TELECOM Digest     Sun, 24 Jul 2005 17:02:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 337

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Next Version of Windows to be Known as "Vista" (AP News Wire)
    News Consumers Become News Editors (Anick Jesdanun)
    An Unsettling Surprise: Victimized by ID Theft (Andrew Plato)
    TV Telephone History (John L. Shelton)
    Re: Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster (DevilsPGD)
    Re: Ethics of Deterrence (John Levine)

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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

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and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest.  

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From: Associated Press News Wire <ap@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Next Version of Windows to be Known as 'Vista'
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 14:11:10 -0500


Next Version of Windows Named 'Vista'

Microsoft Corp. dropped the code name Longhorn on Friday, announcing
the next version of its flagship Windows operating system will be
called Windows Vista.

The world's largest software maker also said it will release the first
of two test versions to developers and information technology
professionals by Aug. 3.

The company did not say when it expects to release a second test
version to a broader audience, but said it remains on target to ship
the oft-delayed update to Windows XP sometime in the second half of
next year.

Microsoft gave an internal gathering of its employees in Atlanta the
first word about the new name Thursday.

"The core idea around Windows Vista is bringing clarity to the user so
they can focus on what matters most," Brad Goldberg, general manager
for Windows product management said Friday.

Vista's features will include better ways to visualize data, such as
seeing through windows that are stacked atop each other, more natural
file organization and faster searching.

The operating system will also be designed to better protect computers
against viruses and spyware.


On the Net:

Vista: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista


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.

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

From: Anick Jesdanun <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Online News Consumers Become Own Editors
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 14:09:37 -0500


By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer

J.D. Lasica used to visit 20 to 30 Web sites for his daily fix of
news. Now, he's down to three -- yet he consumes more news online than
ever. Lasica is among a growing breed of information consumers who use
the latest Internet technologies to completely bypass the home pages
of news sites and jump directly to articles that interest them.

He can scan some 200 Web journals and traditional news sites -- all
without actually going out and visiting them.

Online news consumers are increasingly taking charge, getting their
news a la carte from a variety of outlets. Rarely do they depend on a
single news organization's vision of the day's top stories.

"The old idea of surfers coming to your Web site and coming to your
front door, that's going away," said Lasica, a former editor at The
Sacramento Bee. "People are going to come in through the side window,
through the basement, through the attic, anyway they want to."

Some Web sites are already responding.

"When we all started this 10 years ago, we wanted to be the one and
only place people come to," said Jim Brady, executive editor of The
Washington Post's Web site.

These days, he said, the Post is happy simply to be one of many sources
checked daily. He sees his home page as a starting point, and during the
July 7 bombings in London, the Post even linked to the BBC, something
unfathomable a few years ago.

The Post and Knight Ridder Digital, meanwhile, are redesigning Web
sites to spread elements previously found only on home pages.

And in a case of "if you can't beat them, join them," Knight Ridder
Inc., Gannett Co. and Tribune Co. collectively bought three-quarters
of Topix.net, a startup that provides tools for readers to bypass news
home pages. The New York Times has been paying an undisclosed amount
to have its headlines featured there. Many smaller, privately owned
web sites used the syndicated RSS news feeds of each other as well,
and frequently contribute their own news items in the same way. 

Topix provides direct links to news stories it collects and sorts from
more than 10,000 sources, and it slices story by category as well as
region, down to the ZIP code. Many of the links are to other web sites
as well as the more traditional media. 

A news aggregation service from Google Inc. scans more than 4,500
English sources and uses software to rank and display stories to which
it links, while America Online Inc. and Yahoo Inc. offer services that
rely more on humans.

Yahoo News, rather than trying to keep readers from leaving, provides
easy access to articles elsewhere using Really Simple Syndication, or
RSS, a technology that immediately notifies users of new entries on
their favorite news sites and Web journals.

"In this world where people are looking for multiple points of view,
if all you're giving them is your view, ... they are going to leave
anyway and maybe be less likely to come back," said Neil Budde,
general manager for Yahoo News.

Many news organizations have tried to render online a packaged product
in the mold of the traditional newspaper or broadcast. That mentality
is changing, but slowly, Budde said.

News outlets are starting to add tools to untether readers from home
pages.  The Associated Press, Reuters and others, for example, are
adding RSS support so readers can use tools like Yahoo's to display
summaries and access stories directly. In return, they allow their own 
RSS feeds to be used on small web sites, a sort of 'scratch each
other's back' approach. 

Web journals, or blogs, present another way to bypass home pages. Many
are topic-centric and carry links that present the blogger's rather
than a news editor's vision of the top news items.

Some traditional news sites, including the Post, are even beginning to
let their columnists link to outside sources.

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Yahoo News had 24.9 million visitors
in June, more than any single news outlet on the Internet, and only
MSNBC and CNN had more visitors than AOL News.

Google News ranked 13th among news sites.

At The New York Times' Web site, referrals from RSS feeds account for
only 2 percent of traffic but represent the fastest growth -- 8.5
million page views in June compared with about a half million in late
2003.

The new tools bring opportunities such as better ad targeting, but
they also present some challenges. The news agency Agence
France-Presse, for one, has sued Google for copyright infringement
over Google News' use of photos and story excerpts.

Aggregators and feeds also potentially let readers select only the
topics they care about, ignoring other developments editors might deem
important, said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet and American
Life Project and former managing editor at U.S. News and World Report.

But Charlie Tillinghast, general manager and publisher for MSNBC.com,
said the new tools can also alert readers to once-obscure items they
might not otherwise have seen.

Knight Ridder considers tools like Google News and Topix as "nothing
but incremental traffic from people who might not have otherwise seen
the site," said Ross Settles, its vice president of strategy.

During the Scott Peterson murder trial, for instance, the chain's San
Francisco area papers saw increases in traffic from outside the area.

The new age of online news will still need reporters to produce
stories and editors to make judgment calls.

The need for partners to provide content will never go away, said
Lewis D'Vorkin, editor in chief for AOL News.

Home pages will continue to serve as a jumping off point for some
readers, and MSNBC recently beefed up its home page to include
customized headlines that are chosen based on stories the reader
recently read.

But to stay relevant, online news sites must ultimately overcome their
reluctance to point elsewhere, said blogging pioneer Dave Winer.

"The reader wants lots of sources and doesn't particularly care
whether you point offsite or onsite," Winer said. "They just want the
story."

And while news executives insist their brands will remain important as
trustworthy destinations, some readers prefer to trust individual
bloggers or friends who forward news items via e-mail or their own web
sites.

Nicco Mele, webmaster for Howard Dean's presidential campaign, said he
rarely visits news sites directly anymore and instead trusts bloggers
like Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, a Dean supporter.

Pointing to Moulitsas at a recent conference, Mele remarked, "I'll
read what he thinks I should read."

Anick Jesdanun can be reached at netwriter(at)ap.org

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.

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

From: Andrew Plato <oregonian@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: An Unsettling Surprise: Victimized by ID Theft
Date: Sat, 23 Jul 2005 20:02:59 -0500


      IN MY OPINION

      Andrew Plato

Recently, I opened my mailbox to an unsettling surprise: a cellular
telephone bill for more than $500. Of course, it was not my phone
bill, nor had I made any of the calls it listed. Like millions of
other Americans, I was a victim of identity theft.

The irony of my experience is that I am a computer-security
professional. I make my living helping organizations secure their
information systems from break-ins and theft.

The theft of my identity, like millions of others, was not because my
home computer was infected. It was not because I lost a charge
receipt. My identity was stolen from a large, multinational
corporation's computer database, similar to the recent theft of 40
million credit card numbers from a company in Tucson, Ariz.

When I called the police to report this crime, the officer was blunt
about my predicament. He said police get hundreds of identity-theft
claims every week, and almost all of them go unpunished. And because
credit firms don't hold consumers liable, these crimes are considered
victimless.

But there are victims: all of us. Identity theft has become the
perfect crime for crooks and drug pushers. With stolen identities,
criminals are getting a free ride while the rest of us get stuck with
the bill in the form of higher interest rates and expenses.

All crime has two components: motivation and opportunity. People must
be motivated to commit a crime and have the opportunity to do so. We
cannot do much about motivation, but we can surely do something about
opportunity.

It has become far too easy for hackers and thieves to access a network
and take what they want. Armed with a home PC and free software tools,
anybody with a little technical savvy can break into a network, plant
malicious software and walk away with valuable data.

In my line of work, I've seen the data centers for hundreds of
companies. I've seen large financial companies that have networks
infested with worms and viruses. I've also seen the development of
critical governmental systems outsourced to companies that are so
incompetent that the systems they built were broken into minutes after
being put online.

The fact is, our public and private organizations are ignoring their
security problems and by doing so are needlessly creating the
opportunity for identity thieves. Security is too often placed at the
end of projects as a luxury that never gets implemented.

But information security and privacy is no longer a luxury. It's time
for action. Unfortunately, the only way to get action these days is to
hit companies and governments where it really hurts: their wallets and
the voting booth.

We need to steer purchasing power away from organizations that cannot
secure information and toward those that can promise security and
privacy.  And when data are stolen, there must be
accountability. There must be penalties. Class-action lawyers are
starting to sue companies for damages in such cases. My firm has
already assisted in one such lawsuit. The fear of lawsuits is a
powerful motivator for companies.

But we also need to make information security a priority agenda item
for our elected officials. Government technology spending is highly
flawed, often awarding contracts to incompetent low-bidders, many of
which are incapable of handling complex security issues.

Identity theft will continue to go on unchecked until there is a
serious effort on the part of public agencies and private companies to
make security an integral part of their information systems.

Let's face it: Identity theft is no longer merely an inconvenience.
And it is not acceptable for corporations and governments to continue
building and using insecure information systems.

Andrew Plato is president of Anitian Enterprise Security, a computer
security consulting firm in Beaverton.

Copyright 2005 OregonLive.com.

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.

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Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 11:30:18 -0700
From: John L. Shelton <john@jshelton.com>
Subject: TV Telephone History


While watching TV Land, I realized I could learn about the
phone-wealth of various TV families.

For example:

Rob & Laura Petrie (The Dick Van Dyke Show, early 1960s) had 5
telephones, very unusual at the time. There were model 500 desk phones
in the breakfast room, kitchen, dining room, living room, and master
bedroom. There may have been a sixth phone in the garage; I'm still
trying to confirm.  In one episode, their phone number is given as
636.9970; in another, it's NEw Rochelle 6-9970.  This should have been
area code 914, and area codes were known back then, but not in
widespread use.

TV writers later learned to use the exchange "555" (or KLondike 5) for
fictitious numbers, but perhaps weren't doing this back then. The "99"
portion of their phone number used to indicate a coin-operated
telephone in some exchanges, so perhaps this convention was good
enough.

By the way, the number "9970" appears in many dialing examples from
"Englewood NJ 1951 Customer Long Distance Dialing", posted to this
list by Mark Cuccia in 1996.  And in the movie "The Manchurian
Candidate", a quoted phone number is "El Dorado 5 - 9970".

Do others have good examples of TV family telephones?

=John=
john@jshelton.com


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As best as I can recall, Lucille Ball
and Desi Arnez ('I Love Lucy', a 1950's invention mostly, had two 
phones; one in the front room which was nearly always the one used on
the show, but also a phone in the bedroom we only saw when an episode
needed a bedroom phone.(In one show, Lucy called Ethel from the
bedroom.) Their number was MUrray Hill something, I do not remember
what, although a couple shows had them saying the number. 

The Cleaver Family (Leave it to Beaver) had a phone in the Den, and a
reader here said they had one in the upstairs hallway also, but I do 
not recall seeing it. Their phone number was always given as
'Klondike 5-' something, with one or two digits generally muffled and
unintelligable. 

And who can recall Sheriff Andy Taylor's phone number, both at the
jail and at his home?  Barney Fife's number at the rooming house where
he lived was '407' on the one occassion I heard someone on the show
ask 'Sarah' the operator to be connected. PAT] 

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

From: DevilsPGD <spamsucks@crazyhat.net>
Subject: Re: Corrupted PC's Find New Home in the Dumpster
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 2005 13:27:15 -0500
Organization: Disorganized


In message <telecom24.336.10@telecom-digest.org> Steve Sobol
<sjsobol@JustThe.net> wrote:

> Pat said:

>> Also I would like to comment on your allegation 'the only way to get
>> infected is by user stupidity'. I think that is sort of a harsh
>> assessment. _Not everyone_ who owns a computer knows everything about
>> it

> Pat's right.

> You can be computer-savvy, even, and not necessarily know within hours
> every time a new exploit comes out. It's not a question of
> stupidity. New malware releases tend to happen quickly.

While true, the vast majority of malware released post-XPSP2 requires
explicit user intervention to install it.

It doesn't install itself, it asks for permission (often more then once).


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This is very true also, but often times
that request to install is couched with the colors and logo of a
Windows Update or some other circumstance that would lead a reasonably
intelligent person to go ahead and okay it, only to realize a few
seconds later that they may have done something they should not have
done. Even though they do sometimes ask, it is rare or _never_ that
they are forthright about their intentions or _exactly what_ this
'important update' will actually accomplish.   PAT]

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

Date: 24 Jul 2005 06:22:29 -0000
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
Subject: Re: Ethics of Deterrence
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA


> Did you miss the part where they say that they send a warning first?
> If you've been framed by the spammer, you'll have a chance to let them
> know that it was a forgery.  This should hopefully forestall the
> attack.

First question: why do you expect that legitimate websites will
cooperate with what is in essence a protection racket? ("Nice web site
you've got there, better do what we say if you ever want to see your
home page again.")

Second question: why do you expect that spammers will not say "we
didn't send that, it's a joe job"?  Do you think that Blue Frog can
tell if they're lying with perfect accuracy?  If not, what happens
when BF DOS'es an innocent site?

Anyone who thinks that Blue Frog is a good idea hasn't thought through
what they're doing.

R's,

John


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I wonder if anyone besides me has 
noticed how this whole thing has deteriorated from evil nasty spammers
as the _true_ villians to evil nasty netizens trying to harm a good
and pure web site; for how many ever years, when filtering was thought
to be the answer to everything, so many netters would say 'ho hum,
lets crank up the filter a little more' to desparately try to
eliminate them. Now that we are close to the hundred percent
saturation point with spam (as some of us predicted long ago) and
filtering has been shown to be a dismal failure, at least among
netizens who have to shovel it out by the truck load each day, and
thought has been given to taking a more agressive deterence posture,
these same guys who were so, well, almost _casual_ about installing 
more and more filtering are now getting desparate in their paranoia
as they defend the spammers and their (spammers) 'right of free 
speech' as it were. 

Tell me this John, is there some sort of 'Spammers Legal Defense Fund'
you guys sponsor or contribute to? When spammers (ever so rarely) get
sued by a government agency do you guys hire lawyers to help defend 
them?  Why did ICANN (and its cheering squad on the net) fight so
vigorously against the federal government's CAN-SPAM proposed
legislation; making up all sorts of mumbo-jumbo about 'how it will not
work, so do not waste your time on it'?  Why does ICANN interject
itself, with its so-called 'expert testimony' in all these cases where
legislation is pending, when instead of giving expert testimony they
merely want to hawk their own agenda?  It all really amazes me. Why do 
you guys object so vigorously when netizens try self help?  If our
ideas are such a damn fool waste of time, then please, __let us find
it out for ourselves__; quit trying to save us from ourselves. 
Obviously your passive filtering solutions have not worked; why can't
we try our way instead? What is your _real objection_ anyway?   PAT]

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


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End of TELECOM Digest V24 #337
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