TELECOM Digest     Sat, 20 Jan 2007 17:00:00 EST    Volume 26 : Issue 20

Inside This Issue:                            Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    The Porn Industry Won't Touch it (Bryan Gardiner, ExtremeTech)
    Smart Appliances of Minds of Their Own (Bernie Woodall, Reuters)
    Cable, HDTV and Must-Carry (Rick Merrill)
    Re: Palm Treo 650 (Mr Joseph Singer)
    Re: Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs (Al Gillis)
    Re: NY Times Plans Major Job Cutback (editor@photostaats.com)
    Re: Hell Continues to Freeze Over (Steven Lichter)
    Re: Hell Continues to Freeze Over (Lisa Hancock)

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 14:27:35 -0600
From: Bryan Gardiner <extremetech@telecom-digest.org) 
Subject: The Porn Industry Won't Touch it 


HD DVD or Blu-ray? Even the Porn Industry Won't Touch It 
by Bryan Gardiner - ExtremeTech

It's a dirty little secret that's not all that dirty (or secretive)
for those who follow technology trends. The porn, or "adult industry"
to use today's preferred nomenclature tends to serve as something of
an oracle when it comes to predicting which technologies eventually
make their way into the marketplace and which ones don't. If you want
to know where consumer technology is heading, look to porno and war,
or so the axiom goes.

Twenty-five years ago, it was the adult industry that played a major
role in shaping the future of American home entertainment, at least
for the following 15 years or so. Suffering from stagnant theater and
video-booth revenues, the industry made a bold decision to shift
toward a new method for distributing its content. In the process,
porno cozied up to a budding VHS format in lieu of what many
considered to be its superior Betamax cousin. Granted, Sony (the
progenitor of Betamax) had a lot to do with that ultimate decision,
essentially refusing to let its burgeoning format be sullied by
pornography hawkers. But nevertheless, when the adult industry gave
the thumbs up to VHS, the result of the format war was pretty much a
foregone conclusion.

What followed is now common knowledge. The explosion in the early 80s
of VCRs and home-video rentals did for the adult industry pretty much
what TV did for pro football.

Today, of course, there is a new format war at hand, one between two 
high-definition discs whose similarities far outweigh their differences. 
Nevertheless -- whether it be out of habit or simply a wish for the whole 
thing to be over and done with -- many have started looking toward the 
adult entertainment industry to get a better feel of which way the 
high-definition winds are truly blowing.

As was expected, the 2007 CES saw even more posturing and politics
between the Blu-ray and HD DVD camps, with each side announcing a new
set of alliances and predicting that the end of the war was imminent.
Indeed, the success of this high-definition duel, as many have noted,
will likely hinge on the partnerships that each coalition creates both
with the consumer electronics and film industries. And while today's
home video market environment is far different from that of the 1980s,
the adult industry is again poised to play another leading role in the
final outcome. That is, if it can choose.

Porn outsells Hollywood

Although the vagaries of entertainment accounting have become
legendary, it is universally acknowledged that the U.S. adult-film
industry, at around $12 billion in annual sales, rentals, and cable
charges in 2006, is an even grander and more efficient moneymaking
machine than legitimate mainstream American cinema (the latter's
annual gross came in at $9 billion for 2006).

During this year's AVN Awards -- AVN (or the Adult Video News) is a glossy 
magazine that's basically the Variety of the U.S. porn industry -- the 
media network released its annual survey of the U.S. adult entertainment 
industry. The figures were impressive. Total revenue for 2006 came in at 
an astounding $12.92 billion. Overall, delivery costs were down for the 
year, according to AVN, a fact that supposedly accounted for the 
industry's continued growth.

On the video side of things, while the adult industry saw a
significant decrease (15 percent) in sales and rentals last year, the
sector managed to remain the largest (28 percent) in the adult
entertainment market, accounting for $3.6 billion in 2006 -- this,
despite increasing competition from alleged Internet-based methods of
pornographic distribution.

And with video sales remaining the industry's main breadwinner, it was
only a matter of time before the first high-definition adult film made
its way to the public. The industry, not so surprisingly, chose HD
DVD.  Like with a 108-inch LCD television, it wasn't really about
practicality as much as it was being first to market—and finding a
cheap way of doing so.

In December of last year, Wicked Pictures released the industry's
first HD DVD title, 'Camp Cuddly Pines Power Tool Massacre'. Vice
President of DVD Production, Jackie Ramos, characterized it as a movie
about people having sex and then getting killed. Camp Cuddly also
happened to be one of Wicked's more popular titles (it had already
seen a DVD release earlier in the year) and the company felt there
would be continued demand for the movie in glossier high-definition
iteration.

Are HD breasts better breasts?

"A lot of people are, like, you sure you want to see porn in HD?" said 
Ramos at this year's Adult Entertainment Expo. "We happen to feel that 
they do. We didn't negate; we still haven't negated Blu-ray, but it was 
much more cost effective to go with HD DVD."

As Ramos puts it, Wicked chose HD DVD primarily because of Blu-ray's 
prohibitive expense and lack of market share, as well as the fact that 
it is generally cheaper and easier to produce using the format.

"Right now, [HD DVD and Blu-ray] are so new that people are confused.
They don't know which format they want. Our primary goal was to bring
some sort of high-definition product to the consumer. There's
something to be said about planting a flag and being first, and we
wanted to stay ahead of the curve as much as we can in terms of
technology."

In addition to being first, the plan for now, according to Ramos, is
for Wicked to continue presenting its most popular titles on HD DVD
and eventually move to a day-and-date DVD and HD DVD release
scheme. Again, he stressed that the company was not ruling out
Blu-ray.

"At Wicked, we put a lot of work into our bigger titles," Ramos
explained. "We put a lot of work into our special features. With HD
DVD, we can offer a lot of cool features for fans, which we plan on
doing as we move along in the year -- picture-in-picture,
commentaries, games -- it's going to take a little bit of time to do
that, but that's our goal."

Jay Grdina, president of Club Jenna (and husband to the industry's most 
recognizable performer), seems to agree with Ramos for the most part.

"It's hard because I keep flipping back and forth between Blu-ray and
HD DVD," explained Grdina. "I just got a PS3, and I'm thinking maybe
Blu-ray is really going to take off."

But for the moment, he remains business-minded and bottom-line
oriented, like any good adult industry executive.

"For the adult industry, no one is really replicating on Blu-ray right
now. The process is really difficult, obviously. The render times are
two weeks or more and the costs associated with it are really high."

Grdina even went one step further, adding that even releasing HD DVDs
at this point isn't necessarily a sound business decision. "It's just
not lucrative to make HD movies at the moment. Right now, you're
basically doing it just to say you have it. The players are still
really expensive and most people don't even have a way to watch the
content."

While HD DVD certainly seems to have its foot in the porn industry
door, Vivid Entertainment, another high profile adult movie studio,
announced plans to release on Blu-ray later this year, or at least to
begin burning to the format.

Steve Hirsch, who is head of Vivid, said he will also be using the HD
DVD format due to its greater market saturation. But he also said the
studio will begin burning to Blu-ray as soon as it's feasible (i.e.
affordable).

Is Sony blocking HD porn?

But Vivid may very well run into problems with the Sony format.
Indeed, what all the adult industry execs seemed to either be
avoiding, or at least not aware of, was Sony's continued resistance to
pornographic material migrating to the Blu-ray format.

During an interview with AVN earlier this month, Joone (a pseudonym used 
by Ali Davoudian, an AVN award winning pornographic film 
director/producer and founder of the company Digital Playground), said 
that he was basically forced to use HD DVD because no Blu-ray 
manufacturer would make his discs. While it's true that Sony has said it 
would not "replicate" adult titles on any format -- meaning that it won't 
use its factories to produce Blu-ray porn -- the Blu-ray alliance is saying 
something different.

In fact, the veracity of Joone's claims were called into question 
earlier this week when Marty Gordon, vice chair of the Blu-ray Disc 
Association (BDA), was quoted as saying that there is no specific 
anti-porn mandate when it comes to adult material on the format.

"There is not a prohibition against adult content," Gordon said in a
statement this week. "The BDA is an open organization that welcomes
the participation of all companies interested in using and supporting
the format, including those that represent the full spectrum of genres
in the content industry."

Because of Blu-ray's late arrival into the marketplace, many are
saying that Sony would do well to play nice with the adult industry,
if it wants to have a fighting chance against HD DVD. Gordon's stance
on adult content may be indicative of Sony's increased awareness of
the role that the adult industry can and does play in such battles.

Even though plenty of people will readily admit to Blu-ray's technical
superiority (the format with a larger, um, storage capacity than its
rival) history has already shown that the market does not always
operate in a strictly Darwinian fashion.

"You have to remember that the adult industry is low entry," Grdina
explained. "It's a low hanging fruit. You grab it in a few
seconds. It's not necessarily about what's best but what is cheapest,
what's most accessible."

"I think whatever we [the adult industry] actually pick, the market is
going to follow. But that's still very much up in the air."

Copyright 2007 Ziff Davis Inc.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or)
http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

For more news and headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/technews.html

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 14:24:48 -0600
From: Bernie Woodall, Reuters <reuters@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Smart Appliances of Minds of Their Own


By Bernie Woodall

Jerry Brous's clothes dryer is smarter than yours. And his water
heater has a mind of its own. So will yours, in about 10 years' time,
say power industry experts.

"Smart" appliances like the ones Brous has in his house on the Olympic
Peninsula in Washington are built with computer chips which allow them
to communicate, via the Internet, with the local power company.

Based on boundaries set by Brous on a Web site devoted to the test
program run by the federal government in coordination with local
utilities and several participating companies, his appliances shut
down, turn on, or take a break when electricity prices or strain on
the power grid are high.

"It's really easy to set up," said Brous, 66, who lives in Sequim,
Washington, with his wife, Pat. "And once you set it up, all I have to
do is look on the computer to see how much electricity I'm using and I
can adjust my setting any time I want."

The Brouses are participating in a test program in Washington and
Oregon run by the U.S. Department of Energy's Pacific Northwest
National Laboratory. Their house has been outfitted with a "smart"
dryer, water heater and thermostat for heating and cooling.

"I figure we've cut about 15 percent from my electricity bill," said Brous.

Individual savings add up, which can help keep down the need to build
more expensive power plants and transmission lines, as well as cutting
back on greenhouse gases that cause global warming, said Rob Pratt,
director of the GridWise test in which Brous is participating.

What differentiates the Pacific Northwest experiment from similar
energy-efficiency tests is the connection with local utilities that
guide energy use, said Pratt.

A key component is a "home gateway," or small computer made by
Invensys Plc. (ISYS.L), that rests between the Brouses' computer and
their broadband connection.

"It grabs messages from the Internet (about power use and power
prices) and sends signals to the smart thermostat and load controller
for the water heater," said Pratt.

Sometimes, the signals to save power send the temperature in his house 
too low, Brous said.

"Once in a while, I override them," said Brous. "I did that a lot more
in the beginning. I can change that on the computer. I just hook up
with their Web site and change the settings. It's really easy."

The power company can send a cue for the dryer's heating element to
take a break when the power grid is strained.

"I don't even notice when that happens," said Brous, who says that the
dryer's tumbler keeps tumbling as the energy-sapping part of the
appliance pauses.

The water heater and heating and cooling system also can take breaks
at times of heavy energy use. But the element that is more likely to
save energy is the cut in costs.

The interconnection with the utilities includes price reports that
tell the Brouses when it will cost them to keep appliances running
hard.

"I've shown this system off to just about everybody who comes to the
house," said Brous, a retired transportation manager for U.S. Steel.
"Everybody wants it. So I think it's going to be commonplace one day."

Within 10 years, power grids passing information back and forth with
smart home appliances may save enough energy during peak electricity
demand to keep utilities from building expensive substations and major
transmission lines, said Pratt.

There was a day when homes with color TVs or push-button telephones
were cause for neighborhood celebrity of the kind now enjoyed by Jerry
Brous.

But having a smart dryer connected to the Internet will be so ho-hum
in a few years.

"The concept of automated interactive communication and control is
extremely powerful, and many believe that networked intelligence will
eventually come to dominate daily life," said a report on trends in
energy efficiency by the Electric Power Research Institute.

It costs about $1,000, on average, to outfit a home for the GridWise 
study, but that cost includes the price of research unique to this study.

Within a few years, as the technology becomes common, that cost is 
expected to drop to $200 per customer, said Pratt.

Copyright 2007 Reuters Limited.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily. And, discuss this and other topics in our forum at
http://telecom-digest.org/forum (or)
http://telecom-digest.org/chat/index.html

For more news and headlines, please go to:
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/internet-news.html

------------------------------

Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 12:06:24 -0500
From: Rick Merrill <rick0.merrill@NOSPAM.gmail.com>
Subject: Cable, HDTV and Must-Carry


The over air stations that cable TV carries as part of
"Basic Service" also broadcast HDTV signals (unencrypted)
that should according to the FCC regs be carried as part
of "Basic Service" in-the-clear by Comcast. U agree or not?

- RM

c.f.
http://law.justia.com/us/cfr/title47/47-4.0.1.1.4.4.3.4.html

"Congress is monitoring the changes in the television and broadcast
industry closely. In addition to watching the potential for debate
surrounding FCC's must-carry rule, several representatives are hoping
that broadcasters convert quickly, so they can auction off the
spectrum now used for analog broadcasts. ..."

- http://www.todaysengineer.org/2003/Feb/HDTV.asp

------------------------------

Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2007 21:53:02 PST
From: Mr Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: Palm Treo 650


Thomas Daniel Horne <hornetd@mindspring.com> Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:37:24
GMT wrote:

> Can anyone here direct me to a source of reliable information on the
> use of a Palm Treo 650 from a Sprint CDMA account being made to work
> on Verizon CDMA.

Sprint SOC locks all their devices and will not release the SOC lock
code.  No can do unfortunately.  It's not like with GSM where you can
often get the unlock code or get the device unlocked from the many
places that will unlock GSM phones.

------------------------------

From: Al Gillis <alg@aracnet.com>
Subject: Re: Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 08:45:13 -0800
Organization: NewsGuy - Unlimited Usenet $19.95


Don - Evidently the Act is still there ... Check this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Home_Recording_Act

Take a look at "Exemptions ..." near the bottom of the page.  And keep
in mind that any particular law is subject to interpretation by clever
lawyers!

Dan Lanciani <ddl@danlan.com> wrote in message 
news:telecom26.19.10@telecom-digest.org:

> rick0.merrill@NOSPAM.gmail.com (Rick Merrill) wrote:

>> You don't actually 'buy' music -- you buy a media that contains the music
>> and you do not have the permission to duplicate that media ... at least
>> that's the way it was until moving music to other media became so easy.

> Does the Audio Home Recording Act still have any effect?

> Dan Lanciani
> ddl@danlan.*com

------------------------------

From: editor@photostaats.com
Subject: Re: NY Times Plans Major Job Cutback
Date: 20 Jan 2007 11:09:57 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


 ... Yes, but out here in Phoenix, even the regional edition is better
than the Arizona Republic, which I find to be poorly designed, poorly
edited, with virtually no editorial oversight with regards to
accuracy, and a "moving bias" that fits whatever the "cause du jour"
might be.

For example, they ran a cover feature on the ecological damage done by
the Border Patrol citing harm done by four wheel drive vehicles driven
in pursuit of undocumented aliens (UDAs). What the writer neglected
to mention was that the "average" UDA brings, and discards an average
of five pounds of trash on their trek north.  When I called her on it,
she very snidely replied that "I couldn't possibly know what I was
talking about because [she assumed] I had never seen the area. Wrong!
I had just come back from a ten day assignment with the customs and
border protection southern sector flying in blackhawks, and not only
told her about it, but pointed to some of the photographs I had made
which proved my point in no uncertain terms. No answer from her,
despite repeated email and phone messages to both her and the relevant
editors at the "paper."

If a "journalist" has that little regard for the facts, rather than
taking a difficult situation and further inflaming it with inaccuracies
and bias, then in my humble opinion, the only reason to buy the
Republic is to use it as a training aid for your puppy.

I will take ANY edition of the great [formerly] grey lady any time!

staats

Robert Bonomi wrote:

> In article <telecom26.16.11@telecom-digest.org>,

>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: With a bit of luck, local news from New
>> York City gets covered in NY Times ... maybe. They do not do a very
>> good job of covering local, NYC news, but they are not bad -- if a
>> little bit of liberal bias is okay -- on national and international
>> news.  PAT]

> For reasonably decent NYC local news you have to see the 'metro'
> edition of the NY Times -- not the 'national' edition, or any of the
> 'regional' editions.

------------------------------

From: Steven Lichter <diespammers@ikillspammers.com>
Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc.
Subject: Re: Hell Continues to Freeze Over
Date: Sat, 20 Jan 2007 01:53:07 GMT


Patrick Townson wrote:

> I mentioned here about a week ago that Hell, here in Independence, KS
> had frozen over with the ice storms of last weekend. Now here we are,
> a full week later, ice still over everything in sight. Every day, the
> temperature goes up to a little above freezing -- maybe to 40 degrees
> when the sun is out, a wee bit of the ice drips loose and begins to
> slowly run down the street. Then darkness falls, the temperature goes
> back to somewhere between zero or minus one (Tuesday and Wednesday
> night) and it all freezes again. My house has been frozen solid with
> sheets of ice all over it for a week; the front door has been solidly
> locked in ice all week, and the only other way in/out (the back door)
> has been all I can use. It is under a sheltered, covered area which 
> keeps the rain away, and consequently, all the ice from last weekend.

> But, there is a catch; isn't there always?  Living as I do on the
> side of a hill with a very slight incline in the yard, I am confronted
> with _solid_ sheets of ice throughout the yard and the sidewalk out to
> the street. So, in effect, I cannot go out that way either, except to
> let the dog out to 'make his potty' in the back yard. The cats are
> all staying inside, and the dog is pretty quick about letting me know,
> getting out and coming back inside. _I have not been out of this house
> for several days now_, almost all activities in town have been
> cancelled all week anyway. With the damn gutter spout on the roof
> clogged up, naturally the rain all overflowed last weekend and ran
> all over my front porch and the stairs there, thus the front door
> is blocked with ice. And no one has been _in the house_ either; the
> meals-on-wheels service has been suspended all this week with the
> roads between here and Coffeyville (from whence comes the food wagon)
> totally iced over although the city and state -- its Tenth Street out
> to the city limits, then a state highway -- keep shoveling and
> scraping and salting, to no avail. The ice is so impacted it is quite
> difficult to work on. 

> Given my limited ability to walk anyway, the city authorities have
> very strongly advised me to 'sit it out', not to DARE trying to walk
> (with or without my cane) _anywhere_. Someone did show up last
> Saturday afternoon with a huge box of groceries for me, compliments 
> of the local Episcopal Church; a couple weeks worth of food at least.
> Medicare ordered a power wheel chair for me and it will be _so good_
> when/if it gets here; it is impossible to tip over on the ice, I
> am told, and I can use it for limited (very limited) trips around town
> once it arrives, but believe it or not, the highway going up to
> Kansas City (the supplier) is also mostly blocked with ice, so I am
> out of luck until the electric chair (which gets 25 miles on a single
> charge; so I can go all over town and back easily on one charge)
> arrives here. The city tried to comfort me on the phone yesterday:
> "if you need anything, Mr. Townson, just give us a call or the police,
> someone will come out to help you."

> We had hoped there might be one or two warm 'spring like' days in this
> past week so it would all melt in earnest. But instead, the local
> PBS radio station (KOSU out of Tulsa) interuppted their programs many
> times Friday afternoon to give a 'weather advisory': Three or four
> inches of *new snow* assured overnight Friday into Saturday. At least
> our electric/cable lines have stayed in place, meaning my furnace,
> microwave oven, refrigerator and such are all working. Last winter was
> relatively mild; this year, it is total hell. 

> PAT 

You had better put chains on it!!

The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? 
(c) 2007  I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Do you mean a chain (and lock) to
prevent it from getting stolen or chains for the tires to allow it
to get traction on the ice? Or both?  PAT]

------------------------------

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Re: Hell Continues to Freeze Over
Date: 19 Jan 2007 21:05:45 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


Patrick Townson wrote:

> I mentioned here about a week ago that Hell, here in Independence, KS
> had frozen over with the ice storms of last weekend. Now here we are,
> a full week later, ice still over everything in sight...

Good luck with everything.  I'm glad you still have power and phone
service and food deliveries.

When I was a kid we had an ice storm like that, everything covered in a
thick coating of extremely slippery but hard ice.  It was horrible.  In
those days many autos used tire chains actually which were pretty
effective, but murder if you got on dry pavement, and a pain to put on
and off.  Links would break and bang around.

Somehow we got to school but the school yard was covered with a sheet
of ice.  It had a grade and it was simply impossible to move up it.
The custodian put out a trail of cinders from the coal boilers which
provided traction and worked out well.  (I wonder if the school ever
converted from coal?)

My dad got me something called "strap chains" for my car in case of
snow.  I rarely used them, especially when I got radial tires, but in a
snowbank they always got me through.  When I got a car with front wheel
drive, I never needed them; that would get me through anything, though
I had to be careful that the rear end didn't slide around.  Somewhere I
think I still have the strap chains.  I guess if I were in your town
I'd be digging them out to get around.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: This may sound like a bizarre,
diabolical question, but did you ever wonder how the custodian (of
the school) ever got there _in the first place_ to spread the ashes
around?  i.e. if he got there and spread ashes around, what was it
like before then?  I am barely old enough -- at my ancient age -- to
recall when the boiler at our school converted from coal to gas, and 
the boiler had to run year-round since they not only got heat from it,
but also the hot water supply for the bathrooms and kitchen, etc. Hot
water was made by keeping the 'coils' with the water supply always
surrounded by fire, even if the 'big part of the boiler' was turned
off in the summer. When the whole thing was converted to gas, they
installed a separate water heater with its own gas supply and quit
using the coils in the big boiler. Ergo, during the winter months the
hot water supply was always hotter than during the winter when the
primary boiler was shut down.

And is it true that 'hot' water freezes faster than 'cold' water? When
the plumber was out here once last fall to check on my pipes, he
cautioned me, "when the outside temperaure becomes extreme always be
sure to have your cold water line running slowly (just a slight
trickle) all night long to prevent freezing. _NOT_ the hot water line
but the COLD water line, mainly, I suppose, because it is all 'cold'
water coming from the street through the meter to my house; it only
gets 'hot' when my hot-water heater inside prepares it. The plumber 
told me that chemicals in the water boiled away during heating and
that the 'hot' water got cold (and eventually frozen) faster than 
the 'cold' water got colder (and eventually frozen). Any truth to
that?  I know it seems odd to say 'hot water freezes faster than cold
water'.  

And thanks for thinking about my food. My food supply is okay for
another week; its the dog and cats' supply I am worried about. They
have only a couple more day's worth unless I start rationing it out;
I should put them on a diet anyway. All too big and fat (and sassy!).
PAT]

------------------------------


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*   TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from                  *
*   Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate  *
*   800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting.         *
*   http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com                    *
*   Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing      *
*   views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc.                             *
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Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA.

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Visit http://www.mstm.okstate.edu and take the next step in your
career with a Master of Science in Telecommunications Management
(MSTM) degree from Oklahoma State University (OSU). This 35
credit-hour interdisciplinary program is designed to give you the
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The MSTM degree draws on the expertise of the OSU's College
of Business Administration; the College of Arts and Sciences; and the
College of Engineering, Architecture and Technology. The program has
state-of-the-art lab facilities on the Stillwater and Tulsa campus
offering hands-on learning to enhance the program curriculum.  Classes
are available in Stillwater, Tulsa, or through distance learning.

Please contact Jay Boyington for additional information at
405-744-9000, mstm-osu@okstate.edu, or visit the MSTM web site at
http://www.mstm.okstate.edu

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   In addition, gifts from Mike Sandman, Chicago's Telecom Expert
   have enabled me to replace some obsolete computer equipment and
   enter the 21st century sort of on schedule. His mail order 
   telephone parts/supplies service based in the Chicago area has
   been widely recognized by Digest readers as a reliable and very
   inexpensive source of telecom-related equipment. Please request
   a free catalog today at http://www.sandman.com 
   ---------------------------------------------------------------

Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
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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 V26 #20
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