From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 1 14:40:54 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i91IesL09243; Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:40:54 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:40:54 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410011840.i91IesL09243@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 #461 TELECOM Digest Fri, 1 Oct 2004 14:40:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 461 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson U.S. Cybersecurity Chief Abruptly Resigns (Monty Solomon) Re: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 (jdj) Re: WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 (John Levine) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a Pay as You Go Cell Phone? (Ray Normandeau) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a Pay as You Go Cell Phone? (Dave Garland) Re: Can Anyone Recommend a Pay as You Go Economy Cell Phone? (Joseph) Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains (George Mitchell) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? (Robert Bonomi) Re: What is the Name of #? How did # Get its Name? - Part 2 (Bonomi) Re: Cell Phone Incident Results in DC Metro Arrest (Justin Time) Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal (John Levine) Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? (John Levine) All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk 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: Fri, 1 Oct 2004 13:00:17 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: U.S. Cybersecurity Chief Abruptly Resigns By TED BRIDIS AP Technology Writer WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government's cybersecurity chief has abruptly resigned after one year with the Department of Homeland Security, confiding to industry colleagues his frustration over what he considers a lack of attention paid to computer security issues within the agency. Amit Yoran, a former software executive from Symantec Corp., informed the White House about his plans to quit as director of the National Cyber Security Division and made his resignation effective at the end of Thursday, effectively giving a single's day notice of his intentions to leave. Yoran said Friday he "felt the timing was right to pursue other opportunities." It was unclear immediately who might succeed him even temporarily. Yoran's deputy is Donald "Andy" Purdy, a former senior adviser to the White House on cybersecurity issues. Yoran has privately described frustrations in recent months to colleagues in the technology industry, according to lobbyists who recounted these conversations on condition they not be identified because the talks were personal. As cybersecurity chief, Yoran and his division _ with an $80 million budget and 60 employees _ were responsible for carrying out dozens of recommendations in the Bush administration's "National Strategy to Secure Cyberspace," a set of proposals to better protect computer networks. Yoran's position as a director _ at least three steps beneath Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge _ has irritated the technology industry and even some lawmakers. They have pressed unsuccessfully in recent months to elevate Yoran's role to that of an assistant secretary, which could mean broader authority and more money for cybersecurity issues. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=43989040 ------------------------------ From: jdj Subject: Re: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:33:03 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: [snip] I am trying > now to think of the name of the one person who did most of the work > creating the Web, but his name off hand escapes me. I know he has been > (or still is) involved with MIT and he also has an office (or perhaps > lives) in Switzerland. 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] He is Tim Berners-Lee, of MIT and CERN fame. CERN took most of the credit for the WWW. A history/timeline of the WorldWide Web is at: http://www.w3.org/History.html I still have the all the versions of Mosaic I ever used. Someone sent the first one to me by uucp around 1991, just before I got arpanet access. Used to get a lot more without the web. Just used {Gopher, Archie, Veronica, Jughead}, telnet, ftp, ftpmail and dialups. Now there is too much noise and obfuscation (mostly adverts) to wade through. It's as if they have deliberately made it harder to find things. Kind of like AOL: For every useful minute, ten more are wasted. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Readers may also wish to check out a site I started several years ago: http://internet-history.org or http://internet-pioneers.org . PAT] ------------------------------ Date: 1 Oct 2004 15:22:55 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: WWW Founder, was: WWW is Ten Years Old in 2004 Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA That would be Sir Tim Berners-Lee. He was made Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire earlier this year. This summer his wife told me some amusing stories of trying to fit a trip back home to get the award into Tim's overcrammed schedule. R's, John [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I believe Queen Elizabeth awarded him the Knighthood on January 1, did she not? PAT] ------------------------------ From: rayta@msn.com (Ray Normandeau) Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: 30 Sep 2004 22:51:02 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com avacohen100@yahoo.com (ava cohen) wrote in message news:: > I am thinking of getting my 12 year old daughter a pay as you go cell > phone in California. > Can anyone recommend a "pay as you go" economy cell phone? (like > prepaid cards?) > I do not want to subscribe to any plans. > Which company? > How much does the phone and the calls cost? > Where is the best place to buy it from? > Any help would be highly appreciated. > Thanks. > Ava After using SPCS since 1998 with two phones sharing an acct, we switched in August to prepaid Virgin Mobile. We are incredibly happy. It is a prepaid service. The minimum is $20.00 every 90 days. Since we are now semi-retired, this is ideal. Instead of spending a total of OVER $80.00 with all the $%&** charges added on, we are now averaging a TOTAL of c. $12.00 for a month. In November we have to add $20.00 to each phone to keep the number. Go to Virgin.com, they use the SPCS network. We bought a couple of $60.00 Keyocera Rave 7 phone. One [out of the 2] of the Manhattan NYC stores was giving an instant $20.00 rebate on each phone. THEN VM PAYS YOU $10.00 in usage/time when you activate. At that rate we could THROW AWAY our phones at the end of evey month if we only used the $10.00 time that they gave us and come out ahead. P.S.: we have also use a Gmail addy to post here, but it is a REAL spam magnate. This address is NG, so spammers, don't bother. ------------------------------ From: Dave Garland Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 12:18:24 -0500 Organization: Wizard Information It was a dark and stormy night when avacohen100@yahoo.com (ava cohen) wrote: > Can anyone recommend a "pay as you go" economy cell phone? (like > prepaid cards?) It's pretty competitive, in the sense that most of the companies charge about the same (0.25/min to/from anywhere in the USA, in some cases less if you buy a very large amount of time in advance), you need to add more time periodically to keep the minutes from expiring. Make sure the company has on-network coverage in the area you're concerned about, roaming charges tend to be 2X the base rate. As with other cell companies, all vendors seem to be widely hated by users. If you don't plan to use the phone much at all, ATTW's "Free2Go" may be a slightly better deal (no monthly fee or minimum, you can buy time in $10 increments, and the expiration is 3 mo., some of the others have larger increments and/or shorter expirations). (This is NOT the same as their "2Go" service.) But if your kid is using it, I doubt that unused minutes reaching their expiration date is going to be much of a problem. Periodically the various vendors may have sales where the price of a phone drops. Occasionally one will have a deal online at their website that involves reconditioned phones. Check around, check the websites to find where the best deal is at the moment. ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Can Anyone Recommend a "Pay as You Go" Economy Cell Phone? Date: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 07:41:20 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On Thu, 30 Sep 2004 17:15:36 -0700, jdj wrote: > 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. Not true in most cases. For GSM phones if they are unlocked you can use any card provided it uses the technology that particular phone uses. For others if the phone was previously activated with that carrier generally you can use a deactivated phone on that network. This is true for AT&T Wireless TDMA service, Sprint PCS, Verizon, Qwest and others. The phone's ESN (serial number) has to be in their database of originally being on their system. And for the most part it doesn't matter whether the phone was used for that company's prepaid or monthly service. ------------------------------ From: George Mitchell Subject: Re: BART Cop Orders Radio Turned Off to Protect Trains Date: Thu, 30 Sep 2004 23:18:08 -0700 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com >> http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1976/7614/761406.PD > That link is invalid. Returns 404. Sorry -- it's missing an "F" at the end: http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk3/1976/7614/761406.PDF -- George Mitchell (obfuscated email address) ------------------------------ 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: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 11:55:35 +0000 In article , Nick Landsberg wrote: > Lisa Hancock wrote: >> bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote >>> Sorry, there is use that predates the personal computer -- with a >>> modem on a dial-up to a mainframe time-sharing service. 'Terminal' is >>> the correct word. >> Correct, they were called terminals, a word that included Teletypes >> that were used in the early days. >>> The point being that the cards were _designed_ to accommodate that >>> printing, One of the early IBM 'interpreters' (an O49 or was that a >>> sorter?) could only print 40 columns in a pass; had to change the >>> program on the plugboard to get the other 40 columns. And change >>> where the printing fell on the card, so it didn't write over the first >>> 40 characters. :) >> I'm not certain, but back in 1928 when the modern punch card was >> invented by IBM, I don't think there was any kind of printing >> mechanism for cards. Remember, initially the cards were numeric only >> and the upper field (the "zone") was used only for control characters. >> I suspect the uppermost space was just a margin to give a punched >> card strength or a place for handwritten notes. >> In the 1930s IBM developed a more sophisticated line of tab machines. >> Included was an printing alpha key punch. >> The 1948 line of interpreters were NOT intended to print one character >> per column -- the width of the printed character was slightly wider >> than a column. Only 60 characters would fit on the top and 20 would >> have to go on the next line. In practice, the interpreters were >> programmed by the plug panel to print selected fields in certain >> places, and could do so all over the card. They could also print a >> big number sideways on the side edge so the card could be filed >> vertically. >> Also, most IBM lines of keypunches included printing and non printing >> models, and the non-printers were cheaper. >> BTW, one advtg of the punched card system was that it was easy and >> cheap to have "on-line" file access. They'd just punch out and >> interpret and sort a deck of cards containing key data. Clerks would >> receive phone requests and pull up the cards in a tube file. Changes >> would be processed through the tab system. >> So did IBM, later, around the S/34 or S/36 IIRC, not too long before >> It should be noted that until the 1980s, the above was cheaper and >> faster than developing a "modern" CICS solution on a real computer. >>>> punch cards passed out of mainstream usage altogether. >> IBM's System/32,34,36 did not use cards at all. The mini cards were >> used on the IBM System/3. >> As an aside, the language used on IBM's System/3x through the present >> day AS/400 is RPG, which dates back to 1960 and the IBM 1401. The >> language was intended to mimic the wiring of a tab machine control >> panel so tab operators could make the transition to programming. >>> The 3270 was a 'smart' terminal -- necessitated by IBM's "block mode" >>> architecture -- and used 16 bits per displayed character. 1 byte for >>> the character itself, and one byte for the 'attributes', things like >>> 'bright', 'blank', 'input', 'protected', etc. > IIRC, the "attribute byte" only had to get transmitted when the > attribute properties changed or when you wanted to jump to a different > portion of the screen. Correct as far as -transmission- went. However, the 'in-terminal' memory had to have one 'attribute' byte for each character displayed. The only alternative, as used on some 'cheap' ASCII terminals, was to use any single memory location as _either_ a displayable character, or an attribute byte. This had the drawback of having the attribute byte consume a character-position on the display -- resulting in a blank space at every point the attributes changed. > The sequence, as I recall was : > SBA (Set Buffer Address) ROW, COL, ABYTE, data bytes > The ABYTE subset which I recall is > displayed/non-displayed, > returned/non-returned, > alpha, numeric (not mutually exlusive, 2 bits), > protected/unprotected, > "bright" (or highlighted). > Now that's only 6 bits ... what am I missing? > You could also get very creative with these fields. At least one > implementation that I am aware of used "protected, non-displayed, > returned" fields to "hide" data from the user but make it easier on > the server machine. For example, a transaction which retrieved a > Telephone Co. customer's record would retrieve all the data at once, > but use the 3270 as a kind of storage device, hiding the data which > didn't need to appear on "page 1" as "protected, non-displayed, > returned" so that when the clerk asked for "page 2" all that had to be > done on the far end was echo back the data in a different format > without taking the hit of a database access. > (There was no scroll capability on the 3270's that I recall, so this > was a "neat trick" to flip between "pages".) Correct. they were 'page based' displays. everything was written to fixed (absolute row,col) addresses, and everything _stayed_ where it was originally written. >> It's funny how today we call 3270-type terminals (still in very wide >> use) "dumb terminals" when in fact they were not. A Teletype was more >> "dumb" since it basically transmitted or received upon a keystroke, >> while the 3270 network had buffers, could erase and insert characters, >> and as mentioned had different appearances. [There were advanced >> Teletypes that could do some fancy stuff. Some 3270 functions were >> handled by the controller unit that was required and supported a group >> of terminals.] > 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." Yup. controller _absolutely_ necessary. > 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. > I never encountered an installation where there was an isolated 3270 > without a cluster controller, although I presume this was > theoretically possible. _Not_ possible. There had to be a controller _somewhere_ in the path. Generally, with 'remote' terminals, the cluster-controller was located at the remote site, with hard-wire (coax) to each terminal, and some sort of a 'modem-based' link back to the mainframe. In situations where there were a *very* small number of remote terminals at a given location, one _might_ have a terminal w/o a controller, directly connected to a modem-type device, communicating back to a modem at the head-end, which was hung off a cluster-controller _there_. this was a _very_rare_ set-up, due to the cost of the equipment at each end to mediate between the coax-based communications out of the 3270 and/or cluster-controller and the modem. A '7171'-type front-end -- supporting conventional modems, and allowing use of simple 'ASCII' terminals in the field -- was much more cost- effective if you were supporting more than a very few such locations. >> The Bell System had a heck of a lot of private lines serving business >> data communications. >> A big difference was that IBM liked synchornous transmission while >> many other computers, including common PC transmissions used >> asynchronous transmission. I don't know which is superior. > I don't know either, but from the perspective of private lines (which > you mentioned above), the "cluster controller" saved on private-line > costs. PL's were expensive, and having only one to handle 16 clerks, > rather than 16 PL's or 16 dial-ups, was seen as a cost savings by many > customers. Even though the cluster controllers communicated with the > host at either 4.8 or 9.6 Kbps, the probability of all 16 clerks > hitting send during the same 2-second interval was pretty small. > (Interaction with the customer was on the order of 2 minutes). One > 9.6 PL made a lot more business sense than 16 300 baud PL's or > dial-ups. (At least in those days.) "Synchronous" is notably more 'efficient'. about 20% more efficient. Simply because it does _not_ send the 'start' and 'stop' bits that are part of every asynchronous character transmission. Synchronous has a down-side in that that 'efficiency' results in difficulties in detecting _where_ the boundary between characters is. There are protocol- layer means for dealing with this, but it requires considerable additional 'smarts' in the terminal hardware at each end. If you've already got a lot of smarts in the devices, for other purposes, the additional 'load' on the processor is relatively trivial. If the rest of the hardware is 'dumb', then the cost of the required 'smarts' is definitely non-trivial. A 'noise' hit on a sync comm line will likely cause a much longer disruption of data "readability" than a similar hit on an async line. The async line will re-sync properly within 1 character-time after the end of the noise. The sync line could -- *theoretically* -- run for an indefinite period, spewing out 'mis-aligned' data; in practice, it will usually re-sync within a few tens of characters, to a few hundreds of characters. sync lines _generally_ run some sort of 'error checking protocol' encapsulation of the data for _precisely_ that reason. :) >> We had 3rd party imitation IBM 3270 units but IMHO they weren't as >> good as real IBM units. However, they were a lot cheaper. I don't >> see any "dumb terminals" anymore, it seems almost everyone now has a >> PC with an emulation program/card imitating a 3270 terminal. In the >> early days of PCs, I refused to use a PC with a CGA screen as a 3270 >> terminal since it was so fuzzy compared to a real terminal. >> (Actually, I shied away from CGA PCs altogether.) >> Over time, the cost of 3270-type units and controllers dropped quite a >> bit in price while modem speed increased. > Obligatory rant: Ain't it amazing how much *useful* data can be > transitted over a 9.6 line when you don't have all those graphics and > animations to deal with? Some of us remember when *300*baud* was considered high-speed. Few people can actually _read_ at the 300 word-per-minute speed that such a connection can put data in front of you. 110 baud (100 word/minute) was frustrating, because many/most people _do_ read faster than that. 1200 baud straight text, and you are -well- above the comprehension rates of virtually all humans. On the other hand, I learned to recognize the _sound_ of many of the system messages as printed on a 120CPS dot-matrix printer (DEC LA-120, hooked to a DECsystem 20), something I never managed with a slower (30cps, DEC LA-36) console device. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: That 110/300/1200 baud argument about being able to read/type at that speed was one I used a lot in 1979/1980 when I was the sysop (system operator) for a couple of BBS arrangements. At one point I was the volunteer sysop for the bulletin board system operated by the Chicago Public Library, which I believe was the first public library in the USA to operate a BBS for patrons. I used Bill Blue's 'Peoples Message System' (or PMS) software. The user could automatically switch the baud rate from 110 to 300 by banging on the carriage return or enter key a few times. I remember telling the supervising librarian that I saw no reason to install a 1200 baud modem: "No one can type that fast or read that fast. A good typist can type at 110 and after some practice your eyes can adjust to read at 300. Since most users of the BBS simply sit on line and type their entries and read what others have written, 110/300 should be good enough for anyone. A 1200 baud modem might be a good idea if we were going to move a new text file into place is all." We ran that BBS on an Apple ][+ and I ran a BBS from my home on the same kind of machine. When Jerry Ablan started the 'Think' BBS (based on the IBM slogan) in 1981, he installed a 1200 baud modem which would drop as needed to 300 baud, and he was using a Tandy/Radio Shack Model 1 machine. PAT] ------------------------------ 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: Fri, 01 Oct 2004 13:05:16 +0000 In article , Justin Time wrote: > hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote in message > news:: >> bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote >> <> >> As an aside, the language used on IBM's System/3x through the present >> day AS/400 is RPG, which dates back to 1960 and the IBM 1401. The >> language was intended to mimic the wiring of a tab machine control >> panel so tab operators could make the transition to programming. >>> The 3270 was a 'smart' terminal -- necessitated by IBM's "block mode" >>> architecture -- and used 16 bits per displayed character. 1 byte for >>> the character itself, and one byte for the 'attributes'. things like >>> 'bright', 'blank', 'input', 'protected', etc. >> It's funny how today we call 3270-type terminals (still in very wide >> use) "dumb terminals" when in fact they were not. A Teletype was more >> "dumb" since it basically transmitted or received upon a keystroke, >> while the 3270 network had buffers, could erase and insert characters, >> and as mentioned had different appearances. [There were advanced >> Teletypes that could do some fancy stuff. Some 3270 functions were >> handled by the controller unit that was required and supported a group >> of terminals.] > The term "dumb" and "smart" when applied to terminals really applies > to their ability to process information. The 3270 terminal is a > "dumb" terminal in the fact that no processing is done at the terminal > and it only echoes back what is received from its intelligent source. > According to the original definition of a dumb or smart terminal, a > terminal connected through a PC or other device that was capable of > doing processing, or in the case of mainframes, preprocessing would be > considered a "smart" terminal. By _early_ definitions, a 3270 *IS* a minimal smart terminal. The block-mode nature of the beast allowed for purely *local* editing of data, before transmission. (Not to mention the embedded 'smarts' that transmitted _only_ the input parts of the data displayed on the screen.) Everything you did on the 3270 was purely local processing, until you hit the 'TRANSMIT' (SEND?? -- *not the one with the 'down-left' arrow on it, which simply advanced the cursor to the next input field) key. This stuff wasn't considered anything 'special', because it was an implicit part of the definition of _being_ an "IBM 3270 compatible" device. Compared to something like a Lear-Siegler ADM-3, however, there was _no_doubt_ that the 3270 had considerable on-board intelligence, and was properly classified as a 'smart' device. [[.. munch ..]] > > It was the high cost of a terminal from IBM that gave birth to the low > cost dumb terminal market that spawned the ADM-3 (Adam) 3, 3A, the > Televideo, Lear Siegler, TI, DEC and so many others. Strange, isn't it, that *none* of those manufacturers made block-mode EBCDIC devices compatible with IBM's computers? The growth of the _ASCII_ terminal market was driven by the explosive growth of the minicomputer industry. And, to a lesser degree, by the availability of time-sharing services on NON-IBM based mainframes (DECsystem10/20, XEROX Sigma7, CDC 6xxx, etc.) > IBM did a major>price cut on the 3270 terminals in 1978 that drove > most of the replacement terminal manufacturers under or into > consolidation. 3270 displays went from several 1000 dollars to > around 1000 or so and effectively killed the key to disk market at > the same time. Some of you may remember names of companies like > Mohawk that just disappeared by the early 80's after doing several > hundred million dollars of business just 2 or 3 years earlier. Once > the equipment leases ran out. >> The Bell System had a heck of a lot of private lines serving business >> data communications. > Yep, computer rooms always had a bank of "Dataphone" modems. > Usually 2400, 4800 and wow -- 9600 Baud Syncronous. Async ran at > 300 baud and was good for only low speed stuff -- like teletypes at > 100 WPM and an occasional terminal. >> A big difference was that IBM liked synchornous transmission while >> many other computers, >> including common PC transmissions used asynchronous transmission. >> I don't know which is superior. >> We had 3rd party imitation IBM >> 3270 units but >> IMHO they weren't as good as real IBM units. >> However, they were a lot cheaper. I don't >> see any "dumb >> terminals" anymore, it seems almost everyone now has a PC with an >> emulation program/card imitating a 3270 terminal. In the early >> days of PCs, I refused to use a PC with a CGA screen as a 3270 >> terminal since it was so fuzzy compared to a real terminal. >> (Actually, I shied away from CGA PCs altogether.) Over time, >> the cost of 3270-type units and controllers dropped quite a bit >> in price while modem speed increased. > Asynch modem speed didn't increase until the Hayes modems started > coming out around 1980 or a little later. REVISIONIST HISTORY AT WORK! The BELL 212 protocol (1200 baud full-duplex, async) and the Bell 202 protocol (1200 baud half-duplex [controlled carrier] async) were around _long_ before the Hayes modems hit the market. 1200 baud _dial-up_ was fairly-widely available in the mid 70s. *NOT* using the Bell 212 protocol, but the more robust 'RADIC 3400' protocol. The equipment was considerably more expensive than 'BELL 103' modems, but was fairly widely used in the business community. > The first jump was to > quadruple the speed to 1200 baud, but the big jump was to 2400 baud > about a year or so later. 9600 baud became fairly common around 1989 > -- 90 with 14.4 around 91. o Ignoring the Telebit Trailblazer+, which was available in 1986. supporting 19,200 baud. Ignoring the US Robotics Courier HST which was available in 1987, supporting 14,400 baud. > 56K modems have been around the longest, > since the mid 90's or almost 10 years. It was the introduction of the > 2400 baud modem that did the most to increase the number of computers > in individual use than any other improvement. The 2400 baud modem > paved the way for the acceptance of the computer as a home computer > rather than a scientic tool or hobbyist toy giving birth to the need > for software and spawning companies such as Microsoft, Word Perfect > Corp., Norton, Wordstar, Lotus and others. *LAUGH* WordPerfect, for example, *PREDATES* the development of the IBM PC. The WordPerfect word-processor originated on DATA GENERAL _mini-computers_. circa 1978. I used version **1.08** on a DG C-330, running AOS. > Datapoint developed a split speed modem for use with their timesharing/ > data entry terminals. They had a 300/1200 baud modem, 300 transmit > because it was keystrokes and 1200 receive to handle the display > character input. This meant you could "paint" a full 1920 character > screen in about 1 1/2 seconds Can you say "ILNUMERACY"? I thought you could. Getting 1920 characters across a 120 character/sec line in 1.5 seconds is a *NEAT* trick! It take 9600 baud to paint a 'reasonably full' 24x80 screen in less than 2 seconds. > and that was pretty darn fast for > those days. But then computers had cycle times - one trip through the > main timing chain to process a single instruction - measured in > multiples of whole microseconds. *Snicker* Control Data announced machines in the *mid-1960s* that could process at the rate of 10 million instructions/second. Operating on 60-bit numeric quantities. > The venerable Four Phase system IV-70 (dating from around 1970) took > 2.04 microseconds to process a single 24 bit computer word, and it was > one of the fastest "mini" computers available at the time. I think > the original Altairs were around 8 microseconds for a cycle. It > wasn't until later that people started measuring clock speed in order > to "boost the speed" without any engineering changes. The original > IBM PC ran at 4 MHz, the AT at 6. Now we measure clock speeds in the > billions of cycles per second rather than millions. And, despite 'clock speeds' being circa 800 times higher, the actual _throughput_ improvement is only around 100x. Memory access speeds have only improved by a factor of about 40x over an original 'IBM AT' machine, plus a 4x wider path to memory, less cache-miss penalties. 'Clock speed' should be regarded *exactly* the same way 'millions of instructions per second, executed' is -- as a "meaningless indicator of processor speed". ------------------------------ From: a_user2000@yahoo.com (Justin Time) Subject: Re: Cell Phone Incident Results in DC Metro Arrest Date: 1 Oct 2004 06:42:27 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Michael Quinn wrote in message news:: > Apropos of the discussion about the BART officer who reportedly ordered > a radio turned off, this report has a somewhat different twist: > Between Metro and Cell User, a Disconnect > By Lyndsey Layton > Washington Post Staff Writer > Sakinah Aaron was walking into the bus area at the Wheaton Metro > station several weeks ago, talking loudly on her Motorola cell > phone. A little too loudly for Officer George Saoutis of the Metro > Transit Police. > The police officer told Aaron, who is five months pregnant, to lower > her voice. She told the officer he had no right to tell her how to > speak into her cell phone. > Their verbal dispute quickly escalated, and Saoutis grabbed Aaron by > the arm and pushed her to the ground. He handcuffed the 23-year-old > woman, called for backup and took her to a cell where she was held for > three hours before being released to her aunt. She was charged with > two misdemeanors: "disorderly manner that disturbed the public peace" > and resisting arrest. > Those are the facts on which both sides agree. > They interpret the events of Sept. 9 very differently. <> The point that is glossed over in all the discussions regarding this -- and it is a fairly hot topic in the Washington area -- is that in EACH case the officer approached the person who was arrested and politely informed them they were doing a prohibited action. It was the perpretrator that chose to escalate the warning and not the officer. In the case of the juvenile girl that was arrested for eating a french fry, that arose out of another District law. It is illegal in the District to issue a summons or citation to a minor. According to District law, a minor has to be taken into custody -- NO EXCEPTIONS. And in that particular case the girl did state she knew the regulation regarding consuming food or drink on Metro property but she chose to disregard the law because she had stopped at McDonalds on her way from school to the Metro and her ride home. The regulation prohibiting eating and drinking clearly states it is unlawful to eat or drink in any metro train OR station. The problem is that most people think the metro station doesn't begin until they pass the gates. The metro station begins as soon as the person crossed over onto the concrete pad at the entrance to the escalator or into the pedestrian tunnel well away from the fare gates. In most stations the parking facility and sidewalks are also part of the station, but normally the prohibitions against eating and drinking are not enforced, audio equipment may be -- and that is where the "oh pity me, the poor I'm being picked on victim" was located, on metro property where she was in flagrant violation of Metro Policy. Rodgers Platt ------------------------------ Date: 1 Oct 2004 15:04:46 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Wrong Address For 911 Caller a Tragic Ordeal Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > 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. GPS doesn't work worth squat unless the device has a clear view of the sky. Unless you expect people to be using VoIP predominantly at back yard campouts, that's not gonna work. ------------------------------ Date: 1 Oct 2004 15:17:17 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: Paper Tape Technology Was: What is the Name of #? Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA >> 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. > And this is a reply from me to those statements: > The rest is wrong? Really? Yeah, really. Gates' year at Harvard was in the early 1970s when, as someone else noted, Harvard undergrads did most of their computing on a PDP-11 Unix system in the Harvard Science Center. (I visited Harvard for some early usenix meetings and played with it myself.) Aiken's early Harvard University computer facility was in the 1940s and 1950s. By the 1970s, Aiken was long since retired, his computers were in the Smithsonian, Harvard had named the comp sci building after him, and the CS department was using a PDP-10. As others have noted, Traf-O-Data was back home in Seattle, not at Harvard. R's, John PS: I hear that the paper tape thing was just a cover story, and Traf-O-Data was really planning to make a fortune from selling specialized Caller ID boxes that blocked area code 311 calls. ------------------------------ 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. 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