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TELECOM Digest     Sun, 19 Jun 2005 18:59:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 278

Inside This Issue:                             Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    New Wi-Fi Workbook from Wireless LAN Pioneer (ChinDi Mah)
    Is it Possible to Buy a Cell Phone With no Plan (Frank Booth)
    Verizon Wireless 400 Percent Rate Increase (Gary Novosielski)
    Re: Email to Cellular AT&T Phones Now Cingular (notvalid@xmasNYC.info)
    Re: ISP Hunting (Fred Atkinson)
    Re: ISP Hunting (NOTvalid@XmasNYC.Info)
    Re: ISP Hunting (Choreboy)
    Re: Worst Phishing Fraud Attack Ever! 40 Million Cards Affected (mc)
    Re: MasterCard Says 40 Million Files Put at Risk (Tim@Backhome.org)
    Re: Bell Divestiture (Tony P.)
    Re: Bell Divestiture (Fred Goldstein)
    Re: Pod Slurping Dangerous to Your Company (David Clayton)
    Re: DSL Speed (Choreboy)
    Re: Monitor/Recorder for Residential Power Line Outages? (AES)
    Re: XO Communications (Al Gillis)
    Re: '80' Country Code (Robert Bonomi)
    Re: Cellphone Tax Started in Alexandria, VA (Steven Lichter)

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; other stuff of interest.  

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 08:41:21 PDT
From: ChinDi Mah <mahchindi@yahoo.com>
Subject: New Wi-Fi Workbook from Wireless LAN Pioneer


The following book has just been released. The author has written some
best selling wireless books in the past (see accompanying
biography). Please distribute to interested colleagues.  Thank you for
your attention.

All in a Wi-Fi Network: A Comprehensive Workbook on Wireless LAN
Technologies by Benny Bing

Available from: 
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/097667520X/

Wi-Fi applications have blossomed tremendously over the last few
years.What started out as cable replacement for static desktops in
indoor networks has been extended to fully mobile broadband
applications involving wide-area outdoor community networks, moving
vehicles, high-speed trains, and even airplanes. Wi-Fi data rates have
also continued to increase from 2 to 54 Mbit/s with current 802.11n
proposals topping 500 Mbit/s. This development may eventually render
wired Ethernet redundant in the local network. All in a Wi-Fi Network
is a workbook designed to fill the need for a comprehensive yet
compact and easy-to-use reference, specifically for anyone who wish to
study the underlying principles of past, present, and emerging Wi-Fi
technologies. It contains the latest information with unique features
for quick and effective self-study. The workbook's refreshing teaching
style sets itself apart from other books. Quantitative concepts are
explained visually while the bullet text brings out the key ideas in a
manner that is self-contained, concise, and to the point. The graphics
are engineered towards maximum clarity and are used generously. Whether
you are an entrepreneur, a CTO, a business executive or a scientist,
you will discover that the thought-provoking exercises at the end of
the book not only help you master the subject but also serve as a rich
source of interesting ideas.

The contents of the workbook have been carefully class-tested at many
of the author's teaching assignments on the subject, including
professional courses for industry, government agencies, and academic
institutions, as well as tutorials for researchers at prestigious IEEE
conferences. A companion website is available exclusively for users of
this book, providing updates to this fast developing field, related
websites, and additional learning resources and supplements.

The workbook provides valuable insights on a broad range of topics:

* Introduction to WLANs: Evolution, current standards, evolving
* technologies Fundamentals of WLAN Design and Deployment: WLAN
* classifications, physical layer transmission, MAC protocols, network
* topologies, security, switches, deployment considerations (e.g.,
* office, home, public hotspots/hotzones) 802.11 Standard and
* Amendments: Physical and MAC layers (802.11b/a/g), advanced security
* (802.11i), QoS support (802.11e) Performance Evaluation of WLANs:
* Throughput, delay, prioritization Emerging Technologies and New
* 802.11 Initiatives: High-speed MIMO systems, wireless VoIP,
* intelligent wireless systems, wireless broadband access (long-range,
* multihop/mesh technologies), wireless peer to peer applications

All in a Wi-Fi Network is written by an author whose books on wireless
networks are highly regarded by many technology visionaries. They
contain forewords from both chairmen of the IEEE 802.11 Working Group
since its inception, the inventor of Internet technology, and the
inventor of the first wireless protocol. In early 2000, his
groundbreaking book on wireless LANs was adopted by Cisco Systems to
launch the Cisco-Aironet Wi-Fi product. A multimedia CD was specially
prepared by Cisco to accompany the book. The Aironet product has since
enjoyed phenomenal success, dominating the corporate arena and
capturing over 60% of the Wi-Fi market share. 

The author was subsequently invited by Qualcomm Inc. to conduct a
customized course on wireless LANs for its engineering executives. In
2002, his edited book on wireless LANs was extensively reviewed by
illustrious research journals such as the IEEE Communications
Magazine, IEEE Network, and ACM Networker, the first time a book has
been reviewed by all three journals. The author has worked on wireless
LAN technologies well before it was known as Wi-Fi. He has also
contributed significantly to the field of wireless LANs, being the
first to emphasize the importance of improving range performance and
throughput (versus raw data rate). These concepts have since been
applied to Wi-Fi. The author carries over 12 years of teaching and
research experience. 

His research publications have appeared in many leading journals,
including the IEEE Spectrum and the MIT Technology Review. To date, he
has over 100 research citations and over 40 research papers. In 2003,
he was selected as one of ten best wireless designers in the U.S. by
BICSI, a 22,000 industry member association based in Tampa,
Florida. He is currently a technical editor for the IEEE Wireless
Communications Magazine, a senior member of IEEE, a research faculty
member with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in
Atlanta, GA, USA, and an associate director with the Georgia Tech
Broadband Institute.
		
------------------------------

From: FrankBooth <acg_acg@hotmail.com>
Subject: Is it Possible to Buy a Cell Phone With no Plan?
Date: 19 Jun 2005 14:22:37 -0700


I'm trying to buy a cell phone WITHOUT A PLAN. I am sending it to a
relative in another country where they will activate it.

So far I have not found a local shopping establishment that sells
them.

Can anyone recommend somewhere online where a cell WITHOUT A PLAN can
be purchased? Is it even possible?

Thanks in advance!

FB

------------------------------

From: Gary Novosielski <gpn@suespammers.org>
Subject: Verizon Wireless 400% Rate Increase
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 21:22:05 GMT


My most recent wireless bill had a note that VZW was raising the rates
for inbound TXT messages from $.02 to $.10 each, effective in August.

Now that's what I call a "whopping" increase.

------------------------------

From: NOTvalid@XmasNYC.Info
Subject: Re: Email to Former AT&T Phones Now Cingular
Date: 19 Jun 2005 13:02:17 -0700


> 1XXXXXXX ...@mmode.com  works for my former AT&T now Cingular phones

Thanks.

I tried a whole bunch of different ways and the one above is the only
one that worked. Receiver said she couldn't reply though. Maybe she
doesn't know how.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 04:37:24 PDT
From: Fred Atkinson <fatkinson@mishmash.com>
Subject: Re: ISP Hunting
Reply-To: fatkinson@mishmash.com


> I'm going to be just outside of Chicago (Skokie, if you must know) for
> an unknown period of time and looking to find out what the cheapest
> way to get internet access would be.

> I have no need for anything other then basic connectivity, and the
> ability to establish HTTPS connections to a known IP and PPTP
> connections to another known IP (not even DNS is required) and I
> certainly will not need ISP provided email, webspace, or anything of
> the sort.  I also absolutely refuse to install any crapware provided
> by an ISP.

> I'm eyeballing dialup access through ISP.COM which offers $8.95 - 56K
> Regular Dial-up -- any thoughts, good or bad?  Can I do better?

> Any thoughts?

http://www.thelist.com is a composite list of worldwide Internet
Service Providers.  It's broken down by area code, country, and U.S.
State.

http://broadband.thelist.com/all/areacode/847/ and
http://broadband.thelist.com/all/areacode/224/ would have information
about the Skokie area.

Good luck.  

Fred 

------------------------------

From: NOTvalid@XmasNYC.Info
Subject: Re: ISP Hunting
Date: 19 Jun 2005 12:42:20 -0700


Look at http://Freedomlist.com --they list all the cheap ISPs in NA.

Read the reviews for All2Easy which is $4.95/mo

------------------------------

From: Choreboy <choreboyREMOVE@localnet.com>
Subject: Re: ISP Hunting
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 12:06:58 -0400
Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com


DevilsPGD wrote:

> I'm going to be just outside of Chicago (Skokie, if you must know) for
> an unknown period of time and looking to find out what the cheapest
> way to get internet access would be.

> I have no need for anything other then basic connectivity, and the
> ability to establish HTTPS connections to a known IP and PPTP
> connections to another known IP (not even DNS is required) and I
> certainly will not need ISP provided email, webspace, or anything of
> the sort.  I also absolutely refuse to install any crapware provided
> by an ISP.

> I'm eyeballing dialup access through ISP.COM which offers $8.95 - 56K
> Regular Dial-up -- any thoughts, good or bad?  Can I do better?

> Any thoughts?

Don't you want news-server access?  That's the most common
deal-breaker for me.

Budget ISPs often contract with dialup providers.  The quality of
service can depend on this, and the ISP's representative may not be in
a position to know what's wrong.

At $9.95 I've been with localnet a couple of years, I guess.  At times
I've looked for alternatives, but in the long run things have worked
out.

Last January I began experiencing incidents where I'd get an error
message when I tried to send email.  I kept assuming it would quickly
be fixed.  When it happened over a period of months I finally called.
Mine was the first report of trouble.  From their end, their servers
checked out fine.

I discovered that it happened when I was assigned IPs from a certain
sequence, and it didn't matter what email application or what OS I
used.  They agreed that it must have been affecting all their
customers in my area for months, so they were glad I'd reported it.

They called back to say they thought it was fixed.  I had to complain a
couple more times before they solved the problem.  Still, it was a
positive experience for me.  Some ISP reps tend to insist that any
problem is at the customer's end.  Others try to help but don't get
anywhere.  Localnet reps didn't know what was going on at first, but
they listened to me and pursued the problem until they fixed it.

------------------------------

From: mc <mc_no_spam@uga.edu>
Subject: Re: Worst Phishing Fraud Attack Ever! 40 Million Cards Affected
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 01:52:09 -0400
Organization: Speed Factory (http://www.speedfactory.net)


> We probably need new common-names for all this deviant behavior;
> 'phisher', 'cracker' and 'hacker' are just not enough any longer. PAT]

I agree.

If the detectives are doing their jobs, the accounts released to the
public of how it was done are probably deliberately just a bit
inaccurate.  They don't want to reveal what trail they're following.

One credit card company reacted to this yesterday afternoon by
cancelling my credit card (with no prior notice) while my wife was in
the middle of a shopping trip.  No fraudulent charges had been
attempted; they just felt it had been "compromised."

This could be jolly inconvenient for travelers!  Are credit cards
liable to be yanked at any time because of security breaches?  Is that
how the industry is going to start reacting?

[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: They are, and yes it is. Customer incon-
venience is not a big issue with them when they are threatened with the
possible loss of a few dollars in fraud. PAT] 

------------------------------

From: Tim@Backhome.org
Subject: Re: MasterCard Says 40 Million Files Put at Risk
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 02:23:56 -0700
Organization: Cox Communications


Monty Solomon wrote:

> MasterCard said its investigation found that CardSystems, in
> violation of MasterCard's rules, was storing cardholders' account
> numbers and security codes on its computer systems. That information,
> MasterCard said, was supposed to be transferred to the bank handling
> the merchants' transactions but not retained by CardSystems.

Bankers have been some of the greatest proponents of deregulation over
the past 20, or so years, saying "We can self regulate our banking
industry far better than can government."

Right ...


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: And look at the mess they have made
of things in this latest fiasco; all sorts of personal information
given away. PAT]

------------------------------

From: Tony P. <kd1s@nospamplease.cox.reallynospam.net>
Subject: Re: Bell Divestiture
Organization: ATCC
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 09:55:40 -0400


In article <telecom24.276.11@telecom-digest.org>, kamlet@panix.com 
says:

> In article <telecom24.275.10@telecom-digest.org>, Robert Bonomi
> <bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com> wrote:

>> It is not inaccurate. Demand ramped up *far*faster* than the Bell system
>> projections indicated.

>> There were numerous big-city locations where you _could_not_get_ RBOC
>> phone lines in quantity, when you wanted them. 'Rationing' _was_ in
>> effect.  For a variety of reasons -- lack of field workers to do
>> physical interconnects, lack of C.O. capacity, among the big ones.

>> When you're down to the last few thousand numbers available out of a
>> C.O.  that serves 100,000 numbers, and the new switch isn't due for
>> delivery for another 18 months, you _don't_ have many choices.

> Number Ageing.

> As recently as 10 years ago, the RBOCs had pretty much a consistent
> 12-month number aging policy.  When the crunch came in selected
> offices, those offices were generally allowed to use faster aging, but
> the software generally could not accommodate different aging for
> speciic exchanges.  Their choices were to lower aging company wide or
> have the service order processor override 12 month aging case by case.
> Neither a great solution, but aging changes did free up thousands of
> numbers.

> Today I'd be surprised if anyone really cares about aging any more,
> especially with wireless.

>> Telephone _line_ sales had reached the 'saturation' point, Nearly
>> everybody that was likely to buy telephone service *had* service. The
>> only place for 'revenue growth' was in "add-on sales".  'Additional
>> extensions' was the big-money item in this class.  extra jacks were
>> one-time revenue item.  'Long cords' (set to wall, or handset to base)
>> couldn't justify much of a recurring charge.  Additional sets, on the
>> other hand, were almost pure gravy. With only one line there was, in
>> general, only one phone in use at a time, so the wear-and-tear on the
>> second phone was mostly covered by the increased life-expectancy of
>> the first one.

> We're talking Western Electric phone sets, here.  The kind that when
> they pulled samples and dropped them 50,000 times to see if it would
> break, it would't.

> The building housing the phone would disintegrate before the phone
> would break <g> No wear and tear concerns.

> In my OCAP assignment, I rode along with a repairman one day, on an
> NDT complaint (No Dial Tone.)  It turns out the husband got mad at the
> wife and threw the phone through the wall.  Big hole in the wall, and
> the phone wires pulled out of of the box.

> Repaired the box, reattached the wires, and the phone worked
> perfectly!  Didn't fix the hole in the wall <g>

> One day Western woke up and found the retail cost of a new phone at
> Radio Shack was less than Western's cost of parts for a 500 deskset.
> So after some marketing shifts, they got out of the handset business.
> Today, break a phone? Buy a new one. Just like a TV.  --

Or, hold on to that old Western Electric gear that is perfectly
functional.

The only newer pieces of phone gear in my house are a 900MHz cordless
phone, a 2500 set and a Trimline. Everything else is older than me.

------------------------------

Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 14:53:27 -0400
From: Fred R. Goldstein <fgoldstein@withheld_on_request>
Subject: Re: Bell Divestiture 


Hi Pat,

If you could mung my address for me (fred goldstein @ withheld will
do) it'd be appreciated.  Thanks.

At 18 Jun 2005 13:50:37 -0700, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote,

> rb> There were precisely *two* possible reasons for a price reduction:

>>   1) pressure from competition.
>>   2) enough 'pent up demand' that the price reduction brought in 'more
>>      than enough additional volume' to make up for the reduction in
>>      profitability.

> Neither of those make sense.  There was not significant competition
> before divesture except from other modes (ie writing a letter,
> telegram).  If you say the Bell System had no interest in the
> customer, then it would not have lowered rates to meet that "pent up
> demand", rather just put in more lines and made all the more money.

Wrong.  Monopolies sometimes do lower prices to make more money.

We covered this in Economics 102 (intro to microec) so it's not
exactly rocket science!  This is because there is a demand curve which
causes sales volume to rise as the price goes down.  So there's a
point, the profit maximization point, at which the total profit, well,
is the maximum.  Pricing higher causes demand to fall faster than
profit margins rise.  If monopoly phone calls were ten bucks a minute,
there's be less profit, not more.  So well-run unregulated monopolies
seek out that point.  Sometimes that price is called "incremental
willingness to pay".

A competitive industry has a lower price, because supply-demand
equilibrium is met when price equals "economic cost", which includes a
fair rate of return on capital.  Lack of competition allows the higher
profit-maximization point to be used for pricing.  Regulation was
supposed to hold the price to that which retursn a fair rate of
return, as a substitute for competition.

>> There were numerous big-city locations where you _could_not_get_ RBOC
>> phone lines in quantity, when you wanted them. 'Rationing' _was_ in
>> effect.  For a variety of reasons -- lack of field workers to do
>> physical interconnects, lack of C.O. capacity, among the big ones.

> Would you name those big city locations and the time frames for which
> rationing was in effect?

I was there.  I was doing traffic engineering for AOLnet in 1996,
during the America On Hold debacle.  There were numerous cities where
we had pending orders for *dozens* of PRIs (23 modems apiece) that the
Bells couldn't fill.  A particularly extreme case was Virginia Beach.
We were more than a dozen PRIs behind, service stank, and Bell
Atlantic wanted six months to a year to provision more circuits.  They
said that it would take that long to get additional PRI ports from
Lucent, since Lucent was overwhelmed with demand too.  That was,
however, just one case.  It was bad in lots of places.  Things stayed
bad into 1997, but by 1998 they started using more CLECs and things
got better.

>> Home computers didn't *exist* until the mid 1970s.  The Altair 8800
>> plans ran in PE's Jan 1975 issue. The APPLE-II didn't exist until
>> late 1977.

> But businesses and schools were heavy users of time sharing by the mid
> 1960s -- using dial-up Teletypes.  Businesses were also getting dial
> up dataphone services between computers.

The volume of dial-up was still a lot lower then than when it was a
big consumer item.

>> The mid-90's debacle _was_ Internet driven.

> That was after divesture and the Bell System no longer existed at
> that point.

Going to my point -- the Telecom Act of 1996 prevented a total
meltdown of the network because it allowed CLECs to take over the
high-volume dial-in traffic *just in time*.

>> The Bell system, like any regulated monopoly was _guaranteed_ a
>> certain minimum rate-of-return on investments.

> Regulated monopolies were NOT _guaranteed_ a minimum rate of return.
> If they were Western Union would not have gone broke nor would the
> railroads.  In some locations of the Bell System and even today,
> regulators mandate below-cost services for social reasons or deny rate
> increases.

Common argument, but academic.  Mr. Bonomi was technically wrong to
say that there was a guarantee. There wasn't. On the other hand there
is and was no guarantee that Lisa won't get bonked on the head by a
meteorite as she walks across the supermarket parking lot.  The
supermarket doesn't make a guarantee, but it's certainly not a likely
problem.  Bell rates of return were targets, not guarantees, but it
took really, really bad mismanagement to miss them on the low side by
much.

Now pricing was irrational, by design.  Many services were priced
below cost. That was factored into the high prices for other things.
Rate of return was computed per the Uniform System of Accounts, which
took all revenue on one hand, all expenses on the other, and compared
the difference to the rate base.  There was no linkage of specific
costs to specific prices.  Economically inefficient, but politically
handy.

>> Very, *very* rarely was 'how' that money was spent questioned.

> *NO*, <that> is _not_ true.

> As Pat pointed out, Ma Bell was under constant scrutiny by the news
> media and govt and advocates.  Shareholder gadflies made a point of
> disrupting stockholders' meetings every year.  Activists filed
> constant lawsuits against the system.

Noise, a minor annoyance, and with rare exceptions never a real
problem to the Bell managers.

>> Can you name a feature/capability introduced by the Bell System after
>> 1970 that was not present in third-party-provided, customer-owned, PBX
>> equipment first?  The only one I can think of is the "picturephone".

> I guess to really answer that claim one would have to list the latest
> PBX offerings of the Bell System of 1970, their cost, and the
> competition's offerings.

> How many third party PBXs were available in 1970?

Robert said "after 1970", not "in"; Carterfone had just taken effect,
and the PBX market hadn't developed yet.  AT&T/WECo hurried the
Dimension analog PBXs to market in 1976 or so in response to the
newfangled computer-controlled digital PBXs from Northern Telecom and
Rolm, both out in 1975, as well as the somewhat more primitive PBXs
from Farinon (Harris) DTS, Tele-Resources, and others that had been
out even sooner.  Bell PBXs were never market leaders. (Disclaimer: In
1977, I co-authored on a book called "Dimension PBX and Alternatives."
I researched a bunch of systems, comparing feature lists, capacities,
architecture, etc.)

> The Eng & Sci history of the Bell System describes a multitude of PBX
> systems and features.

Astonishingly primitive compared to what competition wrought.


  Fred Goldstein    k1io  fgoldstein "at" ionary.com
  ionary Consulting       http://www.ionary.com/ 



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: My first 'home computer' was in 1978
when I bought an OSI-C1P  (Ohio Scientific) with all of 4K memory.
However, from sometime around 1970-71 when I was working at the
Standard Oil Credit Card Office in Chicago I had an IBM terminal on
my desk. I knew very little about the thing, except that it was
intended to eventually replace the punch cards which were around
everywhere. By 'everywhere' I mean that there were shopping carts
like used in a grocery store, and women would push these carts around
the room all day, every day, taking 'trays' (metal containers with
four or five hundred cards) off your desk, put them in the shopping
cart with others that had been gathered up, leave you a few new
'trays' of several hundred cards each in their place, then come back in
a couple hours and repeat the process. As we examined and made correc-
tions to the cards, we were to keep them in _exactly_ the same order
(within the tray) as they had been given to us.

I got the OSI computer from a neighbor who decided instead to get an
Atari computer. We had a mutual friend who had just purchased a Tandy
Model 1 computer. I sent away in the mail to a company which had new
chips for the OSI, increasing its memory to 8 K, and installed it
myself. About the same time, I got my Z-19 terminal from the
Zenith/Heathkit people with a 150/300 baud Hayes modem, and I used
that to get on line with Usenet, while the OSI was used for other
things.  That would have been in 1978. The Apple ][ came out that
year as I recall, followed by the Apple ][+, which is what the Chicago
Public Library had for its BBS. And Apple licensed Microsoft Basic
for its machines, but gave it a new name 'Applesoft DOS' instead. 
I thought it was sort of expensive (my salary from the Library was not
that good) so I waited on getting one. 

Sometime in 1977 or early 1978 the Bell and Howell Company of Skokie,
Illinois cut a deal with Apple Computer to buy up a huge number of
'special issue' computers. Instead of the cream-colored cases used
for Apples, they were in charcoal color and had the insignia 'Bell
and Howell Computers' on them. People knew of them under the street
name 'Black Apples', and they had all of _48K_ memory in them, but
Bell and Howell decided to get out of that business and sold them all
at a substantial loss, so I got one of those instead, and started
my own BBS instead, in 1979, about six months after the library
had started its (A)pple BBS. 

Chicago is where the BBS concept got started. Randy Seuss and Ward
Christianson started the very first one. (In yesterday's Digest,
Robert Bonomi mentioned how Randy had such hassles with Illinois Bell
getting the lines he needed). Bell and Howell computers _were_ Apple
][+ machines except for the lable on the front of them, and many of
them, such as mine, had not only a 300 baud modem card on a slot
inside, but an 'expanded memory' card as well, to go in another slot
inside, and a 'clock card' plus a couple of floppy disk driver
cards. I would guess that by 1980 there were a dozen or more BBS's
operating, all in Chicago or nearby suburbs, and almost none anywhere
else in the world. The Library had their BBS (BELmont 5-3200) based on
Bill Blue's *People's Message System* as did a guy in Downers Grove,
IL. Rogers Park ABBS (973-ABBS [2227]) used some other kind of
software for Apple as I did with my original BBS called 'First Choice'
(SHEldrake-3-0001). But I soon decided to work with a different BBS
'skeleton' to make 'Lake Shore Modem Magazine' on my other phone line
SHEldrake-3-0002 instead, and Lake Shore Modem Magazine went on line
in July, 1981. Tim had his Tandy Model 4 operating "Think BBS" (based
on the old IBM slogan) and Randy Suess kept plugging along with his
CBBS, until he eventually decided to go 'multi-user' with his Chinet
system, which was when all the trouble with the telephone company got
started, in 1984 I think. Ward and Randy were not only first with the
BBS concept, I think they were first with the multi-user concept also
(regards home or residential service). There was a guy in Oak Park,
Illinois using his Tandy Model-4 to run a FIDO multi-user node around
that same time, but I never did much care for the FIDO people; they
all seemed so prissy and authoritarian, IMO. I did maintain a user
group out of his node for six months or so, but the FIDO bosses
decided to ex-communicate his entire system, so that was good enough
for me: I had been off and on using Usenet (via Portal) for a couple
years at that point and decided to give up on FIDO and use Usenet
exclusively instead, and I did that mostly with my Zenith Z-19
terminal and modem. From Randy Suess one day I got a bunch of other
very good working terminals and modems as well; that was around
1983. I finally shut down my BBS (Lakeshore Modem Magazine) on
December 31, 1985 for good.  PAT]

------------------------------

From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
Subject: Re: Pod Slurping Dangerous to Your Company
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 11:44:48 +1000


On Sat, 18 Jun 2005 13:41:11 -0500, Lisa Minter wrote:

> The thief could even access PCs that require a log-in  username/password
> by using a boot CD, a specially-crafted CD that sidesteps log-in
> authentication, said Usher.

Only on the assumption that data is actually on the hard drive, most
major organisations that I know of prohibit storage of any data on a
local hard drive and have it all on more secure network storage.

If they leave data on a local hard drive, and don't lock out booting
from a CD or Floppy (and having the BIOS password protected), then
more fool them.

> Gartner's 2004 advice would block pod slurping, added Usher, if
> enterprises adopted the research firm's recommendations to lock down
> desktops by disabling USB functionality or Windows' Universal Plug and
> Play.

And stopping booting another OS to bypass that disabling, otherwise it
could be a waste of time.


Regards,

David Clayton, e-mail: dcstar@XYZ.myrealbox.com
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
(Remove the "XYZ." to reply)

Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have,
intelligence is a measure of how many questions you have.

------------------------------

From: Choreboy <choreboyREMOVE@localnet.com>
Subject: Re: DSL Speed
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 11:02:19 -0400
Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com


Robert Bonomi wrote:

> In article <telecom24.276.9@telecom-digest.org>,
> Choreboy  <choreboyREMOVE@localnet.com> wrote:

>> A relative has a farm. His phone service comes in on 700 yards of
>> ordinary telephone cable buried along his driveway.  Last week he got
>> Bellsouth DSL.  It comes in on the same conductors as before, but I've
>> seen speeds fifty times faster than dialup.

>> I thought 56K was the fastest speed possible with conventional
>> telephone cable.  How can DSL be so much faster with the same old
>> cable?

> You thought 'wrongly'.   <grin>

> "56k" is the theoretical maximum speed you can get across a (mostly
> analog) POTS service circuit.  The limit is not in the wiring, per se,
> but in the _equipment_ (the 'switch' in the telco 'central office')
> that that signal has to pass through.  "Voice" calls, including data
> modem, and fax, over POTS PSTN, leave your house as analog signals. at
> the telco, the first thing that happens is that they are converted to
> a _digital_ data-stream.  this conversion is done at a rate of 8000
> samples/second., with 8-bits of data 'precision' for each sample.
> This means that there is 64,000 bits/second of digital data flowing
> through the switch for a voice line.  You cannot send more data than
> that via _analog_ origin signalling, And, to achieve that 64,000
> bit/second, your signalling must exactly match (and be synchronized
> with) the intervals used by the analog-to-digital conversion gear in
> the C.O.  If there is _precisely_one_ analog/digital conversion in the
> path, then, with some fancy games on the 'digital' end, you can come
> 'close' to that 64,000 bit/sec limit, _without_ requiring the exact
> synchronization.

If 56K is the theoretical limit usually given, does this mean only
seven bits are useful to the customer?  It seems as if modems
negotiate speeds in increments of 4% or so.  I wonder why that is.

> The _wire_, itself, is capable of passing a much broader range of
> signals.  *If* the signal doesn't have to go through the 'voice'
> switching equipment, you are not restricted by the limits of _that_
> equipment.

On dialup, the farm couldn't negotiate modem speeds quite as fast as I
could in town.  I assumed the limitation was in the wire.  That's why
I was amazed to see that DSL seems to use the wire in the same way as
dialup.  Was I wrong to think the reason dialup data rates were slower
at the farm was that the wire to the CO is longer? 

> This is how DSL works, it bypasses the _voice_ switching gear.  It
> uses just the 'bare wire' between the telco C.O. and the customer
> premises.  The special eqipment in the C.O. puts a *different*kind*
> of signal on the wires, that the "DSL modem" at the customer
> premises understands, and the 'modem' at the customer location does
> 'something similar', to communicate back to that special equimpent
> at the Telco offices.

> Voila! the limitations/restrictions of the telco voice_ switching
> equipment are bypassed, and thus 'not relevant' to this
> communication.

What's the downside for the telco?  With the right pricing, I think
they could tap a huge market for increased bandwidth.

------------------------------

From: AES <siegman@stanford.edu>
Subject: Re: Monitor/Recorder for Residential Power Line Outages?
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 08:33:28 -0700
Organization: Stanford University


Multiple mea culpas or brain glitches of my own to apologize for:

>> In article <telecom24.275.11@telecom-digest.org>,
>> bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi) wrote:

>>> It should be obvious that any such device will need to be powered by 
>>> some sort of UPS.  Whereupon you may as well use a UPS.  <grin>

I missed (or misinterpreted) the <grin>.

>> In my household the built-in wall oven apparently has a built-in
>> battery;

> Usually a 'super-cap', rather than a real battery.

Makes sense, and adds a small item to my EE education.

>> Most annoying is the expensive, highly touted Bose radio: it loses all
>> its settings -- time, station presets, etc -- on even the slightest
>> power glitch.  (Lots of other things not to like about this overpriced
>> radio as well -- DON'T BUY BOSE is my recommendation.)

>> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Now wait a minute! I have a Bose radio
>> and that does not happen. The radio has a battery compartment which
>> keeps everything in place. The battery does _not_ continue to play
>> the radio, but when our power goes out here, I do not have to reset 
>> the clock or the presets, etc. Do you have a battery in your Bose
>> radio?  PAT]

> Depends on the model, Pat.  Bose does make more than one.  ;)

On closer inspection mine does have 9 V battery backup -- and the
battery was dead.  (My radio is installed in a tight space, hard to
pull it very far out, and I missed the battery compartment on the
bottom.)

Still seems to have poor FM reception however.  Adjusting the antenna
that came with it to all possible positions never gets clear reception
of a weak local station that a $25 armband sport radio with no antenna
brings in with no trouble.

------------------------------

From: Al Gillis <alg@aracnet.com>
Subject: Re: XO Communications
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 12:26:04 -0700
Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com


Well Steven, an outage involving three DS-3s would likely be related
to an OC-3 failure (an OC-3 at ~155 megabits/second will carry three
DS-3s or just over 2,000 voice channels).  I'd guess one of two
failure types caused your emotional trauma: Traditional "back hoe
fade" or an OC-3 to DS-3 mux went on "time out" for a while.

For example, at my work we've got several kinds of access -- one
flavor has a small mux (a Fujitsu FLM-150) arranged on a SONET ring to
a companion mux in a nearby CO.  That's great, except that both sides
of the SONET ride in the same fiber sheath -- so if it gets dug up
(the aforementioned syndrome of "back hoe fade") down she goes!  Also,
of course, if some of the common stuff in either mux (on either end of
the SONET circuit) fails down she goes!

And who knows?  Maybe this mux in San Bernardino wasn't even
configured for SONET -- Maybe it was just single ended!

Like many things in life now-a-days, communications is more fragile
than we might expect or like!

Steven Lichter <shlichter@diespammers.com> wrote in message
news:telecom24.272.4@telecom-digest.org:

> We had an outage today involving them and Verizon in San Bernardino,
> California.  Anyone know anything about this.  The only thing I could get
> out of them was that 3 DS3's were lost. I would think that there would
> have been backups and they would have been able to reroute within a
> few minutes.

> The only good spammer is a dead one!!  Have you hunted one down today?
> (c) 2005  I Kill Spammers, Inc.  A Rot in Hell Co.

------------------------------

From: bonomi@host122.r-bonomi.com (Robert Bonomi)
Subject: Re: '80' Country Code
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 09:11:42 -0000
Organization: Widgets, Inc.


In article <telecom24.277.1@telecom-digest.org>, Geoff
<nospam@nospam.com> wrote:

> I was looking at my call logs and have an international call from
> Spain and another country.  The number for the other country starts
> with '803' but there is no country with an '80' and '803' dialing
> code.  Any ideas where the call came from?

Best guess:  somewhere around Helsinki, Finland.

------------------------------

From: Steven Lichter <shlichter@diespammers.com>
Reply-To: Die@spammers.com
Organization: I Kill Spammers, Inc.  (c) 2005 A Rot in Hell Co.
Subject: Re: Cellphone Tax Started in Alexandria, VA
Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2005 13:12:36 GMT


The city Of Riverside, Calif. tried to do this about 15 yeara ago, it 
caused a firestorm, at the time most that had cell phones did not even 
use them in the city, but just had a billing address, they dropped it 
and as of yet have not tried that again.

Joseph wrote:

> On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 23:22:21 -0500, Lisa Minter
> <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com> quoted a news report:

>> By Robert MacMillan
>> Special to The Washington Post

>> Using a cell phone is Alexandria is about to become more expensive --
>> $3 a month more expensive.

> If you copied this you sure didn't proofread it.  If the original
> article was like this they didn't bother to proof it either!

> On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 23:22:21 -0500, Lisa Minter
> <lisa_minter2001@yahoo.com> continued quoting the news report:

>> The City Council approved a new tax on cell phones as part of the
>> fiscal 2006 budget. It will help make up some of the money that the
>> city will lose after the real estate tax rate was lowered in order to
>> provide relief to homeowners. 

> Can we say telephone gravy train?  This is about typical though isn't
> it?

The only good spammer is a dead one!!  Have you hunted one down today?
(c) 2005  I Kill Spammers, Inc.  A Rot in Hell Co.

------------------------------


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