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TELECOM Digest     Mon, 29 Aug 2005 20:09:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 391

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Phones Mostly Out Around New Orleans Area (Anick Jesdanun)
    Katrina Floods New Orleans and Gulf Coast (Adam Nossiter)
    Piracy Crackdown Spurs Shift in Online File-Sharing (Adam Pasick)
    BBC Targets Music Downloads in Internet Strategy (Adam Pasick)
    Intelsat Buys PanAmSat for $3.2 Billion (USTelecom dailyLead)
    Book Review: "Spam Kings", Brian McWilliams (Rob Slade)
    Re: RIP, Sussex Cellular (Daniel AJ Sokolov)
    Re: RIP, Sussex Cellular (John Levine)
    Re: Who'll Mind the Mainframes? / Few Students Learning to Run (L Hancock)
    Re: The Luncheon Meat Associated With Junk Email? (Michael Quinn)

Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet.  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: Anick Jesdanun <ap@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Phones Mostly Out Around New Orleans Area
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 16:58:01 -0500


Storm hampers long-distance, cell services

by Anick Jesdanun / Associated Press

Cell phone service was spotty and long-distance callers met busy
signals on Monday as Hurricane Katrina knocked out key
telecommunications hubs along the Gulf Coast.

Most long-distance and cellular providers reported trouble, while the
dominant local phone provider for the hurricane zone, BellSouth Corp.,
did not immediately quantify the extent of storm-related service
disruptions.

Sprint Nextel Corp.'s long-distance switch in New Orleans failed soon
after the storm hit, meaning no long distance call could be placed
into or out of the area, said company spokesman Charles
Fleckenstein. Customers who tried got busy signals or recordings
informing them that all circuits are busy, he said.

He attributed troubles to flooding and power loss.

Many of AT&T Corp.'s facilities in the area were operating on backup
generator power but some were completely down, likely because of
flooding.  Long-distance calls could not be properly relayed along
AT&T's Gulf Coast fiber-optics routes.

AT&T's traffic-management software was able to reroute some calls when
spare capacity existed elsewhere, but spokesman Jim Byrnes said
thousands of calls still were failing to get through.

The company said Internet data networks were operating fine.

MCI Inc. spokeswoman Linda Laughlin said one fiber cable east of New
Orleans was cut and other facilities had "some water issues." But she
said customers faced at most a few seconds' delay as MCI rerouted
calls to other cables.

There were no reports of the storm knocking down any cell phone
towers, but many stopped working because of power problems.

Many of Sprint's cell towers in the New Orleans area switched to
batteries or generators but could not be recharged because crews could
not reach them, Fleckenstein said. Some towers stopped working
completely by early afternoon, and many more were expected to fail as
power loss continues, he said.

Cellular provider Cingular Wireless also reported service
interruptions in the coastal communities of Mobile and Baldwin, Ala.,
because of power outages. Cingular also had problems in New Orleans,
Baton Rouge, La., and Biloxi, Miss.

In Florida, about 46,000 BellSouth Corp. phone lines remained out of
service, representing less than 2 percent of lines in the affected
counties.  The company said its crews already restored service to
nearly 356,000 lines since the storm hit Florida late last week.

BellSouth officials did not return calls for comment on service
outside Florida, nor did Verizon Wireless officials on the status of
their cell towers and services.

Telecommunications companies generally had crews, supplies and parts
on standby to restore facilities and services once emergency officials
clear them.

Cingular said it had distributed more than 500 emergency generators,
placed 240,000 gallons of fuel in them or on standby and had 25 teams
ready to deploy to replace and refuel the generators once conditions
are safe.

Also reporting were AP Business Writer Bruce Meyerson in New York and
AP Writer Phillip Rawls in Montgomery, Ala.

Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Online at:
http://www.wwltv.com/local/stories/wwl082905cellphones.7108841.html


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: wwltv.com has been doing a _tremendous_
job covering the situation in New Orleans for the past 36 hours. You
can watch the storm and the television coverage of same on computer at
http://www.wwltv.com . I've had it on my computer almost continually
since Sunday evening, when it was still in the 'talking stages'. WWL-
TV and radio gave announcements quite promptly regards evacuations,
etc. Sometime around two or three Monday morning, I think even their
power went out for awhile. I know when I woke up Monday morning and
tuned back in to it, they were not in their own studios any longer but
some station in Houston had taken over the coverage for WWL and doing
it by cellular phone with authorities in New Orleans.  Later I heard
WWL say they moved into their auxilliary facility on the campus of
Tulane University. But while they were working out of the television
station in Houston, the cellular phone connection was just horrible,
and the connection was lost frequently. There was no video at that
moment, just audio from the staff in New Orleans and the Houston
people were running visuals from the weather service.  Those people
surely have put in a hard day's work reporting the storm. PAT]

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

From: Adam Nossiter <ap@telecom-digest.org> 
Subject: Katrina Floods New Orleans, Gulf Coast
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 13:21:11 -0500


By ADAM NOSSITER, Associated Press Writer

Hurricane Katrina plowed into this below-sea-level city Monday with
shrieking, 145-mph winds and blinding rain that flooded homes to the
rooflines and peeled away part of the Superdome, where thousands of
people had taken shelter.

Katrina weakened overnight to a Category 4 storm and made a slight
turn to the right before hitting land at 6:10 a.m. CDT near the bayou
town of Buras.  It passed just to the east of New Orleans as it moved
inland, sparing this vulnerable city its full fury.

But National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield warned that New
Orleans would be pounded throughout the day and that Katrina's
potential 15-foot storm surge, down from a feared 28 feet, was still
enough to cause extensive flooding.

"I'm not doing too good right now," Chris Robinson said via cellphone
from his home east of the city's downtown. "The water's rising pretty
fast. I got a hammer and an ax and a crowbar, but I'm holding off on
breaking through the roof until the last minute. Tell someone to come
get me please. I want to live."

On the south shore of Lake Ponchartrain, entire neighborhoods of
one-story, shotgun-style homes were flooded up to the rooflines. The
Interstate 10 off-ramps nearby looked like boat ramps amid the
whitecapped waves. Garbage cans and tires bobbed in the water.

Two people were stranded on the roof as murky water lapped at the
gutters.

"Get us a boat!" a man in a black slicker shouted over the howling
winds.

Across the street, a woman leaned from the second-story window of a
brick home and shouted for assistance.

"There are three kids in here," the woman said. "Can you help us?"

Elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, the storm flung boats onto land in
Mississippi, lashed street lamps and flooded roads in Alabama, and
swamped highway bridges in the Florida Panhandle. At least a
half-million people were without power from Louisiana to Florida's
Panhandle, including 370,000 in southeastern Louisiana and 116,400 in
Alabama, mostly in the Mobile area.

At New Orleans' Superdome, home to 9,000 storm refugees, the wind
peeled pieces of metal from the golden roof, leaving two holes that
let water drip in. People inside were moved out of the way. Others
stayed and watched as sheets of metal flapped and rumbled loudly 19
stories above the floor.

Building manager Doug Thornton said the larger hole was 15 to 20 feet
long and four to five feet wide. Outside, one of the 10-foot, concrete
clock pylons set up around the Superdome blew over.

Elsewhere in the city, the storm shattered scores of windows in
high-rise office buildings and on five floors of the Charity Hospital,
forcing patients to be moved to lower levels. At the Windsor Court
Hotel, guests were told to go into the interior hallways with blankets
and pillows and to keep the doors to the rooms closed to avoid flying
glass.

In suburban Jefferson Parish, Sheriff Harry Lee said residents of a
building on the west bank of the Mississippi River called 911 to say
the building had collapsed and people might be trapped. He said
deputies were not immediately able to check out the building because
their vehicles were unable to reach the scene.

At 11 a.m. EDT, Katrina was centered 35 miles northeast of New
Orleans, moving to the north at 16 mph. The storm's winds dropped to
125 mph -- a Category 3 storm -- as it pushed inland, threatening the
Gulf Coast and the Tennessee Valley with as much as 15 inches of rain
over the next couple of days and up to 8 inches in the
drought-stricken Ohio Valley and eastern Great Lakes.

Katrina was a terrifying, 175-mph Category 5 behemoth -- the most powerful
category on the scale -- before weakening.

By midday, the brunt of the storm had moved beyond New Orleans to
Mississippi's coast, home to the state's floating casinos, where
Katrina recorded a 22-foot storm surge and washed sailboats onto a
coastal four-lane highway.

Trees were blown across streets and onto houses, utility poles dangled
in the wind and billboards were shredded. Windows of a major hospital
were blown and the Beau Rivage Hotel and Casino, one of the premier
gambling spots in Biloxi, had water on the first floor.

Katrina was the most powerful storm to affect Mississippi since
Hurricane Camille came in as a Category 5 in 1969, killing 143 people
along the Gulf Coast.

"This is a devastating hit -- we've got boats that have gone into
buildings," Gulfport, Miss., Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said as he
maneuvered around downed trees in the city. "What you're looking at is
Camille II."

In New Orleans' historic French Quarter of Napoleonic-era buildings
with wrought-iron balconies, water pooled in the streets from the
driving rain, but the area appeared to have escaped the catastrophic
flooding that forecasters had predicted.

On Jackson Square, two massive oak trees outside the 278-year-old
St. Louis Cathedral came out by the roots, ripping out a 30-foot
section of ornamental iron fence and straddling a marble statue of
Jesus Christ, snapping off only the thumb and forefinger of his
outstretched hand.

At the hotel Le Richelieu, the winds blew open sets of balcony French
doors shortly after dawn. Seventy-three-year-old Josephine Elow of New
Orleans pressed her weight against the broken doors as a hotel
employee tried to secure them.

"It's not life-threatening," Mrs. Elow said as rain water dripped from
her face. "God's got our back."

Elow's daughter, Darcel Elow, was awakened before dawn by a
high-pitched howling that sounded like a trumpeting elephant. "I
thought it was the horn to tell everybody to leave out the hotel," she
said as she walked the hall in her nightgown.

For years, forecasters have warned of the nightmare scenario a big
storm could bring to New Orleans, a bowl of a city that is up to 10
feet below sea level in spots and relies on a network of levees,
canals and pumps to keep dry from the Mississippi River on one side,
Lake Pontchartrain on the other.

The fear was that flooding could overrun the levees and turn New
Orleans into a toxic lake filled with chemicals and petroleum from
refineries, as well as waste from ruined septic systems.

The National Weather Service reported that a levee broke on the
Industrial Canal near the St. Bernard-Orleans parish line, and 3 to 8
feet of flooding was possible. The Industrial Canal is a 5.5-mile
waterway that connects the Mississippi River to the Intracoastal
Waterway.

Crude oil futures spiked to more than $70 a barrel in Singapore for
the first time Monday as Katrina targeted an area crucial to the
country's energy infrastructure, but the price had slipped back to
$68.95 by midday in Europe. The storm already forced the shutdown of
an estimated 1 million barrels of refining capacity.

Calling it a once-in-a-lifetime storm, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin had
ordered a mandatory evacuation over the weekend for the 480,000
residents of the vulnerable city, and he estimated about 80 percent
heeded the call.

The evacuation itself claimed lives. Three New Orleans nursing home
residents died Sunday after being taken by bus to a Baton Rouge
church.  Officials said the cause was probably dehydration.

New Orleans has not taken a direct hit from a hurricane since Betsy in
1965, when an 8- to 10-foot storm surge submerged parts of the city in
seven feet of water. Betsy, a Category 3 storm, was blamed for 74
deaths in Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida.

Katrina hit the southern tip of Florida as a much weaker storm
Thursday and was blamed for 11 deaths. It left miles of streets and
homes flooded and knocked out power to 1.45 million customers. It was
the sixth hurricane to hit Florida in just over a year.

Associated Press reporters Mary Foster, Holbrook Mohr, Brett Martel and
Allen G. Breed contributed to this report.

On the Net:
National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

Copyright 2005 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.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Most people have heard the expression
'TGIF' or 'Thank God its Friday'. Not as many folks are familiar with
another saying which is 'OHIM' which means 'Oh Hell, its Monday', and 
like so many 'delightful' things in store for us (Chicago Fire, in
1871), this destruction of New Orleans began late Sunday night and 
continued all day Monday. Some of the video on WWL-TV Monday afternoon
as things were 'quieting down' just a little was absolutely amazing,
including, but not limited to the _total looting_ of a Winn-Dixie 
store. A very troubling scene, that one; and like the Chicago Fire
in 1871, where at one point firemen just tossed in the towel and said
they could do no more, WWL noted that the police department in New
Orleans at one point had to respond to calls for service by telling the
residents, "We will get to you when we can, try us again in two or
three hours". And if the poor people who made their way to the
SuperDome did not have enough misery in their lives, part of the roof
on that structure blew away as well.   PAT]

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

From: Adam Pasick <reuters@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Piracy Crackdown Spurs Shift in Onine File-Sharing
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 13:01:56 -0500


By Adam Pasick

Traffic in the popular file-sharing network BitTorrent has fallen in
the wake of a crackdown on piracy, but file sharers have merely
shifted to another network, eDonkey, new data released on Monday
showed.

Popular movies like "Star Wars: Episode III -- Revenge of the Sith"
have surfaced on BitTorrent before they even appeared in theatres.

A study by the Cambridge-based Internet analysis firm CacheLogic found
that eDonkey is now roughly on par with BitTorrent in the United
States, China, Japan and Britain.

It is the dominant peer-to-peer file-sharing network in South Korea,
which has the world's highest percentage of high-speed Internet use,
and also in Italy, Spain and Germany.

"This is almost assuredly a result of the increased legal action
toward the once-ignored BitTorrent -- a game of P2P hide-and-seek,"
said CacheLogic's chief technology officer Andrew Parker.

Last year, BitTorrent was consuming up to a third of the Internet's
total bandwidth as users traded huge movie and television files.
Hollywood struck back with a slew of lawsuits to shut down Web sites
that provided "tracker" links, which tell the network where to look
for files.

The United States has also seen a surprising return to popularity of
the Gnutella file-sharing network, which had faded after an earlier
crackdown by music companies.

"Gnutella was once seen as dead so may be off the radar" of the music
and movie industries, Parker said. "It's proof that legal pressure
from industry groups results in the mass migration of file sharers to
an alternative network, whether old or new. This cat and mouse game
will continue."

About 60 percent of the Internet's total bandwidth consists of P2P
traffic, according to the CacheLogic study. P2P, which sends data from
user to user, is often difficult to shut down because networks don't
rely on a centralised server to distribute data.

In a precedent-setting ruling earlier this summer, the U.S. Supreme
Court ruled against P2P firm Grokster, saying that because the
company's intent was to encourage copyright infringement, it could be
held liable for the movies and music traded on its network.

But any hopes from Hollywood that the Grokster ruling would result in
less P2P traffic have not been fulfilled, according to CacheLogic.

"The Grokster case did not result in a rapid decline in P2P usage,"
Parker said.

Copyright 2005 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.

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

From: Adam Pasick <reuters@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: BBC Targets Music Downloads in Internet Strategy
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 13:03:38 -0500


By Adam Pasick

The BBC wants to be a major player in the digital media world and is
considering partnerships with private businesses to sell music
downloads, Director-General Mark Thompson said on Saturday.

The publicly-funded broadcaster is testing software called MyBBCPlayer
to let users download its TV and radio programing, and plans to use
its powerful presence to take its place among Internet media giants
like Google and Yahoo.

"Everything we know about the online world suggests that it's the big
brands -- the eBays, the Amazons, the Microsofts -- that punch
through, and the BBC is one of the big brands," Thompson said in a
speech at the Edinburgh Television Festival.

The British Broadcasting Corporation's Web site is the fifth most
popular in Britain, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

It already makes recent radio programmes available for post-broadcast
listening on its Web site, and in recent months, 1.4 million users
downloaded recordings of nine Beethoven symphonies that the
broadcaster offered for free.

There were 60 million online requests for video footage following the
London bombings.

Thompson said that people listening to BBC Radio 1 online could
eventually click on a link to buy a song being broadcast.

The idea that "there needs to be a vast cordon sanitaire" between
public service and commercial transactions "flies in the face of the
way the public actually use the media now," he said.

The BBC plans to a launch a trial incorporating parts of MyBBCPlayer
next month, with a full roll-out in 2006. The plan is to offer
on-demand TV and radio programing, live streaming of BBC channels, and
access to the broadcaster's huge archives.

Thompson said it was "ridiculous" to think that technology-savvy
consumers "would not welcome the opportunity to actually buy a
download of a piece of music they have heard on a BBC Website."

The prospect of the BBC using its massive heft is likely to upset UK
media and Internet companies, which have often complained that the
corporation -- funded by a mandatory tax on UK television households
totaling nearly 3 billion pounds -- has encroached on activities in
the private sector.

Thompson said that when and if the BBC links to online music stores,
"the choice of commercial providers (would be) fair and open."

Ashley Highfield, director of BBC New Media and Technology, told
Reuters that the BBC has not yet held any discussions with online
music providers.

Copyright 2005 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.

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

Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 13:46:57 EDT
From: USTelecom dailyLead <ustelecom@dailylead.com>
Subject: Intelsat Buys PanAmSat for $3.2 Billion


USTelecom dailyLead
August 29, 2005
http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=24200&l=2017006

		TODAY'S HEADLINES
	
NEWS OF THE DAY
* Intelsat buys PanAmSat for $3.2 billion
BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH
* Verizon Wireless cuts EV-DO price by 25%
* FCC extends VoIP deadline
* Broadcom to court Nokia
* Camera phone theft takes bizarre twist
* Telcos take advertising outdoors
USTELECOM SPOTLIGHT 
* Municipal Broadband: The Shape of the Debate
HOT TOPICS
* Tables turn in file-swapping business
* FCC could add VoIP to USF
* Sprint Nextel details plans for local phone unit spinoff
* FCC chief may enforce cable TV competition rule
* Report: IPTV poised for major growth in next five years
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES
* Beeb to offer TV downloads
* Airspan announces U.S., Japan WiMAX trials
REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE
* Cells in the subway: Good idea or a nuisance?
* Nokia, Telsim settle

Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others.
http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=24200&l=2017006

Legal and Privacy information at
http://www.dailylead.com/about/privacy_legal.jsp

SmartBrief, Inc.
1100 H ST NW, Suite 1000
Washington, DC 20005

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

From: Rob Slade <rslade@sprint.ca>
Organization: Vancouver Institute for Research into User 
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 14:52:49 -0800
Subject: Book Review: "Spam Kings", Brian McWilliams
Reply-To: rslade@sprint.ca


BKSPMKNG.RVW   20050610

"Spam Kings", Brian McWilliams, 2005, 0-596-00732-9, U$22.95/C$33.95
%A   Brian McWilliams
%C   103 Morris Street, Suite A, Sebastopol, CA   95472
%D   2005
%G   0-596-00732-9
%I   O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.
%O   U$22.95/C$33.95 707-829-0515 fax: 707-829-0104 nuts@ora.com
%O   http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596007329/robsladesinterne
    
 http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596007329/robsladesinte-21
%O   http://www.amazon.ca/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596007329/robsladesin03-20
%O   Audience n+ Tech 1 Writing 2 (see revfaq.htm for explanation)
%P   333 p.
%T   "Spam Kings"

This book is the story of some spammers, and some anti-spammers,
during the period from about 1998 to 2003.  The stories are not, as in
other works, separated by chapters, but are interwoven in roughly
chronological order.

After a while, you begin to realize that much of the material is
padded out with conversations taken from old Usenet archives, as well
as instant messaging and IRC (Internet Relay Chat) logs.  Oddly
enough, these aren't as interesting as they sound.  The conversations
aren't particularly illuminating, and tend to be arguments on the
level of schoolyard fights.  In fact, almost nobody in the book comes
across as an attractive or sympathetic character: even the "good guys"
seem to be self-righteous, petty, vindictive, and occasionally just
plain, outright nasty.

The book does not provide much insight into spam protection
technology: that is probably not the intent.  Neither does it describe
spamming technology as such, and many would likely consider this
restraint to be a good thing.  Instead, the book concentrates on the
fight between the spamming and anti-spamming forces, but does not go
into any detail on those technologies either, using narratives, and
references to the fact that certain research is undertaken, without
any suggestion of how this might be accomplished.

Those seriously interested in the fight against spam will likely find
something in this work to redeem the cost of it.  Those who simply
want to use email, and who are annoyed by spam, may believe that they
have obtained some insight into the phenomenon after reading the text.
But it's difficult to say what value or intelligence that might be.

copyright Robert M. Slade, 2005   BKSPMKNG.RVW   20050610


======================  (quote inserted randomly by Pegasus Mailer)
rslade@vcn.bc.ca      slade@victoria.tc.ca      rslade@sun.soci.niu.edu
          Dulce et decorum est desipere in loco.
    (It is pleasant and proper to be foolish once in a while.  A
derivation from the more famous `Dulce et decorum est pro patria
mori,' about dying for one's country, which may be more noble but
is less fun.)
http://victoria.tc.ca/techrev    or    http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~rslade

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

Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 01:47:55 +0200
From: Daniel AJ Sokolov <sokolov@gmx.netnetnet.invalid>
Subject: Re: RIP, Sussex Cellular


Am 28.08.2005 11:34 schrieb Stanley Cline:

> One of the most backward, most reviled, most laughed-at cell phone
> companies in the US -- and one mentioned many times here in the Digest
> over the years -- closed its doors earlier this month.  Sussex
> Cellular (which operated as SciTel Wireless in its last days), the
> carrier serving Sussex County, NJ that was infamous for its arrogance,
> roaming agreement "hardball", and poor service and being one of the
> last analog-only carriers in the continental US, requested that the
> FCC cancel its license as of August 4.  http://tinyurl.com/9ua6j

> Since that time their web site has disappeared from the net and the
> trunks between their MTSO and the rest of the world have been either
> busied out or disconnected.  Based on some digging in the FCC ULS
> databases, it appears that Sussex is the ONLY cellular (as opposed to
> PCS or ESMR) licensee to ever have built out a network and simply shut
> down without selling its licenses, network, and customers to another
> carrier; given their historical arrogance, that doesn't surprise me
> one bit.

> It doesn't look like anyone has stepped up to take over the vacated
> license yet, but my guess is that Cingular will do so in order to
> improve service in Sussex County, where Cingular currently has only
> 1900 MHz (PCS) coverage and where 850 MHz coverage would be helpful
> because of the terrain.  Other carriers who might be interested in the
> area include Dobson Communications, who serves areas of New York just
> to the north of Sussex County, and Commnet Wireless, the roamer-only
> carrier that serves scattered tertiary and rural markets stretching
> from California (Lake Isabella/Kernville and Boron) all the way to
> Tennessee (Mountain City).

Hi,

Is there somewhere a list of network operators, that do romaing only?
Like Comnet Wireless and the GSM-part of Western Wireless/Alltel?

BR
Daniel AJ

My e-mail-address is sokolov [at] gmx dot net

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

Date: 29 Aug 2005 00:37:58 -0000
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
Subject: Re: RIP, Sussex Cellular
Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA


> being one of the last analog-only carriers in the continental US

Are there any other analog-only carriers in the US at all?  I can't
think of any.  Even the little carriers in Alaska seem to be doing
TDMA or CDMA.

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

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Re: Who'll Mind the Mainframes? / Few Students Learning to Run
Date: 29 Aug 2005 07:16:30 -0700
Organization: http://groups.google.com


Monty Solomon wrote:

> By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff  |  August 26, 2005

> They're the grizzled, unglamorous veterans of the computing world,
> middle-aged men and women who don't create best-selling computer games
> or dazzling special effects for the movies. All they do is quietly run
> the most important computer systems in the world.

The mainframe world is rather specialized which makes this an even
harder challenge.  First, there is a small group of non-IBM
mainframes, such as Groupe Bull (formerly Honeywell).  There may
Unisys out there as well.  Some companies must support more than one
depending on prior data centers' legacy.

Within the IBM world there are specialities: 

1) Computer operators: physically run the machines -- handle things
like printers, tapes and cartridges, disk drives.  Much work is
automated now (disks are usually fixed, cartridges have auto loader
silos), but there is stuff to be done.

2) System programmers:  This is specialized people who maintain the
operating system for a particular installation.  There are three
operating systems, MVS, VSE, and VM.  Some companies must support more
than one depending on prior data centers' legacy.

3) Application programmers:  Usually COBOL and CICS, but there are
various database programs new and old; plus other work in Fortran and
Assembler.

4) New stuff like Linux and C and web development.  Some centers use
the solid COBOL/CICS on the back end and GUI on the front end to get
the best of the old and new worlds.

The mainframe world got overpopulated in 1999-2000 with many people
trained and hired to work on Y2K conversions.  Mainframe people were
once in great demand, then the market collapsed (at least in NE US)
and many people were laid off, never to work again in the field.
Others took a 50% cut in pay just to have a job, such as a senior
person earning $80k forced to take a junior position making $40k or
else pump gas on the overnight shift.

The mainframe takes a lot of care and support.  However, it has
tremendous capacity to serve thousands of users simultaneously very
reliably and very quickly.  It is extremly rare that my employer's
mainframe or its traditional network goes down.  Remote networks,
servers, and local PCs go down all the time.  The hardware revolution
in cheap memory has hit mainframes as well, and the boxes have
tremendous memory and speed.

The mainframe's basic architecture is great at keeping the system from
crashing from errant programs.  The basic storage protection works
great.  The channel system for I/O is much better than a "bus".  The
operating system assigns peripherals to the proper application and
prevents mixups.

One advantage of older people is that they've made every mistake
they're gonna make and have years of experience behind them.  If there
is a problem, they'll know where to fix it fast.

The article mentioned people passing on.  Sadly, that is true too, I
just was at a funeral for a wonderful woman who died suddenly at 61
from a stroke.  (She was a smoker, FWIW).

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

Subject: Re: The Luncheon Meat Associated With Junk Email?
Date: Mon, 29 Aug 2005 11:09:19 -0400
From: Michael Quinn <quinnm@bah.com>


Speaking of Hoovers, this is a bit of Navy trivia that will all but be
forgotten when the last S-3 carrier based aircraft (remember President
Bush's landing on the USS Abraham Lincoln? That was an S-3) retires.
Known for the distinct high pitched whine from their engines, they are
also sometimes referred to as Hoovers.  There is a particular typed of
flight ops known as "Triple H ops", for "Hummers (the E-2C early
warning aircraft) Hoovers and Helos". =20

There is also a running joke in motorcycle circles along the lines of
"Q: What's the difference between a  Hoover and a (insert target
motorcycle name here)? A: On a Hoover, the dirtbag is on the inside" etc
etc.  


On date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 23:08:46 +0100 Paul Coxwell 
<paulcoxwell@tiscali.co.uk> said:

> "Hoover" is commonly used both as a generic name for any sort of vaccuum
> cleaner, and as a verb, e.g. "I'll just hoover up" or even "I'm going to
> do the hoovering."  The Hoover name never became generic for any of the
> other types of appliances they made, such as irons and refrigerators.
> Had the latter been the most widely associated product of the company,
> maybe today people would talk about "Getting some milk from the Hoover."
> Sounds weird, but it could have happened.

> -Paul

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


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