From editor@telecom-digest.org Sun May 23 03:08:05 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.3) id i4N785d27887; Sun, 23 May 2004 03:08:05 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 03:08:05 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200405230708.i4N785d27887@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 #254 TELECOM Digest Sun, 23 May 2004 03:07:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 254 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Western Union Public Telegraph Offices (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: To Record in HD is a Step Closer to Techie Heaven (Paul Vader) Test-Driving a Cellular GPS Service (Monty Solomon) Re: Now, Two-Thirds of All E-mail is Spam (jmeissen@aracnet.com) The Efax Fax Police Are After Me!!! (Carl Navarro) Mobile IM Survey (T Green) Licensed vs. Unlicensed in Cartoon Format (Tony P.) Cordless Phone Features (Harvey Krodin) Taking my Cell Phone to Switzerland? (John R 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 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 00:36:34 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Western Union Public Telegraph Offices Here is another historical look at Western Union, a company which was known throughout the USA during the first half of the 20th Century. During the period 1900 through about 1969, when Western Union was at its height, a very common feature in every town in America was the public telegraph office. In larger cities, there were offices before that time, but they became pretty much standardized in appearance around the start of the twentieth century. Typically they were very ornate places, with marble top writing desks for public use, a marble top counter where the clerk(s) could be found, high back plush chairs for people to sit in while waiting for telegrams, often times rather plush thick carpeting, spitoons near the chairs, a Western Union clock and overhead fans to cool the air. Air conditioning was essentially unheard of, although a few offices had it in the 1950-60's. At each of the public writing tables, a supply of blank writing paper for customer use in printing out the messages they wished to send and at each desk, one or two fountain pens for their use in their compositions, etc. The phone (some prefix-4321) was always ringing it seemed, since in most offices (except the very large ones like Chicago) one of the clerk's duties in addition to waiting on the customers was to answer the phone and take dictation from someone calling in a telegram they wished to send. In Chicago at least, they had a 'phone room' with clerks assigned to taking messages over the phone, but in smaller towns, and especially the 'agencies' (those small town places where the the WUTCO company did not actually own the business but none the less kept a sort of tight control over the commission agent who did own it) the hapless clerks (usually one per shift) had to do it all. A short distance back from the clerks behind the counter sat the telegaph machines, ordinarily two or three large teletype machines in smaller offices and perhaps five or six machines in busier places. The machines were all wired in a 'hunt group' so that if one machine was in use and another message came in or was being sent it would 'hunt' to the next machine automatically. The 'telegraphers' worked back there, and had little or nothing to do with the public out in front. The clerks were the intermediaries. When you, the customer, approached the counter with a message to be sent, the clerk would take over. Like a school teacher examining a student's composition, she would read it over. Any words which were not clear to her, she would ask you, "what is this word here?" You told her, then she took a red pencil, drew a circle around the word in question and clearly printed it in the margin. There was always a din of noise in the background from the mechanical teletype machines working. Only on very rare occassions would all the machines stop at once for a few seconds while nothing was being sent or received and there would be almost dead silence in the room. Then just as quickly as they stopped, within a few seconds or maybe a minute, you would hear a 'whirr' noise as a motor started running, the gears would engage and one of the machines would start up again, delivering another soap opera like story for someone, somewhere. In most offices there would be one or two telegraphers in back, sitting in rolling chairs with wheels; they would roll themselves from one machine to the next, to supervise the input which was on rolls of paper. Maybe one telegrapher mainly did outgoing traffic while the other guy did mostly incoming traffic. There was no certain way. Meanwhile, the harassed clerk would alternate between phone calls from the public sending messages and the 'walk up' customers at the counter. Western Union had a policy that a walk up customer with cash in hand *always* was to take priority over a phone call, so often times the phone would ring off the hook while the clerk finished waiting on the customer at the counter. After the phone had rang often enough, the clerk would reach over it, respond with the single word 'Hold' and set the phone down on the counter until she was able to give it her attention a few seconds or a minute later. In finishing with the customer at the counter, after editorially proof-reading the message and making suggestions to the custmer such as "if we cut this word here and that word there, then you will get the whole thing in fifteen words, and that will cost eighty-five cents." The customer would generally agree with that, and give her the eighty-five cents or whatever. The clerk would then put the money in the cash box, and quickly stamp indicia all over the back side of the blank. Clop! the date and time. Clop! Her clerk's number. Clop! a serial number for the whole thing. Clop!Clop!Clop! all in two or three seconds. Then she would put it on a spindle behind her from which the telegraphers would take it, examine it and send it over the wires. There was another spindle next to it which was for incoming wires and as the telegraphers put things there, the clerk would reverse the process: stamp it in with her indicia, copy the serial number in a log book and then fold the telegram and put it in an envelope, then call the name out to the waiting room people: "Is Mr. Johnson here waiting for a message?" If Mr. Johnson was there waiting he walked up to get his message. Folding the message paper and putting it in an envelope was intended as a matter of courtesy and privacy to the customer. If Mr. Johnson was not there, then the sealed in an envelope message was put for the messenger boy to take out. The clerks could turn smiles and tears ond off by the minute, depending on the customer they were with at the time. One minute, a message would arrive telling someone that Grandma had died. The clerk would announce the name, and the man and his wife who had been there waiting for message approached the counter; the clerk gave them the sealed envelope, the man opened it and read it then showed it to his wife. The clerk would appear to be on the verge of tears herself and note, "I am really sorry to hear the news" as the man clutched his wife's hand and they turned to walk away. Or maybe she would suggest, "if you want to send a ten word response back to them letting them know if you will be going to the funeral service, if you do that while you are here, it will just cost fifty cents for overnight delivery." Then the next happy man and wife who came to the counter had a message to be sent to their family announcing that Junior had graduated from high school. The same clerk would beam with pleasure as she would congratulate the parents saying, "It sounds like Junior is a really smart kid." And thats the way they went all day: smile, cry, smile, cry, depending on who they were dealing with. And always the constant din in the background from the teletypes as they banged their keys and told yet another story, the occassional minute or so of silence as all the machines went silent for a few seconds and there was just the ticking of the Western Union Clock and the whir of the overhead fans and then suddenly some gears somewhere would engage and a machine would start chattering again, with another story to tell. And both the telegraphers and the clerks (although sometimes on the overnight shift there was only one person who worked counter and the machines) were sworn to **absolute secrecy** about the messages they handled. FCC regulations about privacy in communiations required that and every employee was required to sign a form to that effect when they were first employed by the company. There were, in those days, any number of illiterate Americans. Unlike today, where a college education is the norm, and a person with high school is more and more a rarity, fifty to seventy-five years ago, a high school education meant a lot and there were (ufortunatly) many Americans -- especially in some rural areas and in much of the southern states who could not read or write; to put it politely, they were functionally illiterate. This was especially true of racial minorities in large cities, many of whom had migrated from rural areas of the south. When these people came into the Western Union office, the clerks had to help them if they could. A man might stand at the public writing desk and make scratch marks with the pen (to preseve his own dignity) then go up to the counter and ask the clerk "I do not know for sure what I want to say, can you help me?" Or maybe there was an incoming message and upon announcement of the name, a person would come up to the counter to get the message and their excuse always was "I seem to have forgotten to bring my reading glasses, can you tell me what this says." In which case the clerk would open the sealed envelope (which she had just finished sealing, and read it to the customer. But in those cases, where the customer needed assistance in writing his message or having his message read to him, the clerk was required to add an extra indicia on the back side giving the date and saying in words like this: "My name is (name), I am employed by Western Union Telegraph Company in the (name of city) public office. I was requested by (customer name) to assist in reading/composing this message." And the customer requesting this had to put his own mark or scratch marks for his name there. This was their protection in the event there were any questions later asked. Now and again, however, the low pay the clerks/telegraphers received and the lack of respect they received from the management put them in a strike mood. Next week in this space we will discuss one or two of the work stoppages by telegraphers to protest their working conditions. PAT ------------------------------ From: pv+usenet@pobox.com (Paul Vader) Subject: Re: To Record in HD is a Step Closer to Techie Heaven Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 21:03:41 -0000 Organization: Inline Software Creations Monty Solomon writes, quoting Jonathan Bloom: > The activity on the TiVo Community Forum, a blog linked to, but not > operated by, the company, illustrates the frenzy. There are over > 60,000 registered bloggers, 167,000 threads, and 1.8 million posts. Since when is a web-board a blog? One would think words like 'thread' and 'forum' would have tipped the writer off. * * PV something like badgers--something like lizards--and something like corkscrews. ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 17:07:29 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Test-Driving a Cellular GPS Service By WALTER S. MOSSBERG Navigation systems based on the government's Global Positioning System satellites have become increasingly popular. But they require specialized gear -- either expensive modules permanently installed in a car, or dedicated devices you must remember to carry. But what if you could get GPS navigation in a gadget that's with you all day anyway -- your cellphone? Now, you can. Nextel is now offering cellphones that include a GPS navigation service from a Sunnyvale, Calif., outfit called Televigation Inc. Phones with this service, called TeleNav, display detailed information about your current location, including street names and the direction in which you're headed, as well as large arrows telling you where to turn next and how far you'll have to drive before making that turn. You can even have the directions announced out loud, just like the fancy built-in car GPS systems. My assistant Katie Boehret tested TeleNav this week around Washington, with decidedly mixed results. She found that the system presented directions in an easy-to-follow format, but it was frustratingly inaccurate at times and slow compared with in-car or hand-held systems. http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20040519.html ------------------------------ From: jmeissen@aracnet.com Subject: Re: Now, Two-Thirds of All E-mail is Spam Date: 22 May 2004 21:41:45 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com In article , Monty Solomon wrote: > Spam last month accounted for two-thirds of all e-mail traffic, > according to e-mail monitoring firm MessageLabs Inc. Things are even > worse in the United States, where spam accounted for more than one in > five e-mails, according to Message Labs. Huh? The last time I checked, 20% was less than 66%, not greater than. > http://msnbc.msn.com/id/5032714/ The posting misquoted the article, which actually states,"... in the United States, where spam accounted for more than four in five e-mails" John Meissen jmeissen@aracnet.com [TEELCOM Digest Editor's Note: I definitly know that is the case here many days, like today, for example, where the spam was coming in much faster than I could get it all erased. Many days the Digest mailbox is 90-95 percent spam. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Carl Navarro Subject: The Efax Fax Police are After Me!!! Reply-To: cnavarro@wcnet.org Date: Sat, 22 May 2004 22:13:34 GMT Organization: Road Runner High Speed Online http://www.rr.com Well it finally happened. I had two people send me 11+ pages of faxes and I just got a message of overuse on my Efax free account! They think I'm going to pony up $12.95 for montly service to keep my number. Wow, I wonder if they read the part about I was looking for a fax when I found them? So, any suggestions? I'm not paying real money per month for a service I use one or two times a month. And to think, all I wanted to do was save a step in having to scan a document into a file. Carl Navarro ------------------------------ From: verdantone@yahoo.com (T Green) Subject: Mobile IM Survey Date: 22 May 2004 20:34:11 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I'd like your input on the future of Mobile IM. There is a survey at http://www.generationtext.us that is geared toward kids under 18, but all input is welcome. Thanks. ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Licensed vs. Unlicensed in Cartoon Format Organization: ATCC Date: Sun, 23 May 2004 03:55:14 GMT This illustrates the spectrum grab by big business oh so well. The CTIA comments in particular are interesting when one looks at the what is happening between an unlicensed user and licensed user in the BPL vs. Amateur Radio debacle. ------------------------------ From: hkrodin@hotmail.com (Harvey Krodin) Subject: Cordless Phone Features Date: 22 May 2004 20:59:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I've been in the market for a new cordless phone for months now, and I can't find a phone that has what I want. It seems every phone has one quirk or another that eliminates it from my list. So I decided to write down all the features I could think of. Here's the list, please add to it or pass it along to one of the manufacturers: 1. Base Unit a. Full duplex speakerphone b. Excellent audio c. 2.5mm jack for headset in base d. Corded handset e. Separate speaker and microphone volume control f. Mute button with lighted mute indicator g. Caller ID with name h. 100 programmable contacts Nokia mobile phone menu style access i. Programmed name replaces transmitted name when found in contact list j. Talking Caller ID with names in users voice for all contacts k. USB connection to PC for: i. Setup ii. Synchronization with Outlook Contact list iii. Synchronization with PC clock (optional) iv. PC-initiated calling v. Voice mail management l. PC need not be switched ON for phone to operate m. Clock appears on display at all times (12/24-hour format selectable) n. Clock is automatically updated with incoming call information. o. 20-number redial list; scrolling list appears on base display. p. Press-and-hold any numeric key for speed dialing up to 10 numbers q. Voice dialing for all contacts r. Extra modular jack for connecting PC's modem to phone line s. Handset paging (one/all) t. Handset Intercom (one/all) u. Wall mount option v. Battery for use during power outage w. Calling card info stored and automatically dialed if SEND key is held down. x. Live dial pad option 2. Handset(s) a. Excellent audio capability b. At least 100 ft. range, no disturbance from microwaves, wireless networks, etc. c. At least 4 handsets link to a single base d. Up to 4 handsets may be used simultaneously on a single active call e. Separate speaker and microphone volume control f. Passive noise-canceling microphone positioned near mouth g. Thick/Large enough to cradle with shoulder h. Belt clip i. Vibrating ringer option independent of ringer setting j. Selectable ring tones k. Uses base unit's contact list Nokia mobile phone menu style access l. Ability to edit/program base unit's contact information m. Voice mail access, independent of whether another handset is in use n. 20-number redial list appears on handset display. Common (or optionally independent) list on all handsets. o. Voice dialing (access to stored voice dialing in base unit). Programmable from handset. p. 2.5mm standard plug for headset q. Full duplex speakerphone r. Mute button with button on side of handset for easy access. s. Base unit and inter-handset paging / intercom t. Clock synchronized with base unit (time/format) u. Line in use indication, also works if PC modem is using phone line v. Clock visible at all times on display. w. Press and hold any numeric key for speed dialing up to 10 numbers (synchronized to base unit or individual option). x. Calling card automatically dialed if SEND key is held down. y. 3 programmable alarms with text message, snooze, and reset features. z. Keypad lock/unlock sequence (e.g., MENU + *) aa. AA NiMH rechargeable batteries 3. Digital Answering Machine a. Phone company voice mail audio quality b. Visible flashing indicator on base c. Visible indicator on all handset displays d. Number of new messages visible on both base and handset displays e. Controllable from base or any handset f. Minimum 15 minute conversation duration g. Single/all message erase ------------------------------ Date: 23 May 2004 00:00:15 -0400 From: John R Levine Subject: Taking my Cell Phone to Switzerland? I'm going to a conference in Geneva in July, and it'd be nice to have a phone. What's the best way to do it? I have a Cingular tri-band phone, with one of the band being GSM. Cingular says they have roaming agreements with most of the GSM carriers in Europe, so if I put my GSM SIM card into a phone that works on Euro frequencies, it'll work there, albeit at rather high roaming rates. Cingular will sell me a Nokia 3100 "world" phone that works on GSM 1800, but 360 days out of the year I'm in North America where my current phone is just what I want and fits the car kit in my truck. Can I easily rent a phone when I get there, either an empty one into which I plug my SIM card, or one with its own card and a number I can use? Or should I rent one here before I go? Or something else? Regards, John Levine, johnl@iecc.com, Primary Perpetrator of "The Internet for Dummies", Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://iecc.com/johnl, Mayor "I dropped the toothpaste", said Tom, crestfallenly. ------------------------------ 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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