TELECOM Digest     Mon, 18 Jul 2005 14:50:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 329

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Nokia Fugue in G Major (Melena Z. Ryzik)
    Feds Want to Eavesdrop on Airborne Internet Users (consumer-affairs.com)
    Up the Broadband Creek Without a Signal (James R. Hood)
    Sprint Enhances Sprint PCS Data Link Capabilities (Monty Solomon)
    QUALCOMM's gps Enhanced Navigation Software Further Improves (Solomon)
    Somebody's Watching You (Monty Solomon)
    Thinking Maps (Monty Solomon)
    Texas House Passes Telecom Bill (USTelecom dailyLead)
    Re: Finger Scanning At Disney Parks Causes Concern (Clark W. Griswold,Jr)
    Re: Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster (mc)
    Re: Nigeria Jails Woman in $242 Million Fraud (The Wondrous One)
    Re: Camelot on the Moon - From Our Archives (Paul Vader)
    Poem: Skeletons in the Sky (Charles Gray)

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet.  All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and
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included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article
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               ===========================

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.  


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

From: Melena Z. Ryzik <newswire@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Nokia Fugue in G Major
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:15:44 -0500


By MELENA Z. RYZIK

CARLOS BOUSTED is a laid-back recent high school graduate and a
sometime D.J. Unlike most D.J.'s, though, Mr. Bousted does not have to
lug around crates of records, CD's or even an iPod. His music is
strictly cellular.

Mr. Bousted, 18, is a ringtone D.J. A competitive ringtone D.J. "You
put certain songs in order and play them against other people," he
said, explaining his technique. "Anytime you're walking around: 'Oh,
what you got?' And then you pull out your phone."

Downloadable ringtones like the ones Mr. Bousted uses -- tunes from
artists like the Yin Yang Twins and 50 Cent -- have been a teenage
mainstay for years, a mushrooming market worth almost $5 billion
globally (the United States share is $600 million and growing).

But as people like Mr. Bousted have grown fluent in the language of
ringtones, industry executives and musicians alike have realized that
they need not be duplicates of already popular songs; there is room
for creativity alongside the commerce.

"We definitely see a market for original content," said Andy
Volanakis, president and chief officer of Zingy, a ringtone provider
that has released an album by the producer Timbaland.

When combined with technology that allows them to sound like music
instead of its tinny shadow, and programs that allow anyone to make,
mix or otherwise devise his or her own ringtones, the seven songs on
the Timbaland album -- among the first meant to be played on a phone,
not a radio or CD player -- suggest that ring tones are not merely a
new money-maker; they are a new art form.

"People have really started to take this stuff seriously," said
Jonathan Dworkin, vice president for artists and repertory at
BlingTones, a Zingy competitor that was one of the first to focus on
original works. Its partners include the crunk progenitor Lil Jon,
Q-Tip and others.

With ringbacks, voice tones (Snoop Dogg says, "Pick up the phone!")
and sound effects crowding the field, there are more opportunities to
circumvent the cellphone's bleep or brring than ever before. Even
Nokia, which in 1991 became the first company to market a cellphone
with an identifiable musical ring tone (Francisco Tarrega's "Gran
Vals" for classical guitar), has moved away from its traditional
tunes. For its newest phone, the Nokia 8801, it commissioned wholly
original music and sounds, composed exclusively for cellphone by the
eclectic Japanese composer Ryuichi Sakamoto. Later this summer, Zingy
will release a song by Free Murda, a Wu-Tang Clan acolyte, as both a
single and a ringtone; it was produced by RZA, who compiled the scores
for Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill" films.

Why would a serious musician bother? After all, a song can have
multiple lives; a ringtone, just one, and a fruit-fly-length one at
that.  (Timbaland's seven original ringtones average just 20 seconds
each.) Money is definitely one reason. As Lil Jon said of BlingTones,
"They cut the check." But that's not the end of the story. "It's
another way of reaching your audience," he added in a telephone
interview. "It's exciting. Like I was already thinking, what if I
produce a song for the cellphone that ends up getting on music charts?
The technology is so crazy, that could one day happen."

Actually, it already has: in Britain, the heavily advertised Crazy
Frog ringtone - based on a Swedish teenager's imitation of a revving
engine - topped artists like Coldplay and U2 on the singles charts
just last month.  And the remix is already out.

One BlingTones artist, Tony (CD) Kelly, has already started
incorporating the old standard-issue cellphone rings into his new
ringtones -- a postmodern remix in which the Nokia song morphs into a
hip-hop beat, for example.

Mainstream musicians are not the only ones intrigued by the
possibility of the ringing opus. In 2001, the multimedia artist Golan
Levin, now a professor of electronic art at Carnegie Mellon University
in Pittsburgh, was the co-creator of "Dialtones," a "telesymphony"
(flong.com/telesymphony), composed entirely of the rings of audience
members' cellphones. In Britain (where pop-inspired ringtones already
often outsell the songs they are based on), there's a wide variety of
phone art, from Nick Crowe's "Axis of Evil" national anthems
(artones.net) to Stream & Shout, which paired artists and students to
create original ringtones (streamandshout.net).

"They understood it immediately," Ross Dalziel, a Liverpool, England,
sound artist, said of the teenagers he worked with on the Stream &
Shout project.  For many people, especially the young, ringtones are
as musically viable as a favorite mixtape was a generation ago: "The
phone playing their favorite song is their identifier," said Geoff
Mayfield, director of charts and senior analyst at Billboard magazine,
which began a ringtone chart last fall. "That's part of how they brand
themselves," he added.

Like so much technology before it, then, the cellphone has morphed far
beyond its original function. "A phone used to ring just to get your
attention," Mr. Levin said. Now, said Patrick Parodi, chairman of
Mobile Entertainment Forum, a London-based trade association, "it's
probably the device that identifies us most, along with our cars."

For musicians, the ringtone also presents an irresistible opportunity
to connect with fans. Customization is growing daily: consumers can
now choose what part of Fabolous's single "Baby" they want as their
ringtone; previously, record companes made those kinds of decisions.

"The direction we're going in is you'd actually have this artist
create the ringtone when your boyfriend calls, or your best friend,"
said Amy Doyle, vice president for music programming at MTV, which
helped release the Timbaland album. "So it becomes the artist scoring
your life, almost, on your cellphone."

According to Edward Bilous, a professor at the Juilliard School,
"Ringtones are pointing towards a kind of new interactive media in
which the user and the creator have a more democratic relationship
with each other."

But as every sidewalk, cafe or mode of public transport by now proves,
there's also a performance aspect to mobile phones. (After all, nobody
customizes the ringtone on a home phone.) And not everyone regards it
as welcome. "I think most people would agree with me that as they
exist now, ringtones are a public nuisance," Mr. Sakamoto wrote in an
e-mail message.  (Presumably, his composition for Nokia is an
exception.)

There are certainly limitations to the form, though Mr. Levin suggests
that boundaries breed creativity. But with sales on the rise,
companies like Verizon, Cingular and Sprint are creating music-playing
phones and giving them the ability to tune in streaming radio. And
while Mr. Bilous worries that the ubiquity of musical cellphones might
ruin the listening experience (he is already pondering starting a
course called "From Ring Cycle to Ringtones: A Study in Musical
Attention Deficit Disorder"), others contend that they can create new
fans with every sound. Even the ringtone battles described by
Mr. Bousted, the cellphone D.J., foster community. "You have a little
group of people and they'll decide, like, 'Oh, yours is better,' " he
said. "And then you talk to each other and make friends."

Mr. Levin added: "It can be a vehicle for creative expression both on
the part of the composer and the part of the person who uses it. The
ringtone has a clear connection to everyday life, and because of that
I think it's a vital form." For those who disagree, there's always
vibrate.

Copyright 2005 New York Times.

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. For the daily NY Times, read:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/nytimes.html

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

From: Consumer Affairrs.com <consumeraffairs@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Feds Want to Eavesdrop on Airborne Internet Users
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:18:17 -0500


Federal law enforcement agencies say they're all in favor of airline
passengers being able to surf the Web and send and receive emails, as
long as the feds are able to listen in.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other agencies have told
the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) they want to be able to
iintercept, block or divert email and other airborne communications,
after obtaining a court order. Internet providers would be required to
enable government monitoring within 10 minutes of an order being
issued.

DHS wants the providers to be able to identify Internet users by their
seat number and to retain complete records of passengers' Internet
usage for at least 24 hours.

The government fears that terrorists could use the Internet to
coordinate attacks and even detonate remote-controlled explosive
devices on airplanes using airborne Internet.

In a filing with the FCC, DHS said federal agencies have only "a short
window of opportunity" to detect and thwart suidical terrorist
hijackings or other crisis situations. The proposed requirements go
well beyond those imposed on earthbound Internet providers but DHS
said the potential danger of airborne attacks justifies the measures.

The FCC has been studying the technical issues involved in providing
Internet and cell phone access on commercial airliners. A few
international carriers already offer such service.

Copyright 2003-2005 ConsumerAffairs.Com Inc.

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. Read consumer affairs RSS newsfeed daily here.

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

From: James R. Hood <consumeraffairs@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Up the Broadband Creek Without a Signal
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:20:12 -0500


      Options are Slim for Those without DSL or Cable


By James R. Hood
ConsumerAffairs.Com

Al Gore took a lot of heat for his slightly inflated version of his
role in the Internet's beginnings but, whatever else you may say about
it, the previous Administration at least appeared to be trying to
jump-start the Internet. The current masters of the universe seem to
think the "invisible hand of the marketplace" will cause broadband to
sprout like kudzu throughout the land, without (or in spite of)
needless interference from government.

The Federal Communications Commission, accordingly, stood aside as the
Bell companies devoured everything in sight, pausing between gulps to
say that new broadband networks would be coming soon. But while
high-speed Internet use by U.S. businesses and households rose 34
percent in 2004 to 37.9 million lines, according to FCC figures
released last week, the U.S.  ranks 16th in broadband use among major
nations.

Digital subscriber line, or DSL, service increased 45 percent last
year to 13.8 million lines. Cable modem use climbed 30 percent to 21.4
million lines. Other Internet connections using wireless and satellite
increased by 50 percent to 500,000 last year, the FCC said, while use
of optical fiber and powerlines rose 16 percent to 700,000.

In a column published in Thursday's Wall Street Journal, FCC Chairman
Kevin Martin vows that broadband deployment is his "highest priority."

Perhaps, but that's not of much comfort to the millions of Americans
still without broadband service -- not all of them in Short Pump,
Virginia, or Happy, Texas. Some are in "undesirable" big-city
neighborhoods, others in affluent suburbs that for one reason or
another aren't wired for DSL or cable and some are just in-between,
traveling, vacationing or working outside the office.

The United States is a pretty big place, after all, and the natural
inclination of any businessperson is to concentrate his service where
it will reach the biggest number of potential customers with the
lowest possible delivery costs. These days, that generally means that
downtown areas and middle-class neighborhoods are the most likely to
have broadband service from either a cable company or the local
telephone company, or, as is often the case, both.

And everyone else? Well, they are mostly out of luck. There's no doubt
things are changing and new services are coming. Verizon and SBC are
digging up streets throughout the land to install fiber to the home so
that they can compete with cable system by delivering high-definition
video. Of course, almost all of this activity is in areas where cable
and the telcos already provide broadband. It does nothing for those in
unserved areas.

While there is no shortage of complaints about DSL and cable Internet
services, the situation is much worse for those who can't get
broadband at all.

"The Internet is increasingly designed to be used with a high speed
connection," said Mark Huffman, a ConsumerAffairs.Com contributing
editor who moved to a rural area on Chesapeake Bay a few years
ago. "Every site is loaded with rich media. If you are on dial-up, its
very hard to use the Internet. It becomes very frustrating."

Working with Huffman, we explored various methods of getting broadband
service where none now exists. Contrary to what broadband providers
might think, Huffman found a great deal of interest among residents of
his somewhat sleepy village.

"In my county there is no broadband available, other than satellite. I
can tell you that every business owner I talked to about trying to
bring in wireless was enthusiastic about the idea, and willing to pay
a premium price to get it, if they could," Huffman said.

Here are a few of the services we explored:

Verizon Wireless Broadband

We found this expensive ($80 per month) service to be virtually
useless, whether in the sticks or under the Capitol dome. We could not
get it to work in the Washington, D.C., New York or Los Angeles metro
areas. It didn't work in the St. Louis airport or at the beach in
Delaware, to pick a few other examples. Where does this thing work, we
wondered? Answer: we don't know. See A Test of Verizon Wireless
Broadband for all the gory details. Warning: Sprint has announced it
is deploying the same technology. _Buyer beware of Sprint and Verizon_.

Fixed Wireless

Unlike the Verizon wireless card, some wireless broadband providers
offer what's called "fixed wireless" -- meaning it's not mobile. This
involves line-of-sight microwave transmission. Translation: towers. If you
are lucky enough to have such a service in your area, it may be the answer
if you are in its primary coverage area and don't have trees, mountains or
other obstructions blocking the signal path. It can work well, we're told.
We were not able to find any services we could test but we heard from one
consumer who's quite happy with her experience.

"We had satellite-based Starband, but found it slow and stupid about
multiple users," said Catherine of Sparks, Nevada. "So we got wireless
broadband from Amigo and we are very happy with it."

"The thing is that we essentially have a personal ISP -- the guy who
runs our area for Amigo.net knows us, our tech needs and is very
responsive (unlike our prior DSL experience elsewhere with
Verizon). Reminds me of when we used to have our power from a rural
electric coop -- a much friendlier experience!"

T-1

A T-1 is old technology but very stable. It is provided over a double
pair of plain old copper telephone lines and is available literally
anywhere in the U.S., if you're willing to pay for it. Line-haul
charges are steep outside major urban areas. The speed is about the
same as an average cable connection. Installation takes months and a
long-term contract is required.

A few years ago, driven nearly mad by Cox Communications' extremely
sporadic service and unable to get DSL in our neighborhood, we had a
T-1 installed at our home by a D.C. telecommunications provider who
asks not to be named (hey, we have enemies). The cost: $600 per
month. This may sound like an extravagance but we work at home quite a
bit of the time and reliability is essential.

Obviously, a T-1 is impractical for consumers and, in many cases, even
for technology-dependent businesses, as we learned when we tried to
price out a T-1 for Huffman.

We shopped around for a T-1 and found nothing under about $800 per
month. We were dubious of that quote since every other provider wanted
about $1,200. This obviously isn't a practical solution for most
individuals or small businesses.

Satellite

Still trying to get Huffman up and running, we surfed over to DirecTV
and found them offering a variety of consumer- and business-grade
packages under their DirecWay brand. This is not the old satellite
Internet that used a satellite for the downleg and a telephone
connection for the upleg -- some pretty cool spread-spectrum
technology handles the upleg. The business-grade package we bought
delivers speeds comparable to DSL. There was a $1,000 installation
charge and the monthly charge is about $99. For a business, this is
cheap. Consumer-grade packages start at around $50.

Don't say we told you this but you can buy the consumer package and
get a geekish friend to put up a Wi-Fi connection that your neighbors
can use. Maybe you can get them to chip in on the installation and
monthly tariff.

At the moment, DirecTV has the market pretty well to itself although
there is a new player that hopes to make some noise later this year,
we're told.

In the past, we have received some really bitter complaints from
consumers who found various satellite Internet services
annoying. There's no question that wireless communications will almost
always be somewhat less stable than wired; it's the nature of the
beast. Satellite transmissions are in the Ku band -- very high
frequency and thus more prone to interference from rain and
snow. Until the laws of physics are changed, you can expect service
degradation during bad weather.

Then there's the little matter of the speed of light. The
communications satellites are 26,000 miles out in space. A signal has
to go up from your dish to the bird and the downleg signal has to come
back down.  That's 52,000 miles round trip. Look up the speed of light
and you can do the math; it works out to a noticeable split-second
delay between the time you click your mouse and the time the signal
hits the router on the bird. Is this a problem? We'd say that once you
understand what's happening, you can make a mental adjustment to allow
for it.

We have been around satellite communications a long time and respect
it greatly. It is amazingly effective and has the lowest environmental
overhead you can imagine -- no wires, no digging, no towers, very
slight power consumption. OK, some might find the dishes ugly but
that's an aesthetics argument. Personally, we find utility poles about
as ugly as anything. Dangerous, too. We spent an afternoon using the
DirecWay feed and found it as good if not better than the T-1's we use
at our office and at home.

Of course, not every DirecWay customer agrees, including Gary of
Lincoln, Missouri. "Service is very crappy. Slow, sometimes as bad as
dialup if not worse. I buy and sell on ebay so if the internet doesn't
work I lose big," Gary said.

Gary's complaint is similar to those often leveled at DSL and cable
providers as well. In many of these cases, the fault lies elsewhere --
slow servers, bogged-down DNS and, not infrequently, balkiness in the
user's PC.  Inadequate memory, spyware, viruses, file fragmentation,
all can slow the display of Web pages.

Power Lines

It's a little puzzling why broadband Internet via electrical lines
hasn't taken off. The copper wires that deliver electricity to homes
and offices are capable of moving a lot of data at very low cost but
the technology just hasn't gotten the attention it would seem to
deserve.

That may be changing, though. A Maryland company that provides
high-speed Internet access over electrical power lines last week
received a major investment from Google Inc., the Hearst Corp. and
Goldman Sachs.  Current Communications Group declined to disclose
financial terms of the investment though the Wall Street Journal
reported that it approached $100 million.

If the FCC stays out of the picture, maybe this will go somewhere.

Dial-Up

There's no question: dial-up just doesn't get it anymore. Even if you
never download audio or video files, most Web sites now have such fat
pages that it's a very frustrating proposition to be stuck on a
dial-up connection. The experience just isn't the same.

That being said, we would have to admit we sometimes get more done on
the rare occasions when we must rely on dial-up connections. We find
ourselves spending more time writing and editing, even thinking, less
time reading the latest inflammatory e-mails.

Then there's the matter of cost: dial-up is cheap, assuming you don't
fall for the high-priced brands like AOL, MSN and Earthlink. We seldom
issue outright recommendations but here are two dial-up ISP providers
we have used with great success when stuck in nowheresville:
localnet.com and highstream.net. Both have plans under $10 per month
that will provide dial-up access from most parts of the country. As
always, you must be sure to select a dial-up number that is within
your local calling area.

So?

So, what to do if you're living in an area without cable or DSL
broadband? We'd say satellite is the best option, at least for
now. For road warriors and those on temporary assignments, we don't
have a good answer, other than an inexpensive dial-up plan, a list of
hotel chains that offer free high-speed access and a willingness to
hang around Internet cafes. It shouldn't be that way, but it is. At
least for now.

Copyright 2003-2005 ConsumerAffairs.Com Inc.

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: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:09:55 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Sprint Enhances Sprint PCS Data Link Capabilities


     Sprint Enhances Sprint PCS Data Link(SM) Capabilities to Enable
     Wireless Replacement of Wireline Data Access for Business
     Locations

Capabilities of wireless and wireline networks enable Sprint to offer
a secure, converged, end-to-end solution for business-customer data
access that helps lower costs, drive productivity and increase
customers satisfaction.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan., July 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Further erasing the
imaginary line between wireless and wireline communications
technologies, Sprint today announced enhancements to Sprint PCS Data
Link that allow customers to replace or back-up existing wireline data
access for business locations or leverage new remote-access features
for their mobile workforce.  Wireless data access for office locations
is an exciting new offer at Sprint, enabling business customers to
leverage the low cost and flexibility of wireless as a true wireline
data access replacement technology.  Sprint expects to make these
capabilities available to business customers next month.

     - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=50526536

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

Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 11:18:53 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: QUALCOMM's gpsOne Enhanced Navigation Software


     QUALCOMM's gpsOne(R) Enhanced Navigation Software Further
     Improves Accuracy and Reduces Cost for Automotive and Pedestrian
     Navigation in the Wireless Phone

- Integrated Solution Eliminates Need for Additional GPS Chips and Enables
Mass Market -

SAN DIEGO, July 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- QUALCOMM Incorporated
(Nasdaq: QCOM), pioneer and world leader of Code Division Multiple
Access (CDMA) digital wireless technology, today announced the
industry's first enhanced navigation solution fully integrated in
wireless 3G modems.  This feature provides higher accuracy, turn by
turn map positioning for automotive and personal navigation
applications in wireless handsets, enabling a better user experience
and exciting new navigation applications for the consumer and
enterprise markets.  This enhanced software will be available on
QUALCOMM's market-leading gpsOne(R) solution for use with select
Mobile Station Modem(TM) (MSM(TM)) chipsets for both CDMA2000(R) and
WCDMA (UMTS) networks.

     - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=50527102

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

Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:29:26 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Somebody's Watching You


Upskirting. Downblousing. Happy slapping. As camera phones 
proliferate, an ugly vocabulary is born.

By Monica Collins

Camera phones can be dangerous. That's my technoparanoia talking, as 
the hybrid gadgets now number in the millions and allow anybody to 
take pictures for the perverse kick of it. A cellphone salesman from 
Rhode Island was arrested in May for peeping under a 17-year-old's 
skirt with a camera phone as she rode the escalator at the Emerald 
Square Mall in North Attleborough. The crime? "Upskirting."

"Downblousing" is just what you imagine: covertly snapping bosom shots
of women bending over, images that typically turn up on Internet
voyeur sites. California's Legislature banned upskirting and
downblousing after pictures taken at Disneyland showed up on the Web.
"Happy slapping" involves surprising a passerby with a punch or slap
and recording the act on a camera phone. In April, the British
newspaper The Guardian reported that transport police had investigated
200 such incidents in the previous six months at London bus stops and
train stations.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2005/07/17/somebodys_watching_you/

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

Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:37:00 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Thinking Maps


By Joshua Glenn

LATE LAST MONTH, the Internet search company Google announced it would
share its cutting-edge Google Maps technology with 'outside Web
developers.' That is to say, hackers, who've been using the online
cartographic service to create unauthorized interactive maps of
everything from cheap nationwide gas prices to local street crime ever
since Google's speedy, responsive service was launched in February.

Google had originally envisioned people using its European-style
streetmaps and creepily close-up satellite images to size up
neighborhoods where an apartment was for rent, for example, or to
check out a vacation spot's proximity to the beach. But civic-minded
computer jockeys had other visions. Matching the latitude and
longitude points from Google Maps (which provides virtual push-pin
markers for physical addresses typed into a search field; see marker
on map at right) with locations from police blotters, real estate
listings, and other databases, they've created free searchable maps of
crime in Chicago, sexual predators in Florida, and apartments for rent
in New York, to cite just three examples.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/07/17/thinking_maps/

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

Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 13:00:17 EDT
From: USTelecom dailyLead <ustelecom@dailylead.com>
Subject: Texas House Passes Telecom Bill


USTelecom dailyLead
July 18, 2005
http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=23122&l=2017006

		TODAY'S HEADLINES
	
NEWS OF THE DAY
* Texas House passes telecom bill
BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH
* Nearly half of Americans bundling purchases
* Fed will spend big on wireless, analyst says
* Profile: Alcatel's Quigley dialed in
* Cell phones get big-screen promotion
* Earnings report
HOT TOPICS
* Ebbers gets 25-year prison sentence
* Sprint snaps up US Unwired
* Broadband price war unfolds among cable, phone companies
* Study: VoIP still not as reliable as landline
* Verizon's FiOS being challenged by cable offerings
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
* GPS, E911 and VoIP
REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE
* Lafayette voters approve municipal network

Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others.
http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=23122&l=2017006

Legal and Privacy information at
http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp

SmartBrief, Inc.
1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20005

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

From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. <spamtrap100@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: Finger Scanning At Disney Parks Causes Concern
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 20:50:51 -0600
Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com


Dale Farmer <dale@cybercom.net> wrote:

> Disney does have a problem with (typically teenage) chronic
> troublemakers.  They get caught, given the usual don't come back on
> the property spiel, and escorted off the property.  The problem is
> that some of them come back with revenge in mind.  By getting these
> folks prints and scanning everyone upon entrance, they can easily
> recognize them at the gate and block them.

While I don't doubt that is one use of the technology, I'd have to see
the details of the implementation before I'd believe that the hand
geometry from two fingers would be sufficient to uniquely identify
anyone.

What is far more likely in my mind is Disney's ongoing desire to
prevent multiday passes and resort passes from being used by more than
one individual. I suspect that Disney ties a hash function of a few
points from the hand to the serial number of the pass.

Try to use the pass by someone else and the odds of the hash being the
same are sufficiently high enough to be detected ...

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

From: mc <mc_no_spam@uga.edu>
Subject: Re: Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster
Date: Sun, 17 Jul 2005 23:32:43 -0400
Organization: Speed Factory http://www.speedfactory.net


Whoever gave that man a Ph.D. in computer science should reconsider ...

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

Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 09:56:51 -0500
From: The Wondrous One <trulywondrous@gmail.com>
Reply-To: The Wondrous One <trulywondrous@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Nigeria Jails Woman in $242 Million Fraud


In message <telecom24.327.11@telecom-digest.org>, Fred Atkinson wrote:

> The scam involved $242 million dollars, she is out only about a
> quarter of that, and she only gets two and a half years in jail?
> Is it any wonder these people keep right on doing this?

At least the Nigerian government has begun addressing the problem.
The punishment seems light, but let us compare it to a recent fraud case
in the USA.

$242 million is approximately 1/45th the size of the $11 billion fraud
that was perpetrated at MCI Worldcom, if the latest conviction in the
US holds up.

If the Nigerian government had used the USA's example as a guideline,
she should have been sentenced to 1/45'th of 25 years which is just
under 7 months.

No wonder these corporate types keep right on doing this in the US.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Although she was sentenced to 2.5
years, it was backdated to early in 2004 to credit her for the time
she spent waiting for her trial. Then, in Nigeria as in USA, the
actual time spent in prison is about 50 percent of the sentence, with
the remainder on parole. So half of 2.5 is 1.25 years, with credit for
time served since 2004 waiting for trial subtracted from that. I think
she has a month or two of time still to be served is all. What people
do not seem to understand is that like the court system, the
correctional system is its own bureaucracy. Within certain
constraints, correctional really does not care what the judge said or
recommended; they do their own thing.  I mean, yes, they have to
observe the judge's orders to a certain extent, and they certainly
cannot exceed the time imposed by the court, but often as not, choose
to cut it _way, way_ back. And if the prison social workers choose to
write off about half of the overall sentence through the magic of
'prison accounting' and 'good time awards' do you think the prisoner
is going to complain any?  Once the judge signed and stamped the Writ
of Mandamus, placing the person in custody, he is going to forget
about it and move on to the next case in front of him that day in the
never ending assembly line. Corrections has to discharge a certain
number each day in order to make room for the new offenders the
judicial assembly line is sending in.  PAT]

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

From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader)
Subject: Re: Camelot on the Moon - From Our Archives
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 15:56:49 -0000
Organization: Inline Software Creations


kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:

> Indeed, the Apollo 11 camera was monochrome.  I don't think it was
> until Apollo 14 that we got color images from the moon's surface in
> realtime.  And the monochrome images from 11 were pretty awful due to
> limited channel bandwidth.

Right. We should have gotten color on Apollo 12, but Alan Bean fried
the camera when he accidentally pointed it at the sun moments into the
first moonwalk. As you note, all the color pictures from the first two
landings are from film cameras, which had to make the trip back to
earth with the astronauts before being seen. 

* -- * PV something like badgers -- something like lizards -- and
something like corkscrews.

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

From: Charles G Gray <graycg@okstate.edu>
Date: Mon, 18 Jul 2005 12:42:04 -0500
Subject: Poem - Skeletons in the Sky


Pat, a while back my wife and I were driving down I-44 toward Tulsa
and I noticed a couple of abandoned cell phone antenna towers.  They
were the "old" style open iron framework.  My wife asked who would be
responsible for removing them and I told her that someday the original
owner might, but no guarantee.  She said "they look like skeletons in
the sky", so I suggested that she call our daughter (the English
Teacher) who lives in Ohio and give that to her as a title for a poem.
True to form, here it is -- put it in the Digest if you like.

Skeletons in the Sky
Skeletons in the sky,
Bony fingers reaching for 
Signals,
Silenced
Empty and alone
No longer alive with the 
Chatter of stockbrokers
Best friends,
Teenagers.
Alone they stand
Whole, but broken
Waiting for the sweet sounds
To bring them back.
Skeletons in the sky,
Bony fingers reaching for
Signals.

(c) 2005 Dawn Gray Dobson


Regards,

Charles G. Gray
Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications
Oklahoma State University - Tulsa
(918)594-8433



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you very much for this fine
contribution. Please send my thanks for Ms. Dobson.   PAT]

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


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