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Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #603
TELECOM Digest Thu, 16 Dec 2004 23:42:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 603
Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson
No Safer and Less Free (Lisa Minter)
Gays Own More Tech Innovations (Lisa Minter)
Record Industry Sues 754 for Internet Song Swaps (Lisa Minter)
AFA (Flight Attendants) Opposes In-Flight Cell Phones (Marcus Falco)
Re: FCC Approves Wireless Internet Access on Airplanes (Joseph)
Re: Wrong 911 Address Delays Firemen (Mark Atwood)
Re: Wrong 911 Address Delays Firemen (Thor Lancelot Simon)
Re: Cingular Migration (John Levine)
Re: Cell Phone Users/Motorists Are Dangerous (Dave VanHorn)
Re: Is 'Transitional Fair Use' The Wave Of The Future? (Lisa Hancock)
Re: Cross Battery and Verizon (Gary Novosielski)
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Lisa Minter
Subject: No Safer and Less Free
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:07:55 EST
Organization: http://lisaminter.us.tf
Editorial on National ID Cards
By Laura W. Murphy
"Show me your papers" is a phrase most Americans would never expect to
hear in their everyday lives, but with the intelligence bill passed by
Congress last week, that's the type of Big-Brother society we're
becoming. The de facto national ID that lawmakers approved won't make
us any safer, but it will make us much less free.
Most people already use a driver's license -- to cash checks, vote and
travel -- so what's wrong with standardizing and consolidating data?
A national ID is an identity thief's dream come true. Under new
federal guidelines, state IDs must include personal information, plus
a digital photograph, and they must be "machine readable." Businesses
might soon be able to swipe your ID to track what you bought, and when
and where you bought it. They could be able to use that information
themselves or sell it to others.
Since 9/11, Americans have had to weigh tradeoffs between privacy and
security. A national ID, though, protects neither. Of the 25 countries
most affected by terrorist attacks -- including Israel -- 80% already
have national IDs. A national ID hasn't made these nations any
safer.
A convincing case has not been made that this system would have
stopped 9/11 or the Oklahoma City bombing, because a national ID
cannot reveal malicious intentions. For example, some of the 9/11
hijackers obtained identification documents legally, and were in the
country legally.
It takes good, old-fashioned police work to follow up on leads and
separate the Mohamed Attas and Timothy McVeighs from law-abiding
people.
A national ID wouldn't have stopped those with fake IDs, either. An ID
is only as secure as the "source documents" it requires. Someone who
used a fake birth certificate and fake Social Security card to get an
ID will still be able to do so under the new law; the same people who
manufacture fake driver's licenses today will be manufacturing fake
national IDs tomorrow.
Our privacy isn't the only price we'll pay for this system. Enacting
this legislation will cost billions of dollars -- money better spent on
real security measures that will keep us both safe and free.
Laura W. Murphy is director of the American Civil Liberties Union's
Washington Legislative Office.
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 . New articles daily.
*** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the
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understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic
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For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
------------------------------
From: Lisa Minter
Subject: Gays Own More Tech Innovations
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:17:51 EST
Organization: http://lisaminter.us.tf
Trendsetters once more, gay people are slightly ahead of the curve
when it comes to using technology, particularly when it comes to
communication, a new online survey reveals.
Harris Interactive, in conjunction with Witeck-Combs Communications, a
strategic public relations and marketing firm that focuses on the gay
market, conducted an online survey of technology usage and found some
real differences between how gay and straight people use or acquire
new technology.
If you wanted to watch cable, for instance, you'd have more luck
finding a cable box at a gay person's home. More than two-thirds of
gay households, or 69 percent, have cable as compared with less than
two-thirds, or 61 percent, of straight homes.
At a gay household you would also double your chances of being able to
watch "Queer as Folk" in HDTV: 16 percent of gay households have HDTV;
only 8 percent of straight households have it so far.
Gay people may also stay slightly better connected than their straight
counterparts -- at least when it comes to cell phones. Eight in 10 gay
people, or 79 percent, have cellular service as compared with 72
percent of straight people. The survey also showed slightly more gay
people pick their cell phones and cell phone plans according to their
friends' and family's advice.
While showing the difference between the two communities, the survey
also suggests that such market information is important for companies
to know if they want to attract more gay customers.
"It's no secret that the cellular market is becoming increasingly
saturated, and these data can help marketers distinguish between GLB
and heterosexual consumers' use and purchase considerations," Jake
Stafford, senior marketing strategist at Witeck-Combs, said in the
firm's press release. "The research also suggests that as gays
continue to embrace emerging technologies such as HDTV, there is room
for innovations that would continue to spur the buying preferences of
trend-setting gay customers."
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 . 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 Planet Out News and AP News Service..
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
------------------------------
From: Lisa Minter
Subject: Record Industry Sues 754 for Internet Song Swaps
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:11:36 EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A recording industry trade group said Thursday
that it has filed another wave of lawsuits against 754 people it
suspects of distributing songs over the Internet without permission.
The Recording Industry Association of America has now sued more than
7,000 people for distributing its songs over "peer to peer" networks
like eDonkey and Kazaa, in an effort to discourage the online song
copying that it believes has cut into CD sales.
The RIAA typically settles copyright infringement suits for around
$5,000 each.
Despite more than a year of headline-grabbing lawsuits, peer-to-peer
use has not declined. An average of 7.5 million users were logged on
to peer-to-peer networks in November 2004, up from 4.4 million in
November 2003, according to the research firm BigChampagne.
The four major labels -- Vivendi Universal, Sony BMG Music
Entertainment, EMI Group Plc and privately held Warner Music -- have
recently begun to license their songs to a new generation of online
services as a way to slash distribution costs and reach out to fans.
But recording-industry officials remain at loggerheads with software
makers like Grokster and Morpheus that allow users to freely copy
their songs.
"With legal online retailers still forced to compete against illegal
free networks, the playing field remains decidedly unbalanced," said
RIAA president Cary Sherman in a statement.
Courts so far have declined to declare peer-to-peer software makers
like Grokster and Morpheus illegal because, like a photocopier, they
do not permit copyright infringement but merely make it possible.
The Supreme Court will hear the entertainment's case against Grokster
and Morpheus in March.
The latest round of lawsuits included students at Columbia University,
the University of Pennsylvania, Old Dominion University and Virginia
Commonwealth University.
Under pressure form the RIAA, many schools have taken steps to limit
file sharing and at least 20 schools give students free access to
industry-sanctioned download services like Roxio Inc.'s Napster .
The RIAA does not yet know the names of those it has sued, only the
numerical addresses used by their computers. The trade group typically
finds out suspects' identities from their Internet service providers
during the legal proceedings.
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 . 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 Reuter News.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
------------------------------
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:42:50 -0500
From: Marcus Didius Falco
Subject: AFA (Flight Attendants) Opposes In-Flight Cell Phone Use
There are a lot more interests than the FCC and FAA in this story, and
a lot of players who can delay or derail the change. In this case
its the flight attendants. They may be claiming a safety issue,
but it may be they don't want to deal with passengers yelling
into the phones, or it may be they're hoping to use it as a
bargaining chip in negotiations.
http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=3Dst/sn/12150000aaa06203.u
pi&Sys=3Dsiteia&Fid=3DAVIATION&Type=3DNews&Filter=3DAviation
http://interestalert.com/brand/siteia.shtml?Story=3Dst/sn/12150000aaa06203.u
pi&Sys=3Dprint&Fid=3DAVIATION&Type=3DNews&Filter=3DAviation&S=3Dsiteia=20
AFA opposes in-flight cell phone use
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15 (UPI) -- A union representing U.S. flight attendants is=
calling on the Federal Communications Commission to maintain its ban on
in-flight use of cellular telephones.
The Association of Flight Attendants warns widespread use of wireless
devices in the confined space of an aircraft cabin potentially could
interfere with an aircraft's communications and navigation systems,
compromise safety and increase conflicts between passengers and crew
member.
An AFA representative called for more research on the use of portable
electronic devices on board aircraft during a Washington meeting on
proposed changes in prohibitions on cellular use.
"While this process is unfolding, attempts to weaken the long-standing
FCC prohibition will only confuse the public, and any widespread
misperception by travelers that cell phone use in flight is now
intrinsically safe might well prove catastrophic," said Chris
Witkowski, director of the AFA Air Safety, Health and Security
Department in a statement.
The AFA represents more than 46,000 flight attendants.
Copyright 2004 by United Press International.
All rights reserved.
Copyright 2004 UPI
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 . 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 United Press International.
For more information go to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml
------------------------------
From: Joseph
Subject: Re: FCC Approves Wireless Internet Access on Airplanes
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 16:03:22 -0800
Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com
On Wed, 15 Dec 2004 23:10:23 -0500, Marcus Didius Falco
wrote:
> Press reports say that the FAA is in no hurry to allow this, so it may
> be several years before it's implemented. This article says that
> they won't complete their technical study for 2 years.
> Another scenario, however, would be to nibble away at the rules: use
> is now allowed at the ramp with the doors open. It might be allowed on
> some airlines while taxiing based on this experience. Then later it
> could be allowed at altitude based on that experience. But that would
> take a couple of years anyhow.
All this talk of the FAA is nice, but isn't the present prohibition
for cell phones in flight because of a FCC edict and it has nothing to
do with how it affects avionics and the FAA isn't even involved
officially, but rather the way that someone in a plane at 35,000 feet
would affect multiple cells on the ground and thus mess things up on
the ground is the main concern of the FCC?
------------------------------
Subject: Re: Wrong 911 Address Delays Firemen
From: Mark Atwood
Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy!
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:35:35 GMT
TELECOM Digest Editor writes:
> A fire in a six-story apartment building early Wednesday, killed one
> person and injured 31 others, and Mayor Bloomberg said firefighters
> were delayed because the caller reporting the fire gave the wrong
> address.
Which is why, when one moves to a new address and has POTS service
installed, on a weekday day, when not lots of emergencies are
happening, it is wise to dial 911, immediately tell the operator that
this is not an emergency, and ask them to verify your address.
Mark Atwood | When you do things right, people won't be sure
mark@atwood.name | you've done anything at all.
http://mark.atwood.name/ http://www.livejournal.com/users/fallenpegasus
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When I first printed the original
item a couple days ago, my original intention was to *refute* the
oft-given argument about how 'VOIP fails to provide good identifica-
tion to public safety units.' That is one reason telcos and their
supporters give against VOIP service. My intention was to show it
can go both ways. PAT]
------------------------------
From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon)
Subject: Re: Wrong 911 Address Delays Firemen
Date: 16 Dec 2004 23:20:36 -0500
Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp.
In article ,
TELECOM Digest Editor wrote:
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As sad as this event is, *nothing*
> was said about the call to 911 going over VOIP, rather than the
> more usual transport for calls to 911, nor was it explained who the
> 'someone' was that gave an incorrect address to the dispatcher. Maybe
> one of our NYC readers can provide more background on this. PAT]
The story didn't say anything about VOIP because VOIP was either not
involved or entirely irrelevant. According to this morning's New York
Times, the caller who reported the fire was so flustered that he gave
the dispatcher *his* address as the building on fire instead of the
correct one (which was about a block away).
The real problem here is idiots (often building superintendents, or
tenants intimidated by complaints from their neighbors about door
slamming noise) who remove or defeat the extremely strong spring that
New York City requires as a self-closer on all apartment-door hinges.
With the required spring in place, the door basically _cannot_ stay
open when someone rushes out of an apartment after discovering a fire.
In this case, according to the Times, the tenant rushed out of the
apartment after discovering the fire and did not close the door; what
the Times failed to mention was that if the door had been in
compliance with the fire code, it would have closed itself.
Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com
"The inconsistency is startling, though admittedly, if consistency is
to be abandoned or transcended, there is no problem." - Noam Chomsky
------------------------------
Date: 17 Dec 2004 03:35:59 -0000
From: John Levine
Subject: Re: Cingular Migration
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA
> Then how about SBC? I always heard SBC advertisments mentioning about
> Cingular Wireless. Please advise more ...
That story did a rather poor job of explaining what the problem is.
Cingular bought AT&T Wireless. Since it takes a while to merge the
operations of two big companies, for the moment AT&T Wireless is still
operating as AT&T Wireless even though it's part of Cingular.
That's so EXCEPT in a few places, like the part of Oklahoma where the
article was written. For anti-trust reasons, they sold some parts of
AT&T Wireless to Alltel. So in those few places, AT&T Wireless is
really Alltel. AT&T Wireless did a lousy job of telling the customers
in those areas to ignore all the ads, you're really Alltel customers
now.
If you were a Cingular customer before, you're still a Cingular
customer. If you were an AT&T Wireless customer before, you're
probably a Cingular customer, except in a few areas where you're an
Alltel customer instead. If you're an AT&T Wireless customer and
you're not sure, I'd suggest calling 611 from your cell phone and when
you get a human ask "is this Cinglar or Alltel"?
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
------------------------------
Reply-To: Dave VanHorn
From: Dave VanHorn
Subject: Re: Cell Phone Motorists Are Dangerous
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:45:53 -0500
I've been watching this, conducting my own unscientific poll if you
will ... My results suggest that everyone should be forced to use cell
phones while driving, as I've seen far more "stupid maneuvers" by
drivers without cell phones, than with them.
Seriously, I think it's wrong to judge one driver's abilities by
another driver's abilities. If that were the case, we'd all be
walking because some people can't concentrate enough to drive, at all.
------------------------------
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Re: Is 'Transitional Fair Use' The Wave Of The Future?
Date: 16 Dec 2004 13:45:55 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com
> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do you remember *many, many* years
> ago when cable television was first getting underway how 'they' said
> cable would be a better deal 'since there would not be any
> commercials; it is all paid for by your cable fees'. What a joke
> that was. Of course that was long before they started showing
> commercials in the movie theatres (where you had bought a five or
> six dollar ticket to watch a movie also.) PAT]
Yes, I do. Indeed, I remember a lot of promises about cable
television that never came to be, and I've read a lot of the hopes for
broadcast TV that either never came out or only did in a trickle.
All these broken promises from new technology is a motivator for many
of my postings here. I've seen enough "oh this is a wonderful
technology!" promises when in reality it actually made things _worse_
for us consumers. Sometimes the technology itself was just plain bad,
sometimes it was the way it was promoted and marketed.
Everyone is deep in love with "digital" over analog, but the rush to
implementation had a lot of bugs with disasterous consquences as
firemen radios went dead. A major police system used in several
cities tends to fail; the mfr is working on it.
The old Bell System used to test, test, and retest its new
technologies before rolling them out nationwide. After in-house
extensive lab testing, they did carefully controlled beta tests in one
real exchange. Their famous initial ESS tests taught them a heck of a
lot about reliability, the switchgear, and station sets.
The original point of CATV was better reception. I'm still waiting
for that to happen. For some reason the lowest channels on my system
come in very poorly, and I've called them out many times. As it
happens I don't watch those channels too much so I live with it, but
it's interesting how this supposedly high-tech medium (with fiber
optic now) still can't get the basics right.
The second point of CATV was better program selection. In some ways
that has come true, but in many ways that's lacking. When Nick@Nite
and TV Land first came out they offered some neat stuff from the
1950s, but now it's just more reruns of recent junk. Nick daytime had
some creative original shows, but I don't think they bother anymore.
I don't think much of cable news networks because they spew out raw
facts that are _out of context_ and thus not newsworthy. Good news
reporting is more than just reporting isolated facts -- it is putting
them together in a logical fashion, eliminating contradictions, and
putting in a wider context. Despite all the time they have they still
put everything in brief sound bites.
------------------------------
From: Gary Novosielski
Subject: Re: Cross Battery and Verizon
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2004 22:22:51 GMT
Joe Perkowski wrote:
> The Verizon guy is telling us "cross battery" is causing this?
Tell him you don't care if Green Men from Mars are causing it; when is
he going to fix it?
------------------------------
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