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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 ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecomm- unications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. Contact information: Patrick Townson/TELECOM Digest Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301 Phone: 620-402-0134 Fax 1: 775-255-9970 Fax 2: 530-309-7234 Fax 3: 208-692-5145 Email: editor@telecom-digest.org Subscribe: telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org Unsubscribe:telecom-unsubscribe@telecom-digest.org This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! 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