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The Telecom Digest for January 31, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 31 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Every home needs its own IT guru (David Clayton)
Re: Config advice for asterisk? (Thad Floryan)
Fiber Optics Connectors (Fred Atkinson)
FDA staffers sue agency over surveillance of personal e-mail (Monty Solomon)
Scanning QR codes can infect your smartphone (David Clayton)
Google says one hour of video is now being uploaded to YouTube every second (Monty Solomon)

====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

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Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:56:20 +1100 From: David Clayton <dc33box-usenet@yahoo.com.au> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Every home needs its own IT guru Message-ID: <pan.2012.01.30.06.56.19.542166@yahoo.com.au> On Sat, 28 Jan 2012 10:54:04 -0500, Monty Solomon wrote: > Every home needs its own IT guru - Our growing number of gadgets > means more questions for tech-savvy friends and family And where are the instructions on how to avoid those questions that you just KNOW are going to drain you like a vampire attached to your neck? -- Regards, David. David Clayton Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.
Date: Sun, 29 Jan 2012 16:47:53 -0800 From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Config advice for asterisk? Message-ID: <4F25E8B9.5090806@thadlabs.com> On 1/28/2012 9:14 PM, John R. Levine wrote: > Speaking of asterisk, can someone suggest a good source of configuration > advice for asterisk? [Moderator snip] > Any suggestions where to find simple canned configs and related advice? > I'm a reasonably competent programmer, so something that explained the > programming model as well as giving examples would be nice. I've been out of the business for 4 years now and am technically retired, but I used to set up [among other things] asterisk VoIP systems with interfaces to PRIs for small businesses which features probably the world's best voice mail system and support for Cisco 7960 VoIP instruments, Polycom IP4000 conference room phones, ATA analog adapters, etc. Googling "asterisk configuration examples" returns some very useful material, such as (among many others): http://www.voip-info.org/wiki/view/Asterisk+Configuration+Examples :-) FYI, there are 3 versions of the O'Reilly asterisk book so far: Asterisk, the future of telephony, 1st ed, 376 pages, September 2005 ISBN unknown -- my only copy is PDF Asterisk, the future of telephony, 2nd ed, 604 pages, August 2007 Asterisk 1.4, ISBN-10: 0-596-51048-9, ISBN-13: 978-0-596-51048-0, Asterisk, the definitive guide, 3rd ed, 734 pages, April 2011 Asterisk 1.8, ISBN: 978-0-596-51734-2 Also O'Reilly Asterisk Cookbook, 1st ed, 66 pages, April 2011 ISBN: 978-1-449-30382-2 And these two tomes: Asterisk Hacking [Ben Jackson] (Elsevier) 2007,253 pages ISBN 978-1-59749-151-8 comes with a CD (which I can't quickly find) Asterisk for Dummies (Stephen Olejniczak (author of Telecom for Dummies)) (Wiley) 2007, ISBN 978-0-470-09854-7, 334 pages
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:17:27 -0700 From: Fred Atkinson <fatkinson.remove-this@and-this-too.mishmash.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Fiber Optics Connectors Message-ID: <05b8576ddded1aeddc4222f00e68662a.squirrel@webmail.mishmash.com> Folks, I need to read up on fiber optics connectors. I'm familiar with the LC, ST, and SC type connectors. I understand that there are special connectors called APC (Angle Polished Connectors) and I'd like to read up on when they are used. Can someone recommend a book that explains APCs and some of the newer connectors [those I have not listed here]? Thanks, Fred
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:10:46 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: FDA staffers sue agency over surveillance of personal e-mail Message-ID: <p06240841cb4cbf407b44@[10.0.1.2]> FDA staffers sue agency over surveillance of personal e-mail By Ellen Nakashima and Lisa Rein, Published: January 29 The Food and Drug Administration secretly monitored the personal e-mail of a group of its own scientists and doctors after they warned Congress that the agency was approving medical devices that they believed posed unacceptable risks to patients, government documents show. The surveillance - detailed in e-mails and memos unearthed by six of the scientists and doctors, who filed a lawsuit against the FDA in U.S. District Court in Washington last week - took place over two years as the plaintiffs accessed their personal Gmail accounts from government computers. Information garnered this way eventually contributed to the harassment or dismissal of all six of the FDA employees, the suit alleges. All had worked in an office responsible for reviewing devices for cancer screening and other purposes. Copies of the e-mails show that, starting in January 2009, the FDA intercepted communications with congressional staffers and draft versions of whistleblower complaints complete with editing notes in the margins. The agency also took electronic snapshots of the computer desktops of the FDA employees and reviewed documents they saved on the hard drives of their government computers. FDA computers post a warning, visible when users log on, that they should have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" in any data passing through or stored on the system, and that the government may intercept any such data at any time for any lawful government purpose. But in the suit, the doctors and scientists say the government violated their constitutional privacy rights by gazing into personal e-mail accounts for the purpose of monitoring activity that they say was lawful. ... (URL points to The Washington Post, which sometimes requires registration to read the material - moderator) http://goo.gl/ZmEzr -or- http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/fda-staffers-sue-agency-over-surveillance-of-personal-e-mail/2012/01/23/gIQAj34DbQ_story.html
Date: Tue, 31 Jan 2012 09:16:26 +1100 From: David Clayton <dc33box-usenet@yahoo.com.au> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Scanning QR codes can infect your smartphone Message-ID: <pan.2012.01.30.22.16.25.5823@yahoo.com.au> Scanning QR codes can infect your smartphone Stuart Corner Monday, 30 January 2012 09:01 Your IT - Mobility Cybercriminals are using QR codes to infect mobile phone with malware in a rapidly growing mobile malware 'industry' According to Australian security technology distributor AVG Technologies, "Putting a malicious QR code sticker onto existing marketing material or replacing a website's bona fide QR code with a malicious one could be enough to trick many unsuspecting peopleâ?¦This new technique is expected to gain momentum in 2012 and beyond, as the user does not know what lies behind the QR code until the malware is already installed and running. "For example a QR code could be used to download malware that directs the phone to send text messages to premium SMS numbers.' AVG says, in its Community Powered Threat Report for Q4 2011: "Malware targeting mobile devices evolves frighteningly fast and has the potential of being even more destructive than beforeâ?¦While consumers are going mobile, so are the cyber criminals. We have witnessed the use of the same malicious intent tactics targeting mobile devices: social engineering, stolen or fake certificates to sign malware, root kits and other tactics." AVG's CTO, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, said: "As phones become more like computers, so do the risks. Many sophisticated tricks of the trade from computers are now being repurposed for phones. However, as phones are often tied into billing systems the gains can be far greater." The report also warns that digital signatures attached to Android applications offer little guarantee of trust "Stealing or faking a private key of a trusted source (developer), will allow cyber criminals to sign their malicious applications with the same key as the trusted developer," it says. "By doing so, the cyber criminal could sign and distribute applications that maliciously replace the authentic applications or corrupt them." (URL points to a site that asks users to subscribe - moderator) http://goo.gl/dwNm6 -or- http://www.itwire.com/your-it-news/mobility/52424-scanning-qr-codes-can-infect-your-smartphone ***** Moderator's Note ***** AVG has been known to overestimate the risks associated with the various threats the company warns users about. Bill Horne Moderator
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 2012 17:10:46 -0500 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Google says one hour of video is now being uploaded to YouTube every second Message-ID: <p06240843cb4cc4f0d08c@[10.0.1.2]> Google says one hour of video is now being uploaded to YouTube every second By - New Scientist January 30 People who complain about some of the racier content on YouTube are often told that the sheer rate at which that content is uploaded makes it impossible to moderate. That claim would seem to be more than borne out by the figures released recently by Google, YouTube's owner. The search giant's figures show that one hour of video is now being uploaded to YouTube every second. That upload rate - equivalent to 60 hours of video per minute - represents an astonishing tenfold increase from its 2007 rate. ... (URL points to The Washington Post's online site, which sometimes requires registration to read the material - moderator) http://goo.gl/oximr -or- http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/google-says-one-hour-of-video-is-now-being-uploaded-to-youtube-every-second/2012/01/27/gIQAtubBdQ_story.html
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