From editor@telecom-digest.org Fri Oct 29 21:54:55 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i9U1stA08304; Fri, 29 Oct 2004 21:54:55 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 21:54:55 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410300154.i9U1stA08304@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 #519 TELECOM Digest Fri, 29 Oct 2004 21:55:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 519 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson New Electronic Check Law Sinks 'Float' (Lisa Minter) Re: Linux Asterisk embedded PBX, HELP!! (T. Sean Weintz) Re: Linux Asterisk embedded PBX, HELP!! (Jay Hennigan) Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence (ranck@vt.edu) Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence (Tony P.) Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence (Carl Zwanzig) Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence (Gary Breuckman) Re: Home Phones Face Uncertain Future (Lisa Hancock) Re: Yet Another Telco Tax Proposed (Lisa Hancock) Re: Is There a PBX Like This? Urgent!!! (T. Sean Weintz) Re: What Happened to Channel 1? (Neal McLain) Re: Owner of Stolen 'sex.com' Can Sue VeriSign - Court (Gary Breuckman) Verizon Communications Third-Quarter Revenues Increase 6.7% (M Solomon) 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: Lisa Minter Subject: New Electronic Check Law Sinks 'Float' Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 21:45:30 -0500 WASHINGTON (AFP) - Electronic banking in the United States took another step forward as a new law took effect allowing digitized images of checks to become their legal equivalent. The new law, aimed at easing the burden of transferring billions of paper checks between banks, has drawn praise from the banking industry as a more efficient way of moving money, but is being criticized by some consumer advocates. The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, or Check 21, was pushed by the industry and regulators in the wake of the disruption to banking following the September 11, 2001 attacks. Under the law, any bank in the check-processing chain can convert the original check into a digital image known as a substitute check and throw away the original. Banks are required to accept the digitized images as the "legal equivalent of the original check for all purposes." For consumers, the change may mean an end to the "float" time of several days for a check to travel between banks and clear. "The guy who is trying to cut corners and get an extra few days of float? That's history," said Mark Simmons of Commerce National Bank in Fullerton, California. "They're going to be in for a big surprise." "Banks will save money on processing checks, but banks are not required to share these savings with consumers," says a guide to the new law from Consumers Union. Consumers are unlikely to get their cancelled checks back, although some banks had already stopped this practice. Some say consumers may take an additional hit because Check 21 does not require banks to shorten the holds they put on deposits. And because the law allows banks to create checks with customer information on them, some fear Check 21 will foster fraud, increase mistakes and violate consumer privacy. But Nessa Feddis of the American Bankers Association says making the system more efficient will have benefits for consumers. "Check 21 will help to eliminate the need to use special, dedicated planes and trucks to transport checks around the country," Feddis said. "In addition, natural disasters (hurricanes, and earthquakes) as well as terrorist threats can have a detrimental impact on the timely transportation of paper across the country. Electronic processing can help mitigate some of these issues and provide a more stable banking infrastructure. Merchants may also gain efficiencies in their banking practices. The efficiencies, which will be gained over the long term rather than immediately, will reduce banks overhead costs, and those savings will help consumers." *** 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, in this instance, Yahoo News Service. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Linux Asterisk embedded PBX, HELP!! Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 15:39:29 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Vish wrote: > Hi again folks, > Is there a PBX which is Linux/Asterisk based that can work independent > of a PC? A PBX with embedded Linux OS and Asterisk that can be > configured locally initialy with a PC, (later works independent of the > PC). The device must also be subsequently configurable remotely via > the internet (VPN if required). Maybe I am just dreaming but am new to > this. Any help appreciated. > Thanks, > Vish Um, yeah. You are just dreaming. Consider this -- would not a low end PC generally be cheaper than an embedded system anyway? Making it into an embedded system would make it more expensive, since the embedded system would have all the componenets of a PC anyway (it would essentially be a PC in a special case). ------------------------------ From: Jay Hennigan Organization: Disgruntled Postal Workers Against Gun Control Subject: Re: Linux Asterisk embedded PBX, HELP!! Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 22:58:00 -0700 On Thu, 28 Oct 2004 07:58:42 -0700, Vish wrote: > Hi again folks, > Is there a PBX which is Linux/Asterisk based that can work independent > of a PC? A PBX with embedded Linux OS and Asterisk that can be > configured locally initialy with a PC, (later works independent of the > PC). The device must also be subsequently configurable remotely via > the internet (VPN if required). Maybe I am just dreaming but am new to > this. Any help appreciated. Well, yes. But it's really a PC under the hood. PBXs have essentially been computers since the crossbar days. There are a number of single-board dedicated x86 boxes that can run asterisk without the "look and feel" of a PC. You can boot from a solid-state "disk" and have no hard drive, you don't need a monitor, keyboard or mouse, etc. Some even run on -48VDC, just like your grandfather's PBX. But, if you want the features and reliability, a server-class rack mount "PC" is your best choice. You'll want a large amount of storage for voice mail, standard PCI slots for the Digium boards, etc. And you can configure it locally with a PC (connected via console) or remotely via ssh or telnet, or even with a real green-screen VT-100. If you wanted to, you could probably run asterisk on a Tivo, a Cisco 2500, or any of a number of other esoteric non-PC platforms. It's open source and there are a number of cross-compilers available. With a little effort, most any platform with a C compiler can likely handle the basic engine. ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 14:54:58 -0500 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence Matt wrote: > Now ... about 500 feet - 1000 feet from the field where the > electric fence is a youth camp. On the camp is the office telephones, > caretaker, and a program director. > The phone line for the caretaker and ONE of the two office > lines experience a continual hum as well as a click, click, click, > click, click, every time the electric fence fires off. Hum in particular, and also noise to some extent, are symptoms of an unbalanced pair. > The program director does not experience any known issue on his > line, and the other line in the office is fine. I find this very > odd, since both of the office lines come in (presumably) on the same > cable? These are three separate phone lines, each with their own phone number, right? Not extensions from a single number? Check the lines where they enter the building; hopefully there's a NID there. You can disconnect an RJ-11 type plug inside the NID and connect a phone directly to the line there. If there's still hum and clicking, then it is absolutely Telco's problem. If the hum and clicks disappear when tested at the NID then the problem is with your inside wiring, which Telco will happily repair for you at a substantial fee ... (If you're talking about one phone number with several extensions, of which some are clean and some are noisy -- then it's definitely a problem with your phones or inside wiring. Possibly both.) If there's not a NID it shouldn't be too difficult to have Telco put one in for you. The fact that one line is OK shows that it is possible to provide service to your location without interference. So all your lines should be clean. Yes, they all come in on one cable but that cable is probably not continuous back to the CO. It's likely opened up at one or more pints to tap off pairs for other subscribers. Any of these points provides an opportunity for corrosion or foreign material to affect one or more (but not necessarily all) pairs and cause an unbalanced condition. > Any thoughts? Verizon is kinda stumped on this issue, so I'm trying > to see if I can figure anything out to help them out. This shouldn't be a stumper at all. It can be labor-intensive to track down where the pair is going out of balance, so maybe they're just dragging their feet hoping you'll give up and accept the service you've got. A telephone pair is two wires twisted together. The wires are as near to identical electrically as they can be made. So, if one lead has a 600V pulse induced in it by a nearby electric fence, the other will have an identical 600V pulse induced in it. Since the wires' electrical characteristics are identical, these pulses propagate at identical speeds and arrive at your telephone simultaneously. But since one lead attaches to one side of the phone's circuits and the other lead attaches to the other side, the two pulses cancel each other perfectly and you hear nothing. Only the audio placed onto the pair at the CO should be heard. The hybrid in your telephone is in essence an analog computer; it calculates the difference of the voltages on the two wires and outputs that difference as audio. The CO places different signals on each wire (representing audio) but noise sources place the SAME signal on each wire. Telephone pairs generally carry a LOT of noise -- but since they carry the IDENTICAL noise on both wires, it all cancels perfectly at the ends and nobody hears any of it. Even the twist plays a role; if the wires were parallel they would electromagnetically couple slightly different audio signals from adjacent pairs in the cable. Twisting the pairs ensures that each wire picks up an identical signal. (If your house is wired with old Red-Green-Black-Yellow "cloverleaf" cable and you use the B-Y pair for a second line, you will probably notice crosstalk. This happens because the cloverleaf cable is not twisted-pair and so it acts like a coupling transformer. It can cause crosstalk even if you don't have anything connected to the far end of the cloverleaf cable.) When the electrical characteristics of one wire are changed, the pair becomes unbalanced. This can happen because a spiderweb is built in a junction box, and provides a high-resistance leakage path to ground, or to other pairs (which leads to crosstalk). It can happen because rain leaks into a splice and the resulting corrosion inserts a few dozen ohms of DC resistance into one side of the circuit. It can happen when a mouse chews up insulation on a bunch of wires and randomly alters their capacitance. In an unbalanced condition, signals do NOT propagate identically down the two wires. They may propagate at different speeds, and/or they may have different frequency response curves. When noise signals reach your telephone instrument, the difference between them (which would be zero on a perfectly balanced line) becomes audible. Power lines produce a 60Hz hum, electric fencers produce regular clicks, other types of problems cause hissing and popping. Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com "If we imagined he could _find_ the car, we could pretend it might be fixed." - Calvin {TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had telephone service once where the line went bad, and telco decided it was necessary to swap the pairs. Trouble was, they had a hard time finding *any* spare pairs in the cable, but about a half-dozen pairs which were out of order. So what telco wound up doing (I found out later) was to take *one* good wire from one pair and a second good wire from another pair, in effect making one good pair out of four wires (two of which were out of order.) When I started listening to my phone calls later on, it just did not seem right, it sounded sort of out of balance somehow. I then complained about that also, and a few days later they came out and were working in the hole in the street changing things around again, and that time it sounded better. Is that some sort of problem, when you 'mix and match' wires from different pairs to get a good pair? PAT] ------------------------------ From: ranck@vt.edu Subject: Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 20:16:58 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA Matt wrote: > The phone line for the caretaker and ONE of the two office > lines experience a continual hum as well as a click, click, click, > click, click, every time the electric fence fires off. The program > director does not experience any known issue on his line, and the > other line in the office is fine. I find this very odd, since both of > the office lines come in (presumably) on the same cable? > Any thoughts? Verizon is kinda stumped on this issue, so I'm > trying to see if I can figure anything out to help them out. Does > this sound like a grounding issue? If so is it at the demarc box? Or > on a line some place? Why only one phone line and not the other? Many years ago, when dinosaurs roamed the earth, I looked after some 4-wire leased circuits that we used for data communications. Occasionally, usually after a thunderstorm, one of those lines would get noisy. I would call what was then a Bell company and report noise on circuit number blah. The trouble ticker writer would ask for the phone number, which I didn't have because it was a leased 4 wire, not a real phone line, but they'd take down the circuit number and almost exactly 20 minutes later I would get a call from a technician asking me how I knew there was noise on that cicuit. I learned that if I told them the truth, that I had put an oscilloscope on there and could see it, they would get upset. After some further conversation they'd go and check it out. After the techs got to know me, they would tell me more and the noise usually turned out to be caused by what they called "bad carbons." These are some sort of grounded protective devices that apparently get leaky some times. I am willing to bet that is what the problem is for you. Now, good luck getting anyone to understand the old Bell System term "bad carbons." I assume these are sort of surge suppressors of some sort, but what the modern phone company might call them is anybody's guess. Bill Ranck Blacksburg, Va. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The most unusual thing I ever saw which was sort of like that was when I worked for a place which used wire contacts on their doors and windows for a security alarm company. One night when it was time to go home, I could not get the alarm to 'set' and had to call the alarm company to get them to come over and fix it. The trouble when this happened was usually around the elevator doors which would slide open and closed. For continuity in the wire, there was a wire grill like thing which had to be put across the elevator door opening when you were leaving the premises for the night. The repairman came out (he had a buttset with him with clamps on the ends of the wires) and he stood there at the elevator where the grill went across the doors, clamped on his buttset and *talked* through the wires to the office where he worked, where someone else was making adjustments as they talked. Now that I think about it, I guess there is no reason you could not carry on a conversation over the wires of an alarm system. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence Organization: ATCC Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 21:18:25 -0400 In article , spammers@are.bad.com says: > Hi, > Got a weird problem that I'm looking for a possible resolution > to. There is a fairly large farm with about a mile of electric fence > around the cattle area, with a pulsing electric fence. Apparently > this is a heavy duty pulser and is able to power 100 miles of fence. > Now ... about 500 feet - 1000 feet from the field where the > electric fence is a youth camp. On the camp is the office telephones, > caretaker, and a program director. > The phone line for the caretaker and ONE of the two office > lines experience a continual hum as well as a click, click, click, > click, click, every time the electric fence fires off. The program > director does not experience any known issue on his line, and the > other line in the office is fine. I find this very odd, since both of > the office lines come in (presumably) on the same cable? > Any thoughts? Verizon is kinda stumped on this issue, so I'm > trying to see if I can figure anything out to help them out. Does > this sound like a grounding issue? If so is it at the demarc box? Or > on a line some place? Why only one phone line and not the other? > As another side note, the electric fence runs about 500 - 600 > feet beside the road, which is also where the telephone/electric poles > run (same side of the road). Grounding is probably an issue here. An 8' copper spike driven into the ground and then bonded to every phone instrument would probably do the trick. ------------------------------ From: zbang@radix.net (Carl Zwanzig) Subject: Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence Date: Fri, 29 Oct 2004 01:46:56 -0000 Organization: RadixNet Internet Services Matt wrote: > The phone line for the caretaker and ONE of the two office > lines experience a continual hum as well as a click, click, click, > click, click, every time the electric fence fires off. The program > director does not experience any known issue on his line, and the > other line in the office is fine. I find this very odd, since both of > the office lines come in (presumably) on the same cable? Sounds like there's a ground on the line, somewhere down the line from the premises. That would account for the hum and for picking up the fence clicking. > Any thoughts? Verizon is kinda stumped on this issue, so I'm > trying to see if I can figure anything out to help them out. Does > this sound like a grounding issue? If so is it at the demarc box? Or > on a line some place? Why only one phone line and not the other? Not too surprised ... A decent tech should be able to find it with a 'kicker' in short order. Of course, so should a test board. z! ------------------------------ From: Gary Breuckman Subject: Re: Clicking in Phone Line From Electric Fence Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 22:18:36 -0500 Organization: Puma's Lair - catbox.com In article , "Matt" wrote: > Hi, > Got a weird problem that I'm looking for a possible resolution > to. There is a fairly large farm with about a mile of electric fence > The phone line for the caretaker and ONE of the two office > lines experience a continual hum as well as a click, click, click, > click, click, every time the electric fence fires off. The program > director does not experience any known issue on his line, and the other > line in the office is fine. I find this very odd, since both of the > office lines come in (presumably) on the same cable? Perhaps the one phone line is unbalanced, or has leakage to ground. The telco should have equipment to check this. Also trying different telephones may make a difference, especially if the one with the problem is one of those el-cheapo electronic ones. -- Gary Breuckman ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: Home Phones Face Uncertain Future Date: 29 Oct 2004 08:34:01 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Joseph wrote >> The landline phone's peak has come and gone, but it won't be gone. >> Anyone who has complained about the sound quality of a cell phone >> connection (nearly all of us, I would think) can attest to this. > Over 90% of the time my cell phone voice quality is every bit as good > as wireline phone service. Why should someone tolerate 90% when they can have 100%? Cell phones still have a way to go to catch up to wireline reliability and quality. People joke about making crackling noises, but conversations still break up in mid call, and calls don't go through. Cell phones depend on radio waves. Obviously in the 100 years that we've had radio the technology has improved tremendously. However, radio waves still remain sensitive to interference and blockages. Are today's cell phones sensitive to bad sunspot activity? What happens when lightning hits a cellphone tower -- does it continue functioning without any call interruption? Can modern tiny cellphones work well in isolated rural areas far from the interstate -- do the towers have that wide a coverage? Cellphones also require the battery be kept charged. Presumably that's easier now and we don't have to worry about partial charges ("memory") or overchaging. But do batteries wear out from heavy use and frequent charge/discharge cycling? I don't think landline phones are going away. For years the landline was primarily used for voice with data hitch-hiking along. Now with things like DSL I forsee that data will be the primary and voice hitched along on top of a data line, with the same or even more features and reliability for voice. > Not only for home service, but look at pay phones. Pay phones not > only are becoming scarce (my local super market just remodeled and > they decided that they were not going to install pay phones since they > were just being used to make drug sales.) This is true, my local library pulled its payphone and many patrons still ask to use one. But payphones are a different market than home or office wireline phones. Cell phones definitely took a lot of business away from payphones, however, there remains more payphone business than expected. Not everyone carries their cellphone with them at all times, not everyone even has a cellphone, and sometimes cellphones aren't working (ie dead battery). I think we'll see fewer payphones, especially where there was once a battery of them, but they'll still be around. A brand new train line put payphones on every platform (though partly to serve as a 911 service in case of psgr emergency). [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I had a weird experience today with my cell phone, which normally works pretty well. This is Neewollah week here, and downtown was totally jammed, with cars and pedestrians as to be expected. I was over at the Arco Building to pay my monthly phone bill at Prairie Stream and for some reason looked at my cell phone (from Cingular Wireless) which had changed from saying 'Cingular' at top of the LED screen and instead said 'Roam'. I tried to make a call (we can do seven digits on local cell phone calls) but the phone responded 'must have area code and number'. Okay, so I tried 620 plus the number I wanted, and this time it sat there and after a minute or so started beeping. I looked at the LED and it said 'will try to redial in five seconds.' It did that several times. So I dialed 611 to get the Cingular Business Office and repair. Instead, the phone told me 'you have reached Alltel'. The lady who answered had no idea what was going on, and "are you sure your phone is not on the Alltel network?" Of that I am positive it was not changed. I cycled the power, and it came back up as Cingular. When I then called 611 a second time, Cingular answered me. She asked me where I was at and I told her right here in town as always, I never get away these days. She asked 'where is that' and I told her in Independence. She tapped on her keyboard, came back and said, "Aren't you having some kind of Mardis Gras thing there this week?" I said we were, and she said "that explains why our towers in the area are so jammed up. We were full so you were handed off to the Alltel tower which is in Liberty, KS at the Cell One large facility there. Look at your meter and see what the signal strength is ... " I looked, it was slightly above zilch, zero; usually I get a full, heavy signal since Cingular installed their new tower in the Presbyterian Church steeple over on Fourth Street. "There," she said, "now you see what happened? Everyone in town must all be using their cell phone at the same time." I said I hoped I did not get roaming charges added to my bill from the Alltel people. She said I would not get charged anything extra, and she was sorry for any confusion by having to add the area code to my local dialing, etc. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Jeff nor Lisa) Subject: Re: Yet Another Telco Tax proposed Date: 29 Oct 2004 11:46:43 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com Danny Burstein wrote: > 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. > The telco point: The usual folk have pushed forward a fee on telco > services to cover the shortfall. Quoting from a VOA clip: There are two issues at work here: 1) One is the ever increasing demand for government services. All of us are guilty of that even though we all blame someone else. I heard one local curmogeon gripe about taxes. Yet he is a member of several community organizations that get taxpayer-paid grants for their advocacy work (a specific park improvement). So it's ok for his specific park to get grants, but not for anything else. It never occured to anyone that perhaps his advocacy group is doing too good a job and that their specific park is _over_ funded at the expense of other parks or govt services. We want better roads and transit but we don't want to raise our gasoline taxes to pay for them. We want less crime, but don't want to raise our taxes to pay for an expanded criminal justice system. 2) Medical expenses: Medical costs are going through the roof, as they have been for years. This is a very difficult and complex subject and not fixable by pointing fingers at one simple thing. From a telecom point of view, I am extremely frustrated at the gross inefficiency of today's payment processing for health care. A simple visit to the doctor generates considerable paperwork, much of it wrong! For the life of me I don't understand why claims are not (1) standardized for all health insurers so they are uniform processing even if coverage varies and (2) why claims can't be entered and validated on-line. For some reason I don't understand, many of my doctor's claims are rejected. He has to submit them a second time. I get mailed copies of all the paperwork. The same thing happens to my mother who uses different doctors covered by a different insurer, so it's not just me. Obviously there are clerks processing all this junk in both the doctor's office and insurance carrier and all this costs money. ABC News reported that administrative costs make up a big part of the cost of health care. Now I don't know a stent from styrofoam so I can't comment about the direct costs of the actual medical care. But I do know there is no excuse for this massive inefficient paperwork bureaucracy. Sure they use computers, but the systems are ridiculous. One simple office visit generates a voucher of FOUR 8x11 images! Also, I don't understand what "managed" mean in "managed health care". When HMOs first came out, they were supposed to save us money by encouraging cheap checkups to catch expensive disease early on (ie it's suppposedly cheaper to treat someone with high chloresterol than after they've had a real heart attack.) But obviously that hasn't worked out. Also, I don't understand why the traditional Blue Cross/Blue Shield became extremely expensive. Since those subscribers pay big deductibles (ie 20% of the fee) there would be an incentive to not get care unless necessary, yet that hasn't worked out either. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I notice that several dentists, eye- doctors and podiatrists here in town (many services that are *not* covered by Medicare but *are* covered by Kansas Medicaid have put up signs in their waiting rooms saying 'we no longer accept public aid cards.' The reason, I am told is just what you said: paperwork submitted time and again, always sent back with something wrong, then when they *do* decide to pay the doctor, he gets the money in maybe three or four months. :( PAT] ------------------------------ From: T. Sean Weintz Subject: Re: Is There a PBX Like This? Urgent!!! Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 15:40:52 -0400 Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com Vish wrote: > Hi folks, > I have two incoming lines that need to be transferred to one of > several remote numbers depending on extension or names directory (for > a virtual office). Is there a SOHO PBX with the following specs? > 1. Can be configured locally like a hub or switch is configured ie. by > launching a browser. For my Belkin ethernet hub I enter 192.168.2.1 on > my browser and it helps me configure my hub. Any PBX that can be > configured similarly? Not that I have ever seen. Not browser based. At least not a shoho system. > 2. Can be configured remotely (via VPN) over the internet That's a given. If it works from a browser it will work over VPN. > 3. PBX should not need a dedicated PC ie. should work independent of a > PC (except for inital configuration). > Thanks in anticipation, > Vish ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 16:30:23 -0500 From: Neal McLain Subject: Re: What Happened to Channel 1? PAT wrote: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Something I do not understand > about our Cable One system is this: (Basic) channels are > numbered 2 though 62 with no channel 0 or 1 and no channel 4, > sixty channels total. There's no 0 or 1 because Cable One's basic service uses the STD ("standard") channel-numbering plan, and this plan doesn't include 0 or 1. See the "Standard Carrier Frequency" column at . Cable One probably doesn't use cable channel 4 because of possible direct pickup from K04EJ, a 310-watt station in Coffeyville owned by Coffeyville Community College. A strong off-air signal could get directly into the internal wiring of a poorly-shielded television set that had been connected directly to the cable (without a converter), and cause interference to any signal carried on cable channel 4. This would be the case even if Cable One carried K04EJ *on* cable channel 4. Even though signals move pretty fast through a cable network, there's still a delay of a few microseconds. If an off-air signal and a cable signal both arrive at the TV set, one signal will appear as a ghost in the other. At 310 watts, K04EJ isn't a very strong station, but Independence is only about 13 miles away, so you could still be receiving a fairly strong signal. > here is a channel 3 on our cable which happens to be Fox out > of Tulsa. Our converter boxes come with arrangements to use a > switch on the back to set the converter to do its output on > channel 3 or 4, depending. My thinking was since there is a > channel 3, put the converter box output to channel 4 which is > otherwise vacant. But no, Cable One says use the '3' side of > the converter switch *even though they also put stuff on > channel 3. Assuming the converter is properly designed, there's no reason the output channel can't be the same as one of the input channels. Cable One doesn't use channel 4 as the converter-output channel for the same reason they don't use it as a cable channel: potential interference from K04EJ. > In fact, if you put the converter box on 4 and also > set the television set to '4', we only get a snowy, grainy > picture. Disconnect the converter, hook the TV set up to an antenna, and see what you get. My guess: you'll see K04EJ. > Their full spectrum of 'channels' runs from channel 2 through > channel 938 if you have their full package (2 through 62, > basic), (101 through 1xx, then 200 through 2xx, etc. up > through 901 through 938 which are the music channels, in total > about 400 channels total, with lots of vacancies in the > middle.) But they do not use zero, or one, or four for some > reason. See explanation above. > Also, when manually tuning a cable channel where nothing is > located, the cable does not allow the remote to be stopped on a > vacant spot (even if requested) but automatically goes to the > next highest actual channel, with one exception, channel 70, > just above the basic group of channels. The coverter will stop > on 70 if you request it to, and you get a continuous black > screen, almost like a television station is there but with > carrier but no other output. Ignoring the cable converter and > manually tuning the television to channel 70 I usually just get > snow and hiss, but sometimes I get a 'ghost image' of some > cable channel instead. Can anyone explain any of this? PAT] See "The Mysterious Cable Channel 70" at . Neal McLain [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I read your tinyurl page and it was quite interesting. I also tried your suggestion about an antenna on the television and over the air signals from Channel 4. I did *not* get anything different than what I got before (some hiss and snow with a very faint image.) However, if what you suggest is true about inter- ference from Coffeyville CC, then why isn't that also true of the guy who does the low power repeater of Trinity Broacasting on (I think) channel 22 or 23 here in Indy? Cable One does not block out that channel on account of him; in fact I think Trinity is on our cable 22. I seem to remember channel 4 from *years* ago when as a young kid I lived and visited in Coffeyville. It seems to me it was a 24 hour per day transmission of some weather station. The cameras always looking at the weather dials, and background music. That would have been 1954-55. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Gary Breuckman Subject: Re: Owner of Stolen 'sex.com' Can Sue VeriSign - Court Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 22:24:36 -0500 Organization: Puma's Lair - catbox.com In article , "Patrick Townson" wrote: > 1) what makes .ORG different than .COM is the nature of the web site. > 2) .ORG was always traditionally defined as for use by non-profit > organizations, public service places, etc. ICANN did not just toss > .ORG into the same pot as .COM for good reasons; they are to serve > different categories of web sites. As you said, that difference is 'traditional' and not really enforced these days -- anyone can apply for the com/org/net TLDs without regard for what they want to do with them. 'edu' is the only one that's really restriced anymore. Same with us/biz/info and most of the country code TLDs. Anyone with the money to do so can register any domain that's free. There may be trademark issues, but that gets resolved in court, the registrars don't care. -- Gary Breuckman [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I think the registrars would begin to care if they got sued more often, as in the sex.com case. And I feel Public Interest Registry *should* get sued, to make an example of them just as Verisign got sued for the way they gave away the sex.com thing without any care in the world (at least at first, until *they* got sued.) But now I am waiting for the millionaire soccer player Mikka Krupisoff (or his namesake who corresponded with us a couple days ago using the 'garynuman' mail server in Calgary, Alberta) to get back to me with the 'charter' for PIR which he insisted *requires* them to serve one and all pornographers and penis enlarger companies equally, along with any hapless history archivists who happen to be waiting in line. Personally, I think that is a large slice of bologna; charter, indeed. Either the ICANN people deliberatly tossed internet traditions out the window (which would not surprise me) with a new type of charter for the registrars *or* PIR deliberatly abused the charter and the purpose of the Public Internet Registry. So which is it, Mikka, or garynuman or whoever? *Someone* has to get sued! My question is, who? And I am not interested in chasing off to the Swiss Alps looking for anyone. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 28 Oct 2004 16:35:07 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Verizon Communications Third-Quarter Revenues Increase 6.7% Verizon Communications Third-Quarter Revenues Increase 6.7%, to a Record $18.2 Billion; Wireless Revenues Up 23% - Oct 28, 2004 06:25 AM (PR Newswire) Quarterly Earnings of $1.8 Billion; Continued Strong Growth in Broadband and Wireless Services; Continued Solid Cash Flows and Margins THIRD-QUARTER HIGHLIGHTS * Total Company: Earnings of 64 cents in diluted earnings per share, or 65 cents per share before one special item (non-GAAP); 6.7 percent, or $1.1 billion, growth in operating revenues; $5.6 billion in cash flows from operating activities, a $0.3 billion increase; $1.3 billion free cash flow (non-GAAP, cash from operating activities less capital expenditures and dividends); 19.8 percent consolidated operating income margin (operating income divided by operating revenues) * Wireless: 1.7 million net customer additions, an industry record for the second consecutive quarter; 42.1 million total customers; 23.0 percent growth in total revenues; company-record average revenue per customer; 22.5 percent operating income margin; churn (customer turnover) of 1.5 percent per month * Wireline: 11.5 percent growth in total data revenues; 8.7 percent growth in long-distance revenues; 309,000 net additions of broadband DSL (digital subscriber lines); 3.3 million total DSL lines; broadband, data, long-distance and Enterprise (large business) services contribute to Domestic Telecom's second sequential quarter of revenue growth Notes: Growth percentages cited above compare third-quarter 2004 with third-quarter 2003. See the schedules accompanying this news release and http://www.verizon.com/investor for reconciliations to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for the non-GAAP financial measures included in this announcement. Discontinued operations in the quarterly periods presented include the operations of Verizon Information Services Canada, following a third-quarter 2004 agreement to sell this business. NEW YORK, Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Showing continued strong revenue growth, Verizon Communications Inc. (NYSE:VZ) today reported third-quarter 2004 earnings of $1.8 billion -- 64 cents per diluted share, or 65 cents per share before one special item. Quarterly consolidated operating revenues topped $18 billion for the first time in the company's history -- increasing 6.7 percent to $18.2 billion, compared with $17.1 billion in the third quarter 2003. Also for the first time, Verizon Wireless contributed more than 40 percent of Verizon's total revenues. The nation's leading wireless company grew revenues 23.0 percent to $7.3 billion, compared with $5.9 billion in the third quarter 2003. This marks Verizon Wireless' ninth consecutive quarter of double-digit, year-over-year revenue increases, and the third consecutive quarter that increases totaled more than $1 billion compared with the previous year's quarter. Overall, Verizon's growth businesses -- wireless, long-distance, broadband, data and Enterprise services -- accounted for 55 percent of third-quarter 2004 revenues. This compares with 49 percent of third-quarter 2003 revenues. Over the past year, revenues from these businesses have grown by 20.8 percent. Domestic Telecom operating revenues were $9.6 billion in the third quarter 2004, a 2.1 percent decrease compared with the third quarter 2003 and a slight increase compared with the second quarter 2004. The segment's third-quarter results included an 8.7 percent increase in revenues from all long-distance services, which were $1.1 billion compared with $1.0 billion in the third quarter 2003, and an 11.5 percent increase in total data revenues, which were $2.0 billion compared with $1.8 billion in the third quarter 2003. - http://finance.lycos.com/home/news/story.asp?story=44563915 ------------------------------ 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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