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Message Digest
Volume 28 : Issue 77 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960
Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960
References on IP Telephony?
Re: References on IP Telephony?
Re: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up
Re: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up
VoIP Latency Problem?
Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960
Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960
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Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:47:22 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960
Message-ID: <gpqqgq$7ij$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <6645152a0903171340i17e48e4sb7c8a862ed1e5f59@mail.gmail.com> John Mayson <john@mayson.us> writes:
>> There used to be some public stores (eg copying stores, stationery
>> stores) that offered fax service for about $1/page, there may have
>> even been self-service machines.
>>
>> Is that still even offered?
> Yes, Office Depot and FedEx Office (formerly Kinkos) continue to
> offer this service. We don't own a fax machine and every once in a
> blue moon have to use their services to send a fax.
As does just about every other "copy" and printing shop, and plenty of
others. Typical rate would be $1.50 for the first outgoing (domestic)
page and $1.00 for the following ones, and similarly $1.00 each for
incoming. Lots of variation.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:43:25 -0700 (PDT)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960
Message-ID: <557f7621-3dc0-4f17-811c-5000f1917d84@y13g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 18, 4:19 am, Curtis R Anderson <gle...@gleepy.net> wrote:
> My mother tells me that at her retirement community, there is a "public"
> fax for its residents at the big administrative building, which they
> call the "big house". Many seniors probably don't want to bother
> excessively with fax unless they must.
I suspect for many seniors today a fax is a valuable service. Seniors
often have medical needs which means lots of billing and medical forms
which need to get sent to multiple providers and health-care
insurers. The paperwork seniors have just from medical care is
enormous.
Seniors may be assisted by their children, who may live in a different
place, and transmit financial documents to/from them.
I visited a senior in a facility and there was a common-use photocopy
machine, with an honor paper cup for 10c a copy.
> ObTelecom: When my mother switched her landline phone number in her
> dwelling at the retirement community . . .
At my mother's care facility, the door entry was interlinked with her
phone. But it took forever for the community to set it up, which
meant visitors couldn't get in conveniently. Apparently the phones
were maintained by a parent organization that operated the facility.
***** Moderator's Note *****
N.E.T. experimented with Apartment Door Answering Service (ASAS), on
the Boston University centrex, at Back Bay in the late 70's. The local
pairs were wired to an ADAS frame, and from there to the dial tone on
the 617-353 exchange, which was served by a #5XB. I don't know what
became of it.
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:22:49 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: References on IP Telephony?
Message-ID: <siegman-1EAF2C.07221918032009@news.stanford.edu>
Any recommendations for an introductory book, review article, overview,
or web site on IP telephony? -- not a highly technical coverage, but an
overview of what's currently available, or likely to become available,
for people considering moving, partly or completely, to IP phone.
------------------------------
Date: 18 Mar 2009 21:55:08 -0000
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: References on IP Telephony?
Message-ID: <20090318215508.51364.qmail@simone.iecc.com>
>Any recommendations for an introductory book, review article, overview,
>or web site on IP telephony? -- not a highly technical coverage, but an
>overview of what's currently available, or likely to become available,
>for people considering moving, partly or completely, to IP phone.
My page at http://net.gurus.org/phone/ is a little stale but still
pretty much accurate.
The main things my page leaves out are Packetcable and the unbundled
systems.
Packetcable is VoIP running on a dedicated subchannel on a cable
system. The technology is VoIP, but the performance is more akin to a
normal wired phone. The pricing tends to bundle in a gazillion
features and flat rate calling, and to be somewhat but not hugely less
than the local telco would charge for a similar bundle. They
typically provide battery backup to make it somewhat resistant to
power failure and real 911 service.
There's now some reasonable options for buying VoIP service piecemeal.
A company in Germany called Betamax operates under a variety of names
such as voipdiscount.com providing astoundingly cheap outbound VoIP
service. Their usual rate for calls to the US is one eurocent/minute,
but if you set up an account and put 10 euros into it, calls to most
countries you'd want to call (US, Canada, landlines in most of Europe,
etc.) are free for 120 days, then after that you use up your money
(1000 minutes if you call the US), then when your money is spent down,
probably six months since you put in the 10 euros, you put in another
10 euros and start over. They provide a downloadable softphone, but
they are happy to let you use a VoIP phone or terminal adapter. I
have an old Grandstream VoIP phone I bought on ebay for $20 plugged
into my DSL router. They also offer local (not toll free) dialaround
numbers in many countries, which is really great for those of us whose
mobile service offers unlimited calls to local landlines, giving me
the same mostly free international calling from my mobile as from my
VoIP phone.
Incoming calls are a little trickier -- if you have an inbound VoIP
number, Betamax will let you point it at your Betamax phone, but I
don't know of anyone who will sell small numbers of incoming VoIP
numbers. The largest vendor is Voxbone, who used to sell onesies but
now has a 500 number minimum. A do it yourself setup like this also
does not provide any voicemail or other features; for that you'd need
to point it at a linux box running the Asterisk open source PBX or the
like.
At this point I would not want a non-Packetcable VoIP phone to be my
main phone, because they're still kind of flaky, but if you make a lot
of calls, particularly international calls, they're a good deal.
R's,
John
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 07:34:46 -0700 (PDT)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up
Message-ID: <7924cef7-7ba5-4436-8548-ac50b7f1f72f@41g2000yqf.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 18, 4:34 am, Monty Solomon <mo...@roscom.com> wrote:
> As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up
>
> Last week, a juror in a big federal drug trial in Florida admitted
> to the judge that he had been doing research on the case on the
> Internet, directly violating the judge's instructions and centuries
> of legal rules. But when the judge questioned the rest of the jury,
> he got an even bigger shock.
This just happened in a Philadelphia Federal trial that just
completed; a juror was "twittering". However, in this case the judge
determined it was not harmful and the case proceeded. The defendant
was found guilty and defense is appealing.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Was the juror using Twitter in the courtroom? Was it related to the
case, or just a possible distraction?
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:27:44 -0700 (PDT)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: As Jurors Turn to Web, Mistrials Are Popping Up
Message-ID: <c90e45c6-1d8a-4317-988c-0f280c69c677@v19g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 18, 11:47 am, hanco...@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
> This just happened in a Philadelphia Federal trial that just
> completed; a juror was "twittering". However, in this case the judge
> determined it was not harmful and the case proceeded. The defendant
> was found guilty and defense is appealing.
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
> Was the juror using Twitter in the courtroom? Was it related to the
> case, or just a possible distraction?
Apparently not in the courtroom. Yes it was related to the case, but
apparently not illegally so.
Except:
"Monday's [guilty] verdict came shortly after the judge ruled that a
juror could remain on the panel despite his posts about the case on
Facebook and Twitter.
"The juror told the judge in a closed-door hearing early in the day
that none of his online "friends" had commented back to him about the
Fumo case. The juror said the posts were his way of talking to himself
and expressing his emotions, and were not intended to communicate
anything to others, according to defense lawyer Peter Goldberger, who
attended the session."
The defense believes the posts "tainted" the jury and said it plans to
raise the issue on appeal.
[Afterward, in interviews the jurors in this case said the evidence of
guilt was strong.]
Refs: http://www.philly.com/philly/news/homepage/41300202.html
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/41379397.html
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/41310617.html
http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/nation_world/41315402.html
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 06:58:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tom <tdenham735@gmail.com>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: VoIP Latency Problem?
Message-ID: <e585149e-7d17-4ff3-b42d-33352dce3092@v15g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>
Hello,
We currently have a very simple VPN from our US office to our remote
office. Our bandwidth is fine, but our latency is running around 280
ms on average to the remote office. The interesting thing is that at
least 70% of the time our calls are pretty good, but often we get very
odd noises and dropped calls, even though the bandwidth usage and
latency appear to be running at their usual baseline. Once the
problem starts it seems to persist for hours at a time. Even at times
when bandwidth is [much] lower than our baseline the VoIP problem can
crop up.
We're not doing any VLAN tagging (we have cheap switches/routers), so
QoS is likely out of the question, although I'm not sure that will
help because it appears to happen at times when we have plenty of
bandwidth, so I suspect that it may have something to do with our poor
latency, but then why does it work well most of the time?
I'm just puzzled as to why this works so well much of the time, but
some days can become unusable. Peeking with wireshark does not show
anything unusual during these bad calls, so we're a bit stumped.
Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks...
***** Moderator's Note *****
Since there is no specification for minimum transit time in the IP
specification, you're going to deal with latency on every VoIP
call. Although 280 ms is a good figure, I'm at a loss to explain the
dropouts if Wireshark doesn't show any anomaly.
If some party along the line is "traffic shaping" because they don't
get paid for VoIP (and they want you to use the PSTN instead), that
would explain the dropouts. I suggest you try encapsulating the VoIP
calls in a VPN for some tests: the VPN will hide the traffic
signature, so that might reveal if there's sabotage.
Hate to be cynical, but Comcast has been doing shaping for years (and
denying it), so it's worth checking out. Please pass along the landing
country(ies) as well: there might be some history.
Bill Horne
Temporary Moderator
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:17:00 -0700 (PDT)
From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960
Message-ID: <64e5ef73-8075-4423-97f7-66b3e1085193@q9g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 18, 4:29 am, wleat...@yahoo.com wrote:
> As to the Western Union prices in 1960, for many custonmers and
> certain documents the price was not the significant factor; the fact
> that the service was available at any price was of more importance.
Price is always a factor. Sure there are people willing to pay a very
high price for quickness (such as people who flew the Concorde), but
they are relatively few. The Concorde, despite its high fares, did
not make money and has been discontinued. It's high speed simply
wasn't/isn't worth the fares to make it sustainable.
I can't help but wonder if WU's public fax service didn't get many
customers due to its high price and limited convenience, that is, it
just wasn't cost effective. The article said more cities would be
added if demand justified, but I don't think the demand ever did nor
the service ever expanded.
It is easier to communicate via a two-way phone conversation (instant
feedback) than a terse one-way telegram, but until long distance rates
dropped, businesses used telegrams instead of the phone to save
money. Back then, making a long distance call was reserved for the
most important of issues due to the high cost, otherwise telegraph or
plain mail would do. When toll rates dropped around 1960, long
distance usage went way up and telegrams went way down.
Years ago companies had copying machines but they were expensive to
use and people were expected to use carbon paper instead. If
something had to be copied, it was logged; perhaps there was one
copier in an entire building. Today we don't even think about cost
and freely use our copying machines, indeed, can't even conceive of
running an office without one, but obviously, despite their
convenience, people had to make do in the past due to high cost.
Remember, for this service, one had to physically take or messenger
their document to the central WU office in a city; which was time
consuming and cumbersome in itself. The destination had to be in one
of the above mentioned cities and there was delivery time as well.
The ads said WU would deliver free "within city limits", but what
about Los Angeles which had a huge metropolitan area outside the city
limits?
The other issue is what other modes were available for speedy
transmission. As mentioned, the post office offered air mail and
special delivery which may have been overnight in 1960 and a heck of a
lot cheaper even with premium postage. There may have been air or
railway express services that delivered overnight; I know overnight
rail service was available from NYC to Chicago via the 20th Century,
though I don't know the cost.
In a sense, WU was competing with itself in that someone could send
the text (say of a contract or contract changes) via telegram. I
don't know the charges for a lengthy telegram, but a night letter was
relatively cheap. Also, back then sending a telegram was much easier--
it could be done over the phone or a more convenient branch WU agents.
A larger organization would have Telex or TWX and could route the text
of the message that way.
I could see a need to quickly send engineering documents like
blueprints and schematics, but such documents are usually much larger
than 7.5" x 10". Cutting up a document into sections for
transmission is cumbersome. Also, documents would be needed on site,
not necessarily in the big city.
I don't know what WU technically required to transmit documents, I
presume it was a broadband connection, not their plain 50 Baud lines.
I don't know if their fax machines were extremely expensive that
limited rollout. I would guess that this service would've been much
more popular if offered in more principal cities throughout the
country, like Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, Denver, Miami, Houston, as
well as growing areas like Atlanta and Las Vegas.
I wonder if the big three television networks could've used the
service between NYC network HQ and Hollywood development studios.
There must have been a high volume of scripts, script changes, and
contracts moving back and forth.
------------------------------
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 15:56:39 -0700
From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960
Message-ID: <siegman-B5472D.15560918032009@news.stanford.edu>
In article
<64e5ef73-8075-4423-97f7-66b3e1085193@q9g2000yqc.googlegroups.com>,
hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
> Price is always a factor. Sure there are people willing to pay a very
> high price for quickness (such as people who flew the Concorde), but
> they are relatively few. The Concorde, despite its high fares, did
> not make money and has been discontinued. It's high speed simply
> wasn't/isn't worth the fares to make it sustainable.
>
Nor its highly negative environmental impact, or limited available
routes, or requirements for special ATC handling.
Not to mention that, as I've read somewhere, at the time it was
"discontinued" the Concorde had accumulated by far the _worst_
cumulative safety record (deaths per passenger mile) of any major model
of jet airliner ever operated in commercial service.
------------------------------
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