From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Dec 20 14:27:50 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBKJRnM17569; Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:27:50 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:27:50 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312201927.hBKJRnM17569@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 V22 #801 TELECOM Digest Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:11:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 801 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Prison Phone Technology (From Telecom Archives) FCC OKs News Corp. Purchase of DirecTV (Monty Solomon) FCC Conditions on DirecTV Deal May Limit Murdoch (Monty Solomon) RIAA v. Verizon Decision (Monty Solomon) RealNetworks v. Microsoft (Monty Solomon) Comcast Beefs up Broadband Services in Face of Competition (M. Solomon) Fastest Wi-Fi You Can Actually Buy (Monty Solomon) Going Wireless with AirPort Extreme (Monty Solomon) Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? (Joey Lindstrom) South Korea's Professional Gamers (Mighty Land) Re: Norvergence Really Sucks (Chris Jones) 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 is 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. ------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 12:00:00 CST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: From the Archives: Prison Phone Technology About seven years ago, I printed an article in the Digest sent in by Tom Farley dealing with a relatively new (at that time) technology in phone service for incarcerated persons. I thought that article in our archives might be a good reprint in a weekend issue of the Digest, in view of the extremely high number of persons incarcerated at the present time. There are more individuals in local, state and federal prisons now than ever before in American history. Of course, for those guys in prison in Atlanta and Guantanamo, Cuba who are being held incommunicado by President Bush -- not allowed any outside contact with family members or attornies, this does not apply. But I hope it is a good review of the technology for everyone else. PAT Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 16:00:46 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (TELECOM Digest Editor) Subject: Prison Phone Technology Tom Farley is another great member of our online community who writes a print journal from time to time known as {Private Line}. I shared his most recent issue with Digest readers recently and now I have another excellent report from Tom, this time on telephones in prisons. Without wasting any more bandwidth, let's read it! PAT From: Tom Farley Subject: Prison Phone Technology Date: Wed, 2 Oct 96 14:31:56 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Hello, Pat. Here's something from my latest e-zine. I can e-mail people a copy of the ezine although it should be up at privateline.com soon. Best wishes, Tom Farley IV. AN INTRODUCTION TO PRISON PHONE TECHNOLOGY-- by Tom Farley -- tom@privateline.com -- privateline@delphi.com A. A brief overview B. Three different call processing approaches 1. Class of service approach 2. Generic switch utilizing custom software a. Close up of one switch: NACT's 120LCX 3. Dedicated system using PC technology 4. Typical Call processors' anti-fraud features a. Call blocking on a permanent basis b. Call blocking on an as needed basis c. Limiting long distance carriers d. Flash hook prevention e. Rotary dial acceptance f. Limiting automated message attempts g. Conference call prevention C. The federal Inmate Telephone System (ITS) 1. Introduction 2. Letter from jail 3. Discussion and speculation 4. Federal Bureau of Prison (B.OP.) Time Line 5. Discussion continues 6. ITS Account Report 7. A report on ITS from Jail 8. Real short conclusion 9. Bibliography A. General Overview The prison phone business is big and getting bigger. At least 50,000 inmate phones now exist with more being added all the time. By comparison, colleges account for 60,000 public phones and hotels and motels 80,000. [1] Phone companies pay big commissions to states and counties to service the rapidly growing prison market. The decades old practice of letting inmates call collect to any number they wish is now being replaced by allowing collect calling or direct dialing to pre-selected numbers. Just how that is accomplished is the focus of this article. Prison phone systems come in a bewildering number of shapes and sizes. County, state and some Federal prisons configure their operations for their requirements, consequently, there are no standards, much like all PBX's vary widely in features and operating methods. But like PBX's, there are some features common to all "inmate call control technologies." At the very least, a prison phone system uses a call processor to approve and place the call, surveillance equipment to monitor it, and recording equipment to archive the conversation. Only smaller counties and, curiously, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, "the largest state prison system on earth, still unlock the cells and let prisoners use a phone on someone's desk, a la Barney Fife." (2) In past years prisoners could call collect to anyone they wished. The new trend, though, is toward allowing direct or collect calls to pre-approved numbers. The most controversial approach is a pre-approved number scheme, as practiced by the federal Inmate Telephone System (ITS). But before we look at ITS, let's look at the technology state and county prisons use to process automated collect calls. B. Three approaches to call processing While line based call blocking is an effective solution for some facilities, most county and state prisons use a call processor to approve and place calls. There are two approaches. The first method employs a pre-existing switch using custom software written for the prison industry and quite often for the individual facility itself. Switch based platforms excel at supporting the greatest number of ports (sometimes to 8,000). The other approach uses a dedicated system based on PC or microprocessor technology. PC-based platforms shine at providing flexibility. Figure on stand alone switches costing from $160,000 to $700,000, compared to PC- platforms starting around $60,000 with only 96 ports or 48 channels. [3] Let's first look at what a telco can do and then we'll look at call processors. 1. Class of service approach Large and small telcos offer many kinds of call blocking to institutions. The advantage is simplicity. Order from your local phone company and pay by the month. Pacific Bell calls their two offerings the "COPT (Customer Owned Pay Telephone) Inmate Line" and the "COPT Inmate Collect Only Line." [4] The COPT Inmate Line is a low security offering, with only 900/976 and international direct distance dialing (IDDD) permanently blocked. 'O+' calls are screened for collect only. All other calls, including local, '411', '611' , '911' '0-' (operator dialed) and so on must be blocked with customer owned equipment. Their COPT Inmate Collect Only Line, by comparison, costs more but blocks all of the above calls, at least over Pacific Bell's network. Line based call blocking may be good to have, however, it can't replace a prison's call processor. 2. Generic switch using custom software. Switches like the Summa Four, Excell, Harris 20/20 are often used to managing prison calls. National Applied Computer Technology (NACT), for example, sells a switch called the LCX 120C switching system. [4] It's a tandem digital switch, often used by long distance carriers, prepaid calling card sellers, payphone route handlers and other service providers. The 120C is a medium to large trunk switch, capable of putting long distance traffic out to the toll network without going through the local central office first. It's a generic switch, therefore, with software making the difference. NACT is heavily involved in the correctional industry. Let's look a little more closely at this switch, since it is so often used in prisons and other high fraud locations. a. Close up of one switch: NACT's LCX120C Although I do not have the name of the operator, a NACT LCX120C is currently operated by a company which manages or owns over 2,500 COCOTs in New York City. 1+, 0+ and 0- calls are processed through the switch and all traffic is scrutinized by NACT's proprietary Control and Validation Unit (CVU). Most software, by the way, is developed in "C". NACT claims fraud losses will drop from 20% on average to 0.5 percent and the return on investment for this operator was only six weeks. Perhaps. The cabinet housing the switch stands three feet tall and two feet wide. A clear plexiglass door covers the electronic bay housing the electronics. Two 125 cfm fans keep the air moving. The control and validation unit (CVU) stands at the top of the assembly. The CVU is the primary processor, equipped with dual 330/520 MB hardrives and a 250 MB cartridge tape drive. Using older but serviceable technology, the processor is an MC680x0, utilizing 8 megs of ram and drawing on a 400 watt power supply. The CVU does validation and controls the trunk control unit (TCU) below it. Up to four trunk control units can be supported, each TCU controlling 120 ports (60 talk paths). The TCUs contain "processor and trunk control cards to handle line signalling, send/receive digits, and interface with the CPU." Each TCU utilizes a "realtime industrial processor", 128 Kb of RAM, 80 KB of ROM and a 300 watt power supply. An uninteruuptible power supply sits below the TCU and a remote diagnostics system, with a modem, of course, sits below that.[5] Add an administration workstation and a printer and you're ready to roll. 2. Dedicated system using PC technology The other approach to prison call processing uses a dedicated system, often based on PC or microprocessor hardware. Such a beast will use a 486 processor or a Pentium, typically running under DOS rather than UNIX. TELEQUIP, CPDI and others use this approach. [6] TELEQUIP's ACP-4000 (Automated Call Processor (R)) is marketed just to correctional facilities. That might make it simpler to install. TELEQUIP boasts that "ACP installation is the easiest in the industry. No wall space or card racks! Simple plug-and-play is standard. Set the ACP anywhere on-site, connect one cable to a 66 block, plug in the power and your ACP is processing inmate calls!" [7] Wonderful. N.A.C.T., by comparison, says six weeks are required to install their switch. TELEQUIP says their equipment services 8,000 prison lines and six state contracts. That's a pretty large slice of the prison pie. But for variety, let's take a look at CPDI's offering to get an idea of a PC-platform based switch. b. Close up look at a PC-based switch CPDI's PC-switch approach is typical. It relies on a file server, a card processor, a workstation, Dialogic telephone interface cards, a Novel local area network, a hub and some proprietary software. [8] The file server is actually a souped up PC, a computer with file management software, voice boards for prompts and a big hard drive. T1 lines usually terminate directly into the card processors. Each processor supports 48 ports or 24 channels. A tape backup and a hard drive backup are usually standard, indeed, a redundant file server is often used in case of failure. The administration workstation may have a modem and a dial up remote access port. So what do these two kinds of systems have in common? Plenty, especially when it comes to anti-fraud features. 3. Call processors' anti-fraud features Many state and county prison calls are dialed collect from a pre-approved list. Allowing and supervising calls from hundreds or possibly thousands of prisoners at an institution requires a fraud resistant automated collect calling system. Everett Castor, switch operations manager for N.A.C.T says "You can't possibly simulate in a lab everything an inmate can think to do." [9] Here's a list of features a modern processor may have: a. Call blocking on a permanent basis -- Most inmates are not allowed to talk to a live operator of any sort. In addition, 700, 800, 900 and 950 services are all permanently blocked. "Country codes, information digits, NPAs (area codes), third party numbers" can also be shut down. b. Call blocking on an as needed basis -- Inmates and their compatriots are notorious for their ability to find home phone numbers of guards, wardens and family members of same. Witnesses, judges and many others are also targets. Most systems accommodate nearly limitless amounts of non-dialable numbers. This does not prevent a third party, though, from manually bridging a call. c. Limiting long distance carriers -- Most systems now use one carrier, keeping inmates from switching, for better or worse, to another LD provider.' [10] d. Flash hook prevention -- keeps inmates from breaking out of of a call and dialing a new number. [11] This was a problem with older analog processors which were built along PBX lines. e. Rotary dial acceptance -- Some systems allow a rotary dialed party to signal collect acceptance by holding the line, however, this normally requires the switch to be programmed for this ahead of time. f. Limiting automated message attempts -- Like many of us, inmates try to send coded messages with an automated collect system. This feature limits attempts to a certain number within a certain amount of time, keyed to the inmates' account number. g. Reverse battery supervision -- Disables keypad after destination number is dialed. Prevents fun and games and possibly getting a new dial tone. Pressing different buttons on the keypad while an automated collect system worked may have allowed an unrestricted dial tone in older systems. [12] h. Three way call prevention -- TELEQUIP claims near 100% 3-way call prevention with their patented ACP processor. They go on to say that AT&T's Inmate Processing System deters only 93% of such attempts. I do not see how manually bridging a call can be stopped. It is also possible that call forwarding or foreign exchange circuits could circumvent this. i. Call limitations -- allows an institution to limit calls by length, billing type, dollar amount and so on. May prevent a huge bill from being placed to a subscriber who has no intention of paying. D. The Federal Inmate Telephone System (ITS) 1. An introduction The Federal Bureau of Prisons (B.O.P.) incarcerates approximately 100,000 prisoners at 84 institutions across the country. Fully a quarter of that population are foreign nationals, willing and often able to spend big bucks to call home. This captive market might seem ideal for private competition, with hundreds of long distance companies bidding for a Federal contract. Oddly enough, though, the U.S. still carries calls themselves over the government's normal FTS2000 network. That's composed of, essentially, heavily discounted Sprint lines. (Local telephone companies handle local calls). [13] A new contract, however, will be awarded for this traffic due to a court settlement, indeed, a whole new inmate telephone system will be developed in the next year or two. For now, though, the B.O.P. continues to manage things their own way. So what's going on here? And what kind of technology do the Feds use to process these calls? Before we answer those questions, though, let's take a break and look at the letter that got this article started: 2. Letter from jail March 12, 1996 private line journal P.O. Box 1059 Isleton, CA Re: A "Beseeching", of sorts . . . As may be evident, I am currently incarcerated within a federal correctional center in Coleman, Florida. I have been placed in this hell hole due to ideas run-afoul . . . I am here for wire fraud. It seems that I may have gotten ahead of myself in that I "accidentally" wired money from a corporation's account that I neither worked for, nor had the authorization to be meddling with. Never-the-less, some funds, as I said before, "accidentally" ended up in my account (which was opened in another name, by the way -- I am not totally lame!). Anyhow, I would hope that I may be able to convince you to send me a couple of your back issues, or better yet, a subscription to your fine journal? I await your reply with high hopes. name withheld 3. Discussion Damn that wire fraud! Turns out our man is the author of, appropriately enough, _Credit Card Fraud and Toll Fraud Issues_, a slim tome detailing how "scam artists can take advantage of you without your knowledge." Great. In any case, I sent him a copy of _private line_ and he replied with all sorts of interesting information on the Inmate Telephone System. ITS is a switch based system controlled by a UNIX workstation at 41 federal penitentiaries. I doubt a switch sits at each facility, however, that is certainly possible. But remember, a switch like a N.A.C.T. can sit anywhere in the United States and take calls. The traffic simply has to be routed to it. You could even own a switch and have it located at N.A.C.T.'s headquarters in Utah, just so that it gets around the clock attention. It would be natural, though, that some sort of G.T.E. switching is employed since G.T.E. helped develop I.T.S. Maybe in Texas? Collect calls that are authorized use AT&T's automated collect call program. [14] In accordance with a settlement last year, "prison officials have now agreed to tie their rates to those of state prisons, which are controlled by state utility boards."[15] That might cut down on complaints about high costs, especially overseas calls. Rates like $9.99 a minute to Vietnam were not uncommon. Even domestic calls are sufficiently high that a foreign exchange circuit may be less expensive to arrange rather than paying for direct dialing. (I've paid as high as 61 cents a minute to accept an ITS call from Florida in the middle of the day.) Whether the ITS officer in each prison would allow this is a whole different question, since the whole system is in flux and because each facility is allowed a great deal of leeway in deciding its rules. As an example 38 facilities allow only direct dialing to pre-approved numbers, 28 still provide direct calling only and 18 provide both. The settlement does allow 120 minutes of collect calling to all inmates, no matter what the policy is at a particular institution. Anti-fraud features are basically the same as noted under '3' above. 3-way calling is definitely frowned upon. As one prisoner notes "the ITS system (through GTE/OPUS's proprietary specialized programming) detects such calls in real time, cuts off the inmate- caller, flags the inmates PAC and records the telephone number the inmate was connected to during the 3-way calling attempt."[16] The Bureau of Prisons originated the Inmate Telephone System in 1990, implemented part of it through 1993 and watched as it fell apart in 1995. ITS lingers on at many institutions, but only until the entire system is scrapped after a new contract is awarded. That may take another year to let. Maybe two. The cornerstone of the system, direct dialing to pre-approved numbers has been heavily modified. The funding method, whereby the B.O.P. raided an inmate welfare fund to install the system, without having to officially publish their rules or intent, has been crushed, with Federal officials having returned $4,000,000 in mis-appropriated funds. What a mess. Take a look at the time line that follows: 4. Federal Bureau of Prison (B.OP.) Time Line Pre-1973 -- Each institution's warden sets phone policy 1973 -- B.O.P. sets uniform national phone policy 6/29/1979 -- B.O.P. issues final Rule (44FR 38249) for policy 6/1/1983 -- B.O.P. amends 1979 rule (44FR 24622) 1990 -- B.O.P. conceives Inmate Telephone System 1991 -- GTE & OPUS begins installing ITS at certain prisons. 4/1992 -- B.O.P. starts charging AT&T rates plus 75 cents a call. 7/1993 -- An anonymous LD carrier sponsors class action suit against B.O.P. 8/1993 -- B.O.P. stops installing ITS after 41 facilities due to court injunction. 4/1994 -- B.O.P. admits official policy not often practiced. 4/1994 -- AT&T submits unsolicited bid to develop new system. 4/1994 -- Final rule published in the Congressional Record. 5/1995 -- Mediation begins, seeking to resolve problems. 8/2/95 -- Settlement reached. 5. Discussion continues ITS was supposedly implemented to provide better security and to enable prisoners to better account for their money. The security angle seems spurious in light of existing call processors that offer excellent results. Money management seems odd as well. Direct dialing meant that prisoners needed to pay for calls out of their prison accounts. Yet B.O.P. officials would often take money sent by relatives and friends to cover phone expenses, in order to recover other debts owed by the prisoner. Endless arguments and excitement followed. Prisoners thought long distance costs were too high. Long distance companies felt shut out and the courts were also unhappy. Without going further into the history and machinations of all of this, [17] let's look at how ITS works in practice. Before we get an account from a _private line_ reader in jail, though, let's look at what a typical account report looks like, just so we get familiar with the terms. A register number, by the way, is like a prisoner's serial number . . .: 6. ITS Account Report Inmate Telephone Account Report FCI LFREEH Page 1of 1 Report Date Jan. 12, 1996 12:12 /dev/ttyi1f Register Inmate Phone Access Date Number Name Code Entered 03496823 Louis Freeh 478274228 25-FEB-96 Inmate Dialing Instructions Inmate Telephone System (ITS) To place: -- A Local Call: 1. Listen for the dial tone. 2. Enter the seven digit telephone number. 4. Enter your Phone Access Code (PAC). Example: 555-1234-478274228 -- A Long Distance Call: 1. Listen for the dial tone. 2. Enter 1, area code and telephone number. 4. Enter your Phone Access Code (PAC). Example: 1-202-555-1234-478274228 -- An International Call: 1. Listen for the dial tone. 2. Enter 011, country code and telephone number. 4. Enter your Phone Access Code (PAC). Example: 011-24-335937-478274228 To obtain your ITS account balance and the cost of your last call: I. Listen for the dial tone. 2. Enter 118, then enter your Phone Access Code (PAC). Example 118-478274228 ------------------------------------------------- 7. A report on ITS from Jail A hacker at Lompoc writes _private line_ to say: "ITS is pretty crappy. All my phone numbers have to be submitted to my counselor prior to calling (up to 30 numbers). In a few days the numbers are verified and put on my phone list. Each inmate is assigned a 10 digit pin when they first arrive. The phones are like those information phones at airports. They're all in a row, about 25 of them with the small partition dividing each phone. I don't know if it's important but the handsets all smell like shit. When the handset is lifted you are greeted by a standard dialtone. After you dial the number you get a second dialtone. Then you enter the PIN and wait for validation. The whole system is pretty Mickey Mouse and the cross talk is almost unbearable. Throughout your conversation you can hear DTMF tones from the neighboring phones. Each call is limited to 15 minutes but you can call back immediately if no one is waiting. When you get down to your final minute they drop carrier for a split second to warn you have 15 seconds left. If a foreign dialtone or ring is detected you are dropped immediately. This is to prevent people from three-waying phone calls. It's easily corrected if the receiving party places a call, waits for an answer and then bridges the call. All calls are monitored, most likely recorded, in case you conspire to commit another crime over the phone. The Feds are always looking for a new indictment. Everything is handled by a machine they have on the compound. It's some UNIX box that treats each phone as /dev/???. [18] The only numbers you can dial are those on your approved phone list. Thereby eliminating the problem of people stealing kodez!, or dialing any unauthorized numbers. ("O", 911, 800's, 700's, etc.) Basically, it's run by a script ... a person can pretty much write the whole ITS in modem commands. The system's primary concern is security with inmate's phone calls as a secondary function. The rates are similar to calling card rates, a call to L.A. costs me $3.75 for 15 minutes. Interestingly it costs the same to Sacramento ..." 8. Real short conclusion ITS seems like some bureaucrats 'better idea' gone seriously astray. B.O.P's Request will be interesting to watch for in the next year or so. They'll need to specify what kind of system they want so that companies can bid on it. Lots of technical details should be included. My guess is that they will go with more conventional equipment and techniques -- I'm unsure if they can build on ITS technology, no matter how well it works, since GTE and OPUS's approach is proprietary. Hmm. Got any more information or personal experience with prison phones? Send it in and I'll print it here. 9. --Bibliography-- [1] "Long Distance Runaround" _New York Newsday_ Michael Moss, May 14, 1995 [2] 'Dialing For Dollars: Taxpayers Could Win Big With Prison Pay Phones' _John Sharp Opinions and Editorials_ Undated :( John Sharp, State Comptroller of Public Accounts http://www.cpa.texas.gov/comptrol/oped/oped18.html (5k) [3] "Calling Card Platforms -- The Intelligence Behind The Cards" Ed Metcalf _Premier Telecard_ December 1995-January 1996 28 (+1(805) 547-8500 for Premier) [4] Pacific Bell. For questions, try +1(415) 452-7455 [5] National Applied Computer Technology, 744 South 400 East, Orem, Utah 84058 (801) 225-6248 FAX (801) 224-8456 [6] TELEQUIP Labs Inc., 1820 N. Greenville Ave., Suite 100 RIchardson, TX 75801 1(800) 329-3290; Communications Product Development Incorporated 915 Broadway, Suite 100 Vancouver, WA 98660 (360) 694-2977 FAX (360) 694-2553 [7] TELEQUIP advertisement _Public Communications_ Volume 11, No. 4 April, 1995 49. This ad extols the virtues of their patented switch. This means you could do a patent search and read all about it. Consult _private line_ No. 4 (Volume 2, No. 1 January/February 1995) for my lengthy article on patent searching. [8] "Calling Card Platforms -- The Intelligence Behind The Cards" ibid. [9] "LCX 120C A Success In Camden County Correctional Facility," _CCQ-Correctional Communications Quarterly_ April, 1994. I have a reprint of this article, as supplied by N.A.C.T., however, I have no further information on _CCQ._ [10] "Letter from Prison" _2600_ Winter 1992-93 (Volume Nine Number Four )13 [11] CCQ ibid. [12] Letter to the Editor by C. Rebel _2600_ Autumn 1990 (Volume 7, Number 3) 29 [13] "Federal Prison Telephone Plan Stuck on Hold" _Legal Times_ Naftali Bendavid May, 22 1995 Well researched and balanced article on ITS issues. +1(457-0686) 1730 'M' Street N.W., Suite 802 Washington, D.C. 20036 [14] Each time I've accepted a collect call from ITS the automated voice announces "AT&T". [15] "Plaintiffs, Feds Connect in Settlement; Inmates Laud Deal Over Prison Phones" _Legal Times_ Naftali Bendavid August 14, 1995 Follow on to the article in 13 above. [16] name withheld -- Personal correspondence [17] B.O.P.'s point of view is contained in the Federal Code of Regulations: 28 CFR 540 -- Telephone Regulations and Financial Responsibility. Or look it up in the April 4, 1994 Federal Register. It's the Big Kahuna of ITS documents, as far as rules, regs and explanations go. Not much technical info, however, you may want to look it up under this candidate for the longest URL: http://www.gpo.ucop.edu:80/cgi- bin/gpogate?waisdoc=1&4=gpo.occ.uky.edu;1994_register/TEXT/100 384/3=0%201003840%20/diska/wais/data/1994_register/fr0ap94 dat022.txt; [18] Peter Shipley offers this explanation of /dev/???: A /dev/ is a path to a device kind of like COM1, COM2 and LPT1 under DOS. Think of COM1 as \dev\COM1 on your DOS box and if you do a dir or c:\dev you will see a listing of cards and services you have on your system, eg: (I made this list up) c:> dir \dos COM1 0 09-09-96 5:47p COM2 0 09-09-96 5:47p LPT1 0 09-09-96 5:47p SOUND BST 0 09-09-96 5:48p MOUSE MS 0 09-09-96 5:48p SVGA 0 09-09-96 5:48p KBD 0 09-09-96 5:48p SCSIDISK 1 0 09-09-96 5:48p SCSIDISK 2 0 09-09-96 5:48p SCSITAPE 1 0 09-09-96 5:48p SCSIROM 1 0 09-09-96 5:48p FLOPPY 1 0 09-09-96 5:48p FLOPPY 2 0 09-09-96 5:48p --------------------------------------------- [TELECOM Digest Editor's 1996 Note: Tom, thank you *very much* for sharing this. This article will become a permanent file in the Telecom Archives. Watch for it there soon. PAT] [TELECOM Digest Editor's 12/2003 Note: It is my understanding now that arrested person's right to a phone call to family or lawyer at time of arrest is interpreted to mean that the prisoner gets to use a prison COCOT to make their call once the bureacracy approves the number and gets the number in 'the system'. Not before. Of course, in the case of the boat people in Atlanta or the 'terrorists' in the Guantanamo prison it hasn't gotten that far yet. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 22:18:48 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC OKs News Corp. Purchase of DirecTV By JONATHAN D. SALANT Associated Press Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- Federal regulators on Friday approved News Corp.'s takeover of DirecTV, the nation's largest satellite television provider, but imposed certain conditions on the $6.6 billion deal. The Federal Communications Commission said News Corp. must agree to arbitration to solve disputes with companies that carry its broadcast and cable channels, such as cable companies and other satellite providers. And News Corp. must treat all stations equally, not tilt in favor of its Fox broadcasting network and cable stations such as FX. The arbitration was to alleviate concerns that Fox would pull its network programming, which includes pro baseball and football, off cable systems to encourage viewers to subscribe to DirecTV. News Corp. agreed not to pull either the network programming or its regional sports networks while a dispute was being arbitrated. The Justice Department said it would not oppose the deal. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40052809 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 22:20:05 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FCC conditions on DirecTV deal may limit Murdoch By Kenneth Li NEW YORK, Dec 19 (Reuters) - Media baron Rupert Murdoch may have gotten the green light to beam entertainment, news and music to every major market on Earth, but the victory may be muted by the conditions of the regulatory approval he won on Friday. Even before the ink dries on the U.S. Federal Communications Commission official order approving the transaction, Wall Street began ripping through the details, questioning the true value of News Corp.'s (AUS:NCP) (NYSE:NWS) deal to purchase a controlling interest in Hughes Electronics Corp.'s (NYSE:GMH) DirecTV. Minutes after the acquisition gained approval from the FCC, the Department of Justice announced it would not oppose the deal. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40052543 ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 22:30:51 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: RIAA v. Verizon Decision RIAA v. Verizon http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/verizon/riaavrzn121903opn.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 22:39:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: RealNetworks v. Microsoft RealNetworks v. Microsoft http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/microsoft/realms121803cmp.pdf ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 23:02:37 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast Beefs up Broadband Services in Face of Competition By Peter J. Howe, Globe Staff, 12/19/2003 CHELMSFORD -- Facing strong price competition from telephone companies, Comcast Corp. moved yesterday to bolster its broadband Internet access services, doubling existing customers' connections to 3 megabits per second for no extra charge. For Comcast customers the upgrade means even quicker access to digital entertainment such as movie trailers and video clips. With the higher maximum download speeds, a 15-song compact disc will download in about three minutes instead of six. Comcast also launched a premium $58-a-month home broadband service that allows up to five computers in a home to share a 4-megabit broadband connection. The service uses a single cable modem box that offers both wireless and Ethernet cable connections for computers in the home and provides a security "firewall" and a router to network together the home computers. http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2003/12/19/comcast_beefs_up_broadband_services_in_face_of_competition/ ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 11:50:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Fastest Wi-Fi You Can Actually Buy By Jay Wrolstad Wireless NewsFactor "In the enterprise, with a Wi-Fi network in a closed environment and a gigabit backbone, you can probably reach 100 Mbps with that new technology," says Ira Brodsky, president of Datacomm Research. "But are there applications that require that type of connection?" How fast is fast enough? That is the question buyers of Wi-Fi wireless local area network equipment are asking themselves in the wake of new standards and claims by vendors that they can deliver data at eye-popping rates. But the real question may be, is there a demonstrated need for speed above and beyond that currently offered by basic Wi-Fi standards? Most data transmission rates for Wi-Fi equipment reflect results achieved in a lab under ideal conditions. In reality, the systems for small business and home networks rarely approach those rates -- for a variety of reasons. http://www.wirelessnewsfactor.com/perl/story/22901.html ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 12:44:42 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Going Wireless with AirPort Extreme Whether you're setting up a network in a brand-new office or extending your current network, AirPort Extreme, Apple's standards-based wireless technology, is significantly less expensive than running cable to every system, and offers much more flexibility and freedom than wired connections. With AirPort Extreme, you can have a high-speed wireless network up and running in no time. And you don't have to be a technology guru to set up and manage it. http://www.apple.com/business/profiles/airport/ ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 19 Dec 2003 23:48:35 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? On Friday, December 19, 2003, 6:47:20 PM, dold wrote: > flight_ops@pilots_union.org wrote: >> dold@SatelliteX.usenet.us.com wrote: >>> It's unfortunate that there is no local programming. >> There is, at least in most cars. You switch from XM to FM or AM. > At my house, I don't get any AM or FM radio. Then the lack of local programming by Sirius and/or XM really isn't an issue in your case, right? Or am I missing something. Joey Lindstrom [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think you are missing something. He did not say he cannot receive Sirius and or XM, just that he does not receive AM/FM. PAT] ------------------------------ From: mighty_nation@yahoo.com (Mighty Land) Subject: South Korea's Professional Gamers Date: 20 Dec 2003 01:19:43 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3321537.stm By Charles Scanlon BBC correspondent in Seoul South Korea likes to describe itself as the world's most wired country - 70% of households have high-speed internet connections. That level of access has fuelled a craze for cyber games that appears to consume an entire generation. Gaming over the internet has proved so popular that professional teams backed by corporate sponsors now play in the world's first pro league. Ten members of a professional gaming team sponsored by the mobile phone company KTF train all day long in a cramped three room apartment. In their late teens and early 20s, they are all at their computer screens blazing away at aliens - their fingers a blur on the keyboard. Some of them make more than $100,000 a year. But there is a price to pay. They live packed together in their company barracks, and are expected to spend 12 hours or more each day at a bank of computer terminals. "At first I couldn't believe my luck -- I was getting paid for something I really liked doing," said Lee Ji-hun, one of the veterans at 24 years old. "But then I started to feel the pressure. It's really tough when your ratings go down. You've got to be on peak form all the time -- it's not as easy as people think," he said. Lee Ji-hun specialises in Fifa -- World Cup football with remarkably realistic graphics. His favourite team is England and he is on a winning streak with three consecutive wins. But today there is added pressure because his opponent is an amateur and that means he cannot afford to lose. The competition is played at a downtown game centre with a live audience, big screens and two commentators. It is televised by a cable TV network. It is the second half before Lee Ji-hun gets his first goal, but that is enough to break the tension. Another three goals ensure an emphatic win for the professional player. "I'm really relieved -- my reputation was at stake today. If you lose to a pro you can say it was a bad day. But it looks bad to lose to an amateur and they're getting better all the time," he said. Lucrative industry KTF manager, Chang Ki-uk, said sponsoring a professional team made good sense for his company. Fifteen million people, or 30% of the population, are registered for online gaming, and that means a big marketing opportunity. "Online gaming started out as a hobby, of course, but it's amazing how it's taken off as a professional sport. There are three cable channels that broadcast games and 10 professional leagues. "Electronic sport like this has become a way of marketing and promoting our company, particularly with young people," Mr Chang said. South Korea proudly plays host to the annual World Cyber Games and the country is becoming a Mecca for online gamers around the world. For the thousands who seem to spend every waking hour in an internet cafe, there is a dream that someday they too could do this for a living. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Chris Jones Subject: Re: Norvergence Really Sucks Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 12:38:33 -0500 Joey Lindstrom writes: > There's no "dissention" here. All I've said is that if these dorks > lean on MIT and force you to do this (and you've just said you'd > comply), then *I* will make sure that the "offending" material > receives more-widespread dissemination than it has already received. > Who's with me? :-) Well, I think I am, though I don't see what help you need at the moment. I believe MIT understands the value of information and will not do anything to diminish the value of the Telecom Digest archives. They have a long history of being on the side of enabling, not restricting, access to information. That said, it's great that there's no danger that this information will become inaccessible even if they do decide to stop hosting it. I certainly haven't seen anything in the stuff I've read that would justify the claims of Norvergence or their agents that this information is illegal; it's just public information or personal experiences. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #801 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Dec 21 16:39:57 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBLLduM24388; Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:39:57 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:39:57 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312212139.hBLLduM24388@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 V22 #802 TELECOM Digest Sun, 21 Dec 2003 16:40:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 802 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Dumpster-Diving for Your Identity (Monty Solomon) Court Leaves the Door Open For Safety System Wiretaps (Monty Solomon) Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs (Monty Solomon) 'Because It's There': Commandeering a G.P.S. Navigator (Monty Solomon) Bulk E-Mail Charges May be Next Blow vs. Spam (Monty Solomon) Record Industry May Not Subpoena Online Providers (Monty Solomon) Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? (Joel Levin) Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? (Clarence Dold) Measuring Time Off-Hook? (Steven Christensen) Configuration Software Needed for Intraserver ITI5232E (F. Tarczynski) Busy Signal Madness! (bmooo) Re: Off Hook (110 Volt) Lamp (Touch Tone Tommy) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (Paul H!) Re: Norvergence Really Sucks (BN) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 13:32:55 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Dumpster-Diving for Your Identity By STEPHEN MIHM Stephen Massey was only a few minutes late, yet he apologized profusely as he strode into the lobby of a crowded restaurant in downtown Eugene, Ore. "I'm very punctual about my time," he said, clasping my hand in a firm shake. With his freshly combed hair, crisp white shirt and trimmed mustache, he looked like an off-duty cop or fireman -- a 'pillar of the community,' as he later described himself, a wolfish smile playing across his lips. Far from it: Massey, 39, directed one of the most extensive and notorious identity-theft rings prosecuted so far by federal authorities. By the time investigators broke the case, Massey and his partner in crime, a computer whiz named Kari Melton, had ruined hundreds of people's credit. A judge sentenced them to prison in 2000; Melton was released in 2001, Massey the next year. The Federal Trade Commission estimates that identity theft costs nearly $53 billion annually. Some seven million people were victimized in 2002. Yet little is known about how the perpetrators actually operate. It's a popular perception that most identity theft happens on the Internet, but over the course of dinner, Massey quickly made clear that low-tech methods of getting people's personal information are far more effective. "Every day was exciting," he recalled between mouthfuls of potato skins. "We went to Vegas, Atlantic City. We made a business of it. It was like James Bond ... 'Mission: Impossible.'" In late October, Massey disappeared, violating the terms of his supervised release and prompting a national warrant for his arrest. It had become clear to me in five months of interviews that not everything he said was to be trusted, although much of it was verified by the detectives and prosecutors who had already investigated his crimes and by Kari Melton. As for Massey's current whereabouts, Steve Williams, a detective in the Eugene Police Department, who worked on the first case against Massey and is once again on his trail, said: "My gut feeling is that he is in the Seattle area" -- where he has family -- "back to his old tricks, doing drugs, identity theft and counterfeit checks." If Massey has indeed resumed operations, it's a sure thing that he's not working alone. His identity-theft crimes depended on the work of a carefully built ring, one that employed hordes of petty thieves and drug addicts. If he sticks to his old techniques, his crimes will originate in dumpsters and garbage cans, where information can be culled from discarded personnel files and other trash. It's not the most glamorous crime, but that doesn't make it any less devastating to its victims. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/magazine/21IDENTITY.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 15:08:09 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Court Leaves the Door Open For Safety System Wiretaps By ADAM LIPTAK PEOPLE with sophisticated safety and communications systems in their cars may be getting an unwanted feature. An appeals court decision last month revealed that the government may be able to convert some of the systems into roaming in-car wiretaps. The decision, by a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, arose from a criminal investigation in Nevada. An unidentified company challenged a series of court orders requiring it to create a roving bug for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The appeals court overturned the orders, but its reasoning suggested that the issue will recur. The technology involved, used by OnStar, ATX and others, combines a global positioning satellite transmitter with a cellular telephone. Drivers can use the services to seek information and emergency help. Most of the court file in the Nevada case is sealed, and the appellate decision did not discuss the nature of the investigation or specify the brand of the system in question. But the court's description of the system's features is consistent with one offered by ATX, which provides telematics services for cars from BMW, Ford, Jaguar and Mercedes-Benz, among others. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/automobiles/21SNOOP.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 15:13:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Lost? Hiding? Your Cellphone Is Keeping Tabs By AMY HARMON On the train returning to Armonk, N.Y., from a recent shopping trip in Manhattan with her friends, Britney Lutz, 15, had the odd sensation that her father was watching her. He very well could have been. Ms. Lutz's father, Kerry, recently equipped his daughters with cellular phones that let him see where they are on a computer map at any given moment. Earlier that day, he had tracked Britney as she arrived in Grand Central Terminal. Later, calling up the map on his own cellphone screen, he noticed she was in SoHo. Mr. Lutz did not happen to be checking when Britney developed pangs of guilt for taking a train home later than she was supposed to, but the system worked just as he had hoped: she volunteered the information that evening. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/21/technology/21WATC.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 15:20:18 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: 'Because It's There': Commandeering a G.P.S. Navigator By SANDEEP JUNNARKAR RAY AND ELNA KAWAL hit the open road this fall on an 8,000-mile trip in their 2002 Chevy Tahoe with General Motors' OnStar navigation system serving as their North Star. From their home in Sequim, Wash., across to Denver and Chicago, down to Mexico and then homeward through Arizona and California, the Kawals followed directions to tourist destinations, hotels and their friends' homes using OnStar's Global Positioning System navigation - just the kind of business G.M. covets for its subscription service. But in this case, the automaker didn't make a penny from the six-week excursion. That's because Mr. Kawal, a 57-year-old retired engineer, had pried the OnStar unit from behind the glove compartment and customized it to work with his laptop and commercially available mapping software. His wife read him directions right off the laptop that sat between them. The modified unit was no longer connected to the OnStar network, over which representatives could have provided the same service for a fee. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/technology/circuits/18star.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 00:21:46 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Bulk E-Mail Charges May be Next Blow vs. Spam BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE By Robert Weisman, 12/21/2003 Is it time to start charging the senders of bulk e-mail? Some analysts from Forrester Research in Cambridge think that may be the only way to unclog inboxes and lift the curse of spam. Paying for electronic mail surely cuts against the grain for anyone who remembers the initial thrill of zapping a short message across the country instantly, and free of charge, in the mid-1990s. The novelty of e-mail is long gone. While transmission remains instantaneous, in-box maintenance -- the pruning and weeding of unwanted pitches -- has become a time devourer. E-mail still has the virtue of being free, beyond the cost of signing on with an Internet service provider. But many now recognize that virtue as a mixed blessing; it also provides the incentive for hard-core spammers. http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/355/business/Bulk_e_mail_charges_may_be_next_blow_vs_spam+.shtml ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:00:29 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Record Industry May Not Subpoena Online Providers By JOHN SCHWARTZ The recording industry cannot compel an Internet service provider to give up the names of customers who trade music online without judicial review, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled today. The sharply worded ruling, which dismissed one industry argument by saying that it "borders on the silly," is a blow to the music companies in the online music wars. It overturns a decision in federal district court that favored the industry and ordered Verizon Communications to disclose the identity of a subscriber based on simple subpoenas submitted to a court clerk. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/19/technology/19CND-MUSI.html ------------------------------ From: jbl Subject: Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 12:22:53 -0700 Organization: On the desert Reply-To: jbl@spamblocked.com In , TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to Joey Lindstrom who wrote: > Then the lack of local programming by Sirius and/or XM really isn't an > issue in your case, right? Or am I missing something. > Joey Lindstrom > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think you are missing something. He > did not say he cannot receive Sirius and or XM, just that he does not > receive AM/FM. PAT] Actually, I think the original poster is referring to availability of local stations over the satellite service, much as local stations are now available in many areas on direct broadcast satellite television (as for instance on DirecTV). I am sure that is quite unlikely, especially in the near term. /JBL ------------------------------ From: dold@SatelliteX.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 20:37:32 +0000 (UTC) Organization: a2i network Joey Lindstrom wrote: >> At my house, I don't get any AM or FM radio. > Then the lack of local programming by Sirius and/or XM really isn't an > issue in your case, right? Or am I missing something. No. I don't get over-the-air TV either, but DirecTV provides local TV stations for me via a satellite feed. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: chrissv@yahoo.com (Steven Christensen) Subject: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? Date: 20 Dec 2003 20:22:47 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi all, I am considering dropping my land-line service and moving to an all-cell approach. But I have no clue how much time my wife and I spend on the (local) phone. Is there a device I could hook up to simply measure the amount of time the phone is off-hook? I am an EE, so I could put something together, but I worry about affecting the quality of the phone line (in a bad way). Thanks!! Steven [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There are off-the-shelf phones with timers/clocks built into them to consider also, quite inexpensive to purchase from various electronic stores. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Frank Tarczynski Subject: Does Anyone Have Configuration Software for Intraserver ITI5232E? Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 05:57:45 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net I have an Intraserver ITI5232E NIC that I need to configure to run under Solaris X86. It doesn't want to respond to settings from the driver. Does any one have some DOS or Win95/95/NT/2000/XP based software that will help configure this card? Frank ------------------------------ From: bmooj125@hotmail.com (bmooo) Subject: Busy Signal Madness! Date: 21 Dec 2003 05:46:05 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Our land-line gives a caller 1-1/2 rings and then a fast busy signal. We hear the rings, but no one is there when we pick up. Suspecting a particular telephone malfunction, we tried plugging in only 1 of our 3 phones/computer modem in turn, but that has not helped. For starters does this sound like an inside or outside problem? We do not have Inside Wire Maintenance on our phone plan. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you have an 'official' demarc or place outside or on a wall where telco's responsibility begins and ends, try taking ONE of the phones to that location. At the demarc, split the connection from telco to your premises and plug your ONE phone in that location. Use a cell phone to dial into your number and see if the problem persists or if it is cured. If the trouble is still present, then the problem is telco's. If not, then the trouble is your responsibility. If you find the problem still persists when you plug in your ONE phone at the demarc, then call telco, but be certain to mention you tried it *at the demarc* so you don't get any static from the techs about the need for Wire Maintainence Plans, etc. Then let us know what happens at that point. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Touch Tone Tommy Subject: Re: Off Hook (110 Volt) Lamp Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2003 16:28:07 -0800 Organization: Acme Telephone Works Reply-To: touch_tone_tommyNOSPAM@yahoo.com On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 21:54:27 -0500, Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > On Mon, 15 Dec 2003 05:39:27 PST Fred Atkinson > wrote about Off Hook (110 Volt) Lamp: >> What I am looking for is something that would turn on a 110 Volt lamp >> while the phone is off the hook. This would clue Dad in to the fact >> that he left the phone off the hook again. A little LED isn't going >> to get his attention. > It sounds like a custom assembly, and you might want to get in touch > with a local chapter of the telephone pioneers -- retired phone people > who do special assemblies for the handicapped. I can suggest one way > to do it: when the line has been off-hook for a while it "goes > dead". IF, and this is a big IF, the phone company actually removes > the normal 48vDC from the line, this could be used to trip a > relay. Take a Normally Open relay, and rely on the 48vDC to hold it > open. When the 48vDC goes away, then it will close, and this can turn > on a lamp. Except that the 48V drops to 6 to 12V when the phone is actually in use. It would work, but not as you describe. The relay would kick whenever the phone was in use, talking or ignored off hook. > If all the phone company removes is the "buzz" from the line, then it is > more complex -- you're dealing with detecting the AC on the line. Sandman had or still has something in his catalog that connects in series with the telephone. When the phone is left off-hook, and the "howler" comes on line, this box recgonizes it, disconnects the phone that is downstream, and has its own internal loud ringer to signal the next incoming call. When the handset is returned to the hook, it reconnects automatically. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The catalog is http://sandman.com. He has stuff like that; some of the things are ready to use, some require an additional relay. PAT] ------------------------------ From: paul-kim@thegrid.net (Paul H!) Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Date: 20 Dec 2003 22:03:04 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Mark J Cuccia wrote in message news:: > Yes, it should have ALWAYS been permitted in non-overlay areas. I > have NEVER liked the idea of being prohibited from dialing ten-digits > for same/home NPA (local) calls. Back in 1981 when the phone circuitry was a lot different from what it is now, I discovered that I could successfully dial 1-805-NXX-XXXX from my home phone number to another location in town using a touch-tone phone. It didn't always work the first time, but almost always did the second time. It was fun to hear the call clicking through the line;, then when the other party in town answered, they sounded as though they were several hundred miles away instead of just across town. There must have been a major circuit upgrade in 1982, at which point I found that the above trick was no longer possible. Ah, those were the days. === Paul H! ------------------------------ Reply-To: BN From: BN Subject: Re: Norvergence Really Sucks Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 07:40:07 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico Could someone post a link to these articles? Please. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Look at issues 798 and 796 of this Digest for Thursday/Friday of last week in our archives at http://telecom-digest.org PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #802 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun Dec 21 23:20:56 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBM4Ktt26559; Sun, 21 Dec 2003 23:20:56 -0500 (EST) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 23:20:56 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312220420.hBM4Ktt26559@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 V22 #803 TELECOM Digest Sun, 21 Dec 2003 23:21:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 803 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Satellite Radio Extends Its Orbit (Monty Solomon) Sidestep Unwanted Cell Calls With the Sound of Silence (Monty Solomon) Sony Has Players Working Up a Sweat Over Its EyeToy Games (Monty Solomon) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (COTTP) Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? (Clarence Dold) The Coldest Christmas Ever in Chicago - 20 Years Ago (TELECOM Editor) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:29:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Satellite Radio Extends Its Orbit STATE OF THE ART Satellite Radio Extends Its Orbit By DAVID POGUE RADIO is awesome, isn't it? It's free, it's on whenever you want it, and you can choose from among eight or 10 stations. About the only people who could possibly complain about it, in fact, are people who have to listen to it. They'll tell you that the music you hear on the radio is mostly the same cloying pop junk, played over and over. That 20 minutes of every hour is ads, played over and over. And that as you drive, the signal comes and goes with the territory. Two years ago, two companies -- XM and Sirius -- came up with the same solution: pay radio. Each went to the trouble of blasting private satellites into orbit. Each beams 100 channels of clean, static-proof digital sound down to XM and Sirius receivers in the cars and home stereos of monthly subscribers. So why would people pay for radio, when they have a free alternative? Because satellite radio is fantastic -- a cultural source unlike any other. It's so addictive, the Sirius manual actually refers to its customers as "users." http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/technology/circuits/18stat.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:54:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Sidestep Unwanted Cell Calls With the Sound of Silence By LISA NAPOLI At the Web site of the ring tone company Modtones ( www.modtones.com ), you can dress your cellphone up for the holidays by downloading "Silent Night." Or if you prefer, you can simply download silence. Customers started asking for a silent ring tone a while back, said Jeremy Xavier, the marketing manager of Modtones, although at first he did not understand this oxymoronic request. When he did, he set his developers to work. Like other Modtones ring tones, the silent one costs $1.99 to download (although the company offers package discounts). The user simply assigns the silent tone to any numbers in the cellphone's address book. It seems to callers at those numbers that the cellphone is ringing, but the call is sent to voice mail. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/technology/circuits/18ring.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 21:57:24 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Sony Has Players Working Up a Sweat Over Its EyeToy Games By K EVIN J. D ELANEY Americans are battling an obesity crisis, and some are pointing a finger at videogames as at least a small part of the problem. The average gamer in action doesn't look a lot different from a glassy-eyed couch potato. I've been testing a new videogame accessory from Sony that requires you to get out of your chair. It isn't a solution for the nation's weight problem, but it makes you sweat. Even though you look goofy playing it, you interact with games in a natural, fun and social way. And it shows how gamers might be liberated from the traditional hand-held game controller. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20031218.html ------------------------------ From: COTTP Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Organization: Children of the Tea Party Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 17:50:04 -0500 In article , paul-kim@thegrid.net says: > Mark J Cuccia wrote in message > news:: >> Yes, it should have ALWAYS been permitted in non-overlay areas. I >> have NEVER liked the idea of being prohibited from dialing ten-digits >> for same/home NPA (local) calls. > Back in 1981 when the phone circuitry was a lot different from what it > is now, I discovered that I could successfully dial 1-805-NXX-XXXX > from my home phone number to another location in town using a > touch-tone phone. It didn't always work the first time, but almost > always did the second time. It was fun to hear the call clicking > through the line; then when the other party in town answered, they > sounded as though they were several hundred miles away instead of just > across town. There must have been a major circuit upgrade in 1982, at > which point I found that the above trick was no longer possible. Ah, > those were the days. While the actual paths calls take has changed, much of the actual circuitry is the essentially the same. There are still copper trunks though fiber is rapidly replacing them. There is still the last mile to the home that's copper. The switching matrix has definitely changed though. Wherease in days of old you had a direct physical connection to the called party because that's the way the old SxS and Xbar exchanges worked. The difference between SxS and Xbar was that the Xbar had common control and a very rudimentary stored program and data. ESS changed all that -- the #1ESS used a computer to drive ferromagnetic relays so the physical path was still there for most intra-exchange, but much of the inter-exchange traffic was carried via T1 carrier. The #4ESS was the first all digital switch but was built as a toll tandem, not an end office. That evolved into the #5ESS which converts all audio into digital form and places it in a 'stream' of sorts then routes it to the correct port. So the real, physical connection where we heard all the clicks and pops are gone because it's handled digitally and more importantly, silently. Control is no longer in-band but out of band and reduces what was a large fraud problem in the Bell System back then. The reason digital switching evolved wasn't to provide more services per se. There were economic reasons, the first of which was the realization that they could charge for all the advanced services offered, second of which is that fraud could be cut to nearly zero - a definite profit enhancer. ------------------------------ From: dold@SatelliteX.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 00:05:17 +0000 (UTC) Organization: a2i network jbl wrote: > Actually, I think the original poster is referring to availability of > local stations over the satellite service, much as local stations are > now available in many areas on direct broadcast satellite television > (as for instance on DirecTV). I am sure that is quite unlikely, > especially in the near term. Before the proliferation of local-to-local, DirecTV still had some local stations ... they just weren't "my" locals. I got used to watching the evening news from North Carolina. Even the local football scores. When they went to East/West Coast "distant networks", I picked up a station that I did consider local, KPIX-5 from SF, out of 6 or 8 locals that were available in total. If XM offered a sprinkling of the news stations from bigger cities, they would go a long way toward local news. I find the music channels on DirecTV to be oddly antiseptic and uninteresting. I would rather hear _some_ of the DJ chatter of a normal radio station ... I could do without some of the morning DJs, but still ... something human. Even "radio Walmart" and "radio Safeway" sound like real radio stations. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 22:16:56 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: The Coldest Christmas Ever in Chicago Now and again, I also review my own personal archives for interesting items, and this year being the twentieth anniversary of the great deep freeze in Chicago at Christmas, I thought the following account of 'How I Spent Christmas in 1983' from my archives in 1995 might be of interest to some folks. I am writing this issue of the Digest on an unseasonably warm night in mid-December when the temperature here in southeast Kansas reached *sixty degrees* for most of the day, just a week after our first winter storm of this year when we had strong winds, six inches of snow, and temperatures in the lower teens. Then two days later the snow was totally melted and mild weather was back, and continues to this day. This is how I remembered Christmas, 1983 in 1995, twelve years later. PAT Path: ptownson From: Patrick Townson Newsgroups: misc.misc,chi.general Subject: Christmas, 1983: The Christmas That Won't Go Away Message-ID: <1995.12.25.22wsdr4@massis.lcs.mit.edu> Date: Mon, 25 Dec 1995 00:15:00 EST Sender: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Reply-To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Organization: Patrick Townson, PO Box 4621, Skokie, IL 60076 Lines: 188 Christmases come, and Christmases go ... they all have something nice about them, and often as not something a little sad as well. One though that remains fixed in my mind as clearly as though it were but a year ago was the one in 1983 ... That was the year of the great deep freeze across northern Illinois; the year the temperature stayed below zero for 75 hours, and at one point dipped to minus 29 ... *29 degrees below zero*. All the week before Christmas was cold, with the temperature gradually getting colder day by day, and then on December 23, the overnight low dropped to minus 29 over most of Chicago, minus 25 in other areas of the city, and rumor has it minus 31 here in Skokie. All that day in fact, the National Weather Bureau kept reporting records being broken. During the day of December 22, the temperature dropped below zero about noon, and we were told it was the coldest December 22 ever, having broken the previous record set nearly a hundred years earlier the the late 1880's. But the worst was to come that night, when at four in the morning the weather service told us we made it ... the all time low for the Chicago area; the coldest it had ever been since the bureau began keeping records in the 1870's. By midday December 23, things had 'warmed up' to merely eight below zero, which was the *high* temperature for the day. That night saw minus twenty, and Christmas Eve saw a *high* temperature of only minus ten. A long standing tradition in Chicago -- one that has gone on for nearly a century -- is the gathering by whomever wishes to do so in the Daley Center Plaza on Christmas Eve for the public singing of Christmas carols. The event has always been sponsored by the Chicago Temple (a non sectarian religious institution here of a century and a half) which always rents the plaza for the evening. What generally happens is folks gather at the Chicago Temple for an organ recital about 7 pm, which is followed by the singing of carols directly across the street in the plaza, which in turn is followed by warming refreshments in the Temple Building. Throughout the day of December 23, the staff at the Temple Building wondered what to do: call it off if the weather did not break, if there was not some warming during the next 24 hours ... but the decision was "we have done this for nearly a hundred years, we have never missed a year, let's not miss it this time." The compromise between the 'do it' and 'cancel it' factions finally was that if the weather did not warm up at least to zero or above, what they would do is announce that anyone who wished to do so could join in going across the street to the plaza, sing one single stanza of 'Hark the Herald Angels Sing' then run back inside ... and that is finally what they did. Christmas Eve stayed below zero, with a *high* temperature that day of somewhere about ten below zero, but for whatever reason, after the sun went down that night the temperature did not drop again. It did not go up either, but stayed about where it was through the early/mid-morning hours of Christmas Day. The Christmas Eve organ recital and carol singing had in the past typically drawn over a thousand people; the Temple Building Auditorium seats about 1300 in total. That night .... *seven* people in the audience, an auditorium holding nearly two hundred times that many. The Christmas morning service had fifteen people. ============================== Who was it told us "God gives us our relatives; thank God we can pick our friends ...." Well whoever said it, Oscar Wilde I think, was correct! That Christmas morning all our family gathered for breakfast, gift opening and an exchange of good will. We *might* have gone to the Temple service that morning but most of the cars would not start, etc ... Toward afternoon though, miracle of miracles, the temperature rose to about three degrees *above* zero, leading the Weather Bureau to inform us we had gone about 75 hours without getting above zero, since mid-day on the 22nd to the afternoon of the 25th. Some of the folks had to leave for home with a considerable distance to drive and after those cars which would start were used to jump the ones which would not, all the seldom seen relatives were on their way back to wherever they came from ... time now for friends! Five very dear friends and myself had planned for a month to spend Christmas Night together at dinner downtown. We were to meet at Berghoffs at 5 pm, and by about 4:30 I was on my way downtown, as brave as I could be. After all, the difference between three or four degrees above zero and ten or fifteen below zero is just a matter of attitude on the part of the person out in it. Reaching the corner of State and Adams Street in downtown Chicago I see a large truck parked in the street marked 'City of Chicago, Water Distribution'. Next to the truck, a *large* hole in Adams Street, almost directly in front of Berghoff's. Next to the giant hole in the street, two men standing bundled up. They had dragged over a large trash bin from the curb nearby, filled it with lumber scraps and had set it on fire. Seeing them standing there at the fire to maintain some warmth, I was reminded that this is indeed how our ancestors lived more than a thousand years ago. Very frightened of fire when it was out of control as we are still today, yet deeply dependent on fire for our very survival at times as we still are today. Imagine how people a thousand years ago must have felt in bitter weather such as this: totally miserable, gathered near fires they had started just to merely stay alive. In the huge hole in the street -- it appeared about twenty feet deep, perhaps five feet wide and ten feet long -- two men stood at the bottom wearing large hip boots which came up to their waist. Water and mud swirled around them rapidly as they worked down there. With pick and shovel they were trying to get a new section of pipe in place. A gasoline generated pump was sitting at street level with a hose down into the hole noisily siphoning water as fast as it could with the other end of the pipe in a nearby sewer opening. Not really able to help it, I stood there fascinated and watched the two men deep in this icy cold and wet hell linking up the old and new pipes. The two on ground level saw me and the one said happily, "Merry Christmas to you sir! ... you know, we lost over a hundred thousand gallons of water here this morning. I guess it must be the 'heat wave' we are having, caused the pipe to rupture." I asked him the age of the pipe and he said his estimate was about eighty years old, 'according to the engineering records I checked before coming over.' Installed about 1900. The one who had been standing there with him opened his coat just enough to pull out a bottle he had stashed in the lining of his coat ... a pint bottle of Jack Daniels ... he took a healthy drink and handed it to his partner who drank deeply as well ... 'share it with us sir?' said the one as he held it out. I took a small drink of the whiskey they offered, a simple act of communion offered on a sacred day from a common bottle. Sort of sizing me up, the one fellow who was apparently the foreman of the crew said in a joking way, "care to try your hand at it sir?" Looking at the tools in back of the truck he said, "I've got a tool here that would be about the right size for you," as he pointed to a shovel. I asked him "how much do you pay those guys?", meaning the two down below who were about to finish what they were doing and come up to get warm. Seventeen dollars per hour normally was his reply, but this being a holiday the city would pay double time and a half, so that would be about forty-two dollars per hour that day, and the union they belong to requires two men on the job for reasons of safety. If one got in trouble down there or got hurt, the other one would be there to help him out. "We will have this finished in about an hour and will leave up the street barricades overnight. Tomorrow the other crew will come and fill the hole back in and patch up the street." Of course he was only joking about 'trying my hand at it' and of course I would have refused even if he had been paying his crew a hundred dollars per hour. I didn't refuse a second drink from the bottle of Jack Daniels however, but told him if I did not go inside soon and meet my friends they might send a Saint Bernard dog with a flask out looking for me. Anyway, the whiskey was lying to me, as I imagine it was to him and his partner there; telling us all 'how warm you feel now' when in fact the weather conditions that day could be fatal. The two men deep in the hole had at this point climbed up the ladder, gotten out and were sitting in the City of Chicago Water Distribution truck getting warm. As I turned to leave, the foreman spoke up and said, "Oh, could I tell you something before you leave? The guys in Distribution have been working with a couple of the crews in Filtration and some of the secretaries to pay the utility bills which are past due for some poor people living in the city. We still have about six families we want to help before the end of this month if we can. Anyone is free to help us that way." With that he points to a cannister in the back of their truck. I gave him a twenty dollar bill to put in his cannister for which he thanked me. "Here," he said, "I've got a Christmas present for you, too", and he reached in his pocket and pulled out two buttons to be pinned on my coat or wherever I wanted to wear them. The one said 'A resident of the City of Chicago and proud of it'; the other said simply 'Sharing God's Love'. Five minutes later, and for the next two hours, I was sitting in Berghoff's with cocktails and a Christmas Dinner fit for a king with my friends. Throughout the restaurant, people sat at their tables in quiet conversation, most probably totally oblivious to to the workmen outside. When we left, the workmen were also gone. Twelve years ago this day, yet I cannot forget it. PAT -------------------------- I thought the above might be a good way to start Christmas Week this year, twenty years after it happened and eight years after I first wrote it up in my personal digest for use in other newsgroups. PAT ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #803 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 22 14:45:14 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBMJjEB01278; Mon, 22 Dec 2003 14:45:14 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 14:45:14 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312221945.hBMJjEB01278@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 V22 #804 TELECOM Digest Mon, 22 Dec 2003 14:44:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 804 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Telecom Update #413, December 22, 2003 (Angus TeleManagement) Chats Led to Acxiom Hacker Bust (Monty Solomon) Securing AirPort Extreme Networks with WPA (Monty Solomon) Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? (Monty Solomon) Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? (jbl) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (Lisa Hancock) Re: Message Waiting Won't Turn Off (Rich) Re: Then Again, Bulk E-Mail Charges May Not be Next Blow (John R Levine) Re: Dialing and Transmitting a DTFM in a Single Process (flight_ops) Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? (Jim Van Nuland) Hicom All Busy Lines (FabioG) Re: Last Laugh! Beaver Cleaver Makes a Long Distance Call (Lisa Hancock) Archive Material Search (Hal Gold) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 09:59:13 -0500 From: Angus TeleManagement Subject: Telecom Update #413, December 22, 2003 ************************************************************ TELECOM UPDATE ************************************************************ published weekly by Angus TeleManagement Group http://www.angustel.ca Number 413: December 22, 2003 Publication of Telecom Update is made possible by generous financial support from: ** ALLSTREAM: www.allstream.com ** BELL CANADA: www.bell.ca ** CISCO SYSTEMS CANADA: www.cisco.com/ca ** CYGCOM INTEGRATED TECHNOLOGIES: www.cygcom.com ** GROUP TELECOM: www.360.net ** JUNIPER NETWORKS: www.juniper.net ** PRIMUS CANADA: www.primustel.ca ** SPRINT CANADA: www.sprint.ca ** TELUS: www.telus.com ************************************************************ IN THIS ISSUE: ** We're Taking a Holiday ** Telus Predicts 28% Earnings Growth ** Bell Plans Big Shift to IP ** MTS to Sell Bell West Share ** Rogers Wants Inukshuk Licence Revoked ** Deregulation Increased Cable Rates ** CRTC Finalizes 2003 Contribution Rate ** Ottawa Issues New PCS/Cellular Licence Rules ** Sympatico High Speed Gets Faster ** Telesat Plans Third DBS Satellite ** FatPort Launches VoIP Service ** Vonage Delays Entry in Canada ** Statscan Releases 2001 Telecom Report ** CRTC Revises DC Rates, Again ** Cities Get Extension for Appeal Application ** Aliant Can't Charge for Floor Space Info ** Employees Ratify Allstream Contracts ** Nortel Sells Optical Gear to Bell ** 10% of Canadian Phone Lines Have DSL ** Glentel Buys Edmonton Wireless Integrator ** Telecom Ottawa Acquires Cornwall Utelco ** Com Dev Sales, Losses Shrink ** More Changes in Bell Executive Suite ** Telemanagement Goes Online ============================================================ WE'RE TAKING A HOLIDAY: Telecom Update is taking a winter break; our next issue will be published Monday, January 5. We wish all readers a successful and rewarding New Year. TELUS PREDICTS 28% EARNINGS GROWTH: Telus is predicting a 28% increase in earnings per share in 2004 and a 56% increase in free cash flow. The company expects total consolidated revenue to rise 5%; almost all of the revenue increase is expected to be in wireless, up 15%. Wireline revenue in Alberta and B.C. is forecasted to be flat. ** Telus's non-ILEC operations in Ontario and Quebec have generated about $555 million in sales in 2003, and the company says that will increase 10% in the coming year. BELL PLANS BIG SHIFT TO IP: Bell Canada says that within three years, it will move all traffic to a national IP backbone and make a full suite of IP services available to 90% of its customers. The telco will conduct a market trial of a consumer Voice over IP service in the first half of 2004 and will launch a hosted IP telephony service for business during the year. ** BCE expects about 2% revenue growth in 2004, comparable to 2003. ** Bell is combining its ExpressVu satellite TV operation with its VDSL and IP-based TV activities in a new video group that will be headed by Robert Odendaal, a former executive of British Sky Broadcasting. MTS TO SELL BELL WEST SHARE: Manitoba Tel says it will exercise its "put" option in February, requiring BCE to buy its 40% interest in Bell West for approximately $650 million within 180 days. ROGERS WANTS INUKSHUK LICENCE REVOKED: Rogers Wireless says Ottawa should cancel Inukshuk Internet's spectrum licences. In a letter to Industry Canada, Rogers says that Inukshuk's plan to contribute its spectrum to a joint venture with Allstream and NR Communications violates its licence conditions and government policy guidelines. (See Telecom Update #409) DEREGULATION INCREASED CABLE RATES: In 2002, the CRTC began deregulating cable TV service in areas where the incumbent cableco has lost 5% of its subscribers. Result: cable rates increased by an average of 13% in a sample of 11 deregulated areas reported by the CRTC. ** The figures appear in the CRTC's Annual Broadcasting Report, released December 18. www.crtc.gc.ca/eng/NEWS/RELEASES/2003/r031218.htm CRTC FINALIZES 2003 CONTRIBUTION RATE: Telecom Decision 2003- 84 sets the final contribution rate for 2003 at 1.1% of revenue, down from an interim rate of 1.3%. The interim rate for 2004 is 1.1%. OTTAWA ISSUES NEW PCS/CELLULAR LICENCE RULES: Industry Canada has issued new rules to bring all PCS and cellular licensees under a common set of principles, policies and fees. This follows a public consultation launched a year ago (see Telecom Update #364). strategis.ic.gc.ca/epic/internet/insmt-gst.nsf/vwGeneratedInterE/sf05584e.html SYMPATICO HIGH SPEED GETS FASTER: In the first quarter of 2004, Bell Sympatico will increase its maximum download speed from 1.5 Mbps to 3 Mbps for 75% of its High Speed Internet customers. The current 3 Mbps service will increase to 4 Mbps. Upload speeds for both will increase to 800 Kbps. TELESAT PLANS THIRD DBS SATELLITE: Telesat has received government approval to build and launch a third direct broadcast satellite. Specific plans and dates have not been released. FATPORT LAUNCHES VoIP SERVICE: Mobitus, a division of B.C.- based Wi-Fi provider FatPort Corp, has begun offering IP- based telephone service for $16.95/month. The service includes US$10/month of free calling a month; calls to non- Mobitus Canadian numbers are 4 cents/minute. VONAGE DELAYS ENTRY IN CANADA: The Toronto Star reports that VoIP provider Vonage has not yet found a Canadian partner and has given up plans to enter the Canadian market by year-end. A company spokesman said it will not be able to offer service here using Canadian phone numbers before the summer of 2004. STATSCAN RELEASES 2001 TELECOM REPORT: Statistics Canada's annual report on the telecom services industry always appears later than its quarterly statistics, because it is more comprehensive. The agency has just released its report on the industry's performance in 2001. www.statcan.ca/english/IPS/Data/56-001-XIE.htm CRTC REVISES DC RATES, AGAIN: Based on 2003 costs filed by the incumbent telcos, the CRTC has once again slashed the interim rates they charge competitors for Direct Connection service, reducing previous interim rates for most telcos by 20%-53%. Telus, the only telco whose proposed rates did not decline, must file separate DC cost studies for Alberta and B.C. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Decisions/2003/dt2003-83.htm CITIES GET EXTENSION FOR APPEAL APPLICATION: The Federal Court of Appeal has given the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and the cities of Calgary, Edmonton, Toronto, and Vancouver until late January to apply for leave to appeal CRTC Telecom Decision 2003-82. (See Telecom Update 411) ALIANT CAN'T CHARGE FOR FLOOR SPACE INFO: CRTC Telecom Order 2003-514 denies an application by Aliant to charge competitors for providing information on Central Office space available for co-location. The Commission says it ordered the telcos in 2001 to provide this information for free. www.crtc.gc.ca/archive/ENG/Orders/2003/o2003-514.htm EMPLOYEES RATIFY ALLSTREAM CONTRACTS: Members of the Canadian Auto Workers and the United Steelworkers have ratified new three-year agreements with Allstream. The contracts provide 2.5% pay increases in 2004 and 2005 and a 2.75% increase in 2006. NORTEL SELLS OPTICAL GEAR TO BELL: Bell Canada has agreed to pay Nortel Networks $170 million over two years for optical network technology, including Nortel's Optera Connect optical switch and Optical Multiservice Edge platform. Bell and Nortel will also build an "Optical Innovation Centre" in Montreal. 10% OF CANADIAN PHONE LINES HAVE DSL: The DSL Forum says that in the third quarter of 2003, there were 10.16 working DSL services for every 100 phone lines in Canada. On this measure, Canada has the tenth-highest penetration worldwide and the highest among G7 countries. www.dslforum.org GLENTEL BUYS EDMONTON WIRELESS INTEGRATOR: Glentel, a Vancouver wireless equipment provider, has bought Edmonton-based Mobilcom Wireless, an integrator of land-based and satellite wireless services. TELECOM OTTAWA ACQUIRES CORNWALL UTELCO: Telecom Ottawa, a subsidiary of Hydro Ottawa, has purchased Cornwall District Communications, including 70 kilometres of utility-owned fibre in the Cornwall area and a connection to Kingston. COM DEV SALES, LOSSES SHRINK: Satellite technology provider Com Dev International reports sales of $91 million for the year ended October 31, down 15% from the previous year. A $20.6 million writedown of a satellite phone investment contributed to a net loss of $21.5 million, 38% less than last year's loss. MORE CHANGES IN BELL EXECUTIVE SUITE: Bell Canada is merging its Network Operations and Customer Operations groups; David Southwell will be President of the combined operations. ** Terry Mosey moves from President, Customer Operations to Executive VP, Bell Canada, with responsibility for Supply Chain, Procurement, and Logistics. He will join the Boards of Aliant and Bell West, and retain the chairmanships of Northwestel and Bell Nordiq. ** Christian Trudeau, President and COO of BCE Emergis, has resigned "to pursue other interests." CEO Tony Gaffney will become President; the COO position has been eliminated. TELEMANAGEMENT GOES ONLINE: Coming soon: a new subscribers- only section of the Angus Telemanagement website, featuring current and past issues of Telemanagement, detailed indexes, feature reports, and more. ** Watch for an e-mail with full details, including a money- saving Charter Online Subscriber offer, early in January. ============================================================ HOW TO SUBMIT ITEMS FOR TELECOM UPDATE E-MAIL: editors@angustel.ca FAX: 905-686-2655 MAIL: TELECOM UPDATE Angus TeleManagement Group 8 Old Kingston Road Ajax, Ontario Canada L1T 2Z7 =========================================================== HOW TO SUBSCRIBE (OR UNSUBSCRIBE) TELECOM UPDATE is provided in electronic form only. There are two formats available: 1. The fully-formatted edition is posted on the World Wide Web on the first business day of the week at www.angustel.ca 2. The e-mail edition is distributed free of charge. To subscribe, send an e-mail message to: join-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com To stop receiving the e-mail edition, send an e-mail message to: leave-telecom_update@nova.sparklist.com Sending e-mail to these addresses will automatically add or remove the sender's e-mail address from the list. Leave subject line and message area blank. We do not give Telecom Update subscribers' e-mail addresses to any third party. For more information, see www.angustel.ca/update/privacy.html. =========================================================== COPYRIGHT AND CONDITIONS OF USE: All contents copyright 2003 Angus TeleManagement Group Inc. All rights reserved. For further information, including permission to reprint or reproduce, please e-mail rosita@angustel.ca or phone 905-686-5050 ext 500. The information and data included has been obtained from sources which we believe to be reliable, but Angus TeleManagement makes no warranties or representations whatsoever regarding accuracy, completeness, or adequacy. Opinions expressed are based on interpretation of available information, and are subject to change. If expert advice on the subject matter is required, the services of a competent professional should be obtained. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 00:26:43 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Chats Led to Acxiom Hacker Bust By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus A Cincinnati man who pleaded guilty Thursday to cracking and cloning giant consumer databases was only caught because he helped out a friend in the hacker community. Daniel Baas, 25, plead guilty Thursday to a single federal felony count of "exceeding authorized access" to a protected computer for using a cracked password to penetrate the systems of Arkansas-based Acxiom Corporation -- a company known among privacy advocates for its massive collection and sale of consumer data. The company also analyzes in-house consumer databases for a variety of companies. From October, 2000 until last June, Baas worked as the system administrator at the Market Intelligence Group, a Cincinnati data mining company that was performing work for Acxiom. As part of his job, he had legitimate access to an Acxiom FTP server. At some point, while poking around on that server, he found an unprotected file containing encrypted passwords. Some of those passwords proved vulnerable to a run-of-the-mill password cracking program, and one of them, "packers," gave Baas access to all of the accounts used by Acxiom customers -- credit card companies, banks, phone companies, and other enterprises -- to access or manage consumer data stored by Acxiom . He began copying the databases in bulk, and burning them onto CDs. http://www.securityfocus.com/news/7697 ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2003 22:43:27 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Securing AirPort Extreme Networks with WPA by Wei-Meng Lee, author of Windows XP Unwired, and contributor to Mac OS X Unwired With the release of Mac OS X 10.3 Panther, Apple provided a firmware upgrade for the AirPort Extreme Base Station and AirPort Extreme clients, which support the WPA (Wireless Protected Access) security standard for securing your wireless network. WPA is far more secure than WEP (Wireless Equivalent Privacy). However, before you rejoice in this news, make sure you meet the following requirements: * You must be running Mac OS X v10.3 or later. If you still have not upgraded, well, time to do so. * You must be using an AirPort Extreme wireless network. That means your base station must be an AirPort Extreme one, and so must be your AirPort card. If you are using the 802.11b AirPort network, then you have to stick to WEP. http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2003/12/18/wap.html ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 01:00:57 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? By Michael Gaughn http://www.soundandvisionmag.com/article.asp?section_id=2&article_id=455 Satellite Radio Extends Its Orbit By DAVID POGUE December 18, 2003 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/18/technology/circuits/18stat.html A Sirius "Hail Mary" By Jeff Hwang Motley Fool December 16, 2003 http://www.fool.com/Server/FoolPrint.asp?File=/news/mft/2003/mft03121611.htm Satellites beam radio new life By Andrew P. Moisan United Press International 11/8/2003 2:57 PM http://www.upi.com/print.cfm?StoryID=20031031-031502-5170r A high-stakes gamble on satellite radio Brian Knowlton International Herald Tribune Wednesday, October 8, 2003 http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=112875 Tuning in to satellite radio's jukebox in the sky David Colker LA Times July 31, 2003 http://www.latimes.com/technology/la-hm-satellite31jul31,1,7818442.column Satellite radio gets rough reception at home By Edward C. Baig USA Today 07/09/03 http://www.usatoday.com/usatonline/20030709/5307578s.htm XM Satellite Radio comes to the PC By Ben Charny Staff Writer, CNET News.com April 28, 2003, 1:24 PM PT http://news.com.com/2100-1041-998599.html Satellite Radio Gains Ground With Right Mix of Partners By BARNABY J. FEDER April 21, 2003 http://www.nytimes.com/2003/04/21/technology/21RADI.html Now, XM Satellite Radio Has Gear to Match Programming By WALTER S. MOSSBERG January 23, 2003 http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/ptech-20030123.html Can XM Put Radio Back Together Again? By Frank Ahrens Sunday, January 19, 2003; Page W12 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A57791-2003Jan15.html ------------------------------ From: jbl Subject: Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 11:04:10 -0700 Organization: On the desert Reply-To: jbl@spamblocked.com In , dold@SatelliteX.usenet.us.com wrote: > jbl wrote: >> Actually, I think the original poster is referring to availability of >> local stations over the satellite service, much as local stations are >> now available in many areas on direct broadcast satellite television >> (as for instance on DirecTV). I am sure that is quite unlikely, >> especially in the near term. > Before the proliferation of local-to-local, DirecTV still had some > local stations ... they just weren't "my" locals. I got used to > watching the evening news from North Carolina. Even the local > football scores. When they went to East/West Coast "distant > networks", I picked up a station that I did consider local, KPIX-5 > from SF, out of 6 or 8 locals that were available in total. Though they were local stations, they were not provided as "locals" in that sense; they were provided so people (such as yourself, apparently) unable to receive any local stations could have access to _network_ programming -- NBC, Fox, PBS, etc.; the fact that they could only be provided by retransmitting some area's local station was incidental. /JBL ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Date: 22 Dec 2003 08:34:56 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com COTTP wrote: > ESS changed all that -- the #1ESS used a computer to drive ferromagnetic > relays so the physical path was still there for most intra-exchange, but > much of the inter-exchange traffic was carried via T1 carrier. Carrier systems were extensively used for inter-office trunks long before ESS came along. It should be noted that in the waning days of SxS, the Bell System added electronic front and back ends to the switches to improve performance. I'm not sure if they went as far as converting an SxS exchange into "common control" run by the front end electronics, but there was some up front processing. > The reason digital switching evolved wasn't to provide more services > per se. There were economic reasons, the first of which was the > realization that they could charge for all the advanced services > offered, second of which is that fraud could be cut to nearly zero - a > definite profit enhancer. Well, not exactly. The basic ESS offered the advanced services that earned premium fees -- call waiting, three-party calling, etc. Indeed, some of those services could have been offered on #5xbar but it was cumbersome. The big advantage of a digital switch was that the switch itself was more efficient and compact. It didn't need physical parts making and breaking connections -- the conversations flowed through directly via the electronic circuits. Another advantage was that the transmission signal remained in digital form more of the distance of the call, which was more efficient. In other words, the carrier system didn't have to digitize the call, it was already digitized. The elimination of billing fraud came about quite some time ago by separating the control signals from the voice transmission. Digital wasn't required for this. Billing fraud was a problem in long distance calls and I don't believe local calls had the problem nor could call control be intercepted as could long distance calls. Another advantage gained by separating control signals from trans- mission is that it made more efficient use of voice transmission circuits -- they weren't wasted for setting up a call. ------------------------------ From: rich@virtuallearning.net (Rich) Subject: Re: Message Waiting Won't Turn Off Date: 22 Dec 2003 08:54:40 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Doug wrote in message news:: > Rich wrote in message > news:telecom22.795.4@telecom-digest.org: >> I have Meridian phone system with Star Talk Flash voice mail. I have >> M7208 sets that have "Message Waiting" constantly in the LCD panel >> regardless if there is a message or not. >> I have noticed that the "Message Waiting" changes to "Messages >> Waiting" when there are messages waiting. >> How can I fix this problem? >> This is what I have done so far: >> - deleted and created the mailbox >> - switch phone sets >> - unplugged the phone set >> - changed the settings for the mailbox to show and not to show >> "Message Waiting" >> I will reboot the phone system hopefully in the next day or so but >> this problem comes up at least once a month but I ignore it until it >> becomes a real hassle for my users.> >> Your help is greatly appreciated. >> Rich > Rich, I don't know if my experience with this will help or not. The VM > system my client was using was from CCI, not StarTalk Flash. > VM used 4 ports, DN's 249, 250, 251 and 252, to connect to the KSU. > The modular plug on DN 252 corroded and stopped working. I went into > Maintenance and checked to see what the KSU saw. It showed the port > was unequipped. I fixed the plug, then checked the status again. VM > was now back on DN 252. After a few minutes, the problem cleared > itself. I guess CCI's voice mail uses the highest port to connect to > the KSU for Message Waiting Indicator synchronization. > Good luck, > Doug in Delaware Hi Doug, Thanks again for your advice. The solution was entering in Feature 65 it then tells you what messages are waiting in your call list. It appears that the call list is phone system based which is different from voice mail; however, it still shows the same "Message for you". Once I entered in Feature #65 and cleared the phone system based message all went back to normal. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Then Again, Bulk E-Mail Charges May Not be Next Blow vs. Spam Date: 21 Dec 2003 22:28:51 -0500 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE > By Robert Weisman, 12/21/2003 > Is it time to start charging the senders of bulk e-mail? Well, since you asked, the answer is no. See my whitepaper at http://www.taugh.com which explains all the reasons that e-postage would be a bad idea even if you could implement it, which you can't. Regards, John Levine, johnl@taugh.com, Taughannock Networks, Trumansburg NY http://www.taugh.com ------------------------------ From: flight_ops@pilots_union.org Subject: Re: Dialing and Transmitting a DTFM in a Single Process Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 00:47:39 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes it is possible. You make your speed > dialing string like this example: Let's say you wanted to dial your > bank in Independence, KS, and work through a voice mail menu to be > able to check your balance. I do that by dialing the phone number, and > inserting 'pauses' as needed to temporarily halt the dialing string > then resume it after a two second delay. > After the phone number has been entered, then give a couple pauses (my > cellular phone refers to these as 'p' in the display of the dialing > string). If that is too long, then cut it back to one pause. If it is > not long enough (in other words, the dialing string continues before > the phone call has yet set up, insert another pause. Then the next > character in the string is '1' for I want to check my balance. Then > another pause 'p' to give the voice mail a chance to get to that > function. Then next comes my account number, a pause, my passcode, > a digit (1, 2, or 3) for the type of account, etc. > The main thing is do not terminate the speed dialing string after the > phone number has been entered. Put in enough (but not too many!) > pauses to get the call set up and the number to answer. Then continue > the speed dialing string with the proper digits and pauses needed for > the transaction you are trying to accomplish. You will have to > experiment with it a few times probably to get it to the point the > speed dialing pauses for the right amount of time, but does not pause > to the extent the voicemail thing you are calling gets tired of > waiting and times out on you. You want to make sure the voicemail > thing is listening to you but doesn't get tired of listening to you > (smile). I assume your mobile phone speed dial allows for pausing > in what it is pumping out. On my Nokia 5165 phone, the asterisk key * > pressed once gives *, twice it gives +, three times it gives 'p'. > And each 'p' gives two seconds, so 'pp' gives four seconds, etc. > Each character in the speed dialing string counts for one character, > and I think I am allowed to have 32 such characters. That was > intended originally for putting in calling card numbers on long > distance calls, but no reason you cannot automate any voicemail > process in the same way. Basically it is like the way a comma inserts > a pause when using a modem. By using all 32 allowable characters I > can dial my bank (seven digits) pause for it to set up (2 'p' characters) > dial a '1' to tell voicemail I want to check balances (one character) > pause for two seconds 'p' (one character), then the account number > (nine digits) a # sign to tell it account number entered (one > character), the passcode (five digits), a pause 'p' (one more character) > etc. That's how you do it. PAT] A "wait" or a "link" is far better than a pause for such dialing. I can speak to Audiovox cell phones, which have a link "=" and the Motorola T720, which has a wait option as well as a pause option. A pause can time out; a wait simply waits until you tell the phone to resume the dial string. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Well, yes and no. Either way is the right idea and would answer the original writer's question. The only real difference is with 'wait' or 'link' you have to keep taking the phone away from your ear to user your thumb to dispatch the next batch of characters, where with 'pause' as long you get the timing correct (which you usually can 'guesstimate' pretty well) you just use your thumb once and put the phone back to your ear. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jim Van Nuland Subject: Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 08:59:07 UTC Organization: Silicon Valley Public Access Link Steven Christensen wrote: > Hi all, > I am considering dropping my land-line service and moving to an > all-cell approach. But I have no clue how much time my wife and I > spend on the (local) phone. > Is there a device I could hook up to simply measure the amount of time When the phone on on hook, there is about 48 VDC betwen the red and green wires. Whan a phone is off-hook, the voltage is about 5 to 12 volts, depending on the phone. Wire a relay with a series resister so that the relay drops out at about 20 volts. Use it to control an ordinary 110 volt clock. Jim Van Nuland, San Jose (California) Astronomical Association ------------------------------ From: felix_melo@yahoo.com.br (FabioG) Subject: Hicom All Busy Lines Date: 22 Dec 2003 08:21:20 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I am with a problem in a Hicom central office 150E Officecom. It accuses to all the busy lines exactly not being busy. I speak Portuguese. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Beaver Cleaver Makes a Long Distance Call Date: 22 Dec 2003 08:48:11 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com COTTP wrote > Everything else was a damned toll and > still is to this day. > I don't understand how Verizon gets away with it. Granted toll rates > aren't quite as outrageous as they once were, and there are now > calling plans that reduce the overall per minute charges it still > doesn't make sense to have toll boundaries in a state as small as > Rhode Island. Is it Verizon or the state's PUC? For a great many years cities such as Philadelphia made use of something called "message units" for distance calls in the metropolitan area. A call was charged a series of message units depending on the distance and time talked. Each phone line had a meter in the CO which they'd photograph and bill you. This approach allowed the phone co to eliminate costly operator handling of such calls without the complexity of AMA and detailed billing. They still use the system (now called "Measured Service") to this day in the Phila area. Local calls--within an exchange or to bordering exchanges-- were not timed and free to flat rate customers, or one message unit to message rate customers. It should be noted that Verizon reduced some of the unit charges for calls between the city and suburbs a few years ago. Don't know if the PUC ordered it or it was easier for them. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 13:41:22 +0900 Subject: Archive material search From: Hal Gold I am trying to locate an article in Readers Digest, July 1938 "The Sack of Nanking" (28-31). Any advise on how to go about it? My web searches all ended in Canada or . . .(?). Thank you. Hal Gold Author: Unit 731: Testimony/ Neutral War/ etc ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #804 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 23 00:20:50 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBN5Koe03683; Tue, 23 Dec 2003 00:20:50 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 00:20:50 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312230520.hBN5Koe03683@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 V22 #805 TELECOM Digest Tue, 23 Dec 2003 00:21:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 805 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Crossing Lines to Prescribe Online/Internet Pathologist (Monty Solomon) Re: Chats Led to Acxiom Hacker Bust (COTTP) Re: Dialing and Transmitting a DTFM in a Single Process (es) Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? (Clarence Dold) Norwegian Cleared of Hollywood DVD Piracy Charges (Monty Solomon) Re: Last Laugh! Beaver Cleaver Makes a Long Distance Call (COTTP) Re: Archive Material Search (Dave Garland) Re: Archive Material Search (John R. Levine) Re: Busy Signal Madness! (Ken Abrams) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (COTTP) The NUG-IT Magazine for Telecom Professionals (Pokey) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 22:24:36 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Crossing Lines to Prescribe Online / Internet Pathologist Internet Pathologist Outmaneuvers State Medical Boards By Gilbert M. Gaul Washington Post Staff Writer KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- From his suburban home in nearby Lee's Summit, Miles J. Jones has written tens of thousands of prescriptions for online customers seeking Viagra, Levitra, Xenical and a handful of other drugs. To the stocky 51-year-old pathologist's way of thinking, he is practicing cutting-edge medicine and providing a safe, convenient service. State regulators across the country take a decidedly different view. To date, 13 states have revoked or suspended Jones's license for online prescribing. His home state of Missouri revoked his license in February. So how is it that Jones, a self-described maverick who likens himself to Columbus and Galileo and earns most of his income performing private autopsies, continues to write prescriptions without a license -- including nearly 5,000 for Viagra this year? The answer lies in the nature of the Internet. Although he may review patients' medical questionnaires from his home computer, Jones contends that he is not actually practicing medicine in Missouri. The server for his Web site, netdr.com , is in Pennsylvania, where he still holds a valid license. Therefore, Jones said, "the practice site is in Pennsylvania. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9870-2003Dec17.html/ ------------------------------ From: COTTP Subject: Re: Chats Led to Acxiom Hacker Bust Organization: Children of the Tea Party Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 20:04:13 -0500 In article , monty@roscom.com says: > By Kevin Poulsen, SecurityFocus > A Cincinnati man who pleaded guilty Thursday to cracking and cloning > giant consumer databases was only caught because he helped out a > friend in the hacker community. > Daniel Baas, 25, plead guilty Thursday to a single federal felony > count of "exceeding authorized access" to a protected computer for > using a cracked password to penetrate the systems of Arkansas-based > Acxiom Corporation -- a company known among privacy advocates for its > massive collection and sale of consumer data. The company also > analyzes in-house consumer databases for a variety of companies. > From October, 2000 until last June, Baas worked as the system > administrator at the Market Intelligence Group, a Cincinnati data > mining company that was performing work for Acxiom. As part of his > job, he had legitimate access to an Acxiom FTP server. At some point, > while poking around on that server, he found an unprotected file > containing encrypted passwords. > Some of those passwords proved vulnerable to a run-of-the-mill > password cracking program, and one of them, "packers," gave Baas > access to all of the accounts used by Acxiom customers -- credit card > companies, banks, phone companies, and other enterprises -- to access > or manage consumer data stored by Acxiom . He began copying the > databases in bulk, and burning them onto CDs. This is why you NEVER keep logs on your IRC chat client or on the IRC server itself. Very interesting though. Much of the data out there about us is open to all sorts of attacks. THe very credibility of services like Equifax, Experian and the likes it at stake yet we never hear anything about it. A laptop belonging to a Fiserv employee was recently stolen from BankRI. The laptop had about 43k customer account information on it including SSN and they played it down by saying the machine itself had locking software - ie. WinXP. But anybody knows that NTFSDos Pro circumvents the security on XP. My guess is that whoever stole it didn't have the intention of stealing customer data. Instead they wanted the laptop and probably formatted the thing and fenced it off somewhere. ------------------------------ From: fruitcom@sdf-eu.org (es) Subject: Re: Dialing and Transmitting a DTFM in a Single Process Date: 22 Dec 2003 12:22:37 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Perfect! Thanks a lot. fruitcom@sdf-eu.org (es) wrote in message news:: > Hi, > I want to preprogram a mobile phone with both telephone number > and a sequence of DTFM. This would allow user to dial the telephone > number and send that DTFM sequence all in a *single process*. > Is this possible? > Thanks, > Eric Smith > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes it is possible. You make your speed > dialing string like this example: Let's say you wanted to dial your > bank in Independence, KS, and work through a voice mail menu to be > able to check your balance. I do that by dialing the phone number, and > inserting 'pauses' as needed to temporarily halt the dialing string > then resume it after a two second delay. > After the phone number has been entered, then give a couple pauses (my > cellular phone refers to these as 'p' in the display of the dialing > string). If that is too long, then cut it back to one pause. If it is > not long enough (in other words, the dialing string continues before > the phone call has yet set up, insert another pause. Then the next > character in the string is '1' for I want to check my balance. Then > another pause 'p' to give the voice mail a chance to get to that > function. Then next comes my account number, a pause, my passcode, > a digit (1, 2, or 3) for the type of account, etc. > The main thing is do not terminate the speed dialing string after the > phone number has been entered. Put in enough (but not too many!) > pauses to get the call set up and the number to answer. Then continue > the speed dialing string with the proper digits and pauses needed for > the transaction you are trying to accomplish. You will have to > experiment with it a few times probably to get it to the point the > speed dialing pauses for the right amount of time, but does not pause > to the extent the voicemail thing you are calling gets tired of > waiting and times out on you. You want to make sure the voicemail > thing is listening to you but doesn't get tired of listening to you > (smile). I assume your mobile phone speed dial allows for pausing > in what it is pumping out. On my Nokia 5165 phone, the asterisk key * > pressed once gives *, twice it gives +, three times it gives 'p'. > And each 'p' gives two seconds, so 'pp' gives four seconds, etc. > Each character in the speed dialing string counts for one character, > and I think I am allowed to have 32 such characters. That was > intended originally for putting in calling card numbers on long > distance calls, but no reason you cannot automate any voicemail > process in the same way. Basically it is like the way a comma inserts > a pause when using a modem. By using all 32 allowable characters I > can dial my bank (seven digits) pause for it to set up (2 'p' characters) > dial a '1' to tell voicemail I want to check balances (one character) > pause for two seconds 'p' (one character), then the account number > (nine digits) a # sign to tell it account number entered (one > character), the passcode (five digits), a pause 'p' (one more character) > etc. That's how you do it. PAT] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You are quite welcome, and I am pleased we were able to help you. But don't forget the other option mentioned by another correspondent earlier Monday. Rather than stringing the whole thing together with 'pause' commands, you can also use 'link' or 'wait' commands if you don't mind pressing the button a few more times as you go along. PAT] ------------------------------ From: dold@SatelliteX.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Satellite Radio Systems (Sirius or XM)? Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 21:44:36 UTC Organization: a2i network jbl wrote: > Though they were local stations, they were not provided as "locals" in > that sense; they were provided so people (such as yourself, > apparently) unable to receive any local stations could have access to > _network_ programming -- NBC, Fox, PBS, etc.; the fact that they could > only be provided by retransmitting some area's local station was > incidental. I'm not sure what your point is. PBS was a national feed. The ABC feed from New York was announced as being a national feed (ABC America... by Satellite), although it had local news. The others were local stations. You dismiss this as an anomaly, but the fact is that the West Coast was well represented with Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles supplying the ABC, CBS, and NBC feeds. People in those areas, representing millions of viewers, could receive local stations. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:24:26 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Norwegian Cleared of Hollywood DVD Piracy Charges By Alister Doyle OSLO, Dec 22 (Reuters) - An Oslo appeal court cleared a 20-year-old Norwegian man of DVD piracy charges on Monday in a new setback for Hollywood studios which say unauthorised copying costs them billions of dollars a year. Upholding a verdict by a lower court in January, the court said that Jon Johansen had broken no laws by helping to unlock a code and distribute a computer program on the Internet enabling unauthorised copying of DVD movies. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40058576 ------------------------------ From: COTTP Subject: Re: Last Laugh! Beaver Cleaver Makes a Long Distance Call Organization: Children of the Tea Party Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 20:17:33 -0500 In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > COTTP wrote >> Everything else was a damned toll and still is to this day. >> I don't understand how Verizon gets away with it. Granted toll rates >> aren't quite as outrageous as they once were, and there are now >> calling plans that reduce the overall per minute charges it still >> doesn't make sense to have toll boundaries in a state as small as >> Rhode Island. > Is it Verizon or the state's PUC? Well -- there's a great deal of collusion between Verizon and the Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission. Same goes for National Grid, and whatever Providence Gas calls itself today. The PUC hasn't been public in any sense of the word. Instead, they serve the interests of the utilities more so than the public. > For a great many years cities such as Philadelphia made use of > something called "message units" for distance calls in the > metropolitan area. A call was charged a series of message units > depending on the distance and time talked. Each phone line had a > meter in the CO which they'd photograph and bill you. This approach > allowed the phone co to eliminate costly operator handling of such > calls without the complexity of AMA and detailed billing. They still > use the system (now called "Measured Service") to this day in the > Phila area. Local calls -- within an exchange or to bordering > exchanges -- were not timed and free to flat rate customers, or one > message unit to message rate customers. > It should be noted that Verizon reduced some of the unit charges for > calls between the city and suburbs a few years ago. Don't know if the > PUC ordered it or it was easier for them. Fortunately those of us with a Providence rate center can call close to 85% of the lines in the state without incurring a toll. If you look back at the white paper that John Levine posted you see trending toward flat rate systems as opposed to metered systems. The bottom fell out of telecom about four years ago. That probably explains why we haven't seen a true decrease in price. Probably because while there is a glut of switching capacity, the wired portion is split between Verizon and Cox at the moment. I'm dying to see what happens with the VOIP companies like Vonage. You can already see legislators salivating at the potential for taxation revenue. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Archive Material Search Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 14:06:15 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when Hal Gold wrote: > I am trying to locate an article in Readers Digest, July 1938 "The > Sack of Nanking" (28-31). Any advise on how to go about it? My web > searches all ended in Canada or . . .(?). Low-tech though it sounds, I'd try your local public library. If they don't have it, they can probably get it on inter-library loan. Ink on paper is a storage technology that has stood the test of time :) ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Archive Material Search Date: 22 Dec 2003 21:16:36 -0500 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > I am trying to locate an article in Readers Digest, July 1938 "The > Sack of Nanking" (28-31). Any advise on how to go about it? My web > searches all ended in Canada or . . .(?). This is why we still need regular libraries. There's a big gap in digital media between 1923, which is the latest you can be sure that material in the US is out of copyright, and the 1980s when computer created original documents started being saved and distributed. There's a trickle of stuff in between, but since you can't distribute a digitized version of the 1930s Readers' Digest without the publisher's permission, and the publisher shows no interest in doing so, you'll have to look for a paper copy in a library or ask someone else to do so. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: John, perhaps you will comment on what I say next. For quite a long time now, I have relied upon the 'fair- use' provisions in existing copyright law and always include a state- ment expressing my 'fair-use' of the material in question. My standard statement on this reads like this (as an example only): ========== (start of 'fair use' example text) ========= *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ========== (end of example fair-use text) ========= Upon the advice of Cornell University Law School my use of material here in this Digest per above is 'fair-use' under section 107. I think quoting limited excerpts from a 1938 Readers Digest would equally qualify. John Levine (or attornies in our readership) will you please comment? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Ken Abrams Subject: Re: Busy Signal Madness! Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 00:53:59 GMT My last ISP didn't seem to know how to handle a post to a moderated group. Let's see if the new one does: bmooo wrote in message: > Our land-line gives a caller 1-1/2 rings and then a fast busy signal. > We hear the rings, but no one is there when we pick up. > Suspecting a particular telephone malfunction, we tried plugging in > only 1 of our 3 phones/computer modem in turn, but that has not > helped. > For starters does this sound like an inside or outside problem? We do > not have Inside Wire Maintenance on our phone plan. What you describe is a classic symptom of insulation breakdown somewhere on your pair. Most likely it is in the Telco plant (wet cable) but the test Pat described should point one way or the other. The ring voltage (88-120 VAC) will "jump" across bad insulation where the normal talk battery will not and trip the ring before you have a chance to really answer. If the trouble points inside, look for a staple in the wire too tight or moisture in a jack. ------------------------------ From: COTTP Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Organization: Children of the Tea Party Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2003 20:11:12 -0500 In article , hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com says: > COTTP wrote: >> ESS changed all that -- the #1ESS used a computer to drive >> ferromagnetic relays so the physical path was still there for >> intra-exchange, but much of the inter-exchange traffic was >> carried via T1 carrier. Carrier systems were extensively used >> for inter-office trunks long before ESS came along. Oh I know carrier systems were used for trunking well before ESS, I was implying that it hasn't really changed in that respect. The underlying carrier is the same. The form of the information carried by it has. > It should be noted that in the waning days of SxS, the Bell System > added electronic front and back ends to the switches to improve > performance. I'm not sure if they went as far as converting an SxS > exchange into "common control" run by the front end electronics, but > there was some up front processing. I wasn't aware of that. >> The reason digital switching evolved wasn't to provide more services >> per se. There were economic reasons, the first of which was the >> realization that they could charge for all the advanced services >> offered, second of which is that fraud could be cut to nearly zero - a >> definite profit enhancer. > Well, not exactly. > The basic ESS offered the advanced services that earned premium > fees -- call waiting, three-party calling, etc. Indeed, some of > those services could have been offered on #5xbar but it was > cumbersome. I mentioned that. But out of band signalling became much more realistic with ESS. > The big advantage of a digital switch was that the switch itself was > more efficient and compact. It didn't need physical parts making and > breaking connections -- the conversations flowed through directly via > the electronic circuits. Another advantage was that the transmission > signal remained in digital form more of the distance of the call, > which was more efficient. In other words, the carrier system didn't > have to digitize the call, it was already digitized. Well -- the early ESS systems were hybrid digital/analog. So while space requirements did decline, it wasn't as much as with modern fully digital switches. > The elimination of billing fraud came about quite some time ago by > separating the control signals from the voice transmission. Digital > wasn't required for this. Billing fraud was a problem in long > distance calls and I don't believe local calls had the problem nor > could call control be intercepted as could long distance calls. Well into the 80's we were blue boxing our way across Bell's network. It took them a great deal of time to implement CCIS in response to that. > Another advantage gained by separating control signals from trans- > mission is that it made more efficient use of voice transmission > circuits -- they weren't wasted for setting up a call. Yes that's true. ------------------------------ From: Pokey Subject: The NUG-IT Magazine for Telecom Professionals Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 01:22:35 GMT If you are involved in, or wish to be involved in, IT, Telecom, or Call Center operations then 'The NUG-IT Magazine' is for you. It contains 'Golden NUG-ITs of Information -- from Traditional to IP Telephony'. To download current and past issues, or to subscribe: Visit: http://www.NUG-IT.org We do not sell or rent our list. If you are interested in writing for The NUG-IT Magazine, please contact us at: http://www.nug-it.org/contact Looking for Telecom or IT events: http://events.TelecomCafe.org ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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. 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End of TELECOM Digest V22 #805 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 24 13:40:20 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBOIeK914335; Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:40:20 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:40:20 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312241840.hBOIeK914335@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 V22 #806 TELECOM Digest Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:40:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 806 Inside This Issue: Happy Holidays to all Readers Judge Downs Pop-Ups in Contrary Decision (Monty Solomon) Guinetel Embroiled in Dialer Scam Fraud, Seeks to Stop Abuse (D Garland) Ring Detection Circuits (Hiran) Re: Worm Hits Windows-Based ATMs (Chip G) Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? (yeltrabnhoj@email.com) Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? (Carl Navarro) Re: Chats Led to Acxiom Hacker Bust (Clarence Dold) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (Wesrock@aol.com) Free Calling Now Worldwide for Holidays (Gordon Laubach) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 09:05:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Judge Downs Pop-Ups in Contrary Decision By Janis Mara Bucking decisions made in two earlier cases, a U.S. District Judge this week enjoined New York adware company WhenU from popping up a competitor's ads over plaintiff 1-800 Contacts' Web site. Saying users of WhenU's desktop software might be confused about the source of the pop-up ads, New York District Judge Deborah A. Batts said the adware firm could no longer display Vision Direct's ads over its competitor's site. Vision Direct is WhenU's client and a co-defendant in the lawsuit. http://www.internetnews.com/IAR/article.php/3292731 ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Guinetel Embroiled in Dialer Scam Fraud; Clamping Down on Abusers Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 23:59:51 -0600 Organization: Wizard Information By Brian King Balancing Act News Update On Sunday, May 25th of this year, Terri Lockwood and her family were attending the popular Indy 500 automobile races in Indianapolis, Indiana. While they were out, it seemed, an intruder entered the house unnoticed and used the telephone. The only trace the intruder left appeared on the phone bill some weeks later: hefty charges for calls to Guinea-Bissau, a West African country she had never heard of, and much less had reason to call. When Terri Lockwood disputed the charges, the American operator AT&T told her that the calls were genuine, and that she or someone in her house must have called, or accessed an adult entertainment site on the Internet. The intruder was a program that had slipped unnoticed onto the family computer, and reconfigured the connection to dial a number in Guinea-Bissau. The number, however, does not officially exist. The national operator, the regulatory body, and the International Telecommunications Union all agree that the number dialed from Terri Lockwood's computer is not programmed within the territory of Guinea-Bissau. Communications infrastructure of the country, furthermore, could not conceivably support the graphic-intensive content production and broadcast of many adult entertainment sites. http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/current1.html It looks like c. 4 January 2004 the url will become: http://www.balancingact-africa.com/news/back/balancing-act_188.html ------------------------------ From: hjayaweera@yahoo.com (Hiran) Subject: Ring Detection Circuits Date: 23 Dec 2003 22:21:30 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Please send me a ring detection circuit for a intecome (PBX) system. The ringing voltage of this sytem is around 48V. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Chip G Subject: Re: Worm Hits Windows-Based ATMs Organization: Comcast Online Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 16:04:02 GMT Al Gillis wrote in message news:telecom22.791.9@telecom-digest.org: > our street. But how long until some smart guy or gal invents a > sniffer-like gizmo to sit on our LAN and pick out packets of "voice", > decrypt them and turn my President's conversations into WAV files for > one and all to listen to? > Let's talk about these things ... Do you have any direct experience, > good or bad? Am I wringing my hands with grief and gnashing my teeth > over nothing or do we have some significant exposure to the Forces of > Evil? > Oh, Merry Christmas, too! > Al You made a lot of great points regarding the vulnerabilities of Cisco's architecture. Personally, I think that most vendors are going to move toward some type of client-server architecture ... some will choose stronger than others. I like the way Avaya has chosen to address the issue. They seem to be earning quite a few industry awards for their decisions... might be worth a look to front-end your 81C or even replace it when the time is right. The Avaya Communication Manager seems to be scalable and cost effective enough to allow you to enter the world of IP Telephony without forcing a mass migration. Regarding your comment about IP "line tapping". The software is already out in the public domain ... google for VoIP Crack or VoMIT ... because these tools tend to generate a lot of controversy, you may find that you need to vary the spelling and be pretty creative in your search methodologies but they are out there and fairly easy to find. Avaya was the first major vendor to offer IP voice channel encryption which prevented easy line tapping. Now that the standards are starting to gel, it seems like many vendors are jumping onboard but I have not seen any specific details from other vendors yet. For a long time, Cisco was stating that you needed to use a VPN to ensure privacy which ignored the potential for internal snoops and, of course, drove additional sales of their VPN licenses. I think they are finally getting a clue but have not seen any detail on their direction for IP voice channel encryption ... love to hear from someone who knows more about their perspective! For me ... for now ... Avaya seems to have the right vision for IP Telephony for businesses and executes well on it. Regards, Chip ------------------------------ From: yeltrabnhoj@email.com Subject: Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 20:21:33 GMT Organization: (reverse to reply) (John Bartley, K7AAY, Portland OR) On 20 Dec 2003 20:22:47 -0800, chrissv@yahoo.com (Steven Christensen) wrote: > Hi all, > I am considering dropping my land-line service and moving to an > all-cell approach. But I have no clue how much time my wife and I > spend on the (local) phone. > Is there a device I could hook up to simply measure the amount of time > the phone is off-hook? I am an EE, so I could put something together, > but I worry about affecting the quality of the phone line (in a bad > way). Photocell on the cradle. When the handset is removed, it generates enough current to toggle a power transistor, which passes 1.5v to a AA-powered analog travel clock. Handset back on cradle, current stops, clock stops. Need one device for each instrument in your home. Could also use a microswitch which would eliminate the photocell, power transistor and associated support circuitry, but then it has to make physical contact with the handset. Nobody but a fool goes into a federal counterrorism operation without duct tape - Richard Preston, THE COBRA EVENT. ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 12:57:26 -0500 Organization: Airnews.net! at Internet America On 20 Dec 2003 20:22:47 -0800, chrissv@yahoo.com (Steven Christensen) wrote: > I am considering dropping my land-line service and moving to an > all-cell approach. But I have no clue how much time my wife and I > spend on the (local) phone. > Is there a device I could hook up to simply measure the amount of time > the phone is off-hook? I am an EE, so I could put something together, > but I worry about affecting the quality of the phone line (in a bad > way). The same deal applies to the off-hook to 110 volt application, only you put a $10 electric clock in place of the light :-) Answer pasted below: You actually need two pieces. One is a loop current detector, www.sandman.com/pdf/page40.pdf from the Wizard's tool box, and the other is some sort of relay to convert the closed contacts to switch 110 volts. My favorite is the RIB2UC which I alsways seem to have in stock :-) http://www.functionaldevices.com/ChartPilot.html This whole deal will end up costing about $50 to build. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: dold@ChatsXLedX.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: Chats Led to Acxiom Hacker Bust Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 12:37:06 UTC Organization: a2i network COTTP wrote: > A laptop belonging to a Fiserv employee was recently stolen from > BankRI. The laptop had about 43k customer account information on it > including SSN and they played it down by saying the machine itself had > locking software -- ie. WinXP. But anybody knows that NTFSDos Pro > circumvents the security on XP. When the IRS came out to audit my company, I noticed that the laptop was running Norton "For Your Eyes Only". Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 09:46:29 EST Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Ihancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote on 22 Dec 2003 08:34:56: > Carrier systems were extensively used for inter-office trunks long > before ESS came along. T-1 carrier often made it possible to justify carrier systems over much shorter interoffice routes than earlier analog systems. Carrier systems, as you say, were extensively used for interoffice trunks long before ESS came along. T-1 carrier proved in carrier vs. copper for much shorter routes. Not really related to ESS, and this was as true for trunks between SxS offices or xbar offices, and carrier became almost universal for interoffice trunks before ESS was widely deployed. > It should be noted that in the waning days of SxS, the Bell System > added electronic front and back ends to the switches to improve > performance. I'm not sure if they went as far as converting an SxS > exchange into "common control" run by the front end electronics, but > there was some up front processing. It was not just in the waning days of SxS. The Los Angeles metropolitan area grew up mostly as a collection of small SxS offices which grew to very large SxS offices and as early as the late 1920s or early 1930s Pacific Bell, almost out of necessity put senders on many, eventually probably all, SxS offices. As I recall, those were of Pac Bell design because Bell Labs and Western Electric really considered SxS a small-town sideshow. The L.A. metro area also had vast numbers of independents, many (most?) of which wound up with General Telephone (later GTE, now Verizon) which formed a large part of the network in the area, and many of them, SxS and XY, were senderized, too. If I'm not mistaken, the Sunland-Tujunga Telephone Company installed the first 5XB in the L.A. metro area and perhaps the first installation of 5XB by an independent company. As a sidelight, the London (England) metropolitan area was all SxS for many several decades with senders (called directors, I believe, in the UK). Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ From: gordonl@rocketmail.com (Gordon Laubach) Subject: Free Worldide Calling Now For Holidays Date: 23 Dec 2003 19:35:06 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Free calling now into: USA,Australia, China Germany, Israel, Italy, UK. During the past week, I've been engaged in a "social experiment" with regard to Free World Dialup and my decision to offer free calling into the USA and Canada for the holiday season. http://www.pulver.com/fwd/ USE FWD/X-lite its free software. Part of this experiment is to track the viral word-of-mouth of how new people are discovering Free World Dialup and to observe the dialing and usage patterns of our community. This experiment has now been extended to include Free calling into the following countries: Australia, China Germany, Israel, Italy, United Kingdom. Except for calls into the USA/Canada, it is not possible to place calls to mobile phones. To place a call, dial: * [country code] number on Free World Dialup. For example: USA/Canada: *1 Australia: *61 China: *86 Germany: *49 Italy: *39 Israel: *972 UK: *44 My hope is that our promotion will help some families and friends stay in closer touch during this holiday season. Posted by jeff at December 23, 2003 02:23 AM | TrackBack http://www.pulver.com/fwd/ http://192.246.69.231/jeff/personal/archives/000316.html [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When this message arrived yesterday, I spent a few hours experimenting with it myself. It does work using a sound card equipped with a miocrophone and speakers, etc. If you download the software provided, you get a telephone, dialing pad, etc on your screen. Where I got a little confused however, was with Mr. Pulver's claim it will also work with Cisco ATA-186. I have one of those (configured and working well) with Vonage behind a NAT/firewall on my home system. In his notes, Pulver refers me to Cisco's site for documentation on configuring ATA-186 for use with a 'regular telephone set'. So far so good, but Cisco says make a PC connection with ATA-186 by doing http://ata-ip-adresses. On my network, 192.168.1.100 is the address for my Vonage phone. Using the Vonage configuration menu, *80 tells me that is correct. But doing http://192.168.1.103 could *never* get me the elaborate screen set up display discussed; in fact the address was not found at all. That was when using Windows 2000. But when I used Red Hat Linux, and the X-Windows browser, I was told .100 *did* exist, but the X-Windows browser could not display it because 'the pipe was broken' ?? . So I was able to use sound card and eternal plug in speakers and head phone to listen and speak through Pulver's FWD (Free World Dialer) system (what he calls his 'Lite' system which is free) but was never able to get my Vonage-based phone and Cisco ATA-186 to work with him, which he said I should have been able to do. Pulver does sell various phone attachments to do the job, but rather than buy one and waste the money I spent on Vonage, I thought I would try to modify my Cisco ATA-186 to do the same job. Although he says the intent of his FWD system is to only connect via broadband the voice traffic of callers, his latest innovation of interconnecting to the telephone network makes it all very difficult to refuse, especially since it is totally free. If anyone knows how to adapt the Cisco ATA-186 (and associated phone) to work with FWD (to save me spending the $65 to $250 needed to buy Pulver's external equipment) I would appreciate help. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #806 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 24 21:40:57 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBP2euQ16953; Wed, 24 Dec 2003 21:40:57 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 21:40:57 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312250240.hBP2euQ16953@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 V22 #807 TELECOM Digest Wed, 24 Dec 2003 21:41:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 807 Inside This Issue: Happy Holidays to Everyone! Response to Norvergence Request (TELECOM Digest Editor) Broken Machine Politics (Monty Solomon) How the Internet Invented Howard Dean (Monty Solomon) Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? (COTTP) Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? (Chip G) IP Enabled Home Answering Machine (Stephen Balbach) Massive IP Theft Ring Shut Down (Michael Sullivan) Re: Ring Detection Circuits (William Warren) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 20:52:12 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Response to Norvergence Request I told everyone here about a week ago about the phone call I had received from Kyle M. Kulzer ( mailto: kkulzer@frankandrosenlaw.com ), an attorney with the firm of Frank and Rosen with offices at 8380 Old York Road, Suite 410, Elkins Park, PA 19027, phone 215-935-1000. In that phone conversation, Kulzer had demanded that all references to his client Norvergence, Inc., 550 Broad Street, Third Floor, Newark, NJ 071202 be removed from our archives, particularly those references which Kulzer deemed derogatory toward his client and their pending litigation as plaintiff against defendant David O. Rodriguez, who resides at 1601 South Highland Avenue #3, Fullerton, CA 92832. Although Kulzer's promised fax never did arrive (darn those undependable free efax to email services, anyway!), Kulzer followed up by mailing to me personally, care of my Post Office Box 50 here in Independence a *complete* (as far as I can detirmine) copy of Norvergence's complaint against Rodriguez. It's just as well the fax never got here; what arrived in the mail today at my PO Box was about fifty pages worth of cover letter, and complaint filed in United States Federal Court, District of New Jersey, where it is a **public document** filed under Docket 03 (cv) 5433 (PSH) November 18, 2003, Norvergence vs. Rodriguez. It would have choked the fax machine. About fifty pages long, it alleges in six counts, with five exhibits marked 'A' through 'E' what Norvergence claims is wrong. The exhibits include Norvergence's filing with the Patent Office; a copy of Mr. Rodriquez' signed employment agreement (what was expected of him, the rate of pay he would be given along with 'perks', and the all- important non-disclosure agreement regards company secrets, etc which Rodriguez signed); a copy of the mysterious email which circulated around the net authored by Dola Duncan ( mailto: doladuncan@hotmail.com ) which Norvergence purports (as a result of their internal investigation) was actually authored by Rodriquez; copies of their termination of employment papers which they allege Rodriquez refused to sign (indeed, his signature is not present on the form); and for the fifth and final exhibit, printed out copies of http://mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/telecom-archives/TELECOM_Digest_online/1140.htm Message title: 'Norvergence SOHO Matrix is Fraudulent' where statements about Norvergence appeared, which included in a paraphrased manner some of what 'Dola Duncan' said in the earlier email. Among the exhibits and the 'exit agreement' which Rodriguez refused to sign is a schedule of the corporate accounts upon which which the man had commissions payable to him. If you will read through the email and the paraphrased version of it as appeared in the Digest, you'll note Dola Duncan's allegations that 'Tom Salzano who was barred (by FCC/FTC?) from running any telecomm- unications company is in fact running Norvergence'. (FCC/FTC readers, did you note this allegation?) As I stated on the phone to Kyle Kulzer, and implied in earlier messages here in this Digest, I am disinclined to remove messages from our 22-years plus archives. If requested to do so by MIT, my host site, I would give it much thought, but in all probability simply remove the Digest to some other location. But in specific answer to Mr. Kulzer, via a copy of this email, my answer is simply NO, I will not remove the messages his client finds offensive. And thus far, MIT has been totally silent on the matter. In fact, I have referred this whole matter to my counsel for any followup which is needed. I fully expect I will get sued by Norvergence for exercising this free speech, and I encourage Mr. Kulzer to do as he feels best. Any reader who wishes to contribute to my legal defense fund is invited to do so. All I can send you as a 'premium' for your donation this month is a complete set of the papers given to me by Mr. Kulzer, including the legal service provided to Rodriguez and the various exhibits, all *public documents* since they were filed in the federal court. Copying and postage will cost about ten dollars, plus whatever you wish to donate to my legal defense in the event Mr. Kulzer or Norvergence follows up on their demands. Thank you, and Merry Christmas/Happy New Year! Patrick Townson Post Office Box 50 Independence, KS 67301-0050 email: ptownson@telecom-digest.org ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:40:12 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Broken Machine Politics Issue 12.01 - January 2004 Introducing the User-Friendly, Error-Free, Tamper-Proof Voting Machine of the Future! (WARNING: Satisfaction not guaranteed if used before 2006.) By Paul O'Donnell On a cool afternoon last February, five politicians gathered in the heart of Silicon Valley for a meeting of the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors. Their task: to replace the county's antiquated punch card voting system with $20 million worth of touchscreen computers. Executives and lobbyists from three different voting-tech vendors were scheduled to present their wares, but the outcome was practically predetermined. Supervisors on the board's finance committee had already anointed a winner: Sequoia Voting Systems, based 35 miles north in Oakland. It was all over but the voting. And then the computer scientists showed up: Peter Neumann, principal computer scientist at R&D firm SRI; Barbara Simons, past president of the Association for Computing Machinery; and Stanford computer science professor David Dill. They had been fidgeting in the front of the room through three hours of what Dill would later call "garbage." Finally, they stood up and, one by one, made their case. Voting, they explained, is too important to leave up to computers -- at least, these types of computers. They're vulnerable to malfunction and mischief that could go undetected. Where they'd already been adopted, the devices -- known in the industry as DREs, short for direct recording electronic -- had experienced glitches that could have called into question entire elections. And they keep no paper record, no backup. "We said, 'Slow down. You've got a problem,'" recalls Neumann. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/evote.html ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 13:37:30 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: How the Internet Invented Howard Dean Issue 12.01 - January 2004 Forget fundraising (though his opponents sure can't). The real reason the Doctor is in: He listens to the technology -- and the people who use it. By Gary Wolf It is 83 days before the Iowa caucuses, and I'm sitting at a small table on a private jet above Colorado getting a pure dose of Internet religion from Howard Dean. "The Internet community is wondering what its place in the world of politics is," Dean says. "Along comes this campaign to take back the country for ordinary human beings, and the best way you can do that is through the Net. We listen. We pay attention. If I give a speech and the blog people don't like it, next time I change the speech." The biggest news of the political season has been the tale of this small-state governor who, with the help of Meetup.com and hundreds of bloggers, has elbowed his way into serious contention for his party's presidential nomination. As every alert citizen knows, Dean has used the Net to raise more money than any other Democratic candidate. He's also used it to organize thousands of volunteers who go door-to-door, write personal letters to likely voters, host meetings, and distribute flyers. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.01/dean.html ------------------------------ From: COTTP Subject: Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? Organization: Children of the Tea Party Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 14:13:21 -0500 In article , yeltrabnhoj@email.com says: > On 20 Dec 2003 20:22:47 -0800, chrissv@yahoo.com (Steven Christensen) > wrote: >> Hi all, >> I am considering dropping my land-line service and moving to an >> all-cell approach. But I have no clue how much time my wife and I >> spend on the (local) phone. >> Is there a device I could hook up to simply measure the amount of time >> the phone is off-hook? I am an EE, so I could put something together, >> but I worry about affecting the quality of the phone line (in a bad >> way). > Photocell on the cradle. When the handset is removed, it generates > enough current to toggle a power transistor, which passes 1.5v to a > AA-powered analog travel clock. Handset back on cradle, current stops, > clock stops. Need one device for each instrument in your home. > Could also use a microswitch which would eliminate the photocell, > power transistor and associated support circuitry, but then it has to > make physical contact with the handset. > Nobody but a fool goes into a federal counterrorism operation without > duct tape - Richard Preston, THE COBRA EVENT. If I'm not mistaken there are a couple of leads on the switch hook of the 500 style phones that could be used for just those purposes. Hell, an older style Trimiline could be modified as there is a pair in there that tells the light to come on. If you could do without the light that'd be your best bet. ------------------------------ From: Chip G Subject: Re: How to Measure Time Off-Hook? Organization: Comcast Online Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 21:20:51 GMT Radio Shack in our area sells a device that was designed to setup auto recording on a phone line. I cut the connector off the lead from it, connected it to an X-10 home automation transmitter (PowerFlash PF284 is the model I used). Everytime the phone is off-hook anywhere in the house, the PowerFlash triggers a X-10 on signal ... anytime the phone goes on-hook, it generates an X-10 off signal. I don't remember how much the Radio Shack recording thing cost ... I think around $10, the PowerFlash was about $15 and the X-10 receiver was about $6. All you would need to do is plug in an analog clock and you would be in business without much hassle. One device needed for all phones on a given line. If you have more than one phone line, I think you will need to duplicate the whole setup but you might be able to get away with one FP284 ... doubt it though. Personally, I have an X-10 transceiver that attaches to my computer so I catch the signals via the computer and have written various little VB programs to do various things over the years. You don't need to spend the money to do it so elegantly but it is pretty cool if you are into tinkering. Hope this helps, Chip ------------------------------ From: stephen@balbach.net (Stephen Balbach) Subject: IP Enabled Home Answering Machine Date: 24 Dec 2003 14:59:48 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'm wondering if such a device exists. It would be a stand-alone box (not a PC) that answers incoming calls (POTS line), records the message, and sends it out via SMTP as a .wav or .mp3 file or some other common format. This would be a simple home device nothing fancy or feature laden or exspensive. No need for a monitor or keyboard or hard drive. This is for home use. Does such a device exist? ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Massive IP Theft Ring Shut Down Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 01:54:40 GMT FBI, INTERPOL, INDUSTRY GROUPS SHUT DOWN MASSIVE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY THEFT RING (Washington, Dec. 24) A "massive" international gang of intellectual property thieves has been shut down by a closely coordinated effort of the FBI and Interpol, working with industry groups such as the RIAA, MPAA, BSA, and makers of branded and licensed goods, such as Disney, LVMH, Cartier, and Mattel. The ring has been responsible for manufacturing "literally billions" of copies of trademarked, copyrighted, and patented goods for distribution worldwide for many years, said an FBI spokesman. The gang has traditionally given away the pirated goods at the end of each year, causing vendors of legitimate goods hundreds of billions of dollars in lost sales. The gang started operations many years ago making generic wooden toys, but has expanded its operations into making perfect copies of software, game consoles, licensed toys, name-brand jewelry and clothing, and other items. Operating from a variety of isolated factories known as "workshops" located in Finland, Canada, and other locations North of the Arctic Circle to evade detection, the ring operated a global distribution network that allowed deliveries everywhere in the world during a single 24-hour period. Investigators believe this network may have involved animal cruelty, based on the discovery of a reindeer in the group's stable in northern Finland with a nose so badly injured it almost glowed bright red. The ringleader, according to Interpol, is a mysterious figure going by the handle "SantaClaus." His real name is said to be Kristoffer Kringl, and he is apparently a Turkish refugee of indeterminate age who claims to be a former religious cult leader. His co-conspirators refer to themselves only as "the Elves," and refuse to provide any names. A spokeswoman for the RIAA applauded the capture of the ring, which ended the longest-standing and largest-volume CD piracy operation in history. "This was bigger than Napster, Kazaa, and Gnutella combined," she said. "And it is now over, and music lovers around the world will not have to tolerate this abuse of artists' rights any longer." Jack Valenti announced that the MPAA supplied officials with details about the group's distribution of pirated DVDs and videotapes, which had long been suspected. "SantaClaus is no longer a threat," he said. Bill Gates noted that "this so-called SantaClaus managed to duplicate even the most sophisticated software copy protection mechanisms, including product authentication keys that worked perfectly, even though they were not created by Microsoft." An FBI spokesman indicated that an investigation was underway into whether the ring's activities were facilitated by the Internet. "We think that the many mentions of entering via chimneys are actually referring to 'backdoor' entry ports in software and hardware the group made," he said. Interpol has requested assistance from its 156 member nations to destroy all of the billions of infringing goods as soon as possible. ----- MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL! ----- Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. ------------------------------ From: William Warren Subject: Re: Ring Detection Circuits Organization: Comcast Online Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2003 19:37:29 GMT Hiran wrote in message news:telecom22.806.3@telecom-digest.org: > Please send me a ring detection circuit for a intecome (PBX) system. > The ringing voltage of this sytem is around 48V. Thanks. HOMEWORK-ON-USENET DETECTION METER: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / / / / / / . (Circuit available at any secondary school.) HTH. Bill [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ah, Bill, don't pick on these guys who send me their homework to do. I guess since my message awhile back about a 'telephone education school' I have to expect these to come through now and then. In closing out this Christmas Eve issue of the Digest, I want to send along my holiday greetings to all of you and thank you for your participation here in the past year. Have a good time opening presents and stuffing yourselves with dinner on Thursday. If your choice of holidays is Hanukah or Winter Solistice or otherwise, do enjoy yourself and drive carefully. Although I do expect to hear more from the Norvergence people, I do not expect it will be this week or before the first of the new year. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #807 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Dec 25 23:00:51 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBQ40pe22817; Thu, 25 Dec 2003 23:00:51 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 23:00:51 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312260400.hBQ40pe22817@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 V22 #808 TELECOM Digest Thu, 25 Dec 2003 23:01:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 808 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started (TELECOM Digest Editor) Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone (Monty Solomon) Unexpected Twists in Internet Law (Monty Solomon) In Chasing Movie Pirates, Hollywood Treads Lightly (Monty Solomon) Disney Tweaks Privacy Policy; Allows Promotions (Monty Solomon) Will DVD Acquittal Mean Tougher Copyright Laws? (Monty Solomon) Dish DVR-921 Review (Monty Solomon) Re: Free Worldwide Calling Now For Holidays (David Zinkin) Re: Response to Norvergence Request (Michael D. Sullivan) DSL Shut Down Problem, Windows ME (Felix Oscar) Re: Ring Detection Circuits (Lincoln King-Cliby) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 22:03:04 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started This announcement is ONLY for those of you who are on (or want to be on) the TELECOM Digest direct email list (as opposed, for example, to the c.d.t. readers or the web page readers.) Since the automation a few years ago of the mailing list using the majordomo program, our mailing list has become very garbage and spam ridden. Ideally, people who use our 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' to subscribe should be people who are interested in the Digest and want to read it. But spammers who grab every email address they can find here have also spammed the subscription robot pretty badly. During a recent audit of the 'names' on the Telecom mailing list, a large number of names/email addresses have been found that are just essentially sink- holes. That is to say, the Digest just goes in there and disappears like spam. They are 'names' that majordomo has added because a spammer sent automated mail which contained data that majordomo took to be a request to subscribe. The subscription was then started automatically and the new recipient in fact never intended to subscribe, and simply has his own filter rules, etc set to dump it on arrival. In some cases they do not know TELECOM Digest is even arriving; in a few other cases they have asked to be discontinued, and I explained to them how to do that. So as my contribution to reducing the overall volume of spam on the net, I am going to *rebuild the mailing list from scratch*, and take majordomo out of the picture, at least until the mess gets cleared up. I do not want the Digest going to people who do not want it, or do not know what it is, etc. I do not like the idea of inflated statistics of 'readers' even if it is just a few. As of January 1, 2004, the mailing list will be rebuilt. You **MUST** resubscribe before that point if you wish to remain on our mailing list. This does NOT pertain to you if you only read c.d.t. as a Usenet group, or if you only look at http://telecom-digest.org or if you only read the Yahoo or AOL or Compuserve versions of telecom. This ONLY applies to you if you receive email daily from 'editor@telecom-digest.org' entitled 'TELECOM Digest' and you wish to continue receiving same. In order to continue receiving that piece of email each day, effective Januay 1, 2004 you will need to do this: Send a single line email to editor@telecom-digest.org ... (Make *certain* it comes from the same address you want on the list.) In the subject line say 'Subscribe' and your email address and the name used on that account. Do not just paste this message into a reply. Start from scratch. Add no other comments to that message other than the subject 'subscribe' and a single line saying the same thing along with email address and name johndoe@whatever.site (John Doe) This message will be repeated in every issue of the Digest now through January 1. Shortly after that date the old majordomo list will be removed. Please do not write to me around January 5 or January 10 to complain 'where is Digest? It is not getting here'. Here is to hopefully having a mostly spam/vandal free net sometime in the next year or so. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 12:46:02 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone by Catherine Harris January 2004 A reader inquires: On a flight recently, I left my cellphone on by accident, and yet the plane did not fall out of the sky. Aren't "personal electronic devices" supposed to be a danger to cockpit controls? http://www.popsci.com/popsci/computers/article/0,12543,558341,00.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 12:51:28 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Unexpected Twists in Internet Law By Doug Isenberg Internet law in 2003 was full of surprises, with Congress passing an antispam bill, the courts blessing pop-up advertising, the music industry losing lawsuits and the Supreme Court finally upholding an Internet law. And those are just a few of the highlights from a year in which technology and the law saw their biggest clashes yet. http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5131781.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 13:10:04 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: In Chasing Movie Pirates, Hollywood Treads Lightly By JOHN SCHWARTZ When Tim Davis got caught trading songs, it made him semifamous. Mr. Davis, an artist who teaches photography at Yale, was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America last September and was featured in news articles around the world. Since then, he has made his plight a public cause to help recoup the $10,000 he spent on his legal defense and to settle the lawsuit. He sold "Free Timmy" T-shirts and held a fund-raising party at his studio. Visitors to his Web site, davistim.com, can leave a donation in an online "tip jar." The lawsuit, he said, is "an insane kind of disproportionate response" to his musical sins. Then there is Jeff, who trades movies online. Jeff, who lives in New York and discussed his situation only on the condition that his full name not be used, received a letter from his cable company explaining that New Line Cinema had found a copy of "Freddy vs. Jason" available for sharing through his Internet account. The letter noted that the movie industry did not know his identity but could go to court to discover it and might eventually sue him. "It gave me a little scare," he said. There are many more music traders than movie traders, but there are many more Jeffs than Tims these days. While the recording industry has made headlines with a few hundred lawsuits, the movie industry has been sending out hundreds of thousands of threatening notices via e-mail messages each week to the people who make its products available on the Internet. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/25/business/media/25movie.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 13:32:39 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Disney Tweaks Privacy Policy; Allows Promotions By Jim Hu Staff Writer, CNET News.com Walt Disney has revised its online privacy policy to allow the sharing of user information to third parties, the company confirmed on Tuesday. Disney's policy change applies to information that people submit when registering for its family of Web sites, including Disney.com, ESPN.com and Movies.com. Collecting personal information during registration is a common practice among most major Web sites, providing a way to learn more about users. In Disney's case, the entertainment giant asks people to enter their e-mail address, home address and date of birth. New registrants who accept Disney's privacy policy during registration also accept all marketing options by default. They have to manually turn them off later if they want to opt out. For currently registered Disney users, the sharing options are turned off. Users can opt in by clicking various options. http://news.com.com/2100-1038-5133045.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 13:39:44 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Will DVD Acquittal Mean Tougher Copyright Laws? By Evan Hansen Staff Writer, CNET News.com The acquittal of a Norwegian programmer charged with breaking Hollywood's DVD encryption scheme could lend new urgency to the entertainment industry's efforts to enact tougher global copyright laws. http://news.com.com/2100-1025-5133152.html ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 09:06:35 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Dish DVR-921 Review Dish DVR-921 Review http://www.dbstalk.com/showthread.php?t=21399 http://www.dbstalk.com/specsheets/Dish921Specs.pdf ------------------------------ From: David Zinkin Subject: Re: Free Worldwide Calling Now For Holidays Organization: :noitazinagrO Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 04:05:33 GMT In article , gordonl@rocketmail.com (Gordon Laubach) wrote: > Free calling now into: USA,Australia, China Germany, Israel, Italy, UK. > During the past week, I've been engaged in a "social experiment" with > regard to Free World Dialup and my decision to offer free calling into > the USA and Canada for the holiday season. > http://www.pulver.com/fwd/ > USE FWD/X-lite its free software. [snipped for brevity] > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: When this message arrived yesterday, I > spent a few hours experimenting with it myself. It does work using > a sound card equipped with a miocrophone and speakers, etc. If you > download the software provided, you get a telephone, dialing pad, etc > on your screen. Where I got a little confused however, was with Mr. > Pulver's claim it will also work with Cisco ATA-186. I have one of > those (configured and working well) with Vonage behind a NAT/firewall > on my home system. In his notes, Pulver refers me to Cisco's site for > documentation on configuring ATA-186 for use with a 'regular telephone > set'. So far so good, but Cisco says make a PC connection with ATA-186 > by doing http://ata-ip-adresses. > On my network, 192.168.1.100 is the address for my Vonage phone. Using > the Vonage configuration menu, *80 tells me that is correct. But doing > http://192.168.1.100 could *never* get me the elaborate screen set > up display discussed; in fact the address was not found at all. That > was when using Windows 2000. But when I used Red Hat Linux, and the > X-Windows browser, I was told .100 *did* exist, but the X-Windows > browser could not display it because 'the pipe was broken' ?? . > So I was able to use sound card and eternal plug in speakers and head > phone to listen and speak through Pulver's FWD (Free World Dialer) > system (what he calls his 'Lite' system which is free) but was never > able to get my Vonage-based phone and Cisco ATA-186 to work with > him, which he said I should have been able to do. Pulver does sell > various phone attachments to do the job, but rather than buy one and > waste the money I spent on Vonage, I thought I would try to modify > my Cisco ATA-186 to do the same job. Although he says the intent of > his FWD system is to only connect via broadband the voice traffic of > callers, his latest innovation of interconnecting to the telephone > network makes it all very difficult to refuse, especially since it > is totally free. > If anyone knows how to adapt the Cisco ATA-186 (and associated phone) > to work with FWD (to save me spending the $65 to $250 needed to buy > Pulver's external equipment) I would appreciate help. PAT] Pat, AFAIK you can't use an ATA-186 for FWD while it's also being used for Vonage. The ATA-186 doesn't support using two different services at the same time, so the device would be useless for Vonage once it's programmed to use FWD. Even then, Vonage locks its ATAs so that the settings can't be changed. You'd have to stick with the software-based phone or get another hardware device, separate from the ATA you have now, to use FWD. - David (happy FWD user) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for this explanation. I was hoping to be able to have a second 'profile' in the ATA-186, one for Vonage and one for FWD, in the same way one can use a multi-NAM cell phone. Turn on one, the other one says 'he is not around' when calls come to it, etc. Is there any software unlocking key for the Cisco ATA-186 of which you are aware which would allow the needed parameters to be changed back and forth by editing them (or moved around with some kind of template) or in your opinion is that a very dangerous idea for brain deseased novices like myself? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael D. Sullivan Subject: Re: Response to Norvergence Request Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 06:12:23 GMT On Wed, 24 Dec 2003 20:52:12 EST, TELECOM Digest Editor posted the following to comp.dcom.telecom: > If you will read through the email and the paraphrased version of it > as appeared in the Digest, you'll note Dola Duncan's allegations that > 'Tom Salzano who was barred (by FCC/FTC?) from running any telecomm- > unications company is in fact running Norvergence'. (FCC/FTC readers, > did you note this allegation?) I can't speak for what the FTC may have done, but the FCC entered into a consent decree with Salzano's prior company, Minimum Rate Pricing, to settle slamming complaints, which was signed by Salzano for MRP. . The decree does not bar Salzano in any way. It does provide for severe penalites if violated within 3 years, which expired in December 2002. Apparently MRP also entered into a settlement with various states, but I haven't seen the document. Michael D. Sullivan Bethesda, MD, USA Delete nospam from my address and it won't work. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And thank you also for clarifying this. If Mr. Salzano is no longer on any form of 'probation' (for lack of a better term to use; you note the three year monitoring period expired in December of last year) then I have to wonder if it would be courteous to observe *his* privacy by deleting the messages in question from the archives, or at least appending your clarification to the original? PAT] ------------------------------ From: tree01@inreach.com (Felix Oscar) Subject: DSL Shut Down Problem, Windows ME Date: 24 Dec 2003 23:58:09 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com My friend just got DSL and it works okay except that sometimes it won't shut down normally. I will sometimes have to turn off the power at the power source! Does anyone know why it does that? It's Windows ME. It seems to happen more if I do more things with it. Thanks. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What do you mean exactly when you say 'DSL will not shut down normally' ? Do you mean that when you left click on the little monitor icons in the task bar (or left click on 'start', and 'control panel', and 'network' etc) that the computer is unresponsive to your request, i.e. 'freezes up'? Normally, people with DSL (or cable 'modems') do not shut them down, but allow them to stay on line all the time. Is there some reason you want to 'shut down' the DSL connection, or are we talking about different things here? Please explain what you do when you 'shut down DSL' ? Or did you mean shut down the computer, or the 'modem', etc? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 08:34:13 -0800 From: Removed at Reader's Request Reply-To: linwebmain@pe.net Organization: Is the sign of a sick mind Subject: Re: Ring Detection Circuits [Pat - If you publish this please remove my name/email address. Thanks & Happy Holidays!] Hiran wrote: > Please send me a ring detection circuit for a intecome (PBX) system. > The ringing voltage of this sytem is around 48V. Thanks. If you are refering to "Intecom" (Which is actually the name of a company now owned by EADS Telecom) you likely mean the Intecom PointSpan product (a 45,000+ port PBX) ... If this is what you are referring to, I hate to say that unless you're trying to trap ring on an analog or ISDN port I don't think this is easily possible ... [In my limited experience] Intecom PointSpan systems are all digital (again, with the exception of a port that has been configured to run analog for, eg. a fax machine, modem) and constant voltage is in the neighborhood of 45 to 48 volts (to power the phone's blinkenlights, LCD display, ringer, etc.) and the ringer is activated digitally -- with no change in voltage. I could be totally mistaken here, as I haven't spent much time deeply investigating this, but I think it would be necessary to 'tap' the data stream going to the phone and then determine what bits told the phone to "ring" (also note that the PointSpan system has at least three distinct ring types depending on the call, so presumably there are several different ring bits that would need to be decoded.) rather than a simple off-the-shelf ring detection circuit. [I have hypotheses about other ways to detect ringing, but in order to try any of them you'd have to have admin privelages on the switch, as well as access to some slightly obscure/rare Intecom hardware.] Happy Holidays! ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #808 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Dec 26 15:10:41 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBQKAeH28060; Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:10:41 -0500 (EST) Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:10:41 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312262010.hBQKAeH28060@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 V22 #809 TELECOM Digest Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:10:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 809 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started (Thomas A. Horsley) Radio Rocks -- High-Tech Quirkiness Restores (Marcus Didius Falco) TiVo Clones Spreading Rapidly (Monty Solomon) Re: Response to Norvergence Request (jt) Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone (COTTP) Re: Free Worldwide Calling (John Levine) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 22:03:04 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started This announcement is ONLY for those of you who are on (or want to be on) the TELECOM Digest direct email list (as opposed, for example, to the c.d.t. readers or the web page readers.) Since the automation a few years ago of the mailing list using the majordomo program, our mailing list has become very garbage and spam ridden. Ideally, people who use our 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' to subscribe should be people who are interested in the Digest and want to read it. But spammers who grab every email address they can find here have also spammed the subscription robot pretty badly. During a recent audit of the 'names' on the Telecom mailing list, a large number of names/email addresses have been found that are just essentially sink- holes. That is to say, the Digest just goes in there and disappears like spam. They are 'names' that majordomo has added because a spammer sent automated mail which contained data that majordomo took to be a request to subscribe. The subscription was then started automatically and the new recipient in fact never intended to subscribe, and simply has his own filter rules, etc set to dump it on arrival. In some cases they do not know TELECOM Digest is even arriving; in a few other cases they have asked to be discontinued, and I explained to them how to do that. So as my contribution to reducing the overall volume of spam on the net, I am going to *rebuild the mailing list from scratch*, and take majordomo out of the picture, at least until the mess gets cleared up. I do not want the Digest going to people who do not want it, or do not know what it is, etc. I do not like the idea of inflated statistics of 'readers' even if it is just a few. As of January 1, 2004, the mailing list will be rebuilt. You **MUST** resubscribe before that point if you wish to remain on our mailing list. This does NOT pertain to you if you only read c.d.t. as a Usenet group, or if you only look at http://telecom-digest.org or if you only read the Yahoo or AOL or Compuserve versions of telecom. This ONLY applies to you if you receive email daily from 'editor@telecom-digest.org' entitled 'TELECOM Digest' and you wish to continue receiving same. In order to continue receiving that piece of email each day, effective Januay 1, 2004 you will need to do this: Send a single line email to editor@telecom-digest.org ... (Make *certain* it comes from the same address you want on the list.) In the subject line say 'Subscribe' and your email address and the name used on that account. Do not just paste this message into a reply. Start from scratch. Add no other comments to that message other than the subject 'subscribe' and a single line saying the same thing along with email address and name johndoe@whatever.site (John Doe) This message will be repeated in every issue of the Digest now through January 1. Shortly after that date the old majordomo list will be removed. Please do not write to me around January 5 or January 10 to complain 'where is Digest? It is not getting here'. Here is to hopefully having a mostly spam/vandal free net sometime in the next year or so. PAT ------------------------------ Subject: Re: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started From: tom.horsley@att.net (Thomas A. Horsley) Organization: AT&T Worldnet Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 14:51:39 GMT I'd just like to point out here that anyone who runs a mailing list which does not required a positive round-trip email exchange in order to verify subscriptions is contributing to the spam problem. It is way to easy for malicious morons to subscribe unsuspecting people to a mailing list without their knowledge or consent. >>==>> The *Best* political site > >==+ email: Tom.Horsley@worldnet.att.net icbm: Delray Beach, FL | Free Software and Politics <<==+ [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And, indeed, that is what they do. I get all sorts of crap each day from 'new subscribers' -- people I know damn good and well have no interest in the subject matter at all. I have asked John Levine (who manages the majordomo which handles the telecom mailing list) to assist me by installing a system of round trip email the 'new subscriber' has to use. They will probably need to manually type in a word or number they see on the screen as part of the subscription process. It really is a damn shame the internet has gotten so crappy in recent years with all the spam and viruses that this additional step is required. I guess you may have seen the news where Microsoft is offering a huge (I think million dollars) reward to bring some virus writers to justice. You can see the item on Steve Gibson's home page for Gibson Research. All you have to do is snitch on your buddies (of course smiling very sweetly as you chat with your friends) then Microsoft will take over from there. From someone (myself) who spent several hours Christmas Day and evening for the upteenth time sealing up some ports and rebuilding (once again, for the upteenth time) the TCP/IP stuff that is really good news. I'd dearly love to watch Microsoft get the virii writers heads on the chopping block as the sacrifice is readied for the net. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 23:48:38 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Radio Rocks -- High-Tech Quirkiness Restores * Original: FROM..... John McMullen (johnmac -- I just purchased a Delphi XM Satellite and it's everything that the reviewer says it is plus CNet, CSpan, the BBC, ESFN, Fox Sports, Stations dedicated to the 40's, 50's, 60', & 70's music, Jazz, Folk, Country, Playboy, talk -- 100 stations. The system is composed of a receiver and one or more of the following -- a "boombox", a car kit (easy if the owner has a cassette player; more difficult, if not) and a "home kit" (attachments to an existing stereo system) -- all sold separately. I recommend it -- but, then again, I'm a radio junkie -- Shortwave, CB, Ham, etc.) From the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/26/arts/music/26SATE.html CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK High-Tech Quirkiness Restores Radio's Magic By STEPHEN HOLDEN It's 3 a.m. on a bitter, blustery New York night, and from a bedside radio on which the volume is adjusted to a comforting murmur, the voice of an unfamiliar singer calls through my half-sleep, and I have the sensation of being transported to a land of sonic dreams I haven't visited in decades. Not since I was a teenager enthralled by the cries and moans of the Five Satins and the Moonglows on early rock 'n' roll radio sounds that Paul Simon once described as "deep forbidden music" has the mystique of pop radio been so seductive. The source of these sounds is not a local radio station or a bland, faceless cable music service but a satellite pay radio channel. Music beamed by satellite has resurrected the thrill of musical discovery that has all but vanished on what is called terrestrial radio. From the rock 'n' roll heyday of Alan Freed to the free-form FM rock of the Woodstock era, pop radio has gone through many ups and downs before being creatively smothered by corporate homogenization. At the very moment when terrestrial pop radio has deteriorated into a wasteland in which the role of D.J. is increasingly relegated to announcing songs selected by market research, satellite radio augurs what may be a new golden era of music radio. Barely two years old, it is already offered in two competing systems, XM and Sirius. These services, which suggest radio's answer to Home Box Office and Showtime, carry the niche marketing of music to a new level of refinement. Satellite radio is unlikely to restore the warm feeling of inclusiveness that free-form FM radio evoked among baby boomers in the Woodstock era, when Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Ian and the Rolling Stones could be heard on the same station. But in its own ultramodern way, it resurrects the kind of intimate musical experience that has all but vanished except on college radio. With its transparent, static-free reception and digitally perfect CD sound, it is a technological leap beyond anything that has been heard on the airwaves. Satellite radio has yet to reach the point where record-company and independent promoters are beating down its doors to influence programming, and representatives of both services insist they intend to keep it that way. Let's hope so. That purity is one reason that subscribing to a satellite service is the closest you can come nowadays to going to Radio Heaven. But the medium's biggest selling point may be the enthusiasm that informs its programming. The programmers on both services are experts in their genres who return the missing ingredient to radio: real care for what they play, which market-tested music can't begin to match. Still half asleep, I turn my face toward the orange glow of the dial, read the song title and the artist's name as it scrolls across a small screen, and rouse myself enough to jot down the vital statistics. Come morning, I'll hunt down the recording on Amazon and order it. The satellite channel that has given me the most epiphanies is XM's Channel 50, named the Loft, which is largely devoted to four decades of singer-songwriters, from early Bob Dylan to the present. Some recent discoveries have been Damien Rice's "Cannonball," Phil Roy's "Melt," Rufus Wainwright's "Vibrate," Jonathan Brooke's "10 Cent Wings," Cassandra Wilson's version of Sting's "Fragile," Matthew Ryan's "Skylight," Coldplay's "We Never Change," Ryan Adams's version of Oasis's "Wonderwall," Patty Griffin's "One Big Love" and Richard Thompson's "I Feel So Good." These more-or-less new recordings are intermingled with the best of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac and dozens of other classic folk and rock performers. Bear in mind that the Loft is only one star in XM's constellation of 101 channels (Sirius has 100) embracing the entire spectrum of radio, including music, news, sports, talk, variety, comedy and children's programming. Out of XM's 101 channels, 70 are music channels, half of them commercial-free. (Commercials are widely scattered and usually unobtrusive.) All 60 of Sirius's music channels are without commercials. Satellite radio originated in 1992 when the Federal Communications Commission allocated a spectrum of the S band for digital audio radio. Four companies applied for a license to broadcast, and in 1997 two, American Mobile Radio (now XM) and CD Radio (now Sirius), were licensed. Each paid about $80 million to use the space. XM has a music channel for each decade, beginning in the 1940's. Its 50's music channel does more than play the best early rock 'n' roll. It immerses you in the era by including vintage commercials and media sound bites from the period. In addition XM has 7 rock and pop channels (including the Loft); 6 country and folk channels; 8 urban channels (including 2 devoted to rap and hip-hop); 7 for jazz, blues and vintage pop; 4 for dance; 5 for Latin music; 3 each for world and classical music (classical is divided into instrumental, vocal and pops); 2 Christian music channels; 1 each for movie soundtracks and Broadway; and several eclectic stations. Sirius has 9 pop channels (including individual decade channels from the 50's through the 80's and 1 for Christian music), 13 rock, 4 country, 5 hip-hop, 5 R&B, 6 dance, 5 jazz and standards channels, and 1 for Broadway. Its 3 classical channels are divided into orchestral, chamber and vocal music. The chamber music channel (XM lacks the equivalent) is especially fine. Sirius also carries National Public Radio, without its popular flagship programs, "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered." After skipping around the dial of either service, most music lovers are likely to settle on two or three favorites. Besides the Loft on XM, I listen a lot to XM Caf (which is similar but has a slightly harder, alternative-rock edge) and Frank's Place (the Frank is Frank Sinatra), which is devoted to standards and is programmed by the legendary New York radio personality Jonathan Schwartz, incorporating his personal record collection. (Most of XM's programming emanates from Washington, but Frank's Place is one of five XM channels based in New York.) Down the XM dial from Frank's Place is its country cousin, Hank's Place (as in Hank Williams), devoted to country standards. The Loft is the brainchild of Mike Marrone, a 47-year-old old D.J. from a radio and records background. What makes it great is the fervor with which Mr. Marrone, a self-described ex-hippie, communicates his musical vision. His boundless enthusiasm is matched by his fantastic taste. The music he programs pointedly underscores the continuing vitality of a personal, often confessional songwriting tradition that flourishes artistically despite its commercial marginalization after the 1970's. Mr. Marrone is as cognizant of the past as he is of the present. On the Loft you will rediscover the best recordings by artists seldom heard anywhere on the radio nowadays, like Harry Nilsson, Laura Nyro, Andy Pratt, Todd Rundgren, Jimmie Spheeris, Garland Jeffries, Nick Drake and John Martyn. Others like Jackson Browne, Tom Waits, Loudon Wainwright III, Bruce Cockburn and Duncan Sheik are played regularly enough to qualify as what Mr. Marrone calls "core artists." He was also one of the first D.J.'s in the country to discover Norah Jones, whose debut album he played weeks before its release. Both XM and Sirius are growing rapidly. In late October XM, which began broadcasting nationwide in November 2001, passed the one million mark in subscriptions. It has a projected break-even point of three million subscribers. Sirius, which started in August 2002, has just passed the 200,000 mark. It expects to achieve break-even at two million subscribers. The listeners to both services are pretty evenly distributed around the United States. Because XM and Sirius have agreements with car manufacturers to offer the services as a feature on many new vehicles, car radio is a major market. The two systems broadcast nationally 24 hours a day. A programmer in a studio punches a button connected to a musical storage bank that automatically plays the selection. Sometimes the disc jockeys are live and sometimes not. Although lead-ins and segues are often recorded a day or two in advance, it's virtually impossible to tell if an intro is live or recorded. Sirius is based in New York near Rockefeller Center. Its closest equivalent to the Loft is called Organic Rock (Channel 24), although the music is scruffier and more eclectic. The Bridge, Sirius's mellow rock station, which has no regular disc jockeys, and the Trend, an adult album alternative channel, also cover some of the same territory. Fantasy Ballroom whose name echoes "Make Believe Ballroom," one of the earliest radio shows to feature a disc jockey is Sirius's answer to Frank's Place and features a rotating cast of expert hosts, including the cabaret singers Eric Comstock and Michael Feinstein. Although XM and Sirius have raided terrestrial radio for on-air talent, XM, whose programming philosophy was conceived by Lee Abrams, the man who helped invent the successful formats known as A.O.R. (album-oriented rock) and Smooth Jazz, has a somewhat more personal touch. Mr. Abrams is a fervent advocate of personal communication between programmers and the public. At Sirius, which has grown more conservative in its pop programming philosophy since a change in management, the mellow rock and pop channels more closely resemble lite soft-rock stations like WLTW (106.7) in New York. But ultimately it's not its wondrous technology that makes satellite broadcasting pop radio's (and maybe even pop music's) brightest hope, but a phenomenon that in some ways contradicts that technology. For the music of the night requires guiding sensibilities. When presented by an authority, it is not just a sound. Driven by a passionate music vision, it becomes a compelling story that draws you into an imagined world where music harmonizes with your deepest dreams. The LIfetime Costs Sirius and XM Radio are the service providers for satellite radio service. The equipment consists mainly of the radio and antenna, which can be placed by any window. It can be bought at an electronics store like Circuit City for $120 to $2,000. The XM receiver, which resembles a television remote control, is $120 for a car radio and $199 for a home system, which includes a portable boombox into which the receiver is fitted. Sirius is about to introduce its own similar boombox, which will cost $100. The cost of a Sirius receiver and its cradle is $149. Service plans are available for varying periods: from monthly ($9.99 to $12.95); to yearly ($142); to two years ($199 to $272); to one-time lifetime offers ($400). The unit can be installed in minutes by the purchaser (instructions are available) or through the dealer. The service can be activated by calling the company's Web site (www.sirius.com and www.xmradio .com) or by calling the toll-free numbers, (888) 539-7474 for Sirius and (800) 852-9696 for XM radio. Both services charge a $15 activation fee and offer a discount online. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/25/technology/circuits/25high.html AM and FM Play Digital Catch-Up By IVAN BERGER THERE has been plenty of talk in recent months about satellite radio, streams of digital programming beamed from orbit for a monthly fee. But some earthbound AM and FM radio stations are beginning to broadcast digitally as well -- at no cost to the listener. So far, few consumers have been able to pick up digital AM and FM signals. But that is about to change as equipment designed to decode the digital signals, known as HD (for high definition) Radio, reaches the market. Kenwood is shipping HD Radio decoders that work with some car stereos it has made in the past two years, and Panasonic and JVC plan to announce stereos with built-in HD tuning next month at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Several 2004 car models will carry HD Radio equipment built by Visteon. The HD Radio system gives regular radio stations a chance to compete with satellite by piggybacking digital signals on their regular AM or FM signals. Aside from the occasional promotion for digital sound, listeners with ordinary radios will hear no difference. But with the right equipment, they can hear much clearer sound. According to iBiquity Digital, which developed the technology, HD Radio brings FM-quality sound to AM stations and CD-quality sound to FM broadcasts. Imprecise as those claims are, they seem justified. In a listening test, the sound of WOR, currently the only AM station in the New York area using HD, stood out from that of comparable stations. (On a station broadcasting music instead of all talk, the difference would have been even more noticeable; HD could conceivably help bring music back to the AM band.) The digital signal was stereo, too, although some analog AM stations also broadcast in stereo. When the digital signal was available, the radio's display showed "WOR" instead of "710," a text feature available with FM stations that use signals that can carry additional data. On FM, the difference between regular and HD Radio sound is smaller, partly because FM's sound is often very clear to start with and partly because the New York area FM stations with HD gear (WNEW, 102.7; WDHA, 105.5; and WNYC, 93.9) are still testing HD Radio and are not using the technology all the time. The chief advantage identified by iBiquity is freedom from multipath fading, the FM equivalent of an unwanted secondary image on a TV set. Multipath is not much of a problem in flat rural or suburban country, but in urban areas or near mountains, FM signal reflections that follow multiple paths with different transit times may interfere with one another and coarsen the sound. An HD station's digital signal does not travel as far as the normal analog one. But the digital signal maintains its clarity all the way to the point where it disappears, whereupon the receivers fade gracefully to the station's analog signal. This requires that the station broadcast the program in analog and digital form. The processing used to integrate the digital signal with the analog delays it by about 10 seconds, so the analog signal must be delayed the same amount to ensure a smooth transition between the two. So far, only about 70 stations in the United States are using HD Radio, and most are keeping quiet about it until receivers go on sale next month. (It is explained at WOR's site, www.wor710.com, but not at the sites for the FM stations WNEW and WNYC in New York, WDHA in New Jersey or WXTU in Philadelphia.) IBiquity, which does not yet have station listings at its Web site, said that 100 stations would be broadcasting in the HD Radio format by the end of next month, and that 200 more stations were awaiting HD equipment. By the end of next year, the company says, 70 percent of the nation's population should be within reach of at least one HD Radio station. The suggested retail price of Kenwood's KTC-HR100 HD Radio add-on tuner is $350; Panasonic and JVC have not yet announced their HD prices, but you can expect the devices to become cheaper as HD programming spreads. Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml "When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra "Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson "Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" - Pierre Abelard "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C. Clarke "Bobby Layne never lost a game. Time just ran out." -- Doak Walker John F. McMullen http://www.westnet.com/~observer ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 02:35:39 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: TiVo Clones Spreading Rapidly By Ron Lieber WALL STREET JOURNAL The future of TiVo may be uncertain, but the TiVolution has never been more accessible than it is this holiday season. TiVo, which is both popular usage for newfangled alternatives to VCRs and the brand-name of the company that helped popularize them, once required an upfront investment of hundreds of dollars. But, as new competitors continue to emerge, most people can now try the new way of watching and recording television for far less. Monday, ReplayTV lowered the price on its cheapest machine to $149 and stopped forcing consumers to buy three years of service upfront, cutting the initial cost by more than $300. Time Warner Cable this year began a widespread rollout of a service that has a TiVo-like digital video recorder built into the cable box and costs less than $10 a month. Some of Cox Communications Inc.'s customers already have cable DVR service, and Comcast Corp. plans to roll it out to all of its subscribers next year. Hate your cable company? EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network has started offering a free DVR box to new satellite TV subscribers. http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/business/7563425.htm ------------------------------ From: jt Subject: Re: Response to Norvergence Request Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 09:50:17 -0400 Organization: WorldCom Canada Ltd. News Reader Service > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And thank you also for clarifying this. > If Mr. Salzano is no longer on any form of 'probation' (for lack of a > better term to use; you note the three year monitoring period expired > in December of last year) then I have to wonder if it would be > courteous to observe *his* privacy by deleting the messages in > question from the archives, or at least appending your clarification > to the original? PAT] Append, Pat, append. Snakes often turn when they move. ------------------------------ From: COTTP Subject: Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone Organization: Children of the Tea Party Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2003 23:16:18 -0500 In article , monty@roscom.com says: > by Catherine Harris > January 2004 > A reader inquires: On a flight recently, I left my cellphone on by > accident, and yet the plane did not fall out of the sky. Aren't > "personal electronic devices" supposed to be a danger to cockpit > controls? > http://www.popsci.com/popsci/computers/article/0,12543,558341,00.html And of course Popular Science gave him an answer filled with the standard bovine effluvia. They do mention CD players and laptops though but then go on to say there's never been a crash attributable to any of these devices. Aircraft avionics are fairly well shielded from EM and RF. The only wiring you'd probably induce a current in is the PA system or the lighting circuits. A CD players headphones probably pump out more of a current inducing EM field that the entire cell phone does. And there are a whole lot of them on most flights. Same with laptops, those GTE in-flight phones, etc. Just run your inductive probe around your CD player and laptop while they're on. Hear that? It's radiating out. There are two reasons you shouldn't use a cell phone while in flight: 1) At that height your cell phone would pick up multiple cell sites. This causes some interesting problems for the cell carriers in some cases. 2) To maintain the revenue stream those GTE Airphones generate. ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Free Worldide Calling Now For Holidays Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > If anyone knows how to adapt the Cisco ATA-186 (and associated phone) > to work with FWD (to save me spending the $65 to $250 needed to buy > Pulver's external equipment) I would appreciate help. PAT] You can't. The ATAs that Vonage provides are pre-programmed and locked so that they'll only work on Vonage's network. (Considering that Vonage provides them for way less than Cisco charges, you can't complain.) If you want to use FWD, you have to get your own equipment. Be warned that nearly all of the used ATAs sold on e-bay are also from Vonage so they are equally useless on anything other than Vonage. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner http://iecc.com/johnl Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail TELECOM Digest Editor's Derisive Note: 'pre-programmed and locked' ... haha! Sounds just like an AT&T cell phone doesn't it? As the service rep at AT&T Wireless said to me one day back when I was arguing with them about their lousy coverage in southeast Kansas (i.e. AT&T insists on holding your call as long as possible on their towers until it transmission gets so crappy they have no choice but to drop the call, then they swap you to the nearest Cellular One outfit, which around here means Dobson and Company over in Liberty, Kansas. God forbid they would hand you over to a closer tower if it was a competitor of theirs), "just toss it in the trash can if you are leaving us." When I moved here from Chicago, and took the Jefferson Lines bus from Tulsa north to Independence, I stayed in the AT&T Tulsa coverage area until a little distance north of Bartlesville, at which point AT&T 'extended area' cut in. I talked on the phone to Mike Sandman quite a bit of the trip on the bus and also here in my back yard. The connection got so bad we could barely talk at all. When Mike suggested getting a different phone, I asked AT&T what to do when no one in town of the several cell carriers we have (Cingular, Dobson Cellular One, Alltel and US Cellular) were able to reprogram my phone for their systems. AT&T said to me 'all you can do is toss the phone in your trash can ... ' I thought that rather shocking, but the local guys who handle phone programming all agreed. Mike finally told me to get a new phone from Cingular (same Nokia 5165 model so it would work with all my attachments at least) which I did. I kept the old AT&T phone as a backup using prepaid service, but had it reprogrammed out of Wichita (or Topeka, I don't remember) but still on AT&T. And you say Cisco ATA-186 is the same way? PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. 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Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #809 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Dec 27 04:40:07 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBR9e6k02617; Sat, 27 Dec 2003 04:40:07 -0500 (EST) Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 04:40:07 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312270940.hBR9e6k02617@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 V22 #810 TELECOM Digest Sat, 27 Dec 2003 04:40:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 810 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Mailing List Being Rebuilt - Please Read (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started (Gary Breuckman) Re: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started (Bill Horne) Re: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started (Bob Vaughan) Open-Source Battle is Heating Up (Monty Solomon) Re: Free Worldwide Calling Now For Holidays (COTTP) News Corp Ambitions Big as Largest Pay-TV Provider (Monty Solomon) Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone (Clark W. Griswold, Jr.) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 22:03:04 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started This announcement is ONLY for those of you who are on (or want to be on) the TELECOM Digest direct email list (as opposed, for example, to the c.d.t. readers or the web page readers.) Since the automation a few years ago of the mailing list using the majordomo program, our mailing list has become very garbage and spam ridden. Ideally, people who use our 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' to subscribe should be people who are interested in the Digest and want to read it. But spammers who grab every email address they can find here have also spammed the subscription robot pretty badly. During a recent audit of the 'names' on the Telecom mailing list, a large number of names/email addresses have been found that are just essentially sink- holes. That is to say, the Digest just goes in there and disappears like spam. They are 'names' that majordomo has added because a spammer sent automated mail which contained data that majordomo took to be a request to subscribe. The subscription was then started automatically and the new recipient in fact never intended to subscribe, and simply has his own filter rules, etc set to dump it on arrival. In some cases they do not know TELECOM Digest is even arriving; in a few other cases they have asked to be discontinued, and I explained to them how to do that. So as my contribution to reducing the overall volume of spam on the net, I am going to *rebuild the mailing list from scratch*, and take majordomo out of the picture, at least until the mess gets cleared up. I do not want the Digest going to people who do not want it, or do not know what it is, etc. I do not like the idea of inflated statistics of 'readers' even if it is just a few. As of January 1, 2004, the mailing list will be rebuilt. You **MUST** resubscribe before that point if you wish to remain on our mailing list. This does NOT pertain to you if you only read c.d.t. as a Usenet group, or if you only look at http://telecom-digest.org or if you only read the Yahoo or AOL or Compuserve versions of telecom. This ONLY applies to you if you receive email daily from 'editor@telecom-digest.org' entitled 'TELECOM Digest' and you wish to continue receiving same. In order to continue receiving that piece of email each day, effective Januay 1, 2004 you will need to do this: Send a single line email to editor@telecom-digest.org ... (Make *certain* it comes from the same address you want on the list.) In the subject line say 'Subscribe' and your email address and the name used on that account. Do not just paste this message into a reply. Start from scratch. Add no other comments to that message other than the subject 'subscribe' and a single line saying the same thing along with email address and name johndoe@whatever.site (John Doe) This message will be repeated in every issue of the Digest now through January 1. Shortly after that date the old majordomo list will be removed. Please do not write to me around January 5 or January 10 to complain 'where is Digest? It is not getting here'. Here is to hopefully having a mostly spam/vandal free net sometime in the next year or so. PAT ------------------------------ From: Gary Breuckman Subject: Re: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:51:16 -0600 Organization: Puma's Lair - catbox.com In article , Thomas A. Horsley wrote: > I'd just like to point out here that anyone who runs a mailing list > which does not required a positive round-trip email exchange in order to > verify subscriptions is contributing to the spam problem. It is way to > easy for malicious morons to subscribe unsuspecting people to a mailing > list without their knowledge or consent. If what you are using is majordomo, there is a 'confirm' option that is part of the "subscribe_policy" setting in the config file for your list. 'Confirm' causes majordomo to send a mail messages to the supposed subscriber's from address with a code in the subject line. If the person replies to the message, the subscribe request proceeds, otherwise it's lost in limbo forever and the person is not bothered further. In article , "TELECOM Digest Editor" wrote: > Since the automation a few years ago of the mailing list using the > majordomo program, our mailing list has become very garbage and spam > ridden. Ideally, people who use our > 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' to subscribe should be people who > are interested in the Digest and want to read it. But spammers who grab > every email address they can find here have also spammed the > subscription robot pretty badly. Besides the 'confirm' option I mentioned in an earlier post, one other thing you can do to help stop this is to NOT use the address 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' for folks to subscribe. Instead, have them send an email directly to the majordomo process and in the body of the email put "subscribe telcom-digest" What this does for you is that when spammers pick up the address in your posts and web pages, and send spam to it, all that happens is they get returned an error list with help on using majordomo, instead of being subscribed to the list. It's probably too late now, that the other address is 'out there' - but using confirm will stop it too as well as putting a stop to anyone who subscribes someone else for annoyance reasons. ------------------------------ From: Bill Horne Subject: Re: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 15:29:54 -0500 > This announcement is ONLY for those of you who are on (or want to be > on) the TELECOM Digest direct email list [snip] > I am going to *rebuild the mailing list from scratch*, and take majordomo > out of the picture, at least until the mess gets cleared up. [snip] > Send a single line email to editor@telecom-digest.org ... (Make > *certain* it comes from the same address you want on the list.) > In the subject line say 'Subscribe' and your email address and > the name used on that account. Pat, Please make clear to your readers that the message is NOT going to Majordomo: those familiar with Majordomo might assume they're sending to a Majordomo robot, and format the message incorrectly. BTW, it's not clear if the parenthesis around the name are required. FWIW. Bill [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The subscribe messages are coming here to me; I am creating a new mailing list with them as they arrive, then will provide John Levine with a new list around January 1, so the old list can be totally ditched and the new list installed. And the reason for the name inside parenthesis is mainly for my benefit to have the names in cases where the email address is obscure. PAT]n ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 17:50:42 PST From: Bob Vaughan Subject: Re: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started Organization: Tantivy Associates Note that in recent versions of majordomo (recent being 3-5 years..), it is very easy to setup a list to do subscription confirmation. You simply set the subscribe policy to 'open+confirm', and go from there. -- Welcome My Son, Welcome To The Machine -- Bob Vaughan | techie@{w6yx|tantivy}.stanford.edu | kc6sxc@w6yx.ampr.org | P.O. Box 19792, Stanford, Ca 94309 -- I am Me, I am only Me, And no one else is Me, What could be simpler? -- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 00:15:54 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Open-source battle is heating up By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 12/22/2003 The future of the computer software industry was being fought out last week in the Massachusetts Senate. It was just a skirmish, but dozens more just like it are happening in legislatures around the world. And the outcome will go a long way toward determining the shape of the industry in years to come. Our state's role in the drama began in September, when a remarkable memo leaked from the office of Eric Kriss, Massachusetts secretary of finance and administration. The memo said, or seemed to say, that the entire state would abandon the use of traditional computer software and replace them with "open-source" programs. So what? Well, imagine being told that your company was getting rid of all its Microsoft Corp. software, like Windows and Office, two of the most widely used programs on Earth. Or that you'd be losing all your Apple Computer Inc. machines running Macintosh software, or all of your Oracle Corp. databases. Most of the world runs on this kind of proprietary, "closed-source" software, in which the underlying source code remains the confidential property of the software vendor. Under the Kriss plan, such software would be replaced where possible with open source software. The Linux operating system is the best-known open-source product. For one thing, the underlying code is given away to open-source customers, allowing them to modify the software as needed. Besides, open-source products are generally available at no cost for the code itself. The customer pays only for training and support. So governments save money while liberating themselves from the whims of companies like Microsoft or Oracle, who can raise prices or make inconvenient changes in the design of their software whenever they please. So what's not to like about the Kriss memo? http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2003/12/22/open_source_battle_is_heating_up/ ------------------------------ From: COTTP Subject: Re: Free Worldwide Calling Now For Holidays Organization: Children of the Tea Party Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 20:01:42 -0500 In article , johnl@iecc.com says: >> If anyone knows how to adapt the Cisco ATA-186 (and associated phone) >> to work with FWD (to save me spending the $65 to $250 needed to buy >> Pulver's external equipment) I would appreciate help. PAT] > You can't. The ATAs that Vonage provides are pre-programmed and > locked so that they'll only work on Vonage's network. (Considering > that Vonage provides them for way less than Cisco charges, you can't > complain.) If you want to use FWD, you have to get your own > equipment. > Be warned that nearly all of the used ATAs sold on e-bay are also from > Vonage so they are equally useless on anything other than Vonage. If Cisco gear is anything like NetGear stuff all you have to do is perform a certain power up sequence to reset everything. Haven't really looked into it lately. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 18:47:41 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: News Corp Ambitions Big as Largest Pay-TV Provider In Dec. 22 NEW YORK item headlined "News Corp ambitions big as largest pay-TV provider," please read in 2nd paragraph as ... closed on a $6.78 billion deal ... instead of ... closed on a $6.78 million deal ... (Corrects to billions from millions). A corrected repitition follows: By Michael Learmonth NEW YORK, Dec 22 (Reuters) - Rupert Murdoch is gearing up to throw his weight around as the world's largest pay-TV provider, just days after U.S. regulators approved his takeover of satellite broadcaster DirecTV, a company executive said. News Corp.(AUS:NCP) on Monday closed on a $6.78 billion deal that gives it control of Hughes Electronics Corp. , operator of DirecTV, the largest U.S. satellite television provider. Incoming Hughes President and CEO Chase Carey said the company is serving notice that it expects to wield out-sized influence to slash prices of set-top boxes and reduce the rates it pays for programming. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40082739 ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. <73115.1041@compuserve.com> Subject: Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2003 16:55:51 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com COTTP wrote: > And of course Popular Science gave him an answer filled with the > standard bovine effluvia. They do mention CD players and laptops > though but then go on to say there's never been a crash attributable > to any of these devices. > Aircraft avionics are fairly well shielded from EM and RF. The only > wiring you'd probably induce a current in is the PA system or the > lighting circuits. And you clearly have not kept up to date with current research in this area and may wish to reconsider your editorial comment above. In May 2000, the CAA (UK FAA) published a report showing that cell phones can and do interfere with aircraft avoinics. Relevant quote from Air Safety Week follows: > Hard evidence of interference is contained in a May 2 report by the > UK's Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). The report documents > CAA-sponsored research, in which the potential for telephone > interference was assayed under controlled conditions. This is the > first research of this type. British authorities, like their > counterparts in the U.S., regularly receive incident reports of > interference from portable electronic devices (PED's) carried aboard > by passengers. The CAA set about to go beyond the "anecdotal" > evidence. > Tests were run on a Virgin Atlantic Airways B747 and on a British > Airways B737 last February. The trials were designed to assess the > vulnerability of flight deck systems and avionics (E&E) bays. The > CAA plans a second phase effort, in which aircraft electronics will > be exposed to increasing power levels of simulated portable > telephone transmissions until the equipment "ceases to perform its > intended function." The reality is that the majority of aircraft flying today were not tested for interference from common cell phone frequencies, and the testing that was done assumed the source of the interference was outside the aircraft. Passenger seating puts some cable runs within inches of antenna and control lines. > There are two reasons you shouldn't use a cell phone while in flight: > 1) At that height your cell phone would pick up multiple cell sites. > This causes some interesting problems for the cell carriers in some > cases. Cell phone switches are actually quite resistant to this problem and can ignore phones that appear simultaniously on multiple switches, if they are causing a problem. In addition, cell tower antennas are directional and designed to ignore signals well above the antenna, so it's not likely you'll even make a connection if the aircraft is flying. > 2) To maintain the revenue stream those GTE Airphones generate. American Airlines has disabled all their AT&T seat phones. United still has Verizon (formerly GTE Airphone) activated, but they are try to get people to use the laptop ports for email & web browsing. Voice calls have long since lost their business case. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #810 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 29 01:55:04 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBT6t3414745; Mon, 29 Dec 2003 01:55:04 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 01:55:04 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312290655.hBT6t3414745@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 V22 #811 TELECOM Digest Mon, 29 Dec 2003 01:55:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 811 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Rebuilding Mailing List - Please Read/Respond (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (Lisa Hancock) Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone (joejones@marvinsmartian) Re: Free Worldwide Calling Now For Holidays (David Zinkin) Re: Free Worldwide Calling Now For Holidays (John R. Levine) Is That Possible? (dado) Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (Henry) Bush Signs Parts of Patriot Act II Into Law - Stealthily (Monty Solomon) Re: Norwegian Cleared of DVD Piracy Charges (Jay Hennigan) Re: Busy Signal Madness (Jay Hennigan) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 00:00:00 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started I HAD HOPED BY NOW TO QUIT RUNNING THIS MESSAGE, BUT SOMEONE IS CONCERNED THAT SEVERAL HUNDRED OF THE "REAL NAMES" ON THE LIST WILL GET DUMPED IN A FEW DAYS BECAUSE THEY WERE SIMPLY TOO BUSY OR ON VACATION AND UNABLE TO RESPOND. WE SHALL SEE. SO PLEASE READ AND RESPOND IF YOU HAVE NOT YET. This announcement is ONLY for those of you who are on (or want to be on) the TELECOM Digest direct email list (as opposed, for example, to the c.d.t. readers or the web page readers.) Since the automation a few years ago of the mailing list using the majordomo program, our mailing list has become very garbage and spam ridden. Ideally, people who use our 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' to subscribe should be people who are interested in the Digest and want to read it. But spammers who grab every email address they can find here have also spammed the subscription robot pretty badly. During a recent audit of the 'names' on the Telecom mailing list, a large number of names/email addresses have been found that are just essentially sink- holes. That is to say, the Digest just goes in there and disappears like spam. They are 'names' that majordomo has added because a spammer sent automated mail which contained data that majordomo took to be a request to subscribe. The subscription was then started automatically and the new recipient in fact never intended to subscribe, and simply has his own filter rules, etc set to dump it on arrival. In some cases they do not know TELECOM Digest is even arriving; in a few other cases they have asked to be discontinued, and I explained to them how to do that. So as my contribution to reducing the overall volume of spam on the net, I am going to *rebuild the mailing list from scratch*, and take majordomo out of the picture, at least until the mess gets cleared up. I do not want the Digest going to people who do not want it, or do not know what it is, etc. I do not like the idea of inflated statistics of 'readers' even if it is just a few. As of January 1, 2004, the mailing list will be rebuilt. You **MUST** resubscribe before that point if you wish to remain on our mailing list. This does NOT pertain to you if you only read c.d.t. as a Usenet group, or if you only look at http://telecom-digest.org or if you only read the Yahoo or AOL or Compuserve versions of telecom. This ONLY applies to you if you receive email daily from 'editor@telecom-digest.org' entitled 'TELECOM Digest' and you wish to continue receiving same. In order to continue receiving that piece of email each day, effective Januay 1, 2004 you will need to do this: Send a single line email to editor@telecom-digest.org ... (Make *certain* it comes from the same address you want on the list.) In the subject line say 'Subscribe' and your email address and the name used on that account. Do not just paste this message into a reply. Start from scratch. Add no other comments to that message other than the subject 'subscribe' and a single line saying the same thing along with email address and name johndoe@whatever.site (John Doe) This message will be repeated in every issue of the Digest now through January 1. Shortly after that date the old majordomo list will be removed. Please do not write to me around January 5 or January 10 to complain 'where is Digest? It is not getting here'. Here is to hopefully having a mostly spam/vandal free net sometime in the next year or so. PAT ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Date: 26 Dec 2003 12:33:16 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Wesrock@aol.com wrote > It was not just in the waning days of SxS. The Los Angeles > metropolitan area grew up mostly as a collection of small SxS offices > which grew to very large SxS offices and as early as the late 1920s or > early 1930s Pacific Bell, almost out of necessity put senders on many, > eventually probably all, SxS offices. Would anyone know more about the history of Los Angeles metro telecom? I often wondered how they built that city's network out of SxS _and_ independents when most other big cities had panel and #1 xbar, both of which were designed to be used in high volume calling patterns. I'm especially curious about the 1940s and 1950s when the L.A. region quite a bit with aircraft construction during the war and California migration after the war. What functions did SxS senders provide? The Bell Labs records of the early 1970s discuss electronic front and back ends for SxS offices to extend their life and improve efficiency. A simple one was a touchtone converter. > As I recall, those were of Pac > Bell design because Bell Labs and Western Electric really considered > SxS a small-town sideshow. It certainly does seem that way, but IIRC (from the Bell Labs histories) that SxS was actually the biggest switch method the 2Bell System had, and didn't peak until _1974_. Common control systems were quite costly and not justified until there was a high minimum of lines and calling volume. Indeed, until new technologies came along in the 1960s, SxS or manual remained the choice for small PBXs. The newest technologies allowed first crossbar then ESS to _economically_ serve small size exchanges, both PBX and central office. Remember, just because a new switch was invented, it took years for it to be built and fully distributed to appropriate users in the marketplace, so older systems hung around for a long time. Note that while the first real production ESS came out by 1970, they kept on installing more SxS lines until the peak in 1974. I'm curious when Western Electric built its last new Strowger switch unit. Obviously at some point converted offices provided the remainder of switches needed for expansion or replacement. ------------------------------ From: joejones@marvinmartian.org Subject: Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 01:44:53 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications COTTP wrote: > And of course Popular Science gave him an answer filled with the > standard bovine effluvia. They do mention CD players and laptops > though but then go on to say there's never been a crash attributable > to any of these devices. Nope, but there have been a couple of pretty serious incidents, one of which I recall require the flight crew to execute a missed approach during instrument weather conditions and fairly close in to the airport (read: close to the ground). As a retired airline pilot and current aviation consultant I follow this stuff fairly close. The incident I recall the best apparently involved a laptop, or laptops, in first class, directly over the "E and E" compartment (electronics and electrical). It was never proved conclusively that the laptops caused the problem but the emperical evidence was sufficient for purposes of erring on the side of safety. > A CD players headphones probably pump out more of a current inducing > EM field that the entire cell phone does. And there are a whole lot of > them on most flights. Same with laptops, those GTE in-flight phones, > etc. The GTE flight phones are a certified avionics installation, thus they have presumably met the test of non-interference. The airlines make very little on that set up; it's there mostly for passenger convenience. The ultimate "bottom line" is that the FAA holds the operator directly responsible for determining the safety of electronic items that are not specifically permitted or prohibited by the portable electronic devices regulation. Most carriers have enough on their plates without trying to determine what is good and what is not., but they compromise with the above 10,000 foot use-it rule except for radio transmistters. That is where the real potential for interference lies, as you are dealing with harmonics or RF outward of the aircraft's antennas. Of course, the worst possible violation is someone with a portable aircraft transceiver aboard. ------------------------------ From: David Zinkin Subject: Re: Free Worldwide Calling Now For Holidays Organization: :noitazinagrO Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2003 13:07:19 GMT In article , David Zinkin wrote: > Pat, > AFAIK you can't use an ATA-186 for FWD while it's also being used for > Vonage. The ATA-186 doesn't support using two different services at > the same time, so the device would be useless for Vonage once it's > programmed to use FWD. Even then, Vonage locks its ATAs so that the > settings can't be changed. > You'd have to stick with the software-based phone or get another > hardware device, separate from the ATA you have now, to use FWD. > - David > (happy FWD user) > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Thanks for this explanation. I was > hoping to be able to have a second 'profile' in the ATA-186, one for > Vonage and one for FWD, in the same way one can use a multi-NAM > cell phone. Turn on one, the other one says 'he is not around' when > calls come to it, etc. Is there any software unlocking key for the > Cisco ATA-186 of which you are aware which would allow the needed > parameters to be changed back and forth by editing them (or moved > around with some kind of template) or in your opinion is that a very > dangerous idea for brain deseased novices like myself? PAT] A select few Vonage ATAs can be reset by taking the phone off-hook, hitting the function button, and typing 322873738 (FACTRESET) followed by the # key. But unless you're one of Vonage's earliest customers, your ATA is probably locked at the firmware level and this won't work ... and even if it did, you still wouldn't have the settings required to put the ATA back into Vonage mode once you're done using FWD. I don't know how Vonage would handle your calls if you were to somehow reprogram the ATA for FWD ... I assume they'd go to voice mail, but not having used Vonage myself I can't be certain. (What happens if someone tries to call you while the ATA is unplugged? That's probably your answer.) And even with the updated 3.0.0 firmware I've loaded into my ATA-186, which has never been used with Vonage, I don't see a feature for saving profiles. The only way I know of to reprogram the ATA once it's been firmware-locked by Vonage is to cancel your Vonage service, keep the ATA -- losing the $40 or so that Vonage would otherwise pay you to return it -- and then convince Vonage to give you the password to unlock your ATA. Per reports on other sites (most notably broadbandreports.com), some Vonage reps have provided the unlock password for a $15 fee, while others say no such policy exists to provide the password for any price. Hope this helps, - David [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I know that whenever Vonage cannot reach a subscriber for whatever reason they send the call to voice mail -- even when the box is plugged in but for whatever reason Vonage thinks they cannot see it, such as firewall misconfiguration or network congestion, etc. But your point about getting the ATA-186 back to original configuration following a reset (if your scheme does in fact work) is a good one. I was thinking about 'downloading' the ATA Vonage characteristics to a file, then uploading or 'flashing' the box to get the contents back into it. I do not have a spare socket on my Linksys to simply plug an additional ATA in. I only have four sockets back there; they are all in use. (three computers and one ATA box). To get another ATA box would mean having to get another Linksys and chain them together. Or I could purchase one of the FWD phones preconfigured, swap it all (including its ATA) in and out on the port (.100) used for phone service. Anyway, my desk is cluttered enough as it is ... with no guarentee that FWD will keep their 'holiday special' of interconnection to the telephone network around forever. Plus which on Vonage, they have DID numbers so we subscribers can receive incoming calls, something that is not possible with FWD at present (if ever; considering it is free I cannot imagine them handing out DID lines as well!) And my earlier notion of possibly flashing the ATA box in each direction with the desired profile of the day gets me a little pit in my stomach anyway. I think I am just going to forget about it and stick with Vonage, which is a good deal anyway. Last point: anyone who wants to 'test drive' Vongage for one month free of charge, send me a note and request an e-coupon good for one month of free service. You'll get the e-coupon in return email. PAT] ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Free Worldwide Calling Now For Holidays Date: 27 Dec 2003 15:45:02 -0500 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Be warned that nearly all of the used ATAs sold on e-bay are also from >> Vonage so they are equally useless on anything other than Vonage. > If Cisco gear is anything like NetGear stuff all you have to do is > perform a certain power up sequence to reset everything. Haven't > really looked into it lately. It's not. Early ATAs had a standard global reset sequence, but the new ones are designed so that they can be locked to a provider. Since the providers hand them out free or below cost, it's not surprising they do that. It's like cell phones which are $20 with two years' service or $200 without. ------------------------------ From: george_micheal987@yahoo.com (dado) Subject: Is That Possible? Date: 28 Dec 2003 06:27:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Hi, Can PBX (private branch exchange) line access the internet ?? Here is the situation: The City A (central region) has its own leased line and it's server. Other cities B,C,D just connect to the central region (city A) through pbx line. (We all in the same country). My question now, is that possible that cites (b,c,d) can get the internet connection through pbx line ?? If that is possible what are the requirements?? Thanks for your attention and time. Merry Christmas! ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 17:41:24 +0200 Organization: Elisa Internet customer Greetings. If there is a FAQ for this somewhere or a clearly-written info site, I would be grateful for a pointer. Some years ago, we changed our phone service to ISDN. We bought the little box that connects to the incoming phone line in the wall. We also had to buy a new modem (actually not a modem but an ISDN terminal adapter (TA)). In addition to a port for connecting the TA, the little ISDN box has two jacks for connecting our old analog phones (with ISDN you get two phone numbers). Everything worked fine, and I was happy. A couple of years ago, we got cablemodem service. The ISP is still the same, and they provide (and own) the actual cable-modem device. I have kept my ISDN TA as a backup system and test it from time to time, but the cable-modem feeding into a router serving our little home-LAN is our normal path to the 'net nowadays. Everything works fine, and I am happy. Except ... the siren-song of 'progress' is echoing all around me, and I have decided to try to educate myself about my options. What I want to know is what sort of physical changes would be involved in switching to ADSL. The cable-modem would become superfluous and would go back to the ISP. The phone company would change the format of the line from ISDN to ADSL. But what would that mean? Would there just be a different 'little box' to replace my ISDN box? Any other hardware required? Would the ADSL box have a port for the router, and jacks for the phones? Would we still have two phone numbers? Would there be any way to connect the ISDN TA, or would that be completely surplus? Are there general answers to these questions, or does everything depend on the specifics of our local situation? I have learned that it is best to know as much as possible _before_ calling the locals to ask for even general information. Thanks in advance. Cheers, Henry ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 18:28:17 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Bush Signs Parts of Patriot Act II Into Law - Stealthily WITH A WHISPER, NOT A BANG By David Martin On December 13, when U.S. forces captured Saddam Hussein, President George W. Bush not only celebrated with his national security team, but also pulled out his pen and signed into law a bill that grants the FBI sweeping new powers. A White House spokesperson explained the curious timing of the signing -- on a Saturday -- as "the President signs bills seven days a week." But the last time Bush signed a bill into law on a Saturday happened more than a year ago -- on a spending bill that the President needed to sign, to prevent shuttng down the federal government the following Monday. By signing the bill on the day of Hussein's capture, Bush effectively consigned a dramatic expansion of the USA Patriot Act to a mere footnote. Consequently, while most Americans watched as Hussein was probed for head lice, few were aware that the FBI had just obtained the power to probe their financial records, even if the feds don't suspect their involvement in crime or terrorism. http://www.sacurrent.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=10705756&BRD=2318&PAG=461&dept_id=482778&rfi=6 ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: Norwegian Cleared of Hollywood DVD Piracy Charges Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 21:47:25 -0800 On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:24:26 -0500, Monty Solomon wrote: > By Alister Doyle > OSLO, Dec 22 (Reuters) - An Oslo appeal court cleared a 20-year-old > Norwegian man of DVD piracy charges on Monday in a new setback for > Hollywood studios which say unauthorised copying costs them billions > of dollars a year. > Upholding a verdict by a lower court in January, the court said that > Jon Johansen had broken no laws by helping to unlock a code and > distribute a computer program on the Internet enabling unauthorised > copying of DVD movies. The movie industry has been deliberately distorting the facts of this issue since it began. The DeCSS code has absolutely no effect on anyone's ability to copy DVD movies. It is and always has been possible to make a bit-for-bit copy of a DVD with or without Jon Johansen's code. The copy will be identical to the original, encrypted just like the original, and will play just like the original on any platform that can play the original. Bits is bits, a copying mechanism doesn't know or care if the underlying material is encrypted. Claiming that DeCSS enables unauthorized copying is smoke and mirrors. What DeCSS does is to allow the _viewing_ of encrypted DVDs on platforms not supported by the movie industry (such as PCs running Linux.) The software has nothing whatsoever to do with copying. It accomplishes the exact same function as the software embedded in every DVD player on the market designed to play movies, but on a variety of platforms. Without DeCSS, Linux users would be _less_ likely to purchase DVDs as they would be unable to view them in the same manner as Windows users. The industry is tweaked that someone not only figured out their algorithm but was able to show that it was simple enough to be printed on T-shirts. ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: Busy Signal Madness! Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2003 21:57:17 -0800 On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 05:46:05 -0800, bmooo wrote: > Our land-line gives a caller 1-1/2 rings and then a fast busy signal. > We hear the rings, but no one is there when we pick up. > Suspecting a particular telephone malfunction, we tried plugging in > only 1 of our 3 phones/computer modem in turn, but that has not > helped. > For starters does this sound like an inside or outside problem? We do > not have Inside Wire Maintenance on our phone plan. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: If you have an 'official' demarc or > place outside or on a wall where telco's responsibility begins and > ends, try taking ONE of the phones to that location. At the demarc, > split the connection from telco to your premises and plug your ONE > phone in that location. Use a cell phone to dial into your number > and see if the problem persists or if it is cured. Pat's suggestion is a good one. Additionally, try unplugging the demarc entirely, and see if the calling party gets ring-no-answer. If so, the problem is in your wiring, if it's still bad it's the telco's problem. What you are describing is called "Ring-trip". Normal idle voltage on a phone line is around 50 volts DC. A ringing signal adds a 90-volt AC signal to that voltage. Something on your line is breaking down when the high voltage ringing signal appears, and drawing enough current to resemble a phone coming off-hook as if answered. As soon as this happens, the ringing voltage goes away, the breakdown heals, and it's as if you hung up on the caller. The CO sees the dropped call and plays a fast-busy to cue the caller to hang up. The most common cause of this is a lightning protector that is too sensitive and energizing on the ringing signal. These are located at the demarc itself on the telco side, and at the central office. It could also be a bad card in the central office switch or wet or bad cable. Wet or bad cable will usually also have other noticable effects like squeals or static. If you have any surge strips or UPS devices with a "phone line protector" feature, unplug your line from them. These are gimmicks that really don't do anything for you and can cause the exact troubles you're describing. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #811 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Dec 29 14:29:03 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBTJT3318565; Mon, 29 Dec 2003 14:29:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 14:29:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312291929.hBTJT3318565@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 V22 #812 TELECOM Digest Mon, 29 Dec 2003 14:28:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 812 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Mailing List Being Rebuilt - Please Read/Respond (TELECOM Editor) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (Chip G) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (BN) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (Carl Navarro) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (Danny Burstein) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (Jay Hennigan) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (John R. Levine) Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone (DevilsPGD) Archives For China Telegraph Company (kayi) Re: Busy Signal Madness! (Doug Faunt N6TQS) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 22:03:04 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started This announcement is ONLY for those of you who are on (or want to be on) the TELECOM Digest direct email list (as opposed, for example, to the c.d.t. readers or the web page readers.) Since the automation a few years ago of the mailing list using the majordomo program, our mailing list has become very garbage and spam ridden. Ideally, people who use our 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' to subscribe should be people who are interested in the Digest and want to read it. But spammers who grab every email address they can find here have also spammed the subscription robot pretty badly. During a recent audit of the 'names' on the Telecom mailing list, a large number of names/email addresses have been found that are just essentially sink- holes. That is to say, the Digest just goes in there and disappears like spam. They are 'names' that majordomo has added because a spammer sent automated mail which contained data that majordomo took to be a request to subscribe. The subscription was then started automatically and the new recipient in fact never intended to subscribe, and simply has his own filter rules, etc set to dump it on arrival. In some cases they do not know TELECOM Digest is even arriving; in a few other cases they have asked to be discontinued, and I explained to them how to do that. So as my contribution to reducing the overall volume of spam on the net, I am going to *rebuild the mailing list from scratch*, and take majordomo out of the picture, at least until the mess gets cleared up. I do not want the Digest going to people who do not want it, or do not know what it is, etc. I do not like the idea of inflated statistics of 'readers' even if it is just a few. As of January 1, 2004, the mailing list will be rebuilt. You **MUST** resubscribe before that point if you wish to remain on our mailing list. This does NOT pertain to you if you only read c.d.t. as a Usenet group, or if you only look at http://telecom-digest.org or if you only read the Yahoo or AOL or Compuserve versions of telecom. This ONLY applies to you if you receive email daily from 'editor@telecom-digest.org' entitled 'TELECOM Digest' and you wish to continue receiving same. In order to continue receiving that piece of email each day, effective Januay 1, 2004 you will need to do this: Send a single line email to editor@telecom-digest.org ... (Make *certain* it comes from the same address you want on the list.) In the subject line say 'Subscribe' and your email address and the name used on that account. Do not just paste this message into a reply. Start from scratch. Add no other comments to that message other than the subject 'subscribe' and a single line saying the same thing along with email address and name johndoe@whatever.site (John Doe) This message will be repeated in every issue of the Digest now through January 1. Shortly after that date the old majordomo list will be removed. Please do not write to me around January 5 or January 10 to complain 'where is Digest? It is not getting here'. Here is to hopefully having a mostly spam/vandal free net sometime in the next year or so. PAT ------------------------------ From: Chip G Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Organization: Comcast Online Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 17:17:02 GMT Personally, I would stick with cable modem if you are satisfied with the service for your purpose. It definitely depends on your experience in your area though. Personally, in our area, I find that cable modem (Comcast in my case) is much-much faster than ADSL (SBC in my case). I had ISDN BRI but replaced it with ADSL about 5 years ago. About 4 years ago, I converted to cable modem and have not regretted the switch. I have telephone service through my cable provider as well. If you decide to go with ADSL, most carriers allow you to purchase your own ADSL "modem" or get one with their service. Either way, you will need one which will replace your ISDN TA. As far as I know, each ADSL circuit can only support a single voice line (simultaneous voice conversation) though some carriers will allow you to have multiple numbers ring in on that same voice channel. Only one conversation at a time though. In our area, you can also get various feature packages such as call forward, call forward busy, call waiting, caller ID, etc. On the same wires, the ADSL circuit carries the data connection to your ISP. You can have a voice conversation and a data connection simultaneously. The technology is a little different than the ISDN you have experienced in the past. If you were using ISDN BRI ... very likely for home use, then you had access to three basic channels ... a 16Kbps signalling circuit and two 64Kbps bearer circuits which could be used for two simultaneous voice, two simultaneous data (not usually configured), one 128Kbps data (sometimes used), or one voice/one 64Kbps data (usually used). Each bearer channel is usually configured with its own telephone number. With ADSL, the services vary and you will need to get the specifics from your carrier. However, the basics are: 1 - single voice circuit with its own telephone number. 2 - single data circuit. Usually about 1.5 Mbps downstream (from CO to you). Usually about 128 - 256 Kbps upstream (from yo u to CO). You then need an ISP (very frequently provided by the carrier but also available from alternative providers in many areas). Love to hear what you decide and how it works out for you. Hope this helps, Chip Henry wrote in message news:telecom22.811.7@telecom-digest.org: > Greetings. If there is a FAQ for this somewhere or a clearly-written > info site, I would be grateful for a pointer. > Some years ago, we changed our phone service to ISDN. We bought the > little box that connects to the incoming phone line in the wall. We > also had to buy a new modem (actually not a modem but an ISDN terminal > adapter (TA)). In addition to a port for connecting the TA, the little > ISDN box has two jacks for connecting our old analog phones (with ISDN > you get two phone numbers). > Everything worked fine, and I was happy. > A couple of years ago, we got cablemodem service. The ISP is still the > same, and they provide (and own) the actual cable-modem device. > I have kept my ISDN TA as a backup system and test it from time to > time, but the cable-modem feeding into a router serving our little > home-LAN is our normal path to the 'net nowadays. > Everything works fine, and I am happy. > Except ... the siren-song of 'progress' is echoing all around me, and > I have decided to try to educate myself about my options. What I want > to know is what sort of physical changes would be involved in > switching to ADSL. > The cable-modem would become superfluous and would go back to the ISP. > The phone company would change the format of the line from ISDN to > ADSL. But what would that mean? > Would there just be a different 'little box' to replace my ISDN box? Any > other hardware required? Would the ADSL box have a port for the router, > and jacks for the phones? Would we still have two phone numbers? Would > there be any way to connect the ISDN TA, or would that be completely > surplus? > Are there general answers to these questions, or does everything > depend on the specifics of our local situation? I have learned that it > is best to know as much as possible _before_ calling the locals to ask > for even general information. > Thanks in advance. > Cheers, > Henry ------------------------------ Reply-To: BN From: BN Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:35:55 -0500 Organization: Bell Sympatico You would call your carrier and terminate the ISDN line altogether. A standard line would take its place (most likely the same copper). One line number is issued, or one of your existing line numbers could be ported. You would cancel your cable Internet access and an ADSL modem would take its place, but instead of connecting to the coax in your house it would connect to a telephone jack. All other telephone set in the home would have to have DSL filters attached (normally provided). You would first have to determine if DSL service is available in your area. try www.dslreports.com for lots of info and rates. DSL speeds may not be nearly as good as your cable, so be careful. Analyze what your ISDN service is costing you + cable access and compare that to what a regular plain old telephone line with services will cost + ADSL. Make sure your compare the downstream and upstream speeds of both Internet access solutions to get a fair comparison. If you have an existing contract in place for the ISDN line make sure you research what the termination fee is going to be (if any). Cheers. ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Reply-To: cnavarro@wcnet.org Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:11:50 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 17:41:24 +0200, henry999@eircom.net (Henry) wrote: > Greetings. If there is a FAQ for this somewhere or a clearly-written > info site, I would be grateful for a pointer. > The phone company would change the format of the line from ISDN to > ADSL. But what would that mean? Just that. Instead of sending one type of signal, they'd send another. You lose the 2 lines of ISDN, since the second bearer path is now ADSL. > Would there just be a different 'little box' to replace my ISDN box? Any > other hardware required? Would the ADSL box have a port for the router, > and jacks for the phones? Would we still have two phone numbers? Would > there be any way to connect the ISDN TA, or would that be completely > surplus? They'd bring out a different box, you'd plug it into the router, and maybe make a couple of configuration changes and you'd be on ADSL. The single line of phone service is bridged to the ADSL line and it uses a filter to pass the low frequencies. Except for a pricing difference, it seems to be a step backward to go back to ADSL from cable modem. Most "bronze plus" offerings are 768K down and 128 up for $30-50/month. Our residential cable is $45/month for up to 1.5M down. On the phone side, a 2-line hunt group is about $90/month. Now if I started from dial-up, I might start with an SBC offering of $30/month ADSL for 12 months as a business customer. As ever, YMMV :-) Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: danny burstein Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:28:09 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In henry999@eircom.net (Henry) writes: [ snips throughout ] > I have kept my ISDN TA as a backup system and test it from time to ... > Except ... the siren-song of 'progress' is echoing all around me, and > I have decided to try to educate myself about my options. What I want > to know is what sort of physical changes would be involved in > switching to ADSL. > The phone company would change the format of the line from ISDN to > ADSL. But what would that mean? > Would there just be a different 'little box' to replace my ISDN box? Any > other hardware required? Would the ADSL box have a port for the router, > and jacks for the phones? Would we still have two phone numbers? Would > there be any way to connect the ISDN TA, or would that be completely > surplus? The standard setup for ISDN in the US uses the exact same type of (physical) wire pair that a regular phone line would, but the signalling on it -- even though it's using the same frequencies as a standard voice line -- is very different. As you've noticed, you have to supply (what everyone calls) an ISDN Modem plugged into the wire, and you can then grab the digital circuit directly for 64 or 128k connections (by choosing one or two channels), or you can plug two sets of regular phone equipment (including traditional modems) into it. If you've tried plugging a standard phone into the ISDN wire (ahead of the "isdn modem") you'll have noticed either a click-click every second or so (that's the central office asking if there's anything on your end) or something sounding kind of like a jet plane overhead. The latter occurs if the central office believes you've got the right equipment in place and is sending the full spectrum isdn signal down to you. ADSL, on the other hand, doesn't use the standard voice frequencies but goes much higher up the spectrum. A standard telephone, and common test sets, won't hear any of the adsl signal and the line will seem to be dead (which causes all sorts of problems when the wires are grabbed for other customers, alas). It also has a wider bandwidth, so it can provide higher speeds. (That's a bit simplified, but it'll do for now). Since the frequencies used for voice and for ADSL are different, this lets a regular copper pair of wires handle both a traditional voice call, and also the adsl circuit. This muti-purpose use of a wire pair is called "line sharing". Now for the fun part. In theory, since ISDN uses the same sets of frequencies as a regular voice channel, the telco could throw an adsl high frequency signal onto the same wire pair as an isdn circuit. HOWEVER, this is a very limited market; the telcos hate ISDN with a passion, and there's no profit in it. Hence there's no equipment certified to handle this, no telco tariffs for it, and no provisions. So ... if you're looking for ADSL on that wire pair, the telco will first have to down-convert it to a regular single number voice line, and then throw the ADSL signal on top of it. On your side of the connection you'll have, what in effect is, a "y" connector -- with one of the wires handling regular voice grade signals and going to your phone, etc., and the other side handling the ADSL stuff. The ADSL wire will lead to (you guessed it) an "adsl modem" (or "adsl router") and from there you'd hook up your computer equipment. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 01:57:29 -0800 On Sun, 28 Dec 2003 17:41:24 +0200, Henry wrote: > Some years ago, we changed our phone service to ISDN. We bought the > little box that connects to the incoming phone line in the wall. We > also had to buy a new modem (actually not a modem but an ISDN terminal > adapter (TA)). In addition to a port for connecting the TA, the little > ISDN box has two jacks for connecting our old analog phones (with ISDN > you get two phone numbers). > Everything worked fine, and I was happy. > Except ... the siren-song of 'progress' is echoing all around me, and > I have decided to try to educate myself about my options. What I want > to know is what sort of physical changes would be involved in > switching to ADSL. ISDN is a synchronous digital service with two 64K "bearer" channels and one 16k "driver" channel. As you know, the bearer channels can be used for a voice call or for data. If used for data, they can be combined for a total of 128K data bandwidth. The driver channel is normally used for call setup and teardown, but can also be used if provisioned for low-speed data, but this is rare in the USA. There's some other overhead that increases the raw bandwidth to 192 kbits/s. A standard analog (POTS -- Plain Old Telephone Service) line uses frequencies of from DC to 4 Kilohertz. Your ISDN line uses a substantially higer range of frequencies. > The phone company would change the format of the line from ISDN to > ADSL. But what would that mean? You would have to revert from ISDN to POTS, as the ADSL signal uses part of the same frequency range as ISDN. If you want the ability to have two simultaneous voice calls, you would need two POTS lines. You could have two numbers but one line with distinctive ringing, however the second caller would get a busy signal. Two POTS lines typically cost about the same as one ISDN line, but you would have the additional cost of the DSL service. Only one line is needed unless you want two simultaneous voice calls. > Would there just be a different 'little box' to replace my ISDN box? Any > other hardware required? Would the ADSL box have a port for the router, > and jacks for the phones? Would we still have two phone numbers? Would > there be any way to connect the ISDN TA, or would that be completely > surplus? The ISDN box would be surplus. You would rewire your voice phones to connect directly to the line(s) that come in, bypassing the box. This has the advantage that the phones would still function without power. A small low-pass filter goes inline with each phone to strip off the DSL signal from the voice phone. You would have a DSL modem or router. Depending on your provider, the router function (NAT, firewall, etc.) may be built in to the DSL box, or the DSL box may be just a "modem" similar to your cable modem. Its output is typically ethernet but may also have USB to connect to your computer(s). Although it's called a "modem", its connection is not to the serial port and there is no dialing involved. The hardware is similar in function and conection to your cable modem. Unlike ISDN, voice calls don't share the same bandwidth as data, although they ride the same wire. Thus, talking on the phone doesn't slow down your data throughput. Also unlike ISDN, most residential DSL is asymmetrical or "ADSL", meaning that your download speed is greater than your upload speed, similar to a cable modem. > Are there general answers to these questions, or does everything depend > on the specifics of our local situation? I have learned that it is best > to know as much as possible _before_ calling the locals to ask for even > general information. Some things depend on local specifics such as exact speeds, static vs. dynamic IP addresses, specifics of hardware, etc. The above overview is fairly generic. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Dec 2003 07:51:35 -0000 From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > The phone company would change the format of the line from ISDN to > ADSL. But what would that mean? (This answer is based on North American experience but I think it's equally true everywhere else.) ADSL and ISDN have absolutely nothing in common except that they provide some sort of phone service over copper wires. ISDN changes the way your voice calls are transmitted, by turning them into digital data at your home (that's what the box does) and running the digital data straight into the phone switch. ADSL, on the other hand, leaves the old-fashioned analog phone signal on the phone line just like it's been for the past century. It also sticks a bunch of digital data on the same line, encoded as high frequencies that voice doesn't use. In your house, you run the phone line directly into the ADSL modem which usually has an Ethernet or USB connector to connect to your PC. You can also connect your voice phones directly to the phone line, except that if you do, you'll can hear harmonics of the ADSL data as loud hiss pop click noises. To make the noise (mostly) go away, you put filters on the lines in front of the phones. If your phone wiring permits, the best way to do that is to split the phone wire near the place where it enters your house with one wire going to the ADSL modem, and the other to a filter and then to the existing phone wiring. If you can't do that, you can buy a bunch of filters that plug between the phone and the jack on the wall and put one in front of each phone. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com Village Trustee and Sewer Commissioner http://iecc.com/johnl Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: DevilsPGD Subject: Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone Organization: EasyNews, UseNet Made Easy! Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 08:42:23 GMT In message <> Clark W. Griswold, Jr. <73115.1041@compuserve.com> did ramble: >> 2) To maintain the revenue stream those GTE Airphones generate. > American Airlines has disabled all their AT&T seat phones. United > still has Verizon (formerly GTE Airphone) activated, but they are > try to get people to use the laptop ports for email and web > browsing. Voice calls have long since lost their business case. Any idea what the pricing is like for the laptop ports? ================ You're just jealous because the voices only talk to me. ------------------------------ From: kayi Subject: Archives For China Telegraph Company Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 02:47:30 +1100 Hi, I am trying to find the location for the archives of China Telegraph Company for the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Do you have any suggestions. The company was latter eaten by another company. Any leads would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Anthony ------------------------------ From: Doug Faunt N6TQS Subject: Re: Busy Signal Madness! Date: 29 Dec 2003 07:44:53 -0500 Organization: at home, in Oakland, California Jay Hennigan writes: > On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 05:46:05 -0800, bmooo wrote: >> Our land-line gives a caller 1-1/2 rings and then a fast busy signal. >> We hear the rings, but no one is there when we pick up. >> Suspecting a particular telephone malfunction, we tried plugging in >> only 1 of our 3 phones/computer modem in turn, but that has not >> helped. >> For starters does this sound like an inside or outside problem? We do >> not have Inside Wire Maintenance on our phone plan. > Pat's suggestion is a good one. Additionally, try unplugging the demarc > entirely, and see if the calling party gets ring-no-answer. If so, the > problem is in your wiring, if it's still bad it's the telco's problem. > What you are describing is called "Ring-trip". Normal idle voltage on > a phone line is around 50 volts DC. A ringing signal adds a 90-volt > AC signal to that voltage. Something on your line is breaking down > when the high voltage ringing signal appears, and drawing enough > current to resemble a phone coming off-hook as if answered. As soon > as this happens, the ringing voltage goes away, the breakdown heals, > and it's as if you hung up on the caller. The CO sees the dropped > call and plays a fast-busy to cue the caller to hang up. The last time this happened to me, it was because a cat had urinated on one of the telephone jacks. YMMV, 73, doug ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #812 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 30 04:28:02 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBU9S1X22914; Tue, 30 Dec 2003 04:28:02 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 04:28:02 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312300928.hBU9S1X22914@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 V22 #813 TELECOM Digest Tue, 30 Dec 2003 04:28:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 813 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Mailing List Being Rebuilt - Please Read/Respond (TELECOM Digest) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (Wesrock@aol.com) Obituary: WebTV Co-Founder Phil Goldman Dies at 39 (Monty Solomon) America's Online Pursuits: Changing Picture of Online (Monty Solomon) Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone (Clark W. Griswold, Jr.) Re: TiVo Clones Spreading Rapidly (yeltrabnhoj@email.com) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (William Warren) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Thanks to the Tech Gurus (Henry) Re: How to Get Accurate Directory Listings From the Web? (Frank Lopez) Linksys Boxen (Joey Lindstrom) FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers (Marcus Didius Falco) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 22:03:04 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started This announcement is ONLY for those of you who are on (or want to be on) the TELECOM Digest direct email list (as opposed, for example, to the c.d.t. readers or the web page readers.) Since the automation a few years ago of the mailing list using the majordomo program, our mailing list has become very garbage and spam ridden. Ideally, people who use our 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' to subscribe should be people who are interested in the Digest and want to read it. But spammers who grab every email address they can find here have also spammed the subscription robot pretty badly. During a recent audit of the 'names' on the Telecom mailing list, a large number of names/email addresses have been found that are just essentially sink- holes. That is to say, the Digest just goes in there and disappears like spam. They are 'names' that majordomo has added because a spammer sent automated mail which contained data that majordomo took to be a request to subscribe. The subscription was then started automatically and the new recipient in fact never intended to subscribe, and simply has his own filter rules, etc set to dump it on arrival. In some cases they do not know TELECOM Digest is even arriving; in a few other cases they have asked to be discontinued, and I explained to them how to do that. So as my contribution to reducing the overall volume of spam on the net, I am going to *rebuild the mailing list from scratch*, and take majordomo out of the picture, at least until the mess gets cleared up. I do not want the Digest going to people who do not want it, or do not know what it is, etc. I do not like the idea of inflated statistics of 'readers' even if it is just a few. As of January 1, 2004, the mailing list will be rebuilt. You **MUST** resubscribe before that point if you wish to remain on our mailing list. This does NOT pertain to you if you only read c.d.t. as a Usenet group, or if you only look at http://telecom-digest.org or if you only read the Yahoo or AOL or Compuserve versions of telecom. This ONLY applies to you if you receive email daily from 'editor@telecom-digest.org' entitled 'TELECOM Digest' and you wish to continue receiving same. In order to continue receiving that piece of email each day, effective Januay 1, 2004 you will need to do this: Send a single line email to editor@telecom-digest.org ... (Make *certain* it comes from the same address you want on the list.) In the subject line say 'Subscribe' and your email address and the name used on that account. Do not just paste this message into a reply. Start from scratch. Add no other comments to that message other than the subject 'subscribe' and a single line saying the same thing along with email address and name johndoe@whatever.site (John Doe) This message will be repeated in every issue of the Digest now through January 1. Shortly after that date the old majordomo list will be removed. Please do not write to me around January 5 or January 10 to complain 'where is Digest? It is not getting here'. Here is to hopefully having a mostly spam/vandal free net sometime in the next year or so. PAT ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 19:34:30 EST Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing On 26 Dec 2003 12:33:16 -0800: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > Would anyone know more about the history of Los Angeles metro telecom? > I often wondered how they built that city's network out of SxS _and_ > independents when most other big cities had panel and #1 xbar, both of > which were designed to be used in high volume calling patterns. The first dial office in Oklahoma installed by the Bell company in Oklahoma was installed in 1920, with Strowger (I believe Automatic Electric) equipment because Western Electric did not supply SxS equipment then. The remainder of the city remained manual until it was converted to step (now with W.E. equipment) in 1928. It was probably in the early 1960s that I wrote the news stories about that office to tell customers that the dial tone would be changing. The original A.E. ringing machine was being changed out because it could no longer handle the load, the office having been expanded many times (with W.E. switches after those became available). Some of the original A.E. line switches in their glass cases were still in service at that time. I believe the Dallas Automatic Telephone Company was also non-Western Electric; of course, the D.A.T.Co. was an independent then and a competitor of the Bell company. (The doorway over the building still had "D.A.T.Co." over the door at least into the 1960s, perhaps later. It was noted, years after the Bell company acquired it, for being moved back something like two feet while in service for a road widening project.) This is leading up to noting the fact that what were large cities in the 1910s and 1920s, say, did not include such places as Tulsa, Oklahoma City, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston or San Antonio. The same thing was true then of Los Angeles, which was a collection of relatively small places, many of them served by independent companies. St. Louis and Kansas City were the only places in Southwestern Bell territory that were originally Panel Type (and later, of course, #1XB was added). As far as I can determine, the only place south or west of Kansas City with panel was San Francisco, possible including Oakland. (I'm not sure about New Orleans; Mark Cuccia can no doubt tell us.) All those other places were out in the sticks -- the equivalent of today's "flyover country" and of little interest then to Bell Labs or Western Electric. SxS was for small places. And as those SxS places grew, the installed SxS equipment became a large investment, and so additions were made with SxS equipment. There were digit absorbing switches, and various other arrangements -- today we would call them kludges -- for making SxS routing and trunking work in such places. Panel Type and 1XB had no provision for dealing with SxS pulsing. When 1XB came around, presumably the easterners assumed that any place which would need them would be panel. It was only when 5XB came out that there was an alternative to step in large step cities. So while it was possible to establish new 5XB offices in such cities, the existing huge embedded SxS investment could not be thrown out. When the Oklahoma City metro calling area was vastly expanded, in the late 1960s, I believe, although it may have been later, everybody assumed an XB Tandem or even a 4A to make it possible, but no, an engineering study showed that a SxS tandem would be entirely practical and at far less cost. > I'm especially curious about the 1940s and 1950s when the > L.A. region quite a bit with aircraft construction during the war > and California migration after the war. What functions did SxS > senders provide? Their most important function was to provide translation so that the routing was not restricted to the pulses from the subscribers' phones. If I'm not mistaken, Pac Bell offices in the L.A. metro area were mostly, perhaps all, equipped with senders for this purposes (which Pac Bell had to design and have built since Bell Labs and W.E. considered this a very low priority. > The Bell Labs records of the early 1970s discuss electronic front and > back ends for SxS offices to extend their life and improve efficiency. > A simple one was a touchtone converter. I think that was the only type of converter that ever saw widespread use. > It certainly does seem that way, but IIRC (from the Bell Labs > histories) that SxS was actually the biggest switch method the 2Bell > System had, and didn't peak until _1974_. That was probably true. Before World War II (and for a number of years thereafter) there were only seven offices, all small, in Oklahoma which were dial. They included Oklahoma City, Tulsa, three towns near Oklahoma City which became suburbs and eventually integral parts of the metro area (one of those offices was behind a 3 or 4 chair barber shop), Dewey (near Bartlesville) and Konawa. I lived in Konawa for a year or two around 1950; there were three-digit numbers; except party lines had four digits, the office being terminal per line. But as the cities grew, and as dial service was extended to most towns, SxS installations grew and grew during the post-World War II years. Even after 5XB became available, as you note it was not economic for small places, and there an awful lot of them. > Common control systems were quite costly and not justified until there > was a high minimum of lines and calling volume. Indeed, until new > technologies came along in the 1960s, SxS or manual remained the > choice for small PBXs. The newest technologies allowed first crossbar > then ESS to _economically_ serve small size exchanges, both PBX and > central office. Remember, just because a new switch was invented, it > took years for it to be built and fully distributed to appropriate > users in the marketplace, so older systems hung around for a long > time. > Note that while the first real production ESS came out by 1970, they > kept on installing more SxS lines until the peak in 1974. > I'm curious when Western Electric built its last new Strowger switch > unit. Obviously at some point converted offices provided the > remainder of switches needed for expansion or replacement. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two points of interest to add to the note from Wes Leatherock ... '3 or 4 chair barbershops'; there is no such animal any longer. The very few barbershops which remain these days are almost always single person proprietor places. Only rarely will several barbers work as a group. There simply is no longer any demand for their services. I go to a salon here in Independence which has two beauticians on duty; a mother and daughter, but 'Classy Clippers' as it is known has been around for twenty years at least. Several multi-chair shops *used to exist* years ago in Chicago. And speaking of Chicago, there was a multiple phone company arrangement there years ago also. While Illinois Bell was the predominent company there (and still is, as Ameritech/SBC) in long ago times there was a small independent company -- Centel -- which had the suburbs of Park Ridge, Illinois (Hillary Clinton's home town) and Des Plaines, Illinois. Centel also had one exchange -- Newcastle -- in Chicago itself, in the area around, but not including, Ohare International Airport. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 01:06:14 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Obituary: WebTV Co-Founder Phil Goldman Dies at 39 LOS ALTOS HILLS, Calif. (AP) -- Phil Goldman, a Silicon Valley engineer who co-founded WebTV before launching a Web-based e-mail service that promised to block unwanted spam, has died. He was 39. Goldman died at home in Los Altos Hills on Friday. The cause of his death may take several weeks to determine, according to a spokeswoman for the Santa Clara County coroner's office. Over the course of his career, Goldman worked on the cusp of technology and consumer electronics at firms such as Apple Computer, General Magic and Microsoft Corp. In 1995, along with former Apple colleagues Steve Perlman and Bruce Leak, Goldman co-founded WebTV Networks, which allowed users to surf the Internet from their televisions. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40095983 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 15:16:52 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: America's Online Pursuits: The Changing Picture of Who's Online Table of Contents: Summary of Findings Table of Contents Acknowledgements Introduction Web Use and Communication Activities Information Utility Activities Financial and Transaction Activities Hobby and Entertainment Activities Conclusions Methodology Appendix http://www.pewinternet.org/reports/toc.asp?Report=106 ------------------------------ From: Clark W. Griswold, Jr. <73115.1041@compuserve.com> Subject: Re: Why the FAA Worries About Your Cellphone Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 13:03:18 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com DevilsPGD wrote: > Any idea what the pricing is like for the laptop ports? It's kind of interesting ... they have a two tier system. Limited web access is $5.99 per flight segment, but is restricted to some AirFone specific web pages with news, sports scores and stock prices. Email access is $15.98 per flight segment, plus .10 per kb for any message above 2kb. Email support appears to be to pop3 servers, plus a few web based systems (like Hotmail). Details can be found at: http://www22.verizon.com/airfone/jetconnect/jc_intro.html I would suspect it isn't going to be real popular with a per flight segment billing model. They probably need to follow the same model that the wireless internet access companies are using in airports -- so much per 24 hour window. ------------------------------ From: yeltrabnhoj@email.com Subject: Re: TiVo Clones Spreading Rapidly Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 20:08:58 GMT Organization: (reverse to reply) (John Bartley, K7AAY, Portland OR) On Fri, 26 Dec 2003 02:35:39 -0500, Monty Solomon wrote: > By Ron Lieber > WALL STREET JOURNAL > The future of TiVo may be uncertain, but the TiVolution has never been > more accessible than it is this holiday season. > TiVo, which is both popular usage for newfangled alternatives to VCRs > and the brand-name of the company that helped popularize them, once > required an upfront investment of hundreds of dollars. But, as new > competitors continue to emerge, most people can now try the new way of > watching and recording television for far less. > Hate your cable company? EchoStar Communications Corp.'s Dish Network > has started offering a free DVR box to new satellite TV subscribers. > http://www.bayarea.com/mld/cctimes/business/7563425.htm Well, yeah, but the EchoStar 5xx series PVR machines use software which is waaay behind the TiVo, Replay TV and even the old EchoStar Dishplayer. 1. Search is atrociously implemented. 2 .The PVR must be off to receive the EPG (Electronic Program Guide) update overnight. 3. If the channel changes what program they broadcast (e.g., treacly Xmas stuff iinstead of NYPD Blue), the 5x software does not adjust, so you get stuff you didn't want. 4. No automatic stretch of a recording if an event runs long. Charlie Ergen will only get my DishPlayer when he pries it from my cold, dead fingers. Nobody but a fool goes into a federal counterrorism operation without duct tape - Richard Preston, THE COBRA EVENT. ------------------------------ From: William Warren Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Organization: Comcast Online Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 20:42:10 GMT Henry wrote in message news:telecom22.811.7@telecom-digest.org: [snip] > Some years ago, we changed our phone service to ISDN. [snip] > A couple of years ago, we got cablemodem service. [snip] > I have kept my ISDN TA as a backup system and test it from time to > time, but the cable-modem feeding into a router serving our little > home-LAN is our normal path to the 'net nowadays. > Everything works fine, and I am happy. > Except ... the siren-song of 'progress' is echoing all around me, and > I have decided to try to educate myself about my options. What I want > to know is what sort of physical changes would be involved in > switching to ADSL. > The cable-modem would become superfluous and would go back to the ISP. > The phone company would change the format of the line from ISDN to > ADSL. But what would that mean? > Any other hardware required? Would the ADSL box have a port for the > router, and jacks for the phones? Would we still have two phone > numbers? Would Would there just be a different 'little box' to > replace my ISDN box? ADSL and ISDN are incompatible: they share some of the same bandwidth, and so they'd interfere with each other and can't be used together. You'll have to have your second phone number moved to a separate pair if you use ADSL, and you'll need to retire any ISDN phones you're using and replace them with regular analog "500" sets. ADSL uses an analog transmission method, in the same way that modems use audible tones to carry data over ordinary POTS lines. ADSL is designed to make use of the frequencies above 5KHz, which aren't needed for ordinary telephone calls but which can be carried on most "local" telephone cable pairs: since some of those frequencies are still audible, ADSL users must insall low-pass filters on their phones to block the high-pitched sounds of the ADSL data signals. Unlike ADSL, IDSN is not a "retrofit" of an existing technology: it is a digital service, designed from the start for digital transmission. The reason you can have two phone numbers with ISDN is that the digital signal has enough throughput to support two 64Kbps voice channels, a 9.6Kbps data channel, and a control channel. In fact, IDSL data service is just a "data only" version of ISDN, offering (IIRC) 142Kbps bidirectional data. The advantages of ADSL: 1. May be cheaper for single line users. You might have to spend more if you want to keep both phone numbers, unless you qualify for a "residence" rate on analog lines and have to pay business rates for ISDN. 2. You'll get some redundancy if your second phone number is on a separate pair. 3. Your phone lines won't require local power to work during a power outage, unlike your IDSN TA. The disadvantages of ADSL: 1. It's a consumer-grade service, with less experienced technicians and shared bandwidth from the ISP to the CO. 2. It's an Asymetric service (That's the "A" in ADSL), which offers dramatically reduced throughput _toward_ the CO. This is usually not important for consumers, since all they send toward the CO are URL's, email, etc., and the bandwidth is only needed to download images. However, if you serve a website of have significant upload requirements, you'll notice a dramatic drop. 3. ADSL can coexist with only one POTS line, whereas ISDN supports two voice channels simultaneously. 4. ISDN bandwidth is available _END-TO-END_, so every bit you send from your end goes all the way to your ISP without being thrown into a common pool the way ADSL (and cable) is. In effect, that means that you get the same speed all the time, and if your needs are for high speed transmission during peak consumer hours (~3-11 PM), you'll do better to stay with ISDN. 5. ADSL has shorter line-length restrictions than ISDN. Some telcos restrict it to 12Kilofeet from the CO, some 15, but ISDN goes out to 18Kf and can be extended to 36. On balance, I recommend you keep the ISDN for your two phone lines and retain the cable modem. FWIW. YMMV. William ------------------------------ From: henry999@eircom.net (Henry) Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Thanks to the Tech Gurus Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 06:24:02 +0200 Organization: Elisa Internet customer Thanks for all the information, both here and by private e-mail. To address the question several of you asked ('why?'), the simple answer is 'speed'. The cablemodem service available to me maxes out at 1M down and 128k up, and that level of service costs a bit _more_ per month than 1M/512 on ADSL would cost. And for not too much more I can get 2M/512 on ADSL, far surpassing the cable. However, as you chaps have advised me, there are various other factors that have to be weighed in the balance and I will take all into consideration. Thanks again. Cheers, Henry ------------------------------ From: franklopez2000@yahoo.com (Frank Lopez) Subject: Re: How to Get Accurate Directory Listings From the Web? Date: 29 Dec 2003 13:46:22 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com >>> Are there any online services that provide phone listings that are >>> refreshed frequently with an intuitive lookup UI? There is a directory of free directory assistance web sites at: http://www.callsense.com/resources/directoryassistance.htm I don't know if any of these will solve your problem. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 14:45:49 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Linksys boxen Sunday, December 28, 2003, 11:55:04 PM, TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > the box to get the contents back into it. I do not have a spare > socket on my Linksys to simply plug an additional ATA in. I only have > four sockets back there; they are all in use. (three computers and > one ATA box). To get another ATA box would mean having to get another > Linksys and chain them together. Or I could purchase one of the FWD > phones preconfigured, swap it all (including its ATA) in and out on > the port (.100) used for phone service. Anyway, my desk is Actually, Pat, if you need additional ports, all you need to do is unplug one device and plug in any standard Ethernet hub or switch into the now-vacated port, then plug whatever it was you unplugged into the hub or switch. The remaining ports on the hub or switch are now available for whatever you wanna do with 'em. The Linksys box will allow you to have up to 253 devices on your LAN. For these purposes, a 10-base-T hub would probably suffice, and you can probably get one for under $20 (not including cabling -- you'll need at least one more CAT5 cable to get all this to work: this cable will be your link between the Linksys box and the hub). Joey Lindstrom [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually I could use a 'pass through' socket back there, to attach a second Linksys box as well. But I am trying to *avoid* the additional hardware expense and keep my system as simple as possible. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2003 21:37:12 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Decisions, decisions! Whether or not to file this item under 'last laugh!' or if Mr. Farber and the original correspondents are actually **for real**. I did not do my usual editorialization of the subject line by prepending the phrase 'Last Laugh!' because I got to thinking in this age we live in of ready-made terrorists (you are a terrorist because Bush/Ashcroft say you are; how instant can it be?) this is probably a real thing. Are they going to impose long prison sentences on anyone found in possession of an almanac book? Read on, then you decide. Maybe not a genuine last laugh, but I still sit here snickering as I edit this. PAT] * Original: FROM..... Dave Farber FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers December 29, 2003 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS (AP) -- The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used for terrorist planning. In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs 'to assist with target selection and pre-operational planning.' It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways. 'The practice of researching potential targets is consistent with known methods of al-Qaida and other terrorist organizations that seek to maximize the likelihood of operational success through careful planning,' the FBI wrote. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the bulletin this week and verified its authenticity. "For local law enforcement, it's just to help give them one more piece of information to raise their suspicions," said David Heyman, a terrorism expert for the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. "It helps make sure one more bad guy doesn't get away from a traffic stop, maybe gives police a little bit more reason to follow up on this." The FBI noted that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, 'the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities.' But it warned that when combined with suspicious behavior -- such as apparent surveillance -- a person with an almanac 'may point to possible terrorist planning.' "I don't think anyone would consider us a harmful entity," said Kevin Seabrooke, senior editor of The World Almanac. He said the reference book includes about a dozen pages out of its 1,000 pages total listing the world's tallest buildings and bridges but includes no diagrams or architectural schematics. "It's stuff that's widely available on the Internet," he said. The publisher for The Old Farmers Almanac said Monday terrorists would probably find statistical reference books more useful than the collections of Americana in his famous publication of weather predictions and witticisms. "While we doubt that our editorial content would be of particular interest to people who would wish to do us harm, we will certainly cooperate to the fullest with national authorities at any level they deem appropriate," publisher John Pierce said. The FBI said information typically found in almanacs that could be useful for terrorists includes profiles of cities and states and information about waterways, bridges, dams, reservoirs, tunnels, buildings and landmarks. It said this information is often accompanied by photographs and maps. The FBI urged police to report such discoveries to the local U.S. Joint Terrorism Task Force. http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-Almanacs.html?ex=1073745956&ei=1&en=04d038b602802322 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Didn't I mention above this would make a good 'last laugh!' item? So now get busy, turning in your neighbors and friends in possession of almanac books. Be a good citizen! PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #813 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Dec 30 14:20:03 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBUJK3R25201; Tue, 30 Dec 2003 14:20:03 -0500 (EST) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 14:20:03 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312301920.hBUJK3R25201@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 V22 #814 TELECOM Digest Tue, 30 Dec 2003 14:20:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 814 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Mailing List Rebuild - Please Read/Respond (TELECOM Digest Editor) Alan Ralsky, Unrepentent Spammer (Marcus Jervis) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (COTTP) NEC Aspire Instruction Handbook (Bryan) Re: How to Get Accurate Directory Listings From the Web? (Lou Jahn) Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus (Fred Goldstein) Re: Is That Possible? (Pete Romfh) Re: FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers (Marcus Didius Falco) Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? was Re: Almanac) (???) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 22:03:04 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started This announcement is ONLY for those of you who are on (or want to be on) the TELECOM Digest direct email list (as opposed, for example, to the c.d.t. readers or the web page readers.) Since the automation a few years ago of the mailing list using the majordomo program, our mailing list has become very garbage and spam ridden. Ideally, people who use our 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' to subscribe should be people who are interested in the Digest and want to read it. But spammers who grab every email address they can find here have also spammed the subscription robot pretty badly. During a recent audit of the 'names' on the Telecom mailing list, a large number of names/email addresses have been found that are just essentially sink- holes. That is to say, the Digest just goes in there and disappears like spam. They are 'names' that majordomo has added because a spammer sent automated mail which contained data that majordomo took to be a request to subscribe. The subscription was then started automatically and the new recipient in fact never intended to subscribe, and simply has his own filter rules, etc set to dump it on arrival. In some cases they do not know TELECOM Digest is even arriving; in a few other cases they have asked to be discontinued, and I explained to them how to do that. So as my contribution to reducing the overall volume of spam on the net, I am going to *rebuild the mailing list from scratch*, and take majordomo out of the picture, at least until the mess gets cleared up. I do not want the Digest going to people who do not want it, or do not know what it is, etc. I do not like the idea of inflated statistics of 'readers' even if it is just a few. As of January 1, 2004, the mailing list will be rebuilt. You **MUST** resubscribe before that point if you wish to remain on our mailing list. This does NOT pertain to you if you only read c.d.t. as a Usenet group, or if you only look at http://telecom-digest.org or if you only read the Yahoo or AOL or Compuserve versions of telecom. This ONLY applies to you if you receive email daily from 'editor@telecom-digest.org' entitled 'TELECOM Digest' and you wish to continue receiving same. In order to continue receiving that piece of email each day, effective Januay 1, 2004 you will need to do this: Send a single line email to editor@telecom-digest.org ... (Make *certain* it comes from the same address you want on the list.) In the subject line say 'Subscribe' and your email address and the name used on that account. Do not just paste this message into a reply. Start from scratch. Add no other comments to that message other than the subject 'subscribe' and a single line saying the same thing along with email address and name johndoe@whatever.site (John Doe) This message will be repeated in every issue of the Digest now through January 1. Shortly after that date the old majordomo list will be removed. Please do not write to me around January 5 or January 10 to complain 'where is Digest? It is not getting here'. Here is to hopefully having a mostly spam/vandal free net sometime in the next year or so. PAT ------------------------------ From: Marcus Jervis Subject: Alan Ralsky, Unrepentent Spammer Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 09:29:44 +0000 [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Today, I saved the best for first. This inspirational testimony by Alan Ralksy is an excellent way to end the year, is it not? Read it, then marvel with me as we realize Ralsky has not yet been sacrificed for the net. PAT] http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/30/technology/30spam.html?th (See above for photo of Ralsky) December 30, 2003 An Unrepentant Spammer Vows to Carry On, Within the Law By SAUL HANSELL The New York Times Alan Ralsky, according to experts in the field, has long been one of the most prolific senders of junk e-mail messages in the world. But he has not sent a single message over the Internet in the last few weeks. He stopped sending e-mail offers for everything from debt repayment schemes to time-share vacations even before President Bush, on Dec. 16, signed the new Can Spam Act, a law meant to crack down on marketers like Mr. Ralsky. He plans to resume in January, he said, after he overcomes some computer problems, and only after he changes his practices to include in his messages a return address and other information required by the law, the title of which stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing. That is quite a switch for Mr. Ralsky, who has earned a reputation as a master of cyberdisguise. By his own admission, he once produced more than 70 million messages a day from domains registered with fake names, largely by way of foreign countries -- or sometimes even by way of hijacked computers -- so that the recipients could not trace the mail back to him. Most experts in junk e-mail, known as spam, have dismissed the new federal law as largely ineffectual. And many high-volume e-mailers say the law may even improve the situation for them because it wipes away a handful of tougher state laws. But Mr. Ralsky, who lives in a Detroit suburb, says the law's potential penalties -- fines of up to $6 million and up to five years in jail -- are making him rethink his business. "Of course I'm worried about it," he said after the law was signed. "You would have to be stupid to try to violate this law." No one is saying that e-mail in-boxes will be clean of spam any time soon. But the world is getting to be a much more hostile place for spammers, particularly those who send some of the most offensive messages. The biggest threat is not so much the new law, though it is expected to play a role in stepped-up enforcement, as the increased willingness of prosecutors to go after spammers. In recent weeks, federal and state authorities have finally gotten the attention of spammers with a series of tough civil and criminal actions. "These suits sent a shock wave through the spam world," said Steve Linford, the director of the Spamhaus Project, an organization that tracks bulk e-mailers and tries to thwart their moves. "Lots of spammers are asking, 'Are we next?' " Some bulk e-mailers, like Scott Richter, who was a principal target of a civil suit filed last week by the New York attorney general, Eliot Spitzer, vow to continue. But Mr. Richter has lost some major clients, including mainstream companies like Omaha Steaks. Still, in the week after the suit was filed, Mr. Richter's company, OptInRealBig.com, was actively sending e-mail messages promoting dozens of products, including laser guns, breast enlargement pills and Christian dating services. Others say they have been beaten down by blacklists created by antispammers and filtering systems run by Internet service providers. "E-mail is not working any more," said Brendan Battles, a longtime marketer who has sold CD-ROM's containing long lists of e-mail addresses. "More people are mailing and you get less and less response." Mr. Battles says he has virtually given up the business. "E-mail marketing is a good thing," Mr. Battles said. "I create jobs. But the media has made e-mail out to be some sort of terrorist plot." Not long ago, Mr. Ralsky, like many other bulk e-mailers, had high hopes that the new federal law would help legitimize his operation. Just after Thanksgiving, he sat on a cream-colored couch in the basement of his large home in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., an affluent suburb of Detroit, talking of how he expected the new law to make his business easier. He would identify himself, as required, and would honor any requests to be removed from his mailing lists, he said. He said that he was counting on Internet providers, in return, to stop trying to block his messages. But more recently, Mr. Ralsky said in a follow-up interview by telephone, he has come to the conclusion that the law is more one-sided than he originally thought. Internet providers, he figures, will be able to tag and discard his mail with more certainty. "The law was not written for a commercial e-mailer," he said. "I don't think what they are doing is fair." He suggested that the law was largely a plot by the big companies that connect homes and businesses to the Internet to keep all the profits from online marketing for themselves. "I have never once been ashamed of what I do," he said. "I feel this is a business that has afforded me and my customers a better way of life." At the age of 58, Alan Ralsky seems an incongruous character in an industry largely made up of men from the Nintendo generation. "I am the oldest spammer you know of," Mr. Ralsky said. "You have a bunch of kids in their late 20's doing this with a lot more technical knowledge than I have. But they don't have any business sense." Mr. Ralsky started delivering newspapers in his native Skokie, Ill., at the age of 7 and has been working ever since. Both his parents are deaf. "It was a wonderful thing that I had deaf parents," he said. "I was proud of them and tried to be as helpful as I could, but you do grow up fast." After a stint in the Army, Mr. Ralsky had a career as an insurance agent and sales manager. Then things began to go awry. In 1992, he served 50 days in jail on a charge related to failing to deliver documents to a group of investors. Two years later he was convicted of falsifying documents that defrauded banks and was ordered to pay $74,000 in restitution. "I was in a bad business with bad partners," he said. In 1995, he discovered e-mail messaging. "I took my last thousand bucks and I bought a thousand dollars worth of spam," Mr. Ralsky recalls. From the e-mail messages he was able to send for that amount of money, he said, "I got nothing, but I said, 'You know what, there is something to this. It can take a small guy and make him the equal of a Fortune 500 company.' " His first real customer was in the business of selling remote backup systems for computers. The fee was $1,000 to send a million e-mail messages. He found 400 customers for his client. Soon Mr. Ralsky hooked up with a time-share promoter, sending out offers of three-day, two-night Florida vacations. "From there it just got bigger and bigger and better," Mr. Ralsky said. Travel clubs and time-share offers are a staple of his business, as are debt consolidation services and e-books on how to win government grants. He says he does not deal in pills or pornography. Mr. Ralsky's mailing list now exceeds 150 million names. Unlike many high-volume mailers, Mr. Ralsky does not claim to send only to people who ask to receive marketing pitches. He says he sees nothing wrong with sending unsolicited mail. He insists, though, that he has always honored requests for removal from his list, something now required by the new law. "If someone is mad, all they need to do is unsubscribe," he said. "If you don't want to get it, I don't want to send it to you." This claim is impossible to verify, because nothing in Mr. Ralsky's e-mail messages indicates that they are from him. Anyone who unsubscribed from one of his mailings had no way to know if he stopped sending messages or doubled his mailings to them, as some spammers do. That will change if he identifies himself, as he says he will to comply with the new law. As Mr. Ralsky's business has grown, so has the backlash. Antispam organizations, like Spamhaus and the Spam Protection Early Warning System, work diligently to identify the addresses from which Mr. Ralsky is sending e-mail messages and to urge Internet providers to evict him from their networks. And in 2001, Verizon Online, a unit of Verizon Communications, sued Mr. Ralsky, claiming he violated its policies by sending spam messages by the millions to its Internet customers. Last year, Mr. Ralsky settled the suit, paying an unspecified amount of damages and agreeing not to send mail to Verizon Internet customers again. Mr. Ralsky then redoubled his efforts to use fake names and other techniques so his e-mail could not be easily traced. "I have changed the way we mail totally," he said. The spam fighters, he added, "have no idea what I'm mailing. They could never pinpoint it and say this is from Al Ralsky." Mr. Ralsky said that he was uncomfortable about this deception, but that he had no choice. "Is putting bogus information in your registrations the right way to do business?" he asked. "No. But the Internet world has forced me to do that." He has done business in two dozen countries, and has never visited any of them. He buys mailing lists from people in Sweden and India. And these days, he says, he sends his mail from computers in China and three other countries. "I have been hosted in strange places in the world," he said. "For some reason the I.S.P.'s out of this country are a lot more liberal." But, he acknowledges, they are not necessarily more reliable. "You get good and bad in this business, and I have had all sorts of people try to rip me off," he said. Mr. Ralsky also acknowledged that he had used "open proxies" -- computers with improperly configured software that allow spammers to relay messages without the knowledge of the computer owner. "I personally hate mailing with proxies," he said. "It's rough. But you do what you got to do." Even before the new law was passed and the prosecutors stepped up their actions, Mr. Ralsky said the business was getting harder. It was taking more mail to get the same response. His target is to earn $500 in profit for every million e-mail messages sent; his commission is often 40 percent of the price of each product sold. And the cost of his carefully arranged international network is going up, even more so now. "The Chinese have decided that they will follow the law," he said. "We will have to put in our address and a real 'unsubscribe' list,'' at an added cost, he said, of $3,000 a month. For all the obstacles, Mr. Ralsky said that he did not intend to stop sending bulk e-mail in some form. "There is too much money involved," he said. "I'm a survivor. And when you are a survivor, you find a way to make it happen." ========================= *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, NY Times Company. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: COTTP Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Organization: Children of the Tea Party Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 04:34:28 -0500 In article , Wesrock@aol.com says: > On 26 Dec 2003 12:33:16 -0800: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) > wrote: >> Would anyone know more about the history of Los Angeles metro telecom? >> I often wondered how they built that city's network out of SxS _and_ >> independents when most other big cities had panel and #1 xbar, both of >> which were designed to be used in high volume calling patterns. Interestingly I have found historical references to a Panel system being installed and utilized in the Providence, RI CO on Washington & Greene. The missing link is between the Panel. I think there was also some SxS gear because my grandparents phones had the standard SxS dialtone and when called had the SxS ring and busy signals, though those may have been Panel signaling I'm not familiar with. Our phone (Not far from my grandparents) was on the #1 ESS. I don't recall when they phased out the the SxS/Panel but it wasn't until the late 70's. We didn't get digital until the late 80's. ------------------------------ From: bbenton@interactivefmg.com (Bryan) Subject: NEC Aspire Instruction Handbook Date: 30 Dec 2003 07:15:29 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I have an NEC Aspire phone switch that I need an operations instruction manual for. I will pay top dollar even for a photo copy of an existing one. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 11:32:02 -0500 (Eastern Standard Time) From: Lou Jahn Subject: Re: How to Get Accurate Directory Listings From the Web? > Are there any online services that provide phone listings that are > refreshed frequently with an intuitive lookup UI? The telephone industry utilizes a fairly unique and comprehensive search technique to support operators in locating listings with little or no knowledge of the geographic region nor the exact spelling on Localities or Names. As example, do you look under the Post Office city or local named Central Office identification ... these questions are avoided via use of supporting tools such as "alias's" or "halo" expansions around a targeted city. There is much more to actually finding a listing than simply access to an accurate database! You are correct in looking for a system that supports "intuitive lookup" -- it will save you wasted time and money. While our core business is supporting national Directory Assistance for telephone operators, our private "subscription" based service "ez*INFO may fit your needs as well as lower your overall DA cost. For more detail visit www.InfoPartnersCorp.com. ez*INFO is also used by small LECs who desire to provide their own National 411 DA service as well as firms using high volumes of DA access like Skip Tracers. Our national DA database is updated daily and has been frequently measured at 99% accuracy and is used by 45% of US telephone operators. Lou Jahn Info Partners Corp 609-823-6602 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 11:27:05 -0500 From: Fred Goldstein Subject: Re: Migrating to ADSL -- Questions For the Tech Gurus Since the Original Poster was apparently in Ireland, the way ADSL and ISDN work may be a bit different from what we're used to in the USA. ISDN is far more common in Europe than here. Bell companies have, in general, seen ISDN Basic Rate as a tool for providing multiline phones to Centrex desktops. And a few years ago, before ADSL, they resisted, with varying success, efforts to adapt it as a modem substitute (such as ISP access or telecommuting). So ISDN didn't catch on, and the preponderance of residential phone lines are analog. European carriers, on the other hand, saw ISDN as a cost-saver for them, allowing two lines on one (relatively costly) loop. Some even installed ISDN without being asked; they'd just install a terminal adapter at or near the customer site and deliver analog lines that way. ISDN lines nominally require the spectrum from around DC to 80-100 kHz. (The signal is centered at 40 kHz and rolls off towards the edges. It probably could have been designed to ride above analog, as ADSL does, but wasn't spec'd that way.) Indeed one brand of DSL, Paradyne's "ReachDSL" (formerly called MVL), is type-approved based on its ability to stay within the ISDN spectrum power profile, vs. ADSL's; unlike ISDN, it has filters to allow the line to be shared with analog (POTS). So when Europe rolled out ADSL, they often set it up to accommodate ISDN, by keeping its spectrum above 120 kHz. Analog voice is carried in the spectrum below 4 kHz. American ADSL was designed to ride over POTS, not ISDN, so its spectrum goes well below 100 kHz. This lets it go a little faster. So if you have ISDN and want ADSL in North America, you have to drop the ISDN from that loop. But if he's in Europe, the O.P. should consult with his telephone company first; it's possible that he can keep ISDN (if he wants to; for voice use, for example, or other applications) and still get ADSL. ------------------------------ From: Pete Romfh Subject: Re: Is That Possible? Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 07:39:31 -0600 Organization: Not Organized dado wrote: > Hi, > Can PBX (private branch exchange) line access the > internet ?? > Here is the situation: > The City A (central region) has its own leased line and > it's server. Other cities B,C,D just connect to the > central region (city A) through pbx line. (We all in the > same country). > My question now, is that possible that cites (b,c,d) can > get the internet connection through pbx line ?? If that > is possible what are the requirements?? > Thanks for your attention and time. > Merry Christmas! What type of connection (T-1, Frame, tie line, etc. ) connects A to B,C, & D ? What protocol does the PBX require (or support)? How many voice channels are needed ? Excess bandwidth could be used for data if available and PBX permits. Pete Romfh, Telecom Geek & Amateur Gourmet. promfh at Texas dot net ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 05:35:50 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Re: FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Decisions, decisions! Whether or not > to file this item under 'last laugh!' or if Mr. Farber and the > original correspondents are actually **for real**. I did not do my > usual editorialization of the subject line by prepending the phrase > 'Last Laugh!' because I got to thinking in this age we live in of > ready-made terrorists (you are a terrorist because Bush/Ashcroft say > you are; how instant can it be?) this is probably a real thing. Are > they going to impose long prison sentences on anyone found in > possession of an almanac book? Read on, then you decide. Maybe not > a genuine last laugh, but I still sit here snickering as I edit this. > PAT] What can I say? The good, grey NY Times is carrying this AP story at the URL below. Apparently, Louis Freeh and John Ashford think this is a more reliable way of identifying terrorists than just random selection. > * Original: FROM..... Dave Farber > FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers > December 29, 2003 > By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS > (AP) -- The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people > carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books > covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could be used > for terrorist planning. > In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, > the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs 'to assist with target > selection and pre-operational planning.' > It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other > investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books > are annotated in suspicious ways. <> > The FBI urged police to report such discoveries to the local U.S. > Joint Terrorism Task Force. > http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-FBI-Almanacs.html?ex=1073745956&ei=1&en=04d038b602802322 > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Didn't I mention above this would make > a good 'last laugh!' item? So now get busy, turning in your neighbors > and friends in possession of almanac books. Be a good citizen! PAT] Be afraid. Be very afraid. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 06:05:23 CST From: Anonymous Poster Subject: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? (was Re: Almanacs) *** PLEASE REMOVE MY NAME AND EMAIL ADDRESS (thanx!) *** From an AP release: > The FBI is warning police nationwide to be alert for people > carrying almanacs, cautioning that the popular reference books > covering everything from abbreviations to weather trends could > be used for terrorist planning. > In a bulletin sent Christmas Eve to about 18,000 police organizations, > the FBI said terrorists may use almanacs 'to assist with target > selection and pre-operational planning.' > It urged officers to watch during searches, traffic stops and other > investigations for anyone carrying almanacs, especially if the books > are annotated in suspicious ways. WAY TO GO, FBI! (sarcasm INTENDED; actually DISGUST and SHAME at this point in time to be known as an "American")... FBI, doesn't that stand for Federal Bunch of *IDIOTS*! Then Benjamin Franklin must be a terrorist too ... he published his "Poor Richard's ... um ... ALMANAC"! Yeah, he and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and Madison and Monroe and Hamilton and others were all branded terrorists ... by the BRITS and King George III. Of course, we recently had King George I (1989-93) and now we have King George II. (And yes, there were also Queens Hillary and Reno for some eight years too). I wonder what the official response of the World Almanac and other Almanac publishers is going to be to this federal bunch of *IDIOTS*?! I certainly "hope" that they don't cow-tow and say that they'll turn over lists of customers to those federal bunches of idiots in an "act of (gag) patriotism(?)" ? - a reader of the TELECOM Digest [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And *thank you* for your inspirational testimony to close this issue of the Digest. It always warms my heart to have a reader here who has the courage of his/her convictions to sign their name to their message. Oh, I understand, you do not wish to be branded a terrorist also, a likely outcome these days. I wonder if it has occurred to anyone that if Queen Hillary or her husband were still in office (or, given the election, the 'proper' candidate had ascended to the throne) most likely the horror of September 11, 2001 would never have happened. That whole spectacle was as much for Bush's benefit as anything else. Just a thought. Just an ob-telecom note: Back in the early 1960's when I met Queen Hillary in person (she was a high-school aged Princess in those days) at Chicago Sunday Evening Club when Martin Luther King was there to preach Hillary lived with her parents in Park Ridge, Illinois and had Central States (precursor to Centel) Telephone service at her home. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #814 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 31 02:20:17 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBV7KHI28635; Wed, 31 Dec 2003 02:20:17 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 02:20:17 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312310720.hBV7KHI28635@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 V22 #815 TELECOM Digest Wed, 31 Dec 2003 02:20:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 815 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Last Chance! List Being Rebuilt! Read/Respond (TELECOM Digest Editor) Telecoms Embrace Internet Calling (Marcus Didius Falco) NANP Numbering (Rob) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (Lisa Hancock) Re: 10-Digit Dialing (lawrence.jones@ugsplm.com) Re: Call Forward Service Has Many Advantages (wallyrobertsnospam.com) Re: Alan Ralsky, Unrepentent Spammer (Tom Betz) Re: Linksys Boxen (Gary Breuckman) Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? (David B. Horvath) Re: Busy Signal Madness! (Gary Breuckman) 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 is 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 22:03:04 EST From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: IMPORTANT! Rebuild of Mailing List Being Started This announcement is ONLY for those of you who are on (or want to be on) the TELECOM Digest direct email list (as opposed, for example, to the c.d.t. readers or the web page readers.) Since the automation a few years ago of the mailing list using the majordomo program, our mailing list has become very garbage and spam ridden. Ideally, people who use our 'telecom-subscribe@telecom-digest.org' to subscribe should be people who are interested in the Digest and want to read it. But spammers who grab every email address they can find here have also spammed the subscription robot pretty badly. During a recent audit of the 'names' on the Telecom mailing list, a large number of names/email addresses have been found that are just essentially sink- holes. That is to say, the Digest just goes in there and disappears like spam. They are 'names' that majordomo has added because a spammer sent automated mail which contained data that majordomo took to be a request to subscribe. The subscription was then started automatically and the new recipient in fact never intended to subscribe, and simply has his own filter rules, etc set to dump it on arrival. In some cases they do not know TELECOM Digest is even arriving; in a few other cases they have asked to be discontinued, and I explained to them how to do that. So as my contribution to reducing the overall volume of spam on the net, I am going to *rebuild the mailing list from scratch*, and take majordomo out of the picture, at least until the mess gets cleared up. I do not want the Digest going to people who do not want it, or do not know what it is, etc. I do not like the idea of inflated statistics of 'readers' even if it is just a few. As of January 1, 2004, the mailing list will be rebuilt. You **MUST** resubscribe before that point if you wish to remain on our mailing list. This does NOT pertain to you if you only read c.d.t. as a Usenet group, or if you only look at http://telecom-digest.org or if you only read the Yahoo or AOL or Compuserve versions of telecom. This ONLY applies to you if you receive email daily from 'editor@telecom-digest.org' entitled 'TELECOM Digest' and you wish to continue receiving same. In order to continue receiving that piece of email each day, effective Januay 1, 2004 you will need to do this: Send a single line email to editor@telecom-digest.org ... (Make *certain* it comes from the same address you want on the list.) In the subject line say 'Subscribe' and your email address and the name used on that account. Do not just paste this message into a reply. Start from scratch. Add no other comments to that message other than the subject 'subscribe' and a single line saying the same thing along with email address and name johndoe@whatever.site (John Doe) This message will be repeated in every issue of the Digest now through January 1. Shortly after that date the old majordomo list will be removed. Please do not write to me around January 5 or January 10 to complain 'where is Digest? It is not getting here'. Here is to hopefully having a mostly spam/vandal free net sometime in the next year or so. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 23:05:30 -0500 From: Marcus Didius Falco Subject: Telecoms Embrace Internet Calling, But Is It Trouble? From the Wall Street Journal -- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107264800696941100,00.html?mod=technology%5Ffeatured%5Fstories%5Fhs Telecoms Embrace Internet Calling, But Is It Trouble? By DENNIS K. BERMAN You know an industry is in trouble when its success hinges on something that hasn't been invented yet. A mythical lode of software applications -- called "the next Napsters" -- is expected to save the world's biggest telecommunications companies from ruin. Whether the likes of AT&T and Qwest Communications International can come up with them will be one of the great business stories of the next decade. In the meantime, their plight shows the industry's sorry state of innovation. The technology they're wrestling with is VOIP, or Voice Over Internet Protocol. It is used to send voice calls using the same processes as e-mail, and works by essentially turning your phone into a little computer. Most important, it's dirt cheap compared with how the vast majority of phone calls are made today. After years of false starts, most of the dominant cable-TV companies and a few pesky upstarts have begun selling the Net phone service. Traditional telecom heavyweights, such as AT&T and Qwest, have quickly joined in. These biggies are never shy about wrapping themselves in a capital-P kind of progress, and have lauded VOIP as the most signifi- cant advancement in decades, and one that makes "good sense" for consumers and the telecom companies alike. So what does the telecom industry get for all this good sense? Not much by way of flexibility to use its prime marketing tool: lower prices. VOIP already is typically being sold as an all-you-can-eat package, obliterating the now-meaningless, but highly profitable, distinction between local and long-distance calls. Some cable companies already sell comprehensive calling plans for just under $50 a month. A few unproven start-ups are taking prices even lower, to $40. The big local phone companies are building or buying cheap Net-calling networks to launch attacks on one another's turf. It's not entirely bad news for the industry: Net-based calling is already lowering traditional phone companies' capital costs, and will continue to do so. And a rack of VOIP equipment is about the size of a microwave. Just one of those can replace floors' worth of old-school telecom switches, which are about the size of an industrial refrigerator. It will be decades, however, before the upgrades are complete. All these forces are pushing the big telecom companies to do something at which they're pretty crummy: innovate. With cable companies adding phone service, the Baby Bells are trying to strike back with their own video offerings. These will come via marketing agreements with satellite-TV companies, or 15-year projects that involve laying billions of dollars worth of fiber optics directly to customers' living rooms. Even these moves, however, get the phone companies only to parity with cable, which will have widely available Net-calling capabilities as early as next year. Here's where telecom executives start to talk lovingly about the next Napsters -- software and products that would make their service truly different from the next guy's. Competing, they say, will mean being a lot less like a utility and much more like a whip-smart software company. Think Apple, not ConEd. I wish they could tell me what those services will be. Believe me, I've asked. But the truth is that they don't have much beyond lip-service paid to "multimedia," "security" and "the next Napster." This stems from the fact that they're all buying the same equipment and know-how from a tiny group of suppliers, such as Lucent and Nortel. Research and development at the phone companies has been widely gutted amid cost-cutting, making innovation more of a collective experience than an individual one. If BellSouth rolls out a new call-forwarding feature, SBC is not likely to be far behind. Wireless companies Nextel and Verizon Wireless are good models for what the land-line phone companies will have to become. Using proprietary technology that enables walkie-talkie features on cellphones, Nextel was for years able to exploit its technological uniqueness to win over high-revenue business customers. Verizon Wireless has been successfully able to charge higher rates for what customers say is better reliability. Thirteen years ago, AT&T spearheaded the move into what it thought was the future of the telecom business with a watershed deal for computer and cash-register company NCR. The idea was that AT&T's phone lines and NCR's computers would create something different. "The companies that add the most value as they handle transactions electronically from end-to-end -- collecting, networking, processing and delivering information -- will be the leaders in the global information market of the 21st century," said AT&T's then-CEO, Robert Allen. The NCR deal turned out to be a low moment in the history of corporate acquisitions, as it led to huge losses instead of the promised land of a telecom-computer convergence. Still, Mr. Allen's statement was prescient. The challenge is the same for today's telecom industry. Unfortunately, hope and dumb luck do not make for good business strategy. Send comments to dennis.berman@wsj.com Copyright 2003 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. The 'johnmacsgroup' Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner, in this instance, Dow Jones, Wall Street Journal. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml "When you come to the fork in the road, take it" - L.P. Berra "Always make new mistakes" -- Esther Dyson "Be precise in the use of words and expect precision from others" - Pierre Abelard "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" -- Arthur C. Clarke "Bobby Layne never lost a game. Time just ran out." -- Doak Walker John F. McMullen http://www.westnet.com/~observer ------------------------------ From: rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) Subject: NANP Numbering Date: 30 Dec 2003 11:42:53 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com OK, I know that this may very well seem a dumb question, but why is the NANP numbering system different to other phone systems throughout the world? The vast majority of countries in the world have area codes beginning with '0', whereas in NANP countries the area code commences with '1', and then numbers on the same area code, or even numbers in neighbouring codes (i.e. 919, 252 and 304), aren't always regarded as local, as they are here in the UK. For example, my local calling area not only covers my own exchange (01685) but also all numbers on the neighbouring exchanges of 01443, 01639, 01874 and 01495. Also, how are calls charged between countries within NANP -- that is, is a call from Canada or the US to Bermuda or Barbados regarded as international, even though they're technically (I think!) on the same phone system? TIA! Rob ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Date: 30 Dec 2003 19:19:54 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com Wesrock@aol.com wrote in message news:: > On 26 Dec 2003 12:33 > All those other places were out in the sticks -- the equivalent > of today's "flyover country" and of little interest then to Bell Labs > or Western Electric. SxS was for small places. I don't know of the Bell System priorities in the old days. But a reading of the "Engineering & Science" histories of the Bell System indicates that small areas did receive attention. "Community dial offices" were developed. The plans for nationwide direct distance dialing took into account the many varied dial plans of small offices. I dare say that the big cities received more attention because the more complex calling patterns required it and the cities generated more revenues. I suspect businesses in big cities tended to spend more in long distance and premises equipment (key sets, PBXs, etc.) than in a small town which justified the greater interest. Step by Step was cheaper to install and run since it was simpler. Crossbar and panel required technicians with a higher level of training. As to inter-office connections, remember that when Panel and #1 crossbar were developed (1920s and 1930s, virtually all long distance was handled manually by operators, indeed even establishing a connection took some time and effort. Gradually, operators could dial calls in distant cities and routing was simplified. Panel DID contain capacity for manual/automatic dial interface. I'm also curious how the last manual systems (1960s) worked in terms of handling modern higher call volumes. For example, in suburban Philadelphia (Upper Darby) there was the FLanders exchanges, which didn't convert until around 1962. It was an old suburban community, with a big transit terminal and shopping district, and residential neighborhoods. (In the 1980s I asked Bell of Pennsylvania for information and they said they had no historical information.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Regards manual exchanges and call volumes: The old style manual exchanges had two groups of holes. Along the top the holes were tie lines to other exchanges and closer to the bottom were the numbers on that exchange. The operators' training was very intense *before* an operator was allowed to work alone at a position. Larger offices had 20-30 positions, or operator work places in a large room all along the wall, one after another. Operators were trained to have a *cord in one hand all the time* so that the **very instant** a light came on, meaning a subscriber had gone off hook, the operator saw the light and plugged in, typically while the subscriber was getting the phone up to his ear. She was waiting for him in most cases, and upon plugging in spoke as per the phraseology for that office, usually 'number please?' or sometimes 'number?' or sometimes 'operator' (which after being said several thousand times per day usually came out slurred as 'optur'). The subscriber announced his request; the operator *already had* the connecting cord in hand, ready to jam it in wherever. Now if the subscriber asked for a number on the local exchange, the operator was already touching the tip of the one cord to the sleeve on the proper place to 'test for busy'. (Busy test was needed since the lines were multipled, that is, the same jacks would show up at every second or third position.) If no 'crackle' was heard then the line was busy, operator would say 'the lion is busy' and just as promptly yank the cords and take the next call. If a 'crackle' sound was heard on touching the tip of the one to the sleeve on the other then the line was available, she would complete the plug in and as it was ringing she would say 'thank you' and leave the line. It was up to you to hang up when you grew tired of waiting for an answer if you didn't get one. Now if your call was to another (telephone) exchange or central office, the operator was ready for that also. Let's say you were on the WABash exchange and wanted to call someone on the FRAnklin exchange. As soon as the word 'Franklin' got out of the subscriber's mouth, the operator was already on the strip on her board for the calls to Franklin. She would plug into one of those tie-lines for Franklin as you were probably finishing reciting the number you wanted. Let's say you asked for Franklin 3678. She was up there on the Franklin strip in one of the holes waiting when the distant operator (in the Franklin office) answered her. Operators did not courteously speak to each other in those cases, they simply made 'pip' noises at each other. When your local operator heard the little 'pip tone' meaning the distant operator had plugged in to take the call, your operator would simply announce the digits required, as in '3678'. I used to think, when I was a small child the operator was courteously confirming what I wanted. Actually, she was telling the Franklin exchange what was wanted. Franklin then had the duty to test for busy and either quote back 'lion is busy' or ring the number. Operators were expected to both overlap in their duties (that is, be plugging one call in while writing up the ticket as needed) and in their seated positions (one third of the exchange of local numbers was directly in front of the operator, and one third each on the two sides of her). She only retrieved new calls from directly in front of her face, but depending on what was wanted, if it was not in front of her face then she had to reach over to her left or right to her sister operator's board with the other part of the cord. And they each did that several hundred times per day. In a large office (let us say there were fifty 'positions' or operator seats) your number would be multipled so it would show up at anywhere from 15-20 of those positions (or every third operator). If every available operator was busy with a call when you also went off hook to make a call, then the operators were expected to 'let it burn' (let the illuminated lamp stay lit) for the first operator (of the dozen or so who could take your call) until one of them was able to pick up and work with you. Each board had 15-20 cord pairs available to be used on itself or the neighboring board on either side of you. If your neighbor operator was really busy and you were free for a few seconds, then maybe you would reach over with your cord and take one of her calls to help her out. Likewise when a call 'came down' (the subscriber finished and replaced his receiver) if you got a supervision lamp saying the call was clear you would pull the cord down, but if part of the cord went over in front of your neighbor and you were super busy (let's say writing a ticket or working with another subscriber) all you had to do was tug at the cord in particular; your neighbor operator saw the cord being jerked a little and the one of them (who had it in her face) would reach up and pull it down for you. The cords were all spring loaded so just taking it out of the hole and letting go, it would rapidly snake itself back into the proper opening in front of the proper operator (who had built the connection to start with). Because the operators were very well trained, call set up time was usually the same as or slightly less than in automated dialing days, at least in the earliest of days when 'rotary dialing' was done. By the time the subscriber got the phone to his ear, heard the dial tone, and dialed out all seven digits and the call got set up in the equipment the manual office operators would have finished two or three such calls. Even with touch tone and the 'average' (of today) subscriber, the manual operators still could beat them time wise usually. PAT] ------------------------------ From: lawrence.jones@ugsplm.com Subject: Re: 10-Digit Dialing Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 23:13:06 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Two points of interest to add to the > note from Wes Leatherock ... '3 or 4 chair barbershops'; there is no > such animal any longer. Not true! Here in beautiful Milford, OH (a small town suburb of Cincinnati), the Korner Barber Shop is still going strong -- most times I've been there, at least three of the four chairs are manned and occupied and people are waiting. You can even get a shave and a haircut, but it'll cost a tad more than two bits these days. :-) -Larry Jones Mom would be a lot more fun if she was a little more gullible. -- Calvin [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The Palmer House Hotel in Chicago and the Conrad Hilton Hotel both had (maybe still) multi-chair shops. The lead barber was also the cashier. Of course in addition to a haircut many guys went in the shop every day to also get a shave and a facial. Palmer House had twelve chairs I think; but it used to be that all guys would get a haircut once a week or every two weeks at least. No more. PAT] ------------------------------ From: wally@wallyrobertsnospam.com Subject: Re: Call Forward Service Has Many Advantages Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 16:43:43 -0800 Organization: Cox Communications > Cingular still charges. I don't think they charge for that follow-me CF where you place the phone in a cradle ... whatever it's called. ------------------------------ From: Tom Betz Subject: Re: Alan Ralsky, Unrepentent Spammer Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 02:37:47 +0000 (UTC) Organization: XOme Quoth Marcus Jervis in news:telecom22.814.2@telecom-digest.org: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Today, I saved the best for first. This > inspirational testimony by Alan Ralksy is an excellent way to end the > year, is it not? Read it, then marvel with me as we realize Ralsky > has not yet been sacrificed for the net. PAT] > http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/30/technology/30spam.html?th Available for the registration-averse at . "I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the King that led them to it; who to disobey were against all proportion of subjection." - W.S. ------------------------------ From: Gary Breuckman Subject: Re: Linksys boxen Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 22:16:38 -0600 Organization: Puma's Lair - catbox.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually I could use a 'pass through' > socket back there, to attach a second Linksys box as well. But I am > trying to *avoid* the additional hardware expense and keep my system as > simple as possible. PAT] If you mean a Linksys hub or switch, yes, but you do not need another router. Also, if you have four ports AND an uplink connector, be advised that the uplink shares the port next to it, you can't use BOTH the port and the UPLINK at the same time. -- Gary Breuckman [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I have is a little blue box with squat legs that says Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL Router on the front. On the back side are six modular connectors (lines one through four) plus a 'pass through' and a connector to the cable 'modem'. I assume if I strap another box on either through the 'pass through' or the socket next to it, I would not need another connector to the cable modem as well. But then I could have the luxury of a second VOIP phone, but just imagine the traffic jam going through the cable! PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 14:51:21 -0500 Subject: Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? From: A Nony Mous On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 06:05:23 CST, in response to Anonymous Poster, our esteemed moderator wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And *thank you* for your > inspirational testimony to close this issue of the Digest. It always > warms my heart to have a reader here who has the courage of his/her > convictions to sign their name to their message. Oh, I understand, > you do not wish to be branded a terrorist also, a likely outcome > these days. I have copies of the 2004 Farmers' Almanac; I think I'll start carrying them in plain view in my car. I wonder if the Police would treat me any differently for doing so? > I wonder if it has occurred to anyone that if Queen Hillary or her > husband were still in office (or, given the election, the 'proper' > candidate had ascended to the throne) most likely the horror of > September 11, 2001 would never have happened. That whole spectacle was > as much for Bush's benefit as anything else. Just a thought. Care to explain? How would a different President have prevented this? Prior administrations had the opportunity to grab Bin Laden but did not. According to the consitution, Mr. Clinton could not have been re- elected. And Mrs. Clinton wasn't even running for the office. According to the last news reports I read, Bush actually won the elections in Florida (a group of news organizations had their own, unofficial, recount) which gave him the Electoral College majority required. I've signed this but would rather my email address not appear (SPAM). - David [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Your email address removed as requested. I am aware of the eight year/two term limitation, and the fact that Hillary did not (at that time) run for office. But I do believe if Mr. Gore had taken (through whatever rationale) the office of President there is a reasonably good chance that 9/11/01 would have not occurred. Yes, Clinton could have gotten Sodomy Insane out of office (captured him, etc) but he didn't, and I don't think it ever really crossed his mind. But Bush II went into office a bit more belicose and beligerant than his predecessor, almost daring the folks in the middle east to cause trouble, which of course they did. Its a little hard to explain, but just as Bush's father had trouble with 'those people' back in the early 1990's I really thought for sure that younger Bush would get into a ruckus with them; some wags have said (regarding younger Bush) that 9/11 was the best thing in the world he could have hoped for. He got his way; got the middle east to start up with him, etc. Clinton was too laid back for anything like that; so, I suspect, would have been Gore. But you see, its not just the sore losers here in the USA who hate Bush, a lot of people in the rest of the world don't like him (or his father) either. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gary Breuckman Subject: Re: Busy Signal Madness! Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 22:34:21 -0600 Organization: Puma's Lair - catbox.com In article , "Doug Faunt N6TQS" wrote: > Jay Hennigan writes: >> What you are describing is called "Ring-trip". > The last time this happened to me, it was because a cat had urinated on > one of the telephone jacks. > YMMV, 73, doug That's a catastrophe of another type. So much for CAT-3 wiring, one CAT was more than enough to do it in. Maybe you should have used CAT-5 ? -- Gary ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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: 620-330-6774 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 second oldest e-zine/ mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) Email <==> FTP: telecom-archives@telecom-digest.org Send a simple, one line note to that automated address for a help file on how to use the automatic retrieval system for archives files. You can get desired files in email. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from * * Judith Oppenheimer, President of ICB Inc. and purveyor of accurate * * 800 & Dot Com News, Intelligence, Analysis, and Consulting. * * http://ICBTollFree.com, http://1800TheExpert.com * * Views expressed herein should not be construed as representing * * views of Judith Oppenheimer or ICB Inc. * ************************************************************************* ICB Toll Free News. Contact information is not sold, rented or leased. One click a day feeds a person a meal. Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2003 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. If you donate at least fifty dollars per year we will send you our two-CD set of the entire Telecom Archives; this is every word published in this Digest since our beginning in 1981. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of TELECOM Digest V22 #815 ****************************** From editor@telecom-digest.org Wed Dec 31 17:06:11 2003 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id hBVM6BX04109; Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:06:11 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:06:11 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200312312206.hBVM6BX04109@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 V22 #816 TELECOM Digest Wed, 31 Dec 2003 17:06:00 EST Volume 22 : Issue 816 Inside This Issue: Happy New Year!!! Re: NANP Numbering (John R. Levine) Re: NANP Numbering (Joseph) Re: NANP Numbering (Charlie Gibbs) Unicast Asserts New Patent Covers Rich Media Ads (Monty Solomon) Taxes on Phone Bills - Ouch! (David) Re: Archives For China Telegraph Company (GlowingBlueMist) Re: Call Forward Service Has Many Advantages (John R. Levine) Re: Linksys boxen (Joey Lindstrom) Re: FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers (Paul A. Lee) Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? (Phil Earnhardt) 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 is 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: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: 31 Dec 2003 11:32:44 -0500 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > OK, I know that this may very well seem a dumb question, but why is > the NANP numbering system different to other phone systems > throughout the world? A better question is why the system in the rest of the world is different from the system in the US since North America had long distance dialing first. The technical difference between the two is that the NANP uses "en bloc" signalling which collects all the dialed digits and then attempts to complete the call, while the ITU system uses "compelled" signalling which routes calls a few digits at a time. This means that the NANP system needed phone numbers where the originating switch could tell how many digits would be in the number, so numbers are fixed length, while the ITU system just sent digits down the line and let the remote switch ask for as many as it wanted, permitting variable length numbers. Back in the era of electromechanical switches, the NANP system had the advantage that xbar and maybe panel switches could try alternate routes if the main route was busy. This was useful in the US where the entire country's long distance network was under the same management and many alternate routes existed. The ITU system was designed for SxS switches, and once it had partially routed a call it couldn't back up and try another route, but that wasn't a big deal since each country ran its own small (relative to the US) phone system and the number of routes between countries was small. The billing was different too. The NANP system logged call records to paper tape and the bill was computed off-line at the end of the month. The ITU system used pulses that were counted at the originating switch, with the time per pulse shorter for more distant calls, and they'd do the billing by taking a photo of the rack of counters (really!) each month and charging you for the number of pulses you used. These days it doesn't matter, electronic switches can do all sorts of routing and billing tricks but the signalling isn't going to change. I gather that when AT&T was implementing customer long distance dialing in the 1940s they invited European countries to join the NANP and even reserved some tentative area codes, but due to a combination of technical issues and national pride, the Europeans declined. > Also, how are calls charged between countries within NANP -- that > is, is a call from Canada or the US to Bermuda or Barbados regarded as > international, even though they're technically (I think!) on the same > phone system? It's not one phone system, it's one numbering plan. Phone switches have no trouble looking at the dialed digits and figuring out that a call staring with 1212 goes to New York, 1416 to Toronto, and 1758 to St Lucia. The numbers are all the same length, but the numbering plan is designed so that switches can route long distance calls based on the first few digits. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Sewer Commissioner "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 09:37:27 -0800 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 30 Dec 2003 11:42:53 -0800, rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) wrote: > OK, I know that this may very well seem a dumb question, but why is > the NANP numbering system different to other phone systems throughout > the world? > The vast majority of countries in the world have area codes beginning > with '0', whereas in NANP countries the area code commences with '1', > and then numbers on the same area code, or even numbers in > neighbouring codes (i.e. 919, 252 and 304), aren't always regarded as > local, as they are here in the UK. For example, my local calling area > not only covers my own exchange (01685) but also all numbers on the > neighbouring exchanges of 01443, 01639, 01874 and 01495. In many countries such as the UK, Israel, the Netherlands and others the '0' is not really part of the area code, but in fact is the access code to access the toll network. In other words the area code for London is really 20, the area code for Glasgow is really 141 etc. As far as what is "local" it all depends on the community and what historically has been considered local. In the US and Canada your local area can vary widely from area to area. A big city may have a local calling area that includes that city, all areas contiguous to that city and even beyond that. It all depends on what is considered local from that city. Some cities have very expansive local calling areas such as Atlanta, Georgia whose local calling area is something like 100 square miles (that figure may be off, but nonetheless it's a huge area.) Other areas may have local calling to just that town and perhaps one other city or town. A number can be 'local' and still it may be necessary to dial a different area code to access a city that is either next to it or across a state line in another state. > Also, how are calls charged between countries within NANP -- that > is, is a call from Canada or the US to Bermuda or Barbados regarded as > international, even though they're technically (I think!) on the same > phone system? World zone 1 includes Canada, the USA and many Caribbean islands. Calls to any other country are considered international. Calls are cheaper and sometimes the same cost to call from the USA to Canada, but vary widely when you're calling elsewhere such as the Caribbean islands. > TIA! No worries mate. ------------------------------ From: Charlie Gibbs Subject: Re: NANP Numbering Date: 31 Dec 03 11:55:55 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article rob51166@yahoo.com (Rob) writes: > OK, I know that this may very well seem a dumb question, but why is > the NANP numbering system different to other phone systems throughout > the world? Numbering systems (overseas prefixes, etc.) differ from country to country -- it's not just North America vs. the rest of the world. > The vast majority of countries in the world have area codes beginning > with '0', whereas in NANP countries the area code commences with '1', > and then numbers on the same area code, or even numbers in > neighbouring codes (i.e. 919, 252 and 304), aren't always regarded as > local, as they are here in the UK. For example, my local calling area > not only covers my own exchange (01685) but also all numbers on the > neighbouring exchanges of 01443, 01639, 01874 and 01495. That leading 1 is _not_ part of the area code. It started out as a prefix identifying long-distance calls, but it's nowadays better thought of as the country code - corresponding to your 44 - followed by a 3-digit area code. Indeed, if you place a call to North America from a non-NANP country, you dial the appropriate overseas call prefix followed by 1 then the phone number - just as if you were placing a call to Britain from elsewhere you'd dial the overseas prefix, then 44, then the phone number. > Also, how are calls charged between countries within NANP -- that > is, is a call from Canada or the US to Bermuda or Barbados regarded as > international, even though they're technically (I think!) on the same > phone system? For all practical purposes these other countries are just more area codes. The rate tables will usually have higher values for these entries, though. :-) (At least that's my point of view when writing CDR software - but I just bill 'em, I don't wrestle with tariffs.) /~\ cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid (Charlie Gibbs) \ / I'm really at ac.dekanfrus if you read it the right way. X Top-posted messages will probably be ignored. See RFC1855. / \ HTML will DEFINITELY be ignored. Join the ASCII ribbon campaign! ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:48:03 -0500 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Unicast Asserts New Patent Covers Rich Media Ads By Michele Gershberg NEW YORK, Dec 30 (Reuters) - Privately-held Unicast, known for ads that appear as a user moves between Web site pages, is challenging rivals in the Internet advertising and publishing business armed with a new patent for delivering ads online. Unicast says it developed its original ad delivery methods back in 1996, during the infancy of the online ad business. This past spring, Unicast said it won a new U.S. patent for delivering a wider range of online marketing -- from more sophisticated rich media ads that can combine animated graphics and music to billboard-like banner ads. Rich media is now a hot property as big name advertisers put millions more dollars into marketing on the Web. Unicast's claims could affect both online publishers such as Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) and Yahoo (NASDAQ:YHOO), who place ads on their Internet sites, and immediate advertising rivals including DoubleClick (NASDAQ:DCLK) and Eyeblaster, according to analysts. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=40100442 ------------------------------ From: David Subject: Taxes on Phone Bills - Ouch Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 15:51:05 EST Organization: SBC http://yahoo.sbc.com I recently got ADSL service and looked at what it would take to keep my second phone line for fax use. Monthly fee: Line with local service: $8.95 Taxes: 911 Tax, Al Gore Tax, Spanish American War Tax, State Utility Tax,Sales Tax =$6.00. I dropped the second line because of 67% taxes. If not for that, I would have kept it. David ------------------------------ From: GlowingBlueMist Subject: Re: Archives For China Telegraph Company Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 12:23:01 -0500 kayi wrote in message news:telecom22.812.9@telecom-digest.org: > Hi, > I am trying to find the location for the archives of China Telegraph > Company for the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Do you have > any suggestions. The company was latter eaten by another company. Any > leads would be greatly appreciated. > Thanks, > Anthony Try this URL. It gives history info that might be what you are looking for. http://www.atlantic-cable.com/CableCos/CandW/ ------------------------------ From: johnl@iecc.com (John R. Levine) Subject: Re: Call Forward Service Has Many Advantages Date: 31 Dec 2003 11:10:16 -0500 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> Cingular still charges. > I don't think they charge for that follow-me CF where you place the phone > in a cradle ... whatever it's called. They don't charge minutes, but they do charge you $3/mo or so for the feature which makes it less of a bargain. ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 02:31:44 -0700 From: Joey Lindstrom Reply-To: Joey Lindstrom Organization: Telus Sucks! Subject: Re: Linksys boxen Wednesday, December 31, 2003, 12:20:17 AM, editor wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: What I have is a little blue box with > squat legs that says Linksys Etherfast Cable/DSL Router on the front. On the back side are six modular connectors (lines one through four) plus a 'pass through' and a connector to the cable 'modem'. I assume if I strap another box on either through the 'pass through' or the socket next to it, I would not need another connector to the cable modem as well. But then I could have the luxury of a second VOIP phone, but just imagine the traffic jam going through the cable! PAT] Not really, Pat. The real "traffic jam" will be at your DSL or cable connection, which will probably be a bit stressed to handle two simultaneous calls (if you've got typical consumer-grade service, which imposes some throttling). If your outbound speed is 128kbps, which is typical (but at the low end of "typical"), that's probably BARELY enough for your two calls. But consider: your Linksys switch can handle 100000kbps on each port. The traffic on the cable connecting your Linksys router to any additional hub or switch would be relatively small. I have a 100Mbps network here. Often, I have to burn CD's for customers, and so I copy the requested files from my network server down to my workstation, then fiddle with them and then burn the discs from my workstation. I can typically copy an entire CD's worth of data, 700 megabytes, in about 2.5 minutes over this network. Your network runs at the same speed. You've got speed to burn, dude. Now, in my earlier message, I said you could get away with a cheap old 10-base-T hub instead of a more modern 100Mbps hub or switch. If you do that, then you can knock one of the zeroes out: the speed across your connecting cable will go down to 10000kbps, which is still way more than 128kbps, and which is more than adequate for most jobs (with the exception of the major file-copying operations I mentioned: this would be painfully slow). Joey Lindstrom ------------------------------ From: Paul A. Lee Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 11:41:47 -0600 Subject: Re: FBI Issues Alert Against Almanac Carriers In TELECOM Digest V22 #813, our esteemed Editor wrote (in part): > Decisions, decisions! Whether or not to file this item under > 'last laugh!' or if Mr. Farber and the original correspondents > are actually **for real**. ... > I got to thinking in this age we live in of ready-made > terrorists (you are a terrorist because Bush/Ashcroft say you > are; how instant can it be?) this is probably a real thing. > Are they going to impose long prison sentences on anyone found > in possession of an almanac book? > Maybe not a genuine last laugh, but I still sit here snickering > as I edit this. > So now get busy, turning in your neighbors and friends in > possession of almanac books. Be a good citizen! Oh, how much simpler it would be if all terrorists were swarthy fellows wearing kaffiyehs, carrying AK-47s, and sporting bandoliers hung with hand grenades. If you think this means that federal agents will be surveilling the almanacs at your local Borders or Waldenbooks, then you're already paranoid beyond help. The almanac is just another puzzle piece -- something that may warrant further investigation, depending on the context in which it is found. No _real_ law enforcement professional is going to go looking specifically for almanacs. The bulletin is to make them aware that if there are other suspicious factors already noted, and there's also an almanac present, it's worth looking at for further evidence. Paul A Lee 730-8355 Sr Telecom Engineer [Voice & Transmission] Fax: +1 717 975-3789 Rite Aid Corporation, Telecomm, 30 Hunter Lane, Camp Hill, PA 17011-2410 ------------------------------ From: Phil Earnhardt Subject: Re: Then Benjamin Franklin Must be a Terrorist Too? Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2003 07:40:54 -0700 Organization: Kaos OnLine Coalition On Tue, 30 Dec 2003 14:51:21 -0500, A Nony Mous wrote: > I have copies of the 2004 Farmers' Almanac; I think I'll start carrying > them in plain view in my car. I wonder if the Police would treat me any > differently for doing so? Did you do any research before asking that question? The original AP article I read about this was pretty clear. From http://www.iht.com/articles/123196.htm : "The FBI noted that use of almanacs or maps may be innocent, 'the product of legitimate recreational or commercial activities.' But it warned that when combined with suspicious behavior -- such as apparent surveillance -- a person with an almanac 'may point to possible terrorist planning.' " I personally find it annoying what someone decided to leak the confidential FBI bulletin to the press -- and the press decided to publish it. Granted, it sounds pretty unlikely that noting the posession of an Almanac would lead to the apprehension of a potential terrorist, but stranger things have happened. Whatever value that particular piece of intelligence had has now been lost. Also, more information may have been revealed: whatever documents or communications methods the terrorists used that contained recommendations to use an Almanac are now known by them to be compromised. Loose lips sink ships. I fondly hope the media would think about this before bringing such a worthless "story" to the public. I wish they would show far more restraint in the future. OBTelecom: an amazing chapter in the history of WW II was documented in the 2001 film "Enigma". This movie shows British intelligence with a terrible delimma: should they allow an attack to happen -- and ships to be possibly lost -- in order to gather crucial information? Would they be able to get the information they needed? And Tom Stoppard juxtaposes an interesting (if unlikely) personal thriller with this now-public story. Highly recommended. >- David --phil ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications 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. 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