From editor@telecom-digest.org Sat Apr 24 20:32:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p2/8.11.3) id i3P0Wtc16441; Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:32:55 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:32:55 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200404250032.i3P0Wtc16441@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 V23 #206 TELECOM Digest Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:33:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 206 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Phone Found on Street (H. Leighton) Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Phone Found on Street (Joseph) Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Phone Found on Street (Clarence Dold) Re: Taxes on VOIP Service? (John Levine) Re: Packet8: A VOIP Review (John Levine) Re: 'Old Style' Telephone Call Recording Device (Rich Greenberg) Re: Feds: No Analog TV by '09 (Henry E Schaffer) Re: Next Treo 600? (Joseph) Re: The GMail Saga (Clarence Dold) Friedman: Losing Our Edge? (Monty Solomon) Job Opportunity: Programmers Wanted in India (koshy112003) Bad Storm Overnight Causes Vonage to go Out (TELECOM Digest 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 are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- From: hudsonl@skypoint.com (Hudson Leighton) Subject: Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Telephone Found on the Street Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 12:27:25 -0500 Organization: MRRP In article , Don Saklad wrote: > How would you return a lost cellular telephone you found ?... > Where would there be postage paid mailers provided for returning > someone's lost cellular telephone you find on the street ? ... > . wireless service companies ?... > . manufacturers ?... > . or ...? > . ...? I have found phones, and have been able to find a phonebook entry for "Home" or "Office", called it and informed the person or machine that answered that I had their phone. The owners usually came over and got their phones. -Hudson http://www.skypoint.com/~hudsonl ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Telephone Found on the Street Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 13:29:18 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NONOcom On 23 Apr 2004 18:56:42 -0400, Don Saklad wrote: > How would you return a lost cellular telephone you found ?... > Where would there be postage paid mailers provided for returning > someone's lost cellular telephone you find on the street ? ... I can think of a couple right offhand. The first thing I'd do is call the phone's carrier. Usually dialing 611 or *611 in the US would usually give you the phone's customer service for that carrier. If the phone has the carrier name stamped on it you could take it to a corporate store and turn in the phone there. You could also turn it into the police. When I was in Amsterdam my phone slipped out of the case and someone turned it in and I was able to claim it from a police station once I identified the phone and proved that it was mine. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: dold@HowXtoXRet.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: How to Return a Lost Cellular Telephone Found on the Street Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:56:45 UTC Organization: a2i network Don Saklad wrote: > How would you return a lost cellular telephone you found ?... If it's been lost more than a day, it's probably shut off, and a new one acquired. From that phone, you could dial 611 and ask. Or maybe look for stored phone number called "home". Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ Date: 24 Apr 2004 19:04:49 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Taxes on VOIP Service? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > One thing that puzzles me though: Although the bill is refreshingly > free of all the usual taxes, surcharges and fees found on land and > cell bills, Packet8 does charge a 3% Spanish American War Luxury Tax > (Federal Excise Tax) on the monthly subscription fee. > It's not clear to me why they should be doing this. Because it's phone service, of course. All VoIP carriers charge it. > I pay that tax on the DSL line already. I also pay it on the > underlying voice telephone line. Why should it apply to what is > essentially a data applications service? Because it's phone service, of course. It has a phone number, you can call people on the rest of the PSTN, people can call you from the rest of the PSTN, that makes it a phone. You could make an argument that it's unfair to charge FET on DSL when cable modems and point-to-point T1s aren't, but that's a separate issue. VoIP fans make a big deal about the fact that the calls are delivered over a separately billed IP connection. That should be no more relevant than whether my POTS phone line is analog all the way to the CO or is concentrated into a digital T1 or fiber on the way. The bits on a T1 are just as digital as the bits on any Internet connection, and it would be equally inane to argue that they make the phone calls they carry somehow not phone service. The real question is why, other than preferring that other people pay taxes instead of you, anyone should think that a VoIP phone should pay different taxes from other phones. Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies" Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ Date: 24 Apr 2004 19:16:04 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Packet8: A VOIP Review Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA Nice review. > Packet8 supports Local Number Portability, so theoretically, you > could get you current number reassigned. Are you sure? I didn't see anything about it on their web site, and I know they didn't in the past. As far as I know, Vonage is the only one that does LNP. > While VOIP is here to stay, I'm not convinced that companies like > Packet8 (or Vonage) will survive over the long term. Part of the > savings comes from not being subject to most of the taxes and fees > levied on wire and cell service. This will quickly change as the > various governments start to feel the sting from not collecting funds > they are used to. Indeed. Of course, if VoIP can't survive without tax subsidies when it already gets a huge subsidy by piggybacking on a sepately priced IP connection, who needs it? > There's no reason that the cable companies couldn't offer VOIP > directly for little or no extra charge with their broadband service > and totally cut out the need for Packet8. At that point, the economics > become much more compelling. Cable companies typically provide high quality phone service with dedicated bandwidth, backup power, and real 911, rather than the lower quality service that Packet8, Vonage, and other pure VoIP providers do. But they still have no trouble bundling in unlimited long distance and pricing it lower than the phone company. > I am curious about how calls are handled and where they drop off the > internet on into the traditional voice net. A call I made to the UK > was very clear and had little delay. Do all calls get converted by > Packet8 at their San Jose, CA location, or are they carried around the > world as TCP packets and converted locally? When I've sniffed the packets on my Vonage connection, I've noted that all the outgoing calls go to headquarters, and the incoming calls come from the phone switch in Syracuse where my phone number is assigned. As far as I can tell, all VoIP providers do something like that. Wholesale long distance rates have gotten so cheap that I doubt there's any point to trying to do outgoing IP telephony in other countries, and those other countries are usually less tolerant of VoIP rate arbitrage games than the US is, so it couuld get politically messy. John R. Levine, IECC, POB 727, Trumansburg NY 14886 +1 607 330 5711 johnl@iecc.com, Mayor, http://johnlevine.com, Member, Provisional board, Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial E-mail ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: 'Old Style' Telephone Call Recording Device Date: 24 Apr 2004 15:15:57 -0400 Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Diamond Dave wrote: > I'm looking for what I call an 'old style' recording device. > I'm looking for a 'ring' that you can place over the receiver of a > phone (the round 'G' style). I used to have one many many years ago > (30+) but with several moves, it either got thrown out or got lost in > one of many boxes. [...] > If someone knows where I can buy those "ring" devices, please post a > URL here. No idea about the ring; another type I have seen and used is a pickup that is approximately 1x4x.25 that you put under the phone and it inductivly couples to the coil in the phone. I am guessing that Rat Shack would have it (but haven't looked). I probably have one in my junk box. Rich Greenberg Work: Rich.Greenberg atsign worldspan.com + 1 770 563 6656 N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA Play: richgr atsign panix.com + 1 770 321 6507 Eastern time zone. I speak for myself & my dogs only. VM'er since CP-67 Canines:Val(Chinook, Red & Shasta(Husky,(RIP),Red, husky)) Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ From: hes@unity.ncsu.edu (Henry E Schaffer) Subject: Re: Feds: No Analog TV by '09 Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 19:45:57 +0000 (UTC) Organization: North Carolina State University In article , wrote: > Tony P. wrote: >> The other thing to keep in mind about CRT based televisions is that >> over a period of about 5 years they're pretty much shot nowadays. I >> can already see my 5 year old set redding out. But then it gets heavy >> usage. > Yougottabekidding. > My primary TV is a 1993 32" RCA CRT that still looks as good as it > ever did. ... I'm with Clarence. We are considering replacing our 1987 Sears 27" (something around that size) -- and one of our delays is trying to decide on what aspect ratio we want or need (4:3 or 16:9). (That's another thing which may change in the few years.) --henry schaffer hes _AT_ ncsu _DOT_ edu ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Next Treo 600? Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 13:23:18 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.NONOcom On 23 Apr 2004 13:30:11 -0700, drthomaspopple@hotmail.com (Thomas Popple) wrote: > I'm looking to buy a Treo 600 but someone told me today that I should > hold fire a little longer as a new Treo is coming out shortly. > Can anyone give me any details or links to info about the new model? If it is the information's secret. AFAIKS the latest Treo is the model 600 for CDMA (Sprint) or quad band GSM (T-Mobile, cingular, AT&T and others.) handspring.com doesn't have anything and neither does phonescoop If Phonescoop doesn't have it the likelihood of any significant new Treo introduction is doubtful seeing as how Phonescoop usually gets new model information well in advance of any carrier offerring a particular model. remove NONO from .NONOcom to reply ------------------------------ From: dold@TheXGMailX.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: The GMail Saga Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 20:55:19 +0000 (UTC) Organization: a2i network jmayson@nyx.net wrote: >> Here's a summary of some of my conclusions >> http://www.templetons.com/brad/gmail.html > And here is a summary of my impressions of the service: > http://home.austin.rr.com/jmayson/blog/archives/2004_04_22_archive.html I enjoyed Brad's article. Especially exposing the pieces I don't think about. I have Google email. I don't click on the adsense ads in GMail or in standard Google searches because they cost those folks money. They hope to make some money when I click through and buy something, but I feel guilty clicking on one when I know I'm probably not going to buy based on that link. The idea that those clicks could be tied back to a particular set of keywords is not far fetched. I presume that most adsense buyers don't do it, but only because it is inconvenient to keep track, which certainly wouldn't be true of a targeted government operation. John's comment about lack of signature caught me off guard. I hadn't even noticed. I wonder which of John's comments have been forwarded to the suggestion team at GMail? It isn't a public service yet. It is only open by invitation, and each Google employee is limited in their number of invitations. The bugs that I've noted have been fixed almost immediately. The suggestions that haven't been implemented have been answered with personalized explanations. Oddly, the bug fixes are sometimes not acknowledged, just fixed. There are cool features. One of them is that external images are not loaded while reading an html message. At first this looks odd, and seems only of interest to dialup users. But as Brad points out, there are people watching the IP addresses. One way to verify valid email addresses is to send email with an http link back to your site. You can see that a particular IP fetched the object [ as a result of reading the email ]. If you want the external images, it is a click at the top of the email. I use GMail. I won't do the personal things there that I might do on my home email, because I consider mail storage with a million users a much more attractive safe to crack than my home PC. I'll just hide over here, thanks. But for general chatting about the weather, and transferring large files, it's a pretty cool deal. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 18:46:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Friedman: Losing Our Edge? OP-ED COLUMNIST By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN I was just out in Silicon Valley, checking in with high-tech entrepreneurs about the state of their business. I wouldn't say they were universally gloomy, but I did detect something I hadn't detected before: a real undertow of concern that America is losing its competitive edge vis-a-vis China, India, Japan and other Asian tigers, and that the Bush team is deaf, dumb and blind to this situation. Several executives explained to me that they were opening new plants in Asia -- not because of cheaper labor. Labor is a small component now in an automated high-tech manufacturing plant. It is because governments in these countries are so eager for employment and the transfer of technology to their young populations that they are offering huge tax holidays for U.S. manufacturers who will set up shop. Because most of these countries also offer some form of national health insurance, U.S. companies shed that huge open liability as well. Other executives complained bitterly that the Department of Homeland Security is making it so hard for legitimate foreigners to get visas to study or work in America that many have given up the age-old dream of coming here. Instead, they are studying in England and other Western European nations, and even China. This is leading to a twofold disaster. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/22/opinion/22FRIE.html ------------------------------ From: koshy112003 Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 07:56:42 -0000 Subject: Job Opportunity: Telecom Professionals Wanted in India Reply-To: telecom-news@yahoogroups.com A German telecom software development company is looking out for telecom professionals within Bangalore. Experience: 1-4years Good knowledge in C,C++/Linux,Unix Experience in telecom related domains ( SIP,H.323,MGCP) will be preferred. Contact details: kkv.teles@touchtelindia.net ------------------------------ From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Bad Weather Storm; Vonage Goes Out Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2004 18:30:00 CDT Friday night here in Independence, we had the mother of all rain and hail storms, replete with lightning, thunder, strong winds and then some. Three inches of rain in an hour or two, it flooded the Verdigris River (which was near its high point already) over by the water works and sewer disposal place at Second Street by Oak Street. Police put up barricades on Second Street to keep people away as the water came rolling down the street. No matter for me; I live at the *south end* of Second Street near East Poplar Street; I did not see the water until later on a battery-powered television set with Tulsa area news and it was shown. Battery-powered? Well yeah, even though I am less than six blocks from the Independence electric power plant at Maple and Cement Streets (eastern city limits) my electric power went out for several hours as well -- along with 27 other people here in town according to the service rep manning the customer service line I spoke with. Well, she said, it really did a 'number' on Independence and a lot of Montgomery County; we are restoring things as fast as we can, but no estimates right now on time. That was around 8 PM; power was restored at 2 AM Saturday morning, about six hours later. I talked to them at around 10 PM when I saw lights working down the block (a different transformer and cable I guess) and sort of went in a panic because mine were still out, plus the house next door and across the street, although I could see other places that were on. I was talking on my Vonage phone to a friend in Canada when I saw a *huge* flash of lightning and mentioned it my friend. A second or two later, a loud bang and the lights went out. Battery kept the laptop computers going long enough for an orderly shut down but Vonage went out also. My questions are: since battery will keep computers going temporarily, and assuming one's cable line/or phone and DSL line was working, I am wondering if one could not run a battery to the Motorola MTA and the router and keep your Vonage on line even when the computers otherwise are shut down? I made do with my cellular phone overnight so it was not all that critical. All the taverns in town said business was very poor last night also. 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. 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