From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 1 01:48:07 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i915m6k03010; Fri, 1 Oct 2004 01:48:07 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 01:48:07 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410010548.i915m6k03010@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 #460 TELECOM Digest Fri, 1 Oct 2004 01:48:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 460 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Santa Cruz Pirate Radio Station Unplugged (Robert Weller) Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal (Rick Merrill) Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal (Tony P.) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (Gordon Hlavenka) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (jdj) WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 (Danny Burstein) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? (jdj) Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? (Gene Berkowitz) Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? (AES/newspost) Re: Paper Tape Technology was Re: What is Name of #? (Bob Goudreau) Re: Fireman Claims Radio Failure Nearly Killed Him (Steve Sobol) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Rich Greenberg) Re: AT&T Lowers Price of its Residential VoIP Service (Rick Merrill) Re: Net Firms: Don't Tax Internet Calling (Rick Merrill) Re: Our Inexpensive Directory Assistance Program (Fred Atkinson) 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: Robert Weller Subject: Santa Cruz Pirate Radio Station Unplugged Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 15:32:06 -0700 http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/archive/2004/September/30/local/=20 stories/01local.htm By CATHY REDFERN Sentinel staff writer SANTA CRUZ Federal agents armed with weapons and a court order seized the broadcasting equipment of Free Radio Santa Cruz on Wednesday morning, silencing the pirate radio station. Residents of two buildings on the property said agents knocked on the door with guns drawn about 8:45 a.m. The tense operation concluded about five hours later, with the towing of three of the agents disabled vehicles. [submitted by Bob Weller] ------------------------------ From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:02:42 GMT Jack Decker wrote: > http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2435843,00.html > By John Ingold > Denver Post Staff Writer > When her infant son started having trouble breathing, a worried Krista > Staats rushed to the phone and called 911. > A dispatch center in Castle Rock, nearly 40 miles from her Adams > County house, took the call, thinking she was calling from a business > in Parker. AS VoIP begins to spread (as did Cellphones) we must all re-learn how to give 911 our location AND TOWN. In our town we had a house burn down because they called frantically from a cell phone and it took 15 minutes to find out where they were! My Dlink documentation specificly states that 911 will not work the same as E911. The town dispatcher says that the number coming in is something [screwy] and will not operate their computer: in other words they have to ASK you where you are! How long will it take for that to be fixed? - RM ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal Organization: ATCC Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 00:22:54 GMT In article , Jack Decker says: > http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2435843,00.html > By John Ingold > Denver Post Staff Writer > When her infant son started having trouble breathing, a worried Krista > Staats rushed to the phone and called 911. > A dispatch center in Castle Rock, nearly 40 miles from her Adams > County house, took the call, thinking she was calling from a business > in Parker. As Staats bounced from dispatch center to dispatch center, > trying to find the right people to help her, her baby boy's condition > grew worse, and Staats grew more frantic. > Finally, 5-month-old Christopher Vasquez stopped breathing, and Staats > let out a piercing, terror-filled scream. He died moments later, > shortly after an ambulance was dispatched -- a little over four minutes > after Staats made her call. > Now, Staats has sued her telephone company, Comcast, and two other > companies, claiming that because they put the wrong address for her > phone number into the 911 system, her son died that day in the spring > of 2003. > "Because Comcast had my address wrong in the system, I had to watch my > son die," she said Wednesday at a news conference. > Staats may not be alone in having the 911 problem. > Full story at: > http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36~53~2435843,00.html > Additional commentary at BroadbandReports.com: > http://www.broadbandreports.com/shownews/54996 This is going to force VoIP carriers to figure out how to deal with 911 routing in a big old hurry. For the life of me, I cannot understand why they just can't use GPS and then do a database dip to route to the correct entity. If anything the U.S. is getting more tightly mapped via The Help America Vote Act (Hereby referred to as HAVA). The state of Rhode Island recently got close to $10 million to implement a Central Voter Registration System (CVRS) and that requires us to map EVERY address down to the house number. We're also going to be coordinating with the state DMV though they're still using COBOL flat files. Eeeew. So I can't see why we wouldn't share it with the E-911 folks around here. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: But if this incident happened in the 'spring of 2003' as stated, we are now in the fall of 2004, a year and a half later. Who do *you* see rushing around to fix things, in a big hurry? And how do you know, based on the newspaper report, that the lady attempted to use a VOIP phone, or that the fault is anything to do with VOIP? And *if* it was a VOIP phone, those very seldom -- if ever -- go into the 911 system as such, usually winding up ringing on a seven digit administrative number instead. So why wouldn't the call (if it was a VOIP phone) have rung into one or more dispatcher's positions in the local emergency call answering facility? Because here in Independence, Kansas we are more rural and backward in our way of doing things, our dispatchers have a wall phone which is answered 24/7 and known to be for 'alternate answering'; a '911-like' phone but without 911-abilities in all ways. When Vonage, a major player in VOIP service recieves a request from a customer to turn on 911 service -- your choice if you want to have it or not -- Vonage sends email to the PSAP, and paper mail, advising them of this. When the PSAP acknowledges the email and adjusts the database accordingly, then Vonage tells the customer it is okay to begin using it. Here in Independence, the Police Department, whose dispatcher also responds to calls on the Sheriff's emergency line, also sends paper mail to the address **exactly as received from the VOIP carrier** to confirm it is a 'good address' in an envelope marked 'deliver to addressee only' asking the person to confirm their use of VOIP phone service and explaining how it is different than 'normal 911 service'. The police department asks the subscriber to respond to the mailing, and that response confirms what the VOIP carrier had originally said. Although as I said earlier, we are a small, rural community considered backward and I suspect ignorant in many areas, our dispatchers have been well trained, and our telephones are answered 24 hours per day, seven days per week, unlike New York City where we were advised here in a message a couple months ago, the police quit answering the phones at 10 PM, and rather than responding effeciently and courteously to every call are likely as not to put the caller through the wringer if he did not choose to place his call on the phone line the police happened to consider more appropriate. Why is that so difficult for other police/sheriff/emergency answering points to handle? Why is the VOIP carrier expected to do all the required contortions? And I am not yet convinced the phone company -- whichever one it was -- had anything to do with this fiasco. Why can't all police agencies have a phone line (which makes one or more appearances around the room as needed) to deal with the exceptions like we do here in Independence? PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 21:39:56 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Lisa Hancock wrote: > Concerning the above problem, I'm surprised that a broken crystal (do > crystals even break that easily?) would just so happen to send out a > different valid signal. I don't know the details of how the BART system works, but if there's an analog correspondence between the frequency coming out of a divider and the train speed, then a change in the frequency going into the divider (e.g. from a failed crystal oscillator) would produce a different frequency. Depending on how the frequency is scaled, the crystal could be far off frequency yet the new frequency could still be within the range of valid values. Just wrong. I'm just handwaving here, but suppose there's an 8051 microcontroller running on an 8MHz clock. It's running something similar to this air code: output_speed: MOV A,#speed CPL speed_bit timing: INC A JNZ A,timing CPL speed_bit JMP output_speed Now, the higher the value passed in with #timing, the faster speed_bit oscillates. If speed_bit has been defined as an output pin, you can feed it to a transmitter and send it to the train. The train would have a receiver hooked to an F-V converter attached to the motor speed controller that takes a voltage for input. If your 8MHz crystal begins oscillating at 24MHz for some reason (crystal fails, loading cap fails, onchip 8051 driver fails, etc.) then the code continues to run without error but speed_bit toggles at 3X the desired rate. So, passing the appropriate number in #speed to command 24mph would run the train at 72mph ... Not saying this is how they do it, but it's one way. I'd rather send coded digital data over the air, so I could error-check it before using it. But the whole F-V scenario might still be used onboard the train with a PCM feeding into it; the resulting voltage then sent to a COTS motor speed controller. > Note that Touch Tone signals use two-tones, not just one. Except that most touchtone _generators_ operate off of a single oscillator. So, if that oscillator goes bad both tones slide. I worked on a telephone system that used a TP5088 hardwired to generate "*", but fed a 2MHz input instead of 3.58, to generate a dialtone. The result was pretty close to The Real Thing. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:03:51 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 08:35:14 -0700, Jeff nor Lisa wrote: > George Mitchell wrote >> Lisa Hancock wrote: >>> As to the claim BART radios were "special" years ago, there is >>> definitely truth to that. BART's original train control system had >>> many problems, including a train that ignored a stop signal and flew >>> off at a terminal into the parking lot. > Let me clarify the above paragraph. By 'radios' I meant the train > control system, not the audio communication system. Strictly speaking, BART did not use radios to control trains. Only in an extremely broad sense would the system be considered "radio". The little white fins atop the cars were/are antennae for voice comms. > BART uses automated train operation and protection. The speed and > stopping of trains is controlled by signals sent to the train from > wayside transmitters. A second and critical component of this system is > train protection so that one train does not collide with another. BART > was an early modern automated train system. > The rest of my paragraph is correct. The original BART system had > pushed the state of the art and had many problems in practice. > [GW continues] >> This had nothing to do with radios. The lead car of the train was >> receiving a 27-mph signal from the track. The system for trans- >> mitting the speed command from the lead car to the rest of the train >> was to transmit one of a specified set of audio frequency signals over >> a wire bus. However, the crystal in the 27-mph oscillator was cracked >> and oscillated at the 72-mph frequency, causing the train to speed up >> instead of slow down. The operator was not able to apply the brakes in >> time to stop before reaching the end of the track. > http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1976/7614/761406.PD That link is invalid. Returns 404. > My point is that BART depends on wireless communications to transmit > speed commands from wayside onto the train AND that BART had many > problems with this system. The above example is just one of many > problems they had to deal with. Strictly speaking, it is wireless. The car's shielded pickup is very close to a device alongside or just above the third rail. This is the data communications link. I know that the signalling does not occur above 1MHz -- I did check! (Very surreptitiously.) The system is similar in function to a tape recorder: In a tape recorder the tape head detects changes in magnetic flux from the moving tape and is designed not to pick up stray magnetic fields. The tape head also produces a magnetic flux which is concentrated on the tape to record sounds. The BART control system is designed the same way, except the "tape" carries a magnetic signal that changes continuously. The train pickup is designed to only pick up signals from the "tape" and to "record" signals to the "tape". There is a detailed layman's description of the magnetic pickup in a periodical somewhere. It was published sometime around 1975. Also published were details of the control system, complete with lots of pictures of the IBM mainframe and ops center. If I recall correctly, there was also extensive coverage of BART in IBM's internal publication, "Think". > Concerning the above problem, I'm surprised that a broken crystal (do > crystals even break that easily?) would just so happen to send out a > different valid signal. In Bell System signalling, they were very > careful to avoid harmonic frequencies or any frequencies as well as > pulse coding that could be misinterpreted as something else. Note that > Touch Tone signals use two-tones, not just one. This kind of safety > design goes back to the 1940s. Likewise, in more traditional railroad > signalling, the pulse codes were carefully designed and implemented with > very rugged gear to avoid misinterpretation. If a failure occurs, it is > interpreted as a stop signal. (BART chose to not use traditional > railroad technology.) Yes, crystals do break while in use. They are not perfect. When they break, they can and do produce output at higher frequencies. A crystal's resonant frequency is a function of it's dimensions as well as composition. > Anyway, a stray or errant signal could and did cause a BART train wreck. > Naturally BART mgmt would be interested in preventing such problems. > On other automated rail systems, a positive read of a specific signal is > required to proceed, the failure to receive that signal stops the train. No, a stray signal did not cause the crash. A faulty signalling device, as has been described, caused it. The train was commanded to accelerate. Even emergency braking could not have stopped the train before the crash. There was not enough track left. This was pointed out in the report and in the media. The end of track is only about a car-length or two past the end of the platform. > As someone else explained, superhet radio receivers retransmit a signal, > and this signal happens to interfere with navigation. Well, a radio > that is actually transmitting could send out similar signal > interference. The problem with FM band superhets is that the local oscillator frequency is traditionally set above the band of interest, in this case, within the air-nav band of 108 to 118MHz. The interference is of such a nature that it would be discernible as interference and not a navigation signal. I suspect that modern airnav systems would not be fooled. > As to the current issue, walkie-talkies are transmitters, and as such, > send out signals obviously stronger than within a receiver's superhet > circuits. It is possible that such signals either directly or through > distortion/harmonics could interfere with normal train control. While a > wreck is unlikely, it could force a train into an emergency stop between > stations, which is obviously undesirable. Not possible when the control signal band is below the bands in use by radios, as in the case of BART. Harmonics do not appear below the fundamental. > Until such time that modern walkie-talkies would be tested to ensure > their signals do not and cannot interfere with train control and train > protection, they should not be permitted to be used on BART. Then all transmitters should have been banned on those grounds. Yet cell phones were allowed, as well as untested radios from other agencies. And again, nearby transmitters, including high-powered transmitters, adjacent to the track, caused no problems. It is not a current issue as there is no longer a policy banning transmitters in stations or on trains. There is no evidence that any radios interfere with train operation. The longer this goes on, the more I remember from my "VIP" tour of BART all those years ago ... ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 00:08:06 UTC Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC TELECOM Digest Editor queried in response to kpospisek@yahoo.com (Karl Pospisek): > Please remind me who I am (trying to) thinking about. I do know he > never took a nickle for his work in developing the Web, which I guess > would be the 'killer application' of all time. PAT] Tim Berners-Lee. (not to be confused with Bernard Lee, aka M, James Bond's boss) _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Ah yes, Tim Berners-Lee, thank you for jogging my memory. I wish Mr. Berners-Lee would come around here now and then, I would love to give him a piece of my mind, as disease- riddled and useless as it has become since the aneurysm. I would ask him why in the hell he did not slap a copyright on everything to do with the web back in 1994 so as to prevent so much of the foolish nonsense and charlatanism we see all over the place now days. Ah well, too late now to worry about it I guess. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:15:36 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com On Wed, 29 Sep 2004 21:32:48 -0700, ava cohen wrote: > I am thinking of getting my 12 year old daughter a pay as you go cell > phone in California. It is likely going to cost you far more than a contract plan. Kids and phones are like kids and candy. Both are gone as fast they can consume them. I'll bet you will soon tire of buying more time every day. > Can anyone recommend a "pay as you go" economy cell phone? (like > prepaid cards?) I suggest looking at each company's offering. Target has brochures on many of the available services. Seems almost every single company has a prepaid plan, now. > I do not want to subscribe to any plans. For which you will pay dearly. Not that you wouldn't under a contract ... > Which company? They're all pretty bad. > How much does the phone and the calls cost? Between $40 and $200, depending on company and model of phone. They do not allow you to use a phone you already have -- unless you bought it specifically for their prepaid service. Call costs vary between companies. > Where is the best place to buy it from? Safeway's, Target, KMart, Socket Circus -- I mean Circuit City -- :) etc. They're spreading like a plague. :) > Any help would be highly appreciated. > Thanks. > Ava ------------------------------ From: Gene S. Berkowitz Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 22:46:33 -0400 In article , johnl@iecc.com says... >> As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read and >> count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by the fact >> that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and set up a >> company ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm room which >> received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time on Aiken's early >> Harvard University computer facility, and sent back printed reports to >> traffic engineers all over the company. > Gates and Allen did run Traf-O-Data, but the rest is wrong. Since > Bill is 48 years old, when would he have been at Harvard? When was > Aiken doing the Mark I through Mark IV? Sheesh. Gates was Class of '77 at Harvard. Most students at that time used the Harvard-Radcliffe Student Time Sharing System (HRSTS), which was a Unix variant running on DEC PDP-11s. --Gene ------------------------------ From: AES/newspost Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:02:28 -0700 A recent posting from me said: > Very similar punched tape technology was also used -- probably still > is widely used -- in those traffic counting units that use a rubber > hose tacked down across the roadway and a box by the side of the road. > A classic clockwork mechanism inside the box (spring-wound or battery > powered? -- I don't know, but I'd guess the former) slowly winds a > paper tape from one reel to another. Each time a car runs over the > hose the resulting pneumatic impulse pushes an arm which punches a > hole in the paper. > As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read and > count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by the fact > that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and set up a > company ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm room which > received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time on Aiken's early > Harvard University computer facility, and sent back printed reports to > traffic engineers all over the company. > (Above is written from memory, so take cum grano salis, but I think it's > basically a correct story -- corrections welcome.) A response from John Levine quoted my third paragraph and said: > Gates and Allen did run Traf-O-Data, but the rest is wrong. > Since Bill is 48 years old, when would he have been at Harvard? > When was Aiken doing the Mark I through Mark IV? Sheesh. And this is a reply from me to those statements: The rest is wrong? Really? 1) Gates, born in 1955, was an undergrad at Harvard (though I believe he never finished the degree). This would have been around 1972-73 since I think he started Microsoft around 1973 or 1974. 2) The story of his involvement in Traf-O-Data was told me by a physics colleague who was a fellow undergrad living in the same entry as Gates in the same student residence at Harvard. He recalled in particular the large number of packages containing paper tapes from traffic engineers that Gates received in the dorm, and his processing these on Harvard computer facilities at night. 3) I assume Gates wrote the software that processed the tapes -- does JL know otherwise? 4) Howard Aiken was at Harvard from the 1940s (or earlier?) through 1961. He founded the Harvard Computation Laboratory around 1944 to 1947 (accounts vary). The Laboratory staff and facilities occupied a building at 33 Oxford street which was also called the Harvard Computation Laboratory, although I don't know exactly when this building was built. The organization and the building were both renamed as the Aiken Computation Laboratory in 1964 (before Gates arrived). The Laboratory was still operating, or at least issuing technical reports over that name, at least as late as 1981; the building remained under that name, and I believe housed Harvard's computer facilities, or many of them anyway, until it was torn down in 1998. 5) I guess I don't know for sure that Gates used the computer hardware in this building for his Traf-O-Data operations -- perhaps he used some other computer facility at Harvard -- but it certainly seems a very reasonable supposition, Does JL have any knowledge otherwise? If so, referring to these facilities as "Aiken's early Harvard University computer facility" seems fully accurate to me. (And entirely as an aside, might Gates in 1971 even have used some surviving paper tape reader that had been connected to one of Aiken's early Mark xxx computers? I have no idea, and no knowledge of how long that kind of paper tape hardware can last; but I believe Aiken's Mark IV operated until some time in the late 1950s.) 6) Finally, does anyone see any reference to Aiken's Mark xxx computers in my original post? J Carpenter (SunGard BSR) has also posted a reply which says: > Actually, it was before Bill Gates went to Harvard, when he was still > in high school, that Bill Gates and Paul Allen built their own > computer to measure traffic data, and they made about $20,000. > Search the web on "bill gates" and "traf-o-data" for the details. I've subsequently looked at several of those web sites, and they indeed all agree that Gates and Allen were interested in the traffic counting problem and together founded Traf-O-Data before Gates went off to Harvard, while both were still in high school. Few of the sites are very explicit about details, however, or present much documentation, and some of them contradict each other on specific details. Several of them also seem to agree that neither the hardware nor the software aspects of the traffic counting problem had been fully worked out by the time Gates went off to Harvard. I certainly have no first-hand knowledge of these events myself, but I'd attach considerable reliability to the first-hand report from Gates' fellow Harvard student. Perhaps this has not become part of the Gates legend because it's not quite as appealing or newsworthy as the "brilliant young high-school entrepreneur" human interest aspects of the stories on these other websites. ------------------------------ From: Bob Goudreau Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology was Re: What is Name of #? Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:10:32 -0400 [PAT, please eliminate my email address from the message. Thanks.] J Carpenter (SunGard BSR) wrote: >>> As an undergrad at Harvard, Bill Gates wrote software to read >>> and count these punched holes (a task complicated slightly by >>> the fact that they are randomly spaced along the paper tape) and >>> set up acompany ("Traf-O-Data", I believe) located in his dorm >>> room which received these tapes, read them using bootlegged time >>> on Aiken's early Harvard University computer facility, and sent >>> back printed reports to traffic engineers all over the company. >> Gates and Allen did run Traf-O-Data, but the rest is wrong. Since >> Bill is 48 years old, when would he have >> been at Harvard? When was Aiken doing the Mark I through Mark IV? >> Sheesh. > Actually, it was before Bill Gates went to Harvard, when he was still > in high school, that Bill Gates and Paul Allen built their own > computer to measure traffic data, and they made about $20,000. I think the original poster confused two details of the true story: 1) As pointed out above, Traf-O-Data came before Gates's brief stint in college. What he *did* work on while at Harvard was a BASIC interpreter for the MITS Altair (an early personal computer) that became the first product sold by the new "MicroSoft" company Gates and Allen founded. 2) The Aiken "facility" in question was not one of Howard Aiken's 1940s-era electromechanical computers (the Mark I was obviously the first model), but the university's Aiken Computation Laboratory, a building a bit north of Harvard Yard. This structure was the home of the DEC PDP-10 that Gates used to develop his BASIC interpreter. As recently as the mid-1980s, the public areas of this building still contained a display of some of the pieces of Aiken's original Mark I computer. As I mentioned above, this computer was electromechanical, not electronic, and the sections on display reminded me of nothing so much as an old electromechanical phone switch! The ironic coda to the story is that a few years ago, the Aiken lab was razed. What stands in its place now? The new home of the Harvard CS department, Maxwell-Dworkin Hall, built with money donated by none other than Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer and named in honor of their mothers. Hopefully, the new facility still displays the remnants of Aiken's Mark I machine, but since I haven't visited it yet, I can't say for sure. Bob Goudreau Cary, NC ------------------------------ From: Steve Sobol Subject: Re: Fireman Claims Radio Failure Nearly Killed Him Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:13:37 -0700 Organization: Glorb Internet Services, http://www.glorb.com Tony P. wrote: > It's an accident that was waiting to happen and I'm happy that it did, > but my condolences go out to the firefighter who was nearly killed > because of Motorola's funky emergency system. I hope he sues the ever > loving crap out of Motorola and wins. The ironic thing is that in the cellular world, although I consider Motorola phones to be overpriced junk because the fit and finish is often terrible, they seem to have very few equals in terms of being able to deal with weak signals. I know that they were the only choice for quite some time if you used a CDMA carrier and wanted a phone that held onto calls almost anywhere (though other manufacturers are doing well these days, too) JustThe.net Internet & New Media Services, http://JustThe.net/ Steven J. Sobol, Geek In Charge / 888.480.4NET (4638) / sjsobol@JustThe.net PGP Key available from your friendly local key server (0xE3AE35ED) Apple Valley, California Nothing scares me anymore. I have three kids. ------------------------------ From: richgr@panix.com (Rich Greenberg) Subject: Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? Date: 30 Sep 2004 19:50:38 -0400 Organization: Organized? Me? In article , Nick Landsberg wrote: > Actually, as I recall, the controller was necessary. The 3270's > didn't transmit anything until the operator hit the "send" key, and > this would be buffered in the "cluster controller." > The controller, in turn, would be polled at roughly 2 second intervals > by the far end, at which time it would send the data. A controller > was theoretically limited to 32 terminals, but we found that 16 was a > practical limit for our applications. The polling, which could be set to various intervals, was only on the "remote" controllers, i.e. connected by a communications line, either bisync or (more recently) SNA/VTAM. There were also "local" controllers which were channel attached. On these, pressing an "attention" key (enter, clear, pf1-pf24 & a few others) caused the controller to signal an i/o interrupt to the processor which would cause the processor to read the controller to find out what was wanted. IBM channels on early machines transferred 1.5 megabytes/sec, newer ones went considerably faster. > I never encountered an installation where there was an isolated 3270 > without a cluster controller, although I presume this was > theoretically possible. This is correct with 2 sort-of exceptions. There was a model 3276 which was a display and a controller in one case. Not sure, but I think the controller could handle a few additional displays. Also, the later 360s and all 370s and later processors used a built in 3270 like display which served as an operator console and a service console to control the functions that used to be in lights, switches and buttons on the console. Part of the CPU microcode served as the controller for this display. Rich Greenberg N6LRT Marietta, GA, USA richgr atsign panix.com 770 321 6507 Eastern time zone. I speak for myself & my dogs only. M'er since CP-67 Canines:Val, Red & Shasta (RIP),Red, husky Owner:Chinook-L Atlanta Siberian Husky Rescue. www.panix.com/~richgr/ Asst Owner:Sibernet-L ------------------------------ From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: AT&T Lowers Price of its Residential VoIP Service Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:05:17 GMT Jack Decker wrote: > Comment: I wonder if this means that anyone who orders today > (September 30) would still get the introductory price of $19.99 for > the first six months, but after that would only have to pay the new > rate of $29.99/month (rather than the $34.99 still shown on their web > site). That is my expectation! My Dlink just arrived: it'll take a day or two to get the number ported. > Personally I think there are better deals out there than AT&T, > for example several VoIP companies offer their "unlimited" service at > about $20 or $25 per month. Glad to hear competition is back. > To learn more about AT&T CallVantage Service, consumers can visit > http://www.CallVantage.com, call 1-866-816-3815, extension 70339, or > visit one of these retailers. > Full press release at: > http://www.att.com/news/item/0,1847,13258,00.html ------------------------------ From: Rick Merrill Subject: Re: Net Firms: Don't Tax Internet Calling Organization: Comcast Online Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:07:21 GMT Jack Decker wrote: > http://news.com.com/Net+firms+Dont+tax+VoIP/2100-7352_3-5389880.html > By Declan McCullagh > Staff Writer, CNET News.com > The largest U.S. Internet phone companies are asking the Internal > Revenue Service not to slam them with a "temporary" tax created more > than 100 years ago to pay for the Spanish-American War. > In a six-page letter to the IRS sent late Wednesday, the companies > stressed that fledgling voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services > should not be subject to the excise tax that President William > McKinley signed into law in 1898. > "VoIP is having a profound and beneficial impact on the United States > and the world in a way unimaginable in 1898," the letter said, urging > the IRS to "refrain from any attempt to extend the excise tax to VoIP > services." > The letter was sent by the VON Coalition, which represents AT&T, > Covad, Intel, Level3, MCI, Microsoft, Pulver.com, Skype and Texas > Instruments. > Full story at: > http://news.com.com/Net+firms+Dont+tax+VoIP/2100-7352_3-5389880.html VoIP is also independent of other rules: for example, they can bill to a credit card and cut off service if you card goes belly up. Whereas with POTS they cannot cut off phone service because the legal system has deemed phone an essential service that can only be cut off after due process. - RM ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: Our Inexpensive Directory Assistance Program Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 20:02:34 -0400 Pat, Can this be used in conjunction with Vonage service? Fred [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I guess you are referring to the service at http://www.easy411.com/telecomdigest where you enroll your telephone number(s), provide your credit card number then get billed 65 cents for each use of directory assistance in real time, instead of the $1.25 or $1.50 your own telco charges you. The answer is yes, you can. Vonage itself takes calls to '411' and defaults them to *their carrier [for DA] of choice* but they charge you 99 cents per (up to) two inquiries. But the one I am associated with uses an 800 number instead, and bills you 65 cents each. The ANI provided is used to match your account with the system. If you have some method of your own to dial 411 and re-direct it to the 800 number that's fine or otherwise make a speed dial button for directory assist- ance. They do not literally go to your credit/debit card for 65 cents each time you inquire; they tally up your calls and charge you every month or so for just what you used, no service charges and no minimum usage requirements. If you have a company for example, with a dozen phone lines each with a number, enroll all the numbers, redirect 411 however you please (or tell your people to dial the 800 number) and calculate the savings, at 65 cents per call versus whatever you pay now for directory. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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