answers for Kovie (was: Why does Sprint "allow" limited laptop Vision access?)

Okay, Kovie, here's the deal.

1. There is nothing physically preventing you (no law of nature,
no hidden mechanical or electronic interlock, no squads of
jackbooted agents swooping down in black helicopters) from
connecting your laptop to your phone and transferring bits.

2. The bytes that you so transfer are not covered under a Vision
plan.

3. If you do connect your laptop to your phone and transfer fewer
than 269,128,413 bytes per month, Sprint looks the other way and
does not penalize you for the fact that you have not paid for the
transfer of those bytes. (You haven't paid because your Vision
plan doesn't cover them, you see.)

4. If you connect your laptop to your phone and transfer
269,128,413 or more bytes per month, Sprint terminates your
Vision plan and charges you $0.01/kb for those bytes.
(This can obviously get pretty expensive.)

5. How does Sprint know that you have connected your phone to
your laptop? How does it know that bytes you transfer were
originated by your tethered laptop and not your phone? They can
tell because in the 5th bit of the 7th byte of the IP header of
every packet an official Sprint PCS phone constructs, it draws a
little picture of Jimmy Hoffa in pink crayon. Sprint has filters
on their towers which notice headers without these special
markings. No known laptops mark their packets in this way.
(Well, a few draw pictures of Jimmy Carter, or Jimmy Hoffa in
green crayon, but none use the Hoffa / pink crayon combination.)
Dedicated hardware in each tower keeps track of the number of
non-pink-Jimmy-Hoffa packets transmitted by each subscriber.
Those totals are flown to Sprint HQ by carrier pigeon each month,
where the results are tabulated and the 269,128,413-byte
threshold applied.

6. There is no point 6.

7. The discrepancy between points 2. and 3. -- that is, this
whole so-called nudge, nudge, wink, wink policy we're talking
about here -- is the brainchild of Warren P. Fimblenister,
Sprint's VP of Making Up Obscure New Billing Policies To Maximize
Revenue And Confusion. The policy came to Fimblenister in a
bleary-eyed vision after a late night drinking Pan Galactic
Gargle Blasters and commiserating with his deputy (Binky the
Wonder Slug) after they had spent the day mediating a raging
dispute between two dissenting factions within Sprint's
now-defunct Tethered Laptop Billing Department. One faction
wanted to charge punitively for all tethered laptop use, based on
the argument that tethered laptop use is a sin against Gordon and
is engaged in only by pedophiles, defrocked Balrogs, and Verizon
customers. The other faction wanted to allow free, unlimited
tethered laptop use as an incentive to increase revenue from the
sale of a new line of "Britney Spears Warbles Your Favorite Polka
Classics From 1920's Leipsberg" ringtones. (Gordon is the
unofficial patron saint of nitpickers, and is the pet raccoon of
Brent D. Whent, the ex-director of the Tethered Laptop Billing
Department.)

8. For obvious reasons, Sprint felt the need to keep this
intricate plan totally secret. It was documented in only one
place: written on a folded-up piece of kleenex which was placed
under one of the legs of a pink formica table in Sprint's company
cafeteria, as if to keep the table from rocking. The veil of
secrecy was lifted one day, however, when Rob Vargas, crack Sprint
PCS Customer Service Representative, who was wooing a girl from
down the hall in the My Buddy Animation department and who didn't
want to spoil the mood of their intimate lunch at that very table
by dripping snot all over it, grabbed the piece of kleenex and
blew his nose. The ink was water soluble, so he didn't learn all
the details of the plan, and his loyalty to the company prevented
him from revealing to this newsgroup more than a few of the most
basic of the details which he did learn, but nevertheless, when
Fimblenister discovered this breach of security, he deployed
several of his secret po-faced PCS enforcement operatives to
Vargas's house late one night where they successfully kidnapped
and deported him to Athens, Georgia, where he's now being held
hostage in a badly dilapidated 1957 Airstream travel trailer
parked behind an abandoned Denny's restaurant, and where he
subsists on half-rotten watermelon rinds and longs wistfully
for the good old days lunching with Poozella, the Buddy animator,
who although he never knew it was quite fond of him and misses
him terribly. (The whole deal with transferring the Bolingbrook
call center to IBM was hastily contrived as a cover-up for the
abduction of Vargas. Rob's farewell posts to this newsgroup were
forged by Fimblenister himself, who had managed to guess the
passcharacter protecting Rob's PLP private key.)

9. The "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" policy has been generally
successful. All told, only 17 people have had their Vision
accounts terminated under point 4, while the sales of Britney
Spears Polka ringtones can't be counted. (The 17 abusers are
listed below for your reference and mockery.) None of the 17
have ever posted here to tell us about it, however, because by
a remarkable coincidence, all of them chose to enter the same
convent in Marbelized, Minnesota to escape the collection agents
who were hounding them over the outstanding $.01/kb charges for
the (in each case) many hundreds of megabytes over the
269,128,413 byte limit they'd all used. This convent, however,
requires a Vow of Internet Silence of all its sanctuary seekers.


We hope this answers your questions and removes any of your
remaining uncertainties about the Sprint PCS tethered laptop
usage situation. We apologize for not having made this
information clearer before.



Appendix A. Former Sprint PCS Vision customers who have had
their Vision accounts terminated for abuse of the unstated
269,128,413 bytes per month tethered laptop transfer limit:

1. Minerva Revamping, minerva@comcast.net, Tumultuous, AL
2. Wylie Magenta, wm123@aol.com, Facilities, SC
3. Salvador Siamese, twoguys@blingbling.net, Elizabethan, AZ
4. Georges Rusticate, bovine@blorfingle.com, Deficits, AR
5. Noah Giant, noah@learthink.com, Haplessness, SD
6. Travis Warfare, nit@nat.net, Flail, WA
7. Sylvie Cliche, syl@supercalafragalistic.org, Synthetic, CT
8. Claudio Dignity, i_am_claudio@banana.com, Monster, WY
9. Gloriana Roseanna-Danna, glory@foo.net, Shaking In, MS
10. Dominic Drenches, Dominic.Drenches@verrifast.net, Up In Smoke, CA
11. Adolphus Dolphin, adolphin@somewhere.com, Mauritius, MI
12. Ezekiel Mormonson, zeke42@pluribus.com, Fourteen, UT
13. Macarthur Doult, raving8@well.com, Deathly, IL
14. Thornton Backaches, leisurely@net.com, Prussian, PA
15. Persia Shoshone, furry@tamu.edu, Secular, TX
16. Huck Hornshanter, finn@fleagle.com, Activator, KS
17. Leone Eliminations, ellie@blatter.net, Spat, KY

"Steve Summit" <scs@eskimo.com> wrote in message
news:ckq9ld$2eo$1@eskinews.eskimo.com...
> Okay, Kovie, here's the deal.
>
> 1. There is nothing physically preventing you (no law of nature,
> no hidden mechanical or electronic interlock, no squads of
> jackbooted agents swooping down in black helicopters) from
> connecting your laptop to your phone and transferring bits.
>
> 2. The bytes that you so transfer are not covered under a Vision
> plan.
>
> 3. If you do connect your laptop to your phone and transfer fewer
> than 269,128,413 bytes per month, Sprint looks the other way and
> does not penalize you for the fact that you have not paid for the
> transfer of those bytes. (You haven't paid because your Vision
> plan doesn't cover them, you see.)
>
> 4. If you connect your laptop to your phone and transfer
> 269,128,413 or more bytes per month, Sprint terminates your
> Vision plan and charges you $0.01/kb for those bytes.
> (This can obviously get pretty expensive.)
>
> 5. How does Sprint know that you have connected your phone to
> your laptop? How does it know that bytes you transfer were
> originated by your tethered laptop and not your phone? They can
> tell because in the 5th bit of the 7th byte of the IP header of
> every packet an official Sprint PCS phone constructs, it draws a
> little picture of Jimmy Hoffa in pink crayon. Sprint has filters
> on their towers which notice headers without these special
> markings. No known laptops mark their packets in this way.
> (Well, a few draw pictures of Jimmy Carter, or Jimmy Hoffa in
> green crayon, but none use the Hoffa / pink crayon combination.)
> Dedicated hardware in each tower keeps track of the number of
> non-pink-Jimmy-Hoffa packets transmitted by each subscriber.
> Those totals are flown to Sprint HQ by carrier pigeon each month,
> where the results are tabulated and the 269,128,413-byte
> threshold applied.
>
> 6. There is no point 6.
>
> 7. The discrepancy between points 2. and 3. -- that is, this
> whole so-called nudge, nudge, wink, wink policy we're talking
> about here -- is the brainchild of Warren P. Fimblenister,
> Sprint's VP of Making Up Obscure New Billing Policies To Maximize
> Revenue And Confusion. The policy came to Fimblenister in a
> bleary-eyed vision after a late night drinking Pan Galactic
> Gargle Blasters and commiserating with his deputy (Binky the
> Wonder Slug) after they had spent the day mediating a raging
> dispute between two dissenting factions within Sprint's
> now-defunct Tethered Laptop Billing Department. One faction
> wanted to charge punitively for all tethered laptop use, based on
> the argument that tethered laptop use is a sin against Gordon and
> is engaged in only by pedophiles, defrocked Balrogs, and Verizon
> customers. The other faction wanted to allow free, unlimited
> tethered laptop use as an incentive to increase revenue from the
> sale of a new line of "Britney Spears Warbles Your Favorite Polka
> Classics From 1920's Leipsberg" ringtones. (Gordon is the
> unofficial patron saint of nitpickers, and is the pet raccoon of
> Brent D. Whent, the ex-director of the Tethered Laptop Billing
> Department.)
>
> 8. For obvious reasons, Sprint felt the need to keep this
> intricate plan totally secret. It was documented in only one
> place: written on a folded-up piece of kleenex which was placed
> under one of the legs of a pink formica table in Sprint's company
> cafeteria, as if to keep the table from rocking. The veil of
> secrecy was lifted one day, however, when Rob Vargas, crack Sprint
> PCS Customer Service Representative, who was wooing a girl from
> down the hall in the My Buddy Animation department and who didn't
> want to spoil the mood of their intimate lunch at that very table
> by dripping snot all over it, grabbed the piece of kleenex and
> blew his nose. The ink was water soluble, so he didn't learn all
> the details of the plan, and his loyalty to the company prevented
> him from revealing to this newsgroup more than a few of the most
> basic of the details which he did learn, but nevertheless, when
> Fimblenister discovered this breach of security, he deployed
> several of his secret po-faced PCS enforcement operatives to
> Vargas's house late one night where they successfully kidnapped
> and deported him to Athens, Georgia, where he's now being held
> hostage in a badly dilapidated 1957 Airstream travel trailer
> parked behind an abandoned Denny's restaurant, and where he
> subsists on half-rotten watermelon rinds and longs wistfully
> for the good old days lunching with Poozella, the Buddy animator,
> who although he never knew it was quite fond of him and misses
> him terribly. (The whole deal with transferring the Bolingbrook
> call center to IBM was hastily contrived as a cover-up for the
> abduction of Vargas. Rob's farewell posts to this newsgroup were
> forged by Fimblenister himself, who had managed to guess the
> passcharacter protecting Rob's PLP private key.)
>
> 9. The "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" policy has been generally
> successful. All told, only 17 people have had their Vision
> accounts terminated under point 4, while the sales of Britney
> Spears Polka ringtones can't be counted. (The 17 abusers are
> listed below for your reference and mockery.) None of the 17
> have ever posted here to tell us about it, however, because by
> a remarkable coincidence, all of them chose to enter the same
> convent in Marbelized, Minnesota to escape the collection agents
> who were hounding them over the outstanding $.01/kb charges for
> the (in each case) many hundreds of megabytes over the
> 269,128,413 byte limit they'd all used. This convent, however,
> requires a Vow of Internet Silence of all its sanctuary seekers.
>
>
> We hope this answers your questions and removes any of your
> remaining uncertainties about the Sprint PCS tethered laptop
> usage situation. We apologize for not having made this
> information clearer before.
>
>
>
> Appendix A. Former Sprint PCS Vision customers who have had
> their Vision accounts terminated for abuse of the unstated
> 269,128,413 bytes per month tethered laptop transfer limit:
>
> 1. Minerva Revamping, minerva@comcast.net, Tumultuous, AL
> 2. Wylie Magenta, wm123@aol.com, Facilities, SC
> 3. Salvador Siamese, twoguys@blingbling.net, Elizabethan, AZ
> 4. Georges Rusticate, bovine@blorfingle.com, Deficits, AR
> 5. Noah Giant, noah@learthink.com, Haplessness, SD
> 6. Travis Warfare, nit@nat.net, Flail, WA
> 7. Sylvie Cliche, syl@supercalafragalistic.org, Synthetic, CT
> 8. Claudio Dignity, i_am_claudio@banana.com, Monster, WY
> 9. Gloriana Roseanna-Danna, glory@foo.net, Shaking In, MS
> 10. Dominic Drenches, Dominic.Drenches@verrifast.net, Up In Smoke, CA
> 11. Adolphus Dolphin, adolphin@somewhere.com, Mauritius, MI
> 12. Ezekiel Mormonson, zeke42@pluribus.com, Fourteen, UT
> 13. Macarthur Doult, raving8@well.com, Deathly, IL
> 14. Thornton Backaches, leisurely@net.com, Prussian, PA
> 15. Persia Shoshone, furry@tamu.edu, Secular, TX
> 16. Huck Hornshanter, finn@fleagle.com, Activator, KS
> 17. Leone Eliminations, ellie@blatter.net, Spat, KY

Nope, not really. Can you elaborate, this time in some detail? The above is
too high-level for me and I'm still quite confused. Specifically, can you
tell me more about the convent? I didn't realize they let in men these days.
And do they get good signal strength?

Wow, I thought I had too much free time on my hands. ;-)

--
Kovie
kovie@earthlink.netizen

"Steve Summit" <scs@eskimo.com> wrote in message
news:ckq9ld$2eo$1@eskinews.eskimo.com...
> Okay, Kovie, here's the deal.
>
> 1. There is nothing physically preventing you (no law of nature,
> no hidden mechanical or electronic interlock, no squads of
> jackbooted agents swooping down in black helicopters) from
> connecting your laptop to your phone and transferring bits.
>
> 2. The bytes that you so transfer are not covered under a Vision
> plan.
>
> 3. If you do connect your laptop to your phone and transfer fewer
> than 269,128,413 bytes per month, Sprint looks the other way and
> does not penalize you for the fact that you have not paid for the
> transfer of those bytes. (You haven't paid because your Vision
> plan doesn't cover them, you see.)
>
> 4. If you connect your laptop to your phone and transfer
> 269,128,413 or more bytes per month, Sprint terminates your
> Vision plan and charges you $0.01/kb for those bytes.
> (This can obviously get pretty expensive.)
>
> 5. How does Sprint know that you have connected your phone to
> your laptop? How does it know that bytes you transfer were
> originated by your tethered laptop and not your phone? They can
> tell because in the 5th bit of the 7th byte of the IP header of
> every packet an official Sprint PCS phone constructs, it draws a
> little picture of Jimmy Hoffa in pink crayon. Sprint has filters
> on their towers which notice headers without these special
> markings. No known laptops mark their packets in this way.
> (Well, a few draw pictures of Jimmy Carter, or Jimmy Hoffa in
> green crayon, but none use the Hoffa / pink crayon combination.)
> Dedicated hardware in each tower keeps track of the number of
> non-pink-Jimmy-Hoffa packets transmitted by each subscriber.
> Those totals are flown to Sprint HQ by carrier pigeon each month,
> where the results are tabulated and the 269,128,413-byte
> threshold applied.
>
> 6. There is no point 6.
>
> 7. The discrepancy between points 2. and 3. -- that is, this
> whole so-called nudge, nudge, wink, wink policy we're talking
> about here -- is the brainchild of Warren P. Fimblenister,
> Sprint's VP of Making Up Obscure New Billing Policies To Maximize
> Revenue And Confusion. The policy came to Fimblenister in a
> bleary-eyed vision after a late night drinking Pan Galactic
> Gargle Blasters and commiserating with his deputy (Binky the
> Wonder Slug) after they had spent the day mediating a raging
> dispute between two dissenting factions within Sprint's
> now-defunct Tethered Laptop Billing Department. One faction
> wanted to charge punitively for all tethered laptop use, based on
> the argument that tethered laptop use is a sin against Gordon and
> is engaged in only by pedophiles, defrocked Balrogs, and Verizon
> customers. The other faction wanted to allow free, unlimited
> tethered laptop use as an incentive to increase revenue from the
> sale of a new line of "Britney Spears Warbles Your Favorite Polka
> Classics From 1920's Leipsberg" ringtones. (Gordon is the
> unofficial patron saint of nitpickers, and is the pet raccoon of
> Brent D. Whent, the ex-director of the Tethered Laptop Billing
> Department.)
>
> 8. For obvious reasons, Sprint felt the need to keep this
> intricate plan totally secret. It was documented in only one
> place: written on a folded-up piece of kleenex which was placed
> under one of the legs of a pink formica table in Sprint's company
> cafeteria, as if to keep the table from rocking. The veil of
> secrecy was lifted one day, however, when Rob Vargas, crack Sprint
> PCS Customer Service Representative, who was wooing a girl from
> down the hall in the My Buddy Animation department and who didn't
> want to spoil the mood of their intimate lunch at that very table
> by dripping snot all over it, grabbed the piece of kleenex and
> blew his nose. The ink was water soluble, so he didn't learn all
> the details of the plan, and his loyalty to the company prevented
> him from revealing to this newsgroup more than a few of the most
> basic of the details which he did learn, but nevertheless, when
> Fimblenister discovered this breach of security, he deployed
> several of his secret po-faced PCS enforcement operatives to
> Vargas's house late one night where they successfully kidnapped
> and deported him to Athens, Georgia, where he's now being held
> hostage in a badly dilapidated 1957 Airstream travel trailer
> parked behind an abandoned Denny's restaurant, and where he
> subsists on half-rotten watermelon rinds and longs wistfully
> for the good old days lunching with Poozella, the Buddy animator,
> who although he never knew it was quite fond of him and misses
> him terribly. (The whole deal with transferring the Bolingbrook
> call center to IBM was hastily contrived as a cover-up for the
> abduction of Vargas. Rob's farewell posts to this newsgroup were
> forged by Fimblenister himself, who had managed to guess the
> passcharacter protecting Rob's PLP private key.)
>
> 9. The "nudge, nudge, wink, wink" policy has been generally
> successful. All told, only 17 people have had their Vision
> accounts terminated under point 4, while the sales of Britney
> Spears Polka ringtones can't be counted. (The 17 abusers are
> listed below for your reference and mockery.) None of the 17
> have ever posted here to tell us about it, however, because by
> a remarkable coincidence, all of them chose to enter the same
> convent in Marbelized, Minnesota to escape the collection agents
> who were hounding them over the outstanding $.01/kb charges for
> the (in each case) many hundreds of megabytes over the
> 269,128,413 byte limit they'd all used. This convent, however,
> requires a Vow of Internet Silence of all its sanctuary seekers.
>
>
> We hope this answers your questions and removes any of your
> remaining uncertainties about the Sprint PCS tethered laptop
> usage situation. We apologize for not having made this
> information clearer before.
>
>
>
> Appendix A. Former Sprint PCS Vision customers who have had
> their Vision accounts terminated for abuse of the unstated
> 269,128,413 bytes per month tethered laptop transfer limit:
>
> 1. Minerva Revamping, minerva@comcast.net, Tumultuous, AL
> 2. Wylie Magenta, wm123@aol.com, Facilities, SC
> 3. Salvador Siamese, twoguys@blingbling.net, Elizabethan, AZ
> 4. Georges Rusticate, bovine@blorfingle.com, Deficits, AR
> 5. Noah Giant, noah@learthink.com, Haplessness, SD
> 6. Travis Warfare, nit@nat.net, Flail, WA
> 7. Sylvie Cliche, syl@supercalafragalistic.org, Synthetic, CT
> 8. Claudio Dignity, i_am_claudio@banana.com, Monster, WY
> 9. Gloriana Roseanna-Danna, glory@foo.net, Shaking In, MS
> 10. Dominic Drenches, Dominic.Drenches@verrifast.net, Up In Smoke, CA
> 11. Adolphus Dolphin, adolphin@somewhere.com, Mauritius, MI
> 12. Ezekiel Mormonson, zeke42@pluribus.com, Fourteen, UT
> 13. Macarthur Doult, raving8@well.com, Deathly, IL
> 14. Thornton Backaches, leisurely@net.com, Prussian, PA
> 15. Persia Shoshone, furry@tamu.edu, Secular, TX
> 16. Huck Hornshanter, finn@fleagle.com, Activator, KS
> 17. Leone Eliminations, ellie@blatter.net, Spat, KY


That is OVER 250 Megs. No wonder why they never complained about my
50-60meg usage. Heck, I should have kept my Tethered connection incase the
card I just bought does not work.

In article <ckq9ld$2eo$1@eskinews.eskimo.com>, scs@eskimo.com says...
> (The whole deal with transferring the Bolingbrook
> call center to IBM was hastily contrived as a cover-up for the
> abduction of Vargas. Rob's farewell posts to this newsgroup were
> forged by Fimblenister himself, who had managed to guess the
> passcharacter protecting Rob's PLP private key.)
>=20

You know you've made the big time when people start making conspiracy=20
theories about you.

--=20
R=D8=DF
O/Siris
~+~
A thing moderately good is not so good as it ought to be.
Moderation in temper is always a virtue,
but moderation in principle is always a vice.
Thomas Paine, "The Rights of Man", 1792