From editor@telecom-digest.org Tue Oct 19 14:06:51 2004 Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.11.6p3/8.11.6) id i9JI6og06935; Tue, 19 Oct 2004 14:06:51 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 14:06:51 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <200410191806.i9JI6og06935@massis.lcs.mit.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: massis.lcs.mit.edu: ptownson set sender to editor@telecom-digest.org using -f To: ptownson Approved: patsnewlist Subject: TELECOM Digest V23 #499 TELECOM Digest Tue, 19 Oct 2004 14:07:00 EDT Volume 23 : Issue 499 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Cops Track Emergency Call to Malfunctioning TV (Monty Solomon) Verizon Taking Lessons From Hooterville Telephone Company (T Pelliccio) Re: AMTRAK (was Re: Last, Sad Laugh! A Nice Place to Work!) (M Crispin) Re: AMTRAK (was Re: Last, Sad Laugh! A Nice Place to Work!) (L Hancock) Re: Sinclair's Disgrace (Joseph) Re: Routing to VOIP, was Can't Move 800 Number to Vonage (Stanley Cline) Re: Drivers Try an Anti-Photo Finish (John R. Covert) Re: A Problem With VOIP and Phone Books (Stanley Cline) 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; other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 10:06:55 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: Cops Track Emergency Call to Malfunctioning TV By Richard Shim Talk about unwanted new features in fancy televisions, college student Chris van Rossman got more than he wanted with his Toshiba set -- as he learned when emergency and law enforcement officials came knocking. Earlier this month, Rossman's year-old 20-inch flat screen TV started broadcasting over the 121.5MHz frequency, the channel used for distress signals. Such signals are used by search and rescue workers to find airplanes that have crashed or boats that are lost or missing. Rossman's TV was picked up by search and rescue satellites and emergency crews were alerted. http://news.com.com/2100-1041-5415719.html ------------------------------ From: kd1s@yahoo.com (Tony Pelliccio) Subject: Verizon Taking Lessons From Hooterville Telephone Company Date: 19 Oct 2004 06:09:38 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com I recently moved three blocks east of my former location and contacted Verizon to move the line. I was assured that at 8:30AM on the 15th service at the old address would cut and the new address would be active at 10:30AM. Service at the old location cut at 11:30PM on Friday but the new location wasn't up yet. I've been going around and around with Verizon for days about this. They say the switch is telling them service is fine and to find my network interface and they'll take it from there. What I found was I'm pair #14 on a 50 pair breakout box with screw posts and nuts to hold the wiring down. I had to ANAC about 30 lines before I found mine. Thing is, I know I'm going to have to wire my jacks as whoever did the wiring before was a hack. But I had this faint image of having to climb a telephone pole to make a call that harkens back to Green Acres and the Hooterville Telephone Company. Needless to say -- the CATV line is in the house and the HSI is getting installed Thursday so I just might port my service to Vonage and be done with the stodgy phone company once and for all. ------------------------------ From: Mark Crispin Subject: Re: AMTRAK (was Re: Last, Sad Laugh! A Nice Place to Work!) Date: Mon, 18 Oct 2004 22:57:23 -0700 Organization: University of Washington On Mon, 18 Oct 2004, Lisa Hancock wrote: > From the 1930s to 1950s, a consortum led by General Motors and tire > and oil interests bought out city street railways and converted them > to buses supplied by the consortum. This was not the only reason > cities lost their streetcars, but it was a significant contributor and > accelerated the loss. I have heard this claim many times but have seen scant evidence of a conspiracy. Rather, it seems that companies in the *transportation* business consolidated. Streetcars, while quaint, have limitations. Streetcars vanished from NYC, London, and Tokyo; yet all three cities have extensive rail-based rapid transit networks. You'll see streetcars in Germany and Austria, as part of an aboveground S-Bahn network which is invariably slower and less preferred to the underground U-Bahn. The S-Bahn quickly becomes rapid transit once in suburbia. LA actually had a public vote in the 1920s on whether to extend the streetcar lines. The voters overwhelmingly voted *against* streetcars in favor of more auto roads and bus lines. From that moment, the streetcars' doom was sealed, although it took a few decades for the streetcars to die. Most American cities are still too sparsely-populated to support a rapid transit line. The modern incarnation of streetcars, "light rail", remain limited in service area compared to buses. Some cities, such as Seattle, try to get the best of both worlds with diesel/electric buses that run on overhead power lines when present and on diesel fuel otherwise. Seattle is now trying to build a light rail line and a monorail ... -- Mark -- http://staff.washington.edu/mrc Science does not emerge from voting, party politics, or public debate. Si vis pacem, para bellum. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Streetcars have very few limitations. They are actually preferred, IMO, in various ways. Trolley busses are better, however (the distinction being trolleys run with overhead power lines (i.e. catenary poles) but rubber tires rather than wheels like railroad cars. Chicago Transit Authority had both street cars at one time, and trolley busses until later, into the 1960's on the latter. As children, we would play a game which for lack of a better name was called 'stall the trolley bus'. A trolley bus ran east and west on Lawrence Avenue; a streetcar ran north and south on Western Avenue. The kids got 'points' if they could slip unseen behind the trolley bus and knock the catenary pole down, causing the trolley to stall (from lack of electrical power), while it stopped at Lawrence and Western (a fairly busy intersection) to load/unload passengers. Still more points were given if the kid timed it just right, (Trolley stopped at a stop light, light changed to green, kid waited until the trolley had started to accelerate his motor, *then* pull the catenary down, giving the trolley *just enough power* to coast out into the middle of the intersection before it stalled completely.) Of course if Lawrence had just gotten the green light at that point then Western had a red light. The trolley driver would get out of the bus muttering or cursing about the 'little bastards' who had done it. It was a two or three minute process to get off the bus, walk to the rear, take the connecting rod, prod the catenary into place, re-establish the power, get back on the trolley and drive away. Most likely the stop and go had changed colors twice by then, so of course traffic on Western Avenue was stalled also for the duration. Still more points awarded if the Western Avenue streetcar was coming as well, since *he* had to sit there and wait while the Lawrence trolley bus got un-stalled and restarted. One time that happened, the streetcar motorman came over to help the trolley bus driver get his pole up and re-established. Of course the little bastards were no where to be found, having run off to hide as usual after they had done that. All the cars on Western Avenue which cannot get past are sitting there honking their horns as the trolley driver is trying to get his pole back up, and the passengers on the trolley peering out the window watching it all. The little bastards, from their hiding place were all doubled up in hysterical laughter at it all. It was a great game for boys 10-12 years old. PAT] ------------------------------ From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) Subject: Re: AMTRAK (was Re: Last, Sad Laugh! A Nice Place to Work!) Date: 19 Oct 2004 10:09:50 -0700 Organization: http://groups.google.com John Mayson wrote: > If it provided such an economic advantage then private companies would > be chomping at the bit to set up commuter rail service. When economic advantages accrue to society at large, private companies are not interested and the government is needed to support for them. For example, firehouses are a vital service, but there are very few for-profit fire services and no interest to turn it into something like that. The private sector has shown little interest in building and operating its own turnpikes and toll bridges (though there are a few). One pvt toll bridge in southern New Jersey wants the take to take it over. Likewise, the airlines have shown no interest in raising capital and building and operating their own airports, preferring to rent space from govt built and owned facilities. > This isn't the sole cause, but there is something else contributing > the decline of rail. > Around 1906 or so the US government passed stringent regulations ... Imagine you own old grocery stores. They aren't doing very well. You're thinking of either (1) investing your money to modernize them or (2) closing some or all down. But the government comes along and builds a fancy new shopping across the street from you. Your property taxes go up to for it. You then decide to close those stores which directly compete with the govt stores and have lost their patronage. But, the govt tells you must keep those stores open full hours as a public service, even though you're losing money on them. As to investing money to modernize your stores, you discover that the govt stores were built with guaranteed tax free bonds, which pay little interest. The loans you would take would be much more costly. Further, because you're losing money, investors are leery about giving you a loan, further raising the interest rate. It just doesn't pay you to the run your stores, even where it is still profitable. The above was the railroad passenger situation in the 1950s. Tightly regulated with many mandated unprofitable services, yet government subsidized competition taking away business. In the late 1960s, policy makers realized that highways and airports were so badly overcrowded and using up so much good _irreplaceable_ land that they just weren't working out. So, they recognized there still was a place for the passenger train to supplement the above modes and ease some of the burden. That was the rationale to create Amtrak (and commuter rail lines). ------------------------------ From: Joseph Subject: Re: Sinclair's Disgrace Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 07:48:19 -0700 Reply-To: JoeOfSeattle@yahoo.com On 17 Oct 2004 20:49:06 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com (Lisa Hancock) wrote: > The Sinclair business is propaganda just like Michael Moore's film > is propaganda. I suspect many of those upset about Sinclair are > the same people who applauded Michael Moore. The two are the same. > What goes around comes around. If you're going to compare do it with apples to apples not apples to oranges. People had to *want* to see the Michael Moore film and pay for it and it was not broadcast on public airwaves. What Sinclair is going to do is *demand* that the stations that they control pump this out to the public pre-empting other programming. It's hardly the same thing. ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: Routing to VOIP, was Can't Move 800 Number to Vonage Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 01:02:45 -0400 Organization: Roamer1 Communications Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org On Mon, 18 Oct 2004 03:18:05 UTC, Danny Burstein wrote: > As a related issue, some of the 1-800 providers [a] are taking > advantage of the interim regulatory quagmire vis-a-vis VOIP's > exemption from the local telco per-minute termination fees. So since > they don't have to pay those charges, they're (for the moment) > charging you (the "owner" of the 1-800 number) less for calls that > wind up at a(n) VOIP "number". > [a] I'm familiar with kall-8, being a customer of theirs. I understand > some others do this as well. http://www.kall8.com AIUI, it's not really so much that as the fact that carriers like Kall8 that can terminate traffic "directly" to SIP destinations usually terminate such calls on a dedicated T1 from an IXC, just like a large call center would, that goes into some sort of softswitch or media gateway, or the carrier is both an IXC and a CLEC (Kall8/ITL is both) and so can avoid paying themselves access charges on the terminating end. Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 10:13:12 EDT From: John R. Covert Subject: Re: Drivers Try an Anti-Photo Finish In reply to an article stating "the firms that make and operate radar camera systems and analyze the photos for municipalities routinely check negatives where license plates look unreadable" Linc Madison wrote: > What UTTER and COMPLETE nonsense! If the positive image is illegible, > the negative image will be EXACTLY as illegible. This is only true if you are assuming EXACTLY the same technology for the negative and positive image. But this is not usually the case. The shadow definition (the number of different levels of light and dark or shades of gray) as well as the number of different colors representable is usually significantly greater on negative film than on positive print paper. The resolution is usually higher as well. The printing process which creates the positive image does not retain all of the information that is in the negative. So it's not nonsense at all. You might enjoy the movie "Blow Up!" /john ------------------------------ From: Stanley Cline Subject: Re: A Problem With VOIP and Phone Books Date: Tue, 19 Oct 2004 00:52:56 -0400 Organization: Roamer1 Communications Reply-To: sc1-news@roamer1.org On 16 Oct 2004 10:34:03 GMT, Ed Clarke wrote: > If you read the fine print in your contract, you'll discover that the > phone numbers that you are given (if you can't port your old number > over) are not listed in the "telephone book". This means that you've > gone to an "unlisted" number. > I wonder how long the "phone company" will keep your old number in > their own very expensive book? Why should they? It's not their If you port out to a non-LEC VoIP carrier (Vonage and so on), it'll usually go out of directory assistance as soon as the port goes through, or a week or two thereafter. :( That said, I think a few VoIP providers (BroadVox Direct comes to mind) do have arrangements with the CLECs they use to get numbers into directory assistance and the phone book, at least for business customers. > customer, is it? I just finished looking at several local guide or > mini-phonebook websites; all the ones that I've looked at (411.com, > worldpages.com, whitepages.com) refuse to let you add or edit a > residential listing. Keep looking -- there are some that do allow addition of listings. (switchboard.com comes to mind.) > that's equivalent to the phone book. And what's the situation when > you move to an alternate provider? My wife moved us from Verizon to > Excel for the home phone; is there a reason to expect our home phone > number to remain in the Verizon book? If you port to a certified CLEC (pure reseller, UNE-P, UNE-L, your cable company, etc.), you can almost always keep your listing, or choose to be nonlisted or non-pub as with the ILEC. Wireless carriers just aren't used to people wanting their wireless numbers listed; non-telco VoIP is complicated by the fact that in most cases, the *VoIP provider* and not the actual end user is the "owner" of the phone number. (If you port a number to a VoIP provider the "LNP" request usually consists of a combination LNP request -- to get the number to whatever CLEC the VoIP provider uses -- as well as a "temporary" LOA assigning the number to the VoIP provider while you have service with them. This is why you can almost always port out a number you ported to a VoIP carrier, but you can't port out numbers the VoIP carrier assigned you -- in the former case, it's still "your" number, but in the latter case the number isn't "yours". Technically, a VoIP provider could LOA numbers they assigned to departing customers to let them port out, but none are set up to do that, probably intentionally.) Stanley Cline -- sc1 at roamer1 dot org -- http://www.roamer1.org/ "Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. There might be a law against it by that time." -/usr/games/fortune ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, Yahoo Groups, and other forums. It is also gatewayed 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. 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