Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id PAA24456; Tue, 25 May 1999 15:31:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 15:31:10 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199905251931.PAA24456@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #98 TELECOM Digest Tue, 25 May 99 15:31:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 98 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Long Distance Junk Faxes Advertising www.copierdirect.net (Mark G. Thomas) Payphone Quality - Honolulu Airport (J.F. Mezei) Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed (Fred Hapgood) Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed (John R. Levine) Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed (James Wyatt) Re: Smartjack and CSU (Kevin Lundy) Re: Smartjack and CSU (hal@nospam.com) WW-XX-YYY-ZZZ (was Re: Oregon's 971 Partial Overlay of 503) (Eric Morson) A Few Good People Wanted: On-Line Technography (bdk@cyberverse.com) Targeted Marketing Confronts Privacy Concerns (Monty Solomon) Re: Judge Freezes Funds In Internet Scam (Bob Goudreau) Re: World's First Video Cell Phone Debuts in Japan (Eric Bohlman) 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, 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-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 765 Junction City, KS 66441-0765 Phone: 415-520-9905 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe/unsubscribe: subscriptions@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: hyperarchive.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 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. * ************************************************************************* In addition, a gift from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert has 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 twenty 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Mark@Misty.com (Mark G. Thomas) Subject: Long Distance Junk Faxes Advertising www.copierdirect.net Date: 25 May 1999 15:33:00 GMT Organization: MGT Consulting Hi, I just received a junk fax advertising www.copierdirect.net, listing 800-300-6693, and also suggesting I fax (long distance!) 818-576-0898 to be removed from their database. I strongly suspect my fax number was harvested from the Internic or "war-dialed", since the Internic is the only place I've really listed it, other then to business contacts. I know technically I can sue the sender for $500, but I'm not sure it's worth the trouble. The only other junkfaxes I've had trouble with were over a dozen I received a year or so ago, apparently from Sanford Wallace. This time I called the Bell Atlantic Annoyance Call Center, and the person I spoke with insisted that junk faxes were perfectly acceptable -- "just another telemarketing technique", and that my only recourse I had was to fax back the sender asking they remove me from their database. Any suggestions or comments? Mark G. Thomas (Mark@Misty.com -- http://www.misty.com/) ------------------------------ From: JF Mezei Subject: Payphone Quality - Honolulu Airport Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 04:04:53 -0400 I have a pocket organizer with modem and an accoustic coupler. I limit the modem to 2400 baud (with compression). I have very few problems connecting from Australian pay phones back to my server in Canada via long distance. And in the past, I had no problems connecting at Honolulu airport. But this year, on the outbound journey to Australia, I was only able to connect at one phone near Gate 27. None of the phones at the nearby gates resulted in a CONNECT signal. And upon my return journey, I was not able to connect at all, not even on the same phone I succesfully used a month before. These phones use SPRINT as default long distance carrier. How can I explain this? What could result in a whole bunch of payphones dropping quality like that? ------------------------------ From: hapgood@pobox.com (Fred Hapgood) Subject: Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 19:31:00 GMT Reply-To: hapgood@pobox.com Organization: The World @ Software Tool & Die > Those "carts" should time out after a while, unless the programmer was > really stupid. Unlike a physical store, there are no actual "goodies > sitting there" until the user completes the order. It's like filling > out an order form from a mail-order catalog, and then not mailing it. I disagree. These carts serve as custom catalogs and I love them. The sole reason I don't buy at amazon.com is that their shopping cart times out and I have found two other bookstores (altbookstore.com and books.com) who do not impose that inconvenience on me. I love having a choice between ordering a book that minute and forgetting about it (which, given my memory, is the choice). Don't tell me to 'write it down'. Write it down where? I'd lose the paper; I'd forget the filename. The right place for a list of the books I think I might order sometime is the website of my online bookstore. I keep dozens of books in the one at books.com. If a bookstore gave me some real management tools for my 'cart' I'd take my business there in an instant. Fred http://www.pobox.com/~hapgood ------------------------------ Date: 25 May 1999 10:27:44 -0400 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll tell you another hassle that > merchants on the net have that they are not very anxious to talk about > and that is the 'abandoned shopping cart' situation. It's really not a problem. I wrote a shopping cart system for my sister's web site that sells children's video tapes at http://www.greattapes.com. Each cart is a small file on the disk. Every week or two I delete the old carts. It's no big deal. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 387 6869 johnl@iecc.com, Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner, http://iecc.com/johnl, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: James Wyatt Subject: Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 13:14:53 -0500 Organization: Fastlane Communications (using Airnews.net!) On Sat, 22 May 1999, Monty Solomon wrote: > http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/19777.html > The wife then calls the bank that issued the card, reports the charge as > bogus, and the bank cancels it. The adult-entertainment site is out the > price of the subscription. Beyond that, it has to pay the bank a penalty > fee for the so-called charge-back. Privacy rules prevent some of the trace-back. Even if the business has a detailed (time and IP address of connection) record of the user's request, it can be difficult. ISPs are getting wary of requests for user info or identification. (Except maybe AOL 8{) Some will not verify without either a subpoena, or worse, a court order. Many of the smaller web commerce and dialup ISPs don't keep detail logs long enough to trace users 60-120 days later anyway. How do you balance the needs of everyone here? There also technical problems in synchronizing the clocks so the ISP looks at the right 'local' time in their logs. These problems (and other tracing problems) get worse with proxies used by some xDSL and CableModem ISPs. I amazed at how short proxy logs are kept at some locations. > "It's a very significant issue for the card association, and a very > significant issue for the Net," said Tom Arnold, chief technical officer > for CyberSource, a company that makes fraud-detection software for > online merchants. > Over time, a sizeable population of savvy Web surfers have figured out > how to go on a spending spree on the Web scot-free. > "It's getting us a little nervous -- you can see the wave coming," said > the owner of the job listings site. > Phony disputes are a bigger problem for sites that sell digital goods -- > like subscriptions or downloadable software -- than they are for sites > that ship products by mail. Numerous companies are betting their profits on digital delivery and the economies it provides. (Though it looks like some customers are seeing some great savings already 8{( ) Their investors are betting on those profits and I expect some to be *very* suprised when this wave of uncollectables hits. Whatever was left of the profits could go to shareholder lawsuits when earnings 'unexpectedly' dip. > "For shipped goods, if you've got proof of delivery, that's a way [for > the merchant] to resolve a disputed charge," said CyberSource's Arnold. Digital 'proof of delivery' is being worked on by several folks for this reason. US cryptography laws have hampered efforts as have a lack of open technical standards. Use of PINs would help in proof as well, but I am loathe to send it in a form as it's disclosure leaks untracable cash. > Other merchants agree. "The credit-card companies aren't addressing a > blatant situation," said the owner of the jobs listing site. "And it's a > blatant situation that could affect all e-commerce." The credit-card companies have a much better database for doing the type of analysis that catches this problem. They also have some very good folks doing anti-fraud work. In the past they have been reactive, rather than proactive, in handling fraud. They quietly leak a few million, fix the leak (or it moves), and make it back in profits. After being amazed at how long many merchants took to give up the monthly/weekly 'hot books' and go online, I expect them to display the same behavior with the web. With the thinner margins that many web businesses operate live on, they will have to be better at fraud anticipation. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll tell you another hassle that > merchants on the net have that they are not very anxious to talk about > and that is the 'abandoned shopping cart' situation. For whatever > reason, people will go to a commercial site on the web, start pushing > around their 'shopping cart' picking out nice items, then just walk > out, and go to a different web site leaving their cart full of > goodies sitting there. Most shopping-carts setups I've seen, the systems are per business and don't post inventory updates until you are 'paying'. They collect as some entries in DB tables for a while until they time-out and expire later. I know that CMPExpress, for example, times-out on folks pretty quickly. If I get distracted taking care of the kids, I have to shop around again for the stuff I had collected. > Then you have cases like Bank One, which recently merged with First > Chicago Bank, and in the process also merged their web pages, making > a TOTAL disaster out of it in the process. http://www.bankone.com > has been inaccessible for several days now, at least to First Chicago > customers as a result of the way the designers of the new site (for > both banks) got things screwed up. What's not a bit funny is the > total lack of security they now have. They seem to think they can > keep customer's money and accounts hidden away on real deep pages at > the site, so they use these URLs that have about two hundred > characters in them. I guess no one explained to them how 'cut and > paste' works, and how if you study the arrangement of the URL (as to > where the social security number is placed in it, etc) that you can > get into any account you want. For several days now at Bank One's I'm just waiting for one to think 'we are secure' and put my Credit Card number in a GET form, transmitting it to the company placing a banner ad in the result form to catch exit customers. Ulgh! When designing CGI (order forms and such), it is very tempting to put vital info for your form into variables or URLs. It lessens the realtime database requirements of the application which can prevent site-collapse if you get a lot more traffic than you expected. Making industrial strength ecommerce sites is nontrivial and there is a lot of rope for sale out there... 8{( ------------------------------ From: Kevin Lundy Subject: Re: Smartjack and CSU Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 23:27:09 GMT Organization: @Home Network To all, The smartjack to CSU is probably 350' of cable. It is shielded CAT5 run in conduit. According to Bell Atlantic, Maryland tarrifs prevent smartjack location anywhere other than in the room with the DS3 multiplexer. Three different Bell employees have told me this. Can anyone confirm? I've replaced all cable. Bell replaced the smart jack. Solved a ground problem at the CSU (was within spec, but we made it better anyway). Replace the CSU a second time. The smart jack is in a rack of 20 other smart jacks, so I assume that if the rack had a bad ground I wouldn't be the only one with a problem? Problem still occurs. At the CSU, we are seeing -6db signal level. The LBO was 0 (-6db is an acceptable level?), but we adjusted it to 7.5. Today, we did adjust the LBO, time will tell on that. Another suggestion made by Gil was to check the ground resistance between smart jack and CSU - they are actually in two different (connected) buildings - how would I do that? Any other thoughts or words of wisdom? ------------------------------ From: hal@nospam.com (Hal) Subject: Re: Smartjack and CSU Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 18:17:00 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com On Sat, 22 May 1999 22:22:38 GMT, Kevin Lundy wrote: > Is there any recommended maximum distance from the smartjack to the > CSU? I have a new T1 voice service that is giving me hell. It's an > intermittent problem - slips, dropped calles, static, etc. > Every time we have a problem, the techs can loop up the smart jack and > stress test error free. They loop the CSU, and they see errors. So > we replace the CSU, and problem is still there. This much is > repeatable. Which to me indicates a problem of some sort with the > cable between the CSU and smartjack. A grounding problem, a distance > problem, a flakey termination, etc. But then the techs come on site > and put a test pack on the cable at my CSU and it tests fine. > Any thoughts of wisdom out there? Not really much wisdom, but a bit of experience has shown me to stick with the shielded manufacturers network cable. You didn't say what kind of CSU, but I always use Kentrox. Kentrox recommends, and I think it is worth the few extra bucks to get the shielded cable. Not sure about maximum length but I think Kentrox sells network cables that go up to 50 feet. Hal ------------------------------ From: Eric@AreaCode-Info.com (Eric B. Morson) Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 10:29:45 -0400 Subject: WW-XX-YYY-ZZZ (was Re: Oregon's 971 Partial Overlay of 503) How can a local number format YYY-ZZZ work when there are already dozens if not hundreds of NXXs in a local area? If you reformatted the 10 digit format from NPA-NXX-XXXX to WWX-XYY-YZZZ ^ ^ | | 1) Consider these two digits in the sequence (I reformatted your dialing pattern into the current 3-3-4 for the sake of comparison). How do you propose converting NPA-NXX to WW-XX when the second "X" is the first digit of the current NXX? the VAST majority (80-90%??) of phone numbers in the NANP would have to change it's first digit at the very least. MASSIVE disruption of communications would be inevitable and the cost? Unbelievable today. 2) If you propose 2 digit sub regional codes: "XX is an optional sub region. Larger metro areas would just use this as part of the number", how do you suggest those Larger metro areas actually use the XX codes WITHOUT changing every local 7 digit number's leading digit? (see #1) 3) I won't even go into the politics and public outcry that would result from people and businesses losing their NPA "identity" and eliminating people's ability to know inherently that 213 is Downtown LA, 212 is NYC, etc ... and again, the cost to every consumer ... People are complaining that their area code has to change, or they now have to dial 10 or 11 digits to order a pizza ... imagine changing every single local phone number en masse? A mess, don't you think? and no matter how you slice it, your 2 digit WW region code itself still has a limited number of combinations within it, and there are fewer WWs to go around than there are NPAs. How could Chicago, LA, or NYC go to a single WW region code, since the XX sub region codes would force the changing of all local numbers at once in addition to the loss of their current code, and forcing 8 or 6 digit local dialing? How many different fundamental changes in the way people dial and think of the dialing sequences can we affect at once? It's Sunday morning, so please forgive the babbling nature of my reply! Your thoughts all? Eric B. Morson Co-Webmaster AreaCode-Info.com EMail: Eric@AreaCode-Info.com ------------------------------ From: bdk Subject: A Few Good People Wanted: On-Line Technography Organization: Cyberverse, Inc. Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 19:02:51 GMT I am the developer of the "technography" method for supporting collaborative work on-line. I am looking for a few people (currently, I can only work with people in the US) who have access to two phone lines (one for voice, one for data), a high speed modem (56K or above), are fast typists, have good phone skills, and are familiar with Microsoft Word (especially the Outline View). We are still in our experimental phase. There would be no fees for the training, which would involve at least 3 hours of on-line time, plus whatever practicing needed to develop proficiencies. If you're interested, please e-mail me. For more information, take a look at our website: http://www.technography.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 22:10:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Targeted Marketing Confronts Privacy Concerns By BOB TEDESCHI Offline, few merchants these days offer a personalized shopping experience, where the sales staff knows a customer's name, size and tastes from years of patronage. Internet merchants hope to provide that kind of personalization, but ironically, it is not clear that customers are willing to let them. http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/99/05/cyber/commerce/10commerce.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Most customers are not going to allow that to happen, as well they should not. The Internet was not designed for commercial things anyway; personally I wish most of them would go away. I have to deal with some of them myself, and it is not a very pleasant experience most of the time. In order to keep the Telecom Archives web site http://telecom-digest.org somewhere in line with the last year of the twentieth century, I've succombed a little to what I see as the massive, and frequently offensive commercialization of the net. If it were not for *advertisers* the new search engine would not be available at http://telecom-digest.org/search nor would the free email be available for users at http://telecom-digest.org/postoffice . But I selected a fellow for both of these (Neil Mansilla) whose firm works with web sites in an inoffensive and low-key way. Meanwhile, at http://telecom-digest.org/chat I completely dumped xoom.com as the supplier because of their insistence on spamming everyone they can find on an almost daily basis plus their practice of not only placing advertisements on the chat window but causing people who exit chat to drop into one of their windows on the way out. As of a few days ago, http://telecom-digest.org/chat is linked into a genuine, commercial- free IRC network. If you do not want to (or cannot) run the java applet for chat, then any IRC client connected to irc.ram-page.com 6667 will work just as well. When connected, join #telecom-topics, a channel which is permanently maintained by a bot serving as channel operator. On joining #telecom-topics you'll be right in the same room as if you had come in using the java applet on the telecom web site. The first thing you will notice is there is not an advertisement in sight anywhere. Even using my java applet at http://telecom-digest.org/chat you are still free to go to any channel you wish on irc.ram-page.com using the usual IRC commands to do so. I notice about fifty of you already signed up for your free email address (username@telecom-digest.zzn.com) and I hope you find anonymous email addresses to be useful. But accept the counsel of Postmaster Pat at http://telecom-digest.org/postoffice -- no spam, no scam, or you are out of here ... administrators at zzn.com are deadly serious about it; I will have no choice in the matter. They will not ask me what I want to do about a spammer. They do have algorithyms in place to catch people in the act, both on inbound and outbound mail. To avoid having to check your box each day, if you request 'notify me by ICQ or email when something arrives' you will get notice at some other place to come and see what is waiting for you here. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 11:21:17 -0400 From: goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com (Bob Goudreau) Subject: Re: Judge Freezes Funds In Internet Scam Eli Mantel wrote: > The creation of multiple area codes for the Caribbean has made it > difficult to distinguish them from U.S. and Canadian area codes, yet > the pricing is vastly different. In my view the opposite was true, since under the old situation (one big NPA 809 which served multiple countries *including* the US) it was even harder to distinguish between US and non-US numbers, unless you happened to have memorized the list of 809-NXX exchanges which served Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Remember, PR and the USVI are *both* "Caribbean" and "U.S.", so the dichotomy between those two categories you implied above has never been true. > Rather than have the FTC pursue > individual perpetrators taking advantage of this confusion, it seems > like it would be highly preferable for the FCC to dictate the use of > the international dialing prefix and country code for calls to the > Caribbean. But under what criteria? If you're going to disqualify the non-US NANP countries from being dialed from the US via 1+NPA dialing, then why not Canada as well? What distinguishes Canada from, say, Jamaica in this respect? Pricing, perhaps (the fact that lots of US long distance carriers offer fairly decent rates to Canada, while most or all of the non-US Caribbean NANP countries still have old-fashioned expensive bilaterally-negotiated settlement rates for calls to/from the US)? So then what happens if Jamaica subsequently liberalizes its telecom market enough so that Canada-type rates become available for calls to Jamaica? Will 1-876-NXX-XXXX calls then become dialable from the US again? What if those rates are only available from, say, Sprint and Qwest, but not from AT&T and MCI? And what exactly is the pricing dividing line anyway? If you're going to exclude just some (but not all) of the non-US NANP countries from 1+NPA dialing, you're going to have to come up with a clear and consistent policy that answers all these questions. Otherwise, you could go for the much simpler policy of requiring the international prefix for *all* non-US calls (including those to Canada), or else retain the status quo. > Although the use of "01" and "011" as international dialing prefixes > in the U.S. makes this somewhat problematic, it would solve the > problem for good rather than requiring that everybody be paranoid > whenever they dial into an area code they don't immediately recognize. Possible ways to change NANP international dialing prefixes to add the capability of dialing intra-NANP numbers: 1) Direct-dial prefix changes from 011 to 00; operator-assisted prefix remains 01. 2) Direct-dial prefix remains 011; operator-assisted prefix changes from 01 to 010. Of course, these prefixes are an NANP-wide convention, not just a US thing, so involvement of the North American Numbering Council would be desirable. And I'm not sure how happy the NANC at large would be at the entire concept of making intra-NANP dialing more difficult instead of less ... Bob Goudreau Data General Corporation goudreau@dg-rtp.dg.com 62 Alexander Drive +1 919 248 6231 Research Triangle Park, NC 27709, USA ------------------------------ From: Eric Bohlman Subject: Re: World's First Video Cell Phone Debuts in Japan Organization: Netcom Date: Tue, 25 May 1999 07:18:03 GMT Arthur Ross wrote: > This seems to be a phenomenon that recurs with a cycle time of about one > generation -- takes that long for the old generation of enthusiastic > engineers and marketing folks to forget about the last attempt, and to try > to sell the picturephone again. It's similar to the marvelously periodic snip ... > Seems like it must be the Japanese' turn to find this out. I was shown a > mockup of a similar product a few months ago by some of the 3G wireless > crowd. Same general idea. Gets a lot of points for good technical design. > But, just like all those other attempts, it won't sell, IMHO. I doubt that > human behavior has changed all that much - I think people still don't want > picturephones! Yep. People don't want to have to worry about how they look when they're talking on the phone. It's easy to fall into the trap of believing that the best technical solution to a problem is also the best social solution. There's a semi-apocryphal story about Thomas Edison inventing a system that would allow the members of a state legislature to vote instantly rather than going through a lengthy roll-call. He demonstrated it to a state legislature and it was flatly rejected, because the legislators really wanted to see how a vote was going with their colleagues before casting their own votes. > I'm awfully skeptical about all this "wireless data" hype. I can't find > ANYONE with a credible notion of what all those "killer apps" are that are > going to consume these high data rate wireless services. If its only > e-mail, they should forget the exotic services. An awful lot of e-mail > equals not-very-much speech. A friend, who shall remain nameless because he > works for a Fortune 500 company, that probably would not be thrilled by his > sarcasm, suggested that the killer app is a guy driving down an LA freeway, > downloading porno movies, and talking on the sex line. This is about the > most credible thing I've heard of. Sad. Another such solution looking for a problem is interactive cable TV. The technology for it has been around for 25 years. During that period it's been repeatedly tried, with lots of hoohah each time, and each time it's turned out that the demand didn't justify the cost. Here again, there's a hidden killer app that the industry won't talk about publicly, namely home gambling. ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #98 *****************************