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Message Digest Volume 28 : Issue 40 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Re: The End of Alone Surge Protection ====== 27 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. 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. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 08 Feb 2009 13:12:49 -0500 From: Will Roberts <oldbear@arctos.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: The End of Alone Message-ID: <0MKp8S-1LWE9N0dKN-0007xP@mrelay.perfora.net> In Telecom Digest (Vol 28 # 39), Monty Solomon wrote: > Date: Fri, 6 Feb 2009 23:39:43 -0500 > From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> > To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu > Subject: The End of Alone > > The End of Alone > By Neil Swidey > > At our desk, on the road, or on a remote beach, the world is a tap > away. It's so cool. And yet it's not. What we lose with our constant > connectedness. . . . The more things change, the more they remain the same. The following is from the January 1995 issue of M.I.T.'s "Technology Review" magazine: CHRISTMAS UNPLUGGED ------------------- By Amy Bruckman If I had a network link, I'd be home now. From my chaise lounge on the terrace of my parents' Miami Beach apartment, I see a grid of four-line roads with palm-treed median strips, yachts moored on the inland waterway, a golf course, and a dozen tall white condominiums. The hum of traffic is punctuated by the soft thunk of racquets striking tennis balls somewhere below. The temperature is in the 70s and a breeze blows through my toes. I am a long way from Boston. If I had a net link, I'd know exactly how far. I'd know the weather forecast for Miami, and, if I cared, for Boston too. Just about anything you might like to know is out there on the worldwide computer network -- the Net -- if you know where to look. It's Christmas day in Miami, but I'm not sure it would really be Christmas or I would really be in Miami if I were plugged into the Net. I would be in my virtual office, a "room" in the text-based virtual reality environment where I do most of my work. I have a desk there, piled with things to do, and a fish tank -- just like my "real" office. Except that the virtual fish don't need to be fed -- they're just a program I created one day while procrastinating from real work. My virtual office is just some data on a computer housed at MIT that I can tap into from anywhere, but it is a place to me. When I log onto the network, I am there. And I would be there right now, if not for a difficult choice I made two days ago. I was packed for my trip south and had called a cab. I had the important things: airline ticket, wallet, bathing suit. I stood in the hall staring at a padded gray bag, the one containing my Macintosh PowerBook computer. I grabbed the bag, double-locked the door, and started to walk down the hall. I stopped. I went back, opened the door, and put down the gray bag. I stood in the doorway, feeling foolish. The taxi honked. The honk gave me courage: I locked up again, leaving my computer -- my office -- behind. A vacation should be about escaping from routines; going somewhere else provides a new perspective. But when I travel with my PowerBook, I bring many of my routines with me. I can readily gain access to all my familiar tools for finding information. It's as if I never left. And that's the problem. Had I brought my computer, I would not have written this essay (for which I am using a pencil). Instead, I would have logged onto the network and entered its seductive, engrossing world. By now I would have read the newswire and Miss Manners's column, answered a dozen questions from friends and colleagues, and possible posted by thoughts on a movie I saw last night to a public discussion group. It would be as if I never left home. The network destroys a sense of time as well as place. Daily and seasonal rhythms are subtle at best. As morning turns to evening, I am more likely to bump into my friends in Hawaii, less likely to encounter my friends in England. In the summer, things quiet down. April 1st is the only real network holiday -- don't believe anything you read that day! Beyond that, life on the Net proceeds at an even, unpunctuated pace. There are no holiday decorations on the Net. On my flight down here I saw a young boy carrying a sleek black bag on his shoulder. He held it naturally, but with a hint of importance. It took me a moment to see the logo: it contained his Nintendo Game Boy. His generation sees nothing remarkable about traveling at all times with a computer. It is already possible to connect to the network from a palm-sized computer with a cellular link. As computers get smaller and cheaper, we will lose even the excuse of the weight of that black bag or the cost of losing it. The Net is becoming an important part of the lives of a broader segment of the population. Its spread presents a worrisome challenge: is it ever possible for us to take uninterrupted time off any more? The new technologies of connectedness are pushing people to blend their many roles into one: personal mail is mixed with professional correspondence, and work crises arrive on a cellular phone during leisure time. If our coworkers and competitors have made themselves perpetually available, we feel all the more pressure to do the same, lest we be left behind. One of my colleagues deliberately vacations in places so remote that getting a Net connection is almost impossible -- it's the only way she can get a real break, and, for a little while at least, be a carefree newlywed instead of a world-renowned researcher. But such exotic locales are getting harder and harder to find. I love the network and the people and the places I find there. But sometimes I find it important to disconnect -- to leave the cellular phone and the beeper in a desk drawer, leave that padded gray bag at home. To be out of touch, not for hours but for days. To leave behind routines, both virtual and real. ---------- [Fourteen years ago, when this was written, Amy Bruckman was a doctoral student in the MIT Media Laboratory and known for creating MediaMOO, a text-base virtual reality environment for media researchers. She is now an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the School of Interactive Computing.] ---------- Of course, we can reach back 75 years to the 1932 classic film "Grand Hotel" in which the great actress Greta Garbo delivered the line which will always be associated with her: "I want to be alone." Twitter, anyone? Really? Regards, Will ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 8 Feb 2009 13:05:04 -0800 (PST) From: 4netpost@gmail.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Surge Protection Message-ID: <edadf13a-6e38-46f7-ad83-64b88f211463@t13g2000yqc.googlegroups.com> I have a need to add some surge protect a telephone system. I need the surge protection on the incoming circuits, right at the demark point. I have several lines including POTS voice lines, POTS dial in modem lines, VDSL, ADSL, and T1 circuits. Is there a surge protector that will protect all of the above lines without degrading performance? ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. The Telecom Digest is currently being moderated by Bill Horne while Pat Townson recovers from a stroke. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: mailto:telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Anonymous FTP: mirror.lcs.mit.edu/telecom-archives/archives/ (or use our mirror site: ftp.epix.net/pub/telecom-archives) RSS Syndication of TELECOM Digest: http://telecom-digest.org/rss.html For syndication examples see http://feeds.feedburner.com/telecomDigest Copyright (C) 2008 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of The Telecom digest (2 messages) ******************************