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Message Digest Volume 28 : Issue 86 : "text" Format Messages in this Issue: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 shipping, was: Western Union public fax services, 1960 Re: To Bury or Not to Bury Re: X.25 Pad Re: X.25 Pad Re: Joint utility poles Railway Post Office Service - Re: Railway Post Office Service - Railway Post Office Service - Re: X.25 Pad Re: X.25 Pad Re: X.25 Pad FairPoint's problems could lead to hefty fines ====== 27 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ====== Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Patrick Townson and the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are included in the fair use quote. By using -any name or email address- included herein for -any- reason other than responding to an article herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to the recipients of the email. =========================== Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be sold or given away without explicit written consent. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk are definitely unwelcome. We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands against crime. Geoffrey Welsh =========================== See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 16:06:00 -0700 From: Steven Lichter <diespammers@ikillspammers.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Western Union public fax services, 1960 Message-ID: <vTTyl.23092$Ws1.1857@nlpi064.nbdc.sbc.com> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote: > On Mar 26, 9:32 am, Steven Lichter <diespamm...@ikillspammers.com> > wrote: > > >> I agree, for all my E-Bay sales I use the USPS Priority Mail and >> packages are always delivered in no more the n 3 days and in one piece. > > As far as I know, "Priority Mail" is handled differently than Parcel > Post. The USPS says to use Parcel Post when value is important. As > another posted noted, the price is about 75% of Priority Mail. Parcel > Post delivery time can be up to 8 days. > > I guess if one is mailing something a long distance and it's very > heavy, Parcel Post may save money. But based on the way the website > describes the services, I think they're pushing people to use Priority > Mail. > > > The USPS website says: > > Priority Mail® > Large or thick envelopes, tubes, and packages containing mailable > items can be sent using Priority Mail. This service is typically used > to send documents, gifts, and merchandise. Priority Mail envelopes and > boxes are available at the Post Office™. > > Parcel Post® > Small and large packages, thick envelopes, and tubes containing gifts > and merchandise can be sent using Parcel Post. > > > I am curious what kind of handling, back in the 1960s, a domestic > letter marked "Air Mail" would get; that is, beyond having an airplane > fly it instead of a train or truck, would it be expedited in other > ways? > I sell electron parts and sometimes they are very heavy so I use Flat Rate Boxes, so they cost about $8.00 with tracking and most buyers want Priority. -- The Only Good Spammer is a Dead one!! Have you hunted one down today? (c) 2009 I Kill Spammers, Inc. A Rot In Hell Co. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:19:55 +0000 (UTC) From: danny burstein <dannyb@panix.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: shipping, was: Western Union public fax services, 1960 Message-ID: <gqig9b$s78$1@reader1.panix.com> In <vTTyl.23092$Ws1.1857@nlpi064.nbdc.sbc.com> Steven Lichter <diespammers@ikillspammers.com> writes: [snip] >I sell electron parts and sometimes they are very heavy so I use Flat >Rate Boxes, so they cost about $8.00 with tracking and most buyers want >Priority. If your shipments of electron parts are very heavy, I'd hate to think what your boxes of neutronium weigh. obtelecom: in a large, but declining, portion of the world, the local telecom systems are cross-owned by the postal services. ***** Moderator's Note ***** I had considered, very briefly, a joke along those lines when I approved the original post. I decided that it was too easy. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:06:56 -0700 (PDT) From: Wes Leatherock <wleathus@yahoo.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: To Bury or Not to Bury Message-ID: <357754.72974.qm@web112217.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> On Thursday, March 26, 2009 1:22 PM "Shawn" <shawnl@up.net> wrote: > Even laying underground telephone cable / fiber or even CATV coax in > existing neighborhood has it's issues. You can use plows to put > the cable underground without too much work, but you have to > directional bore at each paved driveway, sidewalk, or road crossing. > That's time consuming and expensive. Imagine a line of 20 houses, > each with a driveway and sidewalk going from the house to the road. In my neighborhood the utility easement is at the back property line, which the telco used a number of years ago to place buried cable replacing the existig aerial plant. The cable company remains on the pole line, shared with the power company. Is the cable company permitted to use the easement? Wes Leatherock wleathus@yahoo.com wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:49:13 GMT From: Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: X.25 Pad Message-ID: <87zlf7u47u.fsf@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> "nicofranzy@googlemail.com" <nicofranzy@googlemail.com> wrote: > Can anbody gives me some phone numbers to dial in a public X.25 Pad? There are phone book listing for "Packet service public dial ports" in my phone book (Nova Scotia, "South Shore" book, area code 902): 3101-300 baud 543-6850 3101-1200 baud 543-1360 3101-2400 Auto 543-1113 3101-Auto 9600 MNP 543-5699 The phone book entry for "DataPac" points to that entry. As these exist in the 543 exchange (small market town), I assume they exist in other Aliant exchanges as well. For a year or two around 1990, I had VMS and Unix accounts at different universities but lived in a very rural place that had upgraded from party lines only a couple of years before. All the Uni accounts were long-distance calls. So I used DataPac for a couple of years, until our fledgling ISP finally provided a local-call dial port. BH> ***** Moderator's Note ***** BH> BH> I'm not sure that there _are_ any more public X.25 networks, but if BH> there are, I think you'll need to start an account with one of them BH> before you dial into it. BH> BH> Bill Horne BH> Temporary Moderator I had to open an account with the local telco and pay a monthly bill to use DataPac. But I've completely forgotten how the authentication worked. -- Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 21:36:17 GMT From: Howard Eisenhauer <howarde@REMOVECAPShfx.eastlink.ca> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: X.25 Pad Message-ID: <fdhqs4tkl40ogdfc51puvq59ft598p1dea@4ax.com> On Fri, 27 Mar 2009 08:23:18 -0400 (EDT), Mike Spencer <mds@bogus.nodomain.nowhere> wrote: >"nicofranzy@googlemail.com" <nicofranzy@googlemail.com> wrote: > >> Can anbody gives me some phone numbers to dial in a public X.25 Pad? > >There are phone book listing for "Packet service public dial ports" in >my phone book (Nova Scotia, "South Shore" book, area code 902): > > 3101-300 baud 543-6850 > 3101-1200 baud 543-1360 > 3101-2400 Auto 543-1113 > 3101-Auto 9600 MNP 543-5699 > >The phone book entry for "DataPac" points to that entry. As these >exist in the 543 exchange (small market town), I assume they exist >in other Aliant exchanges as well. > >For a year or two around 1990, I had VMS and Unix accounts at >different universities but lived in a very rural place that had >upgraded from party lines only a couple of years before. All the Uni >accounts were long-distance calls. So I used DataPac for a couple of >years, until our fledgling ISP finally provided a local-call dial port. > >BH> ***** Moderator's Note ***** >BH> >BH> I'm not sure that there _are_ any more public X.25 networks, but if >BH> there are, I think you'll need to start an account with one of them >BH> before you dial into it. >BH> >BH> Bill Horne >BH> Temporary Moderator > >I had to open an account with the local telco and pay a monthly bill >to use DataPac. But I've completely forgotten how the authentication >worked. I just checked the Halifax phone book, they have 300, 1200, 2400 & 9600 baud connection phone numbers under "Packet Access, Public", I tried calling in, the modems are live but I couldn't get a prompt. h. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 04:30:47 GMT From: Tom Horne <hornetd@remove-this.verizon.net> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Joint utility poles Message-ID: <XDYyl.218$zg5.10@nwrddc02.gnilink.net> Neal McLain wrote: > Add three inches of radial ice and a 100-mph wind, and communications > cables can put a huge lateral force on a poleline. Are there actually installations that can withstand three inches of radial ice? Once the ice passes 0.3 inches here we're heading for a major power and communications failure with ordinary residential streets looking like plates of spaghetti. -- Tom Horne "This alternating current stuff is just a fad. It is much too dangerous for general use." Thomas Alva Edison ***** Moderator's Note ***** My brother lives near Washington, D.C., where everything is a crisis: the lines can't take much ice because of the weight of the conversations they carry, and because of the winds blowing constantly from the Capitol. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 01:13:30 -0700 (PDT) From: f_scheer@remove-this.yahoo.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Railway Post Office Service - Message-ID: <aeaf735e-4b70-48b1-98e0-0e1cf0c54ed8@y13g2000yqn.googlegroups.com> Hanco said: > The other issue is what other modes were available for speedy > transmission. As mentioned, the post office offered air mail and > special delivery which may have been overnight in 1960 and a heck of > a lot cheaper even with premium postage. There may have been air or > railway express services that delivered overnight; I know overnight > rail service was available from NYC to Chicago via the 20th Century, > though I don't know the cost. The cost was first class postage appropriate for the weight. A letter posted in a special mail box at LaSalle Street Station in Chicago around 4 PM was delivered the next day in New York or intermediate cities such as Cleveland and Albany. There were many other Railway Post Office routes which provided similar next-day or second day service for first class mail. A letter moving more than 2,000 miles would likely arrive faster via air mail --but much of this mail was distributed in Railway Post Offices for the beginning and/or end of a letter's journey. If one wants a cut-away view of the Railway Post Office on the 20th Century Limited, please send me a request with your email. The file size is about 1 mb. My address is fscheer at railwaymailservicelibrary dot org (which you such convert to an email format). The railway station at Boyce, Virginia, which is home to the Railway Mail Service Library, was a Western Union office as well as a Railway Express Agency - and later became the town's post office. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:46:54 -0700 (PDT) From: hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: Railway Post Office Service - Message-ID: <4ce84eb5-cc7b-4a44-a52a-e3745a8c858e@r18g2000vbi.googlegroups.com> On Mar 27, 9:26 am, f_sch...@remove-this.yahoo.com wrote: > The cost was first class postage appropriate for the weight.  A letter > posted in a special mail box at LaSalle Street Station in Chicago > around 4 PM was delivered the next day in New York or intermediate > cities such as Cleveland and Albany.  There were many other Railway > Post Office routes which provided similar next-day or second day > service for first class mail.  A letter moving more than 2,000 miles > would likely arrive faster via air mail --but much of this mail was > distributed in Railway Post Offices for the beginning and/or end of a > letter's journey. I know the RPOs had mail slots for the public and mail could be sent via the premier trains, but I wasn't aware that it was at the regular rate. Overnight NYC-Chicago at the First Class basic rate is excellent service, and I'm not sure that's available today. I have a question about railway postal operations: In addition to RPOs, where mail was sorted on board the train, there were also many trains where mail was simply carried. Mail was carried on fast passenger trains and was profitable for the railroads. But in the late 1960s the post office pulled the mail off. That sudden loss of business hurt many trains and the railroads ceased running them. Would anyone know where I could find out more information about the Post Office's decisions in that era? (I wrote the Postal Service but got only a very general booklet in response.) Also, when the post office claims "two day delivery", sometimes that's for delivery to the final postoffice, not delivery to the ultimate destination. If mail arrives at the delivery post office after the carrier has left, it will sit for another day. Back when long distance was expensive people wrote letters. The letters of older presidents (ie FDR, Truman) to their families provide a critical insight into history of the times. Histories fret that later presidents who use the phone won't leave behind such a legacy. In WW II servicemen and their families exchanged letters and today those old letters are part of the historical record. Today soldiers in the field overseas have cell phones and call home as they please. (I have trouble picturing the images of "The Longest Day", with soldiers huddled down, telling their captain to wait because they're on their cell.) Older people, such as Eleanor Roosevelt, were not comfortable communicating over the telephone. ER did not like the phone and her phone calls were short and terse; she much preferred to communicate by letter. I should note that earlier presidents got to choose what letters became public and what did not; their records were considered their personal property. Letters on very sensitive issues were burned. Today it seems every utterance of the president becomes "official public record", something I don't think is fair nor healthy for the truly free exchange of ideas. When advisors discuss a problem, to properly do so they must consider all possibilities, including extreme ones. But subsequent news media and authors will blast the advisor for suggesting something extreme and play it totally out of context. IMHO, things like text messages and informal email should not be considered public property and forcibly archived. I strongly believe the privacy of telephone conversations and messages ought to be strictly enforced. But today's technology, as opposed to telephony of the 1960s, allows that call log data is easily recorded and distributed and even the conversations and messages themselves easily digitally recorded and later accessed and distributed. ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 18:15:09 -0700 (PDT) From: wleathus@yahoo.com To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Railway Post Office Service - Message-ID: <849377.3181.qm@web112222.mail.gq1.yahoo.com> On Friday, March 27, 2009 3:13 AM f_scheer@remove-this.yahoo.com wrote: >> The other issue is what other modes were available for speedy >> transmission.  As mentioned, the post office offered air mail and >> special delivery which may have been overnight in 1960 and a heck of >> a lot cheaper even with premium postage. There may have been air or >> railway express services that delivered overnight; I know overnight >> rail service was available from NYC to Chicago via the 20th Century, >> though I don't know the cost. > The cost was first class postage appropriate for the weight. > A letter posted in a special mail box at LaSalle Street Station > in Chicago around 4 PM was delivered the next day in New York or > intermediate cities such as Cleveland and Albany.  There were > many other Railway Post Office routes which provided similar > next-day or second day service for first class mail.  A letter > moving more than 2,000 miles would likely arrive faster via air > mail --but much of this mail was distributed in Railway Post > Offices for the beginning and/or end of a letter's journey. Mail boxes were on the platform at many railroad stations which were collected by the clerks in the Railway Post Office car.  Some examples were at the Rock Island station in Enid, Oklahoma, and the M-K-T's Highland Park suburban station in Dallas.  The latter was served by the Texas Special and a letter mailed there would be delivered in St. Louis the next morning.  RPO's sorted the mail en route so it reached its destination ready for the letter carriers, in many instances. Many non-stop points along the route of the RPO were served by catcher arms on the RPO cars, where the outgoing puuch was picked up without stopping and the incoming pouch was sent out the door for the mail messenger or agent to retrieve. Note this meant many intermediate points, not just large cities, were served this way which meant they had as good and fast a service as large cities...and much faster than airmail service where the mail had to be taken to and from an airport by the Postal Service or taken from the airport to the destination post office. With RPOs covering th U.S.A., Frank's 2,000-mile figure is about right for air mail to be faster mostly between cities with airports, but for non-airport cities the distance would bw much further before air mail would be faster because of the prior and/or subsequent movement by surface transport. Wes Leatherock wleathus@yahoo.com wesrock@aol.com ------------------------------ Date: 27 Mar 2009 09:28:31 -0400 From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: X.25 Pad Message-ID: <gqik9v$k5l$1@panix2.panix.com> nicofranzy@googlemail.com <nicofranzy@googlemail.com> wrote: > >Can anbody gives me some phone numbers to dial in a public X.25 Pad? > >***** Moderator's Note ***** > >I'm not sure that there _are_ any more public X.25 networks, but if >there are, I think you'll need to start an account with one of them >before you dial into it. Telenet and Tymnet both had public access numbers.... you could call in, connect to a remote address and it would bill the recipient if you didn't have an account. I doubt there is any of this still operating. There might be some vestiges of Widanet out there somewhere. The internet killed the public switched data network a decade ago. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ***** Moderator's Note ***** The question is - "why?". Tymnet and Telenet were in place, working, and available for data transmission before the Internet explosion, so why didn't they become the "MAC layer" for the new ISPs? * Was it cost? I'd be surprised if the cost of installing and maintaining modem pools in every city was less than what the major X.25 carriers would have charged. * Did the X.25 networks fall behind the demand? If so, why didn't they expand? Did their managers underestimate the demand growth? * It couldn't have been compatibility: I was able to connect an Anderson-Jacobson terminal, which used the EBCD code, to Compuserve via Telenet. They did the speed and code conversion transparently. Bill Horne Temporary Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:19:38 +0000 (UTC) From: wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: X.25 Pad Message-ID: <gqin9q$h3c$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu> In article <gqik9v$k5l$1@panix2.panix.com>, Telecom Digest Temporary Moderator wrote: >The question is - "why?". Tymnet and Telenet were in place, working, >and available for data transmission before the Internet explosion, so >why didn't they become the "MAC layer" for the new ISPs? Because X.25 was far too slow and had far too much overhead (both bandwidth-wise and financial). There were encapsulations defined, even an entire class-A network set aside for "IP over PDN", but this approach was more expensive than building pure-IP networks, despite the capital costs. The fact that the PDNs, at least in the U.S., were locked into a model of charging for connect time and for each character made the costs look worse, and telco technologies like Frame Relay provided similar flexibility without the overhead. -GAWollman -- Garrett A. Wollman The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are wollman@csail.mit.edu nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry Opinions not those grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape of MIT or CSAIL. our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness ------------------------------ Date: 27 Mar 2009 21:34:07 -0400 From: kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: Re: X.25 Pad Message-ID: <gqjuqf$jv0$1@panix2.panix.com> Scott Dorsey <kludge@panix.com> wrote: > >The question is - "why?". Tymnet and Telenet were in place, working, >and available for data transmission before the Internet explosion, so >why didn't they become the "MAC layer" for the new ISPs? Because they were slow as a pig, and because the whole point of the new ISPs is that you didn't need to have a long distance connection, you connected up to a local provider. >* Was it cost? I'd be surprised if the cost of installing and > maintaining modem pools in every city was less than what the major > X.25 carriers would have charged. During the last bit of the BBS Revolution in the eighties, Telenet came out with a service called PC Pursuit which allowed you to use a local dial-in into a distant dial-out, over the X.25 framework, for a fairly reasonable price. But the Internet killed the need to call up distant BBSes. >* Did the X.25 networks fall behind the demand? If so, why didn't > they expand? Did their managers underestimate the demand growth? > >* It couldn't have been compatibility: I was able to connect an > Anderson-Jacobson terminal, which used the EBCD code, to Compuserve > via Telenet. They did the speed and code conversion transparently. Yes, that they DID do very well. But long distance rates fell, and the price of competing services fell, and then the internet took over. --scott -- "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis." ------------------------------ Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:23:00 -0700 (PDT) From: Joseph Singer <joeofseattle@yahoo.com> To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu Subject: FairPoint's problems could lead to hefty fines Message-ID: <246512.56632.qm@web52703.mail.re2.yahoo.com> PORTLAND, Maine FairPoint Communications Inc. has been suffering lost revenue, lost customers and a tarnished image because of ongoing customer service problems the last couple of months. It also faces the prospect of hefty fines down the road. State regulators in northern New England can hit FairPoint in the wallet with penalties totaling millions of dollars if it fails to improve customer service. http://tinyurl.com/ceybnh ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom- munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational service offered to the Internet by Patrick Townson. All the contents of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. The Telecom Digest is currently being moderated by Bill Horne while Pat Townson recovers from a stroke. Contact information: Bill Horne Telecom Digest 43 Deerfield Road Sharon MA 02067-2301 781-784-7287 bill at horne dot net Subscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=subscribe telecom Unsubscribe: telecom-request@telecom-digest.org?body=unsubscribe telecom This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm- unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and published continuously since then. Our archives are available for your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list on the internet in any category! URL information: http://telecom-digest.org Copyright (C) 2008 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved. Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA. ************************ --------------------------------------------------------------- Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing your name to the mailing list. All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. End of The Telecom digest (13 messages) ******************************