From editor@telecom-digest.org Mon Oct 18 16:28:52 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i9IKSqx26136; Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:28:52 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:28:52 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410182028.i9IKSqx26136@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 #497 TELECOM Digest Mon, 18 Oct 2004 16:29:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 497 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Re: Vonage Upgrades Local Unlimited Calling Plan to Premium (M Roberts) Re: Vonage Upgrades Local Unlimited Calling Plan to Premium (J Covert) Re: Vonage Upgrades Local Unlimited Calling Plan to Premium (J McHarry) Re: Can't Move 800 Number to Vonage (John R. Covert) Re: Can't Move 800 Number to Vonage (Isaiah Beard) Free Air (Monty Solomon) Re: A Problem With VOIP and Phone Books (Isaiah Beard) Re: Lee's ABC of the Telephone (Jim Haynes) Re: VOIP2 Scam Warning (Isaiah Beard) Re: A Problem With VOIP and Phone Books (Fred Atkinson) Re: A Problem With VOIP and Phone Books (John Levine) Re: Radio Questions (Paul A Lee) Re: Sinclair's Disgrace (Lisa Hancock) Re: Drivers Try an Anti-Photo Finish (Linc Madison) Correction Re: Privacy Eroding, Bit by Byte (Jack Decker) Re: Privacy Eroding, Bit by Byte (Dan Lanciani) 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: markrobt@comcast.net (Mark Roberts) Subject: Re: Vonage Upgrades Local Unlimited Calling Plan to Premium Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 03:39:59 -0000 Organization: 1.94 meters Dave Close had written: > markrobt@comcast.net (Mark Roberts) writes: >> I also see that Vonage has in fact gone to 7-digit local and >> 10-digit LD dialing ... > Of course, when dialing a 7-digit number, there is a time-out before > call completion. At least when the first three digits match a possible > area code, which these days is nearly all calls. And they don't seem > to accept # to terminate dialing. That just gives a reorder tone. You > can't dial 1+NXX-XXXX, so the leading 1 is significant. I have noticed about a 1.5-second delay when leaving off the leading 1. > But this dialing plan makes Vonage essentially identical to Sprint > PCS. Dial as 7, 10, or 11 digits, as you like. But dialing 7 can be > chancy since it isn't clear if they assume your home NPA or the one > where you currently are located. Since VOIP is location-independent, I would assume that they would assign your domiciled NPA as the default, regardless where your adapter is actually plugged in at any given moment. For example, if I took my adapter over the Bay to San Francisco, I would not expect that I could dial a 415 number with seven digits because there is no truly reliable way of mapping IP address with an actual, in-use physical location. I might not want to dial a 510 number with seven digits just to avoid confusion on my part. > All in all, always dialing 10 or 11 is the only safe action, and 11 is > the only reasonably universal technique. "Safe" I think is a bit overstated and, outside the POTS world, either 10 or 11 seems acceptable. Mark Roberts|"Entire media networks, such as Fox News and Sinclair Oakland, CA |Broadcasting prop up Bush in a way that would make their NO HTML MAIL|fellow propagandists in North Korea and Cuba proud." -- Markos Moulitsas, Guardian Unlimited, 2004-10-12 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 07:55:42 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Vonage Upgrades Local Unlimited Calling Plan to Premium Dave Close wrote: > But dialing 7 can be chancy since it isn't clear if they assume your > home NPA or the one where you currently are located. No, it is clear. It's "your area code." Everything about Vonage says that where you are doesn't matter. And even if it did, ever since we've had overlays, there is no such thing as "the area code where you are now located." Speaking of overlays, Vonage is but should not be allowing seven digit dialing if the assigned area code has an overlay. There is a firm rule in the NANP that when there is an overlay, the area code MUST be dialed. The reason for this is to make the "traditional" area code in no way "preferable" to the overlay area code, as well as to make sure that people don't publish seven digit numbers in an area where you can't call up and say "What's the area code for ?" /john ------------------------------ From: John McHarry Subject: Re: Vonage Upgrades Local Unlimited Calling Plan to Premium Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 13:49:22 GMT Organization: EarthLink Inc. -- http://www.EarthLink.net Dave Close wrote: > But this dialing plan makes Vonage essentially identical to Sprint > PCS. Dial as 7, 10, or 11 digits, as you like. But dialing 7 can be > chancy since it isn't clear if they assume your home NPA or the one > where you currently are located. (Of course, a cell phone doesn't need > a time-out to determine number length.) I don't see how they could impute anything other than your home NPA. Your current IP address doesn't tell them much about where you are. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 08:01:28 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Can't Move 800 Number to Vonage Fred Atkinson wrote: > doesn't it seem silly that when someone dials that number I > (1) pay for the time to Power Net Global and (2) the clock on > my Vonage minutes is ticking away for the same time. That's not happening. Read on. Patrick wrote: > [Fred] has to pay for calls to his 800 number (no matter where > it terminates) *and* he has to pay for the minutes of usage on > his Vonage line. As has been discussed before, THERE ARE NO INCOMING MINUTES on Vonage (or any other major VoIP provider). All incoming calls to lines on Vonage's $9.99 (softphone), $14.99 (500 minutes of outgoing calls), or $24.99 (unlimited outgoing calls) plans are completely free. Only Vonage's 800 service plan ($4.99 plus one of the types of lines above) charges for incoming minutes (after the first 100 included minutes), but even with the 800 service plan, the minutes are charged only against the 800 service account, and do not affect the outgoing minutes on the underlying actual Vonage number. It doesn't matter whether it's Vonage's 800 number (billed by Vonage) or someone else's 800 number (billed by someone else), the incoming minutes do not affect the minutes on the non-800 Vonage number which receives the incoming call. /john [P.S.: Vonage has begun offering E-911 in Rhode Island and has begun offering 311 service (non-emergency City Info calls) in a few cities, more to come. Info available at www.vonage.com.] ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: Can't Move 800 Number to Vonage Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 15:01:00 -0400 Fred Atkinson wrote: > To respond to that, Pat, > That number has followed me from carrier to carrier for years. I > believe I originally got it from Sprint years ago. Presently, Power > Net Global is translating it to my Vonage number. But, doesn't it > seem silly that when someone dials that number I (1) pay for the time > to Power Net Global and (2) the clock on my Vonage minutes is ticking > away for the same time. This was not the way things worked for me when I tried out Vonage. I had them for a while, and incoming calls were not counted against any minute allotments your plan might have. So while the clock is ticking on incoming Vonage minutes, it shouldn't actually be deducted from anything. So, the effect of this perceived inefficiency would only be psychological in that two services are racking up the minutes but only one tally -- that of the toll free carrier -- really counts for anything. Perhaps my account was incorrectly set up and it normally doesn't work this way. But, this was what I saw as I used the service. Ultimately I switched to Packet8 for its somewhat cheaper unlimited package and more attractive international rates. E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 15:59:21 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Free Air THE FINANCIAL PAGE FREE AIR Issue of 2004-10-18 In the late nineties, Washington policymakers took up a noble cause. There was a new technology, digital television, that almost everyone agreed would eventually revolutionize TV, but-quelle horreur-almost no one was adopting it. Among other things, local TV stations couldn't transmit digital signals on their existing analog channels. They needed digital spectrum. (If you think of the electromagnetic spectrum as a highway, digital and analog signals travel in different lanes.) So Congress decided to give the stations a leg up-or, rather, a handout. Instead of auctioning off the digital spectrum (which might have brought in new competitors, not to mention money), or simply asking broadcasters to pay for it (it was worth, conservatively, tens of billions of dollars), Congress offered it to them free. It was, as Reed Hundt, who was the F.C.C. chairman, said at the time, "the largest single grant of public property to . . . the private sector in this century." Senator John McCain was a little more blunt. He called it "one of the great rip-offs in American history." To be fair, Washington did insist on some quid for its quo. In exchange for the new spectrum, the broadcasters would accelerate their move into digital programming, and they would return their old analog channels. This was the important part; technological innovation had made those channels extremely valuable, for high-speed wireless connections and public-safety radio transmissions, among other things. Of course, the government had given the broadcasters these channels in the first place, so it wasn't exactly driving a hard bargain. But it was getting something, at least. Something is starting to look more and more like nothing. http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/?041018ta_talk_surowiecki ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: A Problem With VOIP and Phone Books Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 15:29:30 -0400 Ed Clarke wrote: > If you read the fine print in your contract, you'll discover that the > phone numbers that you are given (if you can't port your old number > over) are not listed in the "telephone book". This means that you've > gone to an "unlisted" number. > I wonder how long the "phone company" will keep your old number in > their own very expensive book? Why should they? It's not their > customer, is it? I just finished looking at several local guide or > mini-phonebook websites; all the ones that I've looked at (411.com, > worldpages.com, whitepages.com) refuse to let you add or edit a > residential listing. > In this age of information overload, it's disconcerting to find that > information you want to publish is no longer available. I guess it depends on your point of view. I personally don't see why my number needs to be published, and am quite happy to not have my VoIP or cell numbers published in any book. I keep friends, family and coworkers and anyone else who needs to contact me well-informed of how to do so. And only people I *don't* want contacting me (telemarketers and such) would have any need to look me up. > Aren't cell phones in the same situation? I don't know of a cell > phone directory that's equivalent to the phone book. While I would be only mildly annoyed if my VoIP number were published in a directory, I would find it completely unacceptable for my cell number to be published anywhere. My cell phone has finite minutes attached to it, and therefore I should have the exclusive right to control who has access to it (and those minutes). E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Lee's ABC of the Telephone Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 19:34:20 GMT There's one copy on www.abebooks.com right now. Another good book, somewhat different, is the AT&T Long Lines training book, "Principles of Electricity Applied To Telephone and Telegraph Work" There are several editions: 1938, 1941 reprint of 1938, 1953, and 1961. These are readily available through abebooks.com jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ From: Isaiah Beard Subject: Re: VOIP2 Scam Warning Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 15:40:39 -0400 Alex Wright wrote: > I signed up for service with this company. They advertised a "Small > World" plan with unlimited world-wide calling for $49.99 residential. > If you go to their main website now. They removed the word "unlimited" > from their main page for the Small World plan. > They also impose a cap on the minutes which they didn't have before. > Here's an email I got from them, because I was calling too much. > avoid http://www.voip2.com > SmallWorld is designed for users who fall within the industry > standards for residential usage of 750-1000 average minutes per month. > SmallWorld allows costumers to use a percentage of their usage to stay > in touch with friends and family overseas without worrying about > additional per minute rates. These percentages vary based on the > countries called most frequently. The current wording on their website for the small world plan is as follows: ------------------------- http://www.voip2.com/smallworld.html SmallWorld is for residential use only, and includes ALL the countries that are listed in our published rate plan. There are NO per minute rates in our SmallWorld plan. This is a Residential Plan only, and is not for Business use. The restrictions are gauged on a caller threshold, which means they are the average of calling times based on a per customer basis. We look at daily reports on individual usage, if these thresholds are exceeded you will be notified. ------------------------- So basically: you're stuck to a per-minute threshold, but you are not told what that threshold is is advance. It's subject to the whims of other subscribers, so it could vary unpredictably. Definitely not $49.95 if you ask me, especially if turns out that it's a slow month for everyone else, but your calling patterns are constant. And they're international calling rates leave much to be desired. Both Vonage and Packet8 beat them on a per minute basis in most countries. Finally, for a VoIP phone company that's intent on replacing your landline, they sure are fond of displaying oodles of photos on their site where people are using wireless phones. Looks like someone threw out a ton of telecom-related clipart without caring about content. E-mail fudged to thwart spammers. Transpose the c's and a's in my e-mail address to reply. ------------------------------ From: Fred Atkinson Subject: Re: A Problem With VOIP and Phone Books Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 00:53:49 GMT Organization: Road Runner - Columbia Not a problem. Call your telephone company and request that a foreign listing be made. Most of the CSRs will be in the complete dark about this (as I found out when I had my foreign residential listing made). I finally had to acquire the help of the South Carolina Public Service Commission to get to someone who could help me. But, I got it done. The cost is a little over two dollars per month (residential listing) and Bellsouth bills annually for this. If you don't believe me, call 803 directory assistance and ask for Fred Atkinson, III in Columbia, SC. They will give you my telephone number. It is a Vonage provided number beginning with (803) 233, so you can be sure. So, you see, it's not a problem. I researched doing this in Maryland a few years back and found out the same thing for BellAtlantic (now Verizon) as here. So, go ahead and get a foreign listing in the phone book. The costs and rules may vary a bit from place to place. Fred ------------------------------ Date: 18 Oct 2004 01:01:21 -0000 From: John Levine Subject: Re: A Problem With VOIP and Phone Books Organization: I.E.C.C., Trumansburg NY USA > My wife moved us from Verizon to Excel for the home phone; is there > a reason to expect our home phone number to remain in the Verizon > book? As Pat notes, the dominant local telco publishes the phone book. If you get phone service from someone else, it entirely depends whether they provide your number to the dominant telco to put in the book. I have no idea whether CLECs have to pay to have numbers listed. Does anyone else? For that matter, my ILEC is a tiny local telco that publishes its own tiny phonebook. Their book includes listings for adjacent VZ areas, and the VZ book for nearby Ithaca includes all of my telco's listings. Who pays who to do what? It seems to me that the whole concept of a phone book is nearing a crisis. I gather that in Las Vegas and Los Angeles the local phone book has less than half of the residential numbers, with the rest all being unlisted. My phone has always been listed, and I get an insignificant number of crank or junk calls. (It's on the telemarketer do-not-call list, of course.) Am I just lucky, or are all those unlisted people paranoid? Regards, John Levine johnl@iecc.com Primary Perpetrator of The Internet for Dummies, Information Superhighwayman wanna-be, http://www.johnlevine.com, Mayor "A book is a sneeze." - E.B. White, on the writing of Charlotte's Web [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A weird case I remember from long ago happened in Chicago. *Prior to divestiture, when it was Illinois Bell* IBT was the telco of record for northern Illinois. But there was an oddity: Although IBT 'owned' almost everything telephonic in those days, they did *not* service the suburb of Park Ridge nor *one* exchange in the city itself: 312-693 in Chicago was not Illinois Bell, but was a small (at the time) company called 'Central Telephone Company', (which later became 'Centel'). Strangely enough, 'Centel' or Central States Telephone Company's business office and corporate headquarters were serviced with an IBT exchange due to its location (slightly inside the IBT service area). The reason Centel existed was some obscure thing in history going back to the early 1900's. IBT could not have bought out Centel even if they had wanted to, which they did not, because of the earlier court ruling about AT&T not purchasing any more operating companies (the Kingsbury decree). So for thirty or more years, in my memory at least, that one exchange sat out there on the far northwest side of the city, right next to the suburb of Park Ridge, but served by Centel rather than IBT. If memory serves me, Centel tended to get its equipment from Automatic Electric (the GTE version of Western Electric). And a discerning eye could see the difference in the style of phones, etc. Illinois Bell did include that one exchange in the main Chicago phone book, and Park Ridge in its north suburban directory. But, Centel also published a tiny phone book of its own as well, which went under the name 'Chicago - Newcastle' (Newcastle is the central office in that area.) In the front of the phone book where they put all the numbers to use to call the business office, etc, the Centel directory said to contact our headquarters/business office, at (address) call us on number (an IBT number). In the Illinois Bell phone directory, a *much* larger publication, midst the several columns of listings of phone numbers for their business offices, headquarters, the business offices were always (exchange)-9100, but it warned, for the 693 exchange, call (IBT number on some exchange.) I don't know who paid for what either, but they (Centel and IBT) were always very cozy and worked closely together. Centel has a lot of small towns in the central and southern part of Illinois; how they got so far north (into the Chicago area) I do not know. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Paul A Lee Subject: Re: Radio Questions Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 13:26:20 -0400 Organization: Rite Aid Corporation In TELECOM Digest V23 #493, Lelannie55@yahoo.com (Lelannie) wrote (in part): > I am very interested in the history of radio and I was > wondering if anyone knew where the first radio station in the > United States was located? I knew this one because of many childhood visits with my grandparents in McKeesport, PA, and from my Pennsylvania history class in junior high ... The first commercial radio broadcasting station operating on a regular schedule was KDKA in Pittsburgh, PA. See http://kdkaradio.com/history.shtml for additional history of the station. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yes, but in an earlier issue of the Digest today, some folks mentioned that there was a lot of very early history in California as well, which is where those 'K' call signs belong anyway. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: Sinclair's Disgrace Date: 17 Oct 2004 20:49:06 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Monty Solomon wrote > The right-wing network's decision to force its affiliates to air > anti-Kerry propaganda is one of the lowest moments in the history of > television news, says the former head of the FCC. And it may unleash a > backlash. Democracy is like sausages. We like the finished product, but do not like how it is made. The Sinclair business is propaganda just like Michael Moore's film is propaganda. I suspect many of those upset about Sinclair are the same people who applauded Michael Moore. The two are the same. What goes around comes around. When Nixon was starting out, he played hardball. He accused-- correctly -- his opponents of having liberal voting records. The liberal community didn't like that. A few years later they paid him back with accusations -- wrongly -- that he had an illegal slush fund. Speaking of communications ... Nixon made great use of TV when he made his Checkers speech to explain his campaign funding. Ironically, for someone who knew TV, he blew it with the Kennedy debates. (People who merely heard him on radio thought he did very well -- it was his image that was bad.) Generally, over his career Nixon tried to act statesman-like, but he was a lousy actor and didn't come across that well. Being assigned Eisenhower's political dirty work to do didn't help his image either. Roosevelt made great use of radio. He had an excellent radio voice, and knew how to present complex issues in understandable but not patronizing tones to the public. In contrast, Herbert Hoover was a lousy communicator. He was doing a lot more to fight the Depression and pump up the economy than history gives him credit for, but he did not communicate well to the people and thus is remembered poorly. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And speaking of propoganda, some Democrats are now pushing to get 'Farenheit 911' shown on all the television stations on Monday night before the Tuesday election. I guess that would be fair play also. You are right, Lisa, I would sort of prefer the toenail fungus ads they show several times daily on TV-Land. This entire election is much uglier than most, isn't it? PAT] ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Drivers Try an Anti-Photo Finish Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 23:23:24 -0700 From: Linc Madison Reply-To: lincmad@suespammers.org Organization: California resident; nospam; no unsolicited e-mail allowed In article , Marcus Didius Falco wrote: > ["Drivers Try an Anti-Photo Finish," by Don Oldenburg, Washington > Post, Wednesday, July 21, 2004, Page A01] > "There's a lot of good people in the industry who are honest and a lot > of charlatans. But it doesn't work, that's the bottom line," says Carl > Fors, owner of the Fort Worth company [Speed Measurement Laboratories]. > The bounce-back-the-flash concept does work sometimes, he says, but > only on positive images traffic cameras produce. "If we reverse the > image, go to a negative image, we can read every letter on a license > plate," he says. > Fors says the firms that make and operate radar camera systems and > analyze the photos for municipalities routinely check negatives where > license plates look unreadable. "Going to the negative image is no big > deal," he says. What UTTER and COMPLETE nonsense! If the positive image is illegible, the negative image will be EXACTLY as illegible. I don't care if you have a trillion-dollar budget, merely looking at the negative image cannot improve the legibility of a license plate. If you can't see the faint dark letters in the positive image, then you won't see them any better as faint white letters in the negative, or vice-versa. There are certainly ways to enhance the contrast to try to amplify and clarify subtle gradations, but they have nothing at all to do with checking the negatives. Nowadays, you just slap the digital image into Photoshop. Either Carl Fors was horrifically misquoted, or he is a total idiot. Linc Madison * San Francisco, California * lincmad@suespammers.org * primary e-mail: Telecom at LincMad dot com All U.S. and California anti-spam laws apply, incl. CA BPC 17538.45(c) This text constitutes actual notice as required in BPC 17538.45(f)(3). DO NOT SEND UNSOLICITED E-MAIL TO THIS ADDRESS. You have been warned. ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 17 Oct 2004 21:59:12 -0400 From: Jack Decker Subject: Correction Re: Privacy Eroding, Bit by Byte Pat, please conceal my e-mail address again. I just wanted to make a minor correction to my previous message. I wrote, "In the past, some churches have taught that this is a punishment from God for not taking the mark, but lately I've heard more theorizing that the mark itself will somehow actively interfere with that transition." The word 'NOT' in that sentence somehow evaded my proofreading -- of course, no church has taught that God would punish anyone for NOT taking the mark, because taking the mark is the act that is prohibited! But as I pointed out, some are now thinking that it may be something about the mark itself that interferes with a person's spiritual advancement. Anyway, just wanted to make that correction, in case I managed to confuse anyone. Jack ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 02:13:34 EDT From: Dan Lanciani Subject: Re: Privacy Eroding, Bit by Byte anonfwd774@withheld on request (Jack Decker) wrote: > Here's my question -- will I have the right to refuse implantation of > such devices, or will someone else decide that I have no choice in the > matter and forcibly inject these things into me? Another question might be: will removal of such implants become illegal? What about a device which renders them inoperable? The whole security aspect of these implants (ignore the "convenience" factor) seems to depend on their being difficult to remove. Such security operates largely against (rather than for) the implantee. While you may not be able to have your own implant removed, the bad guy can certainly cut it out of you along with the surrounding tissue. A scanner is not going to know the difference, so the bad guy can pretend to be you. (I'd rather hand a mugger my credit cards than have him cut out an implant, especially when the credit card company is going to say that the use of the implant *must* prove that the bad guy is me ...) Markers with this characteristic -- hard for the marked person to remove but possible to steal -- are usually used to indicate something negative about the marked subject rather than to grant him privileges. A few years back I had the misfortune to adopt one of my cats on the day that the shelter received its shiny new chip implanting kit. In spite of my protests they had to make my cat their first subject. (My alternative was to forget the adoption and let them euthanize the cat since she had been there for the maximum allowed time.) They insisted that they were doing me a big favor since the implant would allow the cat to be identified if lost. I suggested that tags or even a tattoo would make more sense for that purpose since (at least at the time) few shelters had scanners and certainly no individuals who might find a lost cat would have such equipment. They explained that it was too easy to remove or obscure those means of identification while vets apparently understand that they are not supposed to remove chip implants unless there is a medical problem with them. I asked why anybody would go the trouble to obscure the identification of a 2 year old mixed-breed cat with bad teeth. They finally admitted that they have problems with people abandoning or harming adopted cats and they need a tamper-proof way to prove who was the responsible owner so they can initiate legal action. This experience left me very skeptical about the stated benefits of chip implants ... Dan Lanciani ddl@danlan.*com ------------------------------ 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. 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Go to http://www.thehungersite.com Copyright 2004 ICB, Inc. and TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ DIRECTORY ASSISTANCE JUST 65 CENTS ONE OR TWO INQUIRIES CHARGED TO YOUR CREDIT CARD! REAL TIME, UP TO DATE! 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 #497 ******************************