the modern way of life (and warfare). -- Regards, David. David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 01:54:30 -0800 (PST) From: Sam Spade <samspade@coldmail.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: TeleTrap from TelTech Systems Message-ID: <172267.72519.qm@web44814.mail.sp1.yahoo.com> T wrote: > I recall some time ago I was using NetworkPlus 800 service. ANI is a > beautiful thing, you cannot block. Ane Net+ would transmit the ANI as > CLID. > ANI is "sticky" for in-wats calls but not for any other calls. Other than in-wats ANI is an operator trunk treatment (including wireline E911). The CLID blocking rules do not apply to in-wats. I don't believe the CLID SS7 message is even sent on an in-wats call. Lots of half-smart users dial *67 before an in-wats number thinking they are going to block their number from reaching that predatory call center they are calling. Surprise! I think the FCC tried to explain that back in the late 1990s when they still gave a darn about making the Caller ID system working. Maybe now that we have a Democrat (and democratic) president again the FCC will once again grow to care about consumer issues. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:32:02 -0600 From: Hudson Leighton <hudsonl@skypoint.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Low-Tech Fixes for High-Tech Problems Message-ID: <hudsonl-A744B4.10315722022009@news.isp.giganews.com> In article <jB3ol.6905$i9.4371@bignews7.bellsouth.net>, MC <for.address.look@www.ai.uga.edu.slash.mc> wrote: > T wrote: > >> As customers begin to queue, he reaches beneath the counter for a > >> black plastic bag. He wraps one layer of the plastic around the card > >> and swipes it again. Success. The sale is rung up. > > > > It'a because the plastic creates drag so that the card reader actually > > has a chance to interpret the data on the card. > > Would simply sliding it more slowly do the same thing? I seem to recall > that some card readers want the card to be slid fairly slowly. I have never used the bag trick, but have used the slide the card backwards trick with very good success. As I understand it the data is on the strip twice and running the card backwards reads the other data set. Backwards being defined as swiping the card through the POS terminal bottom to top. -Hudson ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 22 Feb 2009 10:27:16 -0800 (PST) From: Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Giving Up the Cellphone Contract Message-ID: <159174.88957.qm@web52701.mail.re2.yahoo.com> Sat, 21 Feb 2009 22:38:36 -0500 T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net> wrote: <<I'm looking hard at Metro PCS. They've just expanded into RI and have coverage in my most traveled areas (RI, MA, CT) but CT isn't quite ready yet. Their rates are very attractive though. I wonder if they're GSM and if I could just snap the module into my Nokia phone.>> MetroPCS as well as Cricket (another prepaid unlimited operator) are both CDMA operators and they don't have SIM cards. Also, you can only use their approved phones i.e. phones which they sell or have sold. Also, please consider when replying to an article to *not* quote the entire article. Include exactly what you're referencing and leave the rest out. Thanks! (Amen - bh) ------------------------------ Date: 22 Feb 2009 12:45:54 -0000 From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Giving Up the Cellphone Contract Message-ID: <20090222124554.62148.qmail@simone.iecc.com> > I'm looking hard at Metro PCS. They've just expanded into RI and > have coverage in my most traveled areas (RI, MA, CT) but CT isn't > quite ready yet. Their rates are very attractive though. > I wonder if they're GSM and if I could just snap the module into my > Nokia phone. No, they're CDMA. You probably have to buy an appropriately programmed phone from them. R's, John ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:20:57 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Free Internet-Calling Services Join the Cellphone App Market Message-ID: <p06240882c5c7e1bddf77@[10.0.1.6]> Phone Smart Free Internet-Calling Services Join the Cellphone App Market By BOB TEDESCHI The New York Times January 29, 2009 For years, software providers have offered ways to make free calls from cellphones, and most of them even work. The problem is putting the software on your phone. It is not that carriers want to make it hard for subscribers to load Skype, Fring and other free-calling apps onto phones, although the networks obviously bristle at the idea of giving their customers a way to make free calls (also known as "voice over Internet protocol" or telephony). The bigger issue is that until recently, carriers have made it painfully hard to load anything onto your phone, whether it is sophisticated software or a simple ring tone. But since Apple buried its spurs in the backside of the industry by creating an application store that actually works - thereby compelling other companies to follow suit - these free-calling applications are almost within the reach of the average smartphone user. Of the many free-calling applications, Fring, a start-up based in Israel, and Skype, the standard-bearer of the free-calling realm, are among the more user-friendly. But even then, the applications are not yet worth the inconvenience unless you plan to make a fair number of international phone calls and can put up with less-than-perfect call quality (or far worse). ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/29/technology/personaltech/29smart.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 00:20:57 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Can the Cellphone Industry Keep Growing? Message-ID: <p0624087dc5c7de922181@[10.0.1.6]> Can the Cellphone Industry Keep Growing? By MATT RICHTEL The New York Times February 4, 2009 Cellphone sales are falling, manufacturers have announced thousands of layoffs and wireless carriers are finding it harder to acquire and keep customers. It seems like another tale of "recession bites industry," but there are signs that this downturn is masking something more fundamental: that the cellphone industry's best days are behind it. Analysts and investors are beginning to ask whether the industry can continue growing. The challenge is both simple and daunting: how to expand when more than half of the six billion people on the planet already have phones. And even in developing countries where there are underserved markets, subscribers spend less on phones and services. ... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/04/technology/companies/04cell.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:03:49 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Time for a muzzle / The online world of lies and rumor grows ever more vicious. Is it time to rethink free speech? Message-ID: <p0624088ac5c7ec8a67ac@[10.0.1.6]> Time for a muzzle The online world of lies and rumor grows ever more vicious. Is it time to rethink free speech? By Drake Bennett | February 15, 2009 HERE ARE TWO stories about the Internet. The week before last, the crippled economy coughed up a gift for picked-on college students across the country: It shut down Juicy Campus, a notorious website where campus gossips nationwide were invited to hold forth anonymously. "Just remember, keep it Juicy!" the home page had exhorted. Posters had duly obliged, and many students had found their social skills, weight, grooming habits, sexual orientation, and/or promiscuity to be the subject of gleefully vicious discussion by unseen online classmates. In a healthier economy, it's unclear if anything could have closed down Juicy Campus - university administrators and even state prosecutors were eager to take it on, but had all but conceded that they had few legal options, and the website had been rapidly expanding the number of its member campuses. And then there is this: Last month, someone posted a map showing the names, home locations, and occupations of thousands of people who gave money to support the passage of Proposition 8, the ballot initiative outlawing gay marriage in California. A number of these Proposition 8 supporters have since reported threatening e-mails and phone calls. Speech now travels farther faster than the Founding Fathers - or the judges who created much of modern free speech law - could have dreamed. The Web has brought a new reach to the things we say about others, and created a vast potential audience for arguments that would once have unfolded in a single room or between two telephones. It has eaten away at the buffer that once separated public and private, making it possible to expose someone else's intimate information to the world with a few keystrokes, or to take information that would formerly have been filed away in obscure public records and present it digestibly as a goad to collective political action. One of the results has been the advent of a new culture of online heckling and shaming, and the rise of enormous cyber-posses motivated by social or political causes - or simple sadism. Now, some legal scholars are beginning to argue that new technologies have changed the balance of power between the right to speak and the right to be left alone. At conferences, in law review articles, and, increasingly, in the courts, some lawyers are suggesting that the time has come to rethink some of the hallowed protections that the law gives speech in this country, especially if that speech is online. The proposals vary: Some focus on restricting material that can be posted online or how long it can stay there, others on whether we should be less willing to protect online anonymity. More ambitious schemes would have courts treat a person's reputation as a form of property - something to be protected, traded, and even sold like any other property - or create a legally enforceable duty of confidentiality between friends like that which exists between doctors and their patients. At stake is the basic question of what we will allow people to say and do online, whether it's on a message board, a Craigslist ad, or a YouTube video - and who gets to set the rules governing what's OK and what's not. As the Web grows increasingly interactive, the system of informal and formal rules that determines appropriate behavior is only beginning to emerge, and thinkers on both sides of the debate agree that courts can go a long way toward shaping it. The argument over what to do about online speech, in other words, is an argument over whether the Web's unruly nature is something to be celebrated or tamed. ... http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/02/15/time_for_a_muzzle/ ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 01:08:00 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Select the smartest phone for you Message-ID: <p0624088bc5c7ed87a2ff@[10.0.1.6]> The Boston Globe THE GLOBE TESTS Select the smartest phone for you With so many competing operating systems and features, choosing a device can be daunting By John Dyer, Globe Correspondent | February 22, 2009 T riders who used to crack open the newspaper on their morning commutes now surf the Web on their smartphones. Executives don't rush back to the office to write last-minute e-mails anymore; they send them via their PDAs, or personal digital assistants, a fancy name for smartphones. Lost in an unfamiliar town? Smartphones have global positioning systems. Want to capture baby's first steps when a camera isn't handy? Smartphones take photographs. These light, handheld devices are like electronic Swiss Army knives. They offer more doodads than most people need, making them essential tools for the technically savvy, but often intimidating for everyone else. The Globe tested four smartphones. Each is essentially a mobile phone and computer in one, allowing users to make calls and send text messages, check e-mail, listen to music, and enjoy the other perks of browsing online - from Internet banking to finding a good local restaurant. Each allows users to download free or inexpensive applications, a trend that's opening new markets for computer and telecommunications companies. Applications range from music files to online dictionaries to currency converters. We asked AT&T and T-Mobile to supply us with their most up-to-date 3G or third-generation smartphones, and we tried out the $435 Blackberry Bold, the $235 LG Incite, the $200 iPhone with 8GB of memory, and the $180 T-Mobile G1. ... http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2009/02/22/select_the_smartest_phone_for_you/ ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition 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. The Telecom Digest is currently being moderated by Bill Horne while Pat Townson recovers from a stroke. 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