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The Telecom Digest for February 04, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 31 : "text" Format

Messages in this Issue:

An Apple E-Book Rule Tightens (Monty Solomon)

Re: New numbering rules for phones in Australia (David Clayton)

Re: New numbering rules for phones in Australia (danny burstein)

Video conferencing phone booth (AES)

The Great Downsizing of comp.dcom.* (Big-8 Management Board)

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Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 10:51:23 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: An Apple E-Book Rule Tightens 
Message-ID: <p0624083cc9707f3afb4c@[10.0.1.2]>

An Apple E-Book Rule Tightens

By CLAIRE CAIN MILLER
February 1, 2011

When you see people flipping through e-books on iPads or iPhones,
there is a good chance they bought the books through Amazon.com, not
Apple.

Now, Apple wants to change that.

Apple confirmed Tuesday that it would require app developers that sell
e-books outside of their iPad and iPhone apps - through a Web site,
for example - to also sell the books inside those apps. And purchases
that originate in the app must be made through Apple, which keeps a 30
percent cut.

Apple said it was newly enforcing an existing rule, one that will
force Amazon, Sony, Google and other e-book sellers to change the way
their apps work.

...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/02/technology/02apple.html

Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 18:57:02 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: New numbering rules for phones in Australia 
Message-ID: <pan.2011.02.03.07.56.57.840446@myrealbox.com>

On Wed, 02 Feb 2011 14:11:56 -0700, Robert Neville wrote:

> David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> wrote:
>
>>Currently, about 2 per cent of calls are made on voice over internet
>>protocol (VOIP) phones, but all fixed-line phones in Australia will
>>eventually operate over the internet as the national broadband network
>>replaces the underground copper line network.
>
> Sigh. Shades of Sprints old "pin drop" campaign. There's absolutely
> nothing that prevents a broadband network from using copper cables.

As part of the rollout of the NBN (fibre to the premises) the incumbent
telco is going to gradually decommission all the "copper".

They continually complain about the upkeep costs of such old plant anyway,
so it will save people money as the fibre infrastructure maintenance
should be a lot less over its intended life.

--
Regards, David.

David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.

Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 19:19:18 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: New numbering rules for phones in Australia 
Message-ID: <iiev3m$mng$1@reader1.panix.com>

In <pan.2011.02.03.07.56.57.840446@myrealbox.com> David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com> writes:

[snip]

>As part of the rollout of the NBN (fibre to the premises) the incumbent
>telco is going to gradually decommission all the "copper".

>They continually complain about the upkeep costs of such old plant anyway,
>so it will save people money as the fibre infrastructure maintenance
>should be a lot less over its intended life.

For some definition of "people" that most likely
does not include the end customers...

-- 
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
		     dannyb@panix.com 
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]

Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2011 10:57:21 -0800
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Video conferencing phone booth
Message-ID: <siegman-62C613.10572103022011@sciid-srv02.med.tufts.edu>

I recently posted on the above topic; got some responses, mostly 
suggesting (and praising) Skype; and a friendly email from "Harry" 
offering to sell me some video conferencing hardware he'd once acquired.

Thanks for replies; Skype sounds good; but at the minute I'm having all 
I can do IT-wise just to get all my heritage Mac apps running properly 
following an upgrade to Snow Leopard.  I just want to sit down and begin 
seeing and talking to some people on the opposite coast, for about an 
hour, right now, without having to fly there, and without having to 
install and learn still another Mac app (especially when networking is 
involved).

So, here's the reply I've sent Harry, for whatever interest it may be to 
any of you (especially any of you in the Tahoe area, who have that 
renowned California entrepreneurial spirit . . . )
+--------------------------------------------------------------+
Thanks, Harry -- but what i want to do is:

*  Walk into a functioning "video conferencing phone booth" (should I 
trademark that name?) here at Lake Tahoe, and hand the operator of the 
facility a credit card;

*  Sit down at a desk which has a nice big LCD monitor on it, decent 
audio in the room, and an independent WiFi hot spot so I can get 
connected with the Internet with my laptop separately from any other 
connections (plus maybe a cheapo USB printer);

*  Have someone knowledgeable  (e.g., the owner/operator of this little 
facility) establish the audio-video connection to the East Coast firm, 
with whatever facilities it has, and start the meter running once that 
connection is made;

and then once the conference is over, an hour or so later, have the 
operator run a charge on my card for, say, $150/hour, with a $150 
minimum and maybe a minor charge for pages printed. 

(Maybe also an option to VCR my whole session and hand me a DVD at the 
end -- appropriately charged for, of course.)

Maybe you'd want to get back in business? --  I really think something 
like this could find a market, in this area and elsewhere.

   --AES

Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 21:06:59 +0000 (UTC)
From: Big-8 Management Board <board@big-8.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: The Great Downsizing of comp.dcom.* 
Message-ID: <iif5dj$mar$1@four.albasani.net>

There is a proposal currently in news.announce.newgroups to remove 198
unmoderated newsgroups all across the BIG8. Because of the magnitude
of the group list the proposal is not crossposted to target groups.
Instead pointers are posted to a few selected groups.

The full text of the proposal is available here:

  http://www.big-8.org/wiki/Nan:2011-02-01-rfd-great-downsizing
  http://groups.google.com/group/news.announce.newgroups/msg/091abc69fd45436b

Affected groups that might interest you:

comp.dcom.frame-relay	  Technology and issues regarding frame relay networks.
comp.dcom.isdn		   The Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN).
comp.dcom.lans.fddi	   Discussions of the FDDI protocol suite.
comp.dcom.lans.token-ring  Installing and using token ring networks.
comp.dcom.servers	   Selecting and operating data communications servers.
comp.dcom.sys.bay-networks Bay Networks hardware, software, other products.

If you have any objections, please make them heard in moderated group
news.groups.proposals. The "Followup-To:" header is set on this
message, so simply replying to this post should do the right thing.

***** Moderator's Note *****

I support this change, since I believe that, at least for Usenet, less
is more. I think there are too many groups laying dormant, and it's
time to thin the herd. 

However, if you believe one of the above groups should be retained,
please make your views known to the Big-8 board.

Bill Horne
Moderator

TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
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End of The Telecom Digest (5 messages)

Return to Archives ** Older Issues

An Apple E-Book Rule Tightens	(Monty Solomon)
Re: New numbering rules for phones in Australia	(David Clayton)
Re: New numbering rules for phones in Australia	(danny burstein)
Video conferencing phone booth	(AES)
The Great Downsizing of comp.dcom.*	(Big-8 Management Board)