TELECOM Digest     Mon, 19 Feb 2007 02:03:00 EST    Volume 26 : Issue 50

Inside This Issue:                            Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Man Sues IBM Over Adult Chat Room Firing (Jim Fitzgerald, AP)
    Science Needs Entrepreneurs, Google Founder Says (Eric Auchard, Reuters)
    Global Vote Will Pick World's "New" Seven Wonders (Sam Cage)
    Re: Which Toll-Free Number Provider Should I Use? (Carl Navarro)
    Re: Party Line Dialing, was Re: Telephone Area Codes and Prefixes (Wesrock)
    Re: Party Line Dialing, was Re: Telephone Area Codes and Prefixes (McHarry)

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Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:23:23 -0600
From: Jim Fitzgerald, AP writer <ap@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Man Sues IBM Over Adult Chat Room Firing


By JIM FITZGERALD, Associated Press Writer

A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is
suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict
who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal.

James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery, says he visits chat rooms to treat
traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed
during an Army patrol in Vietnam.

In papers filed in federal court in White Plains, Pacenza said the
stress caused him to become "a sex addict, and with the development of
the Internet, an Internet addict." He claimed protection under the
American with Disabilities Act.

His lawyer, Michael Diederich, says Pacenza never visited pornographic
sites at work, violated no written IBM rule and did not surf the
Internet any more or any differently than other employees. He also
says age discrimination contributed to IBM's actions. Pacenza, 55 at
the time, had been with the company for 19 years and says he could
have retired in a year.

International Business Machines Corp. has asked Judge Stephen Robinson
for a summary judgment, saying its policy against surfing sexual Web
sites is clear. It also claims Pacenza was told he could lose his job
after an incident four months earlier, which Pacenza denies.

"Plaintiff was discharged by IBM because he visited an Internet chat
room for a sexual experience during work after he had been previously
warned," the company said.

IBM also said sexual behavior disorders are specifically excluded from
the ADA and denied any age discrimination.

Court papers arguing the motion for summary judgment will be exchanged
next month.

If it goes to trial, the case could affect how employers regulate
Internet use that is not work-related, or how Internet overuse is
categorized medically. Stanford University issued a nationwide study
last year that found that up to 14 percent of computer users reported
neglecting work, school, families, food and sleep to use the Internet.

The study's director, Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, said then that he was most
concerned about the numbers of people who hid their nonessential
Internet use or used the Internet to escape a negative mood, much in
the same way that alcoholics might.

Until he was fired, Pacenza was making $65,000 a year operating a
machine at a plant in East Fishkill that makes computer chips.

Several times during the day, machine operators are idle for five to
10 minutes as the tool measures the thickness of silicon wafers.

It was during such down time on May 28, 2003, that Pacenza logged onto
a chat room from a computer at his work station.

Diederich says Pacenza had returned that day from visiting the Vietnam
Veterans Memorial in Washington and logged onto a site called
ChatAvenue and then to an adult chat room.

Pacenza, who has a wife and two children, said using the Internet at
work was encouraged by IBM and served as "a form of self-medication"
for post-traumatic stress disorder. He said he tried to stay away from
chat rooms at work, but that day, "I felt I needed the interactive
engagement of chat talk to divert my attention from my thoughts of
Vietnam and death."

"I was tempting myself to perhaps become involved in some titillating
conversation," he said in court papers.

Pacenza said he was called away before he got involved in any online
conversation. But he apparently did not log off, and when another
worker went to Pacenza's station, he saw some chat entries, including
a vulgar reference to a sexual act.

He reported his discovery to his boss, who fired Pacenza the next day.

Pacenza says he would have understood if IBM had disciplined him for
taking an unauthorized break, but firing him was too extreme.

He argues that other workers with worse offenses were disciplined less
severely including a couple who had sex on a desk and were
transferred.

Fred McNeese, a spokesman for Armonk-based IBM, would not comment.

Pacenza claims the company decided on dismissal only after improperly
viewing his medical records, including psychiatric treatment,
following the incident.

"In IBM management's eyes, plaintiff has an undesirable and
self-professed record of psychological disability related to his
Vietnam War combat experience," his papers claim.

Diederich says IBM workers who have drug or alcohol problems are
placed in programs to help them, and Pacenza should have been offered
the same.  Instead, he says, Pacenza was told there were no programs
for sex addiction or other psychological illnesses. He said Pacenza
was also denied an appeal.

Diederich, who said he spent a year in Iraq as an Army lawyer, also
argued that "A military combat veteran, if anyone, should be afforded
a second chance, the benefit of doubt and afforded reasonable
accommodation for combat-related disability."

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.

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

Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:21:40 -0600
From: Eric Auchard, Reuters <reuters@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Science Needs Entrepreneurs, Google Founder Says


By Eric Auchard

Scientists need more entrepreneurial drive and could benefit by doing
more to promote solutions to big human problems, Google
Inc. co-founder Larry Page told a meeting of academic researchers.

"There are lots of people who specialize in marketing, but as far as I
can tell, none of them work for you," Page told researchers at the
annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science late on Friday.

"Let's talk about solving some worldwide problems. Let's be really
motivated," he said.

Page, a 33-year-old billionaire who remains co-president of Mountain
View, California-based Google, said he took inspiration from the
history of Silicon Valley, with its frequent cycles of innovation.

As a computer science graduate student 11 years ago at Stanford
University, Page said he came up the with idea of "page rank" --
weighing the relative importance of hyperlinks to improve the
relevancy of Web searches -- completely randomly.

Page rank remains at the heart of the world's most popular search
system.

"It is not hard to do this," Page told hundreds of scientists, meeting
in San Francisco. "You need to think that business and
entrepreneurship is a good thing."

"If no one really pays attention to you, then you have a serious
marketing problem," said the Internet boy wonder, who recently
transformed his appearance, adopting a modish haircut and light
stubble.

Page offered a variety of proposals to raise the profile of scientists
in society.

Among the ideas he says deserve further attention:

-- Noting how 40,000 people die annually in U.S. auto accidents, Page
proposed giving computers control over cars. While many people fear
the loss of control, he said, "I am pretty sure if computers guided
cars, a lot fewer people would die."

-- Build fewer roads in underdeveloped parts of Africa. Instead, he
suggested ultralight planes capable of traveling at up to 90 mph (145
kph) and which would consume less gasoline than ground vehicles.

-- Solar energy installations in the Nevada desert were capable of
producing 800 megawatts per square mile (2.5 square km), somewhat less
than half the 2,000 megawatts of a nuclear power plant, he said. (A
midsized natural gas-powered plant generates around 400 or 500
megawatts).

-- A major limitation to wind power is the need for a distribution
grid to move power from regions where wind blows to where populations
are centered. He said 80 percent of the electrical grid of Europe and
North Africa could be served by an ambitious wind distribution grid
cross-connecting the two regions. "Are we going to build that grid? I
don't think so. But I think it would be a good idea."

Page said the reason many scientific undertakings did not succeed was
due to a lack of human effort rather than technical hurdles.

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
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For more news and headlines, please go to:
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------------------------------

Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2007 00:18:44 -0600
From: Sam Cage, Reuters <reuters@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Global Vote Will Pick World's "New" Seven Wonders


By Sam Cage

What are the greatest architectural achievements in history? Rome's
Colosseum? The Great Wall of China? The Pyramids of Giza?

That's what millions of people are asking themselves as they vote in
the largest global poll ever conducted, an attempt to recast ancient
history by ranking the top architectural marvels as the "new" seven
wonders of the world.

Besides the vast scale of the poll -- itself a wonder -- the new list
may reveal what the wired voters in today's global village view
differently from the ancient Greeks, who laid out the original seven
wonders more than two thousand years ago.

About 200,000 people are voting online or firing off mobile phone text
messages every day, organizers estimate -- and the final total of
ballots cast before the result is announced on July 7 could top 100
million.

"This is the first ever global vote. It's never been done before.
Culture is one of the few things that would be relevant to a global
vote," said Tia Viering, spokeswoman for the Zurich-based New 7
Wonders campaign.

"It is going up quickly and we expect it to go up even more
quickly. The faster it goes, the more people find out about it,"
Viering said.

She said Europe was lagging in the voting, but there was lots of
interest in the United States, China, India and Latin America.

The first list of the most impressive monuments of the ancient world
was compiled by the Greeks and included sites around the Mediterranean
such as the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Hanging Gardens of
Babylon.

The only wonder to have survived to the present day is the Pyramids of
Giza, and that inspired Swiss-Canadian adventurer Bernard Weber, who
decided the start of a new millennium was the right moment to find a
consensus "on the last 2,000 years of human achievement."

LARGEST POLL

The number of votes probably make it the largest poll ever undertaken
on a global basis, said pollster John Zogby, but that did not make it
a scientific exercise.

"At the very least the pollster has to create some kind of sample.
However that doesn't reduce the fact that this is an interesting and
intriguing project," said Zogby, who runs polling organization Zogby
International.

"It's an awful lot of people, I can't recall anything of this size."

A genuine sample poll would have to take a representative
cross-section of society by age, culture, sex and other demographics,
while the Seven Wonders vote is open to anyone with an interest.

There is no mechanism to prevent people voting more than once,
provided they have the desire to do so by setting up more than one
Internet or mobile phone profile.

Each has to pick exactly seven sites, which Viering said should help
prevent too much skewing in favor of local sites.

"All of that will cause the purists in my profession to pooh-pooh
this, but it's too damn interesting to be pure," Zogby said.

The vote is, however, still unlikely to reach the totals of national
elections in large democracies such as the United States, where 122
million people voted in 2004, India or Brazil.

IMAGE BOOST

The other four leading candidates for the new list are the Incan
mountaintop city Machu Picchu in Peru, the rose-red desert city of
Petra in Jordan, Easter Island's mysterious statues and India's Taj
Mahal.

Further down the 21-entry shortlist -- which in turn was whittled down
from 77 by a panel of architectural experts -- are the Eiffel Tower in
Paris, the statue of Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, the Statue
of Liberty in New York, Britain's Stonehenge and Moscow's Kremlin.

Weber and his team are traveling through the Americas on a tour of the
shortlisted sites there, building up to the final announcement in
July.

In most places they are given an enthusiastic reception, with
candidates keen on the publicity and added tourist interest associated
with the vote. That is even more the case at sites such as Petra,
where tourist numbers have been affected by violence in nearby Iraq
and Lebanon, Viering said.

The Egyptian authorities were none too pleased that the Pyramids were
subject to a vote, arguing they should be included automatically.

There has been little in the way of lobbying, Viering said, and a
recognition that the campaign is a small, non-profit organization.

"I think that they understood," she said. "Every place we go becomes a
favorite. Each of the monuments is so unique."

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

From: Carl Navarro <cnavarro@wcnet.org>
Subject: Re: Which Toll-Free Number Provider Should I Use?
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 09:01:53 -0500
Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com


On 16 Feb 2007 00:05:03 -0800, Nehmo <nehmo54@hotmail.com> wrote:

> I want to get a toll-free number that terminates at my cell phone
> number. A package with a 100 minutes/month would be acceptable. Who
> should I use?

You're putting information in a question that has no meaning.  When
you get a toll free inward number, you pay based on minutes of use.
The 100 minutes means nothing.

I use Touchtone for both inward and outward.  It cost me 1`.99 a month
to terminate the number and I pay 4-5 cents per minute billed in
tenths for my service.  I am a agent for the company, but you can also
sign up directly at www.touchtone.net.

I pay with a credit card, but usually I just pay about $25 at a time
and work off a surplus balance.

Carl Navarro


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But there are in-WATS 'packages' which
allow a certain number of minutes at a set price per month. Obviously
you need to use as close to this allotment as possible in order to
avoid wasting money. As an example, one hundred minutes per month may
wind up costing a bit more per minute (over all) than the next size
package of two hundred minutes which is a bit less per minute, again,
assuming you use them all. The more minutes you buy (and contract to
pay for) each month, the less expensive the minutes become.  PAT]

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

From: Wesrock@aol.com
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 20:10:51 EST
Subject: Re: Party Line Dialing, was Re: Telephone Area Codes and Prefixes


In a message dated 16 Feb 2007 07:38:25 -0800, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
writes:

> In cities, if you had a party line (2 or 4 party) you had a listed
> number the same as anyone else.  If someone called you, they dialed
> the listed number normally and only your phone rang.  The Bell System
> used a special wiring technique to isolated the ringers of up to four
> separate parties so only the desired party would ring.  (I believe it
> was a combination of bias and grounding).  The independent companies
> used different ringer frequencies to isolate ringers.

> However, in many places, party lines had a letter suffix (J, R?).  In
> the literature, the panel readout boards had that letter suffix.  Some
> old telephone books show that letter listed after to the number.

> I presume in some manual systems one gave the letter to the
> operator.

I lived in several manual exchanges and one did give the letter to 
the operator.  This told her which ringing key to use.

I also lived in a dial exchange that had terminal-per-line step
equipment. This meant there was one terminal for each line -- a party
line had an additional digit.  The number for my busines was 234.
Individual (one-party) lines had three-digit numbers.  Party lines had
four digit numbers, such as 4551.  The last digit (usually a 1 or a 2)
told the connector which ringing current to apply.

This was long before DDD or the national numbering plan. Terminal-per-
line had a number of drawbacks, such as the fact that if intercept
service needed to be provided, both parties' numbers had to be
intercepted and the caller asked which number they were called ... also
regrouping party lines required changing one or both customers numbers.

Larger places, and eventually all places, went to terminal-per-station,
which meant the number of a party line was a normal number and the
connector was wired for which type of ringing current to apply.

Eight-digit numbers would certainly be possible before the days of
uniform numbering, although I never encountered any.  Tulsa had a
combination of four-, five- and six-digit numbers.  Oklahoma City,
originally set up for dial service with all five-digit numbers, later
had some six-digit numbers.

> But in dial systems, did one dial the suffix letter to reach party
> lines so equipped?

> Note -- the above is for party lines of up to 4 customers.  I believe
> anything beyond 4 had to be on a manual system and had to use special
> short-long ringing codes.  Everybody heard the other phones ringing
> and had to listen if it was their code.  (Or they always answered to
> listen in on other people's conversations.)

Not all places had provision for more than two types of ringing.
Others had four, as you suggest.  Many non-Bell companies used
harmonic ringing which, at least in theory, could provide for eight or
10 distinct parties with single ringing.  Some were more reliable than
others.


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


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Am I correct in thinking that all
party-line subscribers were geographically close to each other (such
as a few doors away, or across the alley?) Were they nearly or always
on the same cable out of the central office?  Or were there party line
subscribers across town from each other?  PAT]

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

From: John McHarry <jmcharry@comcast.net>
Subject: Re: Party Line Dialing, was Re: Telephone Area Codes and Prefixes
Date: Sun, 18 Feb 2007 02:27:36 GMT
Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net


On Fri, 16 Feb 2007 07:38:25 -0800, hancock4 wrote:

> In cities, if you had a party line (2 or 4 party) you had a listed
> number the same as anyone else.  If someone called you, they dialed
> the listed number normally and only your phone rang.  The Bell System
> used a special wiring technique to isolated the ringers of up to four
> separate parties so only the desired party would ring.  (I believe it
> was a combination of bias and grounding).  The independent companies
> used different ringer frequencies to isolate ringers.

Bell used diodes and grounded ringing to get four party full selective
ringing. This gave plus and minus tip parties and plus and minus ring
parties. REA standard companies used one of a series of frequency
selective ringing schemes to put up to five parties on tip and five
more on ring. I have no idea how common such large agglomerations
were.

> Note -- the above is for party lines of up to 4 customers.  I believe
> anything beyond 4 had to be on a manual system and had to use special
> short-long ringing codes.  Everybody heard the other phones ringing
> and had to listen if it was their code.

Frequency selective could go beyond four, as noted. I don't recall
either scheme being able to effect ANI beyond two party, so outgoing
calls had to use operator number identification, which led to the
jocularly named "no test trunk". The operator would dial the number
given to see if the result bridged onto the correct line.

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


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*****************************