TELECOM Digest     Sun, 11 Feb 2007 01:42:00 EST    Volume 26 : Issue 44

Inside This Issue:                            Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Re: Telephone Area Codes and Prefixes (Wesrock@aol.com)
    110 Inches of Snow in 7 Days (John Kekis, Associated Press)
    Windows Vista Flunks At MIT (Monty Solomon)
    Re: Bell System History Book (hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com)
    Re: Use Skype WITHOUT Instaling Software? (me@privacy.net)
    Re: How to Shut Down the Net (T)
    Re: A Call to Let Your Phone Loose (B. Wright)
    Re: What About Areas Where Alphabet is Not Like Ours?  (Colin)

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From: Wesrock@aol.com
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 20:58:06 EST
Subject: Re: Telephone Area Codes and Prefixes


In a message dated Sat, 10 Feb 2007 00:10:15 -0600, Neal McLain
<nmclain@annsgarden.com> writes:

> Joe Tibiletti <joetib@cox.net> wrote:

>> I have testified before the Public Utility Commission of
>> Texas -- one of the last states to have this jurisdiction
>> placed in one organization under state control.

> What do you mean by "one organization"?

> If you're referring to an organization that regulates all (or almost
> all) utilities, Texas isn't the only state.  Every state has some sort
> of utility regulatory agency (although they go by variety of names:
> http://tinyurl.com/2qx65y ). Indeed, Texas is an oddball in this
> respect: the TPUC regulates all utilities except natural gas; the
> Texas Railroad Commission regulates natural gas; and the Texas DOT
> regulates railroads.

Joe is correct on his assertion that Texas was one of the last, if not
the last, state to have a single regulatory body for telephone service
(and some other public utilities).

Until the 1960s, telephone regulation in Texas fell under city
jurisdictioin, and there had to be a separate rate case, and separate
negotiations, with each city.


Wes Leatherock
wesrock@aol.com
wleathus@yahoo.com

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

Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 23:26:18 -0600
From: John Kekis, Associated Press <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: 110 Inches of Snow in 7 Days


By JOHN KEKIS, Associated Press Writer

With more than 8 feet of snow already coating the ground, it wasn't
good news for this winter-weary region when the blue sky turned gray
Saturday, signaling another intense snow squall was about to dump some
more.

"This is bad," said 67-year-old Dave DeGrau, who has operated an auto
repair shop on Main Street for 45 years. "We had a very easy winter
until now. Last fall during hunting season it rained every time I went
out. I kept saying 'I'm glad this isn't snow.' Now, it's snow."

Persistent bands of lake-effect snow squalls fed by moisture from Lake
Ontario have been swinging up and down this part of central New York
along the lake's eastern shore since last Sunday.

The National Weather Service said Parish about 25 miles northeast of 
Syracuse reached a milestone early Saturday with 100 inches of snow 
during the past seven days. Late Saturday, the total had risen to 110 
inches. Unofficial reports pegged totals at 123 inches in Orwell and 131 
in Redfield, but those measurements include snow from another storm a 
couple of days before the current weather system. All three towns are in 
Oswego County.

A warning in effect until Monday morning said 2 to 4 more feet of snow 
was possible with wind gusting up to 24 mph.

"That's all we need," Mike Avery said as he took a brief break from 
loading dump trucks with snow to be hauled to a pile outside town. "It's 
getting monotonous."

The fluffy new snow was a magnet for snowmobilers, but stopping was out 
of the question.

"You can't stop or you're done," said Dan Hojnacki, 23, of Syracuse,
after he ground to a halt in a field. "I never got stuck until today,
and I've been snowmobiling for 10 years."

Residents of the nearby town of Mexico see 5- to 6-foot snowfalls every 
two or three years, but this time even hardened locals are amazed. The 
only sign of parked SUVs are their radio antennas or roof racks sticking 
up above the snow. Front doors are buried and footprints lead to 
second-story windows. Sidewalks that have been dug out look like 
miniature canyons.

The state transportation department said 125 workers from elsewhere in 
the state had been sent in with snow equipment to help.

The region is located along the Tug Hill Plateau, the snowiest region 
this side of the Rocky Mountains. It's a 50-mile wedge of land that 
rises 2,100 feet from the eastern shore of Lake Ontario. It usually gets 
about 300 inches roughly 25 feet of snow a year.

The hamlet of Hooker, near the boundaries of Jefferson, Lewis, and 
Oswego counties, holds the state's one-year record with 466.9 inches, 
about 39 feet, in the winter of 1976-77.

Still, less than a month ago it seemed more like spring.

"Gosh, three weeks ago there was green on the ground. We got spoiled,"
Parish Mayor Leon Heagle said. "This just came fast. This is not
normal.  God, we can't catch a break. I feel like getting right in the
car and driving south, but I'd probably get in trouble."

The intense blast of snow hasn't been blamed for any deaths in Oswego
County. Elsewhere, however, more than a week of bitter cold and
slippery roads have contributed to at least 20 deaths across the
northeastern quarter of the nation; five in Ohio, four in
Illinois, four in Indiana, two in Kentucky, two in Michigan, and one
each in Wisconsin, and Maryland and elsewhere in New York, authorities
said.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

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/AP.html


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And _I_ thought it was bad here this
winter with several inches of snow lingering on, and solid ice
everywhere for about two weeks.  This has been a very hard winter for
many folks.  I guess 1985-86 was bad here and in Oklahoma also, but 
for some reason I keep remembering 1967 in Chicago and 1978 in
Chicago. But a winter I especially remember was when I was a very
little guy, about five years old, in 1947 here in Independence. Mother
had brought me up from Coffeyville on the interurban train to see a
friend of hers. Her friend picked us up in her car (this was in the
middle of winter, in February, and there was ice _everywhere_ just 
like middle January this time around. As we rode from the interurban
station down Maple Street, we passed the corner of 6th and Maple, and
the Southwestern Bell Telephone Exchange Building. Bell did not bury
wires underground in those days, they were above ground on poles, so
the closer we got to the telephone building, the more wires there were
approaching the building from every direction; finally in what is now
the parking lot of that building, all the wires came together and down
into the side of the building. (Now, they no longer have a switchboard
in there, nor, for that matter a business office. That's all been done
away with in the name of 'effeciency'.) But this time, in 1947, icycles
were hanging off all the telephone wires in the sky, and when it got
over to the edge of the exchange building, it was all solid ice
hanging from the wires; like a giant free lance 'ice sculpture'
hanging from the wires to the ground and all along the side of the
building where the wires entered the building. PAT]

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

Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 22:46:11 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Windows Vista Flunks At MIT


The reason? The software isn't yet ready for 'productive and 
safe computing.'

By Paul McDougall
InformationWeek

Feb 8, 2007 03:00 PM

Tech staffers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are 
warning professors and administrators at the school -- host to one of 
the country's most prestigious computer science departments -- not to 
upgrade desktops or laptops to Microsoft's new Windows Vista 
operating system because the software isn't yet ready for "productive 
and safe computing," according to an internal statement posted on 
MIT's Web site.

Specifically, MIT's department of information services and technology
is warning computer users at the school away from the Enterprise
Edition of Windows Vista. The reason, according to the Web posting, is
that many critical security and productivity applications aren't yet
compatible with the OS.

http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=197004575

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

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Re: Bell System History Book
Date: 10 Feb 2007 13:30:02 -0800
Organization: http://groups.google.com


On Feb 9, 11:46 am, Charles Gray <charles.g...@okstate.edu> wrote:

> The Bell System History book that Lisa referred to is: A History of
> Science & Engineering in the Bell System: Communications Sciences,
> 1925-1980.  The ISBN is 0-932764-06-1. It is available
> from http://www.alibris.com(and numerous others) starting at
> $32.28. I have a copy.  Google the ISBN for other sources.

Sorry to nitpick, but the title citation I have is:  "A History of
engineering and science in the Bell System vol. 3. Switching
technology (1925-1975)".  [Not 'communication sciences'.]

Note there are a number of volumes in this series.  You may be
referring to a later volume.

The ISBN on my copy "... Eng & Sci Switching Technology 1925-1975" is
0-932764-02-9, Lib Cong is 82-072517 and copyright is 1982.

Among other topics, this book covers the evolution of toll service
from operator relay to operator dialing and customer dialing.  It also
covers the "service and feature" era.  That is significant because
many critics of the Bell System fail to realize how many services and
technologies were indeed available.

By the way, the earlier volume covering 1875-1925 has some switching
fundamentals in it as well.


Charles Gray wrote:

> The Bell System History book that Lisa referred to is: A History of
> Science & Engineering in the Bell System: Communications Sciences,
> 1925-1980.  The ISBN is 0-932764-06-1. It is available from
> http://www.alibris.com (and numerous others) starting at $32.28. I
> have a copy.  Google the ISBN for other sources.

> Regards,

> Charles G. Gray
> Senior Lecturer, Telecommunications
> Oklahoma State University - Tulsa
> (918) 594-8433

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

From: me@privacy.net
Subject: Re: Use Skype WITHOUT Instaling Software?
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 11:37:03 -0600


Gene S. Berkowitz <first.last@comcast.net> wrote:

> In article <telecom26.39.4@telecom-digest.org>, me@privacy.net says:

>> Anyway to use Skype on a computer say at a library where you can NOT
>> install the software?

> Why would you want to use Skype in the ONE PLACE you're NOT supposed
> to be talking?

> --Gene

Just used the library as an example ...

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

From: T <nospam.kd1s@cox.nospam.net>
Subject: Re: How to Shut Down the Net
Organization: The Ace Tomato and Cement Company
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:15:41 -0500


In article <telecom26.43.10@telecom-digest.org>, ellis@no.spam says...

> In article <telecom26.42.6@telecom-digest.org>, mc
> <look@www.ai.uga.edu.for.address> wrote:

>> As I understand it, only very recently changed domain addresses would
>> be affected by a temporary failure of the root servers.

> If *all* the root name servers had been taken out, there would have
> been a huge impact. Any domain that wasn't cached by your server
> wouldn't have resolved. But taking them all down isn't an easy task.

> http://deepcreekhotsprings.net/

And some of us keep our own little IP cache, just in case. Cox's name
servers frequently go down so I've had to resort to that.

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

Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2007 14:05:40 MST
From: "B. Wright" <bmwright@xmission.com>
Subject: Re: A Call to Let Your Phone Loose



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Mr. Wright on Friday sent a reply to
my complaints on Thursday about Cingular Wireless. He saaid it was
'not for publication', and I asked him if I could use it anyway with
no name on it. He did reply it would be okay, however as of now I no
longer have his original letter. His letter basically talked about all
the broken promises and commitments Cigular had made to him and his 
family at one time or another.  PAT]

Hi Pat,

It was originally sent directly for you in hopes that it might 
give you some ideas of how they seem to operate and how you might deal 
with them.  If you think it's worth publishing to the digest then that's 
ok too.

The main thing that never ceases to amaze me is the way many companies
today want to detach themselves from their employees actions and have
no accountability then the extremes the customer has to go to in order
to resolve the problem.  When one of their employees, a representative
of their company, tells you bad information or even intentionally
lies, these companies don't care and simply want to point you to some
corporate policy.  In the least, they should take responsibility, make
things right with you, then take the issue up with the employee that
caused the situation.  Instead, these places just make big call
centers with anonymous people who never have consequences for their
actions or sales people who get rewarded by making up whatever lie
they need to in order to make a sale.

Cinngular, while not the only one, is at the top or near the top of 
my list.  Qwest is there too, one of their phone reps signed my sister up 
for a two year contract on her DSL connection when we called to make a 
small change to the provisioning.  This is after she asked if we wanted 
the "price for life" (more like a useless two year commitment with a $200 
early cancellation fee) and we made it quite clear that we did NOT want a 
contract and it needed to remain as month to month, then she agreed not to 
put it on contract.  Later when we realized the bill showed a two year 
contract they keep refusing to take it off and telling us that my sister's 
husband agreed to it.  This is on the date that *I* called, he has never 
once spoken to them probably within the past few years, I also made it 
clear when I called that I was her brother, not her husband.  

I asked them to prove this with one of the call recording that they
supposedly have of him agreeing to this but they never could produce
that, funnily enough, because it never happened!  Their other excuse
for not taking it off was we only had a 30 day window to cancel it
before being locked in to the contract, well, isn't that funny, since
we were lied to by the phone rep we didn't KNOW there was a contract
until the bill arrived.  By then it was past 30 days, isn't that
convenient for them?  This is similar to your brother's situation
where the 30 day cancellation window has passed by the time he could
have realized he was sold something based on a lie.

Wish you luck on your battle.

On Sat, 10 Feb 2007, TELECOM Digest Editor wrote:

> I hope you will not mind if I use your Cingular complaint in the Digest?
> You wrote a very good letter on Cingular fraud and lies ... I'll hold
> off until sometime Saturday using your letter if you have any really
> serious objections to me using it.

> PAT


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here is how I got my history with
Cingular: In the year 2000, while I was in a nursing home/rehabilitation
center in Chicago, Mike Sandman very generously gave me an AT&T cell
phone to use, and it sure came in handy. After about a year in the
nursing home, with little or no progress being made (doctor said I was
pretty much where I was going to be phsically) I checked out of there
and returned to home here in Kansas, bringing my AT&T cell phone
along. It worked great on the bus trip here; only rarely went into 
'roaming mode' and worked all the way into Tulsa, OK. Coming north out
of Tulsa toward Independence, the signal got very 'iffy' but the phone
stayed in 'extended mode'.  Mike decided we should try for a local
carrier here in Kansas, since AT&T had closed up shop here. So, the
decision was made to go with Cingular with the same Nokia phones, etc.
Then, about a year ago, we decided to renew the contract, although I
wish we had not.  PAT]

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

Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2007 09:44:59 +1100
From: Colin <colins@swiftdsl.com.au>
Subject: Re: What About Areas Where Alphabet is Not Like Ours? 


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Once again, the 8-bit characters did
> not render correctly in this message.  PAT]

The characters display perfectly well on my imac. Check your settings, Pat.

- Colin


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The trouble is, I use a 7-bit terminal
emulator (puTTY) to connect with massis from home, where I otherwise
have a Windows 2000 and a Linux computer. PAT]

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


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End of TELECOM Digest V26 #44
*****************************