Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id JAA24728; Fri, 13 Dec 1996 09:01:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 09:01:04 -0500 (EST) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Message-Id: <199612131401.JAA24728@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #661 TELECOM Digest Fri, 13 Dec 96 09:01:00 EST Volume 16 : Issue 661 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Yet Another PAY-per-Call (Linc Madison) Re: Yet Another PAY-per-Call (Edward Shuck) Re: Yet Another PAY-per-Call (Garrett Wollman) Re: WebTV vs. Client and Display Technology (Jay R. Ashworth) Re: WebTV vs. Client and Display Technology (Lauren Weinstein) Re: WebTV Sad Story (Jeff Colbert) Re: WebTV Sad Story (Andy McFadden) Re: WebTV Sad Story (Thomas P. Brisco) Re: WebTV Sad Story (Hudson Leighton) Book Review: "Asynchronous Transfer Mode: Technical Overview" (Rob Slade) 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 public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 847-329-0571 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu. The URL is: http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives They can also be accessed using anonymous ftp: ftp mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives A third method is the Telecom Email Information Service: Send a note to tel-archives@mirror.lcs.mit.edu to receive a help file for using this method or write me and ask for a copy of the help file for the Telecom Archives. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* 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 twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com (Linc Madison) Subject: Re: Yet Another PAY-per-Call Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 03:20:51 -0800 Organization: No unsolicited commercial e-mail! In article , clive@demon.net wrote: > In article , "Mark J. Cuccia" > writes: > ... an awful lot, most of which I agree with. However, he also writes: >> Over the past few years, we've seen International PAY-per-call scams, some >> in the NANP Caribbean, and some to numbers (but not necessarily locations) >> outside of the NANP. > I don't see how you can class these as scams. With the +1 809 and non- > NANP numbers, you pay *exactly* the same as a call to a "genuine" > number in that area. Provided it's clearly presented as an > international call the way a genuine call would be presented, what's > the problem? That's precisely the point -- it's often NOT clearly presented as an international call. I've seen numerous spams on the net with such weak disclaimers as "Long distance charges apply if calling from outside the 664 area code." The 664 area code is the island of Montserrat, which I don't think even has a single ISP, so the wording of the disclaimer is deliberately disingenuous at the least, particularly since a grand total of three people on earth who don't read TELECOM Digest know that 664 is the new area code for Montserrat. There have also been numerous cases of e-mails or pager calls to get people to dial numbers in the Caribbean with fraudulent intent. There is also the question of whether these calls actually physically terminate in the country indicated by the number, or whether they are siphoned off domestically, but still charged the international rate. I haven't seen any documentation for the allegation that this practice occurs, but if it does, I would consider that a scam. Linc Madison * San Francisco, Calif. * Telecom@Eureka.vip.best.com ------------------------------ From: edshuck@best.com (Edward Shuck) Subject: Re: Yet Another PAY-per-Call Date: Fri, 13 Dec 1996 03:42:01 GMT Organization: Visual Traffic Reply-To: edshuck@visual-traffic.com Hi Clive, The US and the UK have two forms of the same problem it you happen to manage the telecom for a company, and that is keeping down costs and keeping the service to the users high. This takes money. Calls from the UK to ac 809 are fully recognized as long distance calls by everyone in the UK that can dial a phone. Praise your quality education for that one. But in the US, where the former vice president cannot spell potato, geography is not a core subject. So now how is it a pay per call scam. Lets consider the Dominican Republic for a moment. The sex lines in the Dominican Republic do not tell you when they will be billing for 2.99 or 4.99 per minute. There is no, repeat NO, statute that says they will or must or even hints at it. The Telecommunications act of 1995 addresses only the United States of America. What I would like,and I think Mark as well, is that the US would have the regular (regular for us) NPA NNX abcd numbering and for us to call the rest of the world would require a 011. Nice neat clean. That way our companies and corps that do not make international calls can block the 976s and look alikes, the 900s and the 011 and the telcom managers can avoid at least one staff meeting a week. Edward Shuck edshuck@visual-traffic.com Visual Traffic http://www.visual-traffic.com Telephone Traffic Analysis/Phreaker & Telabuse Abatement ------------------------------ From: wollman@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Subject: Re: Yet Another PAY-per-Call Date: 12 Dec 1996 10:49:59 -0500 Organization: MIT Laboratory for Computer Science In article , Clive D.W. Feather wrote: > I don't see how you can class these as scams. With the +1 809 and non- > NANP numbers, you pay *exactly* the same as a call to a "genuine" > number in that area. Provided it's clearly presented as an > international call the way a genuine call would be presented, what's > the problem? These numbers are rarely presented as being international. They are presented as being ``FREE(*)'' with a footnote in tiny illegible print saying ``normal toll charges will apply''. Usually the number is also presented with a carrier access code and reformatted in such a way as to hide its international nature; for example: > Tel: +44 181 371 1138 | Demon Internet Ltd. | CityScape Internet ... might be presented as: 101-051-801-144-181-371-1138 (10518/101-0518 is one of the AOSlime these lot get, or have in the past gotten, kickbacks from). It's even `worse' for NANP international calls, since most telephone users have no notion that there are such things. (I don't consider that an excuse, myself.) There are also outfits that use Canadian numbers, particularly in Vancouver: 105-181-604-xxx-xxxx Garrett A. Wollman wollman@lcs.mit.edu ------------------------------ From: jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us (Jay R. Ashworth) Subject: Re: WebTV vs. Client and Display Technology Date: 12 Dec 1996 18:57:01 GMT Organization: University of South Florida Fearless Leader wrote: > A word now to those of you who read this and decide to get in the back > of your television set and experiment: *** discharge that bugger before > you go sticking your hands in there *** ! Old television sets tend to > retain a charge for a long time; a very long time in fact. I've seen > sets that were turned off and unplugged for a week or more still be > loaded with juice. Those capacitors take forever to leak it out. It > makes quite a frightful but fun display for all the neighborhood kids. > Invite them in to watch, then take a *very big* screwdriver with a > plastic handle you can hold -- do not touch the metal part! Probe in > there with the metal part of the screwdriver, touching it to those > big caps you see in there one at a time and simultaneously to ground. Actually the major storage of high-voltage is in the CRT itself, which acts as a large capacitor. > Each time you do that, there will be a loud bang! and sparks will > fly out of the back of the television at you. Don't worry; it won't > hurt you, it just looks scary and mean. Do that three or four times > or until the television set quits backfiring at you. Now it is okay to > stick your hands in there wherever you want with no concern. It won't hurt you, but it may well ruin the TV. Output transistors in high voltage multipliers tend not to appreciate this sort of behavior. > Now should you forget that first and foremost safety precaution as I > did one day when I was trying to work on a linear amplifier for a CB > radio for someone, it'll knock you on your keister and you will spend > the rest of the day with a sort of crazed look on your face, and some > confusion in your thinking, just like old fashioned electro-shock > therapy the state-run mental hospitals used to administer. If in fact it doesn't kill you. If you're unlucky enough to grab the wrong thing the wrong way, you may well stop your heartbeat. This can be disconcerting. > That will > teach you to keep your hands to yourself and not go sticking them > places they do not belong. ... remember: unplug it completely; > totally discharge those capacitors (you will know you are finished > when the television/radio quits 'arguing' and backfiring at you) and > then -- and only then -- put your hands in there to work on it. _Hand_ please, Pat. The first rule of working on electronic equipment is to keep one hand in your pocket. (Please, no Alanis jokes here.) > There are some who would claim that I still have not recovered to > this day from taking that load twenty years ago. Maybe not. Maybe > I still am crazed and confused. PAT] They're right. :-) Cheers, Jay R. Ashworth jra@scfn.thpl.lib.fl.us Member of the Technical Staff Junk Mail Will Be Billed For. The Suncoast Freenet *FLASH: Craig Shergold aw'better; call 800-215-1333* Tampa Bay, Florida http://members.aol.com/kyop/rhps.html +1 813 790 7592 ------------------------------ Subject: Re: WebTV vs. Client and Display Technology Date: Thu, 12 Dec 96 10:03:42 PST From: Lauren Weinstein > That's what I thought, too. They do some tricky patented thing, and > the text looks about three times better than I would have thought NTSC > could do. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it in person. I > visited some of my own text-heavy pages, and they were quite legible. I went and looked at it on several hookups (video and s-video) and wasn't impressed at all. I saw typical NTSC crawl around edges, and the flicker was very annoying to stare at, especially on typical pages with heavy white background content. S-video naturally looks better than video, but only relatively, and only high-end TVs typically even have an s-video hookup. > In the longer run, WebTV encourages page authors to produce customized > versions of pages to serve up when a webTV request comes in, with > smaller pages and more TV-friendly colors and layout. If they get > their critical mass, I suspect this will happen, since a surprising > number of sites already have different Netscape versions for frames > and non-frames clients and the like. Which is exactly what SHOULD NOT be happening. There's enough effort going into glitzy layouts and such that really should be going into producing useful content as it is. When people have to start creating multiple versions for different platforms even more time is being wasted. It's hard enough now guessing how a simple, flat page will look on various straightforward 800x600, 640x480, or other screen sizes--and sometimes it's pretty horrifying when you go somewhere else and see what some people are looking at. More bizarre screen layouts will only make it worse. I don't touch frames with a 10-foot pole--I think they're nothing but trouble. > It ain't a Pentium with a super-VGA, but for $300, it's pretty impressive. Only because (in my opinion) there hasn't been anything like it before and the "gee-whiz" quotient is very high. I still suspect it will quickly become another box sitting in the closet unused as users who get tired of the net just turn it off and the ones who care move on to conventional systems with more power, flexibiility, ISP choices, etc. --Lauren-- ------------------------------ From: jcolb90@aol.com (Jeff Colbert) Subject: Re: WebTV Sad Story Date: 12 Dec 1996 17:56:48 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com Ran a test here in Iowa. I live in a small town outside a city of 100k. When I gave my home number it said both were toll calls, when, infact, only one of them was. I ran a couple of other numbers for average sized Iowa towns, one of the results gave interlata numbers, the other one intralata numbers. All long distance. I do hope that there is an option to pick your access number. In my case, I would want to restrict access to the local number only. If it is not available, I DO NOT want to be connected long distance automatically. The other issue, is that if someone wants to connect long distance, they should be able to choose the number that gets them the best rates. Oftentimes Interlata is cheaper than Intralata. System should be able to connect initally to 800 number, list access numbers/locations, let you choose, and then download in to flash memory/NVram. Jeff Colbert ------------------------------ From: fadden@netcom.com (Andy McFadden) Subject: Re: WebTV Sad Story Organization: Lipless Rattling Crankbait Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 22:05:37 GMT In article , Jack Decker wrote: > BUT - this page seems to tell you what you want to hear. If you type > in 616-842-xxxx, it tells you it has a local number in the 842 > exchange. If you use 616-846 instead, it says the local number is in > 616-846! Substitute the 847 prefix, and it says the access number's > in 847, and using 844 says the local number's in 844. It's a feature. :-) Some areas are served by an 800 number. Rather than broadcast the number, WebTV shows the area code and exchange you asked for. It's slightly silly, but eventually those people will be served by a local ISP, and WebTV doesn't want to appear like they're guaranteeing toll-free access. > (I do have to give WebTV credit for figuring out that a call > to Wisconsin would be less expensive than a call to Grand Rapids, > which appears to be the next closest in-state access point, but they > aren't always that smart -- callers from the Holland, Michigan area are > sent to the Grand Rapids number as the toll access point, even though > Wisconsin would in most cases be a less expensive call for folks in > that area)! The toll rates you see now were computed with the November CCMI database, using TOD Class 2 (evening) on a weekday for a 30-minute AT&T call. If you can give me the area codes and exchanges in question I will check out your statement. Often you will be given two POPs, one close by and one farther away, that have the same cost rating but are from different providers. I occasionally get complaints about how someone is using a really distant POP when there's a closer one available, but it turns out the closer one is more expensive. A mix of AT&T, MCI, and Sprint rates may be used in the future. > Bottom line is, it's possible that a lot of WebTV users are going to > be VERY surprised when they get their phone bills. Unless the folks > at WebTV really are putting access numbers in all the exchanges where > their Web page claims that access is available, I would not be at all > surprised to hear that they are the target of a class action lawsuit > filed by disgruntled purchasers (wanting to recover toll charges plus > the purchase price of their units) somewhere down the line. Oddly enough, they really are. The WebTV box warns you every time you're about to make a toll call, showing you the exact number you are about to dial. There is no advantage to hiding toll charges from customers; they're going to find out about them sooner or later. Sony & Philips have liberal return policies, so it's not like people are getting stuck with a box that they can't use. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried it with the exchanges here in > Skokie (847-673/674/675 and 847-329) and it consistently came back > saying I had two local numbers, one in 312-509 which is correct and > one in 847-480 which is also correct. PAT] You're drowning in POPs, actually. :-) The two you have are from different IAPs, so if one is down you'll get the other. I don't think anybody else does this, and certainly not at $19.95/month. And yes, I do work at WebTV Networks. I speak about "them" and post from my netcom account to prevent anybody's lawyers from taking what I say as being official statements. Nothing I've said is WebTV policy or opinion, it's all mine. fadden@netcom.com (Andy McFadden) Friends don't let friends patent software -- http://www.lpf.org/ ------------------------------ From: Thomas P. Brisco Subject: Re: WebTV Sad Story Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 12:27:48 -0500 Organization: ICon CMT I'm not sure that JP and Dave are talking about the same thing. A "niche" (presumably for people with reduced physical dexterity) doesn't necessarily imply "a very good thing". The media hype about "the web" has made me nauseous enough so that I've not even really looked seriously at the WebTV. Is it bidirectional? How are responses keyed in? Is advertising splashed/attached to information sent to the screen? I've always presumed that it did not allow for full response capability (i.e. using the "mailto:" URL/buttons to compose replies) and that it is Madison Avenue's way of ensuring that you have no way to voice your objections to anything (pretty much the way TV, Radio and Newspapers are run -- if the dictators approve, your rebuttal will be aired). The interesting thing about the Internet is that it is the worlds' *second* media that permits the mass population to have an equal voice to respond to the opinions of the "opinion makers" (newspaper, tv, etc). [I consider the "soapbox" or town square to be the first]. Thomas P. ``Tp'' Brisco brisco@core.iconnet.net Engineering Group 201.319.5260 (Voice) ICon CMT Corp 201.601.2018 (Fax) ------------------------------ From: hudsonl@skypoint.com (Hudson Leighton) Subject: Re: WebTV Sad Story Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 10:56:54 -0600 Organization: SkyPoint Communications, Inc. In article , beck@slidell.com (Jeff Becklehimer) wrote: > Alan Bishop (a@corp.webtv.net) wrote: >> - we transcode images and other media types. For example, image >> creators often make their images too detailed or store them in >> a format that doesn't compress as well as it should. We fix that >> in the proxy before transmitting them over the slow link to the user. > Just curious, does this violate copyright laws? Also, when you say an > image is "too detailed" does this mean you also resize or reduce the > number of colors of the images to make them fit on the screen? Think about it, they are using a TV as a display moniter, by "derezing" all the graphics down to that level they save a ton of bandwith. I assume that there is no way to get hardcopy out of a WebTV so who cares about the resolution of the images. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 12 Dec 1996 12:51:38 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Asynchronous Transfer Mode: Technical Overview" BKATMTCO.RVW 960909 "Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM): Technical Overview", Harry J. R. Dutton/Peter Lenhard, 1995, 0-13-520446-1 %A Harry J. R. Dutton %A Peter Lenhard %C One Lake St., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 %D 1995 %G 0-13-520446-1 %I Prentice Hall %O +1-201-236-7139 fax: +1-201-236-7131 beth_hespe@prenhall.com %T "Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM): Technical Overview" Of the books on ATM that I have reviewed so far, this is the most useful. Very few people will actually have to deal with ATM on a technical level, but if you do, you'll likely find this overview helpful. The principles, layers, components, characteristics, and management are all clearly spelled out. Managers will likely not appreciate the lack of "words of one syllable" analysis, but ATM is a complex system in any case. (My appreciation for the book was heightened today by a colleague who wanted to choose an ISP because "they were the only ones with ATM". He had no reason that we might need to use ATM for email.) copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKATMTCO.RVW 960909 Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. roberts@decus.ca rslade@vcn.bc.ca rslade@vanisl.decus.ca Materialists are Object Oriented Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER) ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V16 #661 ******************************