TELECOM Digest     Thu, 6 Oct 2005 14:53:00 EDT    Volume 24 : Issue 454

Inside This Issue:                            Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    Internet Crime Shifts to Russia (Reuters News Wire)
    Windows XP Service Pack 3 Reviewed OnLine (Elizabeth Montalbano)
    Finally Cutting the POTS Cord (Brian E Williams)
    Re: Electric Powerlines to be Used For Broadband (Lisa Hancock)
    Disaster Recovery in 1871 (Patrick Townson)
    Jurrasic Telecom (Don Kimberlin, Digest July, 1999 Reprint)
    Go Ahead, You Can Ask Anything (Monty Solomon)
    Online Pioneer Sets Out to Shake Up TV (Monty Solomon)
    Deconstructing Google bombs: A Breach of Symbolic Power (Monty Solomon)
    Cellular-News for Thursday 6th October 2005 (Cellular-News)

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
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               ===========================

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.  

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

From: Reuters News Wire <reuters@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Internet Crime Shifts to Russia
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 21:11:50 -0500


Trafficking in stolen credit cards has largely shifted to
Russian-language Web sites after an international crackdown sparked
disarray among English-speaking scam artists, a U.S. Secret Service
official said on Wednesday.

The October 2004 raid, dubbed Operation Firewall, led to 28 arrests in
seven countries and shut down several Web sites that served as online
bazaars where scam artists could buy and sell credit-card numbers,
drivers' licenses and other documents.

Now much of the activity has shifted to Russian-language Web sites
that are wary of outsiders, posing additional challenges to online
investigators who must cope with language and legal barriers, said
Brian Nagel, the Secret Service's director of investigations.

"The English-speaking side of this criminal activity seems to be in
complete disarray," Nagel said at a credit-card security conference.

"The Russian-speaking side ... rebounded pretty strongly and there
seems to be more membership than there was before," he said.

Nagel said just a "handful" of Secret Service agents speak Russian.
"It's not a problem, but it's an area where we need to grow," he told
Reuters.

Those arrested in the Operation Firewall crackdown were responsible
for at least $4.3 million in losses, the Secret Service said at the
time.


Copyright 2005 Reuters Limited.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

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

From: Elizabeth Montalbano <idg@telecom-digest.org>
Subject: Windows XP SP 3 Review Surfaces Online
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 21:15:28 -0500


Elizabeth Montalbano, IDG News Service

Though Microsoft still won't confirm that it will release a third
service pack for its Windows XP operating system, a preview version of
the software update has been made available on the Web.

An "unofficial" preview pack of Windows XP Service Pack 3 is available
at The Hotfix, a software download site and discussion forum that
focuses on patches and software updates.

Info Avaiable, but Hidden

Ethan Allen, creator and administrator of The Hotfix, said Wednesday
that he assembled the preview pack from software updates sent by an
internal Microsoft source that are expected to be released in SP3.

The updates include Windows log-on improvements and features that fix
current problems with connecting Windows XP computers to various
networks, according to the SP3 forum on the site.

Allen, a Microsoft beta tester who previously worked on a contract
basis for the Redmond, Washington-based software company, updates the
list of technologies for Windows XP SP3 daily based on information
found on Microsoft's Web site.

"Microsoft makes it freely available about what's going to be in the
next hot fixes, but they hide it," Allen said. He said he found
information on updates that will be made available in Windows XP SP3
by using keywords contained in articles on Microsoft's Web site. This
is the same way he discovered the technologies that were released in
Windows XP SP2. He posted those updates on a Web site before that
service pack was released in August 2004.

Allen now works in software assurance for a Bellevue, Washington-based
high-tech company that he declined to name. He said Microsoft has not
contacted him about The Hotfix, which he launched in July.

Allen's site has also published a transcript of a chat discussion in
which Microsoft engineers fielded questions from beta testers about
whether Internet Explorer 7 will be included in SP3. According to the
transcript, Anurag Jain, a program manager on the Internet Explorer
team, said that the service pack won't include IE 7 but will "support"
it. Instead, Internet Explorer 6 will be a part of Windows XP SP3.

SP3 or No SP3?

Microsoft provides service packs to add what the company and its users
think are important updates to the current releases of its software. 
For example, Windows XP SP2, which significantly updated Windows XP,
included software intended to make the OS more secure.

Reports published last week quoted Microsoft France's technical and
security director Bernard Ourghanlian as saying that a third service
pack for Windows XP will become available after the next version of
the client OS, Windows Vista, ships at the end of 2006.


A Microsoft spokesman Wednesday insisted that Microsoft still hasn't
decided whether to release SP3 for Windows XP.

"We have not confirmed plans for a Service Pack 3 for Windows XP yet,"
said Michael Burk, product manager for Windows Vista. "At this point,
the Windows servicing team is reviewing the feedback on Windows XP SP2
and is still evaluating timing and alternatives for the next Windows
XP servicing release."


Copyright 2005 PC World Communications, Inc.

NOTE: For more telecom/internet/networking/computer news from the
daily media, check out our feature 'Telecom Digest Extra' each day at
http://telecom-digest.org/td-extra/more-news.html . Hundreds of new
articles daily.

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For more information go to:
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------------------------------

From: Brian E Williams <sorry_no_email@yahoo.com>
Subject: Finally Cutting the POTS Cord
Date: 5 Oct 2005 11:52:19 -0700
Organization: http://groups.google.com


http://tinyurl.com/9jqae

Above link is a picture of the inside of my outside telecom box here
in the USA.  I want to route my Vonage VoIP service to my internal
phone network, so first I am going to disconnect the internal network
from the POTS provider as a test.  I am guessing that I just flip
those little connectors up and then pull out the solid blue and
blue-white wires, being careful to keep them arranged for easy
reconnection.

Is there anything else I need to worry about?  Also, is having four
wires standard for a single line?  Maybe that is how I can do three
way calling and call waiting, but I never thought about it before.


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: The two features you asked about; call
waiting and three-way calling are _central office features_ and have
nothing to do with your internal wiring. All you really need for a 
single central office line is two wires, typically red/green  or
perhaps in newer configurations solid blue and blue/white. The absolutely
most important thing to remember is avoid having the central office
lines (whatever color they are) come in contact with the VoIP lines.
Having them come in contact will almost surely cause the VoIP box to
fry out. As long as the _live_ telco wires do not come in contact with
the VoIP line or your house wiring then wherever your telco line
reached before, your VoIP line should reach now.  PAT]

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

From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
Subject: Re: Electric Powerlines to be Used For Broadband
Date: 5 Oct 2005 13:06:01 -0700
Organization: http://groups.google.com


> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: A couple things I do not understand
> about voice communication over electrical power lines: Some say it
> will not work; others say it is okay. My own experience has been that
> (a) Chicago Transit Authority for many years (has?) used the third-
> rail for telephone conversations between control towers/trains/station
> agents.  (b) I personally have tried so-called 'wireless intercoms'
> between different locations nearby; sometimes they worked (although in
> a rather piss-poor way; other times not at all. I have no personal
> experience with (a) but have been told the connections are very
> 'noisy' many times, and (b) when they worked, they seemed to have a
> lot of 'hum' in the background. When they did not work (all I got
> was hum with no audible voice at all) I am told this was because the
> two intercom stations involved were on opposite 'legs' of the
> transfomer.  Can anyone explain this better to me?

I am not an expert on the technology, but it is not hard to "piggyback"
voice communication over an electric power line in various ways:

a) Some college and high school radio stations use facility power lines
as their transmission media.  A regular radio tuned to the proper
frequency will pick up the signal, but the radio has to be in a school
building.

b) As mentioned, there are home intercoms that transmit over house
wires.

c) Some subway-el systems transmit trainphone over the 3rd rail.  I
don't think the quality is that good and there is a lot of "hum" in the
power background.  (Even regular telephone circuits pick up the hum).
I believe some systems started off with 3rd rail carrier but switched
to true radio, which requires the stringing of antenna through all the
tunnels and stations, but gives a better signal and allows hand held
walkie-talkies.

An electric wire can carry currents of different frequencies, so AC
power current, DC power current as well audio frequency and radio
frequency can be all carried on the same line.  For example, a RR line
powered by AC has both the AC power (25 or 60 Hz) as well as the
control signal (100 Hz and others) sharing the medium.  Some lines
even have multiple power sources from a separate wire, such as DC via
third rail.  There are "filters" (IIRC, "impedence bonds") that
separate out the stuff.

So, from a purely theorectical point of view, voice and data
communications can be carried on power lines.  How well and expensive
that would be in practice remains to be seen.

> I know that the third-rail seems like an awful way to transmit voice
> communications.  On the one occassion I had to see the CTA system in
> action, I called into the CTA main headquarters phone number (MOHawk
> 4-7200) and the operator switched me to a supervisor in one of the
> control towers several miles away for whom I had a question. The
> connection, frankly, was not all that good. Once I also called Grand
> Central Station in downtown Chicago to the Lost and Found; she
> switched me to the Lost and Found in Baltimore, OH, also via the
> trackside phone lines. That connection sounded pretty bad also. PAT]

For the calls above I doubt they used the trainphones, which are meant
more for trains.  Before SEPTA switched over to Bell, it's internal
communication system between towers and the like was pretty bad.  That
was the result of just physical decay of the private network -- old
wiring, open pole wire, old telephone sets and switchgear,
interference from power sources, etc.  SEPTA dumped it's own system
and switched over the Bell Centrex which was a huge improvement.

PATCO's original internal telephone system (a used SxS switch) had a
terrible hum in the background since the switch was atop a power
substation and telephone lines near traction power lines.  It has been
replaced and it's much nicer now; presumably the new system has better
filters to keep out the power noise.

Well into the 1980s a lot of carriers had handcrank local battery
telephones still in use as wayside telephones; many of those phones
used antique components.

Keep in mind that railroads and transit carriers almost always built
their own voice communications network instead of relying on Bell; it
was more cheaper given the distances involved.  I suspect the
widespread deployment of ESS allowed Bell to offer reasonable rates on
a regional Centrex system that wasn't possible before.  For example,
the Upper Darby Terminal of the Mkt-Fkd line is out of the city limits
and it's a 3 message unit between one terminal and the other.  Given
the numerous times the dispatchers, motormen, towermen, cashiers,
supervisors, and shopmen need to communicate with each other 24 hours
a day the message unit charges would be horrendous; it's free with a
private system.  Further, carriers already have trained staff who
maintain the traffic control signals and they maintain the telephone
network as well.

In the last 30 years, both railroad and transit have upgraded much
(but not all) of their systems.  Railroads have gone heavy into fibre
optic and even satellites.  Transit has gone into advanced systems
"applique" phones.  NJ Transit gives train crews Nextel cellular
phones for emergency use and to double as walkie-talkies.

Would anyone know the history of telephone ownership on the New York
City subways and IRT, BMT, and IND predecessors?  I think whatever
private networks they might have had were dumped long before other
subways.

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

From: Patrick Townson <ptownson@cableone.net>
Subject: Disaster Recovery in 1871
Date: Wed, 5 Oct 2005 23:40:38 -0500



[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Here is an article I wrote nine years
ago, in October, 1996 for this Digest, marking the 125th anniversary
of the Great Fire in Chicago, October 8-9, 1871. I hope you will enjoy
seeing it again, in the event you missed it first time around. As the
Chicago Historical Society did this month, you might like to make some
comparisons between Katrina/New Orleans last month and the Great Fire,
134 years ago this week.  PAT]

             Telecom Disaster Recovery in 1871
        by Pat Townson, ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu


It was 125 years ago on October 8-9, 1871 that the Great Fire in
Chicago completely burned out a large portion of the city as it
existed at that time. The entire month of September had been very dry
and with no rain. In those times everything here was built out of wood
with the exception of 'modern fire-proof buildings' which were made
out of bricks.

The exact reason for the fire was never detirmined. There is the one
theory of the Cow, and although the cow's owner Mrs. O'Leary at first
alluded to the possibility that her lantern may have been kicked over
by the cow during its milking, she later testified under oath in
special hearings before the Chicago Board of Aldermen (what is now the
Chicago City Council) that no such thing had occurred. Other witnesses
who lived nearby Mrs. Oleary's home claimed they had seen teenagers
'sneaking into the O'Leary barn to smoke cigarettes ...'

Oddly enough, Mrs. O'Leary's house did *not* catch fire and burn down
although her barn and some 17,000 other buildings in the city were
destroyed by the time the fire was extingquished due to a heavy
rainfall early on Tuesday morning, October 10. About 90,000 persons
were left homeless, and about 300 persons died in the fire. The fire
burned from about 9:00 pm that Sunday night, throughout the day on
Monday and until shortly after midnight at the start of Tuesday.

A combination of factors made the fire as bad as it was. Not the least
were the nearly exhausted firemen who had battled a rather large fire
on the west side of the city less than 24 hours earlier. Winds of 30
miles per hour spread the blaze rapidly. The 'sidewalks' were made of
wooden planks elevated slightly off the ground and these had lots of
trash under them. The citizens also were caught off guard or perhaps
simply ignored the urgency of the matter until it was too late.

The steeple of City Hall contained a large bell which was used by the
Fire Alarm office to warn of such emergencies. It was operated by a
mechanical device which was spring-wound, much like the clock which
was also in the tower of the steeple. This device had a 'clutch' or
similar on it and could be set to ring the bell with various cadences
to mean various things. One ring and a pause meant a fire in the north
part of the city; two rings and a pause meant a fire in the south part
of the city; three rings and a pause meant a fire on the west side of
the city; four rings and a pause was a general alarm to which all
citizens were urged to heed.

But as the {Chicago Tribune} reported two days after the fire, for
nearly a week prior the bell had been ringing almost constantly due a
large number of small fires all over the city created by the very dry
weather and tinderbox conditions. The Tribune noted that 'our citizens
cannot be blamed for giving the bell little attention that night; for
over a week it seems everywhere we walk about town there is scarcely
more than a few minutes passing before we see a team of horses racing
down the street pulling their water-wagon with the firemen astride it
making loud noises with their gongs to warn us to step aside quickly
and let them past ...' So that warm and very pleasant Sunday evening
as the good citizens of Chicago returned to their homes from church
services they heard the bell in City Hall and most just said, 'oh, it
is another fire somewhere ...' and let it go at that.

At the telegraph office on LaSalle Street, the fellow who was the
combination clerk/telegrapher on duty that Sunday night sat 'on the
wire' talking about it with other telegraphers in cities far and
wide. Even to him, it was 'just another fire' -- although a bigger one
than usual -- as he looked out the window and saw the orange glow a
mile or so to his southwest.  Everyone assumed the fire would end when
it burned its way to the south branch of the Chicago River near
Roosevelt Road. It was common for the telegraphers to 'chat' among
themselves when none of them had any traffic.  They'd sit at the 'key'
and just idly 'converse' with their counterparts around the nation. If
any of them had something to send over the wire, he'd just tap the key
a couple times in a sort of heavy-handed way and the others who had
been chatting among themselves would become silent. Then the one who
had interuppted would key "I have traffic", and the other operators
would remain silent while he passed his traffic to wherever it was
going. When he had finished, there would be a few seconds to a minute
of silence as the others waited to see if more traffic was to follow,
and if none was there, the chit-chat among them would begin again. The
Chicago guy even mentioned it was quite a fire that seemed to be going
on the west side of town that night.

Then what no one expected would happen did happen. Strong winds
carried burning chunks of wood, etc across the river, and the first
few landed on the roof of the People's Gas Works Building. Employees
at the gas works had the presence of mind to cut the gas supply
immediatly, but sufficient gas under extreme pressure in a holding
tank nearby was all that was needed to cause an explosion that, as the
Tribune later reported 'must have been seen and heard by God Almighty
Himself, wherever He is, considering the huge ball of fire which rose
into the air and the noise of the explosion as the gas works went up
in flames. That was about midnight Sunday night, and from that point
on, the fire just simply spread from one building to the next
throughout the downtown area.

In an interview in the {Chicago Tribune Sunday Magazine} in 1911 on
the fortieth anniversary of the fire and the fiftieth anniversary of
the employment of the man who had been on duty in the telegraph office
that night, the man told his memories of the occassion. By 1911, the
Chicago telegraph agency was operated by Western Union (it had not
been in 1871). WUTCO, as readers here know, was itself a consolidation
of several small telegraph companies and their agencies which took
place over a half century or so. The old gentleman was retiring from
employment with WUTCO that year in 1911, and people at the Chicago
Historical Society, the Tribune and others felt his story needed to be
recorded, because as the {Chicago Daily News} noted about the same
time, 'soon all the people who were around at the time of the fire
will be dead, and no one will be left to tell the real story.'

In his interview in the Tribune Sunday Magazine in 1911, the man
mentioned a few things he remembered from that night forty years
earlier. He remembered that:

Mayor Roswell Mason had come to the telegraph office with some of the
aldermen about 1:00 am when it was apparent the fire was going to
destroy most of the city. Mayor Mason had told him to send out several
telegrams immediatly; one to the president of the United States
informing him of the disaster; one to General Sheridan of the United
States Army asking for a declaration of martial law and to send
troops; 'and a few others were sent calling for assistance to be
given.'

By the time he had sent those messages as ordered by Mayor Mason, the
wires were abuzz all over the country as other operators heard the
messages being transmitted and began talking among themselves. By then
it seemed every telegraph operator in the United States on duty at
that time of night was talking about the great fire going on in
Chicago. There was also traffic on the wire about a fire of similar
fury and destructiveness going on at about the same time in the
smaller town of Peshtigo, Wisconsin, where some 2000 people lost their
lives over a 24 hour period.  He recalled watching the fire as it was
burning in several buildings across the street from the telegraph
office and then it became obvious his own office was going to go up in
flames also. He said that he gathered up what he could of the
company's books and records, as well as the cash box at the front
desk, and stored it all in the fireproof safe there. 

He sat down at the telegraph key one last time and 'broke' the
chatters who immediatly went silent expecting that traffic was to be
passed. When he had their attention he said, "the roof of our
building here has caught fire and I am getting out now. Goodbye, we
will be in touch when we can ..." He said he recalls grabbing a few
more things to toss in the safe before locking the door on it while
the 'key' was chattering and other operators were sending words of
encouragement. He said he remembers 'God bless' coming on the wire as
he was going out the door. It was fortunate he left when he did,
because within about a minute the roof collapsed in flames and the
entire building began to burn, just as every other building around him
was already doing.  

[TELECOM Digest Editor's 1996 Note: A quick side note: I am reminded
of the great flood a few years ago when the old underground tunnel
system here sprang a leak and the Chicago River began pouring into the
tunnels and the sub-basments of buildings all over the downtown
area. Although City Hall was one building which had to be totally
evacuated, there were ten or so women who stayed behind -- the centrex
phone operators -- who took call after call from the media all over
the world as well as countless frightened citizens asking for
information about the disaster. One of the ladies was asked, 'how long
are you going to remain there?' and she replied 'until the phones go
out of service or the water has risen to this level or the police come
and carry us out. :) '

For about two hours employees of Ameritech frantically worked to
re-route the City Hall centrex lines away from the rising flood waters
in the basement to a location directly across the street in the
Chicago Temple Building. They lost to the flood; the water rose faster
than they could get the Fire Department lines and the centrex lines
relocated, so the ladies were 'off line' about 45 minutes along with
the people who answer fire calls routed to them through 911. For about
45 minutes, calls to 312-744-4000 and/or 911 just went off to nowhere;
no ring, no answer but then suddenly it started ringing again and the
cheery ladies who had taken several thousand extra calls that day
responded once again. They had all gotten up and walked across the
street to the Temple Building where banks of phones had been set up
for the operators and the Fire Alarm office personnel. Other City Hall
workers would be without phone service for a few more days.  PAT]

He said he remembered walking around downtown the rest of the night,
going no where in particular but just watching the fire everywhere. 
The streets were almost entirely deserted. He said perhaps the most
grotesque thing of all was the bell in the steeple at the City
Hall. His words were, "the bell was on a wind up spring attached to
gears which allowed it ring without human intervention. What was so
strange was that long after the people in the Fire Alarm office itself
had fled in terror seeking to save their own lives and what they could
of their possessions in their homes, that bell continued to
ring. Totally deserted streets downtown and that bell with its hideous
sound as it would ring four times and pause, then four more times and
pause ... a fire everyone! a fire! ... but no one there to listen to
it.  

And then he watched as the cupola of City Hall caught fire and 'the
flames swept wildly up the steeple itself and into the tower. The
ropes which held the bell in place began to burn and presently the
bell itself fell to the ground with an awful noise and the mechanicals
kept moving up and down as the remains of the rope to the bell got
tangled up in it.' And then soon the clock itself got dislodged from
above and fell to the ground next to the bell.  He recalled that about
about 3:00 am that Monday morning the fire further jumped the main
part of the river and spread into the north part of the city. The
water works caught on fire and the hydraulics which caused air
pressure to go into the mains went out of order. That was the end of
any possible fire fighting efforts. Nonetheless people did what they
could on the north side all day Monday to save their homes but with
little or no success.  

He went back to the place where the telegraph office had been located
shortly after daybreak to find only smoldering ashes with the building
completely down, but the company safe still standing there. One of his
supervisors asked him to go along with him to the telegraph office in
the village of Austin to the west of the city (now a neighborhood in
the city known as Austin) where they could obtain tools and spare
equipment to get themselves up and going as soon as possible. He said
they rode their horses out that way and he recalls passing two young
ladies on their way to work downtown carrying their lunch sacks; they
were totally oblivious to everything and apparently unware of the
fire. He said to his supervisor they would certainly be surprised when
they got downtown ... :) With tools in hand, a lot of wire, spare
telegraph keys and the help of everyone employed there, he said they
managed to relocate the telegraph office by the middle of the day
Tuesday. He said they relocated in an area in the 'Customs Building'
on South Clark Street near 18th Street and after working the entire
day Monday and all that night they had a crude facility set up and
operational Tuesday afternoon.  He recalled that when they first began
attaching the keys to the newly installed wire, the keys of course
came to life immediatly with traffic and at the first available free
space in the traffic he 'broke' the other operators 'this is Chicago,
I told you we would be back as soon as possible.' The other operators
started chattering about it immediatly of course, wanting to know the
extent of the damage, etc.  There were 'floods of traffic for several
days afterward' as people anxiously inquired about relatives and
friends. He said that at every minute there were three or four
telegraphers on duty; none of them stopping for more than a few
minutes at a time with people lined up in the street waiting to get
out messages and a lot of messages coming in almost constantly around
the clock.  

The first messages sent out were by Mayor Mason to government
officials telling them of actions he had taken. He recalled Mayor
Mason's message to the president of the United States in which he
stated, "In emergency session of the Board of Aldermen on Monday I
instructed the aldermen to get on their horses and ride to Lincoln
Park (where over a hundred thousand people camped out homeless on
Monday night) to assure the citizens that everything possible is being
done for their welfare, and to advise them that the government has
been restablished and is in control."  He noted the message to the
president continued by saying that martial law had been declared and
that the First Congregational Church had been seized by the government
to serve as the temporary location of City Hall ... and that
furthermore, several railroad trains which had entered the city on
Monday and Tuesday had been comandeered by the police with the food
and other supplies therein seized to be given to the citizens 'most of
whom went without their supper on Monday night as they stood in the
park, grateful that the only real things of value -- their loved ones
 -- were there safe with them ...'

He remembered the day afterward, the Tuesday when the telegraph office
re-opened for business and his visit to the downtown area that afternoon:
'Never did I see so many people downtown on one day. Thousands of people
came downtown to wander the streets and look in amazement and awe. Just
rubble everywhere. The safe remained too hot to open on Monday but after the
rain Monday night it cooled off and on Tuesday morning executives of the
telegraph agency went to the now burned out premises to open the safe and
retrieve the contents. Quite a few of the documents were singed and crumbled
into ashes when picked up, but there was quite a bit they saved.'

Looters and trouble-makers used the circumstances of Monday to their
advantage that night, and groups of citizens formed vigilante parties
to protect what remained from the disaster. He noted in the Tribune
interview that 'General Sheridan and his troops rode into town late
Tuesday evening and never were the citizens so glad to see anyone in
their lives. Order was restored almost immediatly when General
Sheridan placed on display a revolver and a noose made from rope and
explained "these are the tools I will use for those who need them.
__Orderly distribution of relief supplies_ will follow immediatly
beginning at six tomorrow morning (Wednesday). My men (the troops)will
be at nearly every street corner assisting the police. The first
business to re-open downtown was that same Wednesday, two days after
the fire. A man built a small wooden stand and had vegtables and
fruits for sale. The Tribune Building had also burned down despite its
supposedly fire-proof status, and the Tribune missed publication that
Monday, but was back in business with a Tuesday edition from their new
headquarters a few blocks away, and their headline that first day back
after the fire was 'Chicago Will Rise Again'.

The telegraph office stayed at its new location for several years until
Western Union bought it, and it then moved into the new building WUTCO
constructed at 427 South LaSalle Street where it remained until the 1980's.

Telephones were yet to come; they would not be available for another seven
or eight years in the city.

REFERENCES:
Visit the Chicago Historical Society on the web. http://www.chicagohistory.org

PAT

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

Subject: Jurassic Telecommunications, Part I
Date: Thu, 06 Oct 2005 09:22:13
From: Donald E. Kimberlin
Organization: TELECOM Digest




[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Another reprint, this time by Don Kimberlin
writing to us in July, 1999. PAT]

Jurassic Telecommunications, Part I

This is the first in a series about the beginnings of what we today so
casually take as Telecommunications. Reaching back into those late
Victorian and Edwardian era times before the world had electronics,
the first developers were forced to accomplish their feats with
unwieldy, often heavily mechanical methods one could as easily credit
to Jules Verne. While a large part of these methods have become
obsolete, it is amazing to consider what those first contributors to
telecommunications did accomplish.  At the same time, seeing their
methods reveals some delightfully simple ways of understanding how the
patchwork of today's technology operates and how to manage it.

Valdemar Poulsen - The Doctor Frankenstein of Telecommunications?

Poulsen is perhaps best known for his other major contribution to the
art of telecommunications, a literal fire-breathing monster that
functioned as a radio transmitter. That story, however, stands quite
apart from one that more closely parallels Mary Shelly's tragic hero.

If the immortality we hope for really exists, then it follows there is
likely a collegium of archangels or a pantheon of gods of man's higher
accomplishments. Valdemar Poulsen rightly deserves a place in such a
group for his contributions to man's shrinking of time and space; to
man's increase of social intercourse, and thus, one would hope, the
furtherance of peace and harmony in the world today.

However, one of Poulsen's major contributions has had its dark sides
as well as its benefits.

The first notion of recording sound by magnetic means seems to have
been stimulated rather early in Thomas Edison's spew of development
around 1880.

Then-prominent American mechanical engineer Oberlin Smith, after a
visit to Edison's Menlo Park, NJ laboratory, filed an 1878 patent
caveat that was never followed up. It described the notion of
recording electrical signals produced by a telephone onto a steel
wire.

While investigating ways in which speech might be recorded, Edison;s
assistant Sumner Tainter noted on March 20, 1881; "A fountain-pen is
attached to a diaphragm so as to be vibrated in a plane parallel to
the axis of a cylinder. The ink used in this pen to contain iron in a
finely divided state, and the pen caused to trace a spiral line round
the cylinder as it is turned. The cylinder to be covered with a sheet
of paper upon which the record is made." (1)

It's interesting that had the Edison team followed this route and
succeeded, the world may have had postally mailable recordings on
paper sheets a hundred years ago. Rather, however, developments
focused on purely mechanical means to record and play back sound. Not
yet having any of the electronics necessary to amplify the weak
magnetic signals or to prepare the magnetic medium by biasing it,
mechanical recording certainly would have been seen as the only
practical method of the era. From the Edison notebooks, it seems that
idea lay fallow for almost two decades.

Oberlin Smith decided in 1888 that he would not pursue his idea. He
"donated" it to the public by publishing his ideas about magnetic
recording in the journal Electrical World. (2) This publication may
have caught the interest of Poulsen, who after all, had attended the
university at which earlier Danish physicist Hans Oersted made the
connection between electricity and magnetism in 1820. By 1893, then
24- year-old Poulsen was working for the Copenhagen Telephone Company.

Poulsen attacked a point about magnetic recording that Edison had not
addressed -- the matter of how to play back a magnetically recorded
message.  He found that, indeed, Faraday's principle of magnetic
induction would operate to make a magnetic recording
playable. Poulsen's first demonstration device was simply a steel
chisel edge along which he moved a small pickup coil. He sidestepped a
suggestion by Smith of using cotton thread impregnated with iron
powder, advancing directly to a wire suspended across a room. He
mounted the record/pickup coil on a moving trolley.

To achieve a compact and portable device for his patent application,
Poulsen had by 1898 formed the wire into a drum-like vertical
coil. This was rotated with a crank to cause the wire to pass under a
fixed record/pickup coil assembly, as shown here. (3)

Poulsen's earliest patent papers showed he was aware that tape was a
practical option to wire. It was not until later designers attempted
to store steel wire on reels that wire twisting became an irritating
source of high audio frequency loss. That change was not to ensue
until around 1928, when Germans working for AEG and BASF addressed the
Edisonian notion of applying iron power to a paper (by now paper tape)
backing. This created the Magnetophon tape recorders used in German
broadcasting until their discovery by American Jack Mullin at the end
of WW2.

But, back to Poulsen and his first development. At the outset, his
Telegraphone was intended to store either analog speech or digital
Morse telegraph signals. Poulsen's original Danish patent application
indicated his Telegraphone was intended for use to answer unattended
telephone lines and record messages for later playback.

Thus, we see that Valdemar Poulsen's first plan for his development
was to provide Copenhagen Telephone Company with central office based
voice mail, which of course, has a parallel in the telephone answering
machine and other forms of voice mail we now encounter daily. Much is
made by persons in the recording industry of Poulsen inventing
magnetic recording, but little or nothing is said of the often
frustrating other outcome of his work!

It would appear, however, that the world little appreciated Poulsen's
breakthrough at the outset. He took it to the Paris Exposition of
1900, there paralleling a promotional device used by Alexander Graham
Bell a quarter-century earlier. Just as Bell managed to get the
Emperor of Brazil to exclaim interestedly that a telephone worked (in
Philadelphia in 1878), Poulsen snagged Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria
into a demonstration of recorded voice on the Telegraphone. Based on
that royal attention, the Telegraphone was described in glowing terms
by the technical and scientific press as superior to the phonograph
and a great advance in physics as well.  It won Poulsen a gold medal,
but not business success.

Poulsen obtained patents on his Telegraphone in a number of nations,
and even founded an American Telegraphone Company in 1903, with a
manufacturing plant in Wheeling, West Virginia. Efforts to market the
Telegraphone as a business office dictation machine met with little
success, but a number of Telegraphones were marketed to railroads
through Western Union Telegraph as recording devices for Morse
telegraph messages. Correspondence in the Lemuelson Collection of
Western Union at the Smithsonian Institution attests to use of
Telegraphones on the P. and R. railroad, the Northern Pacific
railroad, the L. and N. and the D. and H. railroads.

One can surmise the Telegraphone drew AT&T's attention, as a version
was offered that could answer an unattended telephone - even in 1903!
American Telegraphone moved to Springfield, Massachusetts in 1910,
then went into bankruptcy receivership in 1918, never to emerge; only
to finally close in 1944 following Poulsen's 1942 death.

Other interests, however, benefited and prevailed from Poulsen's
original concepts, even during his firm's bankruptcy. Not the least
was AT&T, which for reasons not completely published, began delving
into magnetic recording in 1930. Bell Telephone Laboratories initiated
a major research effort in magnetic tape recording under the direction
of Clarence N. Hickman. By 1931, prototypes designs were made for a
steel tape telephone answering machine, a central-office message
announcer, an endless loop voice-training machine, and a portable,
reel-to-reel recorder for general purpose sound recording.  None were
said to enter production except for the voice trainer, which failed in
the marketplace. AT&T's official policy on telephone recording devices
was that they would not be allowed on public telephone lines. (4)

The steel tape ramification of magnetic recording seems to have been
of particular interest to AT&T. Although their interest in magnetic
recording was declared not an AT&T business objective, I personally
saw steel tape playback units used in AT&T's overseas radio station
for Miami at Fort Lauderdale, Florida. In that use, vertical steel
tapes ran in a glass-enclosed cabinet about 6 feet high over flat
brass rollers to endlessly play back the message heard by so many on
HF radio over the years, This is a test transmission from a station of
The American Telephone and Telegraph Company. This station is located
near Miami, Florida.

Similar messages emanated from plants near New York and San Francisco
for decades. ostensibly from those Telegraphone-like steel
tapes. Obviously, by the 1960's, the later developments by Armour
(since Marvin Camras' work in 1939), Brush and Ampex interests were
mushrooming so as to overshadow any remembrance of the start Poulsen
gave to the recording art.

Along the way, however, there was a heinous incident in which
Poulsen's conception figured. At the Telefunken radio long wave radio
stations built around 1910 at Tuckerton, New Jersey and Sayville, New
York, Telegraphones were found useful for first recording Morse radio
messages at normal speed, then transmitting them at high speed on the
radio link so as to gain throughput on their expensive, gargantuan
international radio links to Germany.

It just so happened that by 1915 Telegraphone-originated high speed
transmissions raised the curiosity of radio experimenter Charles Adgar
in New Jersey when WW1 was still a European war. Adgar, when one day
playing back recordings of the US - German link, had the spring wind
down on his Edison machine. Messages from Sayville became
readable. One of them was a copy of the infamous 'Zimmerman letter',
in which the German Foreign Minister encouraged Mexico to attack the
United States, to divert attention from the European war. The final
straw was the message on May 7, 1915 telling German submarine U-39 to
'get Lucy', ordering the sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania.

On intercepting that message, the US Navy immediately seized the Sayville
and Tuckerton plants of Telefunken, ultimately expropriating them after the
war. Finally, when GE and Westinghouse joint ventured the Radio Corporation
of America, the new RCA was given them as part of reparations for the war.
Poulsen, who obviously knew of his machine's involvement in that action, may
indeed have felt like our tragic hero, Doctor Frankenstein.

Want to know more? Here are some references and websites with related
information:

http://www.dmg.co.uk/ibex/museum/25years_a.htm
'Some possible forms of phonograph' by Oberlin Smith, The Electrical World,
September 8th 1888.
Danish Patent 1,260, Valdemar Poulsen, 1898.
http://www.cinemedia.net/SFCV-RMIT-Annex/rnaughton/POULSEN_BIO.html
http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~dmorton/mrchrono.html
http://www.asb.com/usr/w2g3zfj/lusit.htm
http://www.asb.com/usr/w2g3zfj/fliwh1/hiscom.htm


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: (in 1999) If you were reading this
Digest several years ago, you will recall that Donald Kimberlin was a
very frequent contributor; then he just sort of dropped out of
sight. I hope that the above means we are going to be hearing from him
again on a regular basis. Of course his article above will receive
permanent placement in the Telecom Archives at
http://telecom-digest.org/archives/history very shortly. Welcome back,
Don!  PAT]

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

Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 01:36:33 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Go Ahead, You Can Ask Anything


By WALTER S. MOSSBERG

If you're one of those people who thinks he's always right, but can't
prove it on the spot, we might have just the technology for you.

This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested a new service
called AskMeNow that attempts to be like a digital version of Who
Wants to Be a Millionaire's phone-a-friend. This service works by
answering questions of all sorts in just a few minutes for free, or in
some cases for 49 cents per question.

AskMeNow, based in Irvine, Calif., is a division of Ocean West Holding
Corp. and is currently only available in beta (or prerelease version),
but its full-scale service will come out in the beginning of next
month. Its concept is very straightforward: You send questions to the
service by calling from your cellphone or emailing directly from a
portable smartphone, and answers are sent back to your phone or
hand-held via Short Messaging Services (SMS) or email within about a
minute.

Questions can be asked for free using a form-entry method, called
"auto answers," or by calling in questions that don't fit into one of
the form-entry categories. (These are referred to as "AskAnything"
questions, and they are the ones that cost 49 cents each.)

To answer your questions, the company employs real people who sit at
computers in the Philippines, furiously researching the Internet
(using data from content partnerships) trying to respond to your
queries within three minutes. This doesn't always mean the response is
correct. It simply means that the retrieved information was online
somewhere. But our results proved rather accurate.

If your question has been asked before, it's more likely to get a
faster response because its answer is already on file. AskMeNow
reserves the right to not answer questions that aren't family
friendly. The service sometimes answers opinion questions using
opinions posted online, but we couldn't get an answer to our question,
"What is the hippest bar in Washington, D.C.?"

http://ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20051005.html

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

Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 01:44:04 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Online Pioneer Sets Out to Shake Up TV


By SAUL HANSELL

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Jeremy Allaire has a long history of shaking up 
the established order as an Internet pioneer.

Mr. Allaire was an architect of the evolution of Macromedia's Flash 
system into a video format that is now second only to Microsoft's 
Windows Media platform in popularity for delivering video on the 
Internet. Now, he has started a new company called Brightcove.

As with his earlier ventures, Mr. Allaire intends to shake up an 
industry - this time, the world of television - by allowing all types 
of video producers, from media giants to anyone who has a camcorder, 
put their work on the Internet and make money if anyone watches it.

Set in an office building at the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, Brightcove will offer three interrelated online services. 
It has tools that let television producers load their video onto its 
servers, arrange them into programs and display them to Internet 
users. It will help producers charge fees for their video, if they 
choose, or sell advertising on their behalf to insert into the 
programs. And it will broker deals between video creators and Web 
sites that want to display the video, arranging for the profits from 
such arrangements to be split any number of ways.

Three dozen production companies are testing the production tools 
now, and a few have started publishing videos using the tools. By 
early next year, Brightcove will have the ad sales and fee systems 
built and will open its distribution network to nearly any video 
producer through a Web site.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/06/technology/06bright.html?ex=1286251200&en=195314d237212120&ei=5090

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

Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 09:55:39 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
Subject: Deconstructing Google Bombs: A Breach of Symbolic Power?


http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_10/tatum/index.html

Deconstructing Google bombs: A breach of symbolic power or just
a goofy prank?

by Clifford Tatum
First Monday v10n10
October 2005

Abstract

In this study I compare two Google bombs using Melluci's (1996) social
movement framework. Viewing the Google bombing practice as a social
movement provides an informative lens from which to analyze the nature
and goals as well as the results of this form of online collective
action. The empirical basis for this research relies on analysis of
the content and context of Google bomb hyperlinking using an approach
informed by Beaulieu's (2005) notion of sociable hyperlinks. From this
study I conclude that the Google bombing practice is an online protest
technique not unlike the "media mind bomb" developed by the late Bob
Hunter of Greenpeace (2004) fame. In the case of Hunter's mind bombs,
sounds and images were used to form alternate constructions of reality
in the news media. Similarly, Google bombs are constructed by
manipulating the relative ranking of an Internet search term and
thereby creating alternate constructions of reality through collective
action online.

Contents

Introduction
Analytical framework
Deconstructing Google bombs
Discussion
Conclusion

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_10/tatum/index.html

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

Subject: Cellular-News for Thursday 6th October 2005
Date: Thu, 6 Oct 2005 07:26:06 -0500
From: Cellular-News <dailydigest@cellular-news.com>


Cellular-News - http://www.cellular-news.com


  Shoppers Unhappy With Phone Shops - report
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14304.php

As wireless penetration among new users begins to slow and the
competition to keep existing customers continues to accelerate, the
likelihood of switching providers among those most dissatisfied with
their recent retail ...

  Telecom New Zealand Offers Compensation Over Billing Fault
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14305.php

New Zealand's Commerce Commission says that it has reached a
settlement with Telecom Mobile after a billing fault on the 027
network resulted in thousands of customers being charged peak rates
for off-peak calls....

  Leather, Willow and 3G
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14306.php
  CDMA Group Publishes 3G Evolution White Paper
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14307.php
 
The CDMA Development Group (CDG) and Signals Research Group have jointly published a white paper on CDMA2000 evolution to 3G and beyond and the benefits it offers to operators in regards to capacity, data throughput, enh...

  More Cash for Mobile Content Firm
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14308.php

The mobile content provider, Mforma Group says that it has raised
US$30 million in a third round of institutional financing. The round
was led by Institutional Venture Partners (IVP), and includes
participation by existi...

  Top Selling Handsets in September 2005
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14309.php

The Swedish manufacturer of carrying cases for portable electronics,
Krusell, has released their "Top 10"-list for September 2005. The list
is based upon the number of pieces of model specific mobile phone
cases that has...

  Americans Benefit from Mobiles more than Europeans - report
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14310.php

The wireless industry has become a strong driver of the USA's economy,
comparable to the US automobile industry, according to Ovum the
analyst and consulting firm. In a study commissioned by CTIA-The
Wireless Association...

  Sprint Files Patent Infringement Lawsuit Agaist Two Telcos
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14289.php

w Jones)- Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) filed a patent infringement lawsuit
against two separate companies, alleging they infringed seven of its
patents relating to voice over packet technology. ...

  Vodafone New Zealand Lifts Fiscal Year Net Profit, Will Reinvest In Network
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14290.php

Jones)- Vodafone New Zealand said Wednesday its full year net profit
was 18% higher than a year ago and added that the increase will allow
it to continue investing in its network as it battles rival Telecom
Corp. of New...

  Nokia To Commence Fixed-Mobile Trial in Brazil
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14291.php

Jones)- Finland's Nokia Oyj (NOK) said Wednesday it has signed a
Memorandum of Understanding with Brazilian telecommunications giant
Telemar Oi to begin trials of Nokia's Fixed Mobile Convergence
solutions. ...

  T-Mobile Launches "web'n'walk" Mobile Internet Service
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14292.php

es)- T-Mobile International AG (TMO.YY), the mobile telecommunications
arm of Deutsche Telekom AG (DT), Wednesday launched a mobile Internet
service called "web'n'walk." ...

  FOCUS: Russia mulls fighting mobile handset thieves
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14293.php

Russia is facing a rising problem of mobile handsets theft. In 2004,
the Moscow police officially registered over 7,000 mobile handset
thefts. However, analysts consider that the real number of stolen
mobile handsets is ...

  Ericsson To Supply 3G Network To Polish Operator
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14294.php

Jones)- Swedish telecommunications equipment maker Telefon AB LM
Ericsson (ERICY) Wednesday said it will supply a 3G network to Polish
operator Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (PTC.YY). ...

  Nokia Gets GSM/EDGE Expansion Deal In Argentina
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14295.php

Jones)- Finland's Nokia Oyj (NOK) Wednesday said it has signed an
agreement with Argentine phone company CTi Movil Argentina to deliver
servers to enable an expansion of the GSM and EDGE networks in
Argentina. ...

  O2 Launches i-mode In Ireland
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14296.php

es)- O2 PLC (OOM.LN), the U.K. mobile telecommunications company,
Wednesday launched its i-mode mobile Internet service in Ireland, with
handsets enabled for the service available in shops from Friday. ...

  Belarus’ MDC mobile subscriber base up 4.1% in September
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14297.php

The subscriber base of Belarus’ mobile phone operator
Mobile Digital Connection (MDC) increased 4.1% on the month in
September to 1.645 million users, the company said Tuesday. ...

  Siemens To Expand PTC's 3G Wireless Network In Poland
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14298.php

Jones)- German technology company Siemens AG (SI) has an order from
Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (PTC.YY) to expand the Polish
telecommunications company's third-generation wireless technology
network to the cities of Poznan...

  Nokia Delays Launch Of Mobile Internet Device Until 4Q
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14299.php

Jones)- Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia Corp. (NOK) Wednesday said it
has delayed the launch of its wireless Web surfing device, 770
Internet Tablet, to the fourth quarter. ...

  Ukraine's Jeans mobile subscriber base up to 5 mln users Sep 30 
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14300.php

The subscriber base of Ukraine's Jeans rose 74% since the beginning of
the year to 5 million users as of September 30, Ukrainian Mobile
Communications (UMC) said in a press release. ...

  Russia's Euroset to cooperate in MVNO project with MTT
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14301.php

Russia's largest mobile handset retailer Euroset has concluded an
agreement with Multiregional Transit Telecom (MTT) on cooperation in
the development of Euroset's mobile virtual network operator (MVNO)
project, an MTT...

  Lucent Tech In External Manufacturing Services Pact With Celestica
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14302.php

Jones)- Lucent Technologies Inc. (LU) said Wednesday it entered into a
pact that gives Celestica Corp. (CLS) the exclusive right to
manufacture most of Lucent's existing and new wireless products for
three years. ...

  TeliaSonera says holders to invest $60 mln in Moldova's Moldcell in 5 yrs
  http://www.cellular-news.com/story/14303.php

Shareholders of Moldova's mobile service operator Moldcell
plan to invest U.S. $60 million in the company within five years,
Anders Igel, CEO of TeliaSonera, Moldcell's key shareholder, said
Wednesday. ...

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


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