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The Telecom Digest for July 07, 2010
Volume 29 : Issue 183 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Taking the Mystery Out of Web Anonymity (Steven)
Apple to replace false iPhone reception reading with another clever exaggeration
(Monty Solomon)
Re: Taking the Mystery Out of Web Anonymity (Garrett Wollman)
Re: Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4 (Thad Floryan)
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Date: Mon, 05 Jul 2010 13:48:37 -0700
From: Steven <diespammers@killspammers.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Taking the Mystery Out of Web Anonymity
Message-ID: <i0tgf7$o1j$1@news.eternal-september.org>
On 7/5/10 7:33 AM, Monty Solomon wrote:
>
> Taking the Mystery Out of Web Anonymity
>
> By JOHN MARKOFF
> July 2, 2010
>
> THE Obama Administration is trying to fix the Internet's dog problem.
>
> The problem, as depicted in Peter Steiner's legendary 1993 New Yorker
> cartoon, is that on the Internet nobody knows you're a dog. And thus
> the enduring conundrum over who can be trusted in cyberspace.
>
> The Internet affords anonymity to its users - a boon to privacy and
> freedom of speech. But that very anonymity is also behind the
> explosion of cybercrime that has swept across the Web.
>
> Can privacy be preserved while bringing a semblance of safety and
> security to a world that seems increasingly lawless?
>
> Last month, Howard Schmidt, the nation's cyberczar, offered the Obama
> administration's proposal to make the Web a safer place - a
> "voluntary trusted identity" system that would be the high-tech
> equivalent of a physical key, a fingerprint and a photo ID card, all
> rolled into one. The system might use a smart identity card, or a
> digital credential linked to a specific computer, and would
> authenticate users at a range of online services.
>
> The idea is to create a federation of private online identity
> systems. Users could select which system to join, and only registered
> users whose identities have been authenticated could navigate those
> systems. The approach contrasts with one that would require a
> government-issued Internet driver's license. (Civil liberties groups
> oppose a government system, fearful that it could lead to national
> identity cards.)
>
> ...
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/weekinreview/04markoff.html
>
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> This is long overdue. The lack of any effective means of
> identification is what detroyed the Citizens Radio Service ("Citizen's
> Band") in the U.S., and Usenet isn't far behind.
>
> If I had to guess at the one big reason for the success of message
> boards hosted by Google and Yahoo, it would be that they are run by
> commercial companies with a stake in keeping the discussion civil and
> a vested interest in avoiding "the trajedy of the commons" that has
> affected Usenet.
>
> In the end, people grow up and the circus leaves town. It's time for
> those who use the Internet to be accountable for their actions.
>
> Bill Horne
> Moderator
It was like the old BBS's. When I ran mine I allowed posters to have
handles, but I know who they were, either by telephone or other
methods. I had one user who would log on make threats against other
users, I'd kick him off, he would log back on as a new user and start
it over again. I finally wrote a routine that checked telephone
numbers against block one; he was not very smart he used the same
phone number
--
The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2010 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co.
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 22:55:35 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Apple to replace false iPhone reception reading with another clever exaggeration
Message-ID: <p06240813c8584b4368e1@[10.0.1.3]>
Technology
THE BUSINESS AND CULTURE OF OUR DIGITAL LIVES, FROM THE L.A. TIMES
Apple to replace false iPhone reception reading with another clever
exaggeration
Mark Milian
July 2, 2010
Months after an Apple employee left a pre-release iPhone in a pub, a
different kind of bar is giving Apple headaches.
The fix for that first bar incident, when Gizmodo got its hands on
the never-before-seen breed of iPhone, brought in the lawyers and a
police task force.
For this new issue, which had Apple on the legal defensive, the smart
phone maker admitted Friday -- a good time to get things off your
chest before the long holiday weekend -- that every iPhone sold in
the last three years has been overstating signal strength. Those bars
in the top left corner? Liars.
The repair this time is to issue a software update in the next few
weeks that corrects the signal-strength reading.
While that software update reduces the reading to an accurate level,
Apple will employ a sneaky design trick to distract users who may be
frustrated when seeing fewer bars at any given time. The shortest
three bars will experience a bit of a growth spurt, Apple said in a
statement, "so they will be easier to see." Because we probably won't
be seeing their big brothers as often.
...
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2010/07/iphone-bars.html
**** Moderator's Note *****
I am shocked - SHOCKED - to think that a reputable company like Apple
would willingly deceive its customers. After all the fanatical loyalty
the MacAddicts have shown, after all the "LookitMe" trendsetters
cuddling their new iPads like babies, after every CEOWannabee has
stood for minutes in front of the executive elevator thumbing her nose
at the stodgy underlings who still use keyboards.
SHOCKED, I TELL YOU!
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Mon, 5 Jul 2010 22:24:28 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Taking the Mystery Out of Web Anonymity
Message-ID: <i0tm2s$c7v$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <p062408a0c8579da78263@[10.0.1.3]>,
Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> wrote:
>This is long overdue. The lack of any effective means of
>identification is what detroyed the Citizens Radio Service ("Citizen's
>Band") in the U.S., and Usenet isn't far behind.
Death of the Net predicted! Film at 11!
>If I had to guess at the one big reason for the success of message
>boards hosted by Google and Yahoo, it would be that they are run by
>commercial companies with a stake in keeping the discussion civil and
>a vested interest in avoiding "the trajedy of the commons" that has
>affected Usenet.
Weren't we just having a discussion not too long ago about the
pointless (but apparently profitable) anonymous message boards some
newspapers attach to every article they put online?
Usenet, frankly, works better now than it has in quite some years.
There's at least an order of magnitude less spam than email (if you
use competently-managed servers), and most of the obnoxious twits have
found somewhere else to deposit their excreta. There are no longer
viruses in the wild that use Usenet as their propagation and update
mechanism.[1] The elimination of Usenet service provided by ISPs has
been an enormous boon.
-GAWollman
[1] Or at least I haven't heard of any recently. I will admit that I
didn't pop over to alt.comp.virus to check.
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Date: Sat, 03 Jul 2010 16:35:54 -0700
From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4
On 7/2/2010 9:58 PM, Monty Solomon wrote:
> July 2, 2010
>
> Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4
>
> Dear iPhone 4 Users,
>
> The iPhone 4 has been the most successful product launch in Apple's
> history. It has been judged by reviewers around the world to be the
> best smartphone ever, and users have told us that they love it. So we
> were surprised when we read reports of reception problems, and we
> immediately began investigating them. Here is what we have learned.
>
> To start with, gripping almost any mobile phone in certain ways will
> reduce its reception by 1 or more bars. This is true of iPhone 4,
> iPhone 3GS, as well as many Droid, Nokia and RIM phones. But some
> users have reported that iPhone 4 can drop 4 or 5 bars when tightly
> held in a way which covers the black strip in the lower left corner
> of the metal band. This is a far bigger drop than normal, and as a
> result some have accused the iPhone 4 of having a faulty antenna
> design.
S'funny, Jobs didn't hold the phone "properly" when he showed it off
in San Francisco -- he, too, lost connectivity holding the phone in a
normal manner.
Though I never thought about it, I just now LOOKED at how I hold my
Motorola RAZR V3. It's in my right hand and my pinky at the lower left
corner. On my RAZR the pinky covers the USB port, on the iPhone4 it
would connectively bridge the gap (the slot) between the two antenna
segments causing a signal drop as 10000s of people are experiencing and
reporting.
> [...]
> We have discovered the cause of this dramatic drop in bars, and it is
> both simple and surprising.
>
> Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use
> to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally
> wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more
> bars than it should for a given signal strength.
I call BS on Jobs. Within 24 hours of the iPhone4 hitting the streets
Apple was inundated with angry communications from dissatisfied users
and immediately RFP'd two PhD-level RF and antenna design positions
which are still open as of today, Saturday, July 3, 2010 per:
http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExternal.showJob&RID=55396&CurrentPage=1
http://jobs.apple.com/index.ajs?BID=1&method=mExternal.showJob&RID=55852&CurrentPage=1
Additionally, comments from Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Chronicle
are justifiably ridiculing Jobs and Apple in the "Reader Comments" section
of this article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/07/02/financial/f055210D98.DTL
which also claims a math error in the bar presentation.
Previous articles commented that Apple's testing prior to product
release was intrinsically flawed: the iPhone4 was camouflaged in a case
that didn't have the external antenna (i.e., the Gizmodo incident with
a prototype found in a bar).
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