Date: 26 Aug 2000 06:15:11 -0400 Message-ID: <20000826101511.28655.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com> From: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org (Telecom Digest) To: telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Subject: Telecom Digest V2000 #33 Reply-To: editor@telecom-digest.org Sender: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Errors-To: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Precedence: bulk X-UIDL: f74ae78854863ec87ac5618d19950fc8 Status: RO X-Status: Telecom Digest Saturday, August 26 2000 Volume 2000 : Number 033 In this issue: Re: Is Private Citizen a good service? Re: Another one of AT&T's contribution to network radio Subject: Re: Wired News : New Toys for Cheating Students Re: Acceptable international DS3 error rates Big Business "trusts", was: Re: Another one of AT&T's Re: Is Private Citizen a good service? Privacy group accused of breaking own rules Yahoo to offer encrypted email option Re: bad mobile service 8/25/00 ICBTollFree.Com HEADS UP HEADLINES Time Warner posts a link it had banned ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 25 Aug 2000 08:33:43 -0400 From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: Is Private Citizen a good service? I've been using Private Citizen for several years. Bob has gotten my phone terribly quiet (except for legitimate calls). It's a great relief not to have to content with that all the time. Very occaisionally, one does come in. I just tell them to 'put me on your do not call list' and end the conversation. They rarely call again after that. The telemarketing folks love to target senior citizens. My parents were getting about four telemarketing calls per day. I got them on with Private Citizen and they rarely get one any more. In case someone reading this would like to contact Bob Bulmash at Private Citizen, his URL is http://www.private-citizen.com. His telephone number is easy to remember. It is (800) CUT-JUNK. Believe me when I say that twenty dollars is a small price to pay for your privacy. Fred - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2000 08:55:32 -0400 From: Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Another one of AT&T's contribution to network radio 24 Aug 2000 23:02:43 -0400 dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) wrote: >and, just as a reminder, the NBC chimes are the musical notes... > > G - E - C > >yes, yung'uns. Once upon a time the National Broadcasting Corporation was >owned, in part, by the Generel Electric Company. > >However, due to anti-trust action by the US gov't, they were forced to >split apart. I'm not totally up on my history, but today NBC's parent company is in fact GE which was formerly RCA. If you watch NBC's night time programming sometimes they will show the studio building from which the broadcast originates. Whereas formerly there was a big RCA on top of the building (known then as the RCA building) there is now a very uninteresting looking pair of letters G E on top of the building now. NBC's parent company is now GEC! (BTW, those are very uninteresting to me... why didn't they use the "scripted" GE that the company has used for year?) Joseph - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joseph Singer Seattle, Washington USA [ICQ pgr] +1 206 405 2052 [voice mail] +1 206 493 0706 [FAX] - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2000 12:35:40 -0400 From: "Richards, Sandra" Subject: Subject: Re: Wired News : New Toys for Cheating Students >Most wireless industry experts, however, predict that someday teachers >in secondary and higher education will administer tests on PDAs, >formatting them so that every student has a different set of >questions. Imagine how upset you'd be if the answer you received from >your friend corresponded to a completely different question. Oh man ... do you realize this technology may blow the concept of standardized testing out the window (College Boards, GMAT, LSAT, GRE, etc) Separate tests also raise a fairness issue unless the professor is going to give a lot of partical credit and that means way more work than just looking at final answers with a scoring guide. Kasper - - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. - ------------------------------ Actually it won't change much in the way of testing because you can ask the kids the same questions in a different order. Most students aren't going to have enough time to read both the test question and the electronic device to make sure that they get the answer in the correct location. Most Standardize test these days have multiple test that they administer at any given time already to avoid Cheating. In fact when I sat for my GRE exam the proctor told us that it wouldn't due us any good to look at the person's sheet next to us because we were given different test include the order in which the exam was given. All the sections required the same amount of time whether it was English, Math or Analytical. In other words if you can type the questions into some program and tell it to 30 copies of the test with the questions on each copy randomly arrange. There are already programs that perform random sampling therefore this shouldn't be an issue and would resolve the problem. Sandy - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2000 13:22:02 -0400 From: Jonathan Seder Subject: Re: Acceptable international DS3 error rates I installed a 64K international private line in 1992. The circuit had to meet a CCITT/ITU-specified acceptance test standard which was something like 50 bit errors and 1 frame loss over a 24-hour period. We failed the test three times before determining that Pacific Bell had run a segment on copper, rather than fiber as required. After they fixed that, the circuit ran with zero errors. Your error rates sound high. Was gear getting moved around or reconfigured while you were running these tests? Maybe you should ask your vendor if some ITU quality standard applies. "Wineburgh, Joseph (Exchange)" wrote: > ... DS3 (clear channel, electrical coax interface) between NY USA & > London UK and are getting the following error rates; > > 50 frame losses over 3 days > > 2000 bit errors over 24 hr period. > > > ... acceptable levels of error for this type of connection... - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2000 14:30:20 -0400 From: dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) Subject: Big Business "trusts", was: Re: Another one of AT&T's In <3.0.5.32.20000825055414.00884ca0@oz.net> Joseph Singer writes: >>and, just as a reminder, the NBC chimes are the musical notes... >> G - E - C >>yes, yung'uns. Once upon a time the National Broadcasting Corporation was >>owned, in part, by the Generel Electric Company. However, due to >>anti-trust action by the US gov't, they were forced to split apart. >I'm not totally up on my history, but today NBC's parent company is in fact >GE which was formerly RCA. That was my point, which I guess was missed by some folk. Once upon a time the US gov't took a dim view of monopolies and trusts, and broke companies apart if they were too dominant in a marketplace. For the most part that attitude has evaporated and replaced by one which seems more politically motivated and less consumer oriented. And yes, I'm aware of the battle against MicroSoft and a few others. - -- _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2000 16:08:18 -0400 From: mrosen@ex-pressnet.com Subject: Re: Is Private Citizen a good service? Does the $20 include the junk mail too or is that an *extra* $10? Thanks, Mike In article <200008251233.HAA28831@celadon.propagation.net>, Fred Atkinson wrote: > I've been using Private Citizen for several years. Bob has gotten > my phone terribly quiet (except for legitimate calls). It's a great > relief not to have to content with that all the time. Very occaisionally, > one does come in. I just tell them to 'put me on your do not call > list' and end the conversation. They rarely call again after that. > > The telemarketing folks love to target senior citizens. My parents > were getting about four telemarketing calls per day. I got them on > with Private Citizen and they rarely get one any more. > > In case someone reading this would like to contact Bob Bulmash > at Private Citizen, his URL is http://www.private-citizen.com. His > telephone number is easy to remember. It is (800) CUT-JUNK. > > Believe me when I say that twenty dollars is a small price to pay > for your privacy. > > Fred > -- > The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail > messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. > Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/ Before you buy. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2000 16:53:41 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Privacy group accused of breaking own rules Privacy group accused of breaking own rules By The Associated Press Special to CNET News.com August 24, 2000, 10:00 p.m. PT WASHINGTON--Truste, an advocacy organization that runs a privacy seal-of-approval program for retail Web sites and shows companies how to write effective privacy policies, itself has tracked Web surfers with means not mentioned in its own privacy policy, a security group says. Interhack, a Columbus, Ohio, security consulting firm that has found other privacy breaches in the past, noticed that Truste's Web site contained "cookies," small text files used for online tracking and profiling, as well as invisible images and other tools aimed at identifying people's online habits. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2607148.html - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2000 16:59:24 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Yahoo to offer encrypted email option Yahoo to offer encrypted email option By Paul Festa Staff Writer, CNET News.com August 25, 2000, 4:00 a.m. PT Yahoo plans to let its email account holders use data scrambling to protect the privacy of their messages, marking a potentially significant advance for the mainstream use of encryption. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-2605437.html - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2000 19:08:35 -0400 From: Eric Blondin Subject: Re: bad mobile service > > From: "Joey Lindstrom" > Subject: Re: bad mobile service (was So now I'm a Telus customer again) > We have four > cell carriers here (five if you count "Mike", but that's part of the > Clearnet network and uses the same system for the most part): Just one little correction, Mike and Clearnet PCS have only one thing in common: the company that markets it. Mike is based on the iDen proprietary (Motorola) technology which -IS- TDMA. It is an entirely separate network with its own set of antennas, even the voice-,ail system is different. iDen is marketed by Nextel in the states... > > I've never been able to hold a conversation longer than that without > the call mysteriously dropping (even when standing perfectly still, in > a high-signal area, for those 18 minutes). Ask Mark Cuccia about our > phone conversations from a couple of years ago, and how often he'd have > to redial me during ONE conversation. If you refer to calls made on those networks YEARS ago, I'd agree. I subscribed to Fido about 3 years ago and I had the type of service you described above, but the company had barely activated their network for a year then. In the past year I've had a total of one dropped call that I can remember, but then again my service is in Montreal where the company is actually based and as you said maybe it wasn't implemented as well in Calgary. > Furthermore, unless I've misread the folks in this forum, the majority > here believe that CDMA is superior to TDMA, so at least some of what > I've said must hold true outside of the Calgary area. For a complete evaluation of this affirmation I'd refer you to http://www.arcx.com/sites/default.htm which is a site with evaluations on all canadian providers mostly on a technical level. The TDMA vs CDMA debate is very well detailed and all testing on which the comments are based was done in Toronto. The only thing that I have say is that sound quality is not sorely dependant on wether its TDMA or CDMA, a lot of other factors must be taken into account. According to this site, CDMA implementation by Bell Mobility in Toronto is amazing whereas Clearnet's was the worst imaginable. > And as for your > statements about which mobile phone standard is the most used > worldwide, consider this: Windows is the most used operating system > worldwide and a lot of people buy new computers with Windows > preinstalled for that very reason. This does not change the fact that > it's a shitty operating system. Ask most technical people about the > merits of Windows versus, say, Linux. If 500 million people are using > a shitty operating system, it's STILL a shitty operating system. Have to agree with the example :) But I don't think it applies here. > Bottom line: TDMA is inferior, old technology. CDMA is superior, new > technology. Why on EARTH did they decide to use TDMA as part of the > GSM standard? I don't agree with that statement but nonetheless, we must remeber that GSM is much older than the current implementation of CDMA (IS-95) and I can guarantee you that in ideal conditions with good quality equipment and coverage you will not notice a difference between CDMA and IS-95 CDMA using your ears alone. But as you said, you refer to Calgary which sadly doesn't seem to have ideal conditions... > Hey, try this: hop in your car and bring along a blank cassette tape. > Put the cassette tape in your tape deck and press play. Then crank up > the volume (so that you can hear a fair amount of tape hiss). Now, > place a call to somebody on your TDMA phone. After a minute or two, > try moving your phone around the interior of your car, moving it closer > and further away from the speakers and the tape deck. Fun, eh? What's > that? You can't hear me above the loud buzzing noise coming from your > speakers? Golly, now THERE'S a surprise... Actually this is half dealt with on the phone hardware and half by the network, so my previous arguments stand. I actually experimented this with Clearnet vs Fido in Montreal and Clearnet ended up having horrible sound... > Anyways, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong. (tm) Same here. Eric Blondin - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 25 Aug 2000 21:26:43 -0400 From: "Judith Oppenheimer" Subject: 8/25/00 ICBTollFree.Com HEADS UP HEADLINES ************************************************************************* ICBTollFree.Com HEADS UP HEADLINES ************************************************************************* from ICB Toll Free News - Daily News and Intelligence covering the Political, Legal and Marketing Arenas of 800 and Dot Com. ************************************************************************* CUSTOMER SERVICE NOTES: WE ARE OUTTA HERE! ... for a week anyway ... ICB Staff is taking a well deserved, extended-Labor Day week of R&R in the Bahamas, and will be returning to your email box on Monday September 4th. Of course, ICB web site http://www.icbtollfree.com never closes, and is chock full of the latest domain name and toll free news and controversies for you to catch up on. 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All rights reserved. ************************************************************************* ------------------------------ Date: 25 Aug 2000 22:36:46 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Time Warner posts a link it had banned Time Warner posts a link it had banned August 25, 2000 by Ryan Tate Time Warner's (TWX) CNN.com linked to download sites for DeCSS, the controversial DVD-cracking program, even after Time Warner won a ban on such links in court. The case is the latest example of a large media company contradicting its legal arguments with its own actions. Earlier this month, America Online (AOL) shut down an MP3 search engine operated by its Winamp division (see full story). The search engine was functionally similar to one operated by MP3Board.com, a website sued by AOL's merger partner, Time Warner. Time Warner filed the suit in conjunction with other major record labels. http://www.upside.com/News/39a6fef00.html - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ End of Telecom Digest V2000 #33 *******************************