EchoStar continues to bring the hammer down on those who steal DISH Network’s satellite services and equipment. The company said, with the help of law enforcement officials, it has concluded another successful conviction of a signal pirate resulting in jail time for the would-be fraudster.

According to the company, Jackie Edward Taylor Jr. was charged and convicted in a North Carolina court of trafficking in unauthorized satellite access devices. Taylor is now serving a 15-month prison sentence with three additional years of probation and has been ordered to pay a large restitution fee.

The conviction was the result of a joint investigation by EchoStar’s Signal Integrity group and the United States Secret Service, the company said.

EchoStar said it will continue to fight those who try to circumvent the security system by illegally intercepting and descrambling the satellite signal being provided to legitimate customers.

Now on to the news. As many of you are aware there are several new map calls which are needed to complete the ccardless fix you all want. Many of you might recall that we had some of those maps completed (specificaly 57) but were missing some others (4d, 4e). Last several days i have been in talk with blacklist to possible combine our efforts in cardless fix. As of 2 hours ago we have came up with an agreement and blacklist has supplied us with 4d and 4e and we have provided him with 57. Now once this is done we still have 1 more call which should not be that difficult to do. Our agreement is to release at same time. Who ever completes task first will assist the other to complete theres

Thats right folks… SonicView has followed suit and has released an official release! This release may just help make SonicView (AWESOME BOX), one of the elite…. Our initial release and enter into the mainstream FTA commuity was cut short before, but we are BACK

The Federal Trade Commission announced yesterday that it has entered into a court settlement with Nomrah Records Inc. and its president, Mark Harmon, named defendants in the recent DirecTV telemarketing case.

Under the settlement, filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on the FTC’s behalf, Harmon will pay a $75,000 civil penalty and both he and the company will be barred from violating the Do Not Call Rule and Telemarketing Sales Rule in the future.

In December 2005, the Commission charged DirecTV and others that telemarketed on DirecTV’s behalf with violating the DNC Rule and the TSR by calling consumers despite the fact that their numbers were on the National DNC Registry. In settling the charges, DirecTV paid $5.3 million, at the time the largest-ever DNC penalty won by the Commission.

The stipulated final judgment and order against Nomrah and Harmon bars them from calling consumers on the DNC Registry, as well as from violating any other provisions of the TSR in the future.

Harmon’s $75,000 civil penalty comes with the stipulation that an additional $400,575 will become due if he is found to have misrepresented his financial condition to the Commission. Finally, the order contains standard record keeping and reporting terms to ensure the defendants comply with the order.

If the court adopts the proposed settlement it will settle the Commission’s charges against Nomrah Records, also doing business as Direct Activation, and Mark Harmon, individually, and as an officer of Nomrah Records. Litigation continues against the following defendants: D.R.D. Inc., also d/b/a Power Direct; Daniel R. Delfino, individually, and as an officer of D.R.D.; Global Satellite LLC., also doing business as Mavcomm; William King, individually, and as an officer of Global Satellite; and Michael Gleason, individually. and as an officer of Global Satellite.

The vote was filed by the U.S. Department of Justice on the FTC’s behalf on August 14, in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division.

Firstly what is a Mathematics Application Processor? (MAP). Well it is a collection of gates wired up in a particular way.
If you don’t know what a gate is you can search the web, they come in a number of varieties, AND gates, OR gates, NAND gates, NOR gates etc. Now by wiring these gates together in some manner to make an encryption / decryption machine a byte presented at the input will produce another byte at the output. This is the simplest explanation. Now all we have to do is present all the possible byte inputs, then we will get all the possible byte outputs, construct a table and continue watching TV.
Unfortunately there a lot of things that the maker of the machine can do to stop this simplistic approach.
For instance the last byte in affects the output of the next byte in. OK then lets put in all the two number combinations then we will get a table that represents all the pair combinations, that is getting to be big just at one byte wide, 64,000 possibilities. Even worse if we use the last two bytes before the current one and do something different if lots of the same byte are presented to the MAP.
Next the maker may have registers in the map that hold bytes that affect the working of the machine. One such register will effectively make 256 different machines so giving us a hugely expanded table let alone if more than one byte is used.
Ha Ha screwed right, well not quite because what I have been explaining is what we would see If we looked at the outside of the MAP just pushing bytes in the front and seeing what came out the back.
The FTA manufacturers have been trying to get the gate configurations and how they are wired together, a task which involves slicing the Card chip into very thin slices and figuring it out, once that is done it is game over for the current cards and probably for future generations of card as the FTA industry will have demonstrated that they have the ability to defeat any future MAP.
How will the game play out once the of structure the MAP is known, well perhaps we will see small processors hanging off the RS232 ports of older FTA’s to do MAP work, more powerful or new FTA will be able to emulate the map using either hardware or software.
What happens if the MAP can’t be compromised? Well FTA manufacturers can always launch or buy their own satellite and see the current providers off.

The National Football League is banning most local television news crews from the sidelines of football stadiums during NFL games. The new policy says local channels - often the primary source for coverage - will no longer be allowed to shoot or air their own footage.

According to 9news.com in Denver, team owners approved the restrictive rules at an owner’s meeting last March.

Spokesman for the Denver Broncos, Jim Saccomano, told 9News that a major factor leading to the decision revolved around the league trying to protect its intellectual property rights. That intellectual property, said the news agency, refers to the league’s NFL Network and an effort to drive more viewers to its in-house channel.

Critics are saying that taxpayers (read: fans, and non-fans for that matter) have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to build new stadiums all across the country and now the owners have turned them into private studios.

I loved his show even as a kid man many years ago.

Mike Douglas, the genial namesake host of the 1963-1982 talk show that in its own genial way beamed the counterculture right into the American kitchenette, died on his 81st birthday Friday.
More here> h**p://www.eonline.com/News/Items/0,1,19746,00.html

Cuba’s Communist government has signaled a crackdown on the use of black-market satellite d*shes, just over a week after ailing leader Fidel Castro temporarily relinquished power to his brother.

The Communist Party newspaper Granma on Wednesday warned that the d*shes, which many Cubans use to watch Spanish-language television programs from Miami, could be used by the U.S. government to broadcast subversive information.

“They are fertile ground for those who want to carry out the Bush administration’s plan to destroy the Cuban revolution,” said the newspaper, the official voice of the government. Such an article in Granma usually signals that action is on the way.

The article also decried the “avalanche” of capitalist advertising in commercial television programs.

Since Castro provisionally relinquished power to his brother Raul on July 31 after undergoing gastric surgery, Cubans have been anxious for more information on his condition and the political direction of their country.

Those who get black-market television by cable have watched with amazement images of Miami’s exile community celebrating in the streets what they see as the end of Castro’s 47-year rule.

Cuban officials say Castro, who will be 80 on Sunday, is recovering from his operation. But neither he nor his brother have been seen in public.
Castro said in an Aug. 1 statement that details of his health were a state secret due to the threat of U.S. intervention in Cuba.

The Bush administration has stepped up pressure for political change in Cuba by increasing broadcasts of U.S.-funded radio and television to the island.

Anecdotal accounts indicate there are more than 10,000 illegal d*shes in use in Cuba. The owner of a d*sh usually sells the service to others–sometimes hundreds of clients–for $10 a month via hidden cables that crisscross roofs.

What are Sat companys looking to do with Mobile broadband services? DTC nd E*hostar teaming together?? HUH??

The FCC will begin Wednesday to auction of the largest-ever section of mobile spectrum, which would be used by many companies to launch next-generation mobile broadband services. The government expects to raise about $15 billion in revenue, which would be deposited into the U.S. Treasury. 168 bidders have qualified for the auction, ponying up some $4.3 billion in registration fees, and are bidding for 1,122 licenses good for 15 years.

While it is unclear who may win the auction, the FCC’s policy of requiring up-front money based on the number of licenses provides some clue as to the most aggressive. Wireless DBS LLC, a joint venture of E*hoStar and D*recTV, paid $972.5 million; SpectrumCo, a collaboration of Comcast, Time Warner, Sprint Nextel, Cox, and Bright House Networks, paid $637.7 million; and T-Mobile License LLC was third at $583.5 million.

There will be in a few days a new Adult channel on IA5 (97.0W) and Horizon1 (127W). with the name PEEPHOLE.TV //www.peephole.tvI know that they will show only new stuff once 24/7 and try to get the old InXtc customers back to their new channel.They also plan to charge about $14.95 / per month and $10 per month on an annual subscription. I know their web guy and he told me that they finish up the last pieces online and launch on the old InXtc slot on IA5.If you get the Horizon 1 Box (from the Chinese PITV) you will get for the same price one extra Adult channel.