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The Telecom Digest for October 31, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 277 : "text" Format
====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
|
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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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, and other stuff of interest.
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Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 18:51:12 -0700
From: Steven <diespammers@ikillspammers.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Edison's powrer network (Was Re: Telegraph turns 150
Message-ID: <j8iaih$s87$1@dont-email.me>
On 10/29/11 3:00 PM, David Scheidt wrote:
> HAncock4<withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org> wrote:
> :On Oct 27, 6:50 pm, Thad Floryan<t...@thadlabs.com> wrote:
>
>
> :Having a DC local network was common in many places, and could've
> :lasted a long time. An IBM catalog of the 1930s listed equipment in
> :both AC and DC versions.
>
> Was that 120V DC (or so), or 48 V DC? Telco plant is 48V DC, and it's
> very common for computing equipment installed in telco faciilites to
> be so as well, beause it makes power distribution easier. (And, of
> course, you can run it off the great honkin' battery plant when the
> commercial power fails.) I woulnd't be surprised that IBM were making
> equipment for that market, for billing calculations, for instance, but
> I'm not aware of it.
>
>
In the early 80's IBM made a computer system that added electronic
options for old Step offices, it was a total mess and they sat in place
for years after they were out of service since neither IBM or Bank of
America who owned them wanted to pay to remove them. In time we junked
them out. They were called System 7.
--
The only good spammer is a dead one!! Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2011 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot in Hell Co.
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2011 16:57:42 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: A national test of the Emergency Alert System
Message-ID: <p06240896cad36a0d7274@[10.0.1.9]>
The first national test of the U.S.A.'s Emergency Alert System is
scheduled for Wednesday, November 9 and all participants of the system
are required to participate. The participants include TV stations,
radio stations, cable TV systems, satellite TV systems, and wireline
(telephone line) video systems. Participants classified as non-
participating national sources are required by the rules of the
Federal Communications Commission (the FCC) to participate in the
national test, too, even though they may choose not to relay national
alerts at other times.
The test is scheduled to begin at 1:00 PM (Central) on November 9 and
last about three minutes, which would be longer than a regular monthly
test of the Emergency Alert System. The maximum limit for all other
alerts, including alerts issued during tests, of the Emergency Alert
System is two minutes.
References:
Emergency Alert System Nationwide Test
http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/emergency-alert-system-nationwide-test
FEMA, FCC Announce Nationwide Test Of The Emergency Alert System
http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=55722
Emergency Alert System
http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/services/eas/
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2011 21:11:26 +0000 (UTC)
From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: A national test of the Emergency Alert System
Message-ID: <j8kehu$1r8$1@reader1.panix.com>
In <p06240896cad36a0d7274@[10.0.1.9]> Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> writes:
>The first national test of the U.S.A.'s Emergency Alert System is
>scheduled for Wednesday, November 9 and all participants of the system
>are required to participate. The participants include TV stations,
>radio stations, cable TV systems, satellite TV systems, and wireline
>(telephone line) video systems.
>References:
>Emergency Alert System Nationwide Test
>
>http://www.fcc.gov/encyclopedia/emergency-alert-system-nationwide-test
>
>FEMA, FCC Announce Nationwide Test Of The Emergency Alert System
>
>http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=55722
>
>Emergency Alert System
>
>http://transition.fcc.gov/pshs/services/eas/
>
I've put a copy of the Public Service Advertisement
they've been running to let people know about this
over at:
http://www.dburstein.com/video/eas-alert.mov
(about 4.5 megs).
Curiously, the FCC states that the NOAA All Hazards Radio
system is NOT part of this test.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dannyb@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 23:52:36 -0700 (PDT)
From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Edison's powrer network (Was Re: Telegraph turns 150
Message-ID: <c1917eb4-75a1-49c9-b729-f42338bd491c@eh5g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>
On Oct 29, 6:00 pm, David Scheidt <dsche...@panix.com> wrote:
> Was that 120V DC (or so), or 48 V DC? Telco plant is 48V DC, and it's
> very common for computing equipment installed in telco faciilites to
> be so as well, beause it makes power distribution easier. (And, of
> course, you can run it off the great honkin' battery plant when the
> commercial power fails.) I woulnd't be surprised that IBM were making
> equipment for that market, for billing calculations, for instance, but
> I'm not aware of it.
I don't know the DC voltage for IBM equipment that took it. I would
guess it was the standard voltage used by DC installations of the era.
Billing was a major application for IBM's punched card tabulating
machines, and the Bell System employed plenty of those machines.
Indeed, they used a punched-card as the turnaround-document into the
1980s.
An IBM history suggests IBM halted its own modem development of the
1950s to avoid upsetting AT&T which was a major customer of IBM
equipment.
But the billing departments were not necessarily located in the same
building as the switch gear. Often the billing department was located
in its own separate office building along with other administrative
workers (ie service reps, other accounting, personnel, engineering,
legal, etc.)
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2011 8:42:11 -0700
From: "Martin Bose" <martyb@sonic.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: 60 hz as a time standard
Message-ID: <01E7926BAA1691C7A85887F9331D79D8@sonic.net>
> At some point in the 1930s or shortly later, the commercial power
> grid became reliable enough to use the 60 Hz as a means to run
> clocks accurately. This led to the loss of pendulum regulator
> clocks and Western Union time signals
Many decades ago my Uncle was a district manager for PG&E, and one of the
perks was a cabin at a turn-of-the-century hydrogenerating facility that
had been automated a long time ago. His cabin was the plant manager's cabin
originally, and in the living room was this neat clock. It was a tall
grandfather clock affair, with a temperature-compensated pendulum to keep
it accurate. It had one large dial with a smaller one inset in it. The
smaller one was a conventional clock face; the big dial had a single hand
that read zero straight up and plus and minus seconds on either side. The
mechanism had two clock drives, the pendulum one and an electric one driven
by the power station generator output, and the big hand kept track of how
far the frequency from the generator had drifted. I never saw it read
anything other than zero, but it wasn't hard to imagine that in the
manually controlled days a glance at that clock might have resulted in a
phone call to the plant operator to get the fequency back on track.
Marty
Date: Mon, 31 Oct 2011 08:39:26 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstarbox-usenet@yahoo.com.au>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: 60 hz as a time standard
Message-ID: <pan.2011.10.30.21.39.21.622042@yahoo.com.au>
On Sun, 30 Oct 2011 08:42:11 -0700, Martin Bose wrote:
>> At some point in the 1930s or shortly later, the commercial power grid
>> became reliable enough to use the 60 Hz as a means to run clocks
>> accurately. This led to the loss of pendulum regulator clocks and
>> Western Union time signals
>
> Many decades ago my Uncle was a district manager for PG&E, and one of
> the perks was a cabin at a turn-of-the-century hydrogenerating facility
> that had been automated a long time ago. His cabin was the plant
> manager's cabin originally, and in the living room was this neat clock.
> It was a tall grandfather clock affair, with a temperature-compensated
> pendulum to keep it accurate. It had one large dial with a smaller one
> inset in it. The smaller one was a conventional clock face; the big dial
> had a single hand that read zero straight up and plus and minus seconds
> on either side.
> The mechanism had two clock drives, the pendulum one and an electric
> one
> driven by the power station generator output, and the big hand kept
> track of how far the frequency from the generator had drifted. I never
> saw it read anything other than zero, but it wasn't hard to imagine that
> in the manually controlled days a glance at that clock might have
> resulted in a phone call to the plant operator to get the fequency back
> on track.
>
I believe they key here is "the grid". AFAIK in any power grid each supply
generator connecting to it has to exactly match phase otherwise the
consequences are (apparently) not good at all.
It is my understanding that once connected the grid itself keeps all the
AC generators in sync through the overall reflected load coming back down
the line.
** Moderator note:
If a generator is out-of-phase, power flows from the grid, into the
generator, to speed-up (or slow down) the moving parts until the phases
do match. That energy flow into the generator is ultimately dissapated as
excess heat from the machinery. It can be a lot of heat, depending on
how fast the hardware can adapt to the phase error. Generation facilities
do run monitoring equipment to check the phase of the external plant against
that of the generators; which which will then adjust the speed of the prime
mover powering the generator, to ensure maximum efficiency, and minimal
thermal losses.
There is a story told in power-generation circless about an occasion
(now more than half-a-century ago) when somebody brought a multi-megawatt
generator "on line" exactly 180_degrees out-of-phase with the grid.
Before the overload cutouts could act, the generator (and the unit feeding
it) was a pile of smoking rubble, had torn itself loose from its mountings,
and moved several feet. Amazingly, no one was killed.
Date: Sun, 30 Oct 2011 18:00:18 -0700
From: Thad Floryan <thad@thadlabs.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: 60 hz as a time standard
Message-ID: <4EADF322.8010208@thadlabs.com>
On 10/30/2011 2:39 PM, David Clayton wrote:
>
> I believe they key here is "the grid". AFAIK in any power grid each supply
> generator connecting to it has to exactly match phase otherwise the
> consequences are (apparently) not good at all.
>
> It is my understanding that once connected the grid itself keeps all the
> AC generators in sync through the overall reflected load coming back down
> the line.
>
> ** Moderator note:
>
> If a generator is out-of-phase, power flows from the grid, into the
> generator, to speed-up (or slow down) the moving parts until the phases
> do match. That energy flow into the generator is ultimately dissapated as
> excess heat from the machinery. It can be a lot of heat, depending on
> how fast the hardware can adapt to the phase error. Generation facilities
> do run monitoring equipment to check the phase of the external plant against
> that of the generators; which which will then adjust the speed of the prime
> mover powering the generator, to ensure maximum efficiency, and minimal
> thermal losses.
>
> There is a story told in power-generation circless about an occasion
> (now more than half-a-century ago) when somebody brought a multi-megawatt
> generator "on line" exactly 180_degrees out-of-phase with the grid.
> Before the overload cutouts could act, the generator (and the unit feeding
> it) was a pile of smoking rubble, had torn itself loose from its mountings,
> and moved several feet. Amazingly, no one was killed.
Heh!
If you want to see a 9-second video of a very high voltage switch
failure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7bMM_40Z9w
I've had that video on my website since 2003 and I seem to be
the only person on the planet who has a description of what it
is we're seeing in that video accompanying the video itself; none
of the multiple copies of that video on YouTube have a description.
Here are the aggregated descriptions I saved in a single file:
http://thadlabs.com/VIDEOS/LugoSWR.txt
The original author's page
http://wiseguysynth.com/larry/day.htm
doesn't have a valid link to the video anymore.
Date: Sat, 29 Oct 2011 21:42:01 -0500
From: Steve Kostecke <steve@kostecke.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: QR Codes (was A quizzical response to the new bar codes)
Message-ID: <E1RKLLV-0003bu-KZ@mail.kostecke.net>
On 2011-10-27, Neal McLain <nmclain@annsgarden.com> wrote:
> In Message-ID: <p0624083bcacd37068d2c@[10.0.1.9]>, Bill Horne wrote:
>
> > ***** Moderator's Note ***** How is this different than what
> > "Cue-Cat" tried to do? Does anyone remember Cue-Cat?
>
> Cue-cat required the user to use a special device (the Cue-Cat
> scanner) connected to a computer. QR codes can be read by any smart
> phone equipped with a camera and the appropriate app. An app can be
> downloaded free if the phone isn't already equipped.
The CueCat business model was based on selling (renting?) "CueCodes"
to advertisers and providing click-track data. 'Digital:Convergence
Corp.' operated servers (until January 2002) which handled the CueCode
to URL linkage.
QR codes allow inclusion of data (up to 4,296 alphanumeric chracters) in
a machine readable format in a variety of media without paying for, or
relying on, a third party service.
In both cases the end result is the same from the user's point of view:
scan a bar code and retrieve data.
CueCode sample at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CueCat_sample_cue.png
More info at
http://www.cuecat.com/
and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CueCat
--
Steve Kostecke steve@kostecke.net
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
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