From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 27 14:45:41 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8RIjfr22458; Mon, 27 Sep 2004 14:45:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 14:45:41 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409271845.i8RIjfr22458@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #451 TELECOM Digest Mon, 27 Sep 2004 14:45:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 451 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson JPEG/GDIplus Vulnerability (Rob Slade) Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free (John R Levine) Realtime Keyword Voice Recognition; Not Just For NSA (Danny Burstein) XandMail SMS Access Solution Give Access to Personal Data (PressRelease) Re: Voicepulse Disconnects Remote Computers When Phone Used (C Griswold) Re: Voicepulse Disconnects Remote Computers When Phone Used (jmeissen) Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? (Ariel Burbaickij) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Dave Thompson) Re: Out of Area Calls (John McHarry) Re: Movies/Documentaries That Feature Crossbar, Panel, SxS? (L Hancock) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Lisa Hancock) Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device (jmeissen@aracnet) Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device (jdj) Don't Let Rules Shackle Internet Phone Service (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Canada: A Eureka Moment at the CRTC (Jack Decker - VOIP News) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 15:03:54 -0800 Subject: JPEG/GDIplus Vulnerability Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca If you have not been living under a rock (in security terms), you will likely have heard something about the GDI+ vulnerability in the past few days. JPEGs and other files that may be handled in the same way are now potentially "dangerous" data files. In 1994 a graphics file was spread via Usenet that contained oddities in the header, and at about the same time a virus warning hoax was created that warned of a viral JPEG file. Neither of these was, in fact, related to actual malicious software, but I did some study on the subject and found header structures in both formats that could, potentially, have been used as malware vectors, under certain conditions. The specifics of the current JPEG/GDI+ vulnerability are very difficult to obtain, even when you have copies of the various "exploits" that have been released. However, it does seem to be simply your common or garden buffer overflow. As I write I am not aware of any specific exploits that have been released with the intent to use them maliciously. However, given the number of "exploit" samples that have been released I dare say that it will not be long before we see the real ones come out. It is unlikely that viruses will be created using this vulnerability, but it is quite probable that viruses will be created that carry graphics files (likely pornographic) that will use the vulnerability to open links to malware on Web sites, or simply open backdoors on machines for exploitation and amalgamation into botnets of various types. Microsoft security bulletin MS04-028 (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms04-028.mspx) has some links that, if you manage to follow them all the way through, will lead you to a patch. The Windows and Office Update sites will also provide you with the patches, but not always easily. (For example, Windows Update seems to insist that you install SP2 first, although there is a way around this.) Affected systems use certain versions of the gdiplus.dll file. The most widespread of the affected versions of the file come with Microsoft Windows and Office, 2003 and XP versions. Other Microsoft (and other vendors) products also have vulnerable versions of the file. The file is fairly ubiquitous. I've got eleven copies (and two compressed copies) of five different versions of gdiplus.dll on my machine. (Versions of it also exist with different file names.) The Microsoft site does provide details of which version numbers are vulnerable or not -- but no information about file sizes or dates that might allow you to determine which versions are which. If you follow links through from that page there is also a "detection" tool -- but it only tells you that you *are* vulnerable, rather than identifying specific instances. SANS also has provided a scanning tool, at http://isc.sans.org/gdiscan.php. (Actually two, a GUI version and a command line version. The GUI version, as provided, seems to want a disk in drive F:, but if you tell it to continue seems to function.) This tool identifies which versions are vulnerable and which are not, and also scans other filenames which are, in fact, renamed copies of the gdiplus.dll file, such as: C:\I386\ASMS\1000\MSFT\WINDOWS\GDIPLUS\GDIPLUS.DLL Version: 5.1.3097.0 <-- Vulnerable version C:\Program Files\ArcSoft\Software Suite\PhotoImpression 5\Share\gdiplus.dll Version: 5.1.3097.0 <-- Vulnerable version C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\OFFICE11\MSO.DLL Version: 11.0.6360.0 C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\VGX\vgx.dll Version: 6.0.2800.1106 <-- Possibly vulnerable (Win2K SP2 and SP3 w/IE6 SP1 only) C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\OFFICE11\GDIPLUS.DLL Version: 6.0.3264.0 Banning JPEGs is unlikely to be effective as a security measure. Untrained users will probably not know how to turn off the relevant functions, or be willing to so "cripple" their Web browsing. In any case, graphics files of various types can be renamed, and Windows will still identify them from internal structures, and run them through GDI+. Using firewalls to block .jpeg, .jpg, and the various other normal file extensions would therefore also probably be ineffective in some cases. Microsoft has provided some new patches (patches for Office and Windows apparently have to be installed separately), and others will possibly do so as well. It may be difficult to find the appropriate patches for all applications. One would assume that all versions of gdiplus.dll could simply be replaced by the latest (safe) version, but, knowing the industry, one would probably be wrong. ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed. - Booker T. Washington http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ Date: 27 Sep 2004 00:54:01 -0400 From: John R Levine Subject: Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free My wife decided that she needs a cell phone, so we dropped by the local Cingular store to get one and add it to my account. (Cingular has excellent coverage here due to the antenna that I lease them space for on my water tower.) So after the nice sales lady told me that most of the free phones were far crummier than my Nokia 6340i (no longer available because it's GSM/TDMA and now they only sell GSM), we looked at a Moto V220 camera phone for $50. As we set up the account, I asked her to turn on international roaming since it's a triband phone, and she said "if you use it in Europe much, you can get a local SIM and use that." "Isn't it locked?" "Naah, they don't usually bother." I happened to have a Swiss SIM here and whaddaya know, she's right, it's unlocked. Not a bad deal. Unfortunately the phone is 850/900/1900 and the SIM is from Orange Switzerland which is 1800 only, but it's easy enough to get a different SIM next time. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Realtime Keyword Voice Recognition; Not Just for the NSA Anymore Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 12:59:52 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC "Phone a call centre and you are likely to spend ages on hold listening to canned music -- and then find the operator cannot find the information you need. But an artificial intelligence system that hunts down the required information is aiming to slash the time people waste this way. "Using a mixture of speech recognition and search engine technology, the system, being developed by IBM, will trawl a call centre's databanks for the information a customer wants and present it to the operator before the caller has finished explaining what they want. By giving operators rapid access to the right information, calls will be dealt with faster. "The system works by listening in to the conversation and identifying keywords spoken by the customer." http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99996430 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 17:31:58 +0400 From: Editor Subject: New XandMail SMS Access Solution Gives Access to Personal Data PRESS RELEASE NETWORK http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com New XandMail SMS Access Solution gives access to personal data -- from emails to photos -- via SMS XandMail, the digital communication solutions provider released its SMS Access Solution, a service enabling mobile telephony subscribers to manage their emails, address books, calendars and pictures by SMS. Paris, France - Sep 27, 2004 (PRN): XandMail, the digital communication solutions provider announces the availability of XandMail SMS Access Solution (SAS), a comprehensive and carrier-grade solution providing access to personal data - Mail, Address Book, Calendar and Photo - from any mobile phone using simple SMS commands. SAS enables subscribers to store messages from any personal or external email account directly on their mobile phones by sending an SMS to a dedicated short number given by the operator. Users can also query and manage their address books and calendars, or turn personal pictures into logos for their mobiles. XandMail SMS Access Solution is designed for mobile operators who want to provide their subscribers with premium mobile data services. It is composed of an SMSC Connector that ensures compatibility with multiple standards (e.g. SMPP, UCP, CMID2, OIS), middleware that transforms the SMS into a server query (LDAP, POP, IMAP, SMTP) and sends back the result to the Connector, which converts the answer into an SMS. With SAS, the subscriber is only one SMS away from obtaining his inbox status, viewing, forwarding and replying to messages, and even sending out new messages. With a limited number of SMS, he can also view some or all of the contacts stored in his personal address book, add new contacts with details such as name, alias, phone number and email address, or search his address book for a specific contact. As for the calendar management, the user can add an event and indicate its title, the date on which it will take place, and duration. Similarly he can choose to access the details of a defined event or all the events registered for one given day. Moreover, SAS also makes it possible to transform a personal picture the user has stored online -- in a photo album for example -- into a logo for his mobile. "Our SMS Access Solution addresses two needs: that of the operators who want to offer profitable and attractive new services based on SMS, and that of the users who want to manage their personal data, anytime, anywhere from their mobile, thanks to SMS, a tool they are familiar with," declares Ky-Ming Jen, Chief Operating Officer, XandMail. Based on the robust EMS architecture and products, SMS Access Solution is an ideal complement to XandMail Mobile Communication Solution, a value-added mobile personal information solution. About XandMail Founded in 1990, XandMail conceived and developed Income Generating Services, a market-proven range of multi-channel services enabling fixed and wireless Telcos, xSPs, Portals and UM Providers to generate additional revenue while leveraging previous investments. Thanks to its integrated product range and support services, XandMail has already deployed licenses for 65 million mailboxes throughout the world. http://www.xandmail.com About Income Generating Services Income Generating Services (IGS) are online services provided by Telecommunication companies, ISPs and Portals at a cost. IGS help these companies increase their revenue and improve their bottom line. IGS are well-targeted, value-added services designed to address the special needs of specific user segments. While most standard communication and email services are provided for free, IGS are easy to invoice because they bring real value to end-users. For more information, contact: Pamela Corbin XandMail, SA Tel: +33 (0) 148-368-903 Email: corbin@xandmail.com Website: http://www.xandmail.com Information from Press Release Network may be freely distributed to any publication. Wherever applicable, please cite Press Release Network as the news source. Editor & CEO Press Release Network editor@pressreleasenetwork.com http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. Subject: Re: Voicepulse Disconnects Remote Computers When Phone is Used Date: Sun, 26 Sep 2004 20:33:17 -0600 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Chris Eilersen wrote: > Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening and what I can do to > fix it? Doesn't ring a bell, but I would start by making sure your router has the latest firmware from the Linksys web site. You are using stock firmware and not one of the hacked versions, right? ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Voicepulse Disconnects Remote Computers When Phone is Used Date: 27 Sep 2004 17:07:28 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Chris Eilersen wrote: > I recently got Voicepulse phone service and it works fine except I > just noticed that my network connection on the remote machines only is > lost when I use the phone. (I have a GE 2.4 GHz phone with a cordless > "satellite" handset). If I use the cordless handset, the connection > returns when I hang up. If I use the corded phone, I have to reboot > the remote machines and wait until the connection is restored. [...] > Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening and what I can do to > fix it? Get a different cordless phone? Since they operate on the same frequencies, a big issue with 802.11g, which also applies to 802.11b, is considerable RF interference from other 2.4 GHz devices, such as cordless phones. Try a 900mhz phone instead. The problem with the corded phone is not so obvious, and will be difficult to explain without knowing more about how your network is configured. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com ------------------------------ From: ariel.burbaickij@gmail.com (Ariel Burbaickij) Subject: Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? Date: 26 Sep 2004 15:41:15 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) wrote in message news:... > In article , Ariel Burbaickij > wrote: >> Hello dear newsgroup participants, >> Could someone explain to me why it was decided not to have call >> reference ID in at least plain ISUP (i.e. not B-ISUP where it could be >> present)? There is call ref id in DSS1, in SIP and again transaction >> id in SCCP/TCAP (with transaction being defined as series of queries >> and responses), so why no call ref ids in ISUP? > SIP and TCAP are end-to-end. What purpose would you expect a "call > reference ID" to serve in ISUP, which is hop-by-hop? Excuse me but I do not see hop by hop nature as the main hurdle for defining unique call id. One obvious solution would be to include some number unique to the originating switch (its pointcode?) plus gmt plus some random value. Not always ISUP is actually hop-by-hop as you surely know. ISUP over SCCP will give you end-to-end nature. > ISUP signaling messages are associated with trunks between a pair of > switches. Until the state machine for the call ends, all messages for > a given call can be the TCIC field, which includes the trunk between > the pair of switches for a given hop. Furthermore, most national > variants specify a use of the Signaling Link Selection (SLS) field > that will cause all messages for a given call to flow over the same > path through the SS7 network, allowing them to be monitored from a > debugging tap at a single location. Sure, for one link. What about debbuging which involves several switches. How are you going to guess which messages belong toghether in such an environment? > In article , Phil Anderton > wrote: >> ISUP does have mechanisms for end to end signalling, but in normal use >> it's almost exclusively link by link signalling, and for that all you >> need is OPC+DPC+CIC. > You know, I hear that from time to time. But aside from the PAM > (Pass-Along-Message) which is so loosely defined by the standard that > it is unclear whether or not it could actually be used, I'm at a loss > as to just what these "mechanisms for end to end signaling" are. > I had occasion to try to generate and send PAM messages in a test > environment a few years ago. It is difficult, to say the least, to > understand exactly what should be in them: one reading of the standard > suggests that it should be a complete encapsulated ISUP message, with > addresses and all. Now, _that_ begs the question "how do I know what > address to put in the inner message, since I don't know the address of > the terminating-end switch?" There are many similar issues. > The Nortel DMS switch documentation describes one very obscure > DMS-only feature that is evidently implemented using PAMs; but as of > the time I last studied this, if that feature actually works at all, > that's the only environment in which it would. > Can you give me better examples of end-to-end signaling in ISUP? I'd > love to have some. Again, I would say ISUP over ISUP. This is surely not ISUP mechanism but it gives you this end-to-end possibility. > Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com With Best Regards, Ariel Burbaickij ------------------------------ From: Dave Thompson Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 05:10:01 GMT Organization: AT&T Worldnet On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 13:51:34 +0000, bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote: > The 80-columns wide 'standard' for a video display is simply a > reflection of the 80-column width of a standard punch-card. Because, > in the 'commercial' environment, 'input' software *was* standardized > at 80 columns -- directly attributable to the punch-card antecedents. > Many early 'budget' video terminals for home/hobby use did *not* show > 80 columns -- it was difficult to achieve that many characters across > a standard TV receiver display -- Right; see below. (Except they were mostly used locally and called displays not terminals.) > As to 'why punch cards were 80 columns', the answer is probably > similar to "why railroad tracks are 4' 8-1/2" apart." Standard > lettering for a _lot_ of business applications is 10 characters/inch. > A punch-card is 8-1/2" wide. between the cut corner, and the rounded > edge, you have just over 8" available for the printing on the top. Although it was entirely possible, and not that rare, to use cards without printing on them. And for that matter to get cards without the top-left corner cut -- either none, or a different one -- or with a colored band across the top, for visual markers or sorting, which incidentally made printing illegible. > 80 cols was *not* universal, though. Burroughs used a 96-column card, > that was less than 1/2 the size, side-to-side, of the Hollerith card. > They would _completely_ fit in a shirt-pocket. So did IBM, later, around the S/34 or S/36 IIRC, not too long before punch cards passed out of mainstream usage altogether. > The 24 rows of text, on the other hand, is directly traceable to the > timing standards employed in a standard (TV set type ) video display. > Of the nominal 525 lines in the raster, only 484 are 'visible'. > [and only half distinguishable due to interlace = 242] Maybe somewhat less depending on how well the set was built and maintained, especially in the analog days of yore. (I don't know if that's why you used the scare quotes.) > The minimum cell for a character-generator capable of > clearly displaying upper _and_lower_ case letters is a 7x9 cell. Add > one 'dot space' between lines, and it takes 10 dots vertically, per > line of text. With an 'available' space of 242 dots to work with, > Guess how many lines you can fit in? > You could go 'upper-case only' -- requiring a > 5x7 character cell, [perhaps doubled] But this is anachronistic (mythtaken?). The first "textual" video displays used in any number were IBM 3270 series, which were either 12x40 (model 1, cheaper) or 24x80 (model 2). They clearly got the 80 from cards, but I have no idea where they got the 24 -- possibly so that, as you also noted, the screen buffer is < 2KC. By "textual" I mean a raster chargen display as opposed to some earlier vector or "graphic" displays which could build a few characters out of line segments, but would flicker unusably for more than a few full lines of text; and Tektronix storage tubes which solved the flicker problem at the cost of taking a minute or several to draw each page, up to about 80x120 (squarish) IIRC, which then could not be edited. IBM was followed, closely in time, and I believe in numbers, by DEC's VT50, VT52, and later VT100, which were also 24x80 standard; some models had options for different sizes. (I think VT05 also but don't recall for sure.) A number of third-party manufacturers also followed 24x80 -- LearSiegler, Beehive, and PerkinElmer spring to mind, but I know there were more I've forgotten. (In addition to the third-party clones of IBM which of course had to.) All of these were custom designed and built video circuitry which could use whatever lines and dots they chose, and never (AFAIK) used interlace. In particular some of the later IBMs (3276/8) that I used fairly extensively had really beautiful video, much crisper than you could get on a normal TV and looking more like a good (and expensive!) laboratory oscilloscope -- or a good computer (digital) or HD monitor of today. (Although the systems those terminals connected to might be a different story. ) In many cases they were actually 25 lines -- 24 data and one reserved for terminal status, operation, and configuration. It was over a decade later when hobbyist computers like Apple, Altair, Imsai, Cromemco, Ohio Scientific wanted to use cheaply available consumer TVs that the NTSC limits of about 240 lines usable per field and 400-some dots usable per line in the standard video bandwidth of ~4MHz became an issue, and yes 24x80 was pushing it and often less and often only uppercase 5x7 or 5x9 was used. - David.Thompson1 at worldnet.att.net ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 15:16:13 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net John Levine wrote: > I get a few out of area calls, none from telemarketers, but I haven't > kept track of where they're from. Calls from outside North America > mostly show up as out of area. It should be noted there are two CLID codes involved here, one for calling number restricted and one for calling number not available. Overseas calls tend to be in the latter category. Some CLID boxes will present them differently. Oddly, I got a call from Germany a few years ago that presented the whole number, in violation of German privacy law. I think I was behind an ISDN connected PBX, so it may not have been set up to honor the privacy bit, or it may have been presenting ANI. Both I and the caller found it rather amusing. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Movies/Documentaries That Feature Crossbar, Panel, or SxS? Date: 27 Sep 2004 09:30:20 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com jdj wrote: > "Three Days of the Condor" with Robert Redford. The Condor enters a > switch to call up the CIA and diddles the switch to keep his call from > being traced. The CIA scene shows automated tracing in use. Was the automated tracing depicted in the movie actually available in city switchgear in use (either panel or crossbar) in the mid 1970s? "Three Days of the Condor" is a good movie, even if a bit implausible in parts. Especially interesting nowadays with the debates over the role of the intelligence community. Also some of the film was filmed in the World Trade Center. I recommend it. [Personal opinion: The film didn't paint the CIA or some of its "game playing" in the best light. This was a common attitude in the U.S. at the time as a result of the 60s anti-establishment revolution, Nixon's attempt to use the agency, and Hoover's FBI abuses that were coming to light. Laws were passed that restricted information sharing and operations. I can't help but wonder that if the CIA/FBI had a greater free hand in conducting intelligence and sharing information than perhaps they may be in a better position to fight terrorism today than they are.] One of the key actors, Cliff Robertson, was later a spokesman for AT&T. There was some other telephone tidbits in the film, such as Redford tape recording someone's TT dialing and calling an agency computer to translate the tones into human numbers; then him finding out the name/address belong to that number. I don't know if it's said in the film, but in the book version they tell us the character spent time working for the phone company. Another implausible scene was his departure from NYC, where Faye Dunaway dropped him off at the Erie-Lackawanna terminal in Hoboken for him to catch a train to Washington. No trains at the E-L terminal went to Washington, only the suburbs. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: 27 Sep 2004 09:52:19 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I agree with all of the good points you make below. But the criminal justice/public safety system is more complex than just the cops. There is also the district attorneys/prosecutors who play a big role, the town and city councils, and the courts. We don't hear about them as often, but some DAs make some huge mistakes and a lot of innocent people suffer. My area just had a big case that fortunately made the newspaper about very weak and unsubstantiated accusations of child beating against a school principal. Parents were outraged when they found their own kids -- who had suffered no abuse -- were listed in court papers as being victims. I don't know the criminal court system very well, but I suspect DA's have a lot of leeway on who they want to pursue and who they let go; and if they decide to go after you and use all their resources, you're in big trouble. For instance, if they decide to wiretap your phone or search your house and take away your computer, is it really that hard for them to get a warrant to do so? Police and city councils are also under a lot of pressure from various parts of the public. In my own town, citizens demand the town council have the police be super zealous in going after speeders in the town. At one meeting, town residents asked the cops to try all sorts of things that were illegal or even unconstitutional and were upset when the police chief tried to explain all that. But on the flipside, the business community wanted to cops to ease up on traffic tickets since it upset customers coming into town to do shopping. So which tact should the cops do -- aggressive enforcement or light enforcement? FWIW, I watched them do a speed trap. The speed limit is 25 mph on a residential narrow street. The cops set the detector at 40 mph, that is, only people going 40 or faster would get pulled over. Speed limit signs were prominently posted all along the street. But even at 40 they still pulled over plenty of people. Said motorists were pretty angry, and I heard some young women use some language that would make a sailor blush. Some motorists were intimidating and threatening, though none of them got into any more trouble. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are correct that police and prose- > cutors are human beings (or human beans as Mayor Daley once said > after the nasty riots in April, 1968 when MLK was assassinated.) And, > people do get very angry when they discover their supermen and super- > heros are just as human as they themselves. That being said, however, > because police officers are routinely given so much more trust than > the rest of us, the trade off should be they are *very careful, almost > exceptionally well behaved and honest* -- at least that's how it > should be. Police officers are often times fond of saying, 'we have > our civil liberties and free speech rights also.' Yes, they do, but > IMO some of their 'free speech rights' and 'civil rights' should be > an agreed on trade off in exchange for their jobs. An officer who lies > or otherwise misbehaves should be dealt with very sternly, not just a > slap on the wrist as they often times get if they get caught. I mean, > if you cannot depend on *them* to tell the truth and behave themselves, > then exactly who are we supposed to be able to trust? PAT] ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device Date: 27 Sep 2004 17:18:00 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Patrick Townson wrote: > I have a four port Netgear Router with wireless 802.11 capability. > My problem is the range of the wireless part seems rather skimpy. > I can get out in my (relatively small) back yard and use the > computer, but a few steps away and it konks out. [....] > Any suggestions or ideas? I used to research this a lot in alt.internet.wireless back when I was trying to set up a point-to-point link. What I found was that the equipment you use makes a big difference. A lot of the consumer stuff is crap. In my personal experience I was using a Linksys WAP-11 access point and a US Robotics PCMCIA card on my laptop. I have an older house that uses wire mesh for lath in walls, so I have serious reception problems. On the basis of repeated suggestions in a.i.wireless to try Orinoco equipment I replaced my laptop card with an Orinoco Silver card. The difference is like night and day. Where I couldn't even get a signal before I can now access the Linksys without any problems. John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: With what I say next, I mean to give no offense, nor take any: What is the group's general impression of the NetGear four port wireless router and its companion 'PCMCIA-like' card to go in the laptop? Good? Bad? Total Crap? I am lucky to get about 50-75 feet *reliably*. I just remembered, I do have *two* cordless phones also plugged in which are 900 mhz units, and they get me about a half block away from home with no trouble. Might *they* be causing interference with the wireless router? PAT] ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 00:35:45 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 17:00:00 -0500, Patrick Townson wrote: > I have a four port Netgear Router with wireless 802.11 capability. My > problem is the range of the wireless part seems rather skimpy. I have a MR314 with same problem. The unit uses an MA401 card inside. It is the "non-US" model with a place for installing a jack. The antenna is connected via coax to this point within the plastic part of the MA401 case. The card has to be pulled out of the PCMCIA socket carefully, the case split open and the coax unsoldered. I have not had the opportunity to do the whole thing but I do plan on replacing that little stub antenna with a TNC or RP-TNC bulkhead mount jack with a "factory attached" pigtail and soldering that into the MA401. Then a gain antenna would be plugged in to the TNC jack. The MA401 is rather low-powered compared to other "real" access points. So it would help to use the best possible low-loss coax for the pigtail and the antenna, such as something from the Times Microwave LMR series. While waiting for a well-rounded tuit to do the MR314, I set up a Linksys AP with noticeably more power and added a gain antenna. With the price of 802.11b AP's coming down it may be less expensive and certainly easier to get another AP. If you are one of us hardcore hardware hackers, then the above will be the better way. There is somewhere a website which shows how easy it is to split the "non-US" MA401 open without damage. I thought I had a link filed away but it seems to have misplaced itself like filing tends to want to do. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had not given much thought to taking the PCMCIA card apart, and I am not sure it can be disassembled. Now, the router box, with its rubber-ducky antenna is all plastic, and I *could* take it apart (but I have not dared to do so yet) and I was hoping maybe there was a little 'trimmer' of sorts in there somewhere I could barely tweak and make some sort of difference, hopefully for the good. As long as I stay in the same room (my office) my coverage is reasonable. Only when I leave the room does the transmission get very 'iffy'. Add that to the fact I have the PCMCIA card in an older IBM Think Pad model 770 (circa 1995-96) which was originally Win 95 but upgraded to Win 98, but still shows all the characteristics of a very slow older laptop (many freeze-ups and lockouts) and perhaps you see why I am pulling my hair out on account of it much of the time. One of our computer stores here in town (Computer Generation) is also the Radio Shack dealer, and he stocks 802.11b stuff. What would *you* suggest I do for replacement stuff if anything? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 06:50:20 -0400 Subject: Don't Let Rules Shackle Internet Phone Service Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/9770728.htm By Bruce Mehlman and Larry Irving A decade ago Congressman Ed Markey, then chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications, noted that there was good news and bad news about the Internet. The good news was that everyone in Washington supported it. The bad news was that no one there had the slightest idea what it was. Unfortunately, history is repeating itself with the Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a technology that turns telephone signals into digital information and delivers it over the Internet. This summer, VoIP has became a national phenomenon. Phone companies began nationwide promotions of this new service to an eager consumer and business base. [.....] Policy-makers need to be reminded that the Internet grew precisely because legislators resisted the urge to regulate. This was no accident: Politicians understood the public wrath that would come down on them if they tried to interfere. Now we are on the cusp of a second Internet revolution, a revolution driven by applications such as Internet calling that will drive broadband adoption. Full story at: http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/opinion/9770728.htm (Free registration required) How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 06:43:14 -0400 Subject: Canada: A Eureka Moment at the CRTC Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1096236608086&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851 TYLER HAMILTON There's no better cure for insomnia than slapping on computer headphones and listening to a CRTC hearing via Webcast. The jargon is mind-numbing and a new layer of glaze coats the eyes with each acronym spoken -- SIP, PSTN, NANP, ILEC, CLEC - to name just a few. Last week's hearing on VoIP, which stands for Voice over Internet Protocol, was no exception. The country's telecom watchdog is trying to figure out whether it should regulate VoIP "Internet phone" services, and if so, what's the best way to go about it. Full story at: http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1096236608086&call_pageid=968350072197&col=969048863851 ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #451 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Sep 27 22:06:57 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8S26uD25522; Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:06:57 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:06:57 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409280206.i8S26uD25522@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #452 TELECOM Digest Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:07:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 452 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Magic Telemarketer Bullets, was Re: Out of Area Calls (John Levine) Re: Magic Telemarketer Bullets, was Re: Out of Area Calls (Paul Vader) Re: Magic Telemarketer Bullets, was Re: Out of Area Calls (N Landsberg) Re: Out of Area Calls (Paul Vader) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device (Clarence Dold) Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device (jmeissen) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Paul Vader) Re: Realtime Keyword Voice Recognition; Not Just for NSA (M Covington) Re: Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free (A User) Re: Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free (John Covert) Re: Movies/Documentaries That Feature Crossbar, Panel, (Gene Berkowitz) Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: Informing Ourselves to Death (Digest Reprint) (Lisa Hancock) On Why the Mac's Small Population is Not Defense (Monty Solomon) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 27 Sep 2004 18:04:50 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Magic Telemarketer Bullets, was Re: Out of Area Calls Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Cost to telcos to implement the overlay area code in your plan, >> several billion dollars. > There are a number of incoming overlays, so making such numbers > dialable would be close to de minimus. Huh? Do you mean 456 or something else? >> Service cost to users who'd have to buy CLID service to hide from >> telemarketers but don't want CLID otherwise, three bucks a month ... > Many, if not all, telcos that offer CLID will throw in anonymous call > reject for free to subscribers to CLID. That's nice, but 311 calls would be different from CLID blocked calls so ACR wouldn't help. If you want a 311 reject, that's a switch upgrade. >> Cost to telcos to implement the overlay area code in your plan, >> several billion dollars. ... > My understanding (glad to be corrected if I'm wrong) is that > Caller ID can be easily "faked" purely locally (i.e., by the > caller, at the caller's location), and that doing this requires > only modest equipment and no telco involvement -- Only if the switch is misprogrammed. If a customer is on an ISDN line, he can provide CLID, but the CO switch is supposed to allow only numbers assigned to that line, typically a block of DID numbers assigned to a PBX. It's a security bug to permit numbers not assigned just like spammers fake other people's e-mail addresses. You could certainly adjust the switch programming to allow some customers to send 311 numbers unrelated to their inbound numbers, but that's a switch upgrade and it's not free. >> Service cost to users who'd have to buy CLID service to hide from >> telemarketers but don't want CLID otherwise, ... > A red herring, I think. More and more people are getting CLID, > one way or another, and usage is likely to grow toward > saturation, You're waving your hands. I would be surprised if as many as half of residential subs have CLID. I can easily believe that all of your friends do, but Palo Alto isn't typical. >> Hardware cost to phone users who'd all have to buy special CLID boxes >> that recognize the magic area code and don't ring, say $20 each .... > Sounds dramatic -- but for most people, cost of a 20 buck > gadget from Radio Shack, if it did this job, would be in the > noise level compared to their total phone costs. Why should I pay anything for a system that won't work as well as the current do-not-call list? Either way, honest telemarketers will follow the rules and won't bother me, crooked ones won't follow the rules and will bother me, and it'll take legal sanctions to make the bad guys behave. To make the bad guys behave, if you're going to file a TCPA suit, it's a lot easier to establish that someone called you than both that they called you and that they sent a particular CLID. The do-not-call list is public info, no problem demonstrating that you're on it. > The telemarketers' current excuses that "Oh, we must have been > given an old list" or "Oh, there must have been a glitch in your > getting your number on the list" would be eliminated. Those excuses aren't valid now, either. If you're on the do-not-call list, they can't call you. >> In case you haven't been paying attention, the cost of the do-not-call >> list is paid for by telemarketers in subscription fees. Cost to >> recipients, zero. > Not so -- cost to recipients of present system comes in > having to get your number (or multiple numbers) on the list; > having to remember to change or add numbers every time > you change your service; and difficulties in confirming that > you've even been added (is there any formal way to confirm > that your number has been added?) I don't know about you, but my main phone number hasn't changed since 1994 and my cell number hasn't changed since 1996. I think that's more typical than the technogeeks who get new numbers every month. Why don't you spend two seconds and visit www.donotcall.gov so you know how the current system works, rather than speculating and guessing wrong? Yes, it's easy to confirm that you're on the list. R's, John ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Magic Telemarketer Bullets, was Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:55:57 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations AES/newspost writes: > Not so -- cost to recipients of present system comes in > having to get your number (or multiple numbers) on the list; > having to remember to change or add numbers every time > you change your service; and difficulties in confirming that > you've even been added (is there any formal way to confirm > that your number has been added?) All of these things are free; they can be done via a toll-free call, or by using the website. And yes, you can verify that a listing exists. > to maintain the bureaucracy to manage the system in > perpetuity (who really does this job, by the way?). Would AT&T. It's not exactly a deep dark secret. > you want to bet the system is really well run? Or really > pays its own way? It sure seems to be well run. The only telemarketing calls I get these days are from people NOT using it. I report all of these on the website. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net Subject: Re: Magic Telemarketer Bullets, was Re: Out of Area Calls Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 21:21:46 GMT AES/newspost wrote: > I wrote a short while ago: >>> Said it early on, will say it again: The intelligent and effective way >>> to handle telemarketing would have been legislation requiring that any >>> and all telemarketing calls be made using Caller ID with a distinctive >>> and national standardized Area Code, e.g. 311 or something similar, so >>> that recipients who didn't want to receive such calls could easily >>> filter and reject them. >>> Would have been cheap and easy to implement (for callers and >>> recipients); > and John Levine -- whose postings to this > group I regularly read, and whose technical knowledge in these > areas I respect -- replied: >> Well, let's see. > and I'm responding to his arguments below. [ SNIP ] > Anyone else want to weigh in on this? As a non-scientific sample of one (well, maybe two) I have two lines into my house. One is the residence (published) number and the other is an "office at home" number (non-pub). Both have caller ID and both have answering machines (either attached or built-in to the phones.) I put both numbers on the national DNC list last year. Observations: - There seem to be considerably fewer telemarketer calls since then. If it's important, and the call comes through as "anonymous," whoever is calling can leave a message on the machine. If we happen to pick up, for some reason, we either hang up on them after a few seconds or play mind games with them (depending on our mood). For example, for a while, we had a local newspaper (The Asbury Park Press) calling us to try to get us to subscribe. After a while, I started telling them that I worked for the Newark Star Ledger (which I don't). The calls stopped shortly thereafter :) Note: We answer anonymous calls just in case a daughter or granddaughter needs help and has to call from a pay phone or the equivalent. If it's not them, we just hang up or play mind games as in the above. - I always answer the "office" line with the company name rather than just "hello". This almost always causes a pause at the other end if it's a telemarketcritter who doesn't know what to do next because it's not in his script. (Note that several company locations seem to be behind PBX's which do not send CID, so I answer the "anonymous" calls again, just in case.) - Both of the above observations are based upon the fact that I have caller-id. Yes, I pay for that. Without the DNC list and the CID, I would probably be much more ticked-off at telemarketers than I am now. My opinion is that somehow, the national DNC list has done some good, and that additional measures aren't necessary. Your mileage may vary. NPL P.S. - Now, can we somehow do the same for SPAM Emails? But that's a subject which is being debated in other newsgroups. "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:14:57 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) writes: > pointed out that the law made *no* such provision for delay on an > -internally-maintained- list, and required that they update my > _customer_record_ with a note that 'customer has ordered us -never- to > make marketing calls to him', and the date/time. Three days later, > somebody "didn't read" the notes, and called me. I promptly demanded > a supervisor, had them read the account 'notes', and asked if they > wanted to pay the statutory $500 minimum, or if I needed to go to > court, in which case I would allege 'knowing and wilful' violation, This is totally lovely. I'm going to use that trick from now on. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Date: 27 Sep 2004 12:44:51 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Stanley Cline wrote: > The places where one would expect to find the last steps (Alaska bush > country, small independents in general, etc.) actually went digital > quite early on, largely because of things like environmental concerns > (Redcom's MDX series switches, popular in extremely remote areas, are > specifically built with harsh environments in mind) and human resource > needs and in part because small independents' generally higher USF > receipts compared to Bells and large indeps allowed for earlier > conversion to digital. What I was told that the superior remote maintenance facility of ESS vs. electro mechanical was a big factor. AFAIK, when changing a number or services for a customer, an office visit by a craftsman is needed on electro mechanical to reroute wires from the distributing frame. However, on ESS, that is all done electronically. Also, SxS requires periodic maintenance since it is mechanical moving parts; ESS does not. When a craftsman has to drive a considerable distance to service something like that, the savings are significant. Some other rural areas may not be as rural anymore and facing growth. Going to ESS over SxS allows a bigger switch to fit in the same size building, saving expensive building expansion. ------------------------------ From: dold@XReXXHelpX.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:58:31 UTC Organization: a2i network Patrick Townson wrote: > I have a four port Netgear Router with wireless 802.11 capability. > My problem is the range of the wireless part seems rather skimpy. I just threw the box for my two year old wireless router away. Emblazoned on the front of the box is the optimistic "up to 1000 feet" claim. Of course, I assumed that 1000 feet might be achievable on Lake Hosgol in the dead of winter, but I expected to get 50 feet or so at home. I didn't. The real range of 802.11b is pretty short in an urban environment. Walls hurt a lot. Exterior walls, with stucco and the reinforcing chicken wire, are very hard to penetrate. Most of the commodity consumer units are similar, with the same considerations you might apply to brand name and cost as any other product. Linksys-DLink-Netgear are going to be very similar. The first thing to do is to try a free reflector. I tried to form the "original" reflector without much success mechanically. The EZ-10 is less antenna gain, but sufficient for my needs, and very simple to make. The EZ-12 would be a tad better, but I haven't tried one of those. I am able to get good coverage anywhere in my house and on the decks in the front and back using the EZ-10. http://www.freeaantennas.com < http://www.rahul.net/dold/clarence/SMC/EZ10-strength.htm > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thank you for your *very realistic* appraisal. I am going to look at your page on EZ-10 tonight and see how I can make it apply to me. I'd be very pleased to get as far as my *front* yard or most of my back yard, or evem my rocking chair in my parlor. I just do not want to have to sit in the same room all the time. Do you think your 'reflector' device will work out okay with a rubber ducky type antenna built into the router? PAT] ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device Date: 27 Sep 2004 20:34:21 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: With what I say next, I mean to give > no offense, nor take any: What is the group's general impression of > the NetGear four port wireless router and its companion 'PCMCIA-like' > card to go in the laptop? Good? Bad? Total Crap? I am lucky to get > about 50-75 feet *reliably*. I just remembered, I do have *two* > cordless phones also plugged in which are 900 mhz units, and they > get me about a half block away from home with no trouble. Might *they* > be causing interference with the wireless router? PAT] It's unlikely that the 900mhz phone would interfere. Unfortunately, it's been a year or more since I read that newsgroup, so I wouldn't be able to tell you what the latest scuttle is regarding NetGear. All I know is that whenever someone complained about reception problems they were told to try an Orinoco card, and when they did they would invariably return with high praise. And that matches my own experience. I have heard a lot of negative talk about D-Link equipment lately, and know people who returned theirs for a different brand. So if you look around for an alternative I think I might stay away from them. What are the model numbers of the router and card? John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The router model number is MR814v2. The card model is MA521. They came as a set; one router and one accompaning card. PAT] ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:37:18 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations wolfgang+gnus20040924T232812@dailyplanet.dontspam.wsrcc.com writes: > 1) The pilots didn't want the passengers to have better navigation > equipment in the cabin than they had in the cockpit. Planes back Snort. That's pretty funny, but I doubt that pilots even think about stuff like that. Since the passenger doesn't know (probably) the details of all the directions given during the flight by the air traffic controllers, you could hardly second-guess the pilots like that. Back when handheld GPSes were fairly new, I used one a bunch of times during flights ('cause I could -- it gave a fairly nice read how far into a long flight I was), and once plotted an entire trip from Chicago to St. Louis on a map just to pass the time. I made no secret of it -- you pretty much have to jam the receiver against the window to get a good reading. One thing that does occur to me -- security. Maybe I don't want someone on the flight being able to call in the plane's exact position to someone on the ground. I seem to remember that the maximum groundspeed that terrestrial GPSes would work at was reduced at some point (I can for a fact say that my old unit works beautifully up to at least 500mph); maybe this is the reason. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Re: Realtime Keyword Voice Recognition; Not Just the NSA Anymore Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 16:54:54 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) This is a good application for voice recognition because errors are (we hope!) inconsequential. The system will probably be designed to get lots of false positives. Let's just hope that in the hands of brain-dead human operators, it doesn't cause more frustration. Danny Burstein wrote in message news:telecom23.451.3@telecom-digest.org: > "Phone a call centre and you are likely to spend ages on hold > listening to canned music -- and then find the operator cannot find > the information you need. But an artificial intelligence system that > hunts down the required information is aiming to slash the time people > waste this way. > "Using a mixture of speech recognition and search engine technology, > the system, being developed by IBM, will trawl a call centre's > databanks for the information a customer wants and present it to the > operator before the caller has finished explaining what they want. By > giving operators rapid access to the right information, calls will be > dealt with faster. > "The system works by listening in to the conversation and identifying > keywords spoken by the customer." > http://www.newscientist.com/news/print.jsp?id=ns99996430 ------------------------------ From: A User Subject: Re: Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 08:26:14 +1000 Organization: Posted via Forte APN, http://www.forteinc.com/apn/index.php On 27 Sep 2004 00:54:01 -0400, John R Levine wrote: > My wife decided that she needs a cell phone, so we dropped by the > local Cingular store to get one and add it to my account. (Cingular > has excellent coverage here due to the antenna that I lease them space > for on my water tower.) So after the nice sales lady told me that > most of the free phones were far crummier than my Nokia 6340i (no > longer available because it's GSM/TDMA and now they only sell GSM), we > looked at a Moto V220 camera phone for $50. > As we set up the account, I asked her to turn on international roaming > since it's a triband phone, and she said "if you use it in Europe > much, you can get a local SIM and use that." "Isn't it locked?" > "Naah, they don't usually bother." > I happened to have a Swiss SIM here and whaddaya know, she's right, > it's unlocked. Not a bad deal. Unfortunately the phone is > 850/900/1900 and the SIM is from Orange Switzerland which is 1800 > only, but it's easy enough to get a different SIM next time. Since when do SIMS know about frequency? It's the phone. > Regards, > John Levine johnl@iecc.com ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:27:54 -0400 (EDT) From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free > Unfortunately the phone is 850/900/1900 Er, tri-band GSM phones are 900/1800/1900. The V220 is supposed to be a quad-band phone, 850/900/1800/1900. All the GSM there is. http://www.cellphones.ca/news/000607.cfm AFAIK, there is no such thing as a phone which does only 850/900/1900; there would be no good reason for such a product to even exist. If a phone can do 900 and 1900, then 850 (because it's a multiple of 1900) and 1800 (because it's a multiple of 900) is a no-cost additional option. Tri-band phones were tri-band because they came out before there was any 850 MHz GSM in operation. I have seen European pages claiming the V220 is tri-band 900/1800/1900. I believe those pages would be wrong. But then I might be wrong. They might have crippled it for Cingular. Why they would do that, since Cingular HAS roaming agreements with European carriers operating on 1800, I have no idea, and I find it unlikely (but not impossible) that they did. /john ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Movies/Documentaries That Feature Crossbar, Panel, or SxS? Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 20:42:20 -0400 In article , jdj@now.here says: > On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 23:14:25 -0700, vu huong wrote: >> Hello, >> Does anyone know of any movies or documentaries that show footage of old >> telco technology? > "Three Days of the Condor" with Robert Redford. The Condor enters a > switch to call up the CIA and diddles the switch to keep his call from > being traced. The CIA scene shows automated tracing in use. > There are some espionage-thriller B movies from the 1950's with footage > where the G-men enter switches and get the techs to trace calls. Nothing > but loud background music can be heard in those scenes. THX-1138, which is now in theatrical re-release, contains a scene with Robert Duvall wandering through a very large switch. --Gene ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? Date: 27 Sep 2004 16:35:56 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Ariel Burbaickij wrote: > tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) wrote in message news:: > Excuse me but I do not see hop by hop nature as the main hurdle for > defining unique call id. One obvious solution would be to include some > number unique to the originating switch (its pointcode?) plus gmt plus > some random value. It's not a "hurdle", it's the reason there's no _need for_ a unique call ID: because there is already a unique tuple identifying any call, for the duration of that call: OPC, DPC, TCIC. This tuple is different between any pair of switches in the call path, but because the standard makes very clear the ordering of the messages (and message reordering is severely restricted) and the transitions in the call state machine you can nonetheless follow a call from A to Z through the network, using OPC, DPC, TCIC for every pair of switches involved. Standard SS7 diagnostic tools, in fact, do exactly this. As I pointed out in my earlier message, the treatment of the SLS field in most national variants is intended, in point of fact, to make it easier to catch the right messages for any call even when debugging with an extremely simplistic protocol analyzer -- or even by hand (believe me, I've done it). > Not always ISUP is actually hop-by-hop as you surely know. ISUP over > SCCP will give you end-to-end nature. That depends what meaning, exactly, you put to "end-to-end". In practice, even when run over SCCP, ISUP signaling is necessarily logically hop-by-hop with the hops corresponding to the hops in the actual voice path -- as it has to be, because *the trunks must be allocated hop by hop* and that is exactly what ISUP does. Even if you are running ISUP over SCCP, except in extraordinarily simple networks (in other words, *not real world networks*) the calling party's end office switch cannot know _a priori_ the entire path the call will take through the network even if it could know the address of the called party's end-office switch; so trunk signalling _can only_ proceed hop-by-hop, which is what it does. > Sure, for one link. What about debbuging which involves several > switches. How are you going to guess which messages belong toghether > in such an environment? This is easy, and it's done all the time. You get into the links between the switches in the call path and you find the messages in ascending time order that have the right calling and called party ID and that are in the right state in the call state machine (for example, IAM and RLC will cascade through the network in an obvious way). There are a few -- very few -- corner cases where things can get a little tricky, but in practice the order of trunk allocation on all major-vendor switches guarantees that you don't see them. This is not rocket science. Telco personnel do it all the time, in busy networks. Students in Telcordia protocol classes do it _by hand_, which is tedious but entirely possible. Most good SS7 protocol analyzers do it automatically, for what it's worth. Even the old HP sets that are often used as teaching tools have features intended to help with this. I assure you, it works. In practice, one very quickly zeroes in on a particular hop in the call path when diagnosing SS7 or trunk troubles; so really, very little time is spent trying to chasx calls end-to-end anyway. You mention "ISUP over ISUP" as an example of end-to-end ISUP signalling. With the exception of the incompletely-specified pass-along message (PAM) that I referred to before, I'm not entirely sure I know what you mean. Can you give me more details? One thing that bears remembering about ISUP is that when it was designed, compact encoding of messages was a major concern -- there was serious grumbling already about the link upgrades that would be required in order to handle the increases in message size compared to the original CCIS that it replaced. Another thing to keep in mind is that later protocols in the same protocol suite have much more in common with computer data protocols of the mid 1980s (e.g. extensive use of ASN.1 encoding) than with ISUP, which is really best understood as a slight tweak of the rather ugly result of tearing CCIS apart into two (or did I mean three? ;-)) layers for standardization. So niceties that one expects from other protocols, e.g. an end-to-end transaction ID, aren't likely to be there unless they're really needed; and it's not tremendously surprising to me that in this case, the judgment was that that feature was not. Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com But as he knew no bad language, he had called him all the names of common objects that he could think of, and had screamed: "You lamp! You towel! You plate!" and so on. --Sigmund Freud ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Informing Ourselves to Death (Digest Reprint) Date: 27 Sep 2004 13:23:46 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 18:12:41 -0600 (CST) > Bill Pfeiffer Editor AIRWAVES RADIO JOURNAL (info@airwaves.chi.il.us) > After all, anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that > technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth > and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new > technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it > destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. This is so true. But I've very rarely heard anyone speak against a new technology. There are usually two separate forces that bring out new technology. One is the inventor/engineers who actually develop something new. The other is the business people who figure out ways to advertise, market, manufacture, distribute, and sell the technology to consumers in a mass market. Neither IBM nor Henry invented the personal computer or automobile, but their skills put those products in the hands of the masses. Bill Gates didn't invent the PC operating system, but knew where to find one and put it in the hands of IBM. Sometimes both the inventor and marketer are the same person, sometimes it involves a whole group of separate people. But normally there are least two separate people or groups involved. Each of those groups has a different agenda. We need both of them, and we get both the good and the bad of both of them. > Another way of saying this is that a new technology tends to favor > some groups of people and harms other groups. School teachers, for > example, will, in the long run, probably be made obsolete by > television, as blacksmiths were made obsolete by the automobile, as > balladeers were made obsolete by the printing press. Technological > change, in other words, always results in winners and losers. Also very true. The phone company used to claim it employed more operators than ever because higher calling volumes, despite automation, required more operators to serve the volume. The computer industry used to claim that clerical workers displaced by computers were offset by technical people who ran the computers, and also by more business requiring more clerks despite automation. Unfortunately, often times the displacement is not easily solved. The abandonment of streetcars for buses isn't too bad--a streetcar motorman can learn to drive a bus. But the transfer of travel from railroads to airplanes is harder. A railroad locomotive engineer can't be easily retrained to a commercial jet pilot, and locomotive mechanicals into jet technicians. Of course some predictions don't work out. It's been said for many years that schoolteachers would be displaced by television, yet it hasn't happened. > ... But to what extent has computer technology been an advantage > to the masses of people? To steel workers, vegetable store owners, > teachers, automobile mechanics, musicians, bakers, brick layers, > dentists and most of the rest into whose lives the computer now > intrudes? These people have had their private matters made more > accessible to powerful institutions. They are more easily tracked and > controlled; they are subjected to more examinations, and are > increasingly mystified by the decisions made about them. They are more > often reduced to mere numerical objects. They are being buried by junk > mail. They are easy targets for advertising agencies and political > organizations. The schools teach their children to operate > computerized systems instead of teaching things that are more valuable > to children. In a word, almost nothing happens to the losers that they > need, which is why they are losers. I'm not sure I fully agree with that. Yes, computers have made privacy an issue, but that is also very much a social and political problem. Computers don't share data, it is people who make requests and answer those requests for personal information. Who are those people? Should they have that ability? Those are the tougher questions that need to be answered. Cars don't kill people, errant drivers do. As far as being reduced to "numerical objects", in some cases that's true, but in others computers have actually helped reduce that. In a big company using clerical procedures, the masses were nothing but the masses, there was simply no time for the clerks to accomodate any individuality. If you look at old payroll ledgers employees didn't even have a name, just a row number in the book and hours worked. > ... The result is that certain questions do > not arise, such as, to whom will the computer give greater power and > freedom, and whose power and freedom will be reduced? This is not necessarily a binary question--social change does not require one group to give up _anything_ in order for another group to gain something, be it power or freedom, money, affluence, etc. At the end of WW II the GI Bill allowed thousands of men to go to college who otherwise never could. That greatly improved the standard of living of such men, but not at the cost of anyone else. The availability of a better skilled and educated labor force after WW II was a contributing factor to a higher standard of living for all. > ... Today, we believe in the authority of our science, no matter > what. I don't agree. First off, "we" is too inclusive, people have very varied levels of acceptance and belief. Second, people will question things. > There is almost no fact -- whether actual or imagined -- that will > surprise us for very long, since we have no comprehensive and > consistent picture of the world which would make the fact appear as > an unacceptable contradiction. Again I don't agree. That is not how people think. If I tell you something new or strange, your belief in what I say isn't based on a reference point, but rather on what else is going on in your life. If my little factoid is irrelevent to your life, you won't care one way or another -- you're busy thinking about your kids, the squeak in the car, etc. If it is relevant, you won't accept it on fate, but rather think about and discuss it further. Sure there are some gullibles who will buy into anything, but not everyone is like that. While this guy's talk is interesting, the reality is that most people could care less about it. They're busy having a life. > And something else, which once was our friend, turned against us, as > well. I refer to information. There was a time when information was a > resource that helped human beings to solve specific and urgent > problems of their environment. It is true enough that in the Middle > Ages, there was a scarcity of information but its very scarcity made > it both important and usable. There was plenty information in the Middle Ages. Is gossip anything new? Is artwork anything new? Is superstition anything new? People heard all sorts of things and evaluated them as best they could. More significantly, their _actions_ on that information was based on their circumstances. I dare say for a heck of a lot of people, the lack or excess of information isn't the issue, but the lack of options to _act_ on that information is the limiting factor. Some starving peasant in the 1800s may have known full well conditions were better in America, but if they had no money to make the trip or was otherwise bound, it didn't help them. I think in the ten years since this was written, the lustre has won off of computers. But they also have become a standard utility box for the home and office and they've evolved from curiosity to commodity. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A 'peasant in the 1800s' did not live in the middle ages, which I believe is the period from about the year 800 through 1500. And people living around the year 1000 *were* very superstitious. Have you ever studied reports of how people who were alive at the end of the year 999 dealt with the fact that a new century -- in fact a new millenium -- was starting? Many folks in that time in the dark ages were absolutely convinced the world was going to come to an end. The panic which was so prevalent would have shamed the corresponding situation in the 1999 <-> 2000 rollover (or if you prefer, the 2000 <-> 2001 rollover.) About the only people in those days who could write were priests and monks (the scholars of the time.) Printing had not been invented, so there was nothing to read. Old and Middle English were *nothing* like we speak or write these days. The 'old English' we see around today dates back at most to the 1500-1600's, and much of it is difficult to understand. At least we (in the 21st century) are leaving much writing for the folks in the year 3000 to deal with, to know more about *our* heritage; that is, assuming by 3000 they are still using our style of speech, writing, etc. And yes, the luster of computers has worn off quite a lot in the 14 years since the speech was first given, and even the 'average' (meaning non-computer literate) person has matured in his thinking a lot. Just as when television sets first came into common usage (1950's) and many well meaning people thought they were an evil influence on children, so people felt the same way about computers in the 1980's. Most people now recognize the absurdity in forbidding their children to use the internet When the public library offers the same thing, but at a slower pace. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:09:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: On Why the Mac's Small Population is Not a Defense John Welch For a long time, the Mac community has believed that because the relative size of the Mac population is small, that this lack of size is a defense against an attack. The logic goes something like this: Since the overall Mac population is so small compared to the Windows population, Macs are not that interesting to virus writers. Well, as the Witty worm showed, a small population is no defense against a devastating attack. On March 8th, 2004, eEye Digital Security discovered a vulnerability in ISS's BlackICE/RealSecure products. On March 9th, ISS released a patch for the vulnerability. On March 18th, eEye published a high-level description of the vulnerability. 36 hours later, Witty was released into the wild. Within 45 minutes, every vulnerable machine was infected, about 12,000 machines in total. Witty is a scary story for a number of reason. http://www.bynkii.com/generic_mac_stuff/archives/2004_09.html#000120 ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #452 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Sep 28 02:13:19 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8S6DI627675; Tue, 28 Sep 2004 02:13:19 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 02:13:19 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409280613.i8S6DI627675@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #453 TELECOM Digest Tue, 28 Sep 2004 02:13:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 453 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device (jdj) Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device (Dave Garland) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (jdj) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Lisa Hancock) Re: Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free (John Levine) Re: Out of Area Calls (Gary Novosielski) Palm OS Cobalt 6.1;Web Browser 3.0;Email API;Dev Suite 1.0 (M Solomon) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (jdj) Re: Need Advice Regarding Communications/Networking Problem (Wm Warren) VOIP Server Setup (Ted Nugent) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: jdj Subject: Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 19:30:11 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: With what I say next, I mean to give no > offense, nor take any: What is the group's general impression of the > NetGear four port wireless router and its companion 'PCMCIA-like' card > to go in the laptop? Good? Bad? Total Crap? I am lucky to get about > 50-75 feet *reliably*. I just remembered, I do have *two* cordless > phones also plugged in which are 900 mhz units, and they get me about a > half block away from home with no trouble. Might *they* be causing > interference with the wireless router? PAT] I would say the combo is near-total crap. The router just does not have the power to reach downstairs. Not reliably. 802.11b is on 2400MHz. No interference problems. For inexpensive, you might try Linksys, except the BEWF11S4 model router, which dies if spoken to even a little crossly. The WRTG54 seems to be reliable. Customer support is not. I think they've done away with it but have not got round to removing it from their website. I have never, ever got a response from them--for anything at all. With the Linksys I have I get a good link from 1/4mile or so away even going 55. After encountering bad interference on 2400MHz, I dumped my really expensive cordless system and got an expensive 900MHz Engenius. The phone interference is gone but I'm afraid I'm now interfering with half the town.(evil grin) But fair is fair: There is a lot of wifi interference from the city, the cops, the Safeway's and all the wireless telecommuters in town. So we're even. Besides, it's all Part15. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: One of our computer stores here in > town (Computer Generation) is also the Radio Shack dealer, and he > stocks 802.11b stuff. What would *you* suggest I do for replacement > stuff if anything? PAT] Personally, being miserly, I would go for a Linksys 802.11G router for B back-compatibility, such as a WRT54 with Linux. I have a BEFW11S4v4 and it has a habit of failing if spoken to crossly or if a broken windows client tries to connect. Linksys support is limited to whatever you can get from the website, though. I have never got a response from anyone there. Not even a salesperson. Add to that a gain antenna, such as a 6dB desktop stick, placed up high. This antenna would replace one of the two router antennae. I picked a $25.00 Hawking desktop blade and hung it from the ceiling. With this I can reach a PCMCIA card in the car the next street over through insulated (with foil) stucco walls on channel 11. Using the MA401 PC card in the car, that's around 150 feet. If that is not enough then using a PCMCIA card with a separate antenna will help. I remember Windows all too well (shudder). Since I got free of it's grip my hair has grown back. Mostly. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 23:56:43 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when Patrick Townson wrote: > Or is there any way I can make it sort of directional using the > rubber ducky thing? I don't care if it gets ten miles down the road > or not, but I would like to be able to get around my house entirely > or in the front yard (impossible now.) Any suggestions or ideas? http://www.techtastic.ca/articles/homemade-antenna.html http://www.freeantennas.com/ (various designs, including corner reflectors and cardboard/tinfoil parabolic reflectors). These homebrew antennas work with 2.4GHz cordless phone base stations, too. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I've been experimenting a little tonight with a tinfoil parabolic reflector. Not a lot of success thus far, but a little bit better. I will look at the other pages you mentioned also. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:55:52 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 02:55:18 +0000, Brian Inglis wrote: > fOn 25 Sep 2004 19:39:25 -0700 in comp.dcom.telecom, > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: >> Never heard that. But I've heard to turn off cell phones while >> refueling the car, and I wonder if that's really necessary. > According to MythBusters, it's not; but opening the car door (e.g. to > get at a ringing cell phone) has caused incidents, either from static > electricity or the lighting circuit (haven't seen a definitive cause). MythBusters did not test this. Their test was something completely different: No vehicles or petrol pumps were involved. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: [snip snip] to the terrorist his > reward with all those virgins in heaven, etc. There are apocrypha -- both Christian and Muslim that suggest that those who make it to Heaven a virgin remain one. It seems if these heroes plan on getting their whoopee after death, they may be in for a little bit of a surprise. The Bible suggests it too but I have not had opportunity to find the same in the Q'ran. > True Patriots would gladly sacrifice their cell phones in the war on > terrorism if it meant one life would be saved. PAT] No big loss. These new phones are junk. Ok, take my (broken) cell phones but I'll keep the radios! ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: 27 Sep 2004 20:14:37 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mark Atwood wrote >> When someone is bearing safety responsibility, it is natural >> to err on the side of caution; and people without any of that >> responsibility might not understand that reasoning. > Ah, the plea of "necessity", mixed with the "precautionary principle". > Too bad things that work worse together. While I agree with your other points, I strongly disagree with this point. Like it or not, we live in a very blame oriented society. If something bad happens, people look for someone to blame, fairly or not. Lives are often unfairly destroyed by that. If by some outside chance, the signals from a modern walkie talkie did interfere with BART train control signals, the BART managers would be hung out to dry. They, like all public officials, are under tremendous pressure to err on the side of caution because any failure would be blamed on them, fairly or not. Further, it is a fact that BART's original train control system was notoriously fickle. I don't know what it is today, but there certainly is a realistic basis to be cautious about stray radio signals. Radio signals are a funny thing. When I use talk on a simple cassette tape recorder, which has no radio in it at all, the playback picks up a radio station on it. I don't know why, but I had a similar problem in another house 35 years ago on a different recorder. How did a tape recorder, without a radio in it, pick up and record radio broadcasts? Somehow it did. It is thus entirely possible that a stray radio transmission close- by could induce unwanted noise in BART's signal controls. Sure it's unlikely, but it would be nuisance or even dangerous if it happened. The radio user wouldn't get blamed, mgmt would. Now, you might argue BART's system should be immune from that and you're right. But BART was designed and built over 30 years ago, and that battle was fought long ago. If I were a BART manager, until I have absolute assurance that such walkie-talkies did not interfere with train control, I would bar them as well. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Sep 2004 03:08:25 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Get an Unlocked Motorola V220 Camera Phone Almost Free Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Unfortunately the phone is 850/900/1900 > Er, tri-band GSM phones are 900/1800/1900. The V220 is supposed to be > a quad-band phone, 850/900/1800/1900. All the GSM there is. I have the phone in my hand, and the Band menu gives me a choice of 850/1900 and 900. If you go to the Motorola web site, you find the Cingular V220 which is 850/900/1900 and the ATTWS V220 which is 850/900/1800/1900. > But then I might be wrong. They might have crippled it for Cingular. > Why they would do that, since Cingular HAS roaming agreements with > European carriers operating on 1800, I have no idea, and I find it > unlikely (but not impossible) that they did. It makes no sense to me, either. The Cingular version has software for AOL Instant Messenger, and the ATTWS has both AOLIM and Yahoo IM. That makes no sense either, since Cingular also has a deal with Yahoo's IM. Other than that they seem the same, same talk time, standby time, etc. To answer a question another user asked, my other SIM is from Orange Switzerland, which does indeed have roaming agreements with Cingular and operates only on 1800. So even though the SIM works in the phone, since the phone won't work on the SIM's home network, I'll need a SIM from a different network (Sunrise, probably) the next time I go to Switzerland. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web ------------------------------ From: Gary Novosielski Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 05:04:44 GMT AES/newspost wrote: > Said it early on, will say it again: The intelligent and effective way > to handle telemarketing would have been legislation requiring that any > and all telemarketing calls be made using Caller ID with a distinctive > and national standardized Area Code, e.g. 311 or something similar, so > that recipients who didn't want to receive such calls could easily > filter and reject them. Say it all you want, it's a bad idea. It's much better to require the companies to provide their REAL phone number in the Caller ID than some fictitious number. You claim that it would be cheap and easy to filter the calls, but you ignore the fact that Caller ID is a rather expensive service. If everyone on the Do Not Call list was forced to subscribe to Caller ID that would be a nice multi-million-dollar windfall for the telcos, but what extra functionality does the customer get, other than paying money? Furthermore, none of the commonly available Caller ID boxes has any feature to filter or reject calls, based on the area code of the number or, for that matter, any other reason. They simply record the number, which is only transmitted AFTER the first ring, so calls can't be rejected even in theory. In contrast, the Do Not Call registry costs the customer nothing to install, has no monthly fees, requires no equipment, and it works. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 01:11:39 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 ; Web Browser 3.0 ; Email API ; Dev Suite 1.0 PalmSource and RIM Announce Release of Email API to Developers - Sep 28, 2004 12:01 AM (BusinessWire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43887990 PalmSource Releases Palm OS Developer Suite 1.0 - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888221 PalmSource Introduces Palm OS Cobalt 6.1 - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888227 PalmSource Introduces PalmSource Installer - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888229 PalmSource Honors Leading Palm OS Developers With Euro Powered Up Awards - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888237 PalmSource Adds Bitfone Corporation, DAT Group and Notify Technology Corporation to the Palm Powered Mobile World Program - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888242 PalmSource Launches New Online Tools for Palm OS User Groups - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888246 PalmSource Releases PalmSource Web Browser 3.0 - Sep 28, 2004 01:00 AM (PR Newswire) - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43888262 ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 22:16:08 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 12:44:51 -0700, Lisa Hancock wrote: > Some other rural areas may not be as rural anymore and facing growth. > Going to ESS over SxS allows a bigger switch to fit in the same size > building, saving expensive building expansion. Another advantage of the modern ESS, such as a 5E, is that the switch can be spread around geographically. The first I saw of this was a 5E used as a PBX. Parts of the switch were in distant buildings. That increased line capacity enormously. In the outskirts of this town, Pa Bell did not lay new cable with the new housing. They just put the line and group cards in the field and used the old telephone pairs for trunks. But things grew beyond the normal capacity and instead of laying more cable or replacing copper with fiber, they took the cheap way out and started using pairgain. Very soon there will be too many new lines even for pairgain. Maybe they'll figure out how to do DS3 over a copper pair by then? The only fiber out here now belongs to ATT Long Lines (or whatever they call it now) and the cable company. Modern switches also can handle multiple exchanges. Where mechanical switches could handle only one exchange or prefix, the modern ESS can take many more. The single 5E in town, where there was once two xbars, handles eight LEC exchanges and at least three CLEC exchanges. A nearby independent had a SxS PBX-type switch up to about seven years ago then cut to an ESS when it became impossible to get parts. I used to call it just to listen to recordings and the translation as it completed the call. Another nearby GTE city had a SxS and I would call into just to hear it translate too. I would dial in with DTMF, which would be translated to pulse + MF, then to pulse. Then there was that Continental Telephone switch that let one hear it hunting for dialtone, translate to and from DTMF, translate a toll number to a routing code, etc. One could tell whether a called number was busy before the connection was completed. I used to wish I lived there. Don't get me started on old switches... ------------------------------ From: William Warren Subject: Re: Need Advice Regarding Communications / Networking Problem Organization: Comcast Online Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 01:40:08 GMT Jonathan wrote in message news:telecom23.449.13@telecom-digest.org: > AES/newspost wrote in message > news:: >> In article , jfklein@shaw.ca >> (Jonathan) wrote: >>> Here is the situation. I work for most of the year in a third world >>> country. [snip] ...dial-up internet access is not a possibility. >>> However, the company does have an office about 18 km away (11 miles) >>> at which they have high speed internet service. >> If there is a clear line of sight from the office to the compound, >> there are commercially available free-space optical or laser >> communications links that could easily bring broadband to the compound >> -- this would be a classic situation for using this technology, in >> fact. >> One of the major companies in the field is TeraBeam: >> [snip] >> Capacities are in the 100 MB range or higher. > I believe there are no geographic obstructions (ie: hills) between the > office and the compound. However, there is a lot of haze and fine sand > in the air. Because of this I don't think it is possible to see one > location when at the other. I am guessing the laser won't work in > these conditions. [snip] According to the Free Space Optics website - http://www.freespaceoptics.com/AirFiber-Physics-FSO.pdf, "The maximum range in realistic atmospheric attenuation situations is about 500 m." So, I suggest you concentrate on a non-optical solution for the distance you must cover. William Warren (Filter noise from my address for direct replies.) ------------------------------ From: nicholasbecker@gmail.com (Ted Nugent) Subject: VOIP Server Setup Date: 27 Sep 2004 18:37:55 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I would like to set up my home computer so it acts as a VOIP Server. I have a home phone line, voice modem, and a broadband connection. I would like to be able to make phone calls through the Internet via my home phone line. Is there any software out there that allows you to do this? ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #453 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Sep 28 17:40:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8SLeth05518; Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:40:55 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:40:55 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409282140.i8SLeth05518@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #454 TELECOM Digest Tue, 28 Sep 2004 17:40:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 454 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Miguel Fornie Named Chairman Of United Telecom Council (eworldwire.com) Auto Attendant Within PBX (omarello) Re: VOIP Server Setup (Kenneth P. Stox) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Robert Bonomi) Re: The Wal-Mart Supremacy (Lisa Hancock) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (DevilsPGD) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Brian Inglis) Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? (Phil Anderton) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (John R. Levine) Re: Out of Area Calls (Truth) Re: Out of Area Calls (Michael A. Covington) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 12:32:11 -0400 Subject: Iberdrola's Fornie Named First Chairman Of United Telecom Council From: distribution@eworldwire.com Iberdrola's Miguel Angel Sanchez Fornie Named First Chairman Of United Telecom Council European Board Of Directors MADRID, SPAIN/EWORLDWIRE/Sep. 28, 2004 --- Miguel Angel Sanchez Fornie, Director de Sistemas de Control y Telecomunicaciones at Iberdrola, headquartered in Madrid, Spain, has been appointed the first Chairman of the European Board of Directors of the United Telecom Council (UTC). UTC is the telecommunications and information technology trade association for electric and gas utilities, water companies, energy companies, and other critical infrastructure companies. Founded in 1948, and until recently known as the Utilities Telecommunications Council, UTC is now an international federation of direct business members and affiliated trade associations representing over 10,000 organizations worldwide. With technology rapidly changing the role of telecommunications in Europe's electric, gas and water utilities and energy companies, many UTC members are using their vast experience in building and managing sophisticated telecommunications networks to enter Europe's new competitive telecoms markets, while continuing to improve support for their core businesses. Many are also facing issues around the introduction of new wireless communications systems and managing internal telecoms businesses in a shared services environment. To meet this need, UTC has created a uniquely European program that will build on UTC's 60 years of experience that will be designed for Europeans, will be uniquely European in focus, and will be led by a European Board of Directors. "I have been actively involved with UTC for years," said Sanchez Fornie. "The information I have received and insights I have gained have proved to be invaluable. I am excited by the prospect of a new UTC program focused on our unique needs as Europeans. Now is the perfect time to do this," he added. "We are indeed fortunate to have someone of Miguel's caliber and commitment to assume the leadership of our European Board," said UTC President/CEO, William R. Moroney, in making the announcement. "At a time when so much is in flux in Europe," he added, "he will bring a needed level of experience and commitment to finding European solutions to the challenges of the day." In addition to announcing Sanchez Fornie's appointment as the Chairman of the UTC European Board of Directors, UTC also made the following announcements: * Peter Moray, formerly of Mason Communications, has been appointed UTC's Director of European Services. Moray is based in the United Kingdom, will work directly with the European Board, and provide a staff focal point for all European members. * UTC has entered into an arrangement with the London-based law firm of Simmons and Simmons to provide regular reports and guidance to the UTC European Board on energy, utility and telecom regulations impacting UTC members throughout Europe. * The full European Board of Directors will be introduced at UTC's Annual European Utility Telecom Conference (EUTC), November 7-10, 2004, in Dublin. For additional information please contact Peter Moray, UTC Director of European Services, at +44 (7710) 057-694 or peter.moray@utc.org. Web sites of special interest with more information are UTC's European web portal (www.europe.utc.org), where more information on Charter European Membership may be found, and the home page for the 2004 European Utility Telecom Conference (www.eutc.utc.org). For more information on Iberdrola, please visit the company web site at www.iberdrola.es. The 2004 European Utility Telecom Conference represents the largest gathering of telecommunications and technology executives from Europe's electric, gas, and water utilities and their technology partners who are focused on exploring the latest telecommunications and data networking business solutions and business opportunities. EUTC 2004 is the only conference devoted to utility telecom issues in Europe that is created by and for European utilities and their technology partners. Session topics will include in-depth case studies, regulatory updates, technology overviews, competitive telecom opportunities, standards updates, and an overview of the European Commission's PLC project, OPERA. Utility CEOs are increasingly asking questions about the telecom service delivery models, how to select and run competitive telecom ventures, how to apply new technologies to increase revenues, and how to secure telecom systems. EUTC 2004 will give answers to all of these questions. About United Telecom Council The United Telecom Council (UTC), formerly known as the Utilities Telecommunications Council is an international trade association whose members own, manage or provide critical telecommunications systems in support of their core business. Founded in 1948 to advocate for the allocation of additional radio spectrum for power utilities, UTC now represents over 10,000 electric, gas, and water utilities, natural gas pipelines and critical infrastructure companies who serve all corners of the world and virtually every community in North America. HTML: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/wr/092804/10643.htm PDF: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/pdf/092804/10643.pdf ONLINE NEWSROOM: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/2880.htm LOGO: http://newsroom.eworldwire.com/2880.htm CONTACT: Peter Moray United Telecom Council Washington, DC 20006 PHONE. 44 (7710) 057-694 EMAIL: peter.moray@utc.org http://www.utc.org Copyright 2004 Eworldwire, All rights reserved. Press Relase Distribution By EWORLDWIRE http://www.eworldwire.com (973)252-6800. ------------------------------ From: omarello1@hotmail.com (omarello) Subject: Auto Attendant Within PBX Date: 27 Sep 2004 23:37:41 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello all, I am trying to write an auto attendant application for the office I am working at. I was wondering what hardware I need, noting that the PBX my company uses is a Sigma DP 50. I thought I could just use a voice modem to do the job but it appears that the PBX is a digital pbx and I cannot do the job with a modem. We are trying to invest in a dialogic card, but I wasn't sure which one satisfies the need, we need one that could work on both a digital and an analog PBX. Any ideas?? Also I know that some pbx's have the auto attendant built in but I don't have access to the pbx and well, we need to have a computer do the job cause we are trying to build another CT application afterwards. Thanks a lot for the help. Omarello ------------------------------ From: Kenneth P. Stox Organization: Imaginary Landscape, LLC. Subject: Re: VOIP Server Setup Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:08:30 GMT Ted Nugent wrote: > I would like to set up my home computer so it acts as a VOIP Server. > I have a home phone line, voice modem, and a broadband connection. I > would like to be able to make phone calls through the Internet via my > home phone line. Is there any software out there that allows you to > do this? http://www.asteriskpbx.com, Free/Open Source. ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 07:02:35 GMT In article , Dave Thompson wrote: > On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 13:51:34 +0000, bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com > (Robert Bonomi) wrote: >> The 80-columns wide 'standard' for a video display is simply a >> reflection of the 80-column width of a standard punch-card. Because, >> in the 'commercial' environment, 'input' software *was* standardized >> at 80 columns -- directly attributable to the punch-card antecedents. >> Many early 'budget' video terminals for home/hobby use did *not* show >> 80 columns -- it was difficult to achieve that many characters across >> a standard TV receiver display -- > Right; see below. (Except they were mostly used locally and called > displays not terminals.) Sorry, there is use that predates the personal computer -- with a modem on a dial-up to a mainframe time-sharing service. 'Terminal' is the correct word. Yeah, it got more common with the 1st generation hobby computers, like SWTPC, and MITS. But there was prior art. :) >> As to 'why punch cards were 80 columns', the answer is probably >> similar to "why railroad tracks are 4' 8-1/2" apart." Standard >> lettering for a _lot_ of business applications is 10 characters/inch. >> A punch-card is 8-1/2" wide. between the cut corner, and the rounded >> edge, you have just over 8" available for the printing on the top. > Although it was entirely possible, and not that rare, to use cards > without printing on them. And for that matter to get cards without the > top-left corner cut -- either none, or a different one -- or with a > colored band across the top, for visual markers or sorting, which > incidentally made printing illegible. The point being that the cards were _designed_ to accommodate that printing, One of the early IBM 'interpreters' (an O49 or was that a sorter?) could only print 40 columns in a pass; had to change the program on the plugboard to get the other 40 columns. And change where the printing fell on the card, so it didn't write over the first 40 characters. :) >> 80 cols was *not* universal, though. Burroughs used a 96-column card, >> that was less than 1/2 the size, side-to-side, of the Hollerith card. >> They would _completely_ fit in a shirt-pocket. > So did IBM, later, around the S/34 or S/36 IIRC, not too long before > punch cards passed out of mainstream usage altogether. >> The 24 rows of text, on the other hand, is directly traceable to the >> timing standards employed in a standard (TV set type ) video display. >> Of the nominal 525 lines in the raster, only 484 are 'visible'. >> [and only half distinguishable due to interlace = 242] > Maybe somewhat less depending on how well the set was built and > maintained, especially in the analog days of yore. (I don't know if > that's why you used the scare quotes.) 484 lines is the 'theoretical maximum' displayable. The video signal is =blanked= for the other 41 line-intervals that make up the frame. One can _never_ see anything on those lines. One may see even less, if the set is configured to 'over-scan' -- then some of the 'visible' lines are lost behind the faceplate of the display. 'Display' type units were usually set to _under-scan_, so the user saw a black border around the entire raster area. This meant that everything possible was visible, even if not at the largest possible size. >> The minimum cell for a character-generator capable of >> clearly displaying upper _and_lower_ case letters is a 7x9 cell. Add >> one 'dot space' between lines, and it takes 10 dots vertically, per >> line of text. With an 'available' space of 242 dots to work with, >> Guess how many lines you can fit in? >> You could go 'upper-case only' -- requiring a >> 5x7 character cell, [perhaps doubled] > But this is anachronistic (mythtaken?). The first "textual" video > displays used in any number were IBM 3270 series, which were either > 12x40 (model 1, cheaper) or 24x80 (model 2). They clearly got the 80 > from cards, but I have no idea where they got the 24 -- possibly so > that, as you also noted, the screen buffer is < 2KC. By "textual" I > mean a raster chargen display as opposed to some earlier vector or > "graphic" displays which could build a few characters out of line > segments, but would flicker unusably for more than a few full lines of > text; and Tektronix storage tubes which solved the flicker problem at > the cost of taking a minute or several to draw each page, up to about > 80x120 (squarish) IIRC, which then could not be edited. A TEK 4019, with the high-res option, had an addressable matrix of 3072x4096 points. It was -not- a 'raster' device, but rather, a pure -vector- one. You didn't turn 'dots' on/off to make lines, you could connect _any_ pair of arbitrary points with an actual straight line. It also had hardware to draw actual circles (or arcs), given a center-point and a radius. In the smallest rendering from the on-board character generator, you got two columns of 80-column text. With about 60 (66?) lines in each column. Makes the quality of today's 'high resolution' 1280x1600 displays look like sh*t. At least when doing technical graphics, like architectural plans, or electronics schematics. The 3270 used "standard TV" video circuitry. Slightly tweaked. instead of 525 lines/frame interlaced, it used 262/field lines non-interlaced (equivalent to 524 lines/frame), 60 fields/sec. Of those 262 lines,242 were 'visible', giving a max vertical resolution of 242 dots. This allowed the use of 'commodity' components for the CRT and the sweep circuitry. As well as allowing for maintenance with 'standard' diagnostic and troubleshooting gear. The 3270 was a 'smart' terminal -- necessitated by IBM's "block mode" architecture -- and used 16 bits per displayed character. 1 byte for the character itself, and one byte for the 'attributes'. things like 'bright', 'blank', 'input', 'protected', etc. Thus 12x80 was all you could get with _one_ 2k RAM for video memory. The 3270 was engineered from day one to be a 24x80 display. The model 1 displayed a (manufactured) blank line between each line of 'real' text. > IBM was followed, closely in time, and I believe in numbers, by DEC's > VT50, VT52, and later VT100, which were also 24x80 standard; some > models had options for different sizes. (I think VT05 also but don't > recall for sure.) A number of third-party manufacturers also followed > 24x80 -- LearSiegler, Beehive, and PerkinElmer spring to mind, but I > know there were more I've forgotten. *LOTS* of em. Look in the 'termcap' file on any UNIX box -- the stock file includes entries for well over 100 types of terminals. Hazeltine, and Televideo were a couple of the other 'big boys'. > In addition to the third-party > clones of IBM which of course had to.) All of these were custom > designed and built video circuitry which could use whatever lines and > dots they chose, and never (AFAIK) used interlace. In particular some > of the later IBMs (3276/8) that I used fairly extensively had really > beautiful video, much crisper than you could get on a normal TV and > looking more like a good (and expensive!) laboratory oscilloscope -- > or a good computer (digital) or HD monitor of today. (Although the > systems those terminals connected to might be a different story. ) > In many cases they were actually 25 lines -- 24 data and one reserved > for terminal status, operation, and configuration. Virtually _everything_ up to the 'MDA' for the IBM PC used standard TV-type video raster circuitry. Tweaked slightly to eliminate the interlace, resulting in 242 visible lines out of 262 intervals. 60 Hz refresh. The video _signal_ circuit was nearly universally a higher bandwidth than a stock TV. Necessary to get 'crisp' rendering of 80 characters across the display. 40 characters was 'iffy' in TV video bandwidth. The 3276/8 was a VGA-class display. > It was over a decade later when hobbyist computers like Apple, Altair, > Imsai, Cromemco, Ohio Scientific wanted to use cheaply available > consumer TVs that the NTSC limits of about 240 lines usable per field Yes, and no. *Manufacturing* (including maintenance/repair/calibration) economies dictated the use of standard tubes and sweep-circuit componentry. > and 400-some dots usable per line in the standard video bandwidth of > ~4MHz became an issue, and yes 24x80 was pushing it and often less and > often only uppercase 5x7 or 5x9 was used. Building higher-bandwidth (well, within reason :) video amps is relatively cheap. which is all that is necessary to get crisp 80 col (or even 132 col) display, even at 'standard' sweep rates. 'TV video bandwidth' was an issue only when trying to use a 'consumer grade' TV device as the display output. even back in the 60's-70's, 'commercial grade' video monitors had response bandwidths well above 10mhz. more than sufficient for 'crisp' 80-col upper-lower display. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: The Wal-Mart Supremacy Date: 28 Sep 2004 08:23:24 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com John David Galt wrote > First off, it is a well established fact that most people prefer the > freedom and convenience-they've-already-paid-for of driving, and > always will drive, even if you force them into "transit oriented > developments" and make driving as big a pain as you possibly can. > Portland proves this. Something to think about: Newsradio 1010wins.com reported (AP) a study by the Rand Corp that people who live in suburban sprawl are more likely to report chronic health problems like high blood pressure, arthitis, headaches, and breathing difficulties than residents of more compact cities. This was because people in cities walk more than people in sprawling suburbs. For the full story see: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SPRAWL_HEALTH?SITE=1010WINS&SECTION=HEALTH&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT Another issue of low density spread-out housing and commerce is the lower efficiency of running utility lines, since individual lines must be run in separate ducts or poles to each separate building. Years ago, the phone company charged suburban customers 20% more of the basic service charge because of this. To this day, there is still a price differential, but it represents a much lower percentage. Our suburban water rates -- for which we get very hard water -- are several times as high as the nearby big city water rates; despite the city govt having constant problems with corruption and incompetence. Despite all that, the big city manages to deliver water and take sewage much more cheaply than suburban private and municipal facilities are able to do. Perhaps economies of scale play a role -- the city water plants, tanks, and resevoirs are huge facilities. There certainly may be some attractive aspects to low density development, but there are just as certainly many costs to go along with it. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Instead of debating the merits or demerits of an urban versus a (sub)urban lifestyle, where in fact much of the suburban lifestyle is dictated by its big city neighbor, give some thought to an (ex)urban lifestyle. Independence is one such example. People have often times asked me 'what big city are you part of?' and the answer, frankly is 'none'. Tulsa, Oklahoma is the nearest 'big city', and it is 80 miles south of us. For cellular phone purposes and some other commercial enterprises, we are part of the 'Tulsa Market'. Wichita, KS is 110 miles northwest of us; Topeka, KS, our state capitol is a hundred plus miles north of us, and the KCMO metro area (which we tend to think of as sort of a foreign place) is 250 miles north of us. Southeast Kansas is a *very* rural area. With our population of eight thousand people, we are considered 'big town' to the tiny villages around us, who seem to be defined as 'Independence rural'. All those places get their water from us, their fire protection and (what little they need of it) their police services. So what 'big cities' get, or demand in the way of services, we have to make do for ourselves. But we do pretty well, minus the big city government corruption and politics. PAT] ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Organization: EasyNews, UseNet made Easy! Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 06:10:40 GMT In message pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) wrote: > One thing that does occur to me -- security. Maybe I don't want someone > on the flight being able to call in the plane's exact position to > someone on the ground. I seem to remember that the maximum groundspeed > that terrestrial GPSes would work at was reduced at some point (I can > for a fact say that my old unit works beautifully up to at least > 500mph); maybe this is the reason. * Maybe ... But you are allowed to have a GPS, just not to use it -- I doubt terrorists on the plane are going to forget about their plans and leave their GPS turned off. To the book depository! -- Homer ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:22:36 GMT From: Brian Inglis Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Reply-To: Brian.Inglis@SystematicSW.ab.ca Organization: Systematic Software On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:55:52 -0700 in comp.dcom.telecom, jdj wrote: > On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 02:55:18 +0000, Brian Inglis wrote: >> fOn 25 Sep 2004 19:39:25 -0700 in comp.dcom.telecom, >> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: >>> Never heard that. But I've heard to turn off cell phones while >>> refueling the car, and I wonder if that's really necessary. >> According to MythBusters, it's not; but opening the car door (e.g. to >> get at a ringing cell phone) has caused incidents, either from static >> electricity or the lighting circuit (haven't seen a definitive cause). > MythBusters did not test this. Their test was something completely > different: No vehicles or petrol pumps were involved. They attempted to cause ignition/explosion of gasoline vapour by calling a cell phone. Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada Brian.Inglis@CSi.com (Brian[dot]Inglis{at}SystematicSW[dot]ab[dot]ca) fake address use address above to reply ------------------------------ From: Phil Anderton Subject: Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 21:05:57 +0200 Organization: Peoples' Front of Judaea Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > wrote: >> ISUP does have mechanisms for end to end signalling, but in normal use >> it's almost exclusively link by link signalling, and for that all you >> need is OPC+DPC+CIC. > You know, I hear that from time to time. But aside from the PAM > (Pass-Along-Message) which is so loosely defined by the standard that > it is unclear whether or not it could actually be used, I'm at a loss > as to just what these "mechanisms for end to end signaling" are. It's been many years since I last looked at the specs, but I was thinking of the end-to-end method indicator which can be used to inform the other end which mechanisms (pass along and/or SCCP) are available. > I had occasion to try to generate and send PAM messages in a test > environment a few years ago. It is difficult, to say the least, to > understand exactly what should be in them: one reading of the standard > suggests that it should be a complete encapsulated ISUP message, with > addresses and all. Now, _that_ begs the question "how do I know what > address to put in the inner message, since I don't know the address of > the terminating-end switch?" There are many similar issues. Well I've never seen the pass along method used in anger, but I'm pretty sure the PAM doesn't contain an MTP envelope, just the ISUP message itself. > The Nortel DMS switch documentation describes one very obscure > DMS-only feature that is evidently implemented using PAMs; but as of > the time I last studied this, if that feature actually works at all, > that's the only environment in which it would. > Can you give me better examples of end-to-end signaling in ISUP? I'd > love to have some. How about CCBS? That uses a TCAP/SCCP connection, so clearly the end switches must somehow exchange addresses and yes, some kind of call reference. I'm afraid I don't know/remember the details, but I have seen CCBS working successfully across network boundaries (GSM to ISDN). Phil It's perfectly ordinary banter, Squiffy. Bally Jerry...pranged his kite right in the how's yer father...hairy blighter, dicky-birdied, feathered back on his Sammy, took a waspy, flipped over on his Betty Harper's and caught his can in the Bertie. ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Date: 28 Sep 2004 16:04:17 -0400 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > The single 5E in town, where there was once two xbars, handles eight > LEC exchanges and at least three CLEC exchanges. Really? I've heard of Bell handling switching for tiny independents (VZ North for Naushon Island, for example), but I've never heard of a LEC selling switching to a CLEC. ------------------------------ From: Truth Organization: http://www.truthaboutwar.com Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 15:45:53 GMT >> However, once in a while, I get calls that are "out of area" with no >> phone number shown. >> My question is -- is there a way to block these from ever getting to >> the phone unless the caller IDs themselves? > Yes, if your phone company offers "call intercept." > Such callers hear a message that their call has been intercepted and > they must identify themselves. They are put on hold and you hear a > distinctive ring as well as see "call intercept" on your CID. This no longer works. Telemarketers display numbers like 555-555-5555 and then they get through, or they just say "this is an urgent message, please pick up" and then your phone rings anyway. What this service does, is make it difficult for friends and family trying to get through to you many times. If you can't see how wrong it is for the phone company to sell phone lines to telemarketers, then sell you some service that is supposed to block their calls, then you need to stand back and take a look at the whole picture. How can you even have a service like this, and national do not call lists unless the majority of people don't like to get telemarketing calls? So why not just make telemarketing ILLEGAL instead of allowing the problem, then trying to use duct tape to fix the problem you allowed to happen? Why not make murder legal, then just sell bullet proof windows and clothes to everyone? Because it makes more sense to make murder illegal, and not have everyone else have to wear bullet proof clothes all the time. THINK ... it causes many questions to be answered. >> "There are some exemptions, for example, as you might expect, >> telephone companies can still call you to solicit you and so can banks >> and credit card companies," Cohen said. Also still allowed to call >> are: charities, insurance companies and politicians." > What does the law say about when you ask a charity to stop calling and > they refuse? They say YOU go and get all sorts of information, like charity name, place of business address, and all sorts of things these telemarketers refuse to give you when you ask, so you are screwed. You are supposed to take all this info and sue the company. Not something most people are willing to take the time and effort to do. And the telemarketers know this. Laws only protect the criminals, never the victims. > The Texas Paralyzed Veterans keeps calling asking for > donations. I have called their office, spoken to a supervisor, and > explcitly asked that my number be removed from their call list. They > always promise, but three or four times a week I continue to receive > calls from them. Of course. The other funny part is how Veterans of a superpower country need to ask and beg for donations because the government doesn't take care of them. You can always tell how good a country is by how well they take care of their veterans! > I had the campaign of a major party presidential candidate (the one I > support over the other) continue to call asking for a $75 donation. They don't need any money. They get FREE publicity every single day on the news media. They don't have to spend one penny and they would still be the top two recognized candidates. The ONLY ones that need money, are the other parties that the press refuse to mention at all. > I kindly asked they remove me but I kept getting calls. I finally told > them, "If you call me one more time I will donate $75 to your opponent and > vote for him in November." The calls immediately stopped. I would've > done it too. You know how this works. You say they stopped, then after you say that, they start calling again. This doesn't work. The type of people that can live with themselves calling and bothering people in their homes, are the type of people that get enjoyment in calling people who beg for you to stop calling them. The more you beg for them to stop, the more they will call you over other people. This is their whole life. The only way to deal with law breakers is to play them on their own level. >> Placing your number on the National Do Not Call Registry will stop >> most, but not all, telemarketing calls. You may still receive calls >> from political organizations, charities, telephone surveyors or >> companies with which you have an existing business relationship. > And there, Mr Falsehood, you have the ONLY exceptions. You don't even realize you just helped prove my point, do you? Of course not. What good is the do not call list if all these thousands of companies can still call you? Go sit down and think about that for a while. THEN, add all the companies that don't care about the law or the do not call list. You know, the ones when you tell to stop calling you, continue to call you even more? Go put your head back in the sand and keep repeating to yourself everything your government preaches to you. > Said it early on, will say it again: The intelligent and effective way > to handle telemarketing would have been legislation requiring that any > and all telemarketing calls be made using Caller ID with a distinctive > and national standardized Area Code, e.g. 311 or something similar, so > that recipients who didn't want to receive such calls could easily > filter and reject them. No, again that is like allowing people to break into your house and steal stuff, so long as they have to wear a bright orange suit when doing so. The ONLY way to solve the problem of telemarketing, is to make telemarketing illegal and not allowed under any situation. > What First Amendment concerns are there in me telling other people > (with the assistance of the government) how they may or may not use my > property to annoy me? My phone was not installed for their benefit; > free speech belongs to those who hire their own hall. Funny thing is, when a telemarketer calls, you are not even allowed free speech in your own home, because if you use offensive language, they will get outraged and demand you not use that language when speaking to them. They entered YOUR home and are telling you that you can't say what you want in your OWN HOME! Free speech only applies to the criminal, not to the victim. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, teleco is required as a common carrier to provide service to every qualified applicant. 'Qualified applicant' is defined under the tariff as any person or organzation who has demonstrated an ability and willingness to pay for the service. What do you want telco to do, ask you upon your application for service what you intend to talk about on the phone? Then if you state that you intend to sell things, refuse to give you the service? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 09:23:23 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) Gary Novosielski wrote in message news:telecom23.453.6@telecom-digest.org: > It's much better to require the companies to provide their REAL phone > number in the Caller ID than some fictitious number. Agreed. What's wrong with honesty? But it would be better yet to ban telemarketing altogether. The telephone is not a broadcast medium. Does *anybody* actually *want* to receive telemarketing calls? The do-not-call list is based on the fiction that not everybody wants telemarketers blocked. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Apparently some people *do* wish to recieve those phone calls. Apparently enough money is made from tele- marketing phone calls that an entire science has been developed around it, as to location (telemarketers prefer a 'bland' midwestern English speaker, preferably a white person so that the telemarketer's speech and accent patterns do not get them off 'on the wrong foot' to start with.) No southern accents, no east-coast accents, no 'black speech patterns' allowed. The telemarketers feel their job is to work with and make sales regardless of the prejudice possible in the person they are speaking with. A telemarketer, to be successful, does not have five seconds to waste on a person who is (even more than usual) unlikely to purchase from them because a (name your ethnic prejudice) called them. And you cannot ban telemarketing totally, even if everyone wanted to be listed on the 'do not call list'. Any qualified applicant for a phone is entitled to have one and you cannot ask what the person intends to talk about on the telephone before allowing them to have an instrument. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #454 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Sep 29 11:57:42 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8TFvg213594; Wed, 29 Sep 2004 11:57:42 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 11:57:42 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409291557.i8TFvg213594@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #455 TELECOM Digest Wed, 29 Sep 2004 11:56:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 455 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson 3Com Unveils New Wireless Switch Products; Large-Scale, Secure (Solomon) Hackers Target Microsoft's JPEG Flaw (Monty Solomon) Calls to 711 (Deaf Message Service) Are Being Blocked (Jim Willis) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (jdj) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Al Gillis) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Scott Dorsey) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (Tony P.) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (Fred Goldstein) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (jdj) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? (Ariel Burbaickij) Re: What's Lurking In Your PC? (Scott Dorsey) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:59:35 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: 3Com Unveils New Wireless Switch Products for Large-Scale, Secure 3Com Unveils New Wireless Switch Products for Large-Scale, Secure Enterprise Wireless Deployments MARLBOROUGH, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sept. 28, 2004-- 3Com Provides More Details on Blueprint for Integrating Wired and Wireless Networks; Interoperability Allows Enterprise Customers to Choose Best-of-Breed Wireless Deployments 3Com Corporation (Nasdaq: COMS) today announced product details of its new wireless switch solutions for enterprise customers. As part of 3Com's enterprise wireless "blueprint" and forming a complete enterprise wireless offering, the new 3Com(R) wireless switch solutions include an enterprise-class wireless switch, a large enterprise wireless controller, mobility system software, mobility management software and new managed access points (APs). These products combine together to provide higher levels of wireless security and mobility, simplified and centralized management of complex wireless LAN environments, higher network availability, fast roaming with quality of service (QoS) and class of service (CoS), standards-based deployment flexibility, and "pay as you grow" network scalability. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43898916 ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 00:03:06 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Hackers Target Microsoft's JPEG Flaw NEW YORK (AP) -- In a harbinger of security threats to come, hackers have exploited a newly announced flaw in Microsoft Corp. programs and begun circulating malicious code hidden in images that use the popular JPEG format. Software tools to create the malicious images began appearing last month, and this week security experts saw images employing them posted on adult-oriented Usenet newsgroups. To get the malicious code, a visitor must download the image and view it using Microsoft's Windows Explorer software, said Oliver Friedrichs, senior manager with Symantec Security Response. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43917559 ------------------------------ Reply-To: Jim Willis From: Jim Willis Subject: Calls to 711 (Deaf Message Service) Are Being Blocked Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 23:56:40 -0400 I have read the digest off and on over the years and I have searched the archives and don't see this question right off. A deaf person moved into a care facility and they asked me to see what was up when they could not get the relay service. They pay $20.00 monthly for phone service that goes through a PBX/CENTREX -- (Dial 9 before number you are calling) Long distance is ok -- you will be billed for it as an incidental on your bill. If you dial 9-711 the call does not complete. All other long distance and local calls and toll free calls complete. Is this a common programming bug on PBX/CENTREX ? Has anyone run into this kind of thing before in the USA or CANADA ? Kind regards, Jim Willis - jwillis@drlogick.com ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:52:55 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:22:36 +0000, Brian Inglis wrote: > On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 18:55:52 -0700 in comp.dcom.telecom, jdj > wrote: >> On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 02:55:18 +0000, Brian Inglis wrote: >>> fOn 25 Sep 2004 19:39:25 -0700 in comp.dcom.telecom, >>> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: >>>> Never heard that. But I've heard to turn off cell phones while >>>> refueling the car, and I wonder if that's really necessary. >>> According to MythBusters, it's not; but opening the car door (e.g. to >>> get at a ringing cell phone) has caused incidents, either from static >>> electricity or the lighting circuit (haven't seen a definitive cause). >> MythBusters did not test this. Their test was something completely >> different: No vehicles or petrol pumps were involved. > They attempted to cause ignition/explosion of gasoline vapour by calling > a cell phone. Exactly. ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:23:27 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com > [TEELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Much snippage, then...) > to the terrorist his reward with all those virgins in heaven, etc. Oh! I thought it was lots of Virginians in heaven! I feel a lot better about it now! ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: 29 Sep 2004 10:00:26 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Lisa Hancock wrote: > Years ago airlines wouldn't allow psgrs to use their transistor radios > onboard because it interfered with their navigation equipment. I > never understood how just listening to a radio could interfere with > other equipment, but this was a common standard restriction. I don't > know if it still applies today. It does. With FM radios it is a particularly serious problem, because of the way the superhet design works. The radio's front end has a local oscillator which operates either 10.7 MHz above or below the FM band. It mixes the adjustable local oscillator with the radio signal to form a difference frequency at 10.7 MHz which then goes into an intermediate frequency fixed receiver chain at 10.7 MHz. This means you get a lot of junk slightly above and slightly below the FM band floating around. And right above the FM band are the aircraft navigation frequencies, and then slightly farther up the VHF aircraft comm frequencies. Even a slight possibility of interference with these is a serious issue. Older cheap radios would leak a lot of LO signal and trash. Newer radios tend to use an IC front end that has somewhat less leakage just because the power level of the LO and mixer stage is so much less. > As to the claim BART radios were "special" years ago, there is > definitely truth to that. BART's original train control system > had many problems, including a train that ignored a stop signal > and flew off at a terminal into the parking lot. Whether silencing > radio receivers would make a difference I don't know, but it is a > fact BART had serious system problems and may have been very sensitive > about any perceived risk of interference, justified or not. BART had enough serious control system problems that radios were the least of their possible worries. But it's possible they may at one time have forbidden the use of two-way radios on board while they were trying to figure the problems out. It sounds to me just like a police officer who was trying to do his job but without any real understanding of the actual policy or the risks involved. But to be honest, I don't know the policy either. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Organization: ATCC Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 21:40:10 GMT In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > Stanley Cline wrote: >> The places where one would expect to find the last steps (Alaska bush >> country, small independents in general, etc.) actually went digital >> quite early on, largely because of things like environmental concerns >> (Redcom's MDX series switches, popular in extremely remote areas, are >> specifically built with harsh environments in mind) and human resource >> needs and in part because small independents' generally higher USF >> receipts compared to Bells and large indeps allowed for earlier >> conversion to digital. > What I was told that the superior remote maintenance facility of ESS > vs. electro mechanical was a big factor. AFAIK, when changing a > number or services for a customer, an office visit by a craftsman is > needed on electro mechanical to reroute wires from the distributing > frame. However, on ESS, that is all done electronically. Also, SxS > requires periodic maintenance since it is mechanical moving parts; ESS > does not. When a craftsman has to drive a considerable distance to > service something like that, the savings are significant. > Some other rural areas may not be as rural anymore and facing growth. > Going to ESS over SxS allows a bigger switch to fit in the same size > building, saving expensive building expansion. I wonder -- how often do the reed relays on the #1ESS need to be replaced? They are technically a mechanical device. We didn't get true digital until the #4ESS tandem and then the #5ESS gave us pure digital switch fabric for POTS services. Interestingly a properly configured #5ESS can also be a tandem too, as can the DMS switches by Nortel. In article , jdj@now.here says... > On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 12:44:51 -0700, Lisa Hancock wrote: >> Some other rural areas may not be as rural anymore and facing growth. >> Going to ESS over SxS allows a bigger switch to fit in the same size >> building, saving expensive building expansion. > Another advantage of the modern ESS, such as a 5E, is that the switch can > be spread around geographically. > The first I saw of this was a 5E used as a PBX. Parts of the switch were > in distant buildings. That increased line capacity enormously. > In the outskirts of this town, Pa Bell did not lay new cable with the > new housing. They just put the line and group cards in the field and > used the old telephone pairs for trunks. But things grew beyond the > normal capacity and instead of laying more cable or replacing copper > with fiber, they took the cheap way out and started using > pairgain. Very soon there will be too many new lines even for > pairgain. Maybe they'll figure out how to do DS3 over a copper pair by > then? > The only fiber out here now belongs to ATT Long Lines (or whatever > they call it now) and the cable company. > Modern switches also can handle multiple exchanges. Where mechanical > switches could handle only one exchange or prefix, the modern ESS can > take many more. The single 5E in town, where there was once two xbars, > handles eight LEC exchanges and at least three CLEC exchanges. Right now PRVDRIWADS2, a Northern Telecom DMS-100 here in Providence has 51 exchanges that it handles. It is also the access tandem for most of the surrounding communities. > Another nearby GTE city had a SxS and I would call into just to hear > it translate too. I would dial in with DTMF, which would be translated > to pulse + MF, then to pulse. Then there was that Continental > Telephone switch that let one hear it hunting for dialtone, translate > to and from DTMF, translate a toll number to a routing code, etc. One > could tell whether a called number was busy before the connection was > completed. I used to wish I lived there. > Don't get me started on old switches ... I remember when the Pawtucket, RI CO was on #5Xbar. That was a noisy beast. You could hear it doing everything. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 18:43:27 -0400 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? At 9/28/2004 05:40 PM, John Levine wrote: aside: John's picture ran large in today's Boston Globe! >> The single 5E in town, where there was once two xbars, handles eight >> LEC exchanges and at least three CLEC exchanges. > Really? I've heard of Bell handling switching for tiny independents > (VZ North for Naushon Island, for example), but I've never heard of a > LEC selling switching to a CLEC. I suppose this aspect of local competition isn't that well known, but indeed the way many competitive programs, including MCI's The Neighborhood, work is by using ILEC switching. This is called UNE Platform, when the ILEC provides the CLEC with all of the basic telephone service, at cost-based wholesale rates. Because the CLEC, not the ILEC, is the carrier of record (they're merely outsourcing components to the ILEC, albeit all of them), the CLEC gets the Switched Access revenue from the long distance providers. That's why it's so critical to nationwide long distance plans! And because local usage is on a cost, not tariff, basis, high "zone" and local charges don't apply -- so a UNE-P CLEC can afford to sell flat-rate local service in New York City, with no zone charges to the suburbs. UNE Platform began when the Democratic-majority FCC that first implemented the Telecom Act interpreted it to require incumbents to provide, as unbundled network elements, all of the elements used to provide Plain Old Telephone Service, as well as Centrex service. (Voice mail and DSL were not included.) This was challenged in court but the Supreme Court in 1998 upheld it. Thus the network elements included the local loop, the local switch, "shared" interoffice transport between the local switch and other switches in the local calling area, tandem switching, signaling, and operator service. So a lot of CLECs have set up shop to sell this. It has both good and bad aspects, depending perhaps on how you view them! UNEs are priced at a cost-based rate (a complex formula called Total Element Long Run Incremental Cost), without regard to ILEC tariff rates. So where ILEC margins are highest, the CLEC can sell UNE-P at a good margin and still undercut the ILEC. This annoys the ILECs to no end, though I think it potentially has the benefit of forcing the ILECs -- and their regulators -- to set their own prices closer to cost. UNE-P also lets a small CLEC sell service in places where they have too few customers to install any facilities of their own. (Without UNE-P, you can't break even as a facilities-based CLEC without a lot of lines in a give wire center. Too much common cost per CO.) So it brings competition to the sticks. But it isn't "true" competition, in the sense of using separate capital plant. It's physically a form of resale, and the ILECs don't like it. The current FCC chairman, Michael Powell considers that latter detail to be absolutely determinative, and he has resolved to kill UNE-P. It's still being fought out. Already, unbundled local switching is being limited to "retail", rather than "enterprise", in many areas, with a maximum of four lines per end user. That kills the UNE-P Centrex and PBX trunk (ISDN PRI and other T1) business. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This system -- UNE-P -- is what our local telco, Prairie Stream Communications does. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:57:42 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Tue, 28 Sep 2004 16:04:17 -0400, John R. Levine wrote: >> The single 5E in town, where there was once two xbars, handles eight >> LEC exchanges and at least three CLEC exchanges. > Really? I've heard of Bell handling switching for tiny independents (VZ > North for Naushon Island, for example), but I've never heard of a LEC > selling switching to a CLEC. Sorry, I should have clarified that it only handles routing for CLEC customers. No Bell wants a CLEC to use their switch. ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 28 Sep 2004 20:36:50 EDT Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? In a message dated Mon, 27 Sep 2004 05:10:01 GMT Dave Thompson writes: > On Mon, 20 Sep 2004 13:51:34 +0000, bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com > (Robert Bonomi) wrote: >> The 80-columns wide 'standard' for a video display is simply a >> reflection of the 80-column width of a standard punch-card. Because, >> in the 'commercial' environment, 'input' software *was* standardized >> at 80 columns -- directly attributable to the punch-card antecedents. >> Many early 'budget' video terminals for home/hobby use did *not* show >> 80 columns -- it was difficult to achieve that many characters across >> a standard TV receiver display -- > Right; see below. (Except they were mostly used locally and called > displays not terminals.) >> As to 'why punch cards were 80 columns', the answer is probably >> similar to "why railroad tracks are 4' 8-1/2" apart." Standard >> lettering for a _lot_ of business applications is 10 characters/inch. >> A punch-card is 8-1/2" wide. between the cut corner, and the rounded >> edge, you have just over 8" available for the printing on the >> top. Those who remember teletypewriter circuits, including TWX and Telex, will no doubt recognize: A QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG'S BACK 1234567890 XX SENDING which among, other things, tested whether the TTY was correctly set for 80 columns and that the 80th column was not jammed. (Note that THE and A can be interchanged, but one must be THE and the other A.) (This test also determined that all characters of the alphabet were printing and that the shift-unshift function was working correctly.) The teletypewriter was in existence for several decades before computers, and its punched-tape technology was also well established. It was an ideal input-output device before punched cards and CRT displays took over. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: ariel.burbaickij@gmail.com (Ariel Burbaickij) Subject: Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? Date: 29 Sep 2004 01:33:01 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) wrote in message news:: > In article , Ariel Burbaickij > wrote: > > tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) wrote in message > news:: >> Excuse me but I do not see hop by hop nature as the main hurdle for >> defining unique call id. One obvious solution would be to include some >> number unique to the originating switch (its pointcode?) plus gmt plus >> some random value. > It's not a "hurdle", it's the reason there's no _need for_ a unique > call ID: because there is already a unique tuple identifying any call, > for the duration of that call: OPC, DPC, TCIC. Between any pair of switchs (on one leg) -- sure. How about the whole path? OPC/DPC can be reused in the national plane and CIC surely also. So unfortunately I would say even so they do identify one leg of call setup pretty unambigiously, this is not a replacement for end-to-end unique identifier. > This tuple is different between any pair of switches in the call > path, but because the standard makes very clear the ordering of the > messages (and message reordering is severely restricted) and the > transitions in the call state machine you can nonetheless follow a > call from A to Z through the network, using OPC, DPC, TCIC for every > pair of switches involved. Yes. You can do it without any doubt and standard SS7 diagnostic tools can do it also. But in my opinion they out of necessity utilize some kind oh heuristic that maybe gives you 99.9% of calls right but what about 0.01% one does care about most? I do not see any mecahnism in current ISUP that is 100% relaible replacement for call ref id. > I said current because it is present in B-ISUP very well. > Standard SS7 diagnostic tools, in fact, do exactly this. As I pointed > out in my earlier message, the treatment of the SLS field in most > national variants is intended, in point of fact, to make it easier to > catch the right messages for any call even when debugging with an > extremely simplistic protocol analyzer -- or even by hand (believe me, > I've done it). >> Not always ISUP is actually hop-by-hop as you surely know. ISUP over >> SCCP will give you end-to-end nature. > That depends what meaning, exactly, you put to "end-to-end". In > practice, even when run over SCCP, ISUP signaling is necessarily > logically hop-by-hop with the hops corresponding to the hops in the > actual voice path -- as it has to be, because *the trunks must be > allocated hop by hop* and that is exactly what ISUP does. Even if you > are running ISUP over SCCP, except in extraordinarily simple networks > (in other words, *not real world networks*) the calling party's end > office switch cannot know _a priori_ the entire path the call will > take through the network even if it could know the address of the > called party's end-office switch; so trunk signalling _can only_ > proceed hop-by-hop, which is what it does. Terribly sorry about it but I do not see the fact that path must be set hop-by-hop (as it must be set almost everywhere) as the reason for preclusion of call ref id tag in the setup message. >> Sure, for one link. What about debbuging which involves several >> switches. How are you going to guess which messages belong toghether >> in such an environment? > This is easy, and it's done all the time. You get into the links > between the switches in the call path and you find the messages in > ascending time order that have the right calling and called party ID > and that are in the right state in the call state machine (for > example, IAM and RLC will cascade through the network in an obvious > way). There are a few -- very few -- corner cases where things can > get a little tricky, but in practice the order of trunk allocation on > all major-vendor switches guarantees that you don't see them. > This is not rocket science. Telco personnel do it all the time, in > busy networks. Students in Telcordia protocol classes do it _by > hand_, which is tedious but entirely possible. Yes, I have done it myself and know that it works in the majority of the cases. Once again, are you sure that this mechanism always works relaibly? By reliable I mean something you can present in the court as the evidence should it be necessary. > Most good SS7 protocol analyzers do it automatically, for what it's > worth. Even the old HP sets that are often used as teaching tools > have features intended to help with this. I assure you, it works. > In practice, one very quickly zeroes in on a particular hop in the > call path when diagnosing SS7 or trunk troubles; so really, very > little time is spent trying to chasx calls end-to-end anyway. > You mention "ISUP over ISUP" as an example of end-to-end ISUP > signalling. With the exception of the incompletely-specified > pass-along message (PAM) that I referred to before, I'm not entirely > sure I know what you mean. Can you give me more details? It was not me, it was Phil ;-). I have never worked with PAM so I cannot say anything about it. I told about ISUP-over-SCCP only. > One thing that bears remembering about ISUP is that when it was > designed, compact encoding of messages was a major concern -- there > was serious grumbling already about the link upgrades that would be > required in order to handle the increases in message size compared to > the original CCIS that it replaced. Another thing to keep in mind is > that later protocols in the same protocol suite have much more in > common with computer data protocols of the mid 1980s (e.g. extensive > use of ASN.1 encoding) than with ISUP, which is really best understood > as a slight tweak of the rather ugly result of tearing CCIS apart into > two (or did I mean three? ;-)) layers for standardization. So > niceties that one expects from other protocols, e.g. an end-to-end > transaction ID, aren't likely to be there unless they're really > needed; and it's not tremendously surprising to me that in this case, > the judgment was that that feature was not. Well, the question is: was ISUP something like gap stopper or was it designed for years to come. If it was decided to upgrade despite all the grumbling I would try to do it right the first time (actually it was not first time at all), so that further upgrades are at least less painful. So to summarize: I still find the fact that ISUP does not have call ref id at least as very pity let us hope that this will not become essential short-coming under some circumstances. With Best Regards, Ariel Burbaickij > Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: What's Lurking In Your PC? Date: 29 Sep 2004 10:16:23 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Monty Solomon wrote: > Because it's so new and still evolving, many computer users don't > understand spyware. Here's a quick tutorial to bring you up to date on > this insidious problem. > http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_40/b3902115_mz070.htm Although this article does briefly mention the advantage of going to a less popular browser, it neglects to mention that this is almost exclusively a problem related to IE, and it has entirely to do with hooks built into IE to allow remote execution. From Microsoft's standpoint, this is a feature and not a bug. Eliminating IE eliminates the problem. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #455 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Sep 29 22:05:50 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8U25o818476; Wed, 29 Sep 2004 22:05:50 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 22:05:50 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409300205.i8U25o818476@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #456 TELECOM Digest Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:57:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 456 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Judge Rules Against Patriot Act Provision (Lisa Minter) Paper Tape Technology was What is the Name of #? (AES/newspost) Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? (Thor Lancelot Simon) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Lisa Hancock) Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device (jdj) Re: Movies/Documentaries That Feature Crossbar, Panel, SxS (S Dorsey) Re: Out of Area Calls (Truth) Terminals and 80 Column Cards (Julian Thomas) Re: Out of Area Calls (T. Sean Weintz) Touch Tone Decoders, Cell Phone Detectors, Jammers, More (007) Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? (John McHarry) Cheap Prepaid Online Phone Cards For Sale (IDPCphonecards) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lisa Minter Subject: Judge Rules Against Patriot Act Provision Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 20:35:57 EDT U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero, in the first decision against a surveillance portion of the act, ruled for the American Civil Liberties Union in its challenge against what it called "unchecked power" by the FBI to demand confidential customer records from communication companies, such as Internet service providers or telephone companies. Marrero, stating that "democracy abhors undue secrecy," found that the law violates constitutional prohibitions against unreasonable searches. He said it also violated free speech rights by barring those who received FBI demands from disclosing they had to turn over records. Because of this gag order, the ACLU initially had to file its suit against the Department of Justice under seal to avoid penalties for violation of the surveillance laws. Although the ACLU's suit was filed on behalf of AOL, TerraWorld and other internet service providers the ruling could apply to other entities that have received FBI secretive subpoenas, known as national security letters. The ACLU said that the Patriot Act provision was worded so broadly that it could effectively be used to obtain the names of customers of Web sites such as Amazon.com or eBay, or a political organization's membership list, or even the names of sources that a journalist has contacted by e-mail. "This is a landmark victory against the Ashcroft Justice Department's misguided attempt to intrude into the lives of innocent Americans in the name of national security," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero. "Even now, some in Congress are trying to pass additional intrusive law enforcement powers. This decision should put a halt to those efforts," he said. PATRIOT ACT He said the suit was one of the ACLU's legal battles to block certain sections of the Patriot Act that went "too far, too fast." The FBI has had power to issue national security letters demanding customers records from communication companies since 1986. These letters do not require court supervision, but the FBI could at first only seek such private information if the subject was suspected of being a foreign spy. In 1993, Congress expanded the powers further to include people who communicated with suspected spies or terrorists. But a section of the Patriot Act -- a controversial law the Bush administration pushed through Congress after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to help it battle terrorism -- gave the FBI even more power to obtain information through these letters. In his ruling, Marrero prohibited the Department of Justice and the FBI from issuing the national security letters, but delayed enforcement of his judgment pending an expected appeal by the government. The Department of Justice said it was reviewing the ruling. The decision is the latest blow to the Bush administration's anti-terrorism policies. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that terror suspects being held in U.S. facilities like Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, can use the American judicial system to challenge their confinement. That ruling was a defeat for the president's assertion of sweeping powers to hold "enemy combatants" indefinitely after the Sept. 11 attacks. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters News and Yahoo News. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 10:07:17 -0700 In article , Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > The teletypewriter was in existence for several decades before > computers, and its punched-tape technology was also well established. > It was an ideal input-output device before punched cards and CRT > displays took over. Very similar punched tape technology was also used -- probably still is widely used -- in those traffic counting units that use a rubber hose tacked down across the roadway and a box by the side of the road. A classic clockwork mechanism inside the box (spring-wound or battery powered? -- I don't know, but I'd guess the former) slowly winds a paper tape from one reel to another. Each time a car runs over the hose the resulting pneumatic impulse pushes an arm which punches a hole in the paper. As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read and count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by the fact that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and set up a company ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm room which received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time on Aiken's early Harvard University computer facility, and sent back printed reports to traffic engineers all over the company. (Above is written from memory, so take cum grano salid, but I think it's basically a correct story -- corrections welcome.) ------------------------------ From: tls@panix.com (Thor Lancelot Simon) Subject: Re: No Call Ref ID in SS7/C7 Why? Date: 29 Sep 2004 13:18:52 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. Reply-To: tls@rek.tjls.com In article , Ariel Burbaickij wrote: >> This is not rocket science. Telco personnel do it all the time, in >> busy networks. Students in Telcordia protocol classes do it _by >> hand_, which is tedious but entirely possible. > Yes, I have done it myself and know that it works in the majority > of the cases. Once again, are you sure that this mechanism always > works relaibly? By reliable I mean something you can present in the > court as the evidence should it be necessary. Given that time in telco networks is extremely tightly controlled, and that the order of trunk allocation on the switches at each hop is also known _a priori_ I think the answer is "yes". But that does not mean that it is necessarily _easy_. > Well, the question is: was ISUP something like gap stopper > or was it designed for years to come. If it was decided > to upgrade despite all the grumbling I would try to do > it right the first time (actually it was not first time > at all), so that further upgrades are at least less > painful. What I think we disagree about here is whether or not your definition of "right" was the one in use by the people who designed the protocol. In fact, I think their definition of "right" had a lot more to do with conserving link bandwidth than it did to do with the ease of following a call end-to-end through the network using diagnostic tools; and by _that_ definition, I think it is entirely understandable that they omitted the feature that by your definition is necessary in order to "do it right". Thor Lancelot Simon tls@rek.tjls.com But as he knew no bad language, he had called him all the names of common objects that he could think of, and had screamed: "You lamp! You towel! You plate!" and so on. --Sigmund Freud ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: 29 Sep 2004 10:54:10 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote > Sorry, there is use that predates the personal computer -- with a > modem on a dial-up to a mainframe time-sharing service. 'Terminal' is > the correct word. Correct, they were called terminals, a word that included Teletypes that were used in the early days. > The point being that the cards were _designed_ to accommodate that > printing, One of the early IBM 'interpreters' (an O49 or was that a > sorter?) could only print 40 columns in a pass; had to change the > program on the plugboard to get the other 40 columns. And change > where the printing fell on the card, so it didn't write over the first > 40 characters. :) I'm not certain, but back in 1928 when the modern punch card was invented by IBM, I don't think there was any kind of printing mechanism for cards. Remember, initially the cards were numeric only and the upper field (the "zone") was used only for control characters. I suspect the uppermost space was just a margin to give a punched card strength or a place for handwritten notes. In the 1930s IBM developed a more sophisticated line of tab machines. Included was an printing alpha key punch. The 1948 line of interpreters were NOT intended to print one character per column -- the width of the printed character was slightly wider than a column. Only 60 characters would fit on the top and 20 would have to go on the next line. In practice, the interpreters were programmed by the plug panel to print selected fields in certain places, and could do so all over the card. They could also print a big number sideways on the side edge so the card could be filed vertically. Also, most IBM lines of keypunches included printing and non printing models, and the non-printers were cheaper. BTW, one advtg of the punched card system was that it was easy and cheap to have "on-line" file access. They'd just punch out and interpret and sort a deck of cards containing key data. Clerks would receive phone requests and pull up the cards in a tube file. Changes would be processed through the tab system. It should be noted that until the 1980s, the above was cheaper and faster than developing a "modern" CICS solution on a real computer. >> So did IBM, later, around the S/34 or S/36 IIRC, not too long before >> punch cards passed out of mainstream usage altogether. IBM's System/32,34,36 did not use cards at all. The mini cards were used on the IBM System/3. As an aside, the language used on IBM's System/3x through the present day AS/400 is RPG, which dates back to 1960 and the IBM 1401. The language was intended to mimic the wiring of a tab machine control panel so tab operators could make the transition to programming. > The 3270 was a 'smart' terminal -- necessitated by IBM's "block mode" > architecture -- and used 16 bits per displayed character. 1 byte for > the character itself, and one byte for the 'attributes'. things like > 'bright', 'blank', 'input', 'protected', etc. It's funny how today we call 3270-type terminals (still in very wide use) "dumb terminals" when in fact they were not. A Teletype was more "dumb" since it basically transmitted or received upon a keystroke, while the 3270 network had buffers, could erase and insert characters, and as mentioned had different appearances. [There were advanced Teletypes that could do some fancy stuff. Some 3270 functions were handled by the controller unit that was required and supported a group of terminals.] The Bell System had a heck of a lot of private lines serving business data communications. A big difference was that IBM liked synchornous transmission while many other computers, including common PC transmissions used asynchronous transmission. I don't know which is superior. We had 3rd party imitation IBM 3270 units but IMHO they weren't as good as real IBM units. However, they were a lot cheaper. I don't see any "dumb terminals" anymore, it seems almost everyone now has a PC with an emulation program/card imitating a 3270 terminal. In the early days of PCs, I refused to use a PC with a CGA screen as a 3270 terminal since it was so fuzzy compared to a real terminal. (Actually, I shied away from CGA PCs altogether.) Over time, the cost of 3270-type units and controllers dropped quite a bit in price while modem speed increased. ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Help Needed With Wireless NetGear 802.11b Device Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 11:56:37 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com I found the link for opening the MA401: http://www.nodomainname.co.uk/ma401/ma401.htm The Intersil link at the bottom is dead. Another page with interesting wireless links: http://www.nodomainname.co.uk/cantenna/cantenna.htm They filed themselves with the MSDS collection somehow. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: While that link is very good, and quite illustrative, it involves something I do not do these days; use solder and microscopic parts. I just get too nervous and likely botch things up. For me, its *not* like before my brain aneurysm. However I did see something I want to ask the experts about: When you first 'set up' the base unit (combination router and wireless stuff) you are asked "what country will this be used in?" and you get a drop down menu of choices including USA, Canada, a few countries in Europe, Asia, etc. Then whichever choice you make, you are warned it had better be the right choice. I wondered why NetGear is so picky about your choice of countries. Surely it would not have to do with the frequency the base was operating on, would it? More than likely it would be the *power you were permitted to use* while on the same frequencies, wouldn't it? So if I moved to Asia I would be entitled legally to use that setting on the 'set up' menu of the router. To test it, and see what I could expect when I move to Asia, I tried setting the base on that spot and it did seem to have a wee, little bit more reliability when I sat in my parlor rocking chair or went out in the back yard. That 'Asia setting' along with the tin foil reflector I built *seems to* make it less cranky and contrary. Advice from the experts, please? PAT] ------------------------------ From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) Subject: Re: Movies/Documentaries That Feature Crossbar, Panel, or SxS? Date: 29 Sep 2004 15:59:30 -0400 Organization: Former users of Netcom shell (1989-2000) Gene S. Berkowitz wrote: >In article , jdj@now.here says: >> On Fri, 24 Sep 2004 23:14:25 -0700, vu huong wrote: >>> Hello, >>> Does anyone know of any movies or documentaries that show footage of old >>> telco technology? >> "Three Days of the Condor" with Robert Redford. The Condor enters a >> switch to call up the CIA and diddles the switch to keep his call from >> being traced. The CIA scene shows automated tracing in use. >> There are some espionage-thriller B movies from the 1950's with footage >> where the G-men enter switches and get the techs to trace calls. Nothing >> but loud background music can be heard in those scenes. > THX-1138, which is now in theatrical re-release, contains a scene with > Robert Duvall wandering through a very large switch. As well as a nice video post suite. Can anyone tell me what the scenes of the computer Alpha, in the film Alphaville really are? They look like the remains of a half-destroyed switch. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ From: Truth Organization: http://www.xxx.com Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:00:00 GMT >> It's much better to require the companies to provide their REAL phone >> number in the Caller ID than some fictitious number. > Agreed. What's wrong with honesty? Look, up to recently, all telemarketers came in as "out of area" or "unknown caller" (same thing depending on your caller ID box manufacturer). You could purchase caller ID boxes or phones that would not allow any calls with this marker through, could forward them to digital messages telling them not to call back, divert them to fax noises, SIT tones, whatever. Now that the government makes them identify with numbers, all telemarketers come through differently and you can't block them before they call, because you don't know what number they will be using. At least making a new caller ID code (private, out of area, TELEMARKETER) that all phone companies would be forced to have telemarketers lines send out, would make them again easy to intercept with home caller ID equipment. > But it would be better yet to ban telemarketing altogether. NOW you got it! > The telephone is not a broadcast medium. Correct. I can chose not to listen to any broadcasts I find offensive or don't want to listen to, yet the government is more concerned with getting Howard Stern off the air, then stopping telemarketers, which just makes no sense at all. Howard Stern doesn't bother you in your home when you are eating, can't wake you up when you are sleeping by ringing your phone, he can only enter your home if you take the time to tune him in on a radio and choose to hear him. Telemarketers can invade your home without your permission, without you WANTING to hear them and they are hundreds of times more offensive. Yet which does the government try to stop? > Does *anybody* actually *want* to receive telemarketing calls? Of course not. The record amount of people registering on the DO NOT CALL lists proved this. Yet instead of having a list in which the one or two people who like to receive calls could be put on for telemarketers to have permission to call, the government does it backwards and makes the majority of people have to register, then after all that, makes most telemarketers EXEMPT from the DO NOT CALL law anyway, making the entire thing a big joke and enormous waste of time and tax dollars. > The do-not-call list is based on the fiction that not everybody > wants telemarketers blocked. Let's make a DO NOT MURDER list so that everyone that doesn't want to be murdered could register for, then allow murderers to go ahead and kill anyone that is not on the list. What we do, is just make murder illegal, and forget about a ridiculous list. Let's do the same for telemarketing. ------------------------------ From: Julian Thomas Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:24:11 -0400 Subject: Terminals and 80 Column Cards Pat - please obscure my email address as usual - thanks. Robert Bonomi wrote about Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? on Tue, 28 Sep 2004 07:02:35 GMT > The point being that the cards were _designed_ to accommodate that > printing, One of the early IBM 'interpreters' (an O49 or was that a > sorter?) could only print 40 columns in a pass; had to change the > program on the plugboard to get the other 40 columns. And change where > the printing fell on the card, so it didn't write over the first 40 > characters. :) Close (I'm not sure about the machine model number), but it actually printed 60 columns in a pass. Only machine that fed 12 edge first face up. Julian Thomas: http://jt-mj.net In the beautiful Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State! Boardmember of POSSI.org - Phoenix OS/2 Society, Inc http://www.possi.org "I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam!" - C. Babbage ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Out of Area Calls Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 17:54:45 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: However, teleco is required as a common > carrier to provide service to every qualified applicant. 'Qualified > applicant' is defined under the tariff as any person or organization > who has demonstrated an ability and willingness to pay for the service. > What do you want telco to do, ask you upon your application for > service what you intend to talk about on the phone? Then if you state > that you intend to sell things, refuse to give you the service? PAT] If they pass a law making telemarketing illegal, of course they must: Simply change the tariff definition of 'qualified applicant" from those who have demonstrated an ability to pay to those who can pay and will not use the service for illegal purposes. And yes, have the person who takes the new service orders ask if they intend to use the line for telemarketing, and deny service if they answer "yes". Better yet, make them sign an acceptable use policy as ISP's do. ------------------------------ From: info@infopro.tv (007) Subject: Touch Tone Decoders, Cell Phone Detectors, Jammers, etc. Date: 29 Sep 2004 15:20:06 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Portable Touch-Tone Decorder. Decodes And Displays Telephone Number From Tape Recorded Calls. The new hand-held 16 digit touch-tone Decorder with built-in microphone, decodes touch-tones from any on-air source, scanner or cassette tape. The resulting tape from your Telephone Recording System has many touch-tones that sometimes need to be identified. With the Portable Decorder, simply play the tape ... and the numbers will immediately appear on the LCD. What makes this decoder unique is the built-in microphone. Any "on- the-air" tone will be immediately decoded and displayed on the LCD. No connections are necessary! Should you need to decode via patch cord, an input is provided. Powered by a 9-volt battery. (not included). Dimensions: 6" x 2 1/4" x 1". We accept paypal, Money Gram and United States postal money orders. Free shipping in USA. Contact me by email if you want a free price quote. You don't have to be 007 to own what I have to offer. To see everything I offer please visit both of my web stores. The Pros Investigative Information Service And Spy Gadgets. http://www.ioffer.com/selling/infopros The Pros Spy Gadgets Shop. http://www.ioffer.com/selling/infopro ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Any Old Mechanical Systems Still in Use in the US? Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 23:09:16 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Tony P. wrote: > I wonder -- how often do the reed relays on the #1ESS need to be > replaced? They are technically a mechanical device. Yes. It is architecturaly a computer driven crossbar, although the reed switches replace the traditional crosspoints. > We didn't get true digital until the #4ESS tandem and then the #5ESS > gave us pure digital switch fabric for POTS services. Interestingly a > properly configured #5ESS can also be a tandem too, as can the DMS > switches by Nortel. The Nortel DMS-10 and DMS-100 preceded at least the 5ESS. I think the DMS-200, the tandem, preceded the 4ESS, but I am not certain. ------------------------------ From: IDPCphonecards@hotmail.com (IDPCphonecards) Subject: Cheap Prepaid Online Phone Cards For Sale Date: 29 Sep 2004 17:41:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com We have Cheap Prepaid Phone cards for sale $4.6 for $5 phone cards: www.idpcphonecards.com ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #456 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 30 15:26:10 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8UJQAj26794; Thu, 30 Sep 2004 15:26:10 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 15:26:10 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409301926.i8UJQAj26794@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #457 TELECOM Digest Thu, 30 Sep 2004 15:26:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 457 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson U.S. Secret Search Ruling Appeal Likely (Lisa Minter) Federal Judge Strikes Down Part of PATRIOT Act (Monty Solomon) CDT Urges FCC to Stand By Approval of TiVo (Monty Solomon) RadioSHARK - AM/FM Radio with Time Shift Recording (Monty Solomon) Fireman Claims Radio Failure Nearly Killed Him (Lisa Hancock) Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay As You Go" Economy Cell Phone? (Ava Cohen) Need Help With External Port (Leander Vanhulle) Lucent DSL MAX 20 Packet Loss (Daniel Eyholzer) Cell Phone Incident Results in DC Metro Arrest (Michael Quinn) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Lisa Hancock) Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? (John Levine) Re: Calls to 711 (Deaf Message Service) Are Being Blocked (Steve Sobol) Re: Calls to 711 (Deaf Message Service) Are Being Blocked (Al Gillis) Is CDT Now Open to All Sales Pitches? (Joseph) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lisa Minter Subject: U.S. Secret Search Ruling Appeal Likely Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 11:07:33 EDT By LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press Writer NEW YORK - In a blow to the Justice Department's post-Sept. 11 powers, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero on Wednesday struck down the provision that let the FBI gather phone and Web customer records but barred service providers from ever disclosing the search took place. Ashcroft, in the Netherlands to meet with European Union officials, said he would study the decision upon returning to Washington, but "it's almost a certainty it will be appealed." "We believe the act to be completely consistent with the United States Constitution," he told reporters. While Marrero called national security of "paramount value" and said the government "must be empowered to respond promptly and effectively" to threats, he also called personal security equal in importance and "especially prized in our system of justice." The decision is the second time a judge has ruled unconstitutional part of the Patriot Act, a package of prosecution and surveillance tools passed shortly after the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001. In January, a federal judge in Los Angeles struck down a section of the act that made it a crime to give "expert advice or assistance" to groups designated foreign terrorist organizations. The judge said the language was too vague, threatening First and Fifth Amendment rights. American Civil Liberties Union attorney Jameel Jaffer called the latest ruling a "landmark victory, and "a wholesale refutation of excessive government secrecy and unchecked executive power." Marrero said his ruling blocks the government from issuing new requests for phone and Internet records "in this or any other case," but delayed the injunction by 90 days to allow time for an appeal. The judge said the law violates the Fourth Amendment because it bars or deters any judicial challenge to the government searches, and violates the First Amendment because its permanent ban on disclosure is a prior restraint on speech. He noted that the Supreme Court recently said that a "state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens." "Sometimes a right, once extinguished, may be gone for good," Marrero wrote. Marrero issued his decision in favor of an Internet access firm identified in his 120-page ruling simply as "John Doe." He had agreed to keep the firm's identity secret to protect the FBI probe that led to the search request. President Bush has been pushing Congress to renew all of the Patriot Act before it expires next year, arguing that it is one of law enforcement's best tools in preventing another catastrophic terrorist attack. The law has become a symbol to civil libertarians who say the Bush administration has gone too far in expanding security powers at the expense of privacy rights and individual freedom. In a footnote to his ruling, Marrero cited words he had written two years ago in another case to warn that courts must apply "particular vigilance to safeguard against excess committed in the name of expediency." "The Sept. 11 cases will challenge the judiciary to do Sept. 11 justice, to rise to the moment with wisdom equal to the task, its judgments worthy of the large dimensions that define the best Sept. 11 brought out of the rest of American society." Doe v. Ashcroft ruling at: http://www.nysd.uscourts.gov/RulingsOfInterest.htm Justice Department: http://www.usdoj.gov *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Associated Press and Yahoo News. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 00:36:06 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Federal Judge Strikes Down Part of PATRIOT Act From: info@cdt.org List-Archive: Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 14:42:47 -0400 (EDT) A federal judge today found unconstitutional a part of the USA PATRIOT Act that allows federal law enforcement officials to obtain confidential financial records without a court order or other safeguards. The lawsuit, brought by the ACLU, challenged the use of so-called "National Security Letters," a type of administrative subpoena power that was expanded by the USA PATRIOT Act. September 29, 2004 For more on the USA PATRIOT Act: http://www.cdt.org/security/010911response.shtml For more information on the ACLU lawsuit [offsite]: http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=15543&c=262 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 12:42:23 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: CDT Urges FCC to Stand By Approval of TiVo http://www.cdt.org/headlines/headline.php?hid=189 In a test of the flexibility of new copy protections for digital television, CDT has filed in support of the FCC's decision to approve TiVo and other Internet-based technologies under its "broadcast flag" rules. Those rules require DTV receivers sold after July 2005 to include FCC-approved technologies to protect broadcasts from broad redistribution online. The TiVo decision, now being challenged, is a test of the FCC's commitment to allow secure uses of DTV over the Internet under the new rules. September 29, 2004 * CDT Opposition to Petition for Reconsideration on TiVo, SmartRight [PDF] , September 28, 2004 http://www.cdt.org/copyright/20040928tivo-reply.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 13:33:01 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: RadioSHARK - AM/FM Radio With Time Shift Recording radioSHARK AM/FM Radio with Time Shift Recording http://www.griffintechnology.com/products/radioshark/ ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Fireman Claims Radio Failure Nearly Killed Him Date: 30 Sep 2004 09:16:41 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com The Phila Inqr (www.philly.com) reported 9/30/04 that a city fireman with 23 years of service says his new digital radio failed leaving him trapped in a burning building and severely injured. The city spent $54 million on a new public safety radio system that has more channels and allows all agencies to talk on the same frequency during emergencies. Firefighters have filed steady complaints about the system, which operates on 800 Mhz band. The city is investigating with Motorola. One concern being checked is if cellphones interfere. Motorola did say one emergency feature (that the fireman used) might not always work. They also said they may have been confusion between the encrypted and clear modes. Other news reports said the batteries in police hand held units don't hold a charge and fail during service. Other cities had a similar problem. Suburban public safety departments have also upgraded to digital radios at tremendous cost since all radios, both on vehicles and hand held, must be replaced. Suburban officials have found numerous dead spots. One can't help but wonder if the digital technology being used in new public safety radios is not mature enough for the demanding applications. From news reports, it seems the digital systems are much more likely to have deadspots (just like digital cell phones) than the prior analog systems. Has anyone heard reports from other municipalities about problems with digital radios? ------------------------------ From: avacohen100@yahoo.com (ava cohen) Subject: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: 29 Sep 2004 21:32:48 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I am thinking of getting my 12 year old daughter a pay as you go cell phone in California. Can anyone recommend a "pay as you go" economy cell phone? (like prepaid cards?) I do not want to subscribe to any plans. Which company? How much does the phone and the calls cost? Where is the best place to buy it from? Any help would be highly appreciated. Thanks. Ava ------------------------------ From: LeanderVanhulle@hotmail.com (Leander Vanhulle) Subject: Need Help With External Port Date: 30 Sep 2004 06:24:39 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com My serial port of my laptop is broken and I bought an external serial port on USB. I would like to use this in DOS but all the software only lets you select COM1 to COM4. It works fine under WinXP but not under Dos. Pleas help me ... ------------------------------ From: Daniel Eyholzer Subject: Lucent DSL MAX 20 packet loss Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 16:31:39 +0200 Hi there, We have three Lucent DSL MAX 20 connected to a Cisco switch. There are also some other network devices and a linux box connected to the same switch. If I am pinging to or from one of the three Lucent devices I have packet loss. Pinging from and to the other devices connected to the switch works without any packet loss. The switch and cables have already been replaced. On the switch I see that on the fastethernet interfaces on which these three Lucents are connected, the number of CRCs is constantly increasing. I also noticed, that if there are more active DSL connections on the Lucent DSL device there is more packet loss and more CRCs. There are two SDSL-16 cards in each of the three DSL MAX 20 which allow 32 SDSL connections per device. On one device we have 28 active connections and there is about 4% packet loss. On the second Lucent there are 20 connections and there is about 1% packet loss. On the third Lucent there is no active connection but still 1% packet loss. I have looked at all config options on the Lucents but did not find anything that could solve this packet loss problem. Is there any known hardware problem with this Lucent DSL MAX 20 devices? Could it be a wrong setting on the device configuration? Or what else could cause this problem? Thanks, Daniel ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 09:12:07 -0400 From: Michael Quinn Subject: Cell Phone Incident Results in DC Metro Arrest Apropos of the discussion about the BART officer who reportedly ordered a radio turned off, this report has a somewhat different twist: Between Metro and Cell User, a Disconnect By Lyndsey Layton Washington Post Staff Writer Sakinah Aaron was walking into the bus area at the Wheaton Metro station several weeks ago, talking loudly on her Motorola cell phone. A little too loudly for Officer George Saoutis of the Metro Transit Police. The police officer told Aaron, who is five months pregnant, to lower her voice. She told the officer he had no right to tell her how to speak into her cell phone. Their verbal dispute quickly escalated, and Saoutis grabbed Aaron by the arm and pushed her to the ground. He handcuffed the 23-year-old woman, called for backup and took her to a cell where she was held for three hours before being released to her aunt. She was charged with two misdemeanors: "disorderly manner that disturbed the public peace" and resisting arrest. Those are the facts on which both sides agree. They interpret the events of Sept. 9 very differently. Transit Police and some Metro officials say Saoutis was protecting the peace by removing a woman who had overstepped the boundaries of civil behavior because she was loudly cursing into her phone. They say that cell phones have become just another instrument of loutish behavior in the public space and that they are fighting a dramatic deterioration of manners in the transit system. "We need better enforcement to allow people to know we are serious and want to maintain the high-quality level of the system," said Robert J. Smith, chairman of the Metro board, adding that "ranting youth" have become a plague on the subway. "This isn't Montana. We live in a very dense region, and people are on top of each other all the time." Smith, who refuses to carry a cell phone, said he thinks Metro riders need to use the devices with care. "We wouldn't allow someone to come into the U.S. Capitol Rotunda and shout obscenities into a cell phone," he said. But Aaron and some defenders of free speech say the Transit Police are the ones who overstepped boundaries by making a crime out of conversation and pushing a pregnant woman to her knees. The incident took place out of doors and not in the confines of a rail car or bus, they note. And they point to a string of other incidents, including the July arrest of a 45-year-old woman for chewing a PayDay candy bar and the 2000 arrest of a 12-year-old girl for eating a french fry, that are earning the Transit Police a national reputation as an agency itching to lock up riders. "Technically, the police officer is right, but the result is wrong," said D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1), who represents the city on the Metro board. "How do we prevent minor transgressions escalating into major problems? It's not what any of us want. We don't want pregnant women booked for loud cell phone conversations. We don't want 12-year-old girls in handcuffs for eating a single french fry. Whether it's training or guidance to our officers, we have to do something." Johnny Barnes, executive director of the Washington area chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, called Aaron's arrest "troubling." "There seems to be an unusual attention paid to activities of patrons," Barnes said. "One should be able to ride the Metro and exercise a range of rights without fear of intervention from Metro police." Aaron, who lives in Silver Spring and works as a clerk at the Food and Drug Administration, said she was talking to her fiance on her cell phone as she walked toward the bus bay about 4:45 p.m. Sept. 9 to catch the Route C4 Metrobus. "Our phone conversation had ended," she said. "I'm walking down the stairs and the transit cop said, 'You have to lower your voice, ma'am.' I said, 'You can't tell me how loud I can talk.' He said, 'I can arrest you,' and he grabbed my arm. I said, 'What are you doing? I'm pregnant! Oh, so you want to flex some muscle today?' He grabbed my hand, and we struggled." Aaron acknowledged that she was loud on the phone but said she wasn't cursing and lobbed a profanity only after Saoutis grabbed her. After her release that night, Aaron went to Holy Cross Hospital and was treated in the emergency room for a bruise she said was a result of Saoutis's pushing her to the ground and placing his knee on her upper back. Saoutis, who is about to complete his first year on the job with the Transit Police, was not available for an interview yesterday, according to Deputy Chief Tim Gronau. Gronau said his officer properly enforced the law and arrested Aaron because it was clear she wasn't taking his warning seriously. "We're not either pro or negative cell phones," he said. "The issue is [that] the volume of her conversation, coupled with the language, is not conducive to socially accepted standards of behavior." *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance Washington Post. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: 30 Sep 2004 08:35:14 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com George Mitchell wrote > Lisa Hancock wrote: >> As to the claim BART radios were "special" years ago, there is >> definitely truth to that. BART's original train control system >> had many problems, including a train that ignored a stop signal >> and flew off at a terminal into the parking lot. Let me clarify the above paragraph. By 'radios' I meant the train control system, not the audio communication system. BART uses automated train operation and protection. The speed and stopping of trains is controlled by signals sent to the train from wayside transmitters. A second and critical component of this system is train protection so that one train does not collide with another. BART was an early modern automated train system. The rest of my paragraph is correct. The original BART system had pushed the state of the art and had many problems in practice. [GW continues] > This had nothing to do with radios. The lead car of the train was > receiving a 27-mph signal from the track. The system for trans- > mitting the speed command from the lead car to the rest of the train > was to transmit one of a specified set of audio frequency signals over > a wire bus. However, the crystal in the 27-mph oscillator was cracked > and oscillated at the 72-mph frequency, causing the train to speed up > instead of slow down. The operator was not able to apply the brakes > in time to stop before reaching the end of the track. http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1976/7614/761406.PD My point is that BART depends on wireless communications to transmit speed commands from wayside onto the train AND that BART had many problems with this system. The above example is just one of many problems they had to deal with. Concerning the above problem, I'm surprised that a broken crystal (do crystals even break that easily?) would just so happen to send out a different valid signal. In Bell System signalling, they were very careful to avoid harmonic frequencies or any frequencies as well as pulse coding that could be misinterpreted as something else. Note that Touch Tone signals use two-tones, not just one. This kind of safety design goes back to the 1940s. Likewise, in more traditional railroad signalling, the pulse codes were carefully designed and implemented with very rugged gear to avoid misinterpretation. If a failure occurs, it is interpreted as a stop signal. (BART chose to not use traditional railroad technology.) Anyway, a stray or errant signal could and did cause a BART train wreck. Naturally BART mgmt would be interested in preventing such problems. On other automated rail systems, a positive read of a specific signal is required to proceed, the failure to receive that signal stops the train. As someone else explained, superhet radio receivers retransmit a signal, and this signal happens to interfere with navigation. Well, a radio that is actually transmitting could send out similar signal interference. As to the current issue, walkie-talkies are transmitters, and as such, send out signals obviously stronger than within a receiver's superhet circuits. It is possible that such signals either directly or through distortion/harmonics could interfere with normal train control. While a wreck is unlikely, it could force a train into an emergency stop between stations, which is obviously undesirable. Until such time that modern walkie-talkies would be tested to ensure their signals do not and cannot interfere with train control and train protection, they should not be permitted to be used on BART. The other question about whether this was a single cop's own interpretation or mgmt policy is significant as well. If it is just one cop, that one cop needs to be disciplined and retrained, but mgmt policy need not be changed. ------------------------------ Date: 30 Sep 2004 02:13:33 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read and > count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by the fact > that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and set up a > company ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm room which > received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time on Aiken's early > Harvard University computer facility, and sent back printed reports to > traffic engineers all over the company. Gates and Allen did run Traf-O-Data, but the rest is wrong. Since Bill is 48 years old, when would he have been at Harvard? When was Aiken doing the Mark I through Mark IV? Sheesh. ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Calls to 711 (Deaf Message Service) Are Being Blocked Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 20:06:33 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Jim Willis wrote: > I have read the digest off and on over the years and I have searched the > archives and don't see this question right off. > A deaf person moved into a care facility and they asked me to see what > was up when they could not get the relay service. They pay $20.00 > monthly for phone service that goes through a PBX/CENTREX -- (Dial 9 > before number you are calling) Long distance is ok -- you will be > billed for it as an incidental on your bill. > If you dial 9-711 the call does not complete. All other long distance > and local calls and toll free calls complete. Try 711. If that doesn't work, the managed-care staff needs to get it working. If not ... well, you could possibly file a complaint with the government regarding ADA violations. Maybe. (Just pulling that idea out of my butt; not sure whether or not it'd work.) > Is this a common programming bug on PBX/CENTREX ? Has anyone run into > this kind of thing before in the USA or CANADA ? You can generally program a PBX any way you want to (which is why, for example, on one system you dial 9 to get an outside line and on another you might dial 8, etc). If it's Centrex through a phone company, there is no reason they shouldn't allow 711 and if they don't, they need to be reported to your state's regulatory board/PUC. I'm pretty sure 711 is a requirement these days (though I could definitely be wrong). JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/ Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED) Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids. ------------------------------ From: Al Gillis Subject: Re: Calls to 711 (Deaf Message Service) Are Being Blocked Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:07:31 -0700 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Hi Jim, Failure to complete calls to the 711 Relay service in that area is more than likely a routing problem in the PBX serving the care facility. I find it a little odd, however, that such a place would allow access to 711 services to go for long before they complained bitterly to their maintenance provider (or maybe they don't have one?). The PBX systems I manage all allow access to the 711 and 511 (road conditions in Oregon) services. It's a simple matter of programming! Make 'em fix it! Another (unlikely) possibility is that the care facility may be located where no hard of hearing relay service is available. Al ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Is CDT Now Open to All Sales Pitches? Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 19:12:23 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com Is comp.dcom.telecom now open to anyone who wants to hawk any wares they want? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: No indeed, it is not. There are commercial-oriented telecom groups which allow that, such as Yahoo News Groups (some of them) and various alt newsgroups. The only casual commercial messages allowed in comp.dcom.telecom are those which have a direct relevance to a recent question posed here (for example, how can I find cheap calling cards, or [like the one in this issue] on prepaid cellular service), and my preference on publishing what little I do of those is given to regular participants in c.d.t. who happen to own that type of business or shop, and not just 'anyone' coming along with that type of advertisement. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #457 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 30 18:12:52 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8UMCpt28482; Thu, 30 Sep 2004 18:12:52 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 18:12:52 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409302212.i8UMCpt28482@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #458 TELECOM Digest Thu, 30 Sep 2004 18:12:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 458 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson AT&T Lowers Price on Internet Calling Service (Lisa Minter) 8x8 Announces Availability of Virtual and Toll Free Numbers (VOIP News) AT&T Lowers Price of its Residential VoIP Service (Decker - VOIP News) Wrong Address for 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Net Firms: Don't Tax Internet Calling (Jack Decker - VOIP News) Horribly Inefficent Fixed Line Phone (Sam) Taxing the Tax (Ron Giteck) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Lisa Hancock) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Nick Landsberg) Re: Touch Tone Decoders, Cell Phone Detectors, Jammers (R Normandeau) Re: Cheap Prepaid Online Phone Cards For Sale (Ray Normandeau) Re: Lucent DSL MAX 20 Packet Loss (Walt Howard) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lisa Minter Subject: AT&T Lowers Price on Internet Calling Service Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 12:00:00 EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - AT&T Corp on Thursday on Thursday said it was lowering the price on its CallVantage Internetcalling service by $5 per month, matching the price from several other suppliers. AT&T, which made Internet calling services a priority after announcing its retreat from traditional residential telephone services in July, said the price cut to $29.99 per month was meant to spur demand in advance of the holiday season. Current subscribers will also get the price cut. More than a dozen companies currently offer voice over Internet Protocol, or VOIP, services to U.S. residential customers. Most offer unlimited calling for $30 per month or less, with some as low as $19.95, although their fees do not include the broadband Internet connection that VOIP requires. Comparable plans for traditional service from the dominant U.S. telephone carriers typically cost $60 to $70 per month. While industry experts estimate the current residential VOIP market has less than 1 million subscribers, they expect sharp growth starting in 2005 as large cable companies roll out their VOIP services. The Yankee Group forecasts VOIP services will have 17.5 million residential users by 2008. The growing number of entrants into the VOIP market has some analysts predicting a price war for VOIP services. AT&T had already lowered the price of CallVantage once, and said it will offer the first month free to some new subscribers. Other providers offer free months or limited calling plans for as little as $10 per month. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance Reuters News and Yahoo News. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 11:32:11 -0400 Subject: 8x8 Announces Availability of Virtual and Toll Free Numbers Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-30-2004/0002261941&EDATE= SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- 8x8, Inc. (Nasdaq: EGHT) the Packet8 broadband voice over internet protocol (VoIP) and videophone communications service provider, today announced the availability of several new optional features for its Virtual Office internet-based PBX service for small to medium sized businesses. Effective immediately, Packet8 Virtual Office users can now choose various new services including Virtual Phone Numbers, Toll Free Numbers, and Switchboard Operator Console. Virtual Phone Numbers allow Virtual Office subscribers to provide local inbound telephone numbers from areas outside of their main number or extension DIDs. Subscribers can select Virtual Numbers from all United States area codes Packet8 supports for a small monthly fee of $4.95 per number and a one-time activation fee of $9.95. Adding Virtual Numbers offers benefits such as enabling an enterprise to show a local presence in a geographic area without physically residing there and facilitating a cost-savings local calling capability for an organization's customers or colleagues. The second new Virtual Office service is Toll Free Numbers, an inexpensive way for Virtual Office subscribers to offer clients the ability to contact them at no charge regardless of their location inside the United States or the company's location worldwide. Packet8's Toll Free Service Plan involves a flat monthly fee of $4.95 including 100 minutes of inbound toll-free calls and an industry low of 3.9 cents a minute thereafter for inbound calls. A one time $9.95 activation fee per number applies. Finally, Virtual Office users can now expand the functionality of their system with Switchboard, Virtual Office's Operator Software Console Application, available for $19.95 per month with a $9.95 activation fee. Switchboard improves the efficiency of an operator's call management by providing a receptionist with a graphical overview of the users on the virtual office service and a simple way to manage an organization's telecommunication activity. Switchboard works on a PC in conjunction with the Internet and the Virtual Office telephones. Additionally, Switchboard enables operators to have: -- Direct status view of extension's status: DND, On-line, idle -- Click to call, click to transfer call control -- Direct transfer to extension and voice mail -- Supervised transfers The Packet8 Virtual Office service costs just $39.95 per extension, per month. For initial set-up costs, subscribers pay only $99 for the equipment (special business telephone and broadband adapter), $14.95 for shipping and $39.95 for activation. Full press release at: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/09-30-2004/0002261941&EDATE= How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 12:05:09 -0400 Subject: AT&T Lowers Price of its Residential VoIP Service Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com Comment: I wonder if this means that anyone who orders today (September 30) would still get the introductory price of $19.99 for the first six months, but after that would only have to pay the new rate of $29.99/month (rather than the $34.99 still shown on their web site). Personally I think there are better deals out there than AT&T, for example several VoIP companies offer their "unlimited" service at about $20 or $25 per month. The company I think will be hurt most by this is Vonage, because they presently charge $29.99 per month (plus a $1.50 "regulatory recovery fee" per phone number, making the "real" price $31.49 per month) for their equivalent level of service, so either they will have to lower their price to stay competitive, or risk losing potential customers to AT&T. http://www.att.com/news/item/0,1847,13258,00.html News Release FOR RELEASE THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2004 AT&T Lowers Price of its Residential VoIP Service BEDMINSTER, N.J. -- As part of its continuing efforts to spur growth in emerging technologies, AT&T today announced it is lowering the price of AT&T CallVantageSM Service, its popular residential broadband phone service, from $34.99 to $29.99 per month beginning October 1. In addition, under some offers AT&T will provide the first month of service free to new subscribers who sign up before January 31, 2005. The new $29.99 pricing will be effective for all existing subscribers beginning October 1 and includes unlimited local and long distance calling in the U.S. and to Canada. This offer replaces the well-received introductory promotional offer in the market for the past six months. "Having completed the initial market build-out to support AT&T CallVantage Service, we're now concentrating on expanding our distribution channels through retail and online sales," said Cathy Martine, AT&T senior vice president for Internet Telephony. "Pricing the service for the holiday shopping season fits our expansion strategy and makes AT&T CallVantage Service even more affordable, which is great news for consumers as we give them more of what they want for less. "In fact, we believe that once those consumers evaluate VoIP and compare it to their existing telephone service, they will recognize AT&T CallVantage Service provides more features and savings making it a compelling offer." AT&T CallVantage Service is available to any U.S. consumer and provides a local footprint to 62 percent of the households in America due to its broad penetration in more than 170 markets coast-to-coast. Upon signing up, all that's required to use AT&T CallVantage is a telephone adapter provided by AT&T or its valued retailers, and a broadband connection, which lets consumers talk over high-speed Internet connections instead of traditional circuit-switched phone networks. AT&T CallVantage Service is different than traditional phone services because, through the use of IP-based networks, it can offer customers typical features such as call waiting, three-way calling, and call forwarding, and far more advanced ones as well. Indeed, consumers will get unprecedented convenience, cost savings and control with innovative features including: * "Call Logs," to track incoming and outgoing; "Do Not Disturb," * to receive calls only when wanted; "Locate Me," which rings up * to five phones, all at once, or sequentially; "Voicemail with * eFeatures," to listen to messages from any phone or PC and * forward them to anyone on the Web; "Simple Reach(SM) Number, * which enables AT&T CallVantage Service customers to add up to * nine telephone numbers with area codes anywhere in the country * where AT&T offers residential VoIP service; and "Personal * Conferencing," to set up meetings with up to nine additional * callers. AT&T also recently began shipping a "Home Wiring Do-It-Yourself Guide" with each self-install kit that provides customers step-by-step instructions for connecting the service to multiple home phones to replicate the traditional home calling environment and make the most efficient use of their existing telephone equipment. For those homeowners who prefer that a trained technician perform the work, AT&T has a fee-based inside wiring service to reconfigure existing lines and telephone jacks, install additional jacks if required, and provide limited assistance with service set-up. Continuing its market momentum, AT&T has expanded its distribution channel by adding leading retailers Amazon.com, Best Buy and Circuit City to its sales team. To learn more about AT&T CallVantage Service, consumers can visit http://www.CallVantage.com, call 1-866-816-3815, extension 70339, or visit one of these retailers. Full press release at: http://www.att.com/news/item/0,1847,13258,00.html ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 14:17:00 -0400 Subject: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2435843,00.html By John Ingold Denver Post Staff Writer When her infant son started having trouble breathing, a worried Krista Staats rushed to the phone and called 911. A dispatch center in Castle Rock, nearly 40 miles from her Adams County house, took the call, thinking she was calling from a business in Parker. As Staats bounced from dispatch center to dispatch center, trying to find the right people to help her, her baby boy's condition grew worse, and Staats grew more frantic. Finally, 5-month-old Christopher Vasquez stopped breathing, and Staats let out a piercing, terror-filled scream. He died moments later, shortly after an ambulance was dispatched -- a little over four minutes after Staats made her call. Now, Staats has sued her telephone company, Comcast, and two other companies, claiming that because they put the wrong address for her phone number into the 911 system, her son died that day in the spring of 2003. "Because Comcast had my address wrong in the system, I had to watch my son die," she said Wednesday at a news conference. Staats may not be alone in having the 911 problem. Full story at: http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2435843,00.html Additional commentary at BroadbandReports.com: http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/54996 ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 14:11:00 -0400 Subject: Net Firms: Don't Tax Internet Calling Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://news.com.com/Net+firms+Dont+tax+VoIP/2100-7352_3-5389880.html By Declan McCullagh Staff Writer, CNET News.com The largest U.S. Internet phone companies are asking the Internal Revenue Service not to slam them with a "temporary" tax created more than 100 years ago to pay for the Spanish-American War. In a six-page letter to the IRS sent late Wednesday, the companies stressed that fledgling voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services should not be subject to the excise tax that President William McKinley signed into law in 1898. "VoIP is having a profound and beneficial impact on the United States and the world in a way unimaginable in 1898," the letter said, urging the IRS to "refrain from any attempt to extend the excise tax to VoIP services." The letter was sent by the VON Coalition, which represents AT&T, Covad, Intel, Level3, MCI, Microsoft, Pulver.com, Skype and Texas Instruments. Full story at: http://news.com.com/Net+firms+Dont+tax+VoIP/2100-7352_3-5389880.html ------------------------------ From: ymailus@yahoo.com (Sam) Subject: Horribly Inefficent Fixed Line Phone Date: 30 Sep 2004 12:10:49 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hello all, My caller ID phone LCD blanks out when the phone recieves a call, i.e. right when I need it most to determine if i want to take the call or not. Off hook the LCD text is sharp. Through pulling out the phone jack I determined that the LCD & LED are powered from the 4 AAA batteries whilst the ringer and speaker is powered by the phone line. Elsewhere on this group I read that on hook the phone can only take limited power from the line to operate itself, whilst off hook it can take a lot more power. Any ideas what I can do? Turning off the ringer made no difference. I tried putting a switch in line with the batteries so I can enable them only when I go to read the caller ID number but the phone's "brain" needs to have been booted with the help of the batteries prior to the initiation of the call. Any suggestions appreciated (even if to implement them I need to spend more than the phone is worth). Sam [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Have you tried testing or replacing the batteries? Even sometimes batteries claimed to be 'fresh' will not be any good. Try with an entirely new set of four AAA batteries, then allow the phone's "brain" to settle down, and intialize itself, and see what results. I'll bet if you were to test those four AAA batteries in the phone now, you'd find one (or more) of them either dead or very weak. That's happened with me: I got a pack of a dozen AAA batteries from Radio Shack and later on found one of them (supposedly a new, fresh battery) to be totally dead. It did not have the obvious signs of 'leaking' (acid on the side of it), nor was it past the expiration date. It was just dead is all. Since I do not make a habit of testing supposedly 'new' batteries before putting them in the device, I found it out only when the four batteries needed device struggled for a short time to keep up, then went dead. PAT] ------------------------------ From: ron.giteck@state.mn.us (Ron Giteck) Subject: Taxing the Tax Date: 30 Sep 2004 11:07:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Can anyone provide more information on the following thread? I am particularly interested in the Illinois Bell case referred to. Where can I find it? From: Tom Saylor (tom.saylor@spam.free) Subject: Questionable Universal Service Fund Practices This is the only article in this thread View: Original Format Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Date: 2003-07-19 10:17:13 PST RCN is charging the Universal Service Fund (USF) fee not only on state-to-state long distance, but also on the Federal Subscriber Line Charge, the Local Number Portability Charge, and port charges. This amounts to 'taxing the tax'. I have never seen this done before, even by Verizon. USF itself has always been questionable to me do to the fact that it is not clear how much the USF fee goes to the FCC and how much the phone company keeps it for itself, under the guise of another federal charge. But RCN is taking this to another level here by also applying the USF tax to other mandated charges, and local charges at that, not long distance. It was my understanding that USF was to be applied to long distance fees only. In our area, RCN is a CLEC that resells Verizon telephone lines. It also is a competitive cable provider, offering cable TV and high speed Internet via its own cable plant. Unlike former AT&T Cable/Comcast, its telephone service is not via the cable lines, but via reselled Verizon lines. Is taxing the tax for USF permissible? > [TELECOM Digest Editor's (July, 2003) Note: This was happening for > many, many years in Chicago. The old Illinois Bell was putting > 'service charges' on taxes and a state tax on the federal tax. When > they finally got called on the carpet for it and lost it in a court > battle, Illinois Bell wound up having to refund to each customer > something like *two cents* per line for *each month of service* > going back several years. The way they effectively resolved it was > by giving most customers of any long standing credit for a month of > telephone service. PAT] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: (new, present time) Whether or not 'taxing the tax' is permissible depends on who you ask (which lawyer), and whether it is known as a 'tax' or a 'service charge', and how the court chooses to define it. On account of the very miniscule amounts of money involved and the length of time to calculate each damage (if indeed it is found to be unlawful) it is only resolved satisfactorily as a class action lawsuit, i.e. a million or more subscribers times a large number of occurances times some miniscule fraction of a dollar each time, etc. Telco/cableco has attornies they pay for to deal with those things full time. You do not stand a chance in hell of getting any customer service rep (who are the only people at telco/cableco whose job it is to talk to you) to understand what you want or making any changes in policy. You need to find an attorney who specializes in (a) tax laws and (b) communication laws, and advance that person a huge sum of money to take your side on the issue and *possibly* get some changes made. In the Illinois Bell case, telco lost after four or five months in court, but the reason they lost was due to some obscure provision in Illinois law. Administering the class action settlement took another year or so. A similar case involved McDonald's Restaurants in the Chicago area. Chicago (and each of a hundred different suburbs) has its own rate of 'sales tax' as it pertains to food. The several hundred McDonald's establishments in the 'metro Chicago area' -- despite their individual ownership (McDonald's owns *nothing*, you understand, each place is a separate corporation) -- go through an area-wide facility which is in existence to program and maintain the various cash registers in each restaurant. Cash registers programmed for 'Chicago sales tax' are supposed to be used only in Chicago, and cash registers programmed for 'Evanston sales tax' are only supposed to be used in Evanston, or those suburbs which use the same sales tax formula. That's because the clerks, with their educational level are supposed to be able to touch a button with a picture of a Big Mac and announce the total amount of money demanded from the customer. No thinking involved. That's why a McDonald's hamburger in Chicago costs 75 cents, but in Evanston costs 69 cents, because the politicians in Chicago are pirates when it comes to getting taxes, but I digress. So a cash register in one McD goes out of order; the manager calls the local maintainence office and gets a replacement register. The maintainence truck comes around, hauls away the broken down register and installs a refurbished one in its place. But the refurbished one came from Chicago, so when the clerk rings up a hamburger, all he knows is he wants his 75 cents, and with his level of education he does not intend to listen to you arguing about how the same hamburger he sold you yesterday only cost you 69 cents. That's not his problem, despite the fact that you may be a tax lawyer and know the rules backwards and forwards. "All I can tell you is what it says here on the register when I push the buttons with the pictures and numbers for the special meals, etc." So when indeed, a lawyer in the north suburbs tracked down the owners of the '4950 West Dempster Street Corporation' d/b/a 'McDonalds' and sued them over this incorrect tax formula, it wasn't just for the six cents he overpaid on his hamburger, it was a class action suit (the only way to go, actually) with *everyone* who had ever eaten in any McD *anytime* in the Chicago area in the past year named as part of the class. After *his* lawyer (all smart attornies are also represented by counsel) got all the money, everyone else in the class got a free small soft drink who clipped a coupon out of the Chicago Tribune and handed it to the cashier, *before they placed their order*. The people who collected Tribunes out of the garbage cans around town got three or four free small soft drinks, in full and complete settlement against McD. And that is how class action suits go against telco and cableco. If teleco/cableco loses the suit or otherwise gets bored and decides to give up, then the lawyers who started and maintained the class action collect all the money and you get a coupon for a free month of HBO or Showtime or maybe a few long distance calls, **if you were willing to work at it and pursue it from the beginning and find an attorney willing to work along withn you on it.** PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: 30 Sep 2004 09:56:56 -0700 Wesrock@aol.com wrote: > The teletypewriter was in existence for several decades before > computers, and its punched-tape technology was also well established. > It was an ideal input-output device before punched cards and CRT > displays took over. Punched cards as tabulating machine input date from 1890, 15 yrs before the Teletype were invented. Printing tabulating machines date from the 1930s (before that results were read off of dials). From the beginning, computers had two operating styles: one was "on-line" where a person communicated back and forth directly with the computer while it was running. The other was "batch" in which information was 'batched' together and fed in, processed, and the person waited for the output to be printed out in its entirety. Because computers, especially the early ones, were so enormously expensive, on-line access was rarely used since the computer was not doing anything while waiting for the person to enter data. One exception was an early (1939?) Bell Labs relay computer. Many early computers did have limited on-line access, but it was for limited control use only. The ENIAC used IBM punched cards for its I/O. For on-line work, Teletypes, either the actual brand or other electric typewriters, were used. Paper tape had the advtg of preparing data off-line then reading it in at higher speeds. For batch work, punched cards and tabulating machine printers were best suited since they could run at relatively higher speed. IIRC, the Teletypes of the 1950s operated at 7 characters per second. The early IBM tab machines used for I/O back then read at 100 cards or printed lines a minute, 80 columns per card (parallel mode). The parallel mode of card reading and printing gave the tab machines far more speed and throughput. Also, the keypunch machine of the 1950s (the IBM 026) had some programmable features to speed keying productivity and verification to improve accuracy. (A TTY would have to constantly shift between LTRS and FIGS while the 026 would do that automatically). (IBM tab machines of the later 1950s read/printed at 150 lines per minute.) In the early 1960s, "time-sharing" and multi-tasking was developed so that a computer could serve several people at the same time. At that point Teletypes as computer terminals became more common. But until time sharing was developed, Teletypes were not an efficient input- output mechanism for computers. A notable pioneer system was SABRE, the reservation system for American Airlines that used electric typewriters. While conceived in the 1950s, I don't think it entered real service until the early 1960s. A notable early "on-line" system was an IBM/Miltary aircraft tracking system that combined radar and console inputs. It should be noted that this system was extremely expensive and not practical for civilian applications of its time (1950s). In the 1960s, many new mfrs of mini computers chose Teletypes (the brand) as their input/output terminal and designed their systems to work in on-line mode. Around that time Teletype introduced a new line of machines that ran faster at 10 cps and also had a much bigger character set (ASCII instead of Baudot). The mini-computer mfrs used ASCII. Notable mfrs included General Electric (Dartmouth's pioneer BASIC system), Hewlett- Packard, Digital PDP, Data General, and others. While users of these machines tended to really love them, they were limited in their ability to handle high volumes of data. At some point, batch processing on a traditional mainframe was more efficient. The IBM System/360, introduced in the 1960s, was originally oriented toward extremely high volume and fast batch processing, although its original architecture provided for on-line processing, too. IBM on-line applications tended to use IBM's own machines which were modified Selectrics. Early IBM computers and tab machines support Teletypes, but through batch mode. Data sent over a phone or telegraph line would be punched out on paper tape, then read by a translating machine that would punch out cards. In reverse, cards would be copied to paper tape and then transmitted. ------------------------------ From: Nick Landsberg Reply-To: SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:07:07 GMT Lisa Hancock wrote: > bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote >> Sorry, there is use that predates the personal computer -- with a >> modem on a dial-up to a mainframe time-sharing service. 'Terminal' is >> the correct word. > Correct, they were called terminals, a word that included Teletypes > that were used in the early days. >> The point being that the cards were _designed_ to accommodate that >> printing, One of the early IBM 'interpreters' (an O49 or was that a >> sorter?) could only print 40 columns in a pass; had to change the >> program on the plugboard to get the other 40 columns. And change >> where the printing fell on the card, so it didn't write over the first >> 40 characters. :) > I'm not certain, but back in 1928 when the modern punch card was > invented by IBM, I don't think there was any kind of printing > mechanism for cards. Remember, initially the cards were numeric only > and the upper field (the "zone") was used only for control characters. > I suspect the uppermost space was just a margin to give a punched > card strength or a place for handwritten notes. > In the 1930s IBM developed a more sophisticated line of tab machines. > Included was an printing alpha key punch. > The 1948 line of interpreters were NOT intended to print one character > per column -- the width of the printed character was slightly wider > than a column. Only 60 characters would fit on the top and 20 would > have to go on the next line. In practice, the interpreters were > programmed by the plug panel to print selected fields in certain > places, and could do so all over the card. They could also print a > big number sideways on the side edge so the card could be filed > vertically. > Also, most IBM lines of keypunches included printing and non printing > models, and the non-printers were cheaper. > BTW, one advtg of the punched card system was that it was easy and > cheap to have "on-line" file access. They'd just punch out and > interpret and sort a deck of cards containing key data. Clerks would > receive phone requests and pull up the cards in a tube file. Changes > would be processed through the tab system. > It should be noted that until the 1980s, the above was cheaper and > faster than developing a "modern" CICS solution on a real computer. >>> So did IBM, later, around the S/34 or S/36 IIRC, not too long before >>> punch cards passed out of mainstream usage altogether. > IBM's System/32,34,36 did not use cards at all. The mini cards were > used on the IBM System/3. > As an aside, the language used on IBM's System/3x through the present > day AS/400 is RPG, which dates back to 1960 and the IBM 1401. The > language was intended to mimic the wiring of a tab machine control > panel so tab operators could make the transition to programming. >> The 3270 was a 'smart' terminal -- necessitated by IBM's "block mode" >> architecture -- and used 16 bits per displayed character. 1 byte for >> the character itself, and one byte for the 'attributes', things like >> 'bright', 'blank', 'input', 'protected', etc. IIRC, the "attribute byte" only had to get transmitted when the attribute properties changed or when you wanted to jump to a different portion of the screen. The sequence, as I recall was : SBA (Set Buffer Address) ROW, COL, ABYTE, data bytes The ABYTE subset which I recall is displayed/non-displayed, returned/non-returned, alpha, numeric (not mutually exlusive, 2 bits), protected/unprotected, "bright" (or highlighted). Now that's only 6 bits ... what am I missing? You could also get very creative with these fields. At least one implementation that I am aware of used "protected, non-displayed, returned" fields to "hide" data from the user but make it easier on the server machine. For example, a transaction which retrieved a Telephone Co. customer's record would retrieve all the data at once, but use the 3270 as a kind of storage device, hiding the data which didn't need to appear on "page 1" as "protected, non-displayed, returned" so that when the clerk asked for "page 2" all that had to be done on the far end was echo back the data in a different format without taking the hit of a database access. (There was no scroll capability on the 3270's that I recall, so this was a "neat trick" to flip between "pages".) > It's funny how today we call 3270-type terminals (still in very wide > use) "dumb terminals" when in fact they were not. A Teletype was more > "dumb" since it basically transmitted or received upon a keystroke, > while the 3270 network had buffers, could erase and insert characters, > and as mentioned had different appearances. [There were advanced > Teletypes that could do some fancy stuff. Some 3270 functions were > handled by the controller unit that was required and supported a group > of terminals.] Actually, as I recall, the controller was necessary. The 3270's didn't transmit anything until the operator hit the "send" key, and this would be buffered in the "cluster controller." The controller, in turn, would be polled at roughly 2 second intervals by the far end, at which time it would send the data. A controller was theoretically limited to 32 terminals, but we found that 16 was a practical limit for our applications. I never encountered an installation where there was an isolated 3270 without a cluster controller, although I presume this was theoretically possible. > The Bell System had a heck of a lot of private lines serving business > data communications. > A big difference was that IBM liked synchornous transmission while > many other computers, including common PC transmissions used > asynchronous transmission. I don't know which is superior. I don't know either, but from the perspective of private lines (which you mentioned above), the "cluster controller" saved on private-line costs. PL's were expensive, and having only one to handle 16 clerks, rather than 16 PL's or 16 dial-ups, was seen as a cost savings by many customers. Even though the cluster controllers communicated with the host at either 4.8 or 9.6 Kbps, the probability of all 16 clerks hitting send during the same 2-second interval was pretty small. (Interaction with the customer was on the order of 2 minutes). One 9.6 PL made a lot more business sense than 16 300 baud PL's or dial-ups. (At least in those days.) > We had 3rd party imitation IBM 3270 units but IMHO they weren't as > good as real IBM units. However, they were a lot cheaper. I don't > see any "dumb terminals" anymore, it seems almost everyone now has a > PC with an emulation program/card imitating a 3270 terminal. In the > early days of PCs, I refused to use a PC with a CGA screen as a 3270 > terminal since it was so fuzzy compared to a real terminal. > (Actually, I shied away from CGA PCs altogether.) > Over time, the cost of 3270-type units and controllers dropped quite a > bit in price while modem speed increased. Obligatory rant: Ain't it amazing how much *useful* data can be transitted over a 9.6 line when you don't have all those graphics and animations to deal with? "It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious" - A. Bloch ------------------------------ From: FrazNor@gmail.com (rNormandeau) Subject: Re: Touch Tone Decoders, Cell Phone Detectors, Jammers, etc. Date: 30 Sep 2004 10:35:52 -0700 info@infopro.tv (007) wrote in message news:: > Portable Touch-Tone Decorder. Decodes And Displays Telephone Number > From Tape Recorded Calls. The new hand-held 16 digit touch-tone > Decorder with built-in microphone, decodes touch-tones from any > on-air source, scanner or cassette tape. The resulting tape from your > Telephone Recording System has many touch-tones that sometimes need > to be identified. With the Portable Decorder, simply play the tape > ... and the numbers will immediately appear on the LCD. > What makes this decoder unique is the built-in microphone. Any "on- > the-air" tone will be immediately decoded and displayed on the LCD. No > connections are necessary! Should you need to decode via patch cord, > an input is provided. Powered by a 9-volt battery. (not > included). Dimensions: 6" x 2 1/4" x 1". We accept paypal, Money Gram > and United States postal money orders. Free shipping in USA. Contact > me by email if you want a free price quote. Techtoyz had these in a beeper case for $99.00 ------------------------------ From: FrazNor@gmail.com (rNormandeau) Subject: Re: Cheap Prepaid Online Phone Cards For Sale Date: 30 Sep 2004 10:43:34 -0700 IDPCphonecards@hotmail.com (IDPCphonecards) wrote in message news:: > We have Cheap Prepaid Phone cards for sale > $4.6 for $5 phone cards: > www.idpcphonecards.com Long distance at MAXIMUM 2.9 Cents Per Minute for intra-USA calls. USA-Canada for 3.5CPM. If you don't use the 800# access, rate is even cheaper; E.G.:USA-Canada 1.9CPM! OneSuite is now available for calls FROM Canada. See https://www.onesuite.com/ See their rates for all other destinations from USA or Canada. Use toll free 800 number to call from payphones [with payphone surcharge]. It is basically a prepaid phone card but you can do away with the PIN for calls from home. Program it as a speed dial, you don't even have to remember their access number. No monthly fee or minimum. There is a surchage for calls from payphones. You can create additional PIN #s for other people and track those calls separately as a "sub-account". If you use the promotion code "034720367" we both get some free minutes. We have it programmed into our cell phones for international calls. ------------------------------ From: whoward@piv27.cns.ualberta.ca (Walt Howard) Subject: Re: Lucent DSL MAX 20 Packet Loss Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 19:40:04 UTC Organization: University of Alberta In article , Daniel Eyholzer wrote: > We have three Lucent DSL MAX 20 connected to a Cisco switch. There are > also some other network devices and a linux box connected to the same > switch. If I am pinging to or from one of the three Lucent devices I > have packet loss. Pinging from and to the other devices connected to > the switch works without any packet loss. .... > Could it be a wrong setting on the device configuration? Or what else > could cause this problem? Are you sure that both the switch and the DSL box agree on the duplex-ness of the connection between them? Having one believe the connection is full-duplex and the other believe that it is half-duplex can cause the symptom you report. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #458 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Sep 30 19:53:35 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8UNrZa29612; Thu, 30 Sep 2004 19:53:35 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 19:53:35 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409302353.i8UNrZa29612@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #459 TELECOM Digest Thu, 30 Sep 2004 19:53:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 459 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 (Karl Pospisek) Our Inexpensive Directory Assistance Program (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Scott Dorsey) Re: Paper Tape Technology was Re: What is Name of # (SunGard BSR) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? (Glowing) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? (Joseph) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Justin Time) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Paul Vader) Lawsuit in Colorado Over Rerouted 911 (Carl Moore) Re: Fireman Claims Radio Failure Nearly Killed Him (Tony P.) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: kpospisek@yahoo.com (Karl Pospisek) Subject: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 Date: 30 Sep 2004 13:10:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Commercial WWW is about 10 years old this year What a vivid experience it was when I installed a beta release of Netscape 0.9 and entered a URL. WOW - It had colour pictures and was better than a terminal or BBS window. At that stage Yahoo was my homepage of choice, one could even keep up with the "New sites" added daily back then. Since then, life and work has not been the same. I'm surprised I haven't seen a world party arranged by some of the founding geeks -- their efforts are now *well* appreciated by all. Karl Pospisek Telecom Product Designer [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Indeed, it does seem like a long time ago, that what is now informally known, in street parlance, as the 'Web' got started, but it was about ten years ago, in the late summer or early fall of 1994 that the mode of transport on the Internet we refer to as the web -- essentially the only thing many or most of the younger users know about -- got started. Prior to this 'web', of course we had gopher (anyone remember that?) and telnet (still in use a little) and similar, but truly, the modern internet pretty much took off with the invention of the World Wide Web. We have come a long way in the past decade, and these 'old fashioned' styles of transmission such as straight ASCII text (as used here in the Digest) are getting more and more rare. I am trying now to think of the name of the one person who did most of the work creating the Web, but his name off hand escapes me. I know he has been (or still is) involved with MIT and he also has an office (or perhaps lives) in Switzerland. Please remind me who I am (trying to) thinking about. I do know he never took a nickle for his work in developing the Web, which I guess would be the 'killer application' of all time. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 18:30:51 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > In the early 1960s, "time-sharing" and multi-tasking was developed so > that a computer could serve several people at the same time. At that > point Teletypes as computer terminals became more common. But until > time sharing was developed, Teletypes were not an efficient input- > output mechanism for computers. A notable pioneer system was SABRE, > the reservation system for American Airlines that used electric > typewriters. While conceived in the 1950s, I don't think it entered > real service until the early 1960s. SAABRE originally used pushbutton terminals with individual city and time buttons. These were then replaced with IBM printing terminals, and then with the 3270-type terminals that you will see in airports today. Sad to say, the original SAABRE kernal has been hacked over pretty well but is still running in most airline machine rooms on modernized 360 ison. > In the 1960s, many new mfrs of mini computers chose Teletypes (the > brand) as their input/output terminal and designed their systems to > work in on-line mode. Around that time Teletype introduced a new line > of machines that ran faster at 10 cps and also had a much bigger > character set (ASCII instead of Baudot). The mini-computer mfrs used > ASCII. Notable mfrs included General Electric (Dartmouth's pioneer > BASIC system), Hewlett- Packard, Digital PDP, Data General, and > others. While users of these machines tended to really love them, > they were limited in their ability to handle high volumes of data. At > some point, batch processing on a traditional mainframe was more > efficient. There were lots of alternatives, from the Friden Flexowriter to the GE Terminet, to the IBM typeball thing. Most of them were much faster and much more expensive than the 33ASR. The reason the 33ASR wound up being shipped as a console with so many computer systems was because it was cheap. It was also very poorly made compared with the higher grade offerings from Teletype and the other firms, and it was a bloody pain. --scott "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology was Re: What is Name of #? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 18:24:41 -0400 From: J Carpenter (SunGard BSR) >> As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read >> and=20 count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by >> the fact=20 that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and >> set up a=20 company ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm >> room which=20 received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time >> on Aiken's early Harvard University computer facility, and sent >> back printed reports to traffic engineers all over the company. > Gates and Allen did run Traf-O-Data, but the rest is wrong. Since > Bill is 48 years old, when would he have > been at Harvard? When was Aiken doing the Mark I through Mark IV? > Sheesh. Actually, it was before Bill Gates went to Harvard, when he was still in high school, that Bill Gates and Paul Allen built their own computer to measure traffic data, and they made about $20,000. Search the web on "bill gates" and "traf-o-data" for the details. ------------------------------ From: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:28:35 -0500 ava cohen wrote in message news:telecom23.457.6@telecom-digest.org: > I am thinking of getting my 12 year old daughter a pay as you go cell > phone in California. > Can anyone recommend a "pay as you go" economy cell phone? (like > prepaid cards?) > I do not want to subscribe to any plans. > Which company? > How much does the phone and the calls cost? > Where is the best place to buy it from? > Any help would be highly appreciated. > Thanks. > Ava I presently use a TracFone that I purchased at Wal-Mart. The cards to feed the phone can be found at a large number of stores. Their web page displays many companies where you can get both the phones and the refill cards. With the large number of locations handling their phones you should not have problems accessing service. You get assigned a telephone number based on available numbers in the zip code area you register it for use in. You can change the registered zip code (local calling area) a few times a year (with corresponding phone number changes) in case you spend half the year in one location and the other half in another. I'll let you view the web offerings for phone models and prices but I think the cheapest phone is around $30. I believe you have to process a phone card refill at a minimum of every 3 months unless you purchase one of the yearly cards. So for someone of the younger set you might stay with the smaller phone refill cards and get one every couple of months. Unused time gets added to the refill if you renew it before the refill date shown on the phone. Their web page is www.tracfone.com As for myself, I just relocated from a different state and still looking for a new job. With that in mind it was foolish to lock myself into a phone plan until I know exactly what state/city I'll be working and living in. So far the only thing I don't like is that my outbound calls do not show my personal caller ID info. Instead people get just the name of the local phone carrier along with my phone number. Many people won't answer thinking it's one of those dreaded sales calls from the said carrier unless they know my number. I'm sure other areas serviced by a different cellular company might even display the owners name as well as number. What ever cellular company you wind up with make sure that the refill cards are available from multiple major merchandisers. I know of friends that had purchased phones from other companies only to find out that they could no longer purchase refill cards for those phones in the state where they lived, not something I have heard about with TracFone. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A very popuar pre-paid phone around here is Trac Phone (available from Walmart) but another widely used phone is Alltel (also available at Walmart from the Alltel corporate kiosk there and also available from the Radio Shack store here.) In Alltel's case at least, they do not require 'cards' to be purchased; you just refill the phone time by dialing *369 on the phone and using a credit card. Alltel also has a 'monthly prepaid plan' where you can pay about $35 per month and get all the features you normally would have on a 'regular' cell phone (such as caller ID, roaming, and other things) and the first $35 they find on your account each month goes to pay for another month of that 'pay as you go' service. If you get on the monthly prepaid plan, (I think they call it 'smart pay') then you *must* tell the agent you want off if you no longer wish to keep it on a certain month. For example, you have (let's say) thirty dollars in credit on your phone; they want $35 or whatever for a month of prepaid service; when they cannot confiscate it all entirely on the first of a month they cut the phone off; they do not revert you to a call-by-call (much more expensive) basis. So with Alltel, you do get some flexibilty, paying for a month at a time (better rates and more features) or 'call by call' (few if any features, no roaming, etc) if that is what you prefer and you pay over the phone itself for additional time. AT&T is similar. Pay with your credit card in various increments for calls (it gets cheaper when you buy more) and you can pay with a credit card over the phone itself, and you get caller ID as well. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 16:21:27 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 29 Sep 2004 21:32:48 -0700, avacohen100@yahoo.com (ava cohen) wrote: > I am thinking of getting my 12 year old daughter a pay as you go cell > phone in California. Where in California would help. > Can anyone recommend a "pay as you go" economy cell phone? (like > prepaid cards?) The cheapest one I've found is an AT&T Wireless reseller called JusTalk marketed by phoneshark. This plan will require that you have a deactivated AT&T TDMA phone (which you can often find at yard sales and the like.) This plan is 25 cents/minute at the $10 refill level and as cheap as 20 cents/minute at the $250 level. Just using the minimum level which is 40 minutes of calling for $10 comes out to ~$1.67 per month. This plan also comes with a dedicated toll-free 866 number so people can call you as a local call wherever you are partly because you may not be able to get a number that's local to you. I was issued a New York City 917 number. It also comes with free calling to many locations including all of western Europe and some other countries. You have to refill with more minutes at least every 180 days or the account will be deactivated. This plan requires that you have your own phone to activate service. If you're not in an area served by AT&T Wireless though there may be higher charges to use the service through roaming minutes. Another alternative is to get AT&T Free2Go service. I've seen full packages for as little as $20 including a phone. Depending on card value you can get airtime as cheap as 15 cent/minute. Another alternative that just started to be marketed by 7-11 stores is a prepaid service that costs 20 cents/minute and uses the Cingular network. http://www.howardforums.com has a pretty active discussion board about prepaid. Check out http://howardforums.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=249 It has several areas that you may wish to look at including an overview as well as discussion of many prepaid plans both in North America as well as elsewhere. And just as a note in case you don't know already it's called prepaid generally in North America and Pay As You Go (PAYG) or Pay As You Talk (PAYT) in other parts of the world such as in the UK. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: AT&T 'Free to Go' is what I have. At one point (when I lived around the Chicago, Illinois area) I used 'regular' AT&T Wireless service. But here around Independence, I started out with AT&T but the service was not so good, and I switched to Cingular Wireless (when AT&T sold their storefront and their agent to Cingular and split town.) I was unable to get the Nokia 6100 phone to work on Cingular so I got a Cingular phone had had my older AT&T cut over to the 'Free to Go' plan. PAT] ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: 30 Sep 2004 13:31:04 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote in message news:: > bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote > <> > As an aside, the language used on IBM's System/3x through the present > day AS/400 is RPG, which dates back to 1960 and the IBM 1401. The > language was intended to mimic the wiring of a tab machine control > panel so tab operators could make the transition to programming. >> The 3270 was a 'smart' terminal -- necessitated by IBM's "block mode" >> architecture -- and used 16 bits per displayed character. 1 byte for >> the character itself, and one byte for the 'attributes'. things like >> 'bright', 'blank', 'input', 'protected', etc. > It's funny how today we call 3270-type terminals (still in very wide > use) "dumb terminals" when in fact they were not. A Teletype was more > "dumb" since it basically transmitted or received upon a keystroke, > while the 3270 network had buffers, could erase and insert characters, > and as mentioned had different appearances. [There were advanced > Teletypes that could do some fancy stuff. Some 3270 functions were > handled by the controller unit that was required and supported a group > of terminals.] The term "dumb" and "smart" when applied to terminals really applies to their ability to process information. The 3270 terminal is a "dumb" terminal in the fact that no processing is done at the terminal and it only echoes back what is received from its intelligent source. According to the original definition of a dumb or smart terminal, a terminal connected through a PC or other device that was capable of doing processing, or in the case of mainframes, preprocessing would be considered a "smart" terminal. Before the days of the 3270 there were thousands upon thousands of 2260 terminals around. These also were dumb terminals as the only thing they did was provide a video interface into a system and displayed only the information sent to them. Keystrokes from the keyboard did nothing to modify the displayed information or change any attributes of the data without processing by the mainframe computer. The cable for a 2260 terminal was about a half inch in diameter with about 6 pair of 18 ga.(IIRC) wires to control the display and receive keystroke information. Video was over a small coax in the center of the cable. The last 2260 style terminals I installed was almost 30 years ago, in the mid 70's. OBTW, the common screen width for a 2260 was 48 characters and early 3270 terminals did both 48 and 80 characters. The maximum number of charcters displayed on a full screen 3270 was 1920 (24 x 80). It was the high cost of a terminal from IBM that gave birth to the low cost dumb termial market that spawned the ADM-3 (Adam) 3, 3A, the Televideo, Lear Siegler, TI, DEC and so many others. IBM did a major price cut on the 3270 terminals in 1978 that drove most of the replacement terminal manufacturers under or into consolidation. 3270 displays went from several 1000 dollars to around 1000 or so and effectively killed the key to disk market at the same time. Some of you may remember names of companies like Mohawk that just disappeared by the early 80's after doing several hundred million dollars of business just 2 or 3 years earlier. Once the equipment leases ran out. > The Bell System had a heck of a lot of private lines serving business > data communications. Yep, computer rooms always had a bank of "Dataphone" modems. Usually 2400, 4800 and wow -- 9600 Baud Syncronous. Async ran at 300 baud and was good for only low speed stuff -- like teletypes at 100 WPM and an occasional terminal. > A big difference was that IBM liked synchornous transmission while > many other computers, including common PC transmissions used > asynchronous transmission. I don't know which is superior. > We had 3rd party imitation IBM 3270 units but IMHO they weren't as > good as real IBM units. However, they were a lot cheaper. I don't > see any "dumb terminals" anymore, it seems almost everyone now has a > PC with an emulation program/card imitating a 3270 terminal. In the > early days of PCs, I refused to use a PC with a CGA screen as a 3270 > terminal since it was so fuzzy compared to a real terminal. > (Actually, I shied away from CGA PCs altogether.) > Over time, the cost of 3270-type units and controllers dropped quite a > bit in price while modem speed increased. Asynch modem speed didn't increase until the Hayes modems started coming out around 1980 or a little later. The first jump was to quadruple the speed to 1200 baud, but the big jump was to 2400 baud about a year or so later. 9600 baud became fairly common around 1989 -- 90 with 14.4 around 91. 56K modems have been around the longest, since the mid 90's or almost 10 years. It was the introduction of the 2400 baud modem that did the most to increase the number of computers in individual use than any other improvement. The 2400 baud modem paved the way for the acceptance of the computer as a home computer rather than a scientic tool or hobbyist toy giving birth to the need for software and spawning companies such as Microsoft, Word Perfect Corp., Norton, Wordstar, Lotus and others. Datapoint developed a split speed modem for use with their timesharing/ data entry terminals. They had a 300/1200 baud modem, 300 transmit because it was keystrokes and 1200 receive to handle the display character input. This meant you could "paint" a full 1920 character screen in about 1 1/2 seconds - and that was pretty darn fast for those days. But then computers had cycle times - one trip through the main timing chain to process a single instruction - measured in multiples of whole microseconds. The venerable Four Phase system IV-70 (dating from around 1970) took 2.04 microseconds to process a single 24 bit computer word, and it was one of the fastest "mini" computers available at the time. I think the original Altairs were around 8 microseconds for a cycle. It wasn't until later that people started measuring clock speed in order to "boost the speed" without any engineering changes. The original IBM PC ran at 4 MHz, the AT at 6. Now we measure clock speeds in the billions of cycles per second rather than millions. ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 22:56:32 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations SPAMhukolautTRAP@SPAMattTRAP.net writes: > IIRC, the "attribute byte" only had to get transmitted when the > attribute properties changed or when you wanted to jump to a different > portion of the screen. Correct. > You could also get very creative with these fields. At least one > implementation that I am aware of used "protected, non-displayed, > returned" fields to "hide" data from the user but make it easier on > the server machine. This still is standard practice in just about any system using 3270 screens. You set the hidden, protected, and modified data flags on data you're sending out to make sure you get it back. It's a way of storing "state" without using a user spool area. > Actually, as I recall, the controller was necessary. The 3270's > didn't transmit anything until the operator hit the "send" key, and > this would be buffered in the "cluster controller." Right, at least until the tn3270 protocol pretty much destroyed the cluster controller business. Lots and lots of aps still use 3270 protocols, but you don't see hardwired 3270 terminals around anymore. > The controller, in turn, would be polled at roughly 2 second intervals > by the far end, at which time it would send the data. A controller > was theoretically limited to 32 terminals, but we found that 16 was a > practical limit for our applications. None of that was true for the last two decades of cluster controllers. I strongly doubt that cluster controllers EVER polled at 2 second intervals, because that would set the minimum response time to one second, and NOBODY would tolerate that. Maybe 30 years ago I suppose. > I never encountered an installation where there was an isolated 3270 > without a cluster controller, although I presume this was > theoretically possible. Nope. There were devices you could hang on a leased line which gave you only a terminal or two, but they were still controllers. > customers. Even though the cluster controllers communicated with the > host at either 4.8 or 9.6 Kbps, the probability of all 16 clerks > hitting send during the same 2-second interval was pretty small. The standard leased-line speed for a cluster controller was 56k. And late in their life, they could go a LOT faster, which they needed to do if you had one controlling 128 terminals. I still shudder remembering all the coax running to the last-generation controllers we had at a warehouse. A bundle of cables three feet across going in, and one token ring cable going out. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 16:31:30 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Lawsuit in Colorado Over Rerouted 911 There are other readers more knowledgeable than I on this, but I have learned of a lawsuit (by a woman in the Denver area) over a wrong address for home telephone number. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: We printed something on this story in the previous issue of the Digest today. As sad as it was to read of the little guy dying because the ambulance was delayed in getting there due to the dispatcher's failure to *stay with the call and find the proper agency to make the referral to* it was sort of refreshing to note that for a change, the blame was not put on VOIP, nor did the story even say if the mother was using a VOIP or a 'landline' phone. I am sure if it had been VOIP we would have heard all about it. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Fireman Claims Radio Failure Nearly Killed Him Organization: ATCC Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 21:46:03 GMT In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > The Phila Inqr (www.philly.com) reported 9/30/04 that a city fireman > with 23 years of service says his new digital radio failed leaving him > trapped in a burning building and severely injured. > The city spent $54 million on a new public safety radio system that > has more channels and allows all agencies to talk on the same > frequency during emergencies. Firefighters have filed steady > complaints about the system, which operates on 800 Mhz band. > The city is investigating with Motorola. One concern being > checked is if cellphones interfere. > Motorola did say one emergency feature (that the fireman used) > might not always work. They also said they may have been confusion > between the encrypted and clear modes. > Other news reports said the batteries in police hand held units don't > hold a charge and fail during service. Other cities had a similar > problem. > Suburban public safety departments have also upgraded to digital > radios at tremendous cost since all radios, both on vehicles and hand > held, must be replaced. Suburban officials have found numerous dead > spots. > One can't help but wonder if the digital technology being used in new > public safety radios is not mature enough for the demanding > applications. From news reports, it seems the digital systems are > much more likely to have deadspots (just like digital cell phones) > than the prior analog systems. > Has anyone heard reports from other municipalities about problems with > digital radios? Oho! Motorola is famous for pushing communities to buy new gear even though their 20 to 40 year old Motorola gear works just fine. I'm so happy my city hasn't bitten the deadly trunking bullet. It's an accident that was waiting to happen and I'm happy that it did, but my condolences go out to the firefighter who was nearly killed because of Motorola's funky emergency system. I hope he sues the ever loving crap out of Motorola and wins. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #459 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 1 01:48:07 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i915m6k03010; Fri, 1 Oct 2004 01:48:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 01:48:07 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410010548.i915m6k03010@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #460 TELECOM Digest Fri, 1 Oct 2004 01:48:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 460 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Santa Cruz Pirate Radio Station Unplugged (Robert Weller) Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal (Rick Merrill) Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal (Tony P.) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Gordon Hlavenka) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (jdj) WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 (Danny Burstein) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? (jdj) Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? (Gene Berkowitz) Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? (AES/newspost) Re: Paper Tape Technology was Re: What is Name of #? (Bob Goudreau) Re: Fireman Claims Radio Failure Nearly Killed Him (Steve Sobol) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Rich Greenberg) Re: AT&T Lowers Price of its Residential VoIP Service (Rick Merrill) Re: Net Firms: Don't Tax Internet Calling (Rick Merrill) Re: Our Inexpensive Directory Assistance Program (Fred Atkinson) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Robert Weller Subject: Santa Cruz Pirate Radio Station Unplugged Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 15:32:06 -0700 http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2004/September/30/local/=20 stories/01local.htm By CATHY REDFERN Sentinel staff writer SANTA CRUZ Federal agents armed with weapons and a court order seized the broadcasting equipment of Free Radio Santa Cruz on Wednesday morning, silencing the pirate radio station. Residents of two buildings on the property said agents knocked on the door with guns drawn about 8:45 a.m. The tense operation concluded about five hours later, with the towing of three of the agents disabled vehicles. [submitted by Bob Weller] ------------------------------ From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:02:42 GMT Jack Decker wrote: > http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2435843,00.html > By John Ingold > Denver Post Staff Writer > When her infant son started having trouble breathing, a worried Krista > Staats rushed to the phone and called 911. > A dispatch center in Castle Rock, nearly 40 miles from her Adams > County house, took the call, thinking she was calling from a business > in Parker. AS VoIP begins to spread (as did Cellphones) we must all re-learn how to give 911 our location AND TOWN. In our town we had a house burn down because they called frantically from a cell phone and it took 15 minutes to find out where they were! My Dlink documentation specificly states that 911 will not work the same as E911. The town dispatcher says that the number coming in is something [screwy] and will not operate their computer: in other words they have to ASK you where you are! How long will it take for that to be fixed? - RM ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal Organization: ATCC Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:22:54 GMT In article , Jack Decker says: > http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2435843,00.html > By John Ingold > Denver Post Staff Writer > When her infant son started having trouble breathing, a worried Krista > Staats rushed to the phone and called 911. > A dispatch center in Castle Rock, nearly 40 miles from her Adams > County house, took the call, thinking she was calling from a business > in Parker. As Staats bounced from dispatch center to dispatch center, > trying to find the right people to help her, her baby boy's condition > grew worse, and Staats grew more frantic. > Finally, 5-month-old Christopher Vasquez stopped breathing, and Staats > let out a piercing, terror-filled scream. He died moments later, > shortly after an ambulance was dispatched -- a little over four minutes > after Staats made her call. > Now, Staats has sued her telephone company, Comcast, and two other > companies, claiming that because they put the wrong address for her > phone number into the 911 system, her son died that day in the spring > of 2003. > "Because Comcast had my address wrong in the system, I had to watch my > son die," she said Wednesday at a news conference. > Staats may not be alone in having the 911 problem. > Full story at: > http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2435843,00.html > Additional commentary at BroadbandReports.com: > http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/54996 This is going to force VoIP carriers to figure out how to deal with 911 routing in a big old hurry. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they just can't use GPS and then do a database dip to route to the correct entity. If anything the U.S. is getting more tightly mapped via The Help America Vote Act (Hereby referred to as HAVA). The state of Rhode Island recently got close to $10 million to implement a Central Voter Registration System (CVRS) and that requires us to map EVERY address down to the house number. We're also going to be coordinating with the state DMV though they're still using COBOL flat files. Eeeew. So I can't see why we wouldn't share it with the E-911 folks around here. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But if this incident happened in the 'spring of 2003' as stated, we are now in the fall of 2004, a year and a half later. Who do *you* see rushing around to fix things, in a big hurry? And how do you know, based on the newspaper report, that the lady attempted to use a VOIP phone, or that the fault is anything to do with VOIP? And *if* it was a VOIP phone, those very seldom -- if ever -- go into the 911 system as such, usually winding up ringing on a seven digit administrative number instead. So why wouldn't the call (if it was a VOIP phone) have rung into one or more dispatcher's positions in the local emergency call answering facility? Because here in Independence, Kansas we are more rural and backward in our way of doing things, our dispatchers have a wall phone which is answered 24/7 and known to be for 'alternate answering'; a '911-like' phone but without 911-abilities in all ways. When Vonage, a major player in VOIP service recieves a request from a customer to turn on 911 service -- your choice if you want to have it or not -- Vonage sends email to the PSAP, and paper mail, advising them of this. When the PSAP acknowledges the email and adjusts the database accordingly, then Vonage tells the customer it is okay to begin using it. Here in Independence, the Police Department, whose dispatcher also responds to calls on the Sheriff's emergency line, also sends paper mail to the address **exactly as received from the VOIP carrier** to confirm it is a 'good address' in an envelope marked 'deliver to addressee only' asking the person to confirm their use of VOIP phone service and explaining how it is different than 'normal 911 service'. The police department asks the subscriber to respond to the mailing, and that response confirms what the VOIP carrier had originally said. Although as I said earlier, we are a small, rural community considered backward and I suspect ignorant in many areas, our dispatchers have been well trained, and our telephones are answered 24 hours per day, seven days per week, unlike New York City where we were advised here in a message a couple months ago, the police quit answering the phones at 10 PM, and rather than responding effeciently and courteously to every call are likely as not to put the caller through the wringer if he did not choose to place his call on the phone line the police happened to consider more appropriate. Why is that so difficult for other police/sheriff/emergency answering points to handle? Why is the VOIP carrier expected to do all the required contortions? And I am not yet convinced the phone company -- whichever one it was -- had anything to do with this fiasco. Why can't all police agencies have a phone line (which makes one or more appearances around the room as needed) to deal with the exceptions like we do here in Independence? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 21:39:56 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Lisa Hancock wrote: > Concerning the above problem, I'm surprised that a broken crystal (do > crystals even break that easily?) would just so happen to send out a > different valid signal. I don't know the details of how the BART system works, but if there's an analog correspondence between the frequency coming out of a divider and the train speed, then a change in the frequency going into the divider (e.g. from a failed crystal oscillator) would produce a different frequency. Depending on how the frequency is scaled, the crystal could be far off frequency yet the new frequency could still be within the range of valid values. Just wrong. I'm just handwaving here, but suppose there's an 8051 microcontroller running on an 8MHz clock. It's running something similar to this air code: output_speed: MOV A,#speed CPL speed_bit timing: INC A JNZ A,timing CPL speed_bit JMP output_speed Now, the higher the value passed in with #timing, the faster speed_bit oscillates. If speed_bit has been defined as an output pin, you can feed it to a transmitter and send it to the train. The train would have a receiver hooked to an F-V converter attached to the motor speed controller that takes a voltage for input. If your 8MHz crystal begins oscillating at 24MHz for some reason (crystal fails, loading cap fails, onchip 8051 driver fails, etc.) then the code continues to run without error but speed_bit toggles at 3X the desired rate. So, passing the appropriate number in #speed to command 24mph would run the train at 72mph ... Not saying this is how they do it, but it's one way. I'd rather send coded digital data over the air, so I could error-check it before using it. But the whole F-V scenario might still be used onboard the train with a PCM feeding into it; the resulting voltage then sent to a COTS motor speed controller. > Note that Touch Tone signals use two-tones, not just one. Except that most touchtone _generators_ operate off of a single oscillator. So, if that oscillator goes bad both tones slide. I worked on a telephone system that used a TP5088 hardwired to generate "*", but fed a 2MHz input instead of 3.58, to generate a dialtone. The result was pretty close to The Real Thing. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:03:51 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 08:35:14 -0700, Jeff nor Lisa wrote: > George Mitchell wrote >> Lisa Hancock wrote: >>> As to the claim BART radios were "special" years ago, there is >>> definitely truth to that. BART's original train control system had >>> many problems, including a train that ignored a stop signal and flew >>> off at a terminal into the parking lot. > Let me clarify the above paragraph. By 'radios' I meant the train > control system, not the audio communication system. Strictly speaking, BART did not use radios to control trains. Only in an extremely broad sense would the system be considered "radio". The little white fins atop the cars were/are antennae for voice comms. > BART uses automated train operation and protection. The speed and > stopping of trains is controlled by signals sent to the train from > wayside transmitters. A second and critical component of this system is > train protection so that one train does not collide with another. BART > was an early modern automated train system. > The rest of my paragraph is correct. The original BART system had > pushed the state of the art and had many problems in practice. > [GW continues] >> This had nothing to do with radios. The lead car of the train was >> receiving a 27-mph signal from the track. The system for trans- >> mitting the speed command from the lead car to the rest of the train >> was to transmit one of a specified set of audio frequency signals over >> a wire bus. However, the crystal in the 27-mph oscillator was cracked >> and oscillated at the 72-mph frequency, causing the train to speed up >> instead of slow down. The operator was not able to apply the brakes in >> time to stop before reaching the end of the track. > http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1976/7614/761406.PD That link is invalid. Returns 404. > My point is that BART depends on wireless communications to transmit > speed commands from wayside onto the train AND that BART had many > problems with this system. The above example is just one of many > problems they had to deal with. Strictly speaking, it is wireless. The car's shielded pickup is very close to a device alongside or just above the third rail. This is the data communications link. I know that the signalling does not occur above 1MHz -- I did check! (Very surreptitiously.) The system is similar in function to a tape recorder: In a tape recorder the tape head detects changes in magnetic flux from the moving tape and is designed not to pick up stray magnetic fields. The tape head also produces a magnetic flux which is concentrated on the tape to record sounds. The BART control system is designed the same way, except the "tape" carries a magnetic signal that changes continuously. The train pickup is designed to only pick up signals from the "tape" and to "record" signals to the "tape". There is a detailed layman's description of the magnetic pickup in a periodical somewhere. It was published sometime around 1975. Also published were details of the control system, complete with lots of pictures of the IBM mainframe and ops center. If I recall correctly, there was also extensive coverage of BART in IBM's internal publication, "Think". > Concerning the above problem, I'm surprised that a broken crystal (do > crystals even break that easily?) would just so happen to send out a > different valid signal. In Bell System signalling, they were very > careful to avoid harmonic frequencies or any frequencies as well as > pulse coding that could be misinterpreted as something else. Note that > Touch Tone signals use two-tones, not just one. This kind of safety > design goes back to the 1940s. Likewise, in more traditional railroad > signalling, the pulse codes were carefully designed and implemented with > very rugged gear to avoid misinterpretation. If a failure occurs, it is > interpreted as a stop signal. (BART chose to not use traditional > railroad technology.) Yes, crystals do break while in use. They are not perfect. When they break, they can and do produce output at higher frequencies. A crystal's resonant frequency is a function of it's dimensions as well as composition. > Anyway, a stray or errant signal could and did cause a BART train wreck. > Naturally BART mgmt would be interested in preventing such problems. > On other automated rail systems, a positive read of a specific signal is > required to proceed, the failure to receive that signal stops the train. No, a stray signal did not cause the crash. A faulty signalling device, as has been described, caused it. The train was commanded to accelerate. Even emergency braking could not have stopped the train before the crash. There was not enough track left. This was pointed out in the report and in the media. The end of track is only about a car-length or two past the end of the platform. > As someone else explained, superhet radio receivers retransmit a signal, > and this signal happens to interfere with navigation. Well, a radio > that is actually transmitting could send out similar signal > interference. The problem with FM band superhets is that the local oscillator frequency is traditionally set above the band of interest, in this case, within the air-nav band of 108 to 118MHz. The interference is of such a nature that it would be discernible as interference and not a navigation signal. I suspect that modern airnav systems would not be fooled. > As to the current issue, walkie-talkies are transmitters, and as such, > send out signals obviously stronger than within a receiver's superhet > circuits. It is possible that such signals either directly or through > distortion/harmonics could interfere with normal train control. While a > wreck is unlikely, it could force a train into an emergency stop between > stations, which is obviously undesirable. Not possible when the control signal band is below the bands in use by radios, as in the case of BART. Harmonics do not appear below the fundamental. > Until such time that modern walkie-talkies would be tested to ensure > their signals do not and cannot interfere with train control and train > protection, they should not be permitted to be used on BART. Then all transmitters should have been banned on those grounds. Yet cell phones were allowed, as well as untested radios from other agencies. And again, nearby transmitters, including high-powered transmitters, adjacent to the track, caused no problems. It is not a current issue as there is no longer a policy banning transmitters in stations or on trains. There is no evidence that any radios interfere with train operation. The longer this goes on, the more I remember from my "VIP" tour of BART all those years ago ... ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 00:08:06 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC TELECOM Digest Editor queried in response to kpospisek@yahoo.com (Karl Pospisek): > Please remind me who I am (trying to) thinking about. I do know he > never took a nickle for his work in developing the Web, which I guess > would be the 'killer application' of all time. PAT] Tim Berners-Lee. (not to be confused with Bernard Lee, aka M, James Bond's boss) _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ah yes, Tim Berners-Lee, thank you for jogging my memory. I wish Mr. Berners-Lee would come around here now and then, I would love to give him a piece of my mind, as disease- riddled and useless as it has become since the aneurysm. I would ask him why in the hell he did not slap a copyright on everything to do with the web back in 1994 so as to prevent so much of the foolish nonsense and charlatanism we see all over the place now days. Ah well, too late now to worry about it I guess. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:15:36 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:32:48 -0700, ava cohen wrote: > I am thinking of getting my 12 year old daughter a pay as you go cell > phone in California. It is likely going to cost you far more than a contract plan. Kids and phones are like kids and candy. Both are gone as fast they can consume them. I'll bet you will soon tire of buying more time every day. > Can anyone recommend a "pay as you go" economy cell phone? (like > prepaid cards?) I suggest looking at each company's offering. Target has brochures on many of the available services. Seems almost every single company has a prepaid plan, now. > I do not want to subscribe to any plans. For which you will pay dearly. Not that you wouldn't under a contract ... > Which company? They're all pretty bad. > How much does the phone and the calls cost? Between $40 and $200, depending on company and model of phone. They do not allow you to use a phone you already have -- unless you bought it specifically for their prepaid service. Call costs vary between companies. > Where is the best place to buy it from? Safeway's, Target, KMart, Socket Circus -- I mean Circuit City -- :) etc. They're spreading like a plague. :) > Any help would be highly appreciated. > Thanks. > Ava ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 22:46:33 -0400 In article , johnl@iecc.com says... >> As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read and >> count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by the fact >> that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and set up a >> company ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm room which >> received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time on Aiken's early >> Harvard University computer facility, and sent back printed reports to >> traffic engineers all over the company. > Gates and Allen did run Traf-O-Data, but the rest is wrong. Since > Bill is 48 years old, when would he have been at Harvard? When was > Aiken doing the Mark I through Mark IV? Sheesh. Gates was Class of '77 at Harvard. Most students at that time used the Harvard-Radcliffe Student Time Sharing System (HRSTS), which was a Unix variant running on DEC PDP-11s. --Gene ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:02:28 -0700 A recent posting from me said: > Very similar punched tape technology was also used -- probably still > is widely used -- in those traffic counting units that use a rubber > hose tacked down across the roadway and a box by the side of the road. > A classic clockwork mechanism inside the box (spring-wound or battery > powered? -- I don't know, but I'd guess the former) slowly winds a > paper tape from one reel to another. Each time a car runs over the > hose the resulting pneumatic impulse pushes an arm which punches a > hole in the paper. > As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read and > count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by the fact > that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and set up a > company ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm room which > received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time on Aiken's early > Harvard University computer facility, and sent back printed reports to > traffic engineers all over the company. > (Above is written from memory, so take cum grano salis, but I think it's > basically a correct story -- corrections welcome.) A response from John Levine quoted my third paragraph and said: > Gates and Allen did run Traf-O-Data, but the rest is wrong. > Since Bill is 48 years old, when would he have been at Harvard? > When was Aiken doing the Mark I through Mark IV? Sheesh. And this is a reply from me to those statements: The rest is wrong? Really? 1) Gates, born in 1955, was an undergrad at Harvard (though I believe he never finished the degree). This would have been around 1972-73 since I think he started Microsoft around 1973 or 1974. 2) The story of his involvement in Traf-O-Data was told me by a physics colleague who was a fellow undergrad living in the same entry as Gates in the same student residence at Harvard. He recalled in particular the large number of packages containing paper tapes from traffic engineers that Gates received in the dorm, and his processing these on Harvard computer facilities at night. 3) I assume Gates wrote the software that processed the tapes -- does JL know otherwise? 4) Howard Aiken was at Harvard from the 1940s (or earlier?) through 1961. He founded the Harvard Computation Laboratory around 1944 to 1947 (accounts vary). The Laboratory staff and facilities occupied a building at 33 Oxford street which was also called the Harvard Computation Laboratory, although I don't know exactly when this building was built. The organization and the building were both renamed as the Aiken Computation Laboratory in 1964 (before Gates arrived). The Laboratory was still operating, or at least issuing technical reports over that name, at least as late as 1981; the building remained under that name, and I believe housed Harvard's computer facilities, or many of them anyway, until it was torn down in 1998. 5) I guess I don't know for sure that Gates used the computer hardware in this building for his Traf-O-Data operations -- perhaps he used some other computer facility at Harvard -- but it certainly seems a very reasonable supposition, Does JL have any knowledge otherwise? If so, referring to these facilities as "Aiken's early Harvard University computer facility" seems fully accurate to me. (And entirely as an aside, might Gates in 1971 even have used some surviving paper tape reader that had been connected to one of Aiken's early Mark xxx computers? I have no idea, and no knowledge of how long that kind of paper tape hardware can last; but I believe Aiken's Mark IV operated until some time in the late 1950s.) 6) Finally, does anyone see any reference to Aiken's Mark xxx computers in my original post? J Carpenter (SunGard BSR) has also posted a reply which says: > Actually, it was before Bill Gates went to Harvard, when he was still > in high school, that Bill Gates and Paul Allen built their own > computer to measure traffic data, and they made about $20,000. > Search the web on "bill gates" and "traf-o-data" for the details. I've subsequently looked at several of those web sites, and they indeed all agree that Gates and Allen were interested in the traffic counting problem and together founded Traf-O-Data before Gates went off to Harvard, while both were still in high school. Few of the sites are very explicit about details, however, or present much documentation, and some of them contradict each other on specific details. Several of them also seem to agree that neither the hardware nor the software aspects of the traffic counting problem had been fully worked out by the time Gates went off to Harvard. I certainly have no first-hand knowledge of these events myself, but I'd attach considerable reliability to the first-hand report from Gates' fellow Harvard student. Perhaps this has not become part of the Gates legend because it's not quite as appealing or newsworthy as the "brilliant young high-school entrepreneur" human interest aspects of the stories on these other websites. ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology was Re: What is Name of #? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:10:32 -0400 [PAT, please eliminate my email address from the message. Thanks.] J Carpenter (SunGard BSR) wrote: >>> As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read >>> and count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by >>> the fact that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and >>> set up acompany ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm >>> room which received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time >>> on Aiken's early Harvard University computer facility, and sent >>> back printed reports to traffic engineers all over the company. >> Gates and Allen did run Traf-O-Data, but the rest is wrong. Since >> Bill is 48 years old, when would he have >> been at Harvard? When was Aiken doing the Mark I through Mark IV? >> Sheesh. > Actually, it was before Bill Gates went to Harvard, when he was still > in high school, that Bill Gates and Paul Allen built their own > computer to measure traffic data, and they made about $20,000. I think the original poster confused two details of the true story: 1) As pointed out above, Traf-O-Data came before Gates's brief stint in college. What he *did* work on while at Harvard was a BASIC interpreter for the MITS Altair (an early personal computer) that became the first product sold by the new "MicroSoft" company Gates and Allen founded. 2) The Aiken "facility" in question was not one of Howard Aiken's 1940s-era electromechanical computers (the Mark I was obviously the first model), but the university's Aiken Computation Laboratory, a building a bit north of Harvard Yard. This structure was the home of the DEC PDP-10 that Gates used to develop his BASIC interpreter. As recently as the mid-1980s, the public areas of this building still contained a display of some of the pieces of Aiken's original Mark I computer. As I mentioned above, this computer was electromechanical, not electronic, and the sections on display reminded me of nothing so much as an old electromechanical phone switch! The ironic coda to the story is that a few years ago, the Aiken lab was razed. What stands in its place now? The new home of the Harvard CS department, Maxwell-Dworkin Hall, built with money donated by none other than Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and named in honor of their mothers. Hopefully, the new facility still displays the remnants of Aiken's Mark I machine, but since I haven't visited it yet, I can't say for sure. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Fireman Claims Radio Failure Nearly Killed Him Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:13:37 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Tony P. wrote: > It's an accident that was waiting to happen and I'm happy that it did, > but my condolences go out to the firefighter who was nearly killed > because of Motorola's funky emergency system. I hope he sues the ever > loving crap out of Motorola and wins. The ironic thing is that in the cellular world, although I consider Motorola phones to be overpriced junk because the fit and finish is often terrible, they seem to have very few equals in terms of being able to deal with weak signals. I know that they were the only choice for quite some time if you used a CDMA carrier and wanted a phone that held onto calls almost anywhere (though other manufacturers are doing well these days, too) JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/ Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED) Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids. ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: 30 Sep 2004 19:50:38 -0400 Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Nick Landsberg wrote: > Actually, as I recall, the controller was necessary. The 3270's > didn't transmit anything until the operator hit the "send" key, and > this would be buffered in the "cluster controller." > The controller, in turn, would be polled at roughly 2 second intervals > by the far end, at which time it would send the data. A controller > was theoretically limited to 32 terminals, but we found that 16 was a > practical limit for our applications. The polling, which could be set to various intervals, was only on the "remote" controllers, i.e. connected by a communications line, either bisync or (more recently) SNA/VTAM. There were also "local" controllers which were channel attached. On these, pressing an "attention" key (enter, clear, pf1-pf24 & a few others) caused the controller to signal an i/o interrupt to the processor which would cause the processor to read the controller to find out what was wanted. IBM channels on early machines transferred 1.5 megabytes/sec, newer ones went considerably faster. > I never encountered an installation where there was an isolated 3270 > without a cluster controller, although I presume this was > theoretically possible. This is correct with 2 sort-of exceptions. There was a model 3276 which was a display and a controller in one case. Not sure, but I think the controller could handle a few additional displays. Also, the later 360s and all 370s and later processors used a built in 3270 like display which served as an operator console and a service console to control the functions that used to be in lights, switches and buttons on the console. Part of the CPU microcode served as the controller for this display. Rich Greenberg N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA richgr atsign panix.com 770 321 6507 Eastern time zone. I speak for myself & my dogs only. M'er since CP-67 Canines:Val, Red & Shasta (RIP),Red, husky Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: AT&T Lowers Price of its Residential VoIP Service Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:05:17 GMT Jack Decker wrote: > Comment: I wonder if this means that anyone who orders today > (September 30) would still get the introductory price of $19.99 for > the first six months, but after that would only have to pay the new > rate of $29.99/month (rather than the $34.99 still shown on their web > site). That is my expectation! My Dlink just arrived: it'll take a day or two to get the number ported. > Personally I think there are better deals out there than AT&T, > for example several VoIP companies offer their "unlimited" service at > about $20 or $25 per month. Glad to hear competition is back. > To learn more about AT&T CallVantage Service, consumers can visit > http://www.CallVantage.com, call 1-866-816-3815, extension 70339, or > visit one of these retailers. > Full press release at: > http://www.att.com/news/item/0,1847,13258,00.html ------------------------------ From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Net Firms: Don't Tax Internet Calling Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:07:21 GMT Jack Decker wrote: > http://news.com.com/Net+firms+Dont+tax+VoIP/2100-7352_3-5389880.html > By Declan McCullagh > Staff Writer, CNET News.com > The largest U.S. Internet phone companies are asking the Internal > Revenue Service not to slam them with a "temporary" tax created more > than 100 years ago to pay for the Spanish-American War. > In a six-page letter to the IRS sent late Wednesday, the companies > stressed that fledgling voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services > should not be subject to the excise tax that President William > McKinley signed into law in 1898. > "VoIP is having a profound and beneficial impact on the United States > and the world in a way unimaginable in 1898," the letter said, urging > the IRS to "refrain from any attempt to extend the excise tax to VoIP > services." > The letter was sent by the VON Coalition, which represents AT&T, > Covad, Intel, Level3, MCI, Microsoft, Pulver.com, Skype and Texas > Instruments. > Full story at: > http://news.com.com/Net+firms+Dont+tax+VoIP/2100-7352_3-5389880.html VoIP is also independent of other rules: for example, they can bill to a credit card and cut off service if you card goes belly up. Whereas with POTS they cannot cut off phone service because the legal system has deemed phone an essential service that can only be cut off after due process. - RM ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: Our Inexpensive Directory Assistance Program Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:02:34 -0400 Pat, Can this be used in conjunction with Vonage service? Fred [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess you are referring to the service at http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest where you enroll your telephone number(s), provide your credit card number then get billed 65 cents for each use of directory assistance in real time, instead of the $1.25 or $1.50 your own telco charges you. The answer is yes, you can. Vonage itself takes calls to '411' and defaults them to *their carrier [for DA] of choice* but they charge you 99 cents per (up to) two inquiries. But the one I am associated with uses an 800 number instead, and bills you 65 cents each. The ANI provided is used to match your account with the system. If you have some method of your own to dial 411 and re-direct it to the 800 number that's fine or otherwise make a speed dial button for directory assist- ance. They do not literally go to your credit/debit card for 65 cents each time you inquire; they tally up your calls and charge you every month or so for just what you used, no service charges and no minimum usage requirements. If you have a company for example, with a dozen phone lines each with a number, enroll all the numbers, redirect 411 however you please (or tell your people to dial the 800 number) and calculate the savings, at 65 cents per call versus whatever you pay now for directory. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #460 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 1 14:40:54 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i91IesL09243; Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:40:54 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:40:54 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410011840.i91IesL09243@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #461 TELECOM Digest Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:40:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 461 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson U.S. Cybersecurity Chief Abruptly Resigns (Monty Solomon) Re: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 (jdj) Re: WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 (John Levine) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a Pay as You Go Cell Phone? (Ray Normandeau) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a Pay as You Go Cell Phone? (Dave Garland) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a Pay as You Go Economy Cell Phone? (Joseph) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (George Mitchell) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Robert Bonomi) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? - Part 2 (Bonomi) Re: Cell Phone Incident Results in DC Metro Arrest (Justin Time) Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal (John Levine) Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? (John Levine) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 13:00:17 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S. Cybersecurity Chief Abruptly Resigns By TED BRIDIS AP Technology Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government's cybersecurity chief has abruptly resigned after one year with the Department of Homeland Security, confiding to industry colleagues his frustration over what he considers a lack of attention paid to computer security issues within the agency. Amit Yoran, a former software executive from Symantec Corp., informed the White House about his plans to quit as director of the National Cyber Security Division and made his resignation effective at the end of Thursday, effectively giving a single's day notice of his intentions to leave. Yoran said Friday he "felt the timing was right to pursue other opportunities." It was unclear immediately who might succeed him even temporarily. Yoran's deputy is Donald "Andy" Purdy, a former senior adviser to the White House on cybersecurity issues. Yoran has privately described frustrations in recent months to colleagues in the technology industry, according to lobbyists who recounted these conversations on condition they not be identified because the talks were personal. As cybersecurity chief, Yoran and his division _ with an $80 million budget and 60 employees _ were responsible for carrying out dozens of recommendations in the Bush administration's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," a set of proposals to better protect computer networks. Yoran's position as a director _ at least three steps beneath Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge _ has irritated the technology industry and even some lawmakers. They have pressed unsuccessfully in recent months to elevate Yoran's role to that of an assistant secretary, which could mean broader authority and more money for cybersecurity issues. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43989040 ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:33:03 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: [snip] I am trying > now to think of the name of the one person who did most of the work > creating the Web, but his name off hand escapes me. I know he has been > (or still is) involved with MIT and he also has an office (or perhaps > lives) in Switzerland. Please remind me who I am (trying to) thinking > about. I do know he never took a nickle for his work in developing the > Web, which I guess would be the 'killer application' of all time. PAT] He is Tim Berners-Lee, of MIT and CERN fame. CERN took most of the credit for the WWW. A history/timeline of the WorldWide Web is at: http://www.w3.org/History.html I still have the all the versions of Mosaic I ever used. Someone sent the first one to me by uucp around 1991, just before I got arpanet access. Used to get a lot more without the web. Just used {Gopher, Archie, Veronica, Jughead}, telnet, ftp, ftpmail and dialups. Now there is too much noise and obfuscation (mostly adverts) to wade through. It's as if they have deliberately made it harder to find things. Kind of like AOL: For every useful minute, ten more are wasted. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Readers may also wish to check out a site I started several years ago: http://internet-history.org or http://internet-pioneers.org . PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 1 Oct 2004 15:22:55 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA That would be Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He was made Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire earlier this year. This summer his wife told me some amusing stories of trying to fit a trip back home to get the award into Tim's overcrammed schedule. R's, John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I believe Queen Elizabeth awarded him the Knighthood on January 1, did she not? PAT] ------------------------------ From: rayta@msn.com (Ray Normandeau) Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: 30 Sep 2004 22:51:02 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com avacohen100@yahoo.com (ava cohen) wrote in message news:: > I am thinking of getting my 12 year old daughter a pay as you go cell > phone in California. > Can anyone recommend a "pay as you go" economy cell phone? (like > prepaid cards?) > I do not want to subscribe to any plans. > Which company? > How much does the phone and the calls cost? > Where is the best place to buy it from? > Any help would be highly appreciated. > Thanks. > Ava After using SPCS since 1998 with two phones sharing an acct, we switched in August to prepaid Virgin Mobile. We are incredibly happy. It is a prepaid service. The minimum is $20.00 every 90 days. Since we are now semi-retired, this is ideal. Instead of spending a total of OVER $80.00 with all the $%&** charges added on, we are now averaging a TOTAL of c. $12.00 for a month. In November we have to add $20.00 to each phone to keep the number. Go to Virgin.com, they use the SPCS network. We bought a couple of $60.00 Keyocera Rave 7 phone. One [out of the 2] of the Manhattan NYC stores was giving an instant $20.00 rebate on each phone. THEN VM PAYS YOU $10.00 in usage/time when you activate. At that rate we could THROW AWAY our phones at the end of evey month if we only used the $10.00 time that they gave us and come out ahead. P.S.: we have also use a Gmail addy to post here, but it is a REAL spam magnate. This address is NG, so spammers, don't bother. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 12:18:24 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when avacohen100@yahoo.com (ava cohen) wrote: > Can anyone recommend a "pay as you go" economy cell phone? (like > prepaid cards?) It's pretty competitive, in the sense that most of the companies charge about the same (0.25/min to/from anywhere in the USA, in some cases less if you buy a very large amount of time in advance), you need to add more time periodically to keep the minutes from expiring. Make sure the company has on-network coverage in the area you're concerned about, roaming charges tend to be 2X the base rate. As with other cell companies, all vendors seem to be widely hated by users. If you don't plan to use the phone much at all, ATTW's "Free2Go" may be a slightly better deal (no monthly fee or minimum, you can buy time in $10 increments, and the expiration is 3 mo., some of the others have larger increments and/or shorter expirations). (This is NOT the same as their "2Go" service.) But if your kid is using it, I doubt that unused minutes reaching their expiration date is going to be much of a problem. Periodically the various vendors may have sales where the price of a phone drops. Occasionally one will have a deal online at their website that involves reconditioned phones. Check around, check the websites to find where the best deal is at the moment. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 07:41:20 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:15:36 -0700, jdj wrote: > Between $40 and $200, depending on company and model of phone. They do > not allow you to use a phone you already have -- unless you bought it > specifically for their prepaid service. Not true in most cases. For GSM phones if they are unlocked you can use any card provided it uses the technology that particular phone uses. For others if the phone was previously activated with that carrier generally you can use a deactivated phone on that network. This is true for AT&T Wireless TDMA service, Sprint PCS, Verizon, Qwest and others. The phone's ESN (serial number) has to be in their database of originally being on their system. And for the most part it doesn't matter whether the phone was used for that company's prepaid or monthly service. ------------------------------ From: George Mitchell Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:18:08 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com >> http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1976/7614/761406.PD > That link is invalid. Returns 404. Sorry -- it's missing an "F" at the end: http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1976/7614/761406.PDF -- George Mitchell (obfuscated email address) ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 11:55:35 +0000 In article , Nick Landsberg wrote: > Lisa Hancock wrote: >> bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote >>> Sorry, there is use that predates the personal computer -- with a >>> modem on a dial-up to a mainframe time-sharing service. 'Terminal' is >>> the correct word. >> Correct, they were called terminals, a word that included Teletypes >> that were used in the early days. >>> The point being that the cards were _designed_ to accommodate that >>> printing, One of the early IBM 'interpreters' (an O49 or was that a >>> sorter?) could only print 40 columns in a pass; had to change the >>> program on the plugboard to get the other 40 columns. And change >>> where the printing fell on the card, so it didn't write over the first >>> 40 characters. :) >> I'm not certain, but back in 1928 when the modern punch card was >> invented by IBM, I don't think there was any kind of printing >> mechanism for cards. Remember, initially the cards were numeric only >> and the upper field (the "zone") was used only for control characters. >> I suspect the uppermost space was just a margin to give a punched >> card strength or a place for handwritten notes. >> In the 1930s IBM developed a more sophisticated line of tab machines. >> Included was an printing alpha key punch. >> The 1948 line of interpreters were NOT intended to print one character >> per column -- the width of the printed character was slightly wider >> than a column. Only 60 characters would fit on the top and 20 would >> have to go on the next line. In practice, the interpreters were >> programmed by the plug panel to print selected fields in certain >> places, and could do so all over the card. They could also print a >> big number sideways on the side edge so the card could be filed >> vertically. >> Also, most IBM lines of keypunches included printing and non printing >> models, and the non-printers were cheaper. >> BTW, one advtg of the punched card system was that it was easy and >> cheap to have "on-line" file access. They'd just punch out and >> interpret and sort a deck of cards containing key data. Clerks would >> receive phone requests and pull up the cards in a tube file. Changes >> would be processed through the tab system. >> So did IBM, later, around the S/34 or S/36 IIRC, not too long before >> It should be noted that until the 1980s, the above was cheaper and >> faster than developing a "modern" CICS solution on a real computer. >>>> punch cards passed out of mainstream usage altogether. >> IBM's System/32,34,36 did not use cards at all. The mini cards were >> used on the IBM System/3. >> As an aside, the language used on IBM's System/3x through the present >> day AS/400 is RPG, which dates back to 1960 and the IBM 1401. The >> language was intended to mimic the wiring of a tab machine control >> panel so tab operators could make the transition to programming. >>> The 3270 was a 'smart' terminal -- necessitated by IBM's "block mode" >>> architecture -- and used 16 bits per displayed character. 1 byte for >>> the character itself, and one byte for the 'attributes', things like >>> 'bright', 'blank', 'input', 'protected', etc. > IIRC, the "attribute byte" only had to get transmitted when the > attribute properties changed or when you wanted to jump to a different > portion of the screen. Correct as far as -transmission- went. However, the 'in-terminal' memory had to have one 'attribute' byte for each character displayed. The only alternative, as used on some 'cheap' ASCII terminals, was to use any single memory location as _either_ a displayable character, or an attribute byte. This had the drawback of having the attribute byte consume a character-position on the display -- resulting in a blank space at every point the attributes changed. > The sequence, as I recall was : > SBA (Set Buffer Address) ROW, COL, ABYTE, data bytes > The ABYTE subset which I recall is > displayed/non-displayed, > returned/non-returned, > alpha, numeric (not mutually exlusive, 2 bits), > protected/unprotected, > "bright" (or highlighted). > Now that's only 6 bits ... what am I missing? > You could also get very creative with these fields. At least one > implementation that I am aware of used "protected, non-displayed, > returned" fields to "hide" data from the user but make it easier on > the server machine. For example, a transaction which retrieved a > Telephone Co. customer's record would retrieve all the data at once, > but use the 3270 as a kind of storage device, hiding the data which > didn't need to appear on "page 1" as "protected, non-displayed, > returned" so that when the clerk asked for "page 2" all that had to be > done on the far end was echo back the data in a different format > without taking the hit of a database access. > (There was no scroll capability on the 3270's that I recall, so this > was a "neat trick" to flip between "pages".) Correct. they were 'page based' displays. everything was written to fixed (absolute row,col) addresses, and everything _stayed_ where it was originally written. >> It's funny how today we call 3270-type terminals (still in very wide >> use) "dumb terminals" when in fact they were not. A Teletype was more >> "dumb" since it basically transmitted or received upon a keystroke, >> while the 3270 network had buffers, could erase and insert characters, >> and as mentioned had different appearances. [There were advanced >> Teletypes that could do some fancy stuff. Some 3270 functions were >> handled by the controller unit that was required and supported a group >> of terminals.] > Actually, as I recall, the controller was necessary. The 3270's > didn't transmit anything until the operator hit the "send" key, and > this would be buffered in the "cluster controller." Yup. controller _absolutely_ necessary. > The controller, in turn, would be polled at roughly 2 second intervals > by the far end, at which time it would send the data. A controller > was theoretically limited to 32 terminals, but we found that 16 was a > practical limit for our applications. > I never encountered an installation where there was an isolated 3270 > without a cluster controller, although I presume this was > theoretically possible. _Not_ possible. There had to be a controller _somewhere_ in the path. Generally, with 'remote' terminals, the cluster-controller was located at the remote site, with hard-wire (coax) to each terminal, and some sort of a 'modem-based' link back to the mainframe. In situations where there were a *very* small number of remote terminals at a given location, one _might_ have a terminal w/o a controller, directly connected to a modem-type device, communicating back to a modem at the head-end, which was hung off a cluster-controller _there_. this was a _very_rare_ set-up, due to the cost of the equipment at each end to mediate between the coax-based communications out of the 3270 and/or cluster-controller and the modem. A '7171'-type front-end -- supporting conventional modems, and allowing use of simple 'ASCII' terminals in the field -- was much more cost- effective if you were supporting more than a very few such locations. >> The Bell System had a heck of a lot of private lines serving business >> data communications. >> A big difference was that IBM liked synchornous transmission while >> many other computers, including common PC transmissions used >> asynchronous transmission. I don't know which is superior. > I don't know either, but from the perspective of private lines (which > you mentioned above), the "cluster controller" saved on private-line > costs. PL's were expensive, and having only one to handle 16 clerks, > rather than 16 PL's or 16 dial-ups, was seen as a cost savings by many > customers. Even though the cluster controllers communicated with the > host at either 4.8 or 9.6 Kbps, the probability of all 16 clerks > hitting send during the same 2-second interval was pretty small. > (Interaction with the customer was on the order of 2 minutes). One > 9.6 PL made a lot more business sense than 16 300 baud PL's or > dial-ups. (At least in those days.) "Synchronous" is notably more 'efficient'. about 20% more efficient. Simply because it does _not_ send the 'start' and 'stop' bits that are part of every asynchronous character transmission. Synchronous has a down-side in that that 'efficiency' results in difficulties in detecting _where_ the boundary between characters is. There are protocol- layer means for dealing with this, but it requires considerable additional 'smarts' in the terminal hardware at each end. If you've already got a lot of smarts in the devices, for other purposes, the additional 'load' on the processor is relatively trivial. If the rest of the hardware is 'dumb', then the cost of the required 'smarts' is definitely non-trivial. A 'noise' hit on a sync comm line will likely cause a much longer disruption of data "readability" than a similar hit on an async line. The async line will re-sync properly within 1 character-time after the end of the noise. The sync line could -- *theoretically* -- run for an indefinite period, spewing out 'mis-aligned' data; in practice, it will usually re-sync within a few tens of characters, to a few hundreds of characters. sync lines _generally_ run some sort of 'error checking protocol' encapsulation of the data for _precisely_ that reason. :) >> We had 3rd party imitation IBM 3270 units but IMHO they weren't as >> good as real IBM units. However, they were a lot cheaper. I don't >> see any "dumb terminals" anymore, it seems almost everyone now has a >> PC with an emulation program/card imitating a 3270 terminal. In the >> early days of PCs, I refused to use a PC with a CGA screen as a 3270 >> terminal since it was so fuzzy compared to a real terminal. >> (Actually, I shied away from CGA PCs altogether.) >> Over time, the cost of 3270-type units and controllers dropped quite a >> bit in price while modem speed increased. > Obligatory rant: Ain't it amazing how much *useful* data can be > transitted over a 9.6 line when you don't have all those graphics and > animations to deal with? Some of us remember when *300*baud* was considered high-speed. Few people can actually _read_ at the 300 word-per-minute speed that such a connection can put data in front of you. 110 baud (100 word/minute) was frustrating, because many/most people _do_ read faster than that. 1200 baud straight text, and you are -well- above the comprehension rates of virtually all humans. On the other hand, I learned to recognize the _sound_ of many of the system messages as printed on a 120CPS dot-matrix printer (DEC LA-120, hooked to a DECsystem 20), something I never managed with a slower (30cps, DEC LA-36) console device. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That 110/300/1200 baud argument about being able to read/type at that speed was one I used a lot in 1979/1980 when I was the sysop (system operator) for a couple of BBS arrangements. At one point I was the volunteer sysop for the bulletin board system operated by the Chicago Public Library, which I believe was the first public library in the USA to operate a BBS for patrons. I used Bill Blue's 'Peoples Message System' (or PMS) software. The user could automatically switch the baud rate from 110 to 300 by banging on the carriage return or enter key a few times. I remember telling the supervising librarian that I saw no reason to install a 1200 baud modem: "No one can type that fast or read that fast. A good typist can type at 110 and after some practice your eyes can adjust to read at 300. Since most users of the BBS simply sit on line and type their entries and read what others have written, 110/300 should be good enough for anyone. A 1200 baud modem might be a good idea if we were going to move a new text file into place is all." We ran that BBS on an Apple ][+ and I ran a BBS from my home on the same kind of machine. When Jerry Ablan started the 'Think' BBS (based on the IBM slogan) in 1981, he installed a 1200 baud modem which would drop as needed to 300 baud, and he was using a Tandy/Radio Shack Model 1 machine. PAT] ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 13:05:16 +0000 In article , Justin Time wrote: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote in message > news:: >> bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote >> <> >> As an aside, the language used on IBM's System/3x through the present >> day AS/400 is RPG, which dates back to 1960 and the IBM 1401. The >> language was intended to mimic the wiring of a tab machine control >> panel so tab operators could make the transition to programming. >>> The 3270 was a 'smart' terminal -- necessitated by IBM's "block mode" >>> architecture -- and used 16 bits per displayed character. 1 byte for >>> the character itself, and one byte for the 'attributes'. things like >>> 'bright', 'blank', 'input', 'protected', etc. >> It's funny how today we call 3270-type terminals (still in very wide >> use) "dumb terminals" when in fact they were not. A Teletype was more >> "dumb" since it basically transmitted or received upon a keystroke, >> while the 3270 network had buffers, could erase and insert characters, >> and as mentioned had different appearances. [There were advanced >> Teletypes that could do some fancy stuff. Some 3270 functions were >> handled by the controller unit that was required and supported a group >> of terminals.] > The term "dumb" and "smart" when applied to terminals really applies > to their ability to process information. The 3270 terminal is a > "dumb" terminal in the fact that no processing is done at the terminal > and it only echoes back what is received from its intelligent source. > According to the original definition of a dumb or smart terminal, a > terminal connected through a PC or other device that was capable of > doing processing, or in the case of mainframes, preprocessing would be > considered a "smart" terminal. By _early_ definitions, a 3270 *IS* a minimal smart terminal. The block-mode nature of the beast allowed for purely *local* editing of data, before transmission. (Not to mention the embedded 'smarts' that transmitted _only_ the input parts of the data displayed on the screen.) Everything you did on the 3270 was purely local processing, until you hit the 'TRANSMIT' (SEND?? -- *not the one with the 'down-left' arrow on it, which simply advanced the cursor to the next input field) key. This stuff wasn't considered anything 'special', because it was an implicit part of the definition of _being_ an "IBM 3270 compatible" device. Compared to something like a Lear-Siegler ADM-3, however, there was _no_doubt_ that the 3270 had considerable on-board intelligence, and was properly classified as a 'smart' device. [[.. munch ..]] > > It was the high cost of a terminal from IBM that gave birth to the low > cost dumb terminal market that spawned the ADM-3 (Adam) 3, 3A, the > Televideo, Lear Siegler, TI, DEC and so many others. Strange, isn't it, that *none* of those manufacturers made block-mode EBCDIC devices compatible with IBM's computers? The growth of the _ASCII_ terminal market was driven by the explosive growth of the minicomputer industry. And, to a lesser degree, by the availability of time-sharing services on NON-IBM based mainframes (DECsystem10/20, XEROX Sigma7, CDC 6xxx, etc.) > IBM did a major>price cut on the 3270 terminals in 1978 that drove > most of the replacement terminal manufacturers under or into > consolidation. 3270 displays went from several 1000 dollars to > around 1000 or so and effectively killed the key to disk market at > the same time. Some of you may remember names of companies like > Mohawk that just disappeared by the early 80's after doing several > hundred million dollars of business just 2 or 3 years earlier. Once > the equipment leases ran out. >> The Bell System had a heck of a lot of private lines serving business >> data communications. > Yep, computer rooms always had a bank of "Dataphone" modems. > Usually 2400, 4800 and wow -- 9600 Baud Syncronous. Async ran at > 300 baud and was good for only low speed stuff -- like teletypes at > 100 WPM and an occasional terminal. >> A big difference was that IBM liked synchornous transmission while >> many other computers, >> including common PC transmissions used asynchronous transmission. >> I don't know which is superior. >> We had 3rd party imitation IBM >> 3270 units but >> IMHO they weren't as good as real IBM units. >> However, they were a lot cheaper. I don't >> see any "dumb >> terminals" anymore, it seems almost everyone now has a PC with an >> emulation program/card imitating a 3270 terminal. In the early >> days of PCs, I refused to use a PC with a CGA screen as a 3270 >> terminal since it was so fuzzy compared to a real terminal. >> (Actually, I shied away from CGA PCs altogether.) Over time, >> the cost of 3270-type units and controllers dropped quite a bit >> in price while modem speed increased. > Asynch modem speed didn't increase until the Hayes modems started > coming out around 1980 or a little later. REVISIONIST HISTORY AT WORK! The BELL 212 protocol (1200 baud full-duplex, async) and the Bell 202 protocol (1200 baud half-duplex [controlled carrier] async) were around _long_ before the Hayes modems hit the market. 1200 baud _dial-up_ was fairly-widely available in the mid 70s. *NOT* using the Bell 212 protocol, but the more robust 'RADIC 3400' protocol. The equipment was considerably more expensive than 'BELL 103' modems, but was fairly widely used in the business community. > The first jump was to > quadruple the speed to 1200 baud, but the big jump was to 2400 baud > about a year or so later. 9600 baud became fairly common around 1989 > -- 90 with 14.4 around 91. o Ignoring the Telebit Trailblazer+, which was available in 1986. supporting 19,200 baud. Ignoring the US Robotics Courier HST which was available in 1987, supporting 14,400 baud. > 56K modems have been around the longest, > since the mid 90's or almost 10 years. It was the introduction of the > 2400 baud modem that did the most to increase the number of computers > in individual use than any other improvement. The 2400 baud modem > paved the way for the acceptance of the computer as a home computer > rather than a scientic tool or hobbyist toy giving birth to the need > for software and spawning companies such as Microsoft, Word Perfect > Corp., Norton, Wordstar, Lotus and others. *LAUGH* WordPerfect, for example, *PREDATES* the development of the IBM PC. The WordPerfect word-processor originated on DATA GENERAL _mini-computers_. circa 1978. I used version **1.08** on a DG C-330, running AOS. > Datapoint developed a split speed modem for use with their timesharing/ > data entry terminals. They had a 300/1200 baud modem, 300 transmit > because it was keystrokes and 1200 receive to handle the display > character input. This meant you could "paint" a full 1920 character > screen in about 1 1/2 seconds Can you say "ILNUMERACY"? I thought you could. Getting 1920 characters across a 120 character/sec line in 1.5 seconds is a *NEAT* trick! It take 9600 baud to paint a 'reasonably full' 24x80 screen in less than 2 seconds. > and that was pretty darn fast for > those days. But then computers had cycle times - one trip through the > main timing chain to process a single instruction - measured in > multiples of whole microseconds. *Snicker* Control Data announced machines in the *mid-1960s* that could process at the rate of 10 million instructions/second. Operating on 60-bit numeric quantities. > The venerable Four Phase system IV-70 (dating from around 1970) took > 2.04 microseconds to process a single 24 bit computer word, and it was > one of the fastest "mini" computers available at the time. I think > the original Altairs were around 8 microseconds for a cycle. It > wasn't until later that people started measuring clock speed in order > to "boost the speed" without any engineering changes. The original > IBM PC ran at 4 MHz, the AT at 6. Now we measure clock speeds in the > billions of cycles per second rather than millions. And, despite 'clock speeds' being circa 800 times higher, the actual _throughput_ improvement is only around 100x. Memory access speeds have only improved by a factor of about 40x over an original 'IBM AT' machine, plus a 4x wider path to memory, less cache-miss penalties. 'Clock speed' should be regarded *exactly* the same way 'millions of instructions per second, executed' is -- as a "meaningless indicator of processor speed". ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Incident Results in DC Metro Arrest Date: 1 Oct 2004 06:42:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Michael Quinn wrote in message news:: > Apropos of the discussion about the BART officer who reportedly ordered > a radio turned off, this report has a somewhat different twist: > Between Metro and Cell User, a Disconnect > By Lyndsey Layton > Washington Post Staff Writer > Sakinah Aaron was walking into the bus area at the Wheaton Metro > station several weeks ago, talking loudly on her Motorola cell > phone. A little too loudly for Officer George Saoutis of the Metro > Transit Police. > The police officer told Aaron, who is five months pregnant, to lower > her voice. She told the officer he had no right to tell her how to > speak into her cell phone. > Their verbal dispute quickly escalated, and Saoutis grabbed Aaron by > the arm and pushed her to the ground. He handcuffed the 23-year-old > woman, called for backup and took her to a cell where she was held for > three hours before being released to her aunt. She was charged with > two misdemeanors: "disorderly manner that disturbed the public peace" > and resisting arrest. > Those are the facts on which both sides agree. > They interpret the events of Sept. 9 very differently. <> The point that is glossed over in all the discussions regarding this -- and it is a fairly hot topic in the Washington area -- is that in EACH case the officer approached the person who was arrested and politely informed them they were doing a prohibited action. It was the perpretrator that chose to escalate the warning and not the officer. In the case of the juvenile girl that was arrested for eating a french fry, that arose out of another District law. It is illegal in the District to issue a summons or citation to a minor. According to District law, a minor has to be taken into custody -- NO EXCEPTIONS. And in that particular case the girl did state she knew the regulation regarding consuming food or drink on Metro property but she chose to disregard the law because she had stopped at McDonalds on her way from school to the Metro and her ride home. The regulation prohibiting eating and drinking clearly states it is unlawful to eat or drink in any metro train OR station. The problem is that most people think the metro station doesn't begin until they pass the gates. The metro station begins as soon as the person crossed over onto the concrete pad at the entrance to the escalator or into the pedestrian tunnel well away from the fare gates. In most stations the parking facility and sidewalks are also part of the station, but normally the prohibitions against eating and drinking are not enforced, audio equipment may be -- and that is where the "oh pity me, the poor I'm being picked on victim" was located, on metro property where she was in flagrant violation of Metro Policy. Rodgers Platt ------------------------------ Date: 1 Oct 2004 15:04:46 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > For the life of me, I cannot understand why they just can't use GPS and > then do a database dip to route to the correct entity. GPS doesn't work worth squat unless the device has a clear view of the sky. Unless you expect people to be using VoIP predominantly at back yard campouts, that's not gonna work. ------------------------------ Date: 1 Oct 2004 15:17:17 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read and >> count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by the fact >> that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and set up a >> company ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm room which >> received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time on Aiken's early >> Harvard University computer facility, and sent back printed reports to >> traffic engineers all over the company. ... >> Gates and Allen did run Traf-O-Data, but the rest is wrong. >> Since Bill is 48 years old, when would he have been at Harvard? >> When was Aiken doing the Mark I through Mark IV? Sheesh. > And this is a reply from me to those statements: > The rest is wrong? Really? Yeah, really. Gates' year at Harvard was in the early 1970s when, as someone else noted, Harvard undergrads did most of their computing on a PDP-11 Unix system in the Harvard Science Center. (I visited Harvard for some early usenix meetings and played with it myself.) Aiken's early Harvard University computer facility was in the 1940s and 1950s. By the 1970s, Aiken was long since retired, his computers were in the Smithsonian, Harvard had named the comp sci building after him, and the CS department was using a PDP-10. As others have noted, Traf-O-Data was back home in Seattle, not at Harvard. R's, John PS: I hear that the paper tape thing was just a cover story, and Traf-O-Data was really planning to make a fortune from selling specialized Caller ID boxes that blocked area code 311 calls. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. 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End of TELECOM Digest V23 #461 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 1 18:04:37 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i91M4b011274; Fri, 1 Oct 2004 18:04:37 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 18:04:37 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410012204.i91M4b011274@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #462 TELECOM Digest Fri, 1 Oct 2004 18:05:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 462 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Mount St. Helens Erupts After 18 Years (Lisa Minter) Book Review: "Biometrics for Network Security", Paul Reid (Rob Slade) Vonage(R) Upgrades Local Unlimited Calling Plan to Premium (Decker-VOIP) Re: Lawsuit in Colorado Over Rerouted 911 (Rick Merrill) Re: Wrong Address for Caller a Tragic Ordeal (Isaiah Beard) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a Pay as You Go Cell Phone? (Ed Fortmiller) Re: WWW Founder was Re: WWW Ten Years Old in 2004 (Graeme Thomas) Re: Lucent DSL 20 Packet Loss (Daniel Eyholzer) Re: Paper Tape Technology (AES) Recording Industry Sues 762 for Net Music Swaps (Lisa Minter) Iraq Mobile Network Brings Benefits and Bombs (Lisa Minter) Patton Adds FXO to SmartNode(TM) VoIP Solutions (Chris) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lisa Minter Subject: Mount St. Helens Erupts After 18 Years Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 16:11:57 EDT [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As this issue of the Digest was being edited and getting ready for release, the thing everyone has been expecting for several days finally happened: Mount St. Helens blew her stack, spewing ashes and hot lava everywhere in the vicinity of Vancouver, WA. The seismic activity in California over the past few days was a good indicator something was about to happen. Officially, I guess, the eruption started at 12:45 PM Pacific time, and lasted about 30 minutes before she quieted down. But ashes were still floating around in the air a few minutes ago. My thanks to Lisa for capturing this report from Yahoo for us. PAT] MOUNT ST. HELENS, Wash. - Mount St. Helens, the volcano that blew its top with cataclysmic force in 1980, erupted for the first time in 18 years Friday, belching a huge column of white steam and ash after days of rumblings. "This is exactly the kind of event we've been predicting," said U.S. Geological Survey scientist Cynthia Gardner. Still, the eruption was nowhere near what happened 24 years ago, when 57 people were killed and towns 250 miles away were coated with ash. About 20 minutes after Friday's eruption, the mountain calmed and the plume began to dissipate. The National Weather Service notified the Federal Aviation Administration in case planes needed to be rerouted. The steam cloud poured from the southern edge of a 1,000-foot-tall lava dome in the volcano's crater. Steam frequently rises from the crater, but the 8,364-foot peak had not erupted since 1986. For the past week, scientists have detected thousands of earthquakes of increasing strength as high as magnitude 3.3 suggesting another eruption was on the way. Copyright 2004 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Associated Press and Yahoo News. . For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Rob Slade Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 10:19:06 -0800 Subject: Book Review: "Biometrics for Network Security", Paul Reid Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca BKBIOMNS.RVW 20040527 "Biometrics for Network Security", Paul Reid, 2004, 0-13-101549-4, U$44.99/C$67.99 %A Paul Reid %C One Lake St., Upper Saddle River, NJ 07458 %D 2004 %G 0-13-101549-4 %I Prentice Hall %O U$44.99/C$67.99 +1-201-236-7139 fax: +1-201-236-7131 %O http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131015494/robsladesinterne http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131015494/robsladesinte-21 %O http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131015494/robsladesin03-20 %P 252 p. %T "Biometrics for Network Security" In the preface, Reid presents biometrics as the cure for all network security ills. Given his employment, with a company that sells biometric systems, this enthusiasm is understandable, if not totally compelling. Part one deals with introduction and background. Chapter one is the introduction -- mostly to the book. The definition of biometrics itself is very terse. Authentication technologies are promised in chapter two -- which starts out by repeating the all-too-common error of confusing authentication with identification. Reid then pooh-poohs passwords and tokens and praises biometrics as strong authentication, without dealing with the fact that a biometric is the ultimate static password, or addressing the technologies (and associated error rates) needed to make biometrics a viable authentication factor. Privacy is confused with intellectual property, access control, and improper employee monitoring in chapter three. Part two lists biometric technologies. Chapter four is a disorganized amalgam of factors generally involved in biometric use and applications. Fingerprint features are reviewed in chapter five with incomprehensible explanations and unclear illustrations. Attacks against fingerprint technologies and systems are raised--but are usually dismissed in a fairly cavalier manner. Similar examinations are made of face (chapter six), voice (seven), and iris (eight) systems. Part three looks at implementing the technologies for network applications. Chapter nine compares the four biometrics from part two, in general terms, and states measures that are rather at odds with other biometric literature. Reid makes a big deal out of simple error rate metrics in chapter ten. Most of chapter eleven talks about hardening biometric devices and hardware. Unconvincing fictional "straw man" case studies and some general project planning topics are in chapter twelve, with more of the same in thirteen and fourteen. Part five, which is only chapter fifteen, casts a rosy-spectacled look at the future when all of security will be made perfect through the use of biometrics -- essentially returning us to the preface. Basically, this appears to be a promotional pamphlet padded out to book length: it isn't even as good as Richards' article in the "Information Security Management Handbook" (cf. BKINSCMH.RVW). The material will not help you with a realistic assessment of what biometrics can (and cannot) do, or how to implement it. The "Biometrics" text by Woodward, Orlans and Higgins (cf. BKBIOMTC.RVW) is far superior. copyright Robert M. Slade, 2004 BKBIOMNS.RVW 20040527 ====================== (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer) rslade@vcn.bc.ca slade@victoria.tc.ca rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. - Rich Cook http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev or http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 12:49:19 -0400 Subject: Vonage(R) Upgrades Local Unlimited Calling Plan to Premium Reply-To: VoIPnews@yahoogroups.com http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-01-2004/0002262771&STORY&EDATE= EDISON, N.J., Oct. 1 /PRNewswire/ -- Vonage, the leading provider of broadband phone service in North America, announced today it will upgrade all customers on its Local Unlimited Plan, to Premium Unlimited, reducing the cost of unlimited calling throughout the US and Canada to $24.99 per month. "Over the past five months, we've noticed a trend in the industry away from calling certain minutes local and others long distance -- in an IP world distance is irrelevant, so we have changed our calling plans to reflect that," said Jeffrey A. Citron, Chairman and CEO of Vonage Holdings Corporation. "Instead of giving this great new upgrade to a small set of people, we decided to make it available to all of our customers and automatically upgrade those to the new price even if they're on the unlimited package already." In favor of a simplified pricing model, Vonage will now only offer two residential calling plans with the same great features for free: * $14.99/month -- Residential Basic Plan -- 500 minutes of local, toll and long distance calling throughout the United States and Canada. * $24.99/month -- Residential Premium Unlimited Plan -- unlimited calling throughout the 50 United States and Canada anytime, anywhere. * Services and hardware included for free on any of the above plans: * Voicemail * Call hunt * Caller ID * Call transfer * Call waiting * Repeat dialing * Call forwarding * Bandwidth saver * Call return (*69) * Area code selection * Caller ID block (*67) * International call block * Web-based account management * Motorola VT1005v device -- Real-time billing activity * Great international calling rates: -- Online voicemail retrieval -- Tel Aviv 4 cents per minute -- Real-time inbound/outbound -- London 3 cents per minute call record details -- Sydney 4 cents per minute "We don't call ourselves a phone company, because phone companies often treat their customers unfairly when it comes to new offerings, giving new customers the advantage over loyal ones," added Mr. Citron. "Vonage believes in rewarding our existing customers first, then making the plans available to new ones." Full press release at: http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-01-2004/0002262771&STORY&EDATE= How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/VoIPnews/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: VoIPnews-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ ------------------------------ From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Lawsuit in Colorado Over Rerouted 911 Organization: Comcast Online Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 19:08:18 GMT Carl Moore wrote: > There are other readers more knowledgeable than I on this, but I have > learned of a lawsuit (by a woman in the Denver area) over a wrong > address for home telephone number. My local E911 dispatcher acknowledges that CallVantage will not give them the info needed to work with their equipment. In other words, although the land lines have E911, and cell phones are supposed to soon, VoIP does not have the capability and it is not on the horizon. Tony P. wrote: >> A dispatch center in Castle Rock, nearly 40 miles from her Adams >> County house, took the call, thinking she was calling from a business >> in Parker. As Staats bounced from dispatch center to dispatch center, >> trying to find the right people to help her, her baby boy's condition >> grew worse, and Staats grew more frantic. >> Finally, 5-month-old Christopher Vasquez stopped breathing, and Staats >> let out a piercing, terror-filled scream. He died moments later, >> shortly after an ambulance was dispatched -- a little over four minutes >> after Staats made her call. >> Now, Staats has sued her telephone company, Comcast, and two other >> companies, claiming that because they put the wrong address for her >> phone number into the 911 system, her son died that day in the spring >> of 2003. >> "Because Comcast had my address wrong in the system, I had to watch my >> son die," she said Wednesday at a news conference. > This is going to force VoIP carriers to figure out how to deal with 911 > routing in a big old hurry. > For the life of me, I cannot understand why they just can't use GPS and > then do a database dip to route to the correct entity. You must be thinking cellphone. But a telephone adapter (TA) for VoIP can be moved to another location, even across country, plugged into broadband and it should work. THe USER must access the company database and change their address. Even then it will not work the same way that cell phones work (or will work). But I certain agree that this problem needs to be solved and soon. - RM ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 15:56:24 -0400 Tony P. wrote: > This is going to force VoIP carriers to figure out how to deal with 911 > routing in a big old hurry. > For the life of me, I cannot understand why they just can't use GPS and > then do a database dip to route to the correct entity. How would you propose installing a GPS device that works in determining the specific location of phone using Voice Over IP? With wireless you have a transceiver that is either outdoors and can 'see' GPS satellites, or is indoors but can be triangulated (we hope) from cellular base stations with known fixed locations. With VoIP on the other hand, I can plug the terminal into any number of ethernet ports, but most are indoors where GPS signals can't reach. E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ From: Ed Fortmiller Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 16:06:50 -0400 I don't know if Verizon covers California, if so they have a prepaid plan. First minute is 35 cents and each additional is 10 cents/min. Minimum purchase is $15. http://www.verizonwireless.com - under "plans" select PrePay. Ed Fortmiller | RUBBISHef24u@fortmiller.us | Hudson MA * To avoid getting a lot of SPAM junk mail, I have altered my REPLY-TO * address. PLEASE remove the leading "RUBBISH" from my REPLY address. * Any Email sent to the address without removing "RUBBISH" will * automatically be discarded without me even seeing it. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 21:06:54 +0100 From: Graeme Thomas Subject: Re: WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 In article , John Levine writes: > That would be Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He was made Knight Commander of > the Order of the British Empire earlier this year. This summer his > wife told me some amusing stories of trying to fit a trip back home to > get the award into Tim's overcrammed schedule. > R's, > John > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I believe Queen Elizabeth awarded him > the Knighthood on January 1, did she not? PAT] [ PAT: Please remove my address, in the unlikely event you want to publish this. It's a bit off-topic for telecomms. ] Awards and titles are announced twice a year: once on New Year's Day, and again on the Queen's (official) birthday. Those people awarded the honours can pick them up whenever convenient. I'm not sure when Sir Tim managed to find the time. I believe that people are not supposed to use the title until it has been awarded, but this nicety is often overlooked by the media. In practice people are informed, in confidence, about the award a few weeks before it happens. That gives them time to turn it down, without any publicity. Graeme Thomas ------------------------------ From: Daniel Eyholzer Subject: Re: Lucent DSL MAX 20 Packet Loss Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 22:41:09 +0200 whoward@piv27.cns.ualberta.ca (Walt Howard) wrote: > Are you sure that both the switch and the DSL box agree on the > duplex-ness of the connection between them? Having one believe the > connection is full-duplex and the other believe that it is > half-duplex can cause the symptom you report. Thanks a lot for your reply, Walt! After setting the switch ports on which the DSL boxes are connected to half duplex, it seems that the packet loss does not occur anymore, but the CRCs on the Cisco switch are still constantly increasing. It would be nice if I could find the cause for this CRCs too. Any idea what it could be? Daniel ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 13:40:17 -0700 In article , John Levine wrote: > Yeah, really. Gates' year at Harvard was in the early 1970s when, as > someone else noted, Harvard undergrads did most of their computing on > a PDP-11 Unix system in the Harvard Science Center. (I visited > Harvard for some early usenix meetings and played with it myself.) > Aiken's early Harvard University computer facility was in the 1940s > and 1950s. By the 1970s, Aiken was long since retired, his computers > were in the Smithsonian, Harvard had named the comp sci building after > him, and the CS department was using a PDP-10. > As others have noted, Traf-O-Data was back home in Seattle, not at > Harvard. There are clearly a few significant differences between the statements in this message and in John's earlier message, and those in my original post and the longer reply message I recently posted. I tend to believe that the various details I posted about the Gates/Traf-O-Data/Harvard relationship, as told to me by the fellow undergraduate who was there at the time, are probably correct. Neither John Levine nor I seem to be know for certain whether Gates processed traffic counter tapes using computer facilities in the Aiken Computation Laboratory (which was definitely still functioning when Gates was there), or in the much newer Harvard Science Center (or perhaps even not at all). Perhaps others will know. Over and out on this topic ... ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Recording Industry Sues 762 for Net Music Swaps Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 15:36:04 EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A recording-industry trade group said on Thursday it had filed a new round of lawsuits against 762 people it suspects of distributing its songs for free over Internet "peer to peer" networks like Kazaa and eDonkey. The Recording Industry Association of America has now sued roughly 5,400 people over the past year in an effort to discourage the online song copying that it believes has cut into CD sales. "We want music fans to enjoy music online, but in a fashion that compensates everyone who worked to create that music," RIAA said. Among those sued were students at 26 different colleges and universities, where the prevalence of high-speed networks and cash-poor music fans has led to an explosion of peer-to-peer traffic. Under pressure from the RIAA, many schools have taken steps to limit file sharing and at least 20 schools give students free access to industry-sanctioned download services like Roxio Inc.'s web site. The RIAA does not yet know the names of those it has sued, only the numerical addresses used by their computers. The trade group typically finds out suspects' identities from their Internet service providers during the legal proceedings. In addition to those sued anonymously, the RIAA said it had sued 68 defendants whose identities had been discovered and who had declined offers to settle. The RIAA typically settles copyright-infringement suits for around $5,000 each. Though the recording industry has successfully sued thousands of individuals, it has had less luck with the peer-to-peer networks themselves. Courts so far have held that networks cannot be held liable because, like VCR makers, they do not commit copyright infringement but merely make it possible. The RIAA has pushed Congress to lower that standard. A bill currently being considered in the Senate would hold liable anyone who "induces" others to reproduce copyrighted material. Objections by librarians, conservative groups and the technology industry have prevented the bill from advancing so far, but Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch said earlier Thursday that he would take it up again next week. The RIAA represents the world's largest record labels, such as Warner Music, EMI Group Plc, Bertelsmann AG Universal, others. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Reuters News Service and Yahoo News.. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You know what is really scary about this demand by the RIAA is its intent to go after the folks who 'induce' or 'encourage' illegal copying, and if that provision is resurrected (it was shot down once) then anyone who publishes anything which *possibly could be illegal* can get in trouble also if they do not make sure everything in their collection is not absolutely legal. Reasoning is they 'encouraged' it or 'facilitated' it. If I have a copy machine here which is not monitored constantly (and what library does that?) then did the librarian 'induce' someone to make an illegal copy? Am I supposed to carefully inspect and evaluate everything published here in the Digest, lest I be put on trial for 'inducing' and 'faciliting' a copyright infringment? That would seem to be what RIAA is saying. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Iraq Mobile Network Brings Benefits and Bombs Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 15:39:18 EDT [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here is another example of how technology gives, and technology takes away, as per the essay printed here last weekend from the 1991 conference. PAT] BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Iraqis hail their mobile phone network as one of the few achievements in the country's reconstruction, but the technology is also being used to detonate bombs that cause daily death and destruction. Copying techniques employed by the attackers in the Madrid train bombings, the Bali bombings and recent blasts in Saudi Arabia, insurgents in Iraq are using mobile phones to set off car bombs and other explosions, U.S. officials and experts say. It is far from the only method being used, but since licenses were awarded to set up the mobile network a year ago, and mobile phones became ubiquitous accessories in Iraqi cities, the technique has become common and reliable. "There's definitely evidence that mobile phones are being used to detonate roadside bombs and car bombs," said David Claridge, a security specialist with the Risk Advisory Group who has worked in Iraq in recent months. "I wouldn't say it's the single biggest contributor to the bombings, but it's a technique that they're employing." Setting off a bomb using a mobile phone is fairly simple. A call to the phone generates an electronic pulse that sets off the detonator or closes a circuit, triggering the bomb. "It's not rocket science," John Pike of Globalsecurity.org, a Washington think-tank, was quoted as saying in a recent report by the U.S.-based Homeland Security Group. "Cellphone detonators are pretty straightforward tradecraft." DIFFICULT TO TRACE Not only are they straightforward, reliable and relatively cheap, but conditions in Iraq make them particularly attractive. Since the goal of the network was to provide service as quickly as possible, and make it accessible to as many people as possible, most subscribers use pay-as-you-go facilities, which make the individuals very difficult to trace. Even if a call was made from one mobile phone to another to set off a bomb, telecoms experts question whether Iraqi operators would be capable of tracking the call quickly enough to help U.S. troops and Iraqi police hunt down the perpetrators. "With most Western mobile networks, it would be possible for intelligence agents to trace the call, or at least identify all calls made to that number at that time," said a London-based forensic security expert who asked not to be named. "I'm not familiar with Iraq, but I can imagine that it would be more difficult to do such a thing there given the security situation and other limitations." While Iraqis may face greater danger now that they have a mobile phone network, security consultants say that's just a fact of life -- the technology brings benefits as well as risks and everyone in the world is potentially threatened. "To deny access to mobile telecommunications at this stage would be counterproductive," said Claridge. "If insurgents in Iraq can't use mobile phones, they'll find something else." Still, U.S. troops have clamped down on mobile phone use at bomb sites to prevent follow-up blasts, the sort of attack that may have been used to kill 34 children in Baghdad on Thursday. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, Reuters News Service and Yahoo News.. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Chris Subject: atton Adds FXO to SmartNode(TM) VoIP Solutions Date: 1 Oct 2004 12:44:53 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com New FXO Analog Telephony Interfaces for Patton SmartNodes Enable True VoIP-to-PSTN Access While Eliminating Telephone Charges GAITHERSBURG, Maryland - Patton Electronics--an industry leader in access, connectivity and VoIP--announces new additions to their SmartNode(TM) family of VoIP Gateways and Routers. The new SmartNode models feature FXO and FXS/FXO telephony interface combinations that enable direct connection to a PBX or PSTN. "Our customers are asking for solutions that integrate seamlessly with their existing communications infrastructure to deliver end-to-end voice services over an IP network," said Scott Whittle, Director of Product Management at Patton." With SmartNode and FXO, network administrators can preserve their existing legacy telephone equipment and services while leveraging VoIP to lower operating costs and achieve voice-data convergence." Any enterprise with a legacy analog PBX can connect SmartNode FXO ports to their PBX and the local PSTN, thus reaping the benefits of VoIP without costly PBX replacement or upgrades. The PBX can then securely route calls through the Internet or corporate IP network to any analog phone or fax. Routing voice and data through a single network enables companies to consolidate communications infrastructures, thereby reducing equipment, cabling, and network administration costs. Meanwhile, employees working at remote IP endpoints (for instance, those teleworking from home) can take advantage of all the PBX features (voice-mail, 3-digit dialing, conference calls, etc.) provided at the corporate headquarters. FXO, FXS, and FXS/FXO interface combinations are now available on a wide range of models within the SmartNode 4520 Series. All SmartNode ToIP Gateway Routers support SIP and H.323 VoIP signaling, T.38 Fax-over-IP, a full set of codecs, IP routing with NAT, Firewall, PPP, PPPoE, VLAN, Frame-Relay, DHCP and DynDNS, plus a full suite of upstream and downstream QoS (Quality of Service) features to prioritize traffic for enhanced voice quality. Available software options offer IPSec DES/3DES/AES) VPN and Q.SIG support. About the SmartNode Family of VoIP Gateway Routers The SmartNode family of VoIP gateways and routers offer compact-desktop and modular-chassis solutions for provider and enterprise voice and data applications. The SmartNode 1000 and 4520 series SOHO and branch office IADs support one or two ISDN BRI So ports or 2-8 analog ports as well as a full-featured QoS VPN Router. The modular 19" SmartNode 2300 series are designed for medium and large enterprise applications featuring on-board LAN and WAN interfaces and a range of PMC based voice interface cards/expansion modules. Interface cards provide flexible port configurations for ISDN, T1, E1, PRI, BRI and FXS. The SmartNode 2400 series supports up to 96/120 Voice-over-IP connections in a single 1U 19" chassis. About Patton Patton Electronics Company is a US manufacturer and marketer of data communications products, including VoIP/ToIP gateways & routers, Remote Access (V.92, V.90, K56Flex, V.34+, and ISDN dial-in), Last Mile/Local Loop Access (T1, E1, and xDSL modems, NTUs and CSU/DSUs), Multi-Service Access (voice, intranet, extranet, and Frame Relay access), and Connectivity (interface converters, short range modems, multiplexers, and surge protectors). Patton Electronics Company 7622 Rickenbacker Drive Gaithersburg, MD 20879 USA Tel: (301) 975-1000 Fax: (301) 869-9293 Email: marketing@patton.com http://patton.com ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V23 #462 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 1 23:28:46 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i923SkD13531; Fri, 1 Oct 2004 23:28:46 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 23:28:46 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410020328.i923SkD13531@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #463 TELECOM Digest Fri, 1 Oct 2004 23:28:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 463 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Microsoft Vows Fight on Patent Rejection (Lisa Minter) Re: Voicepulse Disconnects Remote Computers When Phone is Used (jdj) Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal (Tony P.) Re: Mount St. Helens Erupts After 18 Years (Clarence Dold) Re: Mount St. Helens Erupts After 18 Years (Marcus Jervis) Re: Lawsuit in Colorado Over Rerouted 911 (David) FCC Nears Cingular, AT&T Decision (Lisa Minter) Red Hat Buys Technology From Netscape (Lisa Minter) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: Lisa Minter Subject: Microsoft Vows Fight on Patent Rejection Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 15:41:41 EDT By ALLISON LINN, AP Business Writer SEATTLE - In a preliminary ruling, the government rejected Microsoft Corp.'s 1996 patent on technology for saving files on computers using easy-to-remember names. Microsoft vowed Thursday to appeal the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's decision, setting the stage for what could be long-running negotiations. The office could eventually decide to reject it outright, let it stand or change its scope. The patent covers technology widely used on computers running Microsoft's Windows operating system. In more recent years, it has also been used for naming files from devices that work with Windows, like digital cameras and portable music players. The patent is part of what Microsoft says is its implementation of a broader system used to store computer files, called File Allocation Table, or FAT. But Microsoft does not claim control over the entire FAT system. "We have some rights, but no one person has firm, strong control over all aspects of FAT," said David Kaefer, director of business development for Microsoft's intellectual property and licensing unit. Late last year, Microsoft began asking companies to buy licenses to use its implementations of the FAT system, including licensing the patent that was preliminarily rejected. The move raised concerns that the company would discriminate against those who develop open-source technology, restricting their ability to compete on the widely used Windows platform, said Daniel Ravicher, head of the Public Patent Foundation. His organization, backed by the open-source movement, asked that the patent be re-examined. Kaefer said Microsoft would grant the licenses to those who use open-source technology, albeit with slightly different terms. Greg Aharonian, a patent critic who runs the Internet Patent News Service, believes the patent will likely end up rejected given so much evidence the technology in question is widely used. "It's like getting a patent on cheesecake," he said. But he doesn't believe a rejection would have any major business or financial impact on the company because it doesn't pose a serious threat to cash cows like Windows or the Office business software. Nonetheless, in cases like this, where an outside group initiates the re-examination request, the most common outcome is that the patent is ultimately changed but not rejected outright, patent office spokeswoman Brigid Quinn said. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Voicepulse Disconnects Remote Computers When Phone is Used Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 16:48:02 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 16:04:27 -0400, Chris Eilersen wrote: > Does anyone have any ideas why this is happening and what I can do to > fix it? Seems your phone may be hogging all the network bandwidth. It also sounds like a router firmware and/or a windows driver problem. It may also be a router config problem. Linksys may have updated the router firmware and windows drivers since you got your system. Linksys may also have FAQ or knowledgebase info on this. You might also ask Voicepulse whether they have heard of this before. Don't expect to talk to anyone at Linksys. Seems no one is home any more. If you do get someone there, then you will be one of the luckiest people around. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal Organization: ATCC Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 23:56:37 GMT In article , sacredpoet@sacredpoet.com says: > Tony P. wrote: >> This is going to force VoIP carriers to figure out how to deal with 911 >> routing in a big old hurry. >> For the life of me, I cannot understand why they just can't use GPS and >> then do a database dip to route to the correct entity. > How would you propose installing a GPS device that works in > determining the specific location of phone using Voice Over IP? With > wireless you have a transceiver that is either outdoors and can 'see' > GPS satellites, or is indoors but can be triangulated (we hope) from > cellular base stations with known fixed locations. With VoIP on the > other hand, I can plug the terminal into any number of ethernet ports, > but most are indoors where GPS signals can't reach. > E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. > Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. Suction cup mounted antenna in the nearest southwest facing window. Put solar cells on the thing to keep it charged and hell, use bluetooth or 802.11 for it to transmit it's location. Not hard at all. ------------------------------ From: dold@XReXXMount.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Mount St. Helens Erupts After 18 Years Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 22:40:00 UTC Organization: a2i network Lisa Minter wrote: > Mount St. Helens, the volcano that blew its top with cataclysmic force > in 1980, erupted for the first time in 18 years Friday, belching a > huge column of white steam and ash after days of rumblings. I drove to Mt. St. Helens in 1989. As you drive in last few miles, you see the mountain now and then, and then lose sight of it on the windy road.But you don't lose your sense of direction. Thousands of trees, like toothpicks, all point toward (or away from) the crater. Acres and acres of that was more impressive than the crater itself, where we weren't allowed to get very close. GPS: 46.19, -122.2 http://earthquake.usgs.gov/recenteqsUS/Quakes/uw10010614.htm Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: For people who wish to see an absolutely breathtaking view of Mount St. Helens, I recommend taking a look at http://www.fs.fed.us/gpnf/volcanocams/msh which operates 24 hours per day snapping new pictures at five minute intervals. Very unfortunatly, during the Friday afternoon action, the servers were so overloaded it was very difficult to get through. After the immmediate action was over it was easier to reach the page. Be sure to clean your cache at least every five minutes unless your computer will do that automatically. For those of us who have been more provincial in recent years -- seldom getting more than a mile or two from our homes -- *good* web cams are the next best thing to being there in person. Oh, 35-40 years ago I traveled everywhere; would fly to New York City for a weekend of shopping, touring, etc, then a month or so later I'd be in San Francisco for several days at a time. I still remember quite well one trip I made (via San Franciso to Seattle, then onward to Vancouver and Victoria, BC, winding up in northern BC for a few days and riding in a rented car with a friend from northern BC back to Chicago traveling across southern Canada to Windsor, Ontario then dropping back into the USA at Detroit. Those good times are long over for me; now I must content myself with looking at the three thousand or so constantly changing images in the Web Cam Watcher software program. :( PAT] ------------------------------ From: Marcus Jervis Subject: Re: Mount St. Helens Erupts After 18 Years Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 23:05:51 +0000 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As this issue of the Digest was being > edited and getting ready for release, the thing everyone has been > expecting for several days finally happened: Mount St. Helens blew her > stack, spewing ashes and hot lava everywhere in the vicinity of > Vancouver, WA. The seismic activity in California over the past few > days was a good indicator something was about to happen. Officially, > I guess, the eruption started at 12:45 PM Pacific time, and lasted No, no no. There is no lava. Vancouver, WA, across the river from Portland, Oregon, is not covered with ash. The mountain shot off some steam for about 25 minutes. The mountain did not blow her stack. There was no lava flow during the big eruption in 1980, but lots of ash spread over downwind communities. At that time the bulk of the airborn ash landed to the southeast. University of Washington geophysicists have also said that there is no connection between the volcano activity and the seismic activity in California. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My note quoted the Associated Press article which Lisa Minter printed in full. Some of the related articles (which we did not print here) had geophysicists stating that much of the seismic activity *was* due to the volcano planning to erupt. The AP article used the phrase 'she blew her stack' and 'although mostly hot boiling water and steam, a little debris also shot out.' It was quite an exciting afternoon, if the amount of network congestion at volcanocams was any indicator. A local newspaper in the area talked about it some also today, and you may wish to read it: http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20040929/topstories/445.shtml PAT] ------------------------------ From: David Reply-To: FlyLikeAnEagle@United.Com Subject: Re: Lawsuit in Colorado Over Rerouted 911 Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 02:34:00 GMT Hello everyone, My comments are inline. On Fri, 1 Oct 2004 19:08:18 UTC, Rick Merrill wrote: > Carl Moore wrote: >> There are other readers more knowledgeable than I on this, but I have >> learned of a lawsuit (by a woman in the Denver area) over a wrong >> address for home telephone number. > My local E911 dispatcher acknowledges that CallVantage will not give > them the info needed to work with their equipment. In other words, > although the land lines have E911, and cell phones are supposed to > soon, VoIP does not have the capability and it is not on the > horizon. > Tony P. wrote: >>> >> This is going to force VoIP carriers to figure out how to deal with 911 >> routing in a big old hurry. I work on parts of the "911 problem". The VOIP Systems are not part of the PTSN (Public Telephone System) and claim they should not be regulated as phone companies. A few are growing up, but slowly. It's not a hard problem to solve. I've seen several good solutions and came up with another after reading this post. I'm not sure why CallVantage didn't know where the caller was; they did. It's always sad when the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing. Even in the cellular world, the problem wasn't that hard. Phones are starting to get GPS locations. It's a start. Even with GPS Phones, sometimes the 911 center has to call the cell company to get your location. The sad part of the 911 system is that it was built on incomplete and partial standards. That left the dozens of telephone providers to create their own solutions. Making a change to your landline's location during a move across town may take your provider a few minutes, days, or longer to actually make it to the 911 center. There isn't much agreement on what is an important update period. The Canadian system is a bit more reliable and requires an update period of a few hours nation wide. I've not heard how they handle the move request though, perhaps it still take a while to hit their national update system. >> For the life of me, I cannot understand why they just can't use GPS and >> then do a database dip to route to the correct entity. > You must be thinking cellphone. But a telephone adapter (TA) for VoIP > can be moved to another location, even across country, plugged into > broadband and it should work. THe USER must access the company > database and change their address. Even then it will not work the > same way that cell phones work (or will work). True, but there are ways to handle that most of the time. The networking people just need to get with the phone people and get a solution made. I don't think they are trying. I also read fairly often that those 911 Surcharges you pay on your monthly cell and landlines don't always get into funding the 911 system. I've never been thrilled with lawmakers creating taxes and then mis-spending the money. > But I certain agree that this problem needs to be solved and soon. - RM I agree. There are so many problems with the 911 system. At least it is there. Many countries are not working that hard, though a few may be doing better. David ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: FCC Nears Cingular, AT&T Decision Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 15:40:27 EDT by Ron Orol in Washington Federal Communications Commission member Kathleen Abernathy said Thursday, Sept. 30, that the agency will rule on Cingular Wireless LLC $41 billion acquisition of AT&T Wireless Services Inc. in the next few weeks. Speaking to reporters, Abernathy said that while agency staff have yet to circulate a draft order among the commissioners, it would be "weeks, not months, before the FCC completes action on the merger. That suggests the companies remain on track to close the deal in October. Abernathy said FCC commissioners expect to receive a formal recommendation from the agency's wireless telecom bureau in the next few days, which they will then begin reviewing. "It's a very complex merger," she said. "We will need to take time to understand how the analysis was developed and what the conditions are." Observers do not expect the FCC to require Cingular to divest significant amounts of wireless spectrum or customers to win approval for the transaction. Separately, sources said Thursday that Cingular remains close to securing clearance of the transaction from the Department of Justice. All substantive disputes have been resolved, and the consent decree clearing the deal should be completed within days, they said At her FCC press conference, Abernathy said agency economists and lawyers are debating whether wireless and wire-line phones are becoming interchangeable, which would suggest that there is a broader telecommunications market rather than distinct wireless and wire line markets. But she did not say that the FCC intends to find a broader telecommunications market in its Cingular review. Most observers expect it will be several years before the agency makes this leap, which would widen the door to telecom industry consolidation. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Yahoo News. . For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: Red Hat Buys Technology From Netscape Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 15:40:49 EDT SEATTLE (Reuters) - Linux said on Thursday that it had bought Netscape's computer user identification and management technology from America Online Inc., a unit of Time Warner Inc. Raleigh, North Carolina-based Red Hat, which provides update and support services for the Linux operating system, said it will integrate the assets from Netscape Security Solutions into its products in the next 6 to 12 months. The technology purchased by Red Hat for an undisclosed amount is used to manage user profiles in large corporate networks. Red Hat is focusing its efforts on selling more of its update and support services to large companies that are using Linux, a software operating system that can be copied and modified freely, unlike proprietary software such as Microsoft Corp.'s Windows. Netscape was bought by AOL which later merged with Time Warner. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance Reuters News Service and Yahoo News.. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V23 #463 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Oct 2 15:15:29 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i92JFSV19932; Sat, 2 Oct 2004 15:15:29 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 15:15:29 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410021915.i92JFSV19932@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #464 TELECOM Digest Sat, 2 Oct 2004 15:15:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 464 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Magna Carta For the Knowledge Age (TELECOM Archives Reprint) Re: WWW Founder was Re: WWW is Ten Years Old in 1994 (David Heyman) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 2 Oct 2004 13:37:45 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Magna Carta For the Knowledge Age This appeared in the Computer Underground Digest on January 31, 1995. CuD is now a defunct publication. CuD began in 1989/90 as an offshoot of TELECOM Digest. Around that time, there was a huge stench on the net as the result of some activities the federal government categorized as 'crime', resulting in many arrests, computer seizures, etc. The sheer volume of messages coming into the Digest prevented publishing even close to the total, despite the fact that daily there were six or eight -- even ten, one day -- issues of the Digest. Jim Thomas suggested starting a new digest, on the theme of the 'computer under- ground' to discuss it all. So, the Computer Underground Digest was started. At the time, Jim Thomas was a professor at Northern Illinois University. I have since lost track of him. CuD was published on a regular basis for six or seven years. Starting last week, as we began observing the tenth anniversry of the WWW -- World Wide Web -- we have published various short notes on the topic, and we began last weekend with an essay (actually written a few years before the WWW became a reality) on how to handle all the information we have been given. This weekend, a 'Magna Carta' for netizens which was written about the time WWW was beginning to take a firm grasp on our reality. Date: Tue, 31 Jan 95 23:14 CST To: cudigest@UIUCVMD.BitNet From: Cu Digest (tk0jut2@mvs.cso.niu.edu) Sender: owner-cudigest@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu Computer underground Digest Tue Jan 31, 1995 Volume 7 : Issue 07 ISSN 1004-042X Editors: Jim Thomas and Gordon Meyer (TK0JUT2@NIU.BITNET) Date: Wed, 18 Jan 1995 14:14:52 +0000 From: rkmoore@IOL.IE(Richard K. Moore) Subject: File 1--"Magna Carta" digest: A Commentary Digest of PFF's Magna Carta - Part 1 of 2 By: Richard K. Moore 17 January, 1995 I reviewed the Magna Carta in a previous message. This document is a condensed version of the Magna Carta itself, with commentary. Some sections, especially the introductory material, are quoted in entirety. Some sections are summarized by me, with representative passages cited. Other sections are simply boiled down with ellipses to their meat. You will find editorial comments scattered throughout. These couldn't go in the review, because they need to be adjacent to the material to make sense. -Richard ---------------------------------------------------- From-- Phil Are To-- rre@weber.ucsd.edu Subject-- "Magna Carta" This is the so-called "Magna Carta" from Newt Gingrich's "Progress and Freedom Foundation" that I discussed in TNO 1(12). It is formatted precisely as I received it from PFF. Date-- 9 Jan 95 17:25:21 EDT From--Kevin Lacobie Subject--Your request for "Cyberspace and the American Dream" ... Below is a copy of the Magna Carta paper. A listserv-based discussion group will be formed soon for this paper, and the Progress and Freedom Foundation *promise further activities* in this area. If you have any more questions about PFF, please direct them to PFF@aol.com. If you have questions about the MagnaCarta discussion group, please direct them to info@bionomics.org. Kevin Lacobie postmaster for @bionomics.org [*emphasis* added throughout - rkm] ___________________________________________________ Cyberspace and the American Dream: A Magna Carta for the Knowledge Age Release 1.2 // August 22, 1994 ---------------------------------------- This statement represents the cumulative wisdom and innovation of many dozens of people. It is based primarily on the thoughts of four "co-authors": Ms. Esther Dyson; Mr. George Gilder; Dr. George Keyworth; and Dr. Alvin Toffler. This release 1.2 has the final "imprimatur" of no one. In the spirit of the age: It is copyrighted solely for the purpose of preventing someone else from doing so. If you have it, you can use it any way you want. However, major passages are from works copyrighted individually by the authors, used here by permission; these will be duly acknowledged in release 2.0. It is a living document. Release 2.0 will be released in October 1994. We hope you'll use it is to tell us how to make it better. Do so by: - Sending E-Mail to PFF@AOL.COM - Faxing 202/484-9326 or calling 202/484-2312 - Sending POM (plain old mail) to 1250 H. St. NW, Suite 550 Washington, DC 20005 (The Progress & Freedom Foundation is a not-for-profit research and educational organization dedicated to creating a positive vision of the future founded in the historic principles of the American idea.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As of today, October 2, 2004, I have *not* been able to find a 'version 2.0' or any later version of this document than the 'version 1.2' noted above. The occassional [] notes as they are inserted below are those of Mr. Are when he first sent this document in to CuD. PAT] ----------------------------- PREAMBLE The central event of the 20th century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth -- in the form of physical resources -- has been losing value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things. In a First Wave economy, land and farm labor are the main "factors of production." In a Second Wave economy, the land remains valuable while the "labor" becomes massified around machines and larger industries. In a Third Wave economy, the central resource -- a single word broadly encompassing data, information, images, symbols, culture, ideology, and values -- is _actionable_ knowledge. The industrial age is not fully over. In fact, classic Second Wave sectors (oil, steel, auto-production) have learned how to benefit from Third Wave technological breakthroughs -- just as the First Wave's agricultural productivity benefited exponentially from the Second Wave's farm-mechanization. But the Third Wave, and the _Knowledge Age_ it has opened, will not deliver on its potential unless it adds social and political dominance to its accelerating technological and economic strength. This means repealing Second Wave laws and retiring Second Wave attitudes. It also gives to leaders of the advanced democracies a special responsibility -- to facilitate, hasten, and explain the transition. As humankind explores this new "electronic frontier" of knowledge, it must confront again the most profound questions of how to organize itself for the common good. The meaning of freedom, structures of self-government, definition of *property*, nature of *competition*, conditions for *cooperation*, sense of community and nature of *progress* will each be redefined for the Knowledge Age -- just as they were redefined for a new age of industry some 250 years ago. What our 20th-century countrymen came to think of as the "American dream," and what resonant thinkers referred to as "the promise of American life" or "the American Idea," emerged from the turmoil of 19th-century industrialization. Now it's our turn: The knowledge revolution, and the Third Wave of historical change it powers, summon us to renew the dream and enhance the promise. THE NATURE OF CYBERSPACE The Internet -- the huge (2.2 million computers), global (135 countries), rapidly growing (10-15% a month) network that has captured the American imagination -- is only a tiny part of cyberspace. So just what is cyberspace? More ecosystem than machine, cyberspace is a bioelectronic environment that is literally universal: It exists everywhere there are telephone wires, coaxial cables, fiber-optic lines or electromagnetic waves. This environment is "inhabited" by *knowledge*, including incorrect ideas, existing in electronic form. It is connected to the physical environment by portals which *allow people to see what's inside*, to put knowledge in, to alter it, and to take knowledge out. Some of these portals are one-way (e.g. television receivers and television transmitters); others are two-way (e.g. telephones, computer modems). [ Hey! I though *we* were the residents of [ cyberspace, not the the electrons! [ [ Here's where the condensation starts. [ [ They continue building the model that cyberspace is [ a big data world that people can access. No [ perception of cyberspace *embodying* communities of [ people. People are to participate as individual [ consumer/navigator of cyberspace's resources. [ [ Here's a representative sample of the slogan- [ coating that colors their presentation: ... Cyberspace is the land of knowledge, and the exploration of that land can be a civilization's truest, highest calling. The opportunity is now before us to empower every person to pursue that calling in his or her own way. The challenge is as daunting as the opportunity is great. The Third Wave has profound implications for the nature and meaning of property, of the marketplace, of community and of individual freedom. As it emerges, it shapes new codes of behavior that move each organism and institution -- family, neighborhood, church group, company, government, nation -- inexorably beyond standardization and centralization, as well as beyond the materialist's obsession with energy, money and control. [ Next comes the first entry of the leit-motiv: [ "government" as the villain of the story. It also spells the death of the central institutional paradigm of modern life, the bureaucratic organization. (Governments, including the American government, are the last great redoubt of bureaucratic power on the face of the planet, and for them the coming change will be profound and probably traumatic.)... [ Corporations, as a seat of bureaucratic power, [ manage to escape notice here. Ah well, so many [ details, so little time... [ [ Next, they show how hip they are by pointing out [ the narrowness of the "superhighway" metaphor, and [ the aptness of the "cyberspace" [ metaphor. They break the 2nd-wave bounds of linear [ ASCII messaging to give us a brilliant two- [ dimensional table with which to compare the [ metaphors in a futuristic light: _Information Superhighway_ / _Cyberspace_ Limited Matter / Unlimited Knowledge Centralized / Decentralized Moving on a grid / Moving in space Government ownership / A vast array of ownerships Bureaucracy / Empowerment Efficient but not hospitable / Hospitable if you customize it Withstand the elements / Flow, float and fine-tune Unions and contractors / Associations and volunteers Liberation from First Wave / Liberation from Second Wave Culmination of Second Wave / Riding the Third Wave ... [ Well, OK, I buy it. I bought it ten years ago. [ [ --- [ [ The first major character in the story now makes an [ appearance. He is brother "private property", [ endowed by his creator with inalienable rights. [ Those rights are to be the very [ cornerstone of the cyberspace frontier: THE NATURE AND OWNERSHIP OF PROPERTY Clear and enforceable property rights are essential for markets to work. Defining them is a central function of government. Most of us have "known" that for a long time. But to create the new cyberspace environment is to create _new_ property -- that is, new means of creating goods (including ideas) that serve people. The property that makes up cyberspace comes in several forms: Wires, coaxial cable, computers and other "hardware"; the electromagnetic spectrum; and "intellectual property" -- the knowledge that dwells in and defines cyberspace. [ [ Cyberspace is clearly defined as being a repository [ for "knowledge property". This definition is [ summarized in their phrases: [ [ "the knowledge that dwells in and defines [ cyberspace" [ [ " to create...cyberspace...is to create _new_ [ property" [ [ They next set out a dichotomy -- we are to decide [ between two options for cyber-property ownership, [ private & public: In each of these areas, two questions that must be answered. First, what does "ownership" _mean_? What is the nature of the property itself, and what does it mean to own it? Second, once we understand what ownership means, _who_ is the owner? At the level of first principles, should ownership be public (i.e. government) or private (i.e. individuals)? ... [ Brother "private property" is asking to be accepted [ as "everyman", to be the character the reader [ identifies with. He claims to represent the [ "individual". Well... OK so far. But methinks [ Plato is entrapping me... [ [ Is it true that "public" includes no other options [ than direct government ownership? [ [ And is it true that "private" means ownership by [ individuals? [ And if so, is that all individuals, or a few [ individuals? [ The unfolding story will make this clear. [ [ --- [ [ They make one really ominous statement in this [ section: If this analysis is correct, copyright and patent protection of knowledge (or at least many forms of it) may no longer be unnecessary... [ That word "knowledge" is scary in this context. Do [ they mean that ideas and facts are to be [ patentable? We see such a trend [ in genetic engineering already. [ [ In the cyberspace context, are they proposing that [ intellectual concepts themselves will be [ patentable? If so, then presumably it will happen [ on a wholesale basis. [ Will schools pay knowledge royalties to teach the [ three R's? [ [ --- [ [ Their next section is entitled "THE NATURE OF THE [ MARKETPLACE". I'll pass most of it along, trimmed [ by a few ellipses and punctuated by asterisks: THE NATURE OF THE MARKETPLACE Inexpensive knowledge destroys economies-of-scale. Customized knowledge permits"just in time" production for an ever rising number of *goods*. Technological progress creates new means of serving old markets, turning *one-time monopolies* into *competitive battlegrounds*. These phenomena are altering the nature of the marketplace, ...transformed by technological progress from a "*natural monopoly*" to one in which competition is the rule. Three recent examples: * The market for "mail" has been made competitive by the development of fax machines and overnight delivery ...During the past 20 years, the market for television has been transformed from ... a few broadcast TV stations to one in which consumers can choose among broadcast, cable and satellite services. * The market for local telephone services, until recently a monopoly..., is rapidly being made competitive by the advent of wireless service and the entry of cable television into voice communication... The advent of new technology and new products creates the potential for _dynamic competition...Dynamic competition is better, because it allows competing technologies and new products to challenge the old ones and, if they really are better, to replace them. Static competition might lead to faster and stronger horses. Dynamic competition gives us the automobile... Then the personal-computing industry exploded, leaving older-style big-business-focused computing with a stagnant, piece of a burgeoning total market. As IBM lost market-share, many people became convinced that America had lost the ability to compete. By the mid-1980s, such alarmism had reached from Washington all the way into the heart of Silicon Valley. But the real story was the renaissance of American business and technological leadership. In the transition from mainframes to PCs, a vast new market was created. This market was characterized by *dynamic competition* consisting of easy access and low barriers to entry. Start-ups by the dozens took on the larger established companies -- and won. ...The reason for America's victory in the computer wars of the 1980s is that dynamic competition was allowed to occur, in an area so breakneck and pell-mell that government would've had a hard time controlling it _even had it been paying attention_. The challenge for policy in the 1990s is to permit, even encourage, dynamic competition in every aspect of the cyberspace marketplace. [ The meat of the story is now unfolding. Cyberspace [ is simply a new mass communications marketplace. [ The players are telcos, fiber operators, wireless [ providers, and entrepreneurs of all flavors. [ [ Consumers play no role in this drama, their benefit [ comes when they get to choose among the commercial [ services being arranged for them. [ [ Brother "private property" who was "the [ individual" in scene one, has now become a typical [ corporate board member, dealing with mergers, [ acquisitions, new-product planning, and new forms [ of competition. [ [ Notice the explicit call for *dynamic competition* [ as being central to a good cyberspace. Watch later [ how they switch sides on this issue several times. [ [ --- [ [ Now on to the next section: THE NATURE OF FREEDOM Overseas friends of America sometimes point out that the U.S. Constitution is unique -- because it states explicitly that power resides with the people, who delegate it to the government, rather than the other way around... This idea -- central to our free society -- was the result of more than 150 years of intellectual and political ferment, from the Mayflower Compact to the U.S. Constitution, as explorers struggled to establish the terms under which they would tame a new frontier. And as America continued to explore new frontiers --from the Northwest Territory to the Oklahoma land-rush -- it consistently returned to this fundamental principle of rights, reaffirming, time after time, that power resides with the people. [ [ Those of you with color screens probably noticed [ the red-white-and-blue background on this [ stationery. [ [ The argument has touched deep ground here. Our [ American heritage, our very duty as American [ citizens, demands that we agree that power in [ cyberspace should we reside with "the people". [ [ Fine, until you find out who "the people" [ are. Stay tuned. Cyberspace is the latest American frontier. As this and other societies make ever deeper forays into it, the proposition that ownership of this frontier resides first _with the people_ is central to achieving its true potential... [ I'm skipping four long paragraphs of fluff, to the [ effect that the struggle for freedom never ends, [ and that this generation must do its part. [ [ Next comes the second appearance of the leit-motif. [ The "evil government" character broadens out to [ represent the entire "2nd Wave" mentality. [ [ Government itself is possibly one of the 2nd Wave [ anachronisms to be left behind. [ * In a Second Wave world, it might make sense for government to insist on the right to peer into every computer by requiring that each contain a special "clipper chip." * In a Second Wave world, it might make sense for government to assume ownership over the broadcast spectrum and demand massive payments from citizens for the right to use it. * In a Second Wave world, it might make sense for government to prohibit entrepreneurs from entering new markets and providing new services. * And, in a Second Wave world, dominated by a few old-fashioned, one-way media "networks," it might even make sense for government to influence which political viewpoints would be carried over the airwaves... [ [ I just heard about the 3rd Wave last month, and [ already we're seeing a revisionist history of the [ 2nd Wave. [ [ What America have these guys been living in? We've [ encouraged entrepreneurs to enter new markets [ throughout our history, from railroad building, [ to mining, to Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, [ Henry Ford, the aircraft industry, ad infinitum. [ [ I never made massive payments to the government to [ watch TV. Which planet are these guys from? [ [ But they *do* make sense if you accept the [ equation: [ "citizen" == "communications company" [ because communication companies do pay license [ fees. But those fees are nominal for corporations, [ though they might seem large to an individual. [ [ Thus they skate from one meaning of "individual" to [ the other, even in mid thought. [ [ --- [ [ The next section is called THE ESSENCE OF THE [ COMMUNITY. I'll skip most of it -- it's really [ vacuous. I'll just give you the last two paragraphs [ to illustrate the flavor of this idling segment of [ the storyline: "...But unlike the private property of today," Salin continued, "the potential variations on design and prevailing customs will explode, because many variations can be implemented cheaply in software. And the 'externalities' associated with variations can drop; what happens in one cyberspace can be kept from affecting other cyberspaces." "Cyberspaces" is a wonderful _pluralistic_ word to open more minds to the Third Wave's civilizing potential. Rather than being a centrifugal force helping to tear society apart, cyberspace can be one of the main forms of glue holding together an increasingly free and diverse society. [ This next section is the heart of the story. [ Evil "government" is to be vanquished by brother [ "private property" -- watch as the two masks [ ("individual" and "communications provider") [ switch back and forth faster than the mind can see. THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT The current Administration has identified the right goal: Reinventing government for the 21st Century....This said, it is essential that we understand what it really means to create a Third Wave government and begin the process of transformation. ...The most pressing need...is to revamp the policies and programs that are slowing the creation of cyberspace...if there is to be an "industrial policy for the knowledge age," it should focus on removing barriers to competition and massively deregulating the fast-growing telecommunications and computing industries... ...the transition from the Second Wave to the Third Wave will require a level of government _activity_ not seen since the New Deal.... [ A nice-sounding vision for cyberspace is pulled in [ from the New York Times: "The amount of electronic material the superhighway can carry is dizzying, compared to the relatively narrow range of broadcast TV and the limited number of cable channels. Properly constructed and regulated, it could be open to all who wish to speak, publish and communicate. None of the interactive services will be possible, however, if we have an eight-lane data superhighway rushing into every home and only a narrow footpath coming back out. Instead of settling for a multimedia version of the same entertainment that is increasingly dissatisfying on today's TV, we need a superhighway that encourages the production and distribution of a broader, more diverse range of programming" (New York Times 11/24/93 p. A25). [ [ The individualist aspects of this vision play no [ further part in our story. The sole item adopted [ by PFF seems to be the requirement for [ symmetric bandwidth. Could this be establishing a [ pecking order between telcos and cable-operators, [ giving the edge to the telcos with their more [ symmetric architectures? ... an open question. [ [ We now come to an amazing shift of ground in our [ story. Its almost Khafka'esque or even [ Ionesco'esque in its blatant reversal of [ established story line. [ [ What they're going to do is passionately espouse [ the creation of a gigantic monopoly among the [ telcos and cable operators to build and operate [ cyberspace. Even though "dynamic competition" was [ the rallying cry up to this point, we're now to [ learn that "contrived competition between phone [ companies and cable operators" "will not deliver [ the two-way, multimedia and more civilized tele- [ society Kapor and Berman sketch." ...reducing barriers to entry and innovation [is] the only effective near-term path to Universal Access. In fact, it can be argued that a near-term national interactive multimedia network is impossible unless regulators permit much greater **collaboration** between the cable industry and phone companies. The latter's huge fiber resources...could be joined with the huge asset of 57 million broadband links...to produce a new kind of national network -- multimedia, interactive and (as costs fall) increasingly accessible to Americans of modest means. That is why obstructing such collaboration -- in the cause of forcing a competition between the cable and phone industries -- is *socially elitist*. To the extent it prevents collaboration between the cable industry and the phone companies, present federal policy actually thwarts the Administration's own goals of access and empowerment... ...If Washington forces the phone companies and cable operators to develop supplementary and duplicative networks, most other advanced industrial countries will attain cyberspace democracy -- via an interactive multimedia "open platform" -- before America does, despite this nation's technological dominance. ...A contrived competition between phone companies and cable operators will not deliver the two-way, multimedia and more civilized tele-society Kapor and Berman sketch. Nor is it enough to simply "get the government out of the way." Real issues of antitrust must be addressed, and no sensible framework exists today for addressing them. Creating the conditions for universal access to interactive multimedia will require a fundamental rethinking of government policy. [ How orwellian can you get? Those of us who bought [ into the glory of dynamic competition earlier on [ have now become "socially elitist" -- unless we [ have a mind which can switch identities and change [ positions as adroitly as our illustrious authors. [ [ Their cyberspace manifesto now reads: [ (1) strong private property rights [ (2) infrastructure to be owned by a [ private monopoly [ --- [ [ The pace of doublespeak picks up now. In the [ next section we're back in the "competition" camp, [ finding out why regulation must be eliminated from [ the communications game, to be replaced by [ an anti-trust model. [ ...Promoting Dynamic Competition Technological progress is turning the telecommunications marketplace from one characterized by "economies of scale" and "natural monopolies" into a prototypical competitive market. The challenge for government is to encourage this shift -- to create the circumstances under which new competitors and new technologies will challenge the natural monopolies of the past. Price-and-entry regulation makes sense for natural monopolies. The tradeoff is a straightforward one: The monopolist submits to price regulation by the state, in return for an exclusive franchise on the market. But what happens when it becomes economically desirable to have more than one provider in a market? The continuation of regulation under these circumstances stops progress in its tracks. It prevents new entrants from introducing new technologies and new products, while depriving the regulated monopolist of any incentive to do so on its own. Price-and-entry regulation, in short, is the antithesis of dynamic competition. The alternative to regulation is antitrust. Antitrust law is designed to prevent the acts and practices that can lead to the creation of new monopolies, or harm consumers by forcing up prices, limiting access to competing products or reducing service quality. Antitrust law is the means by which America has, for over 120 years, fostered competition in markets where many providers can and should compete. The market for telecommunications services --telephone, cable, satellite, wireless -- is now such a market...price/entry regulation of telecommunications services...should therefore be replaced by antitrust law as rapidly as possible. ...there should be no half steps. Moving from a regulated environment to a competitive one is -- to borrow a cliche -- like changing from driving on the left side of the road to driving on the right: You can't do it gradually. [ [ Though the "justification" arguments illogically [ contradict one another, the "conclusions" of those [ arguments add up to a coherent proposal. [ [ What the authors are proposing is an [ *unregulated monopoly* [ [ It is not surprising that they had to twist [ logic several times to pack both words into a [ manifesto, and make it seem like both are [ natural and consistent consequences of [ "competitive spirit" and the "American Dream". [ [ Their cyberspace manifesto now reads: [ (1) strong private property rights [ (2) infrastructure to be owned by a [ unregulated private monopoly [ --- [ [ Next they double-click on property rights: [ ...Defining and Assigning Property Rights ...Defining property rights in cyberspace is perhaps the single most urgent and important task for government information policy. Doing so will be a complex task, and each key area -- the electromagnetic spectrum, intellectual property, cyberspace itself (including the right to privacy) -- involves unique challenges. The important points here are: First, this is a "central" task of government... Secondly, the key principle of ownership by the people -- private ownership -- should govern every deliberation. *Government does not own cyberspace, the people do.*... [ [ Here's where the doublespeak pays off. They can [ make a statement like "the people own cyberspace" [ and manage to imply they are empowering [ the individual, when they've already stated clearly [ that ownership is to be vested in a large monopoly [ conglomerate. I must tip my hat to their skill. [ [ In an earlier review, I described this document as [ grossly rambling and inconsistent. I now have more [ respect for it. It's masterfully deceitful, and [ manages to marshall contradictory arguments in [ support of a coherent business proposal. [ [ --- [ [ We now move to another corporate business concern. [ Such concerns are clearly the domain of serious [ discourse addressed in the Magna Carta. The rest of [ the verbiage is a meaningless, crowd-pleasing [ smokescreen. [ [ Here we have a plea for rapid capital depreciation. [ That would be quite a windfall for a conglomerate [ investing billions in an infrastructure. [ [ Once again the taxpayer is asked to subsidize the [ R&D bill for new technology, but the ownership [ benefit is to go exclusively to the private [ operator. This has been the pattern since the New [ Deal. ...Creating Pro-Third-Wave Tax and Accounting Rules We need a whole set of new ways of accounting, both at the level of the enterprise, and of the economy. ...At the level of the enterprise, obsolete accounting procedures cause us to systematically _overvalue_ physical assets (i.e. property) and _undervalue_ human-resource assets and intellectual assets. So, if you are an inspired young entrepreneur looking to start a software company, or a service company of some kind, and it is heavily information-intensive, you will have a harder time raising capital than the guy next door who wants to put in a set of beat-up old machines to participate in a topped-out industry. On the tax side, the same thing is true... It is vital that accounting and tax policies -- both those promulgated by private-sector regulators like the Financial Accounting Standards Board and those promulgated by the government at the IRS and elsewhere -- start to reflect the shortened capital life-cycles of the Knowledge Age, and the increasing role of _intangible_ capital as "wealth." [ Their cyberspace manifesto now reads: [ (1) strong private property rights [ (2) infrastructure to be owned by a [ unregulated private monopoly [ (3) investment to be written off rapidly [ --- [ [ Next they get into a discussion of transforming [ government. I'm not sure why they're departing [ from their focused agenda of launching cyberspace [ as a private monopoly. Perhaps they think they're [ on a roll, and might as well go for the whole [ enchilada -- a corporate state. ...Creating a Third Wave Government Going beyond cyberspace policy per se, government must remake itself and redefine its relationship to the society at large...there are some yardsticks we can apply to policy proposals...[vacuous ones omitted] _Does it centralize control_? Second Wave policies centralize power in bureaucratic institutions; Third Wave policies work to spread power -- to empower those closest to the decision... A serious effort to apply these tests to every area of government activity -- from the defense and intelligence community to health care and education -- would ultimately produce a complete transformation of government as we know it. Since that is what's needed, let's start applying. [ With their usual twists of logic, we'd probably [ learn that other constellations of private [ interests, perhaps including additional unregulated [ monopolies, should be running all these other [ areas of public life as well. [ [ The closing section is vacuous but for [ background smoke. I'll cite a few representative [ paragraphs... [ GRASPING THE FUTURE The conflict between Second Wave and Third Wave groupings is the central political tension cutting through our society today. The more basic political question is not who controls the last days of industrial society, but who shapes the new civilization rapidly rising to replace it. Who, in other words, will shape the nature of cyberspace and its impact on our lives and institutions?... The Third Wave sector includes not only high-flying computer and electronics firms and biotech start-ups. It embraces advanced, information-driven manufacturing in every industry... For the time being, the entrenched powers of the Second Wave dominate Washington and the statehouses... ...a "mass movement" for cyberspace is still hard to see. Unlike the "masses" during the industrial age, this rising Third Wave constituency is highly diverse...This very heterogeneity contributes to its lack of political awareness. It is far harder to unify than the masses of the past. [ I guess the Magna Carta is to bring about this [ unity. Perhaps they seek to form an "internet cult" [ and the Magna Carta is the "mind-programming" [ formula being trial-posted. I think they'll find [ most of us not that easily programmed. We're too [ professionally familiar with the technology of [ programming, and are equipped to judge the internal [ consistency of models. Yet there are key themes on which this constituency-to-come can agree. To start with, liberation -- from Second Wave rules, regulations, taxes and laws laid in place to serve the smokestack barons and bureaucrats of the past. Next, of course, must come the creation -- creation of a new civilization, founded in the eternal truths of the American Idea. It is time to embrace these challenges, to grasp the future and pull ourselves forward. If we do so, we will indeed renew the American Dream and enhance the promise of American life. [ [ There you have it. The American Dream and frontier [ competitiveness lead us inevitably to the following [ mandate for cyberspace: [ (1) strong private property rights [ (2) infrastructure to be owned by an [ unregulated private monopoly [ (3) investment to be written off rapidly [ [ Buying into this vision upholds the honor of [ our forefathers, fights big government, empowers [ the individual, and ushers in the American [ millennium. [ [ Simple, succinct...and packed full of lies. [ [ My only question is: why did the document have to [ be so long? Richard K. Moore - rkmoore@iol.ie - Wexford, Ireland - fax +353 53 23970 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And there you have a rather good summary of the death of the 'old internet' in 1994 and birth of the 'new internet' about the same time as the World Wide Web -- that's what the 'www' seen on the start of so many network addresses these days stands for -- was started. Esther Dyson, George Gilder, and Alvin Toffler; what a hot team that is! And don't forget Vint Cerf, another well known netizen. PAT] ------------------------------ From: David Heyman Subject: Re: WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 Date: 2 Oct 2004 02:43:01 -0700 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ah yes, Tim Berners-Lee, thank you for > jogging my memory. I wish Mr. Berners-Lee would come around here now > and then, I would love to give him a piece of my mind, as disease- > riddled and useless as it has become since the aneurysm. I would > ask him why in the hell he did not slap a copyright on everything to > do with the web back in 1994 so as to prevent so much of the foolish > nonsense and charlatanism we see all over the place now days. Ah well, > too late now to worry about it I guess. PAT] He couldn't because there was prior art. British Telecom attempted to invoke patent rights on Hyperlinks and Gopher systems were already around. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/798475.stm Remember that Sir TBL also didn't include graphics in the web, that was done at NCSA with Mosaic by some of the folks that would go on to found Netscape. http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/fbrowser.html David Heyman NOTE: Please remove my email address when posting. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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