30 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
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The Telecom Digest for November 26, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 300 : "text" Format
====== 30 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
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Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and
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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, and other stuff of interest.
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Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:53:24 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: AT&T, T-Mobile temporarily withdraw bid for FCC merger approval
Message-ID: <p062408cecaf434902fa9@[10.0.1.4]>
AT&T, T-Mobile temporarily withdraw bid for FCC merger approval
November 24, 2011
Acknowledging the mounting difficulties in obtaining government
consent for their merger, AT&T Inc. and the parent company of
T-Mobile USA Inc. said Thursday they had temporarily withdrawn their
application to the Federal Communications Commission and will focus
first on battling the Justice Department for approval of the deal.
AT&T also said it expected to take a pretax accounting charge of $4
billion in the fourth quarter of this year "to reflect the potential
breakup fees" it must pay to T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom AG of
Germany if the deal doesn't get regulatory approval.
The moves highlight the growing unlikelihood the huge
telecommunications deal ever will be consummated.
...
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/11/att-t-mobile-temporarily-withdraw-merger-bid-with-fcc.html
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:31:05 -0800
From: Andrew Carey <carey.remove-this@and-this-too.ar-ballbat.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: How 1-800-ITS-UNIX changed the world
Message-ID: <1F3394BD-93A3-46AB-8D9B-A0D1CF8E3B86@ar-ballbat.org>
On Nov 23, 2011, at 0847, Adam H. Kerman wrote:
> Would AT&T have been prohibted from buying BSDI, either by the court
> order that broke them up a few years earlier or by the
> non-commercial license they'd given to Univ of Cal at Berkeley in
> early days?
No prohibition. One of the outcomes of Greene's order (Modification
of Final Judgement) was to remove that block from the 1956 consent
decree (the original Final Judgement). AT&T bought NCR in 1991 after
all. Now the RBOCs could have run into some roadblocks in that time
period perhaps.
> I thought all commercial Berkeley-style Unixes were licensed by the
> university.
And AT&T. The BSD license didn't entail any fees and little in the way
of conditions.
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 11:19:23 -0800 (PST)
From: Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Hedy Lamarr--actress/radio inventor
Message-ID: <1322162363.27995.YahooMailClassic@web161505.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>
Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:21:16 -0800 (PST)From: HAncock4 wrote:
> Actress Hedy Lamarr is credited with inventing key concepts used in
> radio and telephony to this day. Her biography, by noted author
> Richard Rhodes, has been published.
Indeed, Hedy Lamarr was responsible for the first use of the
technology known as CDMA which is one of two major mobile telephone
technologies.
http://www.google.com/search?btnG=1&pws=0&q=Hedy+Lamarr+CDMA
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:29:33 -0500
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: 60 hz as a time standard
Message-ID: <MPG.2938490c87fd63b9989d68@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <j8mp4g$2jkf$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>,
wollman@bimajority.org says...
>
> In article <1320069561.37163.YahooMailClassic@web111705.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>,
> Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > I read in the evening paper (remember those?) a story about the fire in
> >Cleveland. The drop in frequency drop was only to 59.9 or something like
> >that.
>
> Tom Van Baak, amateur metrologist, made measurements of his local
> utility power and found that (over the course of the two months he
> studied) the frequency varied from 59.950 Hz to 60.050 Hz. See
>
> http://leapsecond.com/pages/mains/
> .
>
> -GAWollman
Now that is dedication. I've just measured that the voltage coming out
of my outlets is rock steady at 125VAC. I suppose I could hook up the
scope and measure the frequency but why bother.
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:10:25 -0500
From: tlvp <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Sophos Security's take on Google's latest "_nomap" opt-out
Message-ID: <jghgbcsyx7hl$.atfxtucyu4ky.dlg@40tude.net>
On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:24:23 -0500, Geoffrey Welsh wrote:
> ... Attention ... anyone else who thinks it's just a minor
> inconvenience for us to do 'just one little thing' to accommodate
> you ... If you want to do something you should figure out how to
> do it ... with your resources, not ours, thank you very much!
Right on, Geoffrey. And it applies as well to all those monthly
bill- and statement-providers who would prefer to shift the cost
(in time and money) of printing those bills and statements out
from them to us. Their "going green" pretext doesn't cut it!
Cheers, -- tlvp
--
Avant de repondre, jeter la poubelle, SVP.
Date: Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:03:39 -0800
From: John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Please contribute to keeping Wikipedia free of ads
Message-ID: <jam7v2$unl$2@blue-new.rahul.net>
On 2011-11-19 09:25, Bill Horne wrote:
> I made a contribution to Wikipedia this morning, and I recommend
> that other readers do so too. They do good work.
>
>
> https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Support_Wikipedia/en
>
I beg to differ. This about says it all:
http://xkcd.com/978/
***** Moderator's Note *****
OK, I opened the door, so I'm going to allow the followup.
I didn't say Wikipedia was perfect. I said "They do good work".
This is important: Wikipedia gives people who were actually there the
chance to publish first-hand information about subjects that they
actually were involved in creating or changing. Having access to the
people who made the history is a privilege that only the Internet
could provide, and Wikipedia is a major vehicle for carrying this
important work forward.
It is, of course, only part of the picture. Any historian or
biographer will tell you that people's memories are imperfect and that
we'll all prone to spin our recollection of events. Wikipedia gives a
wide audience the ability to correct others' accounts of events in a
way that improves the accuracy of the record.
It's not perfect: nothing is. If you had the choice of asking Jimmy
Carter why he didn't mention "Bedtime for Bonzo" in the debates with
Reagan, or reading notes from someone who was in a meeting at the
time, years after his/her death, which would you choose?
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2011 01:30:23 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Universal Service Reform Order Yields a Surprise or Two
Message-ID: <jamr3f$1eol$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <jak5ug$39d$1@news.albasani.net>,
Adam H. Kerman <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
>What federal law defines broadband as universal service?
I believe it's left up to the Commission.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
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