Confused by an acronym or term? You might find it in the newsletter glossary (or suggest that we add it.)
We know of at least one program that makes it easy for you to turn
this service off (and to turn it back on, if need be): Steve Gibson's
"Shoot the
Messenger" program. Be aware that we don't make any representations
about programs that you get off of the net: in fact downloading and
running programs is inherently risky. We mention this program for
your reference only: take an appropriate amount of care if you should
decide to use it.
If you're on a dialup connection to MV, you may be protected from
these popups by some of our temporary packet filtering, which we put
into place a couple of months ago to help with the spread of a couple
of nasty viruses. (This filtering is indeed meant to be temporary,
and we'll address that subject a little more next month.) But it's
still a good idea to turn off services that you don't need,
particulary if these services can be accessed from outside your
computer.
We ran across a site recently,
www.changenotes.com that lets
you watch one or more sites for changes. Although we are aware of
other such services, this one stood out for a number of reasons.
It combines notices for all sites you are watching into a single email
message, with a maximum of one message per day. Plus, it doesn't
require you to install any tools or toolbars, nor does it require you
to enable any fancy browser features to set it up. The notification
email message may contain some advertising.
(We have no affiliation with this service, and don't really know any
background about them: we're just passing the link along.)
Relatedly, we moved several of our underlying access numbers to
another carrier. These included Nashua numbers 603-886-7124 and
603-886-6688, plus the Concord number 603-227-2100. Since these calls
are being handled by a new carrier, we'd advise you to check with your
phone company to make sure you understand any charges incurred,
particularly if you are calling them from a non-Verizon phone (e.g. an
independent telco)
In the case of the Concord number (603-227-2100), the change to the
new carrier took place almost instantly, except in the Concord
area, where it mattered the most. Something about the way the
change was propagated got delayed, and callers in the Concord area
got a busy signal when they called this number. After some days (a
week at most), the change went through completely and the number resumed
working for all callers. Most people were able to use one of our
other numbers. But if you were severely inconvenienced, please contact
us and let us know and we'll provide a small credit.
Some others who were placing ISDN calls to the old 1-500 number
were affected. The 1-500 number supported circuit switched data ISDN
calls (digital calls at 64000bps) as did the 227-2100 number. Our
standard dialup numbers support data-over-voice ISDN (at 56000bps) but
do not support pure data ISDN. Frankly because of the way ISDN calls
are tariffed in NH, we were surprised to find people who were making
data ISDN calls. The carrier that we use for our primary numbers has
identified the problem with data ISDN calls and is working on correcting
it, but we have no estimate for this repair.
Disabling Windows Messenger Service
If you're running a Microsoft Windows operating system, you could be
subject to annoying messages that pop up spontaneously. We're not
talking about popup windows that are part of web browsing, rather
messages that are contained in what look like alert boxes. Windows
includes a facility called the "Messenger Service" that was originally
designed to accomodate communications between local computers.
Unfortunately this function has been abused by those who think it's
all right to prey on others as long as there's the possibility of
making some money. Messenger Service is subject to abuse because
there are no controls on it: if it's enabled and not protected by a
firewall of some sort, anyone can make use of it to display a message
on your computer.
Changenotes: monitoring Web site changes
Sometimes you find a website that has interesting content that changes
now and then, but not often enough for you to check it regularly.
Some of these sites have ways to let you know when there are updates
(whether via an RSS feed, mailing list, or other methods). But
sometimes the site does not provide any such notification.
Access number changes
We've been telling you for a few months now to expect the 1-500 NH
statewide access number to go away, and it is now indeed gone. The
background in brief is that we took up this service while Verizon
initially deployed it. Verizon decided not to tariff the underlying
service in NH, preferring only to offer a more layered service
instead. We certainly wished that Verizon had decided to file
the tariff and offer the service, but we had little choice once they
decided to withdraw it. On the up side, we were able to give you
several months notice.
Access number change fallout
There were a couple of things relating to the access number changes
that did not go as smoothly as we would have liked.
Email: extended addresses
Just a reminder that if you have a mailbox at MV, you can create and
use extended addresses. Say you have an address of user@example.mv.com
that is delivered to your mailbox named "example-00" on our mailbox
server. An extended address of the form
"user-anything@example.mv.com" will also be delivered to that
mailbox. The extended address is formed by adding a hyphen to the
username part, and any combination of letters, digits, and hyphens
following that. You can use these extensions to create unique email
addresses for specific purposes. If you give out such an address and
decide later that you don't want to receive any more mail for that
address, you can filter it out using our mail filters (available via
the webmail interface at
http://webmail.mv.net/ . Or you can
explicitly configure the extended addresses that you will accept, and
block all others.
Some dialup account changes
We are making some pricing changes to dedicated dialup and
telnet-only shell accounts, as well as introducing a new standby
dialup account.
Holiday Specials
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Edit History
20031118: posted
20031120: clarify "pre-payment" vs "deposit"