The Telecom Digest for August 12, 2010
Volume 29 : Issue 218 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
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Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 23:53:39 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Why the Verizon iPhone is already too late
Message-ID: <p06240877c887cf130a2f@[10.0.1.6]>
Why the Verizon iPhone is already too late
Apple should have gone to Verizon in 2009 - before Android took off
By Wilson Rothman
msnbc.com
updated 8/10/2010 9:05:49 AM ET
Verizon Wireless might get an iPhone this January? It's about time.
Or is it too late? New reports show that Google's Android is eating
the iPhone's lunch. And by clinging to AT&T exclusivity and staying
clear of Verizon, Apple is effectively serving up that lunch on a
shiny silver platter.
For a decade, Apple played Ice Man in a calculated dogfight of
product design and marketing. It rarely made a misstep, and its
successes were legendary as a result. This year, Apple has not shown
itself to be so level-headed.
You could cite Antennagate or the missing white iPhone as evidence
Apple is losing its cool, but these are mishaps, destined to follow
previous iPhonapocalypses and Applegeddons into the void of the
forgotten past. No, the biggest reason is that it miscalculated how
much a prolonged exclusivity with AT&T would cost. The deal has been
lucrative - God knows AT&T pays well for the privilege - but the
downside has been that Apple has let a reasonable iPhone copy become
the No. 1 selling smart phone platform in America.
It let this happen, by simultaneously creating a burning desire for
an app-driven touch-screen smart phone, and then denying it to
two-thirds of the American populace. That might be an old rant, but
the detrimental result of this decision - or rather, the detrimental
result of sustaining the decision for so long - are only now becoming
apparent.
...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38635041/ns/technology_and_science-wireless/
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 02:26:41 +0000 (UTC)
From: "Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Do rate centers cross state lines?
Message-ID: <i3t1p1$1sa$1@news.albasani.net>
Mark J. Cuccia <markjcuccia@yahoo.com> wrote:
>Danny Burstein replied:
>>We've had two in the larger NYC area.
>>First is Fisher's Island, in Long Island Sound. Legally it's part of
>>Suffolk County, an eastern NYC suburb.
>>Per the Wiki write-up, though, it's "2 miles (3 km) off the
>>southeastern coast of Connecticut across Fishers Island Sound. It
>>is approx. 11 miles (18 km) from the tip of Long Island (NY)..."
>So far, true.
>>The physical phone lines are run from Ct. central offices.
>NOT true. Someone is fooling someone and using Wikipedia to do it.
>Fishers' Island NY is its own telephone company, with its own
>c.o.switch, and is also its own LATA due to the demands of the NY
>State PSC back in the early/mid-1980s. The original plans drafted by
>pre-divestiture AT&T was to have Fishers' Island NY to be a part of
>the (semi-BOC) SNET Connecticut LATA, since Fishers' Island "homed" on
>the AT&T-LL/SNET tandem in New London CT. However, the NY State PSC
>objected to having any NY State-based customers, rate-centers,
>c.o.switches, etc. associated with any outside state's LATAs. I don't
>know offhand if there are any NY State customers getting dial-tone
>from any PA or NJ or CT or MA or VT (or Quebec or Ontario) central
>offices, but IF any do, they would be associated with a NY State-based
>LATA. However, there are several NY State-based LATAs which serve
>adjacent-state customers which have their own state/NPA-based
>c.o.codes, although they could get their dial-tone from their own
>switch as well as from the NY side. Of course, with CLECs and wireless
>these days, the ILEC trunking and such does not necessarily have to be
>the same as the competitors' network configurations.
How bizarre. There are three LATAs that cross the Illinois-Wisconsin
state line due to how communities are wired up. Two are mostly Wisconsin
with a finger into Illinois. The third is just North Antioch, Wisconsin,
an unincorporated area wired to the switch in Antioch, Illinois.
The state used LATA boundaries but called the in-state LATAs and Illinois
portion of interstate LATAs "market service areas", assigned numbers unique
to Illinois because we didn't want to use the national numbering scheme,
and regulated away. Two separate numbering schemes is pointless but at
least the boundaries are the same.
For regulatory purposes, the New York public service commission had exactly
the same authority regardless of a LATA's interstate nature.
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 05:55:49 -0700 (PDT)
From: Harold Hallikainen <harold@hallikainen.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Model 15 RO Teletype available (OT)
Message-ID: <e36ad33c-d58d-4059-a76d-9729e5127886@u4g2000prn.googlegroups.com>
On Aug 10, 5:05 pm, bon...@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote:
>
> An absolute non-issue with any 5-level TeleType(r) machine I ever
> encountered. They were physically not capable of full duplex operation.
Physically or electrically? The model 15 printers I had had separate
keyboard and printer mechanics and electrical wiring. Though the stock
Teletype wiring was very complex (allowing for polar relays and lots
of other options), the machine came down to two wires to power the
motor, two wires to drive the printer selector magnets, and two wires
from contact closures on the keyboard. They COULD be wired for full
duplex, relying on a remote echo, but were often wired in series for a
local echo and half duplex operation.
On punched tape, I used to maintain Alden fax machines that printed
weather maps in an FAA flight service station. The people would do a
weather observation, punch a tape, and put it in the reader. Later,
the reader would be polled from central location, and the tape would
be sucked through the reader. That's the only place I've seen polled
tape reading, though it probably was used elsewhere.
Harold
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:30:05 -0500
From: Jim Haynes <jhaynes@cavern.uark.edu>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Model 15 RO Teletype available (OT)
Message-ID: <Yr-dnTZkjbuAQ__RnZ2dnUVZ_tudnZ2d@earthlink.com>
On 2010-08-11, Robert Bonomi <bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com> wrote:
>
> Depends greatly on the application. And the 'urgency' of the message.
>
Paper tape storage could be used to save line time or operator time.
It saves line time because as you say the operator can't keep up with
the transmission for any long period of time. It saves operator time
when the circuit is heavily loaded and a central controller polls
the out stations for traffic to be sent. This allows the operator to
prepare the message and put it into the reader and then go away and
do other things.
Then the other use of paper tape was for message relaying without
having to re-keyboard the messages.
> An absolute non-issue with any 5-level TeleType(r) machine I ever
> encountered. They were physically not capable of full duplex operation.
They were perfectly capable of full-duplex operation - there is no
fixed connection between the keyboard and the typing unit. But probably
just about never operated where the typing unit was not connected to
get local copy during keyboarding.
>>Even the newer Teletype 33/35 keyboards were not easy to use. Some of
>>the numeric shift characters did not match standard typewriters and
>>the keyboard was 'heavy'.
The 32/33 keyboards were pretty awful, but then those were cheap machines.
The 35 keyboard was not bad.
There was an issue in the design of keyboards for ASCII. To make a mechanical
keyboard there had to be a simple relationship between the bits of the
characters and the characters on the key tops, so that the shift and control
keys affected all the other keys in the same manner. A standard was issued
which allowed two different keyboard arrangements. One was called "typewriter
paired" and had the keys arranged as was typical for typewriters at the
time. The other was called "bit paired" and met the requirement for
mechanical keyboards. Use of the "typewriter paired" arrangement required
some electronic translation between bit patterns the keys could easily
generate and those of the ASCII code.
Of course in the modern PC keyboard the keys generate arbitrary binary
numers for each key and software translates those into ASCII or any other
code desired.
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 10:02:47 -0700 (PDT)
From: Lisa or Jeff <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Model 15 RO Teletype available (OT)
Message-ID: <de6ef762-d30c-422e-8855-fc6afa5424b5@i13g2000yqd.googlegroups.com>
On Aug 4, 8:53 am, Harold Hallikainen <har...@hallikainen.com> wrote:
> Also, finally, on Morse... In 1969, I went to the FCC office in San
> Francisco to take the exam for my radiotelephone license. The PA
> system in the FCC office used Morse. They'd use tone over speakers to
> send the name of the person and the line they needed to pick up on the
> phone. I don't know when that was taken out. Perhaps when the FCC
> office moved out of San Francisco.
A participant in nyc.transit had a comment on the above:
"Well, that was MY office from 1967 to 1995!
The FCC office and that of its predecessor agencies had been in those
same quarters since 1912, and the paging system was OLD - it used
pre-WW-II vacuum tubes that were no longer available in the early
1970s when the oscillator failed! Each staff member was identified
with a single letter, usually related to their first or last name
(mine was P). We didn't have to do much training for the
receptionists - just a list of who has what letter - and there was a
large board on the wall opposite the front desk with the code for each
person and an indicator of whether that person was in the office, had
not yet arrived or had left for the day, or was temporarily out of the
office. The equipment was replaced with a more modern oscillator in
the mid 70s.
In 1980, the office was moved from the third floor of the San
Francisco Customhouse to the fourth floor, incident to an upgrade of
the building, and the "code line" was replaced by a conventional PA
system. The building was designated as a National Historical
Customhouse (built in 1906 right after the earthquake). I was the
agency's representative to the Relocation and Upgrade Committee and I
could have written a Master's thesis on what it takes to make upgrades
and repairs to such a structure.
In 1986 the office telephone system was upgraded to one that included
a paging function and the outboard PA system was retired. We took
this system with us when we moved to an industrial park in Hayward, CA
(a suburb) in 1990, and when that office was moved to another location
in 2000 (after I retired as the District Director) the new telephone
system had an integrated paging function as well.
Memories, memories...... and it's OK to repost this story to the
group where the original posting came from."
Date: Wed, 11 Aug 2010 09:58:07 EDT
From: Wes Leatherock <Wesrock@aol.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Model 15 RO Teletype available (OT)
Message-ID: <26ff2.11c8dc43.3994066f@aol.com>
In a message dated 8/10/2010 8:02:27 PM Central Daylight Time,
bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com writes:
> Depends greatly on the application. And the 'urgency' of the message.
>
> Wire-service "5 bells" stories were often typed 'live'. They were
> too urgent for the latency of off-line composing.
>
> On lightly-loaded remote circuit -- e.g. train orders on a low-traffic
> section -- were also sometimes keyed live. There was 'bandwidth' to
> spare, and it saved the time of the tape run, after the original keying.
>
> When one wants to maximize throughput, and can tolerate the latency, off-
> line prep is a necessity, Practically nobody can maintain even the 60/66
> words/min of the medium-speed machines, with the uniformity of keystroke
> spacing required. And, as line speeds got higher, it became more nearly
> impossible for direct keying to keep the line busy.
While maintaining the speed and uniform spacing on 60/66 circuits by
manual keying was indeed virtuallly impossible, most press operators could
readily do that speed punching tape, and with no more latency than that required
for the small loop of tape under the sensor bar (maybe 1 or 2 seconds,
most 5-bell ("Bulletin") material was sent by breaking the tape and starting
cold on a new strip of tape. A press operator could do this more quickly
than direct keyboarding.
Only the most extremely urgent mateiral was sent by direct keyboarding
("Flash"), 10 bells or more. This was an extremely rare occurrence.
"Japan surrenders.," e.g. The wire stays idle after a flash, with a
bulletin following with a normal text lead, usually within a few
seconds, the bulletin often being dictated to the operator.
Most press operators could get the tape well below the sensor bar and
feeding continuously within a minute or less. Many operators could
put the tape on the floor, so far ahead of the distributor that the
tape hung down to the floor.
Wes Leatherock
wesrock@aol.com
wleathus@yahoo.com
***** Moderator's Note *****
The "sensor bar" that Wes refers to was a mechanical arm which hung
down beside the tape reader on a Moder 19 or similar machine: if the
operator who was typing the original text onto the punched tape wasn't
fast enough to keep up with the reader, then the tape would become
taut and the sensor arm would rise, interrupting the reader's feed
mechanism.
I don't know how an operator could "get ahead" of the reader: the
Model 19's keyboard was drivin by the same shaft as the printing
mechanism, so I don't understand how it was possible to exceed the
reader's speed.
Bill Horne
Moderator
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