From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Aug 21 16:31:13 2002 Received: from localhost (localhost [[UNIX: localhost]]) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.3nb1/8.11.3) id g7LKVDK25278; Wed, 21 Aug 2002 16:31:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 16:31:13 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200208212031.g7LKVDK25278@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V21 #1 TELECOM Digest Wed, 21 Aug 2002 16:31:00 EDT Volume 21 : Issue 1 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Starting Year 22 (TELECOM Digest Editor) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 15:48:07 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Starting Year 22 TELECOM Digest began publication on August 21, 1981. For a couple of days back then, 22 years ago, there were test messages, a message sent out about how messages to/from the Digest and the old arpa.telecom newsgroup would be passed back and forth, etc. We began as an offshoot or expansion of HUMAN NETS Digest, which had begun a couple years earlier. There were a number of people reading HUMAN NETS who wanted telephone discussion, so it was decided to break out the telecom-related threads and put them in a new Digest of their own, thus TELECOM Digest started, and the first several issues of this Digest contained message threads which had originally been started/discussed in HUMAN NETS. In those days, prior to the 'modern internet' the passing of messages required manual intervention through a couple of well-known and well-connected gateways. You can read about those things if you look in the archives at the test message, the introductory message and Volume 1 Issue 1 of this Digest. You will also note how syntax has changed over the years such as the adoption of '@' to replace 'at' as a system identifier. My email address in those early days would have been 'ptownson at lcs.mit.edu' rather than what was phased in during the early eighties 'ptownson@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu' Mintaka as a work station at LCS has long since been gone. The archives in those early days were kept at a site called DUFFEY, which was an MIT location. Contrary to what is commonly thought, I did not found TELECOM Digest. I inherited it from Jon Solomon in the middle 1980's. There were a couple of the charter subscribers to the Digest in those days who thought that was a mistake (putting me in charge of the Digest) and maybe some of them still think so. Yes, we have about a half-dozen or so individuals who came on board here from HUMAN NETS and are still here today, 22 years later. I was a regular poster in the Digest when Jon Solomon was the moderator in the early 1980's. In those days, we all used Usenet News; today very few folks use Usenet in the way we used to. It has become simply to spam-ridden to of much value except for a few newsgroups. Because I used to have to pay for long distance calls in the old days, *and* use a 300-1200 baud modem, the long distance charges to call into the 'annex box' (or router) at MIT to reach LCS and work on the Digest got rather expensive. I applied for a user account at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL which was close to my home and a local phone call. I did the Digest from there for several years while keeping the archives first at Boston University then later back at MIT. I think I did the Digest from nwu.edu for about five years, during the period 1989 through 1993 or 1994, until about the time the net started going commercial. Wasn't 1993 the final year of the golden days of the Internet? Our website (telecom-digest.org) began in 1995. Prior to that, the archives were accessible using FTP and still are. I held off starting a web site as long as possible; it seemed to me to be a foolish waste of resources. Bill Pfieffer, who I had 'taught about computers' in 1977-78 from scratch using an old OSI C-1-P computer with 8 K memory came to me in 1994 and said 'Patrick, you *gotta* start a web site; thats really where things on the net are going'. So I did, and the daily user count began climbing very astronomically; user counts we never could obtain in the old FTP days. When I managed to get to the point of a 9600 baud modem, I started calling back direct to MIT to work on the archives now and then and in 1994 sometime began using my nwu.edu account to telnet into MIT to work on the Digest from that original (for me) location. As ISPs (Internet Service Providers) became more common at that same time, I experimented with using services like Randy Suess offered in Chicago (chinet) to do telnet to Boston. Then came 32 and 56 K modems and I thought I had it made. Those Editor Notes began flying out of the keyboard all the time. Just as HUMAN NETS was responsible for our birth, this Digest has been responsible for several new newsgroups and Digests over the years. These were (and I hope I don't miss any): Computer Underground Digest and related newsgroup. CuD was started during a particularly nasty scandal on the net at the time about computer/telephone fraud. The professor who maintained it was employed at Northeastern Illinois State University in the Chicago area. He ran it for several years; now I believe it is defunct. I was literally up to my neck in messages on the scandal. He agreed to take them and use them in a new Digest. Computer Privacy Digest (NOT to be confused with the product of Lauren Weinstein several years later) was started at the time Caller-ID became common in the early nineties. Caller-ID had all the privacy advocates up in arms, and the messages pro and con were flooding my inbox. The fellow who started comp.privacy was equally gracious. I let him take several hundred inbox messages and set them up Digest-style at his site. Then there was alt.dcom.telecom which was a group of users who felt they could better handle some messages that I was not printing. They chose to go into the alt hierarchy which has always been unmoderated and anyone could start a group on anything. The difference between Usenet (in those days, highly respected) and Altnet was that starting a Usenet newsgroup was a group process. It had to be voted on and approved by the community, but once this approval was granted, there was a gentlemen's agreement that *all sites would carry all newsgroups.* If your site carried Usenet, you carried that newsgroup, no matter the personal sensibilites of the local sysadmin. Altnet on the other hand, required no approval of any kind; anyone could start a group on anything. However the catch was *no sysadmin had to carry it. Your first task as a moderator/booster of an alt newsgroup was to convince a sysadmin to carry it on his spool.* Consequently Usenet groups (once approved) had a huge default circulation and readership. Altnet groups on the other hand had spotty and irregular circulation; some major sites such as AT&T dumped them all; would not agree to take any alt groups. Then came comp.dcom.telecom.tech. This was a sort of bitter thing where a number of readers chose to pull out of comp.dcom.telecom when they were advised by the 'Usenet heirarchy' that I could not be legally deposed as moderator here; that the Digest and newsgroup are 'my property' because they were originally (1980's) ported to Usenet from the old Arpanet system. Rather than begin alt.anything and take the risk of poor circulation alt.dcom.telecom suffered, they solicited for votes to become Usenet and after two votes were taken became comp.dcom.telecom.tech . It was a messy, bitter thing, no one (least of all me) was happy with it, but they, and the alt counterpart exist to this day. I think ...tech has or had a Digest version also; if it still operates maybe one of the Digest editors/ managers there will tell us about it. These two last 'children' of mine (alt.dcom.telecom and comp.dcom. telecom.tech) were born with some bitterness; as the old song goes, "What is too painful to remember we simply choose to forget" and I guess I have forgotten a lot of the details. You are obviously hearing my side of the story. There was also rec.radio.broadcasting which I inspired Bill Pfeiffer to start in 1990. Then he inspired me to begin my web site in 1994-95. Then he met an untimely death in September, 1999 in a car crash in Minnesota. I temporarily took over his newsgroup moderation duties (AIRWAVES RADIO Digest) and his web site (airwaves.com) until someone else could be found to handle it. Then I had my brain aneurysm on November 29, 1999, and you all know the history there. Anyway, now we reach age 22 and the second-oldest Digest/newsgroup combo on this internet, still around from the old days. I think the sci-fi group is still around; it is a bit older than this one. Lauren Weinstein can fill in this history on newsgroups. I never thought we would be around *this* long; its been a real blast. Because I was not around last year (2001) for reasons I will go into when my book 'Genesis 39' is published here on the net someday, we did not have a Volume 21 of this Digest. For the sake of continuity this single message will comprise 'Volume 21' and we will then go on to Volume 22 with the next and subsequent issues. Let's conclude this issue of the Digest with the (in)famous song of Lauren Weinstein which has become sort of by default the reason for the existence of this TELECOM Digest on the net. ======================= (DO NOT USE ANY OF THESE OLD EMAIL ADDRESSES AND PATHS! THEY ARE ONLY SHOWN HERE AS CURIOSITY ITEMS!!!) 12-Jul-83 09:14:32-PDT,4930;000000000001 Return-path: <@LBL-CSAM:vortex!lauren@LBL-CSAM> Received: from LBL-CSAM by USC-ECLB; Tue 12 Jul 83 09:12:46-PDT Date: Tuesday, 12-Jul-83 01:18:19-PDT From: Lauren Weinstein Subject: "The Day Bell System Died" Return-Path: Message-Id: <8307121614.AA17341@LBL-CSAM.ARPA> Received: by LBL-CSAM.ARPA (3.327/3.21) id AA17341; 12 Jul 83 09:14:35 PDT (Tue) To: TELECOM@ECLB Greetings. With the massive changes now taking place in the telecommunications industry, we're all being inundated with seemingly endless news items and points of information regarding the various effects now beginning to take place. However, one important element has been missing: a song! Since the great Tom Lehrer has retired from the composing world, I will now attempt to fill this void with my own light-hearted, non-serious look at a possible future of telecommunications. This work is entirely satirical, and none of its lyrics are meant to be interpreted in a non-satirical manner. The song should be sung to the tune of Don Mclean's classic "American Pie". I call my version "The Day Bell System Died"... --Lauren-- ************************************************************************** *==================================* * Notice: This is a satirical work * *==================================* "The Day Bell System Died" Lyrics Copyright (C) 1983 by Lauren Weinstein (To the tune of "American Pie") (With apologies to Don McLean) ARPA: vortex!lauren@LBL-CSAM UUCP: {decvax, ihnp4, harpo, ucbvax!lbl-csam, randvax}!vortex!lauren ************************************************************************** Long, long, time ago, I can still remember, When the local calls were "free". And I knew if I paid my bill, And never wished them any ill, That the phone company would let me be... But Uncle Sam said he knew better, Split 'em up, for all and ever! We'll foster competition: It's good capital-ism! I can't remember if I cried, When my phone bill first tripled in size. But something touched me deep inside, The day... Bell System... died. And we were singing... Bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? Is your office Step by Step, Or have you gotten some Crossbar yet? Everybody used to ask... Oh, is TSPS coming soon? IDDD will be a boon! And, I hope to get a Touch-Tone phone, real soon... The color phones are really neat, And direct dialing can't be beat! My area code is "low": The prestige way to go! Oh, they just raised phone booths to a dime! Well, I suppose it's about time. I remember how the payphones chimed, The day... Bell System... died. And we were singing... Bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? Back then we were all at one rate, Phone installs didn't cause debate, About who'd put which wire where... Installers came right out to you, No "phone stores" with their ballyhoo, And 411 was free, seemed very fair! But FCC wanted it seems, To let others skim long-distance creams, No matter 'bout the locals, They're mostly all just yokels! And so one day it came to pass, That the great Bell System did collapse, In rubble now, we all do mass, The day... Bell System... died. So bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? I drove on out to Murray Hill, To see Bell Labs, some time to kill, But the sign there said the Labs were gone. I went back to my old CO, Where I'd had my phone lines, years ago, But it was empty, dark, and ever so forlorn... No relays pulsed, No data crooned, No MF tones did play their tunes, There wasn't a word spoken, All carrier paths were broken... And so that's how it all occurred, Microwave horns just nests for birds, Everything became so absurd, The day... Bell System... died. So bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? Ma Bell why did you have to die? We were singing: Bye, bye, Ma Bell, why did you die? We get static from Sprint and echo from MCI, "Our local calls have us in hock!" we all cry. Oh Ma Bell why did you have to die? ================================ Thank you Lauren! And thanks to those of you who have been readers here for however long; in some cases years and years and years, in a few other cases a month or two. I'll see you tomorrow to start Volume 22 of the Digest. Patrick Townson TELECOM Digest Editor ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V21 #001 ******************************