The Telecom Digest for December 13, 2010
Volume 29 : Issue 336 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
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Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2010 08:51:06 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: The lurking danger of driving while texting
Message-ID: <p0624083ac92a83693ee8@[10.0.1.5]>
The lurking danger of driving while texting
Posted: Wednesday, December 8, 2010 10:08 am
BY SCOTT MCDONALD, Examiner publisher
Alex Brown was a young, pretty, West Texas teenage girl with a rich
life ahead of her. A quick sequence of events led to her lying in a
field - dying.
The 17-year-old's death just over a year ago led to a crusade by her
parents to encourage students to buckle up and stop texting.
Jeanne and Johnny Mac Brown travel to high schools around Texas to
spread the message, and Tuesday they stopped for an assembly at
Navasota High School.
Alex Brown was a senior at Seagraves High School, which is about an
hour and a half southwest of Lubbock. Brown was ranked second in her
class, but her college credits would have moved her to valedictorian
by the end of the year and she would have had enough credits to be a
sophomore in college the day she graduated high school.
"She was a good kid," Jeanne told the students at Navasota. "She
loved people, no matter who they were or what they were. Everybody
loved her."
On Nov. 10, 2009, Alex was running late for one of her college
classes because she spent too much time on Facebook that morning,
Jeanne said. That led to Alex scrambling so she wouldn't be TOO late
for class. She took the more dangerous route to school - the route
her parents always discouraged her to take.
Alex didn't buckle her seat belt. And then, while simultaneously
carrying on text message conversations with four different friends,
her pick-up truck spun out of control and crashed. Alex was thrown
from her vehicle into a field. She just laid there, fading into
consciousness and back out again, quickly leaving this world.
The state trooper who investigated that accident said that Alex was
driving 70 miles per hour before she spun.
...
http://www.navasotaexaminer.com/news/article_3a9d3eb6-02e5-11e0-a93f-001cc4c002e0.html
***** Moderator's Note *****
Like most parents, I harped on this and similar subjects until my face
was blue. I told my son, again and again and again ad nauseam, "Never
get your pride into a fight with the laws of physics. Physics 'gonna
win every time!"
In my copious free time, I cursed the studpidity of children in
general and mine in particular, and managed (more by good luck than by
good parenting) to get him past his teenage years without any auto
accidents. In other words, I became my father. C'est la vie.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 2010 23:45:42 -0600
From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Question about an old scrambler phone
Message-ID: <qfedna3AjPAb_JnQnZ2dnUVZ_hqdnZ2d@posted.nuvoxcommunications>
In article <941b0574-3b4d-4c24-928d-3c79a8f978cb@k21g2000vbd.googlegroups.com>,
Lisa or Jeff <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>On Dec 11, 4:10 am, Chris Hoaglin / Primary Rate
><ch...@primaryratedata.com> wrote:
>
>> More recently, speech inversion has been used in some analog cordless
>> phones, various radio systems, and in central office remote line testing
>> equipment to allow line monitoring while maintaining some level of
>> privacy. The Harris DATU from the 90's is one example, and I'm sure
>> there are others.
>
>A long time standard feature in telephone service is the ability of
>the operator to break into ongoing calls to announce an emergency
>call. (Now they charge a steep fee to do that). Before doing so,
>they listen in to ensure the line is actually 'busy talking' and not
>merely off hook or our of order. (Verifying a busy line is a fee now,
>too.)
>
>Some time ago Bell Labs Record reported on a device that would allow
>operators to confirm the line was in use with a conversation without
>the operator being able to listen to the conversation. The device
>would scramble the conversation so the operator would hear
>something.
Faugh! talk about overkill! A simple voltmeter across the pair will
give a 'good' indicator of conversation on the line. And, with an ESS
you could do it purely in software -- the 'mean' level of the signal,
the extreme values, and a variance-type number (e.g. std deviation),
should provide an extremely reliable indicator. Most of the 'development
cost' would lie in developing the 'norms' against which data from a specific
test was compared. It would be trivial to hook this to an IVR system
that could report, w/o -any- human intervention:
1) line is 'on hook'
2) line is 'off hook', and appears to be actively in use
3) line is 'off hook', but appears to be not in active use
with a little hardware support -- instrumentation to measure things on
the analog tail loop itself, rather than just looking at data in the switch,
one can add:
4) trouble on the line, apparent short
5) possible trouble on the line, line break or no instruments connected.
Getting result 5 does require some fairly sophisticated test gear, but 4 is
trivial.
I'd guesstimate the total development cost of the analyzer for results 1-3
at 'low 5 figures' with the preponderance of that going for gathering the
data for the 'norms' used in setting the reference check-points. since it's
a pure software function, the 'cost of deployment', once developed, is
essentially zero for each location.
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2010 12:43:10 -0800
From: John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Question about an old scrambler phone
Message-ID: <ie3c4v$8kg$1@blue.rahul.net>
Robert Bonomi wrote:
> Faugh! talk about overkill! A simple voltmeter across the pair will
> give a 'good' indicator of conversation on the line. And, with an ESS
> you could do it purely in software -- the 'mean' level of the signal,
> the extreme values, and a variance-type number (e.g. std deviation),
> should provide an extremely reliable indicator. Most of the 'development
> cost' would lie in developing the 'norms' against which data from a specific
> test was compared. It would be trivial to hook this to an IVR system
> that could report, w/o -any- human intervention:
> 1) line is 'on hook'
> 2) line is 'off hook', and appears to be actively in use
> 3) line is 'off hook', but appears to be not in active use
There are "anti-eavesdropping devices" you can get which tell you whether
another phone on your line is off hook; I believe they're nothing more than
a zener diode bridged across the pair.
Detecting activity is harder, because some lines are "noisy" enough that,
with a phone off hook but left idle, a sound meter would show a higher
volume than two people talking quietly on a better line. I've seen causes
for this ranging from old wiring in an old house to squirrels eating the
insulation off the drop wires (and wondered why the phone company wouldn't
let us cure that by substituting an armored cable).
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2010 16:49:03 -0800 (PST)
From: Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Question about an old scrambler phone
Message-ID: <765574.95660.qm@web111715.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>
--- On Sun, 12/12/10, John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us> wrote:
From: John David Galt <jdg@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us>
>Robert Bonomi wrote:
>> Faugh! talk about overkill! A simple voltmeter across the pair will
>> give a 'good' indicator of conversation on the line. And, with an ESS
>> you could do it purely in software -- the 'mean' level of the signal,
>> the extreme values, and a variance-type number (e.g. std deviation),
>> should provide an extremely reliable indicator. Most of the 'development
>> cost' would lie in developing the 'norms' against which data from a
>specific
>> test was compared. It would be trivial to hook this to an IVR system
>> that could report, w/o -any- human intervention:
>> 1) line is 'on hook'
>> 2) line is 'off hook', and appears to be actively in use
>> 3) line is 'off hook', but appears to be not in active use
> There are "anti-eavesdropping devices" you can get which tell you whether
> another phone on your line is off hook; I believe they're nothing more than
> a zener diode bridged across the pair.
>
> Detecting activity is harder, because some lines are "noisy" enough that,
> with a phone off hook but left idle, a sound meter would show a higher
> volume than two people talking quietly on a better line. I've seen causes
> for this ranging from old wiring in an old house to squirrels eating the
> insulation off the drop wires (and wondered why the phone company wouldn't
> let us cure that by substituting an armored cable).
Squirel guards are common on aerial cables in much of Oklahoma and surrounding
states. I don't think there was much problem on drops.
I had squirrels eat the insulation off the TV cable in my attic until it
failed and Cox had to rewire the eintire house. It certainly got very noisy
before it failed completely.
Not the only things wrong with squirrels in your attic.
Wes Leatherock
wleathus@yahoo.com
wesrock@aol.com
Date: Sun, 12 Dec 2010 18:46:47 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Angry Birds, Flocking to Cellphones Everywhere
Message-ID: <pan.2010.12.12.07.46.44.208095@myrealbox.com>
On Sat, 11 Dec 2010 20:46:09 -0600, John Mayson wrote:
> I am 41 years old. I have not been a video game fan since I was about 14
> or so. I have no games on my laptop. I have only a couple of games on my
> phone and iPod Touch. My son suggested I install Angry Birds on my phone.
> I absolutely cannot put it down. I cannot explain the appeal. I am
> probably the least likely of anyone to get hooked on it, but I have.
>
Ahh yes, the secret Al-Qaeda plot to destroy western society by destroying
productivity via useless distractions seems to be working well(?)
Or is it purely self-inflicted?
--
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.
***** Moderator's Note *****
Oh, we did this to ourselves: Osama bin Laden didn't lift a finger.
Every new toy demands a change of habit, and eventually worms it's way
into the public consciousness as "the way it's 'spozed to be". In a
previous moderator's note, I quoted Brad Paisley's song "Welcome to
the Future": he used to have to get a ride down to the arcade, but now
he has Pacman on his phone.
This is often a mixed blessing: after all, how do you think the
U.S. derailed the Japanese economic juggernaut of the late 20th
century? It's simple: we invented computers! Before PC's, Japanese
managers had to write (on paper, with a pen, by hand) memos
themselves, thus tending to make their writen communications short,
concise, and easy to understand. Now, they have PCs, and they are
burying their society under a mountain of bombastic and pointless
email - just like us.
Bill Horne
Moderator
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