TELECOM Digest     Sun, 17 Apr 2005 17:50:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 168

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    AOL Monitor Accused of Luring 15-Year-Old (Lisa Minter)
    Intel to Release First Chip for Broadband Wireless (Lisa Minter)
    Web Search Revenue Seen Strong for Google, Yahoo (Lisa Minter)
    PPC Advertising, Click Fraud; Effect on Search Engines (Greg Skinner)
    Can I Substitute NiMH Battery for NiCd in Cordless Phone? (curious)
    Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse (DevilsPGD)
    Re: Congress Aims to Thwart Identity Theft (Thomas A. Horsley)
    Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not in Emergency System (Tim)
    Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not in Emergency System (Wilber)
    Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (Scott Dorsey)
    Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses (Tony P.)
    Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam (Scott Dorsey)
    Re: Last Laugh! Honesty on the Internet (Barry Margolin)

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; other stuff of interest.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: 16 Apr 2005 14:51:37 -0700
From: Lisa Minter <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com>
Subject: AOL Monitor Accused of Luring 15-Year-Old


An Internet chat room monitor hired to keep children safe from sexual
predators seduced a California girl online and was about to meet her
for sex when he was found out by a co-worker, a lawsuit charges.

According to documents filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the
online relationship began when the girl was 15. She met the AOL
employee in a children's chat room and confided in him.

Their conversations online and by phone became increasingly explicit,
the lawsuit says. They were preparing to meet on the girl's 17th
birthday when one of the monitor's co-workers became suspicious and
prevented the encounter.

The lawsuit charges AOL and its parent company, Time Warner Inc., with
failing to supervise the employee and of falsely advertising that its
online service was safe for children. It also charges the monitor with
inflicting emotional distress.

America Online spokesman Nicholas Graham said the company fired the
monitor and contacted authorities after learning of the situation in
April 2003. The man, who was 23 when he met the girl online, has not
been charged with a crime.

Graham said AOL puts its chat room monitors through "rigorous
screening and training procedures," including a criminal background
check.

The teenager, who is now 19 and living in Los Angeles, waited two
years to bring legal action because it was "a very confusing and
painful time for her," said her lawyer, Olivier Taillieu.

There was no immediate indication what the lawsuit seeks; Taillieu did
not immediately respond to a call seeking comment Saturday.
    
Copyright 2005 The Associated Press.

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/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

------------------------------

Date: 17 Apr 2005 12:56:40 -0700
From: Lisa Minter <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com>
Subject: Intel to Release First Chip for Broadband Wireless


As telecommunications carriers around the globe experiment with a
wireless replacement for cable and DSL modems, Intel Corp.  plans on
Monday to release its first chip for the technology, known as Wimax.

The world's largest chip maker sees in Wimax a potential profit source
that it hopes will become as popular as its shorter-range cousin,
Wi-Fi. Intel also believes it will stimulate computer sales in
emerging markets where high-speed Internet access is unavailable or
prohibitively expensive.

Wimax is not a guaranteed hit, as telecommunication carriers invest in
wireless broadband networks based on cellular technology as well as
WiFi hot-spots.

Intel's chip, formerly given the code name Rosedale, costs around $45
and is designed to power devices that will receive Wimax signals in
users' homes. Major networking equipment makers, including Siemens AG
of Germany and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. (HWT.UL) of China, will
also announce products built on Rosedale, Intel said.

Intel also will highlight as many as 18 current or upcoming trials of
Wimax technology around the world, run by the likes of BT Group Plc
(BT.L) of Britain. Plans for trials, of various scopes, are also to be
announced in India, the Philippines, Japan, South Africa and Russia.

Scott Richardson, general manager of Intel's broadband wireless
business, said Wimax equipment was probably too expensive now for wide
adoption, but that Intel and networking equipment makers were working
to push equipment costs below $200 from the $300 to $500 level.

"It's our vision and our strategy to really drive that price point
down," Richardson said.

Unlike Wi-Fi, whose ad hoc networks can be set up by anyone to connect
a single house or office, Wimax is engineered to cover an entire city
via base stations dispersed around a metropolitan area.

So-called client devices, akin to a cable or DSL modem and built with
a Wimax chip like Intel's, then pick the signal up.  When connected to
a PC, the signal becomes a high-speed wireless connection.

Intel and other Wimax backers are working to ratify a new Wimax
standard designed for use in mobile products. That technology is seen
as a potential threat to cellular networks, although some consider it
a long shot.

Intel's support for Wi-Fi in its Centrino brand of notebook computer
chips made the short-range wireless technology into a global standard
popular in cafes, homes, offices and other public spaces.
    
Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.

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/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

------------------------------

Date: 17 Apr 2005 12:58:07 -0700
From: Lisa Minter <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com>
Subject: Web Search Revenue Seen Strong for Google, Yahoo


By Lisa Baertlein

Strong search advertising
revenues are expected to drive profits at Google Inc. and Yahoo
Inc. when they report earnings next week.

Some financial analysts and research firms flagged a decline in
"keyword" pricing during the holiday hangover months of January and
February, compared with prior months when pricing on retail-related
terms rose.

But several analysts who cover search companies are skeptical, saying
discerning trends is notoriously difficult because of the large number
of keywords available and variability within the group.

Web search advertisers set the prices on keywords through
auction-style bidding. They pay each time a Web search user clicks on
their ad, which links to their site.

For their parts, executives at Google and Yahoo each repeatedly have
said their growth has resulted from greater search volume rather than
price increases.

"People should be careful about extrapolating too much from a small
sample" of keyword prices, Google co-founder Sergey Brin said on the
sidelines of a recent cable industry conference in San Francisco.

Yahoo is scheduled to release earnings on April 19 and Google is due
to announce on April 21.

"Although there has been significant controversy over search trends
this quarter, the numerous data points we compiled indicate to us
continued strong momentum," American Technology Research analyst Mark
Mahaney said in a client note this week.

"We believe Google will outpace the industry," added Mahaney, who does
not own Google shares and whose firm does not provide investment
banking services.

Mahaney expects Google to beat analysts' consensus estimates when it
reports its first-quarter results. He sees Google posting a profit,
excluding items, of 99 cents a share.

The average targets compiled by Reuters Estimates call for Google to
post earnings excluding items of 91 cents a share.

Jeffrey Herzog, chairman and chief executive of iCrossing, a search
engine marketing company that helps advertisers create and manage
campaigns, said keyword prices are up from a year ago.

Analysts pegged their Google optimism on the company's international
growth, the expansion of its network of Web sites that carry Google
ads pegged to editorial content, and recent efforts to make Web search
ads more relevant to users.

"We would expect Google to again grow faster as it is much further
along in the monetization process, has a stronger international
presence, and is benefiting from expansion of its contextual
advertising network," Lehman Brothers analyst Douglas Anmuth wrote in
a client note last week. Lehman Brothers was one of the underwriters
on Google's IPO.

Anmuth's target calls for Google to post first-quarter net revenue of
$739 million, up 13 percent from the prior quarter, and earnings,
excluding items, of 91 cents a share.

He projected 12 percent quarter-over-quarter search revenue growth for
Yahoo during the first quarter of 2005.

Mahaney sees Yahoo posting 13 percent growth in the same time frame --
largely driven by volume growth -- and net income of 11 cents a share,
matching analysts' average target.

"Our belief in continued strong search growth was reinforced by public
comments by Yahoo and Google executives, as well as by numerous
conversations we've had with other public and private search
companies," Mahaney said.

Copyright 2005 Associated Press.

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/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 21:18:34 +0000
From: Greg Skinner <gds@best.com>
Subject: PPC Advertising, Click Fraud, and Its Effect on Search Engines


By now, many if not most of you have probably read, or at least heard,
about the lawsuit filed against several search engines, accusing them
of conspiring to overcharge for advertisements.  More information
here:

http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?cat=USMARKET&src=704&feed=dji&section=news&news_id=dji-00001320050405&date=20050405&alias=/alias/money/cm/nw

The WSJ recently featured a front-page story on the issue of click
fraud as well.

I have always been skeptical of the pay-per-click (PPC) method of
charging for advertisements.  I have always felt it was a poor
business model, because of its susceptibility to fraud.  I have never
understood the search industry's fascination with PPC, especially
since there are other methods of selling advertising, such as fixed
fees, which provide no means (and thus, no incentive) to game the
system by merely clicking on ads.  Furthermore, the money that is
spent both by the advertisers and publishers (including the search
engines) implementing complex fraud detection systems can be put to
more productive uses.  Just about everyone I have spoken to with a
technical background in Internet protocols and architecture seems to
realize this, but the message doesn't get through to business people
who feel that despite click fraud, PPC is a superior advertising model
to any others. Perhaps there is something I have overlooked in my
assessment of the risks vs. rewards of PPC advertising.

It seems that PPC advertising is going to be a fixture in web
advertising.  Given that PPC makes click fraud easy, we can expect to
see more of it in the future.  This should be a serious concern to
anyone who invests in search engines or other companies that do PPC
advertising, or is a customer of such companies.  At the very least,
the companies need to disclose the criteria they use for determining
that fraud has taken place, and the rights their customers
(advertisers) have with regards to getting refunds for fraudulent
clicks.

I'd also like to know if there are any technical groups that are
studying the issue and proposing solutions.  From a standpoint of
detecting fraud at its inception, I thought I might find some interest
among the intrusion detection community, but I haven't yet.  The types
of intrusion detection done at the packet level don't seem to scale to
the types of attacks I've witnessed, which suggests that the detection
might be better done at the web server and/or web log processing
level.  I checked the Apache documentation to see if any work of that
type had been done, and outside of some basic configuration options
for blocking certain types of sites and requests, there wasn't any.
Also, based on what I've read about some of the tools people are using
to analyze web logs, they can detect certain types of fraud, but don't
necessarily provide alerts of impending fraud, especially if the site
receives a considerable amount of traffic.  (This is especially the
case for the largest search engines.)

--gregbo
gds at best dot com

------------------------------

From: curious@nospam.com
Subject: Can I Substitute a NiMH Battery for NiCd in a Cordless Phone?
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 00:06:07 -0400


I recently bought a cordless phone, which came with a NiCd battery.  In the
manual it says:

"To reduce the risk of fire, use only 3.6V 850mAh Nickel Cadmium
(Ni-Cad) cordless telephone replacement battery pack."

I've heard about the dreaded "memory effect" with NiCd batteries, so
I'm interested in replacing it with a NiMH one.  Someone who is
selling a 3.6V 1000mAH NiMH battery on Ebay claims it works with my
phone, but will it really be safe?  Wouldn't want to install a NiMH
battery and have the house burn down.



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: 3.6 at 850 is _close enough_ to 3.6 at
1000 that I think it should work. The difficulty with swapping
batteries around randomly however is not so much that your house would
burn down as it is that differences in those batteries could possibly
cause some slow degredation on your electronics unit and cause it to
fry out prematurely. Your voltage (3.6) is critical; you want to avoid
increasing _low voltages_  very much. A device which calls for 3.6 
should pretty much be confined to 3.6. You can play around with the
amperage a bit however; 1000 will work fine with something rated for 
850. But make certain the battery contacts line up correctly and do
not cause a short circuit accidentally. It would be a shame to waste
that new battery as soon as you got it.    PAT]

------------------------------

From: DevilsPGD <ihatespam@crazyhat.net>
Subject: Re: Texting is Slower Than Morse
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 16:41:55 -0600
Organization: Disorganized


In message <telecom24.164.6@telecom-digest.org> Colin
<colin@sutton.wow.aust.com> wrote:

> The Sydney Morning Herald reports on a challenge between 93 year old
> telegraph operator transmitting morse code to an 82 year old with a
> manual typewriter, and youngsters sending a text message. The text
> message was received 18 seconds after the message was already on
> paper.

> http://smh.com.au/articles/2005/04/14/1113251739401.html

Sure, but much of that 18 seconds was in network transmission time,
but the telegraph has a (by comparison) severely limited "network"

Let's try another test; let's send the same message to each of five
different recipients randomly selected out of a possible thousand
recipients, then travel to a randomly selected location within two
city blocks and send a new message to those five people again.

Anybody want to bet that by the time the telegraph operator gets his
system reconnected to send to the second recipient, the phone user
will have finished walking to the randomly selected location (sending
the first batch of five messages while walking?)

In message <telecom24.167.15@telecom-digest.org> Tony P.
<kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net> wrote:

> They've obviously not heard of T9 mode in text messaging. The biggest 
> issue I have with texting is that the keypad is too damned small. 

How large a phone are you willing to carry?

------------------------------

Subject: Re: Congress Aims to Thwart Identity Theft
From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley)
Organization: AT&T Worldnet
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 23:02:00 GMT


> ...and to require businesses to confess to customers
> when private data is taken.

This is that part that cracks me up. For every piece of stolen data
the data brokers find out about, there are probably more than 100
other pieces they aren't even aware of (only clumsy data thieves leave
fingerprints :-).

>>==>> The *Best* political site <URL:http://www.vote-smart.org/> >>==+
      email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL      |
<URL:http://home.att.net/~Tom.Horsley> Free Software and Politics <<==+

------------------------------

From: Tim@Backhome.org
Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency 
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 10:53:01 -0700
Organization: Cox Communications


I don't understand where local governmental public safety managers are
hiding out on this one.  I cannot imagine of a public safety
jurisdiction that doesn't own the E911 database, as well as pay the
LEC for the ANI trunks that go to the emergency center dispatchers.

I guess they have all supped too often with the LEC folks.

------------------------------

From: Charles.B.Wilber@Dartmouth.EDU
Date: 17 Apr 2005 13:50:45 EDT
Subject: Re: New Technology Poses 911 Peril VOIP Not Part of Emergency



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mr. Wilber gets in a discussion with 
Jack Decker, moderator of VOIP News. References in the following to
'moderator' are referring to Jack Decker. PAT]


Jack Decker writes:

> [COMMENT: Okay, if there is some truth to it, then why does almost
> everyone in the press play toady for the big phone companies and try
> to lay all the blame on the VoIP companies alone?

--- end of quote ---

Wilber replies:

In your diatribe against "toady journalists" and "big phone companies"
I saw no mention of the fact that the ILECs are bound by regulations
and hampered by "universal service fees" and "E-911 fees" from which
the VoIP providers are -- and demand to be -- exempt from. It is these
fees that financed much of the telecommunications infrastructure and
much, if not all, of the nationwide E-911 system.

[Moderator's comment: I'm not sure what "Universal Service Fees" have
to do with this discussion, but I have said on several occasions that
they amount to "corporate welfare", especially for the smaller (and
often highly profitable) rural telephone companies, and they ought to
be abolished across the board. I'd rather see the fact that VoIP
companies don't pay them used as leverage to abolish these hidden
taxes/handouts, rather than trying to put VoIP companies under this
same rotten system.  As for E-911 fees, I have been saying for many
months now that the only fair way to finance E-911 centers is through
the same mechanism used to finance every other emergency service in
the community (such as fire and police), be that property taxes, local
sales taxes, or whatever.  There is nothing remotely fair about
billing these fees on people's phone bills, because it deprives them
of the ability to vote on whether they want these enhanced systems,
and when people have multiple phone numbers (as is more and more
common) they pay multiple E-911 fees even though their household may
be the same size as before, and isn't using 911 any more frequently -
meanwhile a large industrial facility with only a handful of phone
numbers may not be paying its fair share at all!]

Wilber notes further:

Furthermore, most of the E-911 systems currently in place cannot
easily handle the processing of 911 calls from VoIP origins. Who
should bear the burden of converting, modifying, upgrading or
replacing those local systems? Wireline users or providers who have
already been paying into the system for years to make it work while
VoIP users remain exempt?

[Moderator's comment #2: In an ideal world, the phone companies that
sold the 911 centers these technologically obsolete systems would be
forced to pay.  However, I suspect that if there were more sources for
these systems -- that is, if 911 center operators didn't run to their
partners in crime at the phone companies to purchase these systems at
top dollar -- I suspect they could get far more advanced systems for
far less money.  In other words, I believe the phone companies may be
DELIBERATELY selling systems to 911 centers that only work really well
with wireline services.  There is a conflict of interest there, but as
I more or less said before, I think the 911 center administrators so
love it that they can put one over on the taxpayers and voters (by not
seeking their permission before installing a new system) that they
don't really question what sort of deal the phone companies are giving
them, nor whether the equipment they are being sold is expandable to
handle communications from newer forms of technology.  Again, I think
911 systems should be funded by taxpayers through normal taxation
mechanisms, NOT through a surcharge on any type of communications, and
if that were done the 911 center administrators might not feel so
beholden to the phone companies and might shop around to get systems
that are more easily upgradeable.]

Wilber again:

Providers such as Vonage and others are quick to yell "foul" when they
are taken to task for rushing a product to market without assuring
that it provides the same level of safety the public already
enjoys. They are even quicker to yell "unfair" when someone suggests
that they be subject to the same regulation and fees that critical
public communications providers have had to deal with for decades. It
must be nice to have your cake and eat it too but few of us are able
to pull it off.

[Moderator's comment #3: You conveniently ignore the fact that for
many years cell phones were unable to complete calls to 911. Perhaps
you feel that all new forms of communication should be hamstrung until
they can fit into the wireline telephone companies' ways of doing
things, but I for one do not.  NO ONE is forced to buy VoIP service,
but dammit, I think people should have the CHOICE to buy a product
with a greater or lesser level of safety.  This is supposed to be a
free county (well, at least that is the lie we were brainwashed with
in school) and if that were the least bit true, we'd give people the
freedom to buy any product and let them make the decision whether any
risks are acceptable, and that applies not only to telecommunications
products but also to certain types of medicines and cancer cures that
have been banned by the FDA (don't even get me started on that).

Anyway, no industry has been better at having their cake and eating it
too than the traditional telcos.  For example, they built their
networks using money taken from the ratepayers when people had no
choice as to providers, and they set their poles on public
rights-of-way, and then they have the unmitigated gall to claim it's
all theirs and they shouldn't have to share it with competitors.  Of
course had they not had their government-enforced monopoly all these
years, there would have probably been viable competition 50 years ago
and no one would have monopoly bottleneck control on the pair of phone
wires coming into a home.  VoIP, which still has a minuscule share of
the market at the moment, is the one thing that can and will break
that monopoly, and that is why we are getting all the telco-inspired
propaganda crap being fed to the press right now. But it will only
happen if customers can freely choose VoIP, and that is why the
incumbents are using every dirty trick at their disposal to try and
eliminate or delay that choice.

As for my "diatribe", no one is forcing you to read anything I write
and if you don't like what I write you can unsubscribe from VoIP News
anytime. I apologize if it sounds like I'm being short, but I really
have lost my patience with people who cannot see that the incumbent
telcos are staging a massive effort, probably via their public
relations firms and their "astroturf" consumer groups (and PLEASE
educate yourself on what an astroturf group is!), to make VoIP look
bad and even dangerous.  But VoIP is no worse than cell phone service
was in the early years, and the only reason you didn't see this sort
of propaganda against cell phones was because the big phone companies
were in that from the beginning.  Now it comes out (in some European
studies) that cell phone radiation may be dangerous to the brain, but
do you hear a peep out of anyone about that in this country?  No, we
can make a big deal out of the fact that some guy in Texas couldn't be
bothered to activate his 911 service, but there is zero concern for
all the teenagers that are possibly going to develop brain tumors in
20 or 30 years because of their extensive cell phone use today.  As
soon as the big phone companies think they are competitive in the VoIP
market, suddenly VoIP will be the best thing since sliced
bread. -Jack]


Charlie Wilber
New Hampshire

How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home:
http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html

If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/

------------------------------

From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses
Date: 17 Apr 2005 14:12:39 -0400
Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000)


 <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:

> Do the 'spam interest groups' have that powerful of a lobby to keep
> such bills from passing?  Or are there other Internet activists who,
> for their own reasons, are opposed to such laws and regulation?

For the most part, if backbone sites had taken spam seriously a decade
ago, it would never have become a problem.  The reason we have spam
today is mostly because major backbone sites are not willing to
disconnect customers who provide service to spammers.

Just refusing service from the two largest Korean ISPs would probably
cut down spam by half.  But there are plenty of backbone sites peering
with them.

The vast majority of spam comes from a fairly small number of people.
If everyone here went out and shot someone on the ROKSO list, there
would be no spam problem at all.

--scott

"C'est un Nagra.  C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

------------------------------

From: Tony P. <kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net>
Subject: Re: Spam Hits Us Hard Today - Message Losses
Organization: ATCC
Date: Sun, 17 Apr 2005 15:35:33 -0400


In article <telecom24.167.5@telecom-digest.org>, tom@tomlynn.com says:

> Pat,
> Check out http://popfile.sourceforge.net

> Popfile is an e-mail proxy that filters spam based on how you train
> it.  It takes some initial effort to get it over the hump, but it
> achieves over 99% accuracy over the long term.

> I believe they also have an nntp proxy for filtering usenet, too.

> You won't be sorry.

I will second the endorsement of Popfile. I've been using it for over
a year now and it works very well. Every once in a great while it
misclassified something as spam, but it's seriously easy to reclassify
through their web interface.

------------------------------

From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey)
Subject: Re: Getting Serious About the War on Spam
Date: 17 Apr 2005 14:18:25 -0400
Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000)


Danny Burstein  <dannyb@panix.com> wrote:

>   In <telecom24.164.1@telecom-digest.org> Lisa Minter <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com> writes:

>> From here, Jeremy Jaynes, a Raleigh businessman who rose to No. 8 on
>> a list of "spam kingpins," broke the nation's toughest spam law by
>> churning out more than 100,000 unsolicited e-mails a month. In fact,
>> he was moving closer to 10 million a day. 

> Ok, this guy contracted for high speed internet connectivity from someone 
> or another.

I believe it was uunet.

> Why did anyone else accept any packets from this organization?

Because uunet is very large.  They provide service to a lot of
spammers.  They do not disconnect spammers.  But they are large enough
that we cannot just refuse all service from them.

Note that Jaynes also used a lot of offshore servers in China and Korea
as well.  

> Let the spammer continue to pay the local company. And let the two of
> them send all the garbage they want to each other. There's no
> requirement (barring a few unique circumstances) for anyone else to
> answer the doorbell when they ring.

The problem is that very large backbone sites are providing service to
spammers, or peering with other large backbone providers who do.  When
uunet and sprintlink take spam problems seriously, spam will be
reduced dramatically.  As long as uunet and sprintlink ignore
complaints about their spamming users, as long as they continue to
peer with Kornet and Hananet spam factories, then we will have spam.
As long as verio and he.net hang up on people asking for the abuse
desk on the phone, we will have spam.  

--scott

"C'est un Nagra.  C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Sure you can cut off UUNET the same way
you can cut of MCI. Just do it ... call their bluff ... let _them_
deal with their legitimate customers who are no longer able to get 
through. Yes, they both have lots of legitimate customers, but in any
kind of serious medical procedure, for example, we don't think about 
how long the patient will be in the operating room or how long they 
will be in intensive care recovering. We concern ourselves with what 
their life will be like when they are fully recovered and back to 
normal. And our net has some very serious, I suspect deadly cancerous
growths that have been going of for years. So what if cutting off
UUNET and MCI leaves a shambles of email and the net _for a few days_.
Things are pretty much a shambles now anyway, aren't they? Oh, I know
that MCI (and probably Vint Cerf) will scream and carry on about it,
as will UUNET and others similarly situated. But it is time _we_ took
the net back over, and my belief is it would not take too many days
of simply refusing to handle _any_ of their traffic until things began
to change for the better. Just cut them, and be done with it, and hope
they are back with us sometime soon under more reasonable terms.  PAT] 

------------------------------

From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Honesty on the Internet
Organization: Symantec
Date: Sat, 16 Apr 2005 21:49:36 -0400


In article <telecom24.167.19@telecom-digest.org>,
TELECOM Digest Editor <ptownson@telecom-digest.org> wrote:

> Two editorial cartoons you may enjoy, and perhaps relate to personally.

http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/honesty.html

I prefer the class "On the Internet, no one knows you're a dog".

Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: At least with 'no one knows you are a
dog', probably no one asked, so no one volunteered, therefore no one
should be surprised or disappointed. But with the chat rooms, many
of them like Yahoo and AOL seem to be predicated on the all-important
questions of life: 'm or f, how old', and the trouble and the deceit
only gets worse from there. A couple months ago, a kid named Eric, a
friend of Lisa and her husband, was over here day after day; he wanted
to always 'check his email' and do a little chatting on Yahoo Messenger.
It was cool with Lisa, so I let him sit here for an hour or so at a
time doing his thing. The payoff came this weekend, when all eager, he
came around and told me his 'new friend' was coming down from Wichita
for the weekend. It turns out his new friend was at least twenty years
older than the Yahoo Profile would indicate, and a bit more plump,
etc. Poor Eric was crushed :(  and _he_ had sent reasonably recent and
accurate photos of himself, etc. I told him, trying to be courteous
and polite about it, "welcome to the real world of honesty and the 
internet". PAT]

------------------------------


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