From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Sep 21 12:49:47 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i8LGnl513055; Tue, 21 Sep 2004 12:49:47 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 12:49:47 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200409211649.i8LGnl513055@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 #437 TELECOM Digest Tue, 21 Sep 2004 12:48:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 437 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Worst Sex Offenders to be Tracked by Satellite (Monty Solomon) Digital Age 'May Mean no TV For Poor' [UK] (Monty Solomon) Broadcasters Object to Planned Digital TV Bill (Monty Solomon) Best Buy Ready to Feast at Digital TV Sweet Spot (Monty Solomon) Comcast Blocking Suspected Spammers For 48 Hours (Monty Solomon) Symantec Internet Security Threat Report (Monty Solomon) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Dave Garland) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Robert Bonomi) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Steve Kl.) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Lisa Hancock) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Michael Covington) Paper, was: What is the Name of #? How did # Get Name? (Danny Burstein) Seen This Tekelec Article Yet? (switch hitter) Re: DIRECWAY VPN Accelerator (dold@XReXXDIREC.usenet.us.com) Re: A Backup Battery For Cell Phones (Michael A. Covington) 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: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 23:31:37 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Worst Sex Offenders to be Tracked by Satellite By Karen Testa, Associated Press BOSTON (AP) The state's most dangerous sexual predators will soon be forced to wear electronic monitoring devices and be tracked by satellite 24 hours a day, a move supporters say rightly sacrifices the privacy of offenders for public safety. The new rules for monitoring apply only to so-called Level 3 sex offenders who are on probation or parole. There are currently about 1,000 Level 3 offenders in Massachusetts, and 219 of those qualify for electronic monitoring. http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/09/20/worst_sex_offenders_to_be_tracked_by_satellite ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 23:43:54 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Digital Age 'May Mean no TV For Poor' [UK] WILLIAM CHISHOLM MANY low-income families across the south of Scotland will be without television three years from now as the cost of converting sets from analogue to digital reception will be beyond their financial reach, it has been claimed. A consultation document published by Ofcom, the media regulator, has confirmed that the Border ITV area is in line to become the first region in the UK to lose analogue signals in 2007 as broadcasters and the government embark on a four-year programme to switch to an all-digital system. http://news.scotsman.com/scotland.cfm?id=1095472004 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 23:55:14 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Broadcasters Object to Planned Digital TV Bill By Jeremy Pelofsky WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. television broadcasters on Monday labeled as inadequate planned legislation to ensure millions of consumers can still watch television once broadcasters begin airing only in digital. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman John McCain plans to offer a bill on Tuesday that would require broadcasters to only air the new, crisp digital television signals by 2009 and would subsidize the cost for those consumers who rely on traditional television to see those signals. His measure would provide up to $1 billion for consumers, particularly lower-income households, to either buy a device that would convert the digital signals back into a format that they could watch or to install cable or satellite service. The National Association of Broadcasters, which represents scores of local television stations, said it would oppose the bill because it would not cover all the traditional television sets in American households, estimated at over 70 million. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=technologyNews&storyID=6284773 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 23:59:13 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Best Buy Ready to Feast at Digital TV Sweet Spot By Nat Worden TheStreet.com Staff Reporter Solid earnings guidance Wednesday from Best Buy (BBY :NYSE - news - research ) could mark the beginning of a trend several analysts believe will finally awaken its sleepy shares: high-definition television for the masses. http://www.thestreet.com/markets/natworden/10182980.html ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 01:34:57 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Comcast Blocking Suspected Spammers For 48 Hours Excerpt from: The error message reads as follows: 550 IP blocked by ldap:ou=rbl,dc=comcast,dc=net -> 550 Message sending error. Please go to http://faq.comcast.net/faq/answer.jsp?name=17867&cat=Security&subcategory=Spam Comcast has made it a priority to thwart these attacks -- and as part of our ongoing efforts to protect our customers and our network, we are temporarily (for a period of 48 hours) suspending e-mail accounts on any infected customers generating abnormally high outbound e-mail traffic. Doing so will give our customers notification about the situation, so they can adequately protect and repair their computers. ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 02:10:08 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Symantec Internet Security Threat Report News Release Symantec Internet Security Threat Report Identifies More Attacks Now Targeting e-Commerce, Web Applications Short Vulnerability-to-Exploit Window, Rise in Bot Networks, Increase in Severe/Easy-to-Exploit Vulnerabilities CUPERTINO, Calif. - Sept. 20, 2004 - Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC), the global leader in information security, today released its newest Internet Security Threat Report. The sixth bi-annual report provides analysis and discussion of trends in Internet attacks, vulnerabilities, and malicious code activity for the period of Jan. 1, 2004 to June 30, 2004. http://www.symantec.com/press/2004/n040920b.html Internet Security Threat Report http://ses.symantec.com/ITR https://ses.symantec.com/content.cfm?articleid=1539&EID=0 Internet Security Threat Report Webcast Presented by: Dean Turner, Manager, Early Warning Solutions Date: Thursday, September 23, 2004 Time: 8 a.m. (PDT) http://ses.symantec.com/GLX597KZAL ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 01:29:43 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information FWIW, I have one friend who calls "#" a "plaid", probably just to annoy me. She tells me that in Finnish the word for "#" is the same word as "picket fence". ------------------------------ Organization: Robert Bonomi Consulting Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 10:00:17 +0000 In article , Michael A. Covington wrote: > The Don McPherson story sounds too good to be true, unless > Mr. McPherson can confirm it himself. (I'm a linguist and have > studied a lot of etymologies; elaborate stories like that are almost > invariably false. An analogous one is the story that attributes the > name "ham radio" to the initials of 3 people or 3 ships.) So I would > urge further investigation. > I had heard -- but can no longer trace the source -- that an > "octothorpe" is a mapmaker's symbol for 8 fields around a village > common. "Thorpe" means "village," not "beam." > Despite being well known to us, the word "octothorpe" seems to be > extremely obscure; it is in neither the OED (online edition) nor the > Jargon File. > I can, however, clear up one other detail. # is called "pound sign" > not because of any connection with British pounds, but because, in > industrial use 75 or so years ago, it denoted pounds of weight. To > this day "24#" means 24-pound paper, for instance. The poundage of > paper, in turn, is the weight of some specified quantity - I don't > recall at the moment exactly how much. *THAT* I can answer. it is one ream -- 500 sheets -- of whatever the 'basis size' for that stock is. For regular writing paper, the basis size is 17"x22", 4 times the size of 'normal' 8.5x11 paper. Thus, a 500-sheet ream of 8.5x11 24# stock will weigh in at exactly 6 lbs. ------------------------------ From: stevekl@panix.com (Steve Kl.) Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: 21 Sep 2004 10:02:14 -0400 Organization: PANIX -- Public Access Networks Corp. In article , JP wrote: >> Yep, same here. I've never been able to find it in a dictionary, nor > http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=octothorpe You have me to thank for that. :) (Really.) Steve Kl. ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: 21 Sep 2004 08:13:40 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I thought that the grandfather of > William Burroughs (a prominent author), who founded the Burroughs > Adding Machine Company (you know, punch the buttons, yank the crank > lever back and forth) was the founder (or one of them) of IBM. That's > what William Burroughs claims in his book 'Naked Lunch' when he > casually mentions his grandfather. William Burroughs said he was still > living off the largesse in his grandfather's trust fund. PAT] AFAIK, Burroughs was not involved in founding IBM, but I don't know the details of the early investors; he may have played a part. It's hard to pinpoint an exact date and person as the "founding" of IBM because different things happened at different times. Originally, there were three independent companies, one was Hollerith's punched card machines, one was a timeclock company, and one was grocery scales. Investors (IIRC headed by a man named Flint) bought the three companies and put them under the name "Computer Tabulating Recording" company. The combined company was struggling and the investors set out to find a manager. Thomas J. Watson Sr was available (having been fired from NCR by its tempermental boss Patterson) and was hired as General Manager. Watson whipped the ragtag outfit into shape. He eventually renamed it IBM. Some histories date IBM to when they hired Watson, but he was neither the founder nor its first president. By the way, Hollerith purchased some early components from the fledging Western Electric company. Although Watson was fired by Patterson, he always gave him and his NCR experiences full credit for teaching him salesmanship and how to run a business. Watson sold off the scale division to Hobart in the 1920s. The time division remained until the late 1950s when Watson Jr sold that off. My elementary and junior high schools had IBM clocks. Central clock systems were common in schools and industry as well of course timeclocks and IBM sold them. To this day, stationers still sell timeclock cards speced for "IBM models" even though they've been out of the business for years. In the 1930s, Watson Sr bought an electric typewriter company which later produced the famous line of IBM Selectric typewriters. The corporate HQ was in NYC, but the mfr plants were in Endicott NY, also home of Endicott Johnson shoes. At one time IBM had a huge presence in Endicott as well as Hudson valley towns like Poughkeepsie, but this has shrunk a great deal. In the 1930s Watson built an impressive research building and school building in Endicott. In the 1930s the passage of the New Deal gave IBM its big break. The new govt regulations required substantial information processing equipment in both govt and industry to comply with the regulations (Social Security alone was a big purchaser.) IBM's biggest seller by that point was Hollerith's tabulating machines. As mentioned, in 1928 they developed the modern card. Punched card tabulating machines worked by encoding data in various fields on a card, just like various columns on a spreadsheet. The card could then be sorted in numerous ways by any fields or collection of fields. The beauty of this system was that information had to be entered only once, then the card data be passed down the line as a transaction was processed. Once the card was sorted, it could be selected out of a file or matched against other similar cards. Arithmetic information could be tabulated and printed on a report including subtotals and totals and literal information. Thus a sales transaction card could be used for a purchase order, sales report, inventory report, invoice generation, and general ledger feed all by sorting the card and grouping it in different ways. This capability existed by the mid 1930s. IBM expanded its machines in the late 1940s. They were quite sophisticated by that time and could even transmit data over telegraph lines. A large company could do much of its accounting work on IBM machines. IBM salesmen were trained to develop systems for customers and had industry specialists available. IBM didn't simply deliver boxes to a customer, it helped them design and operate their machines with extensive customer support and training -- this was IBM's style from the beginning and is what set IBM apart. Although much has been written about the IBM method, I think many copiers over the years have taken on the "letters" of the method but not the "spirit". In my own experience over the years IBM people were far better trained and competent than others. When the Bell System was a monopoly, it too provided considerable training and support to its business customers. It sent people out to schools to teach kids the proper way to use the telephone. My elementary school saw countless educational films on all sorts of science subjects made as a freebie by Bell Labs. Bell System people weren't quite as sales aggressive as IBMers, but good service was important. In the early 1950s real computers were still extremely rare and extremely expensive. But there was a strong demand for number crunching by postwar engineering efforts (such as building missiles and jets and big bridges). IBM offered an electronic card calculator in which data punched in a card would be numerically processed with the result punched in the card. While obviously not a computer, this calculator was a big and relatively inexpensive boon to industry. IBM's "CPC" and "604" machines sold by the thousands in the late 1940s and early 1950s as "poor man computers". It wasn't until IBM introduced its (relatively) inexpensive small scale computer, the 650, that the price of true electronic computing came down; this was in the later 1950s. A lot of colleges got one (thanks to a big discount to encourage computer classes). Even the 650 required tab machines for input and output. It should be noted that IBM didn't begin to make more money from electronic computers than punched cards until 1962. We forgot today that electronics were extremely expensive and mechanical devices driven by relays were cheaper. I've seen several sites still using pure punch card processing into the early 1980s, until then it was still more cost efficient to use the old machines rather than buy and program and electronic computer. Also, punch card machines supported big computers by doing utility functions offline such as pre-sorting and detail listing. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: In elementary school we had IBM clocks also, but in high school the clocks were called 'pneumatic clocks' which is to say they operated by air pressure; a short, powerful burst of air sent through the lines once per minute would advance the hand on the clock one minute, and there was a master clock in the principal's office. I never did know (or have forgotten if I did know) who made those clocks. Does anyone remember them? PAT] ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 18:29:33 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) In fact, at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Octothorpe we have several unsubstantiated etymologies and no evidence to substantiate any of them. At least this particular site collects the stories all in one place. One thing that linguists know -- and many others don't realize -- is that the mere existence of an etymology does not make it true. People seem to have a remarkable compulsion to make up myths to explain words. Some of them do not seem to realize that etymologies are questions of fact. "Octothorpe" may indeed be one person's whimsical coinage. The jury still seems to be out as to the exact circumstances. BTW, who has heard + referred to as a "quadthorpe"? I have, somewhere, but don't remember where. Obviously this is a back formation on "octothorpe" intended to denote half as much. ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: Paper, was: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 21:58:22 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC In Michael A. Covington writes: > I can, however, clear up one other detail. # is called "pound sign" > not because of any connection with British pounds, but because, in > industrial use 75 or so years ago, it denoted pounds of weight. To > this day "24#" means 24-pound paper, for instance. The poundage of > paper, in turn, is the weight of some specified quantity - I don't > recall at the moment exactly how much. One ream (500 sheets) of "size C" (17 x 22 inches), which could be more commonly thought of as four reams (2,000 sheets) of 8.5 x 11 inch stuff. _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] ------------------------------ From: chip.howard@comcast.net (switch hitter) Subject: Seen This Tekelec Article Yet? Date: 20 Sep 2004 13:27:06 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I just saw this article (on Telephony's web site). Very interesting ... http://telephonyonline.com/ar/telecom_tekelec_acquires_vocaldata/index.htm ------------------------------ From: dold@XReXXDIREC.usenet.us.com Subject: Re: DIRECWAY VPN Accelerator Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 22:19:32 UTC Organization: a2i network T. Sean Weintz wrote: > LOL. No amount of acceleration will get over Satellites latencey > problems, which makes satellite almost useless for VPN deployments. There are three elements to this. One is that the latencies would prevent VPN from working. Another is that it makes VPN available to someone who does not otherwise have a VPN infrastructure. > Duh. My condolences to any/all who decide to try this service. The third is the impact of latency on the appearance of overall performance. That depends on what you are going to be doing. I have not seen the satellite service in use, but a friend who has it transfers files and uses Outlook. Latency is not an issue there, as there is no interactive typing. It probably isn't an issue for most web surfing or client server applications. Gaming, interactive terminal shells, and Remote Desktop are applications that would be annoying with long latency. Thor Lancelot Simon wrote: > Except that there is no such thing as an "industry standard Nortel > IPsec VPN solution", because Nortel has been among the very worst > offenders in its "embrace and extend" approach to the actual IPsec Isn't that exactly what it says, with marketing fluff added? It works with Nortel VPN. As I recall when I investigated this earlier, they would provide you with a VPN connection to their headend that was a Nortel solution. Your employer could be another Nortel VPN endpoint. I think they are now accomodating Nortel VPN that they don't provide. Clarence A Dold - Hidden Valley (Lake County) CA USA 38.8-122.5 ------------------------------ From: Michael A. Covington Subject: Re: A Backup Battery For Cell Phones Date: Mon, 20 Sep 2004 18:32:32 -0400 Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net) > A convenient little product called Cellboost was created for moments > like this. It looks a bit like a Zippo lighter, but is slightly > smaller, and if you plug one into your wireless phone, it can charge > the battery long enough to talk for up to an hour or so. > http://www.forbes.com/2004/09/20/cx_ah_0920tentech.html There's a better one called Cell Rescue that takes AAA cells which you can replace, and also has a flashlight built in. I got mine at a CompUSA but it is no longer on their web site. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: You can also build these from scrap parts without a lot of hassle. Radio Shack used to have a three or four way adapter (from power transformer terminating on three or four different styles of plugs. From a dip-switch on the transformer you sat the amount of power out you wanted (several choices such as 1.5 volts, 3 volts all the way up to 9 volts). Then the other end (the various styles of outputs) went to the device you wished to operate, according to whatever size/shape fit your device. One day when the power supply (or transformer) part burned out/blew up, my response was to cut the head off the thing, toss out the now useless burned out power supply but retain the other end of the connector (the various endings). I have done exactly this kind of thing now and then: used a nine-volt battery (rectangular battery with two stubby ends) to power some 7.5 or 9 volt device which used a tube shaped connector. Obviously, the smaller the amount of voltage used to run some device, the less lee-way you have in the amount of input. But for 'higher voltage' applications 7-12 volts you can play around with it a little. 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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SPONSORED BY TELECOM DIGEST AND EASY411.COM SIGN UP AT http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest ! ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- 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. 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 V23 #437 ******************************