June
29, 2002
<RealAudio | MP3>
<Weekly Newsletter>
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- Worldcom
-- A Perspective on the Telecommunications Industry
- Worldcom
is symptomatic of an industry with too much debt and not enough
revenue
- Between
1997 and 2001, spending on telecommunications in Europe and
the United States totaled more than $4 trillion.
- Competitive
rate-cutting in 2000, forced by an oversupply of bandwidth,
forced many bankruptcies and reorganizations.
- 51
Telecommunication Bankruptcies since October, 1999
- Most
dramatic excess Global Crossing ($15B on 85,000 miles of fiber,
defaulted on $12B)
- Others
include (Teligent, XO Communications, 360Networks, Winstar,
Williams)
- Others
in trouble (AT&T, Qwest, Level 3 Communications)
- Sector
won't be profitable until debt load is reduced.
- FTC
Wants Paid Search Tools to Offer Full Disclosure
- 11-month
study has concluded that some search engines are misleading
- Commercial
Alert, an Internet watchdog filed the original complaint
- Investigation
aimed at AltaVista, AOL Time Warner, Direct Hit Technologies, iWon,
LookSmart, Microsoft and Terra Lycos.
- New
Apache Worm Starts to Spread
- Infects
Apache Webservers running on FreeBSD
- Places
a Trojan (zombie) for latest DDOS attack
- 10.4
million active Web sites running on the Apache server
- Only
a fraction run FreeBSD, but worm could be modified to hit the rest
- US
Fears al-Qaeda Hack Attack
- Many
US computer sites are being cased from abroad
- The
surveillance was routed through telecommunications switches in Saudi
Arabia, Indonesia and Pakistan
- Focused
on emergency telephone systems, water storage and distribution,
and the power grid and power plants, including nuclear power plants.
- Questioning
of captured al-Qaeda operatives also found that the terror group
was interested in a class of digital devices involved in distributed
control systems. Many of these system use Windows OS and are susceptible
to common hacks.
- Piracy
Fight Gets Serious
- Californian
congressman Howard Berman has drawn up a bill that would legalize
the disruption of peer-to-peer networks by companies who are trying
to stop people pirating copyrighted materials.
- So
far, music companies have only used legal action to stop people
spreading pirated pop through net-based peer-to-peer networks, such
as Napster, Kazaa and Audiogalaxy.
- The
music industry wants to employ their own hackers to develop worms
and Trojans that would disrupt the exchange of titles, denial of
service attacks on popular download locations, etc.
- ICANN
Meets in Bucharest
- ICANN
stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers
- Board
voted to eliminate online election of individual Internet users
- Board
will be drawn from corporations, governments, NGO, technical firms.
- Other
board descisions included 25 cent tax on new domain name registrations,
30-day period for expired domain names, waiting list for popular
domain names.
- Department
of Commerce is slow rolling complete turnover of the DNS to ICANN
- Senate
backs $345M e-Gov Bill
- Called
the E-Government Act of 2002
- Establishes
an office of electronic government, headed by a Senate-confirmed
administrator, within the Office of Management and Budget.
- Bill
would also establish a federal portal, require federal courts to
post opinions online, and encourage the use of digital signatures.
- Yaha-E
Worm Launches Political Attack
- Trojan
programmed to launch a DDOS attack against the Islamic Republic
of Pakistan
- The
From and Subject fields of the forwarded message vary but the message
body will always contain this text:
- "Enjoy
this friendship Screen Saver and Check ur friends circle...
- "Send
this screensaver from to everyone you consider a FRIEND, even
if it means sending it back to the person who sent it to you.
If it comes back to you, then you'll know you have a circle
of friends."
- Yaha-E
tries to disable some antivirus and firewall programs. All antivirus
programs currently have up-to-date definitions to protect against
Yaha-E.
- Home
Theater Update
- Technology
options for the big screen
- CRT—conventional
tube technology
- Projection
- Plasma
Display—flat panel wall display
- Digital
and Analog Television Standards
- Analog
NTSC(480 lines, interlaced, 4:3 aspect ratio, channel capacity
1)
- Digital
Standard Definition (480 lines, interlaced, 4:3 or 16:9 aspect
ratio, channel capacity 5-6)
- Digital
High Definition (720 lines, progressive, 16:9 aspect ratio,
channel capacity 1-2)
- Digital
High Definition (1080 lines, interlaced, 16:9 aspect ratio,
channel capacity 1)
- Options
for the audio
- Dolby
Pro-logic (digital, four channels, outdated standard)
- Dolby
Digital (digital, five channels plus woofer, current DVD and
HDTV, also called 5.1 channel and AC-3)
- THX
Surround EX (digital, six channels, demanding system specs,
top-of-the-line, created by Lucas Films)
- All-in-one
integrated sound systems are the best value
- Wireless
versus wired
- State
of wireless—not ready for prime time
- Bluetooth
will probably be used for home systems
- Some
802.11b is available now -- but not the surround sound speakers
- HDTV
requires 802.11a for video
- Surround
sound earphone uses 900 MHz
- Use
16 gauge for most runs (12 gauge wire for long runs)
- A
great tutorial about HDTV video and audio technology
- Stratford
News
- Next
Start July 1 (still time to enroll)
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