From editor@telecom-digest.org Thu Dec 30 17:42:42 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id iBUMgfW02910; Thu, 30 Dec 2004 17:42:42 -0500 (EST) Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 17:42:42 -0500 (EST) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200412302242.iBUMgfW02910@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 #624 TELECOM Digest Thu, 30 Dec 2004 17:43:00 EST Volume 23 : Issue 624 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Family, Friends Scan Internet for Tsunami Victims (Lisa Minter)) Court Bars Regulation of Web Phone Service (Lisa Minter) FCC to Auction Spectrum for Advanced Wireless (Telecom dailyLead) Consumer Reports Story on Cellphone Providers (LB@notmine.com) Can Someone PINGing Really Screw Your Network? (BertieBigBollox) MSISDN Format For WLL Subscribers: Standard Conformance ?? (qazmlp) Telecom Definitions: Meaning For 'Seizure/Seizure Signal'? (Jack) Bells Dig In (Tony P.) Great Chicago Fire Question (Kay Olson) Connect to Skype With Multiple Phones Around the House (jaykchan) Re: Such Carnage is Hard to Believe! (Lisa Hancock) Re: Vonage no Longer Shipping Linksys PAP2 (brmorris@yahoo.com) Re: Future of Cellular Phone (oookhc@hotmail.com) Re: My High Hopes About Google Ads (Joseph) Re: Drill Bit Size (Gordon S. Hlavenka) Re: QCTimes.com -- Spam Suit Nets $1 Billion (ldn20042002@yahoo.co.uk) Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. 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: Family, Friends Scan Internet for Tsunami Victims Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 10:15:53 EST HONG KONG (Reuters) - Distraught relatives and friends of those missing after the most catastrophic tsunami on record are increasingly turning to the Internet to search for loved ones. In Hong Kong and Singapore to Australia, Britain, the United States and Sweden, people are scanning through lists of names of victims and posting bulletins to look for those missing. "Today I am still searching the hospitals," said James Wong from Hong Kong, as he looked through names and pictures of victims posted on the Internet by hospitals in Phuket. Wong is in Phuket to search for his daughter Rubina Wong, who was on nearby Phi Phi Island with her fiance when the sea swept over the tiny island. "But I still harbour hope. Some people have been found even after hanging in a tree for a day," Wong told Hong Kong television reporters on Thursday. The Thai government has also set up Web sites listing names of victims to examine ( http://www.phuketitcity.com, http://www.disaster.go.th ) Of the hundreds of bulletins posted on one of these sites, a handful had good news for some. "Now we can find the name of Miss Anneli Laitinen from Finland, but we're not quite sure that she is the same person you are looking for. I'm happy to inform you that she's still alive but injured," read a message posted on a page for people looking for loved ones in Krabi in Thailand. Visitors to the sites have also posted heart-wrenching messages looking for their parents, siblings and friends. Other Web sites collating information and news about the disaster, aid and volunteer efforts have also sprung up, such as http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com. Aid agencies, such as the Red Cross and Oxfam, have also appealed for donations, which can be made quickly online at: http://www.redcross.org.hk, http://www.oxfam.org.hk "Since the appeal went out on December 27, we have had responses online. People can also download forms from the Internet and fax it back to us. Others have also made donations directly to our accounts or sent checks," said a spokeswoman for Red Cross in Hong Kong. It has collected HK $32 million (US $4.1 million) to date, which it will use to supply food, medicine and sleeping materials to disaster victims. MANY, MANY MISSING Thousands of foreigners had been holidaying southern Thailand when they went missing after a 9.0 magnitude undersea quake off the Indonesian island of Sumatra. The quake triggered tsunamis that slammed into Indonesia, India, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and other countries as far away as Africa, killing more than 90,000 people. Officially, only 212 foreign tourists have been reported as killed by their home countries, but Thailand alone has said that at least 435 foreigners had died there. Some 1,500 Swedes, 1,000 Germans, 600 Italians, 464 Norwegians, 294 Singaporeans, 277 Hong Kong residents, 219 Danes, 200 Finns and 200 Czechs have been reported as missing by their governments. Valerio Natale, a 14-year-old Italian student, said two missing Italian holidaymakers -- Dario Collodi and Liliana Giordanino -- have already been found thanks to postings on his web page http://www.tuttosimpsons.altervista.org/index.htm. The site is devoted almost entirely to Italian citizens who disappeared in Thailand, Sri Lanka, the Maldives and India. "I was paging through the newspaper and saw lots of ads from people looking for relatives," Natale told Reuters. "I asked myself, 'Why not make a free site that can help everybody?' So I made a free site, which used to be dedicated to the famous American cartoon family, the Simpsons." NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra . New articles daily. *** 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 Reuters News Service. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A hell of a way to end the year, isn't it? Every time I listen to the radio news at http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/AP.html or read the news stories, the body count keeps going up; now 115 thousand people killed in this disaster, and no end in sight. On NASA television today members of the press corps were having a press conference with the two men in the space station, and asked them, "have the folks back home told you about the tragedy which happened in Indonesia and Sri Lanka and otehr parts of Asia over Christmas?" The men said they had been notified of it, but that their sleeping and orbiting schedule had prevented them from any first hand knowledge of it. The sanitation workers here in Independence came around again today for their Thursday pickup and sweep up day and I was reminded once again of the rules now in place through that part of the world: 'Stack the bodies by the curb, we will take them all away as soon as we are able.' God have mercy on all of us. PAT] ------------------------------ From: Jack Decker Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 12:42:10 -0500 Subject: Court Bars Regulation of Web Phone Service http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041229/ZNYT05/412290387/1004/local New York Times A federal appeals court upheld a lower court ruling yesterday that prohibits the state of Minnesota from regulating Internet-based phone calling as if it were a traditional telecommunications service. Full story at: http://www.wilmingtonstar.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20041229/ZNYT05/412290387/1004/local How to Distribute VoIP Throughout a Home: http://michigantelephone.mi.org/distribute.html If you live in Michigan, subscribe to the MI-Telecom group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MI-Telecom/ ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 12:21:23 EST From: Telecom dailyLead from USTA Subject: FCC to Auction Spectrum for Advanced Wireless Services Telecom dailyLead from USTA http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=18445&l=2017006 TODAY'S HEADLINES NEWS OF THE DAY * FCC to auction spectrum for advanced wireless services BUSINESS & INDUSTRY WATCH * AT&T in talks with Sprint * The top 10 turnaround stories of 2004, according to Light Reading * Verizon Wireless plans more upgrades for Florida in 2005 * Net2Phone eyes U.S. expansion USTA SPOTLIGHT * SUPERCOMM: TIA's and USTA's Premiere Event EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES * Adult content goes wireless REGULATORY & LEGISLATIVE * California to challenge FCC's VoIP ruling EDITOR'S NOTE * The dailyLead will not be published Friday Follow the link below to read quick summaries of these stories and others. http://www.dailylead.com/latestIssue.jsp?i=18445&l=2017006 ------------------------------ From: LB@notmine.com Subject: Consumer Reports Story on Cell Phone Providers Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2004 07:09:56 -0500 Organization: Optimum Online The new Consumer Reports magazine has a large story on cell phone providers and cell phones. You can get better info in this group, but the mag has lots of info. Will be very handy for those times when a "friend" is looking for info. I think the mag should be on newsstands now. LB ------------------------------ From: BertieBigBollox@gmail.com Subject: Can someone PINGing Really Screw Your Network Date: 30 Dec 2004 01:32:03 -0800 rganization: http://groups.google.com Read somewhere that if someone continually pings your network, the server will eventually fall over. Seems a bit hard to believe. Surely one computer pinging would make very little impact even on a DSL connection ... Would be a bit unfortunate if this were the case and someone got hold of your static IP :-) Also, what about UDP floods? Are these different? Surely firewalls etc would stop this sort of thing from happening? ------------------------------ From: qazmlp1209@rediffmail.com (qazmlp) Subject: MSISDN Format For WLL Subscribers: Standard Conformance ?? Date: 29 Dec 2004 17:43:31 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com My understanding is as follows: - Normal MSISDN is of the format: CC NDC SN MSISDN for WLL subscribers is of the format: CC LAC SN . I could see that, E.164 specification explains about the format: CC NDC SN But, I could not find any standard which explains about the MSISDN format i.e.CC LAC SN, for WLL subscribers. Could you please help? ------------------------------ From: Jack Subject: Telecom Definitions: Meaning For 'Seizure/Seizure Signal'? Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 18:45:25 -0500 Organization: NTT/VERIO What does Seizure mean in telecom? What is Seizure Signal? TIA! Jack ------------------------------ From: Tony P. Subject: Bells Dig In Organization: ATCC Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 20:51:40 -0500 It seems the ILEC's are digging in to make the broadband market their own. This is disgusting to me. I call for the regulatory pendulum to swing back. Clamp down now or else we'll all pay. http://www.rednova.com/news/display/?id=114841 ------------------------------ Subject: Great Chicago Fire Question Date: Tue, 28 Dec 2004 09:39:25 -0600 From: Kay Olson Pat Townsend, I read your article, Telecom Disaster Recovery in 1871, on the web. I am writing a children's book on the Great Chicago Fire and I have a question. Do you know any details of the fire alarm system in place in Chicago in 1871? I know that the wrong alarm box was pulled, which sent fire fighters in the wrong direction. (I believe Mathias Schaffer signaled his assistant to strike Box 342, which was a mistake. The correct box was Box 319. Then later, the assistant, William J. Brown, took it upon himself to turn in a second alarm. Unfortunately, he struck Box 342 for a second time. My question is, what was the arrangement of these boxes -- how far apart were they? I would like to have a clearer idea of how easy (or difficult) it might have been to get the boxes confused. Any help you could provide in finding the answer to this question would be most appreciated. Thanks for any reply you care to send. Kay M. Olson Editorial Director Capstone Press [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The alarm boxes were a block or two apart, but I know nothing about their numbering arrangments, etc. I do know that they had hopes the fire could be confined to the west side of Chicago, but a strong wind caused some burning embers to do what was considered unthinkable at the time: Some chunks of burning wood flew through the air *across the river* and landed in the middle of the Gas Works, on a gasometer, which was a huge, old- fashioned control mechanism which pumped gas through the pipelines of the city. The 'relatively harmless' (although nasty) fire which had begun at 8:30 PM that Sunday night quickly expanded with that horrendous explosion at the People's gas works on West 12th Street about 11:45 PM same night. By midnight, or as soon as all the gas in the pipelines had drained out, the gas lamps all over the city had gone dark. Chicago Mayor William Mason and the members of the Common Council (what today is known as the Chicago City Council) at that point decided it was time to declare a state of emergency and martial law. Mayor Mason and the councilmen rode their horses over to the telegraph office (which was the basis of my original article) and sent off 'wires' to the president advising him, and also to General Sheridan asking him to please bring his troops ASAP, to maintain order and prevent looting, etc. The firemen kept right on fighting the fire in the various locations as best they could until early Monday morning when even worse circumstances occurred: The fire once again jumped over the river (that is, flying embers and burning wood flying through the air) and landed -- in the most unfortunate of places -- on the water works building, setting it on fire, and before long, it was out of order as well. Water pumping and pressure in the pipes in those days was rather sophisticated for their time; water from the river was diverted through a stream nearby, through a waterwheel, which in turn operated the hydrolic mechanism which pumped water through the pipes to residences, to the firemen's hydrants and similar. Most of the water works did not burn down, but the pumping mechanism was totally shot as a result, and the trickle of water still running made the fire fighting effort in vain (and the pumps had been working overtime for several hours anyway at that point due to the fire.) What remains of the old water works still stands today as a monument in Chicago. The fire continued to burn all day Monday and until early Tuesday when a very heavy rain storm burned out what was still burning at Fullerton Avenue on the north side. About 30 years after the fire, in 1901, the Chicago Historical Society commissioned a book of rememberances, saying as a preface, 'as more and more old people die off, soon there will be no one left at all who was present at the fire. This book will serve to tell everyone about that event.' The same year, the Chicago Tribune, in its Sunday magazine also printed an interview with an employee of Western Union who had been on duty in the telegraph office that Sunday night. When I was employed by the Chicago Public Library in the visually handicapped radio reading service, I used that book 'Remberances of the Great Fire' as a 13 week series in the programs I produced. Unfortunatly I no longer have my copy of the book and do not recall any mention (of the several rememberances used) of how the alarm system worked. Maybe some other reader here will know, or you might be able to read it at the Historical Society Museum/Reading Room. PAT] ------------------------------ From: jaykchan@hotmail.com Subject: Connect to Skype with Multiple Phones Around the House? Date: 30 Dec 2004 12:28:48 -0800 I am interested to use Skype to save money on long distance calls that I made regularly to far east countries (and I really don't like the trouble of using calling cards that keep reducing the minutes for no reason). I intend to get a VoIP USB base unit from pcphoneline to control Skype in the PC using USB; it has a phone jack that I can plug my cordless phone into it. So far this seems like this will work. But my PC will be in the basement; this means the VoIP USB phone connection device will also be in the basement right next to the PC. I prefer to make phone call in the living room and in the bedroom, not down there in the basement. This means somehow I need to make the VoIP service available in multiple locations in my house. Can I connect multiple phone line to the VoIP USB base unit mentioned above? Then I can run cables to various locations in my house. Running cable is no big deal because I have already run cat-6 cables around the house for networking. I can easliy change the cat-6 jack with a phone-jack. What I am wondering is whether there will be any conflict in the base unit if I plug a lot of phone lines into it. How to connect many phone lines into it anyway? I mean ... physically? How is the sound quality of using a USB phone with Skype (or with other VoIP service provider)? My co-worker uses a headset that connects to the sound card of the PC to talk to developer in Russia, and he has good result. Does using USB phone give us an even better sound quality? I have thought of using Vonage and a VoIP phone that connects to a LAN jack. But I am forced to maintain a local phone service with Verizon (in order to use their low cost DSL service), and I don't want to pay $15 basic monthly rate for Vonage. This doesn't make economy sense to keep both Verizon local service and Vonage basic package at the same time. Because I am forced to keep Verizon local service, I would prefer to get VoIP through Skype that is pay-as-you-go. Thanks in advance for any input. Jay Chan ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com Subject: Re: Such Carnage is Hard to Believe! Date: 30 Dec 2004 11:53:38 -0800 TELECOM Digest Editor wrote: > That disturbance of the earth over around s.e. Asia on Sunday has > certainly taken its toll. If such waves hit either the east or west coast of the U.S., how far inland would the destruction be? One mile? Ten miles? How much shoreline (ie length) would be affected? For example, say the wave were to hit Coney Island in Brooklyn NY, how much of Brooklyn would've been destroyed? [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: There was an interesting article in Yahoo News earlier today discussing this very topic. It appears there is an area fifty or a hundred miles in the Pacific Ocean roughly off the coast of San Jose/San Francisco which is very earthquake prone according to siesmologists. I guess it is just a matter of time. You may have also seen in the news that hungry crockodiles got washed ashore in the Indonesia area this week, and although the little guys do not go out of their way to attack/eat humans, they certainly will do so when they get aggravated/agitated enough to do so. PAT] ------------------------------ From: brmorris@yahoo.com Subject: Re: Vonage no Longer Shipping Linksys PAP2 Date: 29 Dec 2004 17:30:23 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com I don't know if that is true, but I just bought a PAP2 from Amazon and there was a loud humm/buzz, so I returned it and the next one had the humm/buzz, too. It is fairly loud, too! ------------------------------ From: oookhc@hotmail.com Subject: Re: Future of Cellular Phone Date: 29 Dec 2004 19:53:26 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com There are many things that can be imagined. For example, a cellular phone could project a "virtual keyboard" on a flat plane so that people do not have to use the "real keyboard" to type anything; or the cellular phone is with voice recognization function so that people can just use their mouth to enable something; or a cellular phone could work as a language translator so that people on the other hand could speak in different languages ... Well, they are just dreams in the near future. :) But it just depends on your imagination to realize them. The following links just provide some basic principles from fundamental things: http://www.ScienceOxygen.com/gadget1.html http://www.ScienceOxygen.com/signal.html http://www.ScienceOxygen.com/electrical.html Keep dreaming... ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: My High Hopes About Google Ads Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 20:48:11 -0800 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 28 Dec 2004 05:41:56 -0000, Telecom Digest Editor writes: > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The givers-away of free, remote > registered domains in the '.ms', '.tc' and '.tf' domains are all > using precisely the same templates and software, and all offer the > same webmaster's tool-kits, if, as you suggest, they are different > people/organizations. But instead of paying $10 for a domain you > could pay $5 for (any unlimited number of) domain names in the > 'dhs.org' and 'n3.net' group [snip] With your cheap registration you're going to get what you paid for it. Considering that godaddy.com ( http://godaddy.com ) normally has major common domains such as .com, .org, .net, .name, .biz and others at normal prices of around $7 and often have sales on some domains as cheap as $1 or $3. Who knows what .tc will do in another year?! [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Makes me wonder why that idiot over in Switzerland who deliberatly cybersquatted on my internet history domain thought he was going to accomplish other than bad will. FYI, http://internet-history.org (one of my domains) is now being run by the Penis Enlargement Company, and I guess he wants several hundred dollars to redeem it. Or, as Mikka, my erstwhile correspondent from the garynuman mail server in Alberta put it, I should quit my bellyaching, and face up to how overall rotten to the core the net has gotten in the past few years. The main thing with .tc and .tf and .ms is they are outside the grasp of ICANN. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2004 22:56:17 -0600 From: Gordon S. Hlavenka Reply-To: nospam@crashelex.com Organization: Crash Electronics Subject: Re: Drill Bit Size I wrote: >> I have a 5/8" spade bit... Tony P. replied: > 5/8" seems huge. You can get CAT-5 through a quarter inch hole ... Mea culpa -- I meant to say 5/16". Kinda makes a difference, doesn't it? :-) Gordon S. Hlavenka http://www.crashelectronics.com Tragically, as many as 9625 out of every 10,000 individuals may be neurotypical ------------------------------ From: ldn20042002@yahoo.co.uk Subject: Re: QCTimes.com -- Spam Suit Nets $1 Billion Date: 30 Dec 2004 04:48:08 -0800 Organization: http://groups.google.com This is very interesting. Thank you. ldn20042002@yahoo.co.uk [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Yeah, but I have to wonder how much of that billion dollars he will be able to collect. Probably little or none of it. PAT] ------------------------------ 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. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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