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The Telecom Digest for February 11, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 38 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
|
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
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See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
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Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2013 23:01:15 -0800 (PST)
From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: John E Karlin, who led the way to all-digit dialing dies at 94
Message-ID: <444f7319-1c91-4f19-a352-3196897f1de1@fn10g2000vbb.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 9, 12:26 pm, Joseph Singer <joeofseat...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was
> about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical
> question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long
> enough to dial them?
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/business/john-e-karlin-who-led-the-
> ...
The article mentions an experimental push button phone. One is
described in an early ESS research effort in BSTJ--the "chest" of the
phone has a series of buttons like a cash register.
The article describes, "It is not so much that Mr. Karlin trained
midcentury Americans how to use the telephone. It is, rather, that by
studying the psychological capabilities and limitations of ordinary
people, he trained the telephone, then a rapidly proliferating but
still fairly novel technology, to assume optimal form for use by
midcentury Americans. "
Human engineering used to be a major priority for the old Bell Labs.
Indeed, back in the 1950s, when a commuity was to covert to dial, the
phone co sent out representatives to call upon households and
businesses to show them how to work the dial. (This also also a p/r
move since some towns liked having manual service and the free extras
that went along with it.)
I wonder if today's technology makers, from TV/stereo remote controls
to computer screens and 'smart phones' devote as much effort toward
usability as Bell used to do.
Side note: IMHO, the pressure required to press a Touch Tone button
on the Western Electric 2500 set--selected after extensive research--
is too heavy. Later Touch Tone sets by other makes require less
pressure and are easier to use.
***** Moderator's Note *****
I could never understand how they got two tones from one transistor.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: 10 Feb 2013 00:35:28 -0000
From: "John Levine" <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: RE:Site plagiarizes blog posts, then files DMCA takedown on originals
Message-ID: <20130210003528.30098.qmail@joyce.lan>
In article <a4d81a2980b855bf37ecf0693dd2a77d.squirrel@louise.hallikainen.org> you write:
>That's an interesting story! I really wonder if this is the sort of thing
>that "reputation management" companies do. They can find anything bad
>about their client and file a take-down notice claiming copyright
>infringement.
Fake DMCA notices are a felony, although rarely prosecuted. They do
tend to backfire as they often lead to news stories about the notices
and the reasons for them.
"Reputation" companies are more likely to create sites that say nice
things about the client, then use SEO techniques to try to move them
to the top of the search rankings.
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2013 22:48:59 -0800 (PST)
From: HAncock4 <withheld@invalid.telecom-digest.org>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: John E Karlin, who led the way to all-digit dialing dies at 94
Message-ID: <2fb380a3-ee02-47c1-bd8b-b9925892b2ce@r8g2000vbj.googlegroups.com>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> Alan Sherman sang it best:
. . .
[Sadly, Alan Sherman was a comedian we lost too early. I have his
record, "My Son the Folk Singer", though I'm not sure today's
audiences would get all the jokes about working in the garment
district. But I think "hello mudder hello fadder" would still get
laughs.]
Comedian Alan King also criticized ANC and was mad they added the
requirement that he had to dial 516 to call home. "The other night I
called my barber and forgot his area code. Before I could say I was
sorry, Stragetic Air Command bombers penetrated ten miles inside
Russia". He also criticized the business office and dealing with the
phone company in general. King thought people spent too much time on
the phone; I wonder how he'd react to cell phones of today.
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:28:06 -0500
From: Fred Goldstein <fgoldstein@remove-this.ionary.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: The Pentagon And Cyber Defense, Cyber Warnings [nfp]
Message-ID: <5117D8A6.7040005@thorne.net>
On Tue, 05 Feb 2013 21:16:06 -0800 Mark Kaminsky wrote,> [snip]
>> >First came Leon Panetta, Secretary of Defense, warning that the
>> >United States in vulnerable to a "cyber Pearl Harbor " - an Internet
>> >attack on infrastructure that could shock and disable the nation.
>> >
>> >Then came Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, just last week,
>> >saying a "cyber 9.11" could happen "imminently." Then news that the
>> >Pentagon is looking to sharply expand its force of cyber warriors.
> [snip]
>
>> >***** Moderator's Note *****
>> >
>> >Let's see:
>> >
>> >1. Sky-is-falling warnings concerning a subject that few
>> > voters are aware of, let alone competent to evaluate.
>> >
>> >2. The Pentagon wants more and more money to address the
>> > "threat".
>> >
>> >3. Yawn.
>> >
>> >Bill Horne
>> >Moderator
Bill is generally on target here. There is a problem, but the
Pentagon's strength is in kinetic weaponry and manpower, not software.
"Cyber-war" as a metaphor does not mean that men in uniform are the
answer. But then Mark does make some good points:
> I had to respond to the comments of our esteemed moderator
> [no smileys - I'm serious about the adjective].
>
> Most of the time, I think your take would be correct. However,
> this is one field where I think that the Pentagon et al are
> underestimating the threat. We will never get the data, but
> from what I hear, there are continual, persistent attacks at
> the nation's largest banks. It is only a matter of time before
> we start having national blackouts because someone managed to hack
> into the power grid; local disasters because someone hacked into
> the local water company and released all the chlorine at once;
> and who knows what else.
>
> I'm not sure that the Pentagon's solution is adequate, but
> I think DARPA should certainly be involved in designing
> a new internetworking protocol which emphasizes security.
> And, actually, as I think of it, this really is on-topic,
> because the dunderheads at the phone companies really want
> to get rid of the PSTN and replace it with VoIP - which is
> IMHO a disaster in the making.
This is all true. The use of IP, and of a single, wide-open Internet,
is very risky. It wasn't designed for security. And it's much harder
to add security to an insecure design than to create controlled public
access in a secure design. Utilities should not put critical
infrastructure onto the public Internet.
There is a new internetworking protocol under development, far from the
IETF and its TCP/IP fanbois, which addresses these and other problems.
It's called RINA, Recursive InterNetworking Architecture. The very
brief description is that it uses the same layer machine at every layer,
as many as needed (not a fixed number of layers), so there are very few
protocols needed. It allows (some functions are essentially options to
be requested as needed) authentication, encryption, multicasting,
mobility, and quality of service options. Its advocates are the Pouzin
Society (
http://www.pouzinsociety.org
) and a pilot implementation is
being built in Europe by IRATI (
http://irati.eu
). Consider this the
result of many years of observation of what works and especially what
doesn't work in the TCP/IP stack, which is older than MS-DOS. Network
science instead of alchemy.
The theoretical underpinnings are in John Day's book, Patterns in
Network Architecture: A Return to Fundamentals.
--
Fred Goldstein fgoldstein "at" ionary dot com
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 16:04:34 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: The Pentagon And Cyber Defense, Cyber Warnings
Message-ID: <kf9200$a0h$1@dont-email.me>
On 2/10/2013 12:28 PM, Fred Goldstein wrote:
> The use of IP, and of a single, wide-open Internet,
> is very risky. It wasn't designed for security. And it's much harder
> to add security to an insecure design than to create controlled public
> access in a secure design. Utilities should not put critical
> infrastructure onto the public Internet.
That's like saying that we shouldn't let our children walk on busy
streets or that someone offering to sell a pistol for two dollars might
have an ulterior motive: some things are just understood.
Using a "single, wide-open Internet" may be risky, but that's not what
users do. When people have data that needs protecting, they take steps
to address the risks, and those measures make the Internet they use
into a much safer place.
> There is a new internetworking protocol under development, far from the
> IETF and its TCP/IP fanbois, which addresses these and other problems.
When the IETF or other major standards bodies endorse it, I'll be very
interested. In the meantime, though, we're stuck with the Internet we've
got, including the TCP/IP Protocol stack.
As things stand now, it's not practical to consider any change away
from IP. There are too many routers out there, and too many techs
who've never done anything else but IP, and too many individuals and
companies with a vested interest in keeping IP alive.
Backbone speeds have risen to a point where we can encapsulate
<anything> inside IP, and just use the Internet as
exactly-what-it-was-intended-to-be, which is a high-speed information
transfer system. IMHO, TCP/IP is not the enemy, and
<new-improved-protocol> is not the solution to security problems.
Security is a complicated subject, and what little I've been taught
about it convinces me that users won't accept "security" until there is
a major loss that affects them personally, such as widespread
exploitation of the Electronic Funds Transfer network or the stock
exchanges.
Take, just as on example, our money management: by and large, every
place where computers touch money is an example of a mechanical overlay
on a preexisting manual system, and every aspect of the manual systems
was thrown out when it wasn't needed to make the computer replacements
work. This is the reason that identity theft is so easy: computerized
banking has replaced the old, tried-and-true system of face-to-face
identity verification which was the cornerstone of banking prior to
computers.
When there is a major meltdown of the EFT system, or a major,
well-publicized instance of fraud that uses computers to trick the ATM
networks, THEN people will accept more security.
FWIW. YMMV.
Bll
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:03:28 +0000 (UTC)
From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: The Pentagon And Cyber Defense, Cyber Warnings
Message-ID: <kf91v0$203v$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>
In article <5117D8A6.7040005@thorne.net>,
Fred Goldstein <fgoldstein@remove-this.ionary.com> wrote:
>There is a new internetworking protocol under development, far from the
>IETF and its TCP/IP fanbois, which addresses these and other problems.
>It's called RINA, Recursive InterNetworking Architecture.
And it will never be adopted by any substantial user base, despite
Mr. Goldstein's evangelizing in this newsgroup.
-GAWollman
- -
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wollman@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
***** Moderator's Note *****
Why not?
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 22:16:32 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: The Pentagon And Cyber Defense, Cyber Warnings
Message-ID: <kf9npb$p7o$1@dont-email.me>
An earlier post on this topic, by Fred Goldstein, appeared with the
Subject: line of
Re: The Pentagon And Cyber Defense, Cyber Warnings [nfp]
... which was incorrect. Although Fred did have some Not For
Publicatoin material in his original email to the Digest, it concerned
the rest of the email, which was intended for publication, so I
published his post after removing the private content: I did, however,
neglect to remove the Not For Publication tag from the Subject line.
My apologies for the confusion. If you choose to file a public reply
to Fred's post, please remove the "[NFP]" tag. TIA.
Bill Horne
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2013 12:27:09 -0500
From: Fred Goldstein <fgoldstein@remove-this.ionary.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: John E Karlin
Message-ID: <5117D86D.6060001@thorne.net>
On 2/10/2013 3:20 AM, Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> A generation ago, when the poetry of PEnnsylvania and BUtterfield was
> about to give way to telephone numbers in unpoetic strings, a critical
> question arose: Would people be able to remember all seven digits long
> enough to dial them?
>
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/09/business/john-e-karlin-who-led-the-way-to-all-digit-dialing-dies-at-94.html?hp&_r=1&
> ;
>
> or
>
>
> http://goo.gl/Flj0Q
>
>
> ***** Moderator's Note *****
>
> Allan Sherman sang it best:
>
> "Can you see him smirking and smiling?
> 'cause he's got us all-digit dialing!
> So, let's all call up AT&T and protest to the President march
> So protest! Do you best! Let us show him that we march in unity!
> If he won't -
> change the rules -
> we'll take our business to another phone company!"
>
> Bill Horne
> Moderator
The obit pointer was posted to a mailing list I'm on, subject
"My Hero". I replied with the YouTube pointer to that song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYnpfi2vdrI
Glad to see [the Moderator is] a fan too. I probably still have the
vinyl; we were big Allan Sherman fans when he was alive.
When I heard it again in the YouTube, that last line in your quote
struck me as especially funny in context. In those pre-Carterfone
years, "another phone company" was so unthinkable, the notion of
monopoly so ingrained, that even mentioning the idea was worthy of a
laugh.
But the song was not prescient: Telephone numbers never got that long.
No, such long digit strings are reserved for IPv6 addresses! :-)
--
Fred R. Goldstein fred "at" interisle.net
Interisle Consulting Group
+1 617 795 2701
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