From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 22 18:08:53 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i9MM8qE15292; Fri, 22 Oct 2004 18:08:53 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 18:08:53 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410222208.i9MM8qE15292@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 #507 TELECOM Digest Fri, 22 Oct 2004 18:09:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 507 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Boston's Big Rebound Makes a Winner of Fox, Too (Monty Solomon) Statewide Medical Records Planned (Monty Solomon) San Francisco Sets Goal of Free Citywide WiFi (Lisa Minter) 11-Sept Police Widow Gets Domain-Cyberburned (Danny Burstein) What Happened to Channel 1? (Andrea) Re: Who Carries TV Signals and Long Distance -- Today? (Wesrock@aol.com) Re: Who Carries TV Signals and Long Distance -- Today? (Jim Haynes) Re: Help Me Identify/Repair/Replace a Power Transformer (Bit Twister) Re: Callsigns and Horse Teeth (Tony Pelliccio) Re: Verizon Taking Lessons From Hooterville Phone Company (T. Pelliccio) Re: AMTRAK (was Re: Last, Sad Laugh! Nice Place to Work!) (T. Pelliccio) Re: AMTRAK (was Re: Last, Sad Laugh! Nice Place to Work!) (John Covert) Re: 'K' v. 'W' Televison Call Signs (Linc Madison) Re: Yet Another Telco Tax Proposed (Tony Pelliccio) Re: Bell System Competition: Private Telephone Networks (Jim Haynes) Re: Illinois Death Row is Empty Today (Carl Moore) 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, 22 Oct 2004 13:24:59 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Boston's Big Rebound Makes a Winner of Fox, Too By RICHARD SANDOMIR It was the game that wasn't supposed to be televised because it wasn't supposed to happen. But you have to think that Fox was pleased and astonished that the Boston Red Sox had done the impossible in postseason: they had forced a seventh game after losing the first three of the American League Championship Series to the Yankees. Then the Red Sox took it one step further last night, beating the Yankees, 10-3. For Fox, it's too bad that Yankees-Red Sox league championship series aren't best-of-nine affairs. A ninth game might approach Super Bowl ratings levels. Game 6 produced a 15.6 Nielsen rating, or 25.1 million viewers, which made it the highest-rated nondecisive league championship series game in 13 years, Fox said, in spin that would gladden a break dancer. Even more fortunate for Fox is the type of television rabidity in the Boston market: 70 percent of those tuned to televisions in the center of Red Sox Nation were watching Game 6 (compared with 44 percent among New Yorkers). The last time the Red Sox were in the World Series -- 18 years ago against the Mets -- they generated a 28.6 rating, the best performance since 1981. Fox might now produce a new reality show: "My Big Fat Obnoxious Idiots." http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/21/sports/baseball/21tv.html ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 01:34:51 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Statewide Medical Records Planned Blue Cross to give $50m to boost electronic project By Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Massachusetts plans to spend about $50 million to electronically link doctors, hospitals, and other healthcare providers in three Massachusetts communities, allowing them to share and access patients' medical records. Blue Cross and more than 25 other insurers, hospitals, doctors and medical industry groups have formed a nonprofit organization with the goal of building a statewide electronic medical record system. Blue Cross, which has earned record profits in recent years, said it will donate $50 million to test the project next year in three cities or towns. Doctors who study medical errors and quality of care believe electronic medical records will substantially improve healthcare. Done right, they allow doctors spread out in various offices and hospitals to call up a patient's complete medical history, allergies, test results and prescriptions -- even though many different physicians have treated and tested the patient. These systems also can send doctors alerts to follow up on negative test results with further testing and warn them when they prescribe a drug to which a patient is allergic. Right now, most doctors keep patients' records on paper in filing cabinets. Many don't have access to records when their patients received treatment from another doctor. Even hospitals and doctors groups that have sophisticated electronic medical records can look up only their own records but generally can't see their patients' test results and treatment from other hospitals and doctors. http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2004/10/21/statewide_medical_records_planned/ ------------------------------ From: Lisa Minter Subject: San Francisco Sets Goal of Free Citywide WiFi Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 10:40:45 EDT SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom set a goal on Thursday of providing free wireless Internet activity in his city that sees itself as a vanguard of the Internet revolution. "We will not stop until every San Franciscan has access to free wireless Internet service," he said in his annual state of the city address. "These technologies will connect our residents to the skills and the jobs of the new economy." "No San Franciscan should be without a computer and a broadband connection." He said the city had already made free WiFi service available at Union Square, a central shopping and tourist hub, and would add access to several other sections of the city including Civic Center around City Hall. The stadium where the San Francisco Giants baseball team plays also offers WiFi, a wireless technology that allows a computer with a special modem to connect to the Internet. Other cities have started setting up large areas of WiFi coverage, including San Jose in Silicon Valley and parts of Long Beach, California. Copyright 2004 Reuters Limited. *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material the use of which has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. This Internet discussion group is making it available without profit to group members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of literary, educational, political, and economic issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. I believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: Danny Burstein Subject: 11-Sept Police Widow Gets Domain-Cyberburned Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 02:59:28 -0400 Organization: PANIX Public Access Internet and UNIX, NYC "The widow of a hero NYPD Emergency Service detective killed on 9/11 created a Web site as a loving tribute to her husband -- only to have it snapped up by a heartless Internet company that forced her to fork over $800 to buy it back, The Post has learned. "Kathy Vigiano's gut-wrenching ordeal began in January when she discovered that her husband Joseph's memorial Web site -- which she filled with personal photos and an emotional letter from one of their sons -- had been replaced by ads for penile-enlargement tools, sexual-performance drugs and Viagra... http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/30859.htm _____________________________________________________ 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: The very same people did that to our internet-history.org site as well. If you type in http://internet-history.org you get the very same preposterous ads. And of course, the guy wants to sell that one also. I **thought** there were laws against that sort of cybersquatting, but I guess that only pertains for large commercial web sites. Any damn fool would know that 'internet history' was discussed there on the site which was the property of the Internet Historical Society, which is *my* name, and it was a running site for three or four years. Yet, that moron simply walked away with it, got the org registrar to give it to him I guess. I had asked John Levine to take it away from the person and give it back to me. John won't do it. I thought he was one of the registrars for .org ... so I know how this poor lady feels now as well. But I can tell you *I* am not going to pay his blackmail ransom demand. If I had any money I would just sue the damn registrar who took it from me and gave it to him (I understand he is in some country in Europe. The lady should not have paid anything either, just immediatly filed suit against the registrar she had used when she first set up the site and done it that way. Of course, I have no money to pay any lawyers to help me, so that leaves me and internet-history.org high and dry. Maybe some attorney doing pro-bono work will be able to get our site back. If people would quit paying good money to these charlatans who steal the names that netizens use for their web sites, then they would go out of business. PAT] ------------------------------ From: andrea8090@gmail.com (Andrea) Subject: What Happened to Channel 1? Date: 22 Oct 2004 09:47:13 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Does anyone know the real reason American TVs don't utilize channel 1? I've read many conflicting theories. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I have always heard that Channel 1 was occupying frequencies used in the VHF-low area (30-50 mc band) and that *originally* (1940's) some of that spectrum was going to be taken away from the users of VHF-low band radio and given to television, but many people protested it, so rather than re-align the television channels to move Channel 1 a bit further up, the FCC simply abandoned it for television use. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Wesrock@aol.com Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:32:15 EDT Subject: Who Carries TV Signals and Long Distance -- Today? In a message dated 21 Oct 2004 11:36:19 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) writes: > In 1970 AT&T descriptions, long distance routing had a triangle > design. That is, most calls were sent to a toll center for subsequent > routing. However, local exchanges had their own links to some nearby > exchanges. For example, New York City to Newark NJ is "long distance" > since it crosses states and LATA boundaries, but is physically so > close calls be carried over plain copper interoffice trunks. Are such > close LD calls still sent that way? It would seem strange to bounce > 10 mile call off of a satellite. It is not inherently true that a call that crosses state boundaries and LATA boundaries is long distance. (And a call of 10 miles even then was usually carried on a carrier system, as copper for thousands of trunks was prohibitively expensive.) Many local exchanges and calling areas cross state lines and LATA boundaries. A notable example is the Kansas City, Mo.-Kan. metropolitan exchange. Other well known ones include Texarkana, Ark.-Tex. (that's the post office name, too ... the post office sits astride the state line); Fort Smith, Ark. (a lot of it is in Oklahoma); Texhoma, Okla.-Tex. (the elementary school is in one state, the high school in the other); and one with which Pat is no doubt well familiar, Coffeyville, Kan.-South Coffeyville, Okla. Wes Leatherock wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Who Carries TV Signals and Long Distance Today? Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:45:31 GMT A related question: Western Union built a transcontinental microwave network, but I guess they never succeeded in capturing any TV business. So they had more bandwidth than needed for the telegraph business. Perhaps they couldn't get the TV business because their microwave system didn't go to enough places. Had they been so inclined, I guess they could have done what MCI did and use their microwave capacity to compete with AT&T for private line service on the heavily traveled routes. MCI had to go through protracted legal battles to get AT&T to connect their customers to their offices. Perhaps W.U. didn't have the stomach or funds to take on that kind of fight. Or perhaps W.U. sided with AT&T, they both being members of the "club" of common carriers and intending to keep MCI or anyone else from joining the club. Comments, anyone? jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ From: Bit Twister Subject: Re: Help Me Identify/Repair/Replace a Power Transformer Organization: home user Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 14:04:20 GMT On Thu, 21 Oct 2004 20:49:20 -0500, Jeff Spidle wrote: > Pat, a 10 Amp fuse should be sufficient. 10 Amps * 12 Volts = 120 > Watts. If you only have 88 watts of lights it leaves you with some > headroom for small surges and inrush current when you turn on the > lights. 10A fuses are common and inexpensive. And getting a slow blow fuse will help that pesky startup surge. ------------------------------ From: kd1s@yahoo.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Callsigns and Horse Teeth Date: 22 Oct 2004 07:58:33 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com jtaylor wrote in message news:: > TELECOM Digest Editor noted in response to in message > news:telecom23.505.2@telecom-digest.org: >> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, no matter how many teeth you >> saw in the mouth of some particular horse, there can always be >> exceptions. For example, how many toes does a cat have on its paws? >> Some people would say 'five', which is normally the correct >> answer. But some cats have *six* toes on one (or all four) feet. The >> vernacular name for such cats is 'polydex' and my first cat 'Nicholas' >> (the one who was so warm and loving, not the later Nicholas who was >> always hateful with humans) was that way. Nicholas had six toes on >> each of his two front paws, five toes on each of his back paws. I >> guess it is some genetic thing going back a million years or so. PAT] > Polydactyl cats are particularly common (not just if you count them by > their toes) around Boston and Halifax; must have been some good > mousers in the first lot of ships to come over. Throughout New England actually. I've got a very heavy polydactyl who knows he should pounce on a mouse but then plays around until he kills it and then doesn't know what to do with it. In his case he weighs in at close to 30 lbs. so it is a little bit hard to pounce when you are that large. Thing is, he's a big cat. There is also a strong link between the Maine Coon and polydactylism, and anyone who knows cats knows that Maine Coons are HUGE cats. As to mousing ability, the champion at my home is a 6.5lb dsh female. She likes to catch them, gut them and then hide them so she can trot them out later. ------------------------------ From: kd1s@yahoo.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Verizon Taking Lessons From Hooterville Telephone Company Date: 22 Oct 2004 08:00:17 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Marcus Didius Falco wrote in message news:: >> From: J Kelly >> Subject: Re: Verizon Taking Lessons From Hooterville Telephone Company >> Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 14:55:50 -0500 >> Organization: http://newsguy.com >> Reply-To: jkelly@newsguy.com >> Where my brother lives if the power goes out across town, or even in a >> town 30 miles away (where the headend is), his cable tv and internet >> die. Hard to believe that Mediacom has no UPS's or generators for the >> headend or any of the line amps. I think they bought some cable co's >> that were pretty messed up though. In time I suppose they will clean >> them up. > There isn't much you can do if the utility dies. However, you can keep > your house running indefinitely using something called an "inverter". > This converts DC into "modified sine wave" AC. If you connect an > inverter to the battery of your car with the engine running, you can > power your computer, telephones, or other small utilities until you > run out of gas -- which would probably take several days idling if you > start with a full tank. > An inverter is rated by peak and sustained power. One that will > provide about 1200 Watts sustained will be rated for about 2400 Watts > peak. You can probably find one for under $140 on the internet. This > is enough power to start and run your refrigerator or, possibly, the > fan on your furnace. Maybe even your well pump. > The power is clean enough to run your computer, phones, or other > electronics. > If you have more than one car, then you can have more than one > inverter. The alternator on a car can produce about 400 to 600 Watts, > but the battery can supply the rest of the load. Thus, you can run > your refrigerator, even though it draws about 900 Watts, because it > does not run continuously -- your alternator recharges your battery. Some inverters are better than others. If the wave is too square many pieces of electronic gear will complain. So stay away from cheap inverters. A UPS and a generator are the best way to go. ------------------------------ From: kd1s@yahoo.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: AMTRAK (was Re: Last, Sad Laugh! A Nice Place to Work!) Date: 22 Oct 2004 08:48:54 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman) wrote in message news:: >> doable, if a bit of a long day. It strikes me that one of our biggest >> voluntary economic disadvantages is our failure to maintain and >> improve a strong rail infrastructure. > I'm sure you can find the full story on-line without much trouble. > The short version is that the U.S.'s lack of a strong rail > infrastructure is, in fact, by design. Detroit auto manufacturers and > the truck-driver unions combined to dismantle the rail network that > existed in this country and to pour money into building motorways > instead of railways. The result is that we have great highways in the > U.S. and not nearly as much rail as we used to (and terrible train > service on what's left). Don't forget the oil industry. Imagine what would happen to demand had we a good rail infrastructure. Right now we're paying a heavy price for those great highways. Rhode Island has some of the worst roads, bridges and highways in the country and Masschusetts isn't far behind. What amazes me is that we still buy into the arguments put forth by auto manufacturers, oil companies etc. A recent study indicated that Rhode Island needs to widen I-95 in the southern part of the state and all of I-295. At the same time, there are plans to build sidings for rail stations in Warwick, RI in the immediate future, and then Wickford and Westerley in the longer term. It would make much more sense to drop commuter rail in. The MBTA has actually committed to running their commuter lines as far as Warwick. That would make TF Green airport an intermodal airport as the train station is < 1500 feet from the main entrance. The point of my statement is that widening the highways in those areas won't help. If they're going to wide anything they should do it in the metro ring where traffic always backs up. The other point is that we should make use of commuter rail, yes it's more expensive up front but over the long term it might put off having to expand highways. If we were to tax gasoline to the point where it would be adequate to maintain the roads we'd have riots on our hands. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:28:22 -0400 (EDT) From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: AMTRAK (was Re: Last, Sad Laugh! A Nice Place to Work!) Mark Crispin wrote: > Prior to [the fall of the wall], the U-Bahn was run by West Berlin > authorities and the S-Bahn by East Berlin authorities. Actually, the S-Bahn was run by East German authorities, specifically by the Deutsche Reichsbahn, which ran the long-distance trains in East Germany. The Deutsche Bundesbahn and Reichsbahn have now merged to form the Deutsche Bahn, which now runs the Berlin S-Bahn. Up until the wall was built, the U-Bahn was a single network in both the east and the west. After the wall was built, the four U-Bahn lines which crossed between East and West were modified. Two of them were split and did not cross the wall, one of them (U8) passed through six locked and patrolled stations (including the major station at Alexanderplatz) without stopping, and one of them (U6) passed through four of five stations without stopping, and made a stop in a hermetically sealed portion of the Friedrichstr station, where it was possible to transfer to three S-Bahn lines serving the west. > The S-Bahn was entirely streetcars in West Berlin, and generally avoided. Not one bit of the S-Bahn in Berlin is or was ever streetcars. All of it operated directly on rails of the Deutsche Reichsbahn (now Deutsche Bahn) completely within the right-of-way and through the same stations as the long-distance trains (although the long distance trains would not stop at all of the stations). By the mid-80s, the avoidance of what was left of the West Berlin portion of the S-Bahn had pretty much ended, with the incorporation of the S-Bahn into the same fare system as the rest of the West Berlin transit system. (I've visited Berlin on over a dozen separate occasions between 1965 and 2001 and am VERY familiar with the transit systems there and their history.) > In Munich, the S-Bahn is a high-speed line from the suburbs into > downtown, but only one or two stops in town No, the S-Bahn stops at all of the following in-town stations: Westkreuz, Pasing, Laim, Donnersbergerbruecke, Hackerbruecke, Hauptbahnhof, Karlsplatz (Stachus), Marienplatz, Isartor, Rosenheimer Platz, Ostbahnhof, Leuchtenbergring, Untersbergstr, Giesing, Heimeranplatz, Harras, and several other stations. In Munich, the Deutsche Bundesbahn intercity rail system did not provide quite the coverage of the inner city that is the case in Berlin and Hamburg, and the S-Bahn was not fully developed until a major east-west tunnel under the center of the city was built to connect Hauptbahnhof (a terminus like GCT rather than a through station like Penn) with Ostbahnhof. A similar tunnel was built in Frankfurt to extend the S-Bahn from Hauptbahnhof under the city center. > there definitely were streetcars in the Vienna ring which were > part of the S-Bahn system Vienna does have streetcars, but they have nothing to do with the S-Bahn other than the fact that since 1984 there has been a fare union among the commuter rail, bus, streetcar, and U-Bahn systems. As in Germany, the S-Bahn is operated by the national long-distance rail system (the OeBB). There is a picture of some of the Vienna S-Bahn trains at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baureihe_4020 -- and you can see that they are operating as full-size rail cars out of big train stations. /john ------------------------------ Subject: Re: 'K' v. 'W' Television Station Callsigns Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 14:55:43 -0700 From: Linc Madison Organization: California resident; nospam; no unsolicited e-mail allowed I grew up in Dallas, Texas, with WRR-FM and WRR-AM (now KAAM-AM), WBAP-AM and WBAP-TV (now KXAS-TV), WFAA-AM and WFAA-TV, and, down in San Antonio, WOAI-AM and -TV. I then moved near Philadelphia and watched KYW-TV. What I find rather more interesting are situations where stations sharing the same callsign are in completely different metropolitan areas. For example, KCBS-TV is in Los Angeles, but KCBS-AM is in San Francisco. 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. ------------------------------ From: kd1s@yahoo.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Re: Yet Another Telco Tax Proposed Date: 22 Oct 2004 09:07:09 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Danny Burstein wrote in message news:: > In the continuing tradition of government that try to offload taxes > onto third parties (that way they're not "raising taxes", you see ...) > California has a very real problem with medical costs. The hospitals > and other medical providers provide services, but don't take in > anywhere near as much money as they claim to be expending. > Hospital and medical finances are such a huge mess they put Enron to > shame. Normally this isn't a telecom issue but ... > The telco point: The usual folk have pushed forward a fee on telco > services to cover the shortfall. Quoting from a VOA clip: > "A voter initiative that Doctor Higgins calls a "Band-Aid" could > provide a short-term fix, and he supports the measure. Appearing > on the November 2nd ballot as Proposition 67, it would raise 500 > million dollars a year by adding a three-percent surcharge to the > cost for telephone calls made in California. > To which the curmodgeons retort: > > "It's the wrong solution for a real problem. This is a phone tax. > This is a tax on a service that has absolutely nothing to do with > emergency medical care whatsoever. It does have some relation. People use the telephone to call the emergency services which then deliver them to the hospital. But I think too many other taxes have been loaded onto phone bills in recent years. In essence it is nickle and diming us to death. Now my medical system rant. There are several reasons why medical services have gotten so expensive and they have to do with supply and demand. Many more people seek medical attention now than they did years ago, but infrastructure improves glacially and so cannot keep up. The other part of my rant is insurance and billing companies. They just add two more layers of fees to medical services, one cut for the insurer and another for the billing company. Dismantle that mess and we might see costs come down. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Bell System Competition: Private Telephone Networks Reply-To: jhaynes@alumni.uark.edu Organization: University of Arkansas Alumni From: haynes@alumni.uark.edu (Jim Haynes) Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 16:59:21 GMT Blurring the picture even further, there were big companies that had their own telephone systems, but using lines leased from Bell and connecting with the Bell public system. When I worked for G.E. circa 1967 there was such a system -- I don't remember now what the name of it was -- where we could dial a certain prefix and then dial most other G.E. locations without going through the public switched network. Big companies also had their own teletypewriter networks, usually with lines, equipment and maintenance furnished by Bell or W.U. on a lease basis. The airlines had these, and in addition the ability to exchange messages with other airlines. That was a big thing in the days of regulated air transportation when a trip from here to there often required flying on two or more airlines. I remember too that big department stores had their own internal telephone systems with equipment from independent telephone suppliers. Only a few employees were considered to need phones for both the internal and external phone networks. jhhaynes at earthlink dot net ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:08:18 EDT From: Carl Moore Subject: Re: Illinois Death Row is Empty Today This remark by you was in Jan. 2003: > Police around Chicago area are today gunning for the governor, to say > the least. They hate him. Police do not like DNA testing either, > except when the results go the way they want. And occasionally I hear of remarks "just the truth/facts" (remember "just the facts" from the fictitious Sgt. Joe Friday, played by Jack Webb in the "Dragnet" TV series?). Sigh. (I have watched many forensics programs.) [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There is a new governor in Illinois in the past year. And where did I read it the other day, the Boston Globe perhaps? ... it seems some state passed a new law allowing prisoners to petition to get a DNA test which could possibly prove their innocence, but the prosecutor had to okay the test before the prisoners could receive it or benefit from it. Since prosecutors are usually just rubber stamps for police, you know the likelyhood of a prosecutor agreeing to such a test is very slight unless it was a case where the heat was on so badly. In Chicago, police get in trouble now and then, (arson, drug sales and use, assault, rape, etc) but the *only time* anything is ever done about it is when the case becomes *so* public and the public gets *so* stirred up about it and the newspapers get so up in arms about it, that the prosecutor has to act. So it does not surprise me that they play games with DNA testing if they can. I don't know anything about reading/interpreting those tests, do you? A recent case (Wes Leatherock knows about it as do most folks in Oklahoma) had a forensics technician (Joyce someone) confess to deliberatly screwing up the results of various scientific tests performed as part of police investigations. Any number of guys went to prison, what the hell, one or two may have been executed. Joyce said the police told her how they wanted the tests to turn out, and who was she, she whimpered, to not follow orders from the brave, courageous police officers who told her what to do. She was just following orders. I don't know what ever became of her. The Tulsa World Newspaper raised so much hell about it they had to sacrifice her, I know that much. Wes, how did that ever turn out? I know a lot of the guys in prison who had been victimized by her 'tests' wanted to be retested or set free. PAT] ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. 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