The Telecom Digest for January 11, 2011
Volume 30 : Issue 10 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
====== 28 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: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 08:29:06 +1100
From: David Clayton <dcstar@myrealbox.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Against Headphones
Message-ID: <pan.2011.01.09.21.29.02.537367@myrealbox.com>
On Sat, 08 Jan 2011 21:40:47 -0500, Monty Solomon wrote:
>
> Against Headphones
>
> By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
> January 7, 2011
>
> One in five teenagers in America can't hear rustles or whispers, according
> to a study published in August in The Journal of the American Medical
> Association. These teenagers exhibit what's known as slight hearing loss,
> which means they often can't make out consonants like T's or K's, or the
> plinking of raindrops. The word "talk" can sound like "aw." The number of
> teenagers with hearing loss - from slight to severe - has jumped 33
> percent since 1994.
>
........
> According
> to that report, headphone users who listen to music at high volumes for
> more than an hour a day risk permanent hearing loss after five years.
>
> Maybe the danger of digital culture to young people is not that they have
> hummingbird attention spans but that they are going deaf.
>
> ...
As someone who used to frequent live - and very loud - music performances,
this will just be an addition to that way of damaging hearing that has
been going on for decades now.
I still recall coming out of my very first loud show and walking straight
onto a road and almost being cleaned up by a truck - because I couldn't
hear it coming, or anything much at all for the next couple of days!
The worst thing that happens these days to me is when my mobile phone
doesn't answer correctly and when I put it to my ear I get blasted with
the uber-loud ringer - that physically stings as well as deafening that
ear for a few minutes.
--
Regards, David.
David Clayton
Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Knowledge is a measure of how many answers you have, intelligence is a
measure of how many questions you have.
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 07:41:17 GMT
From: sfdavidkaye2@yahoo.com (David Kaye)
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: More on abandonment of telephone directories
Message-ID: <iged6t$4nc$1@news.eternal-september.org>
Lisa or Jeff <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com> wrote:
>One person quoted in the article, a web publisher, asserts that people
>don't want to receive telephone books anymore. I don't agree with
>that.
A distinction should be made between white pages and yellow pages. Many
telcos are abandoning white pages, but yellow pages directories continue to
hold strong everywhere.
In fact, in recent years upstarts have such as Valley Yellow Pages in Northern
California have tried to grab some of that money by publishing their own
directories offset by about 4 months after the local telco yp has been
distributed.
In San Francisco, the current AT&T yp, just released in December, had 990
pages, not including special coupon pages.
I advertise in several yp books and have had phenomenal success with it.
But as for white pages, many telco companies have been petitioning their state
PUCs to allow them to stop publishing them. I don't have any disagreement
with that. I myself haven't looked up anybody in the local wp in probably 5
years.
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 12:10:05 -0500
From: Matt Simpson <net-news69@jmatt.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: More on abandonment of telephone directories
Message-ID: <net-news69-258113.12100510012011@news.toast.net>
In article <ig8nhq$g3$1@news.albasani.net>,
"Adam H. Kerman" <ahk@chinet.com> wrote:
> List consolidators sell information to other list consolidators and the
> original source isn't associated with the record. A list with more records,
> no matter how inaccurate, sells for more than a list with fewer. This
> mitigates against correction.
At least in this area, in addition to the "official" printed directory
produced by the landline company (AT&T in my case), households receive
several printed directories from other directory publishers. These
publishers are just interested in the Yellow Pages advertising revenue.
Presumably their white pages come from the same outdated inaccurate
lists used by the online directories.
Perhaps, as an alternative to the "official" printed directory, the
wireline companies could ensure that customers have access to an online
directory that is at least as accurate as a printed directory would have
been: i.e. a database that is updated at least once/year with
information pulled directly from the company's customer records. They
could provide this themselves, or contract with some other company to
provide it.
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2011 11:50:47 -0800 (PST)
From: Lisa or Jeff <hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: More on abandonment of telephone directories
Message-ID: <4e70e7b5-c701-41ee-a270-d7df28494136@p7g2000prb.googlegroups.com>
On Jan 7, 11:00 pm, "Adam H. Kerman" <a...@chinet.com> wrote:
> As a bad record stands as much of a chance as generating hits as a good
> record does, there is no economic incentive to make any corrections
> or to track a record back to its original source.
>
> Even worse are the number of list consolidators whose hits are used to
> feed traffic to sites that sell out of date credit record headers,
> pretending to be private investigators. They never tell you what
> credit file these headers came from either, and they refuse to
> remove listings for inaccuracy or for privacy. Again, there is money
> to be made from out-of-date information.
Sad and frustrating, but very true.
What's particularly galling is that these 'searches' of inaccurate
garbage are presented to us as an "improvement" over hardcopy
directories issued by the telephone company. As mentioned, one of the
promoters (see article) thinks this is really great. I'm afraid to
think of what his excuse would be when presented with the above facts
about the errors in their products.
As an example of the inaccuracy of list consolidators: I received an
mail ad addressed to father at my current home address. The only
thing is that my father had been deceased for 25 years. Further, he
never lived at my address and at the time he passed on, and I didn't
live there either. Somehow they linked his name and my name and
disregarded or didn't know he was deceased and issued it as a record.
I went to the bank which sent me the solicitation and asked the
manager about it, but naturally the local branch manager had no idea
or any way of finding out what was going on; this was all done
'separately'.
(I think these on-line directories are published by 'separate' units
of the big phone companies so they can waive any kind of
responsibility.)
Speaking of banks, I was gonna sign up for 'on-line' banking. As I
waded through the fine print, I discovered it included a right for
them to spam me, that is, send me emails on ads for banking services
as well as from 'affilliated companies". I immediately opted out of
the registration process. None of the less, even the partial attempt
was captured and immediately I began to receive their spam emails. I
called the bank but their customer service center said it was 'handled
separately' and there was nothing they can do. I told a manager in
there they were responsible to fix the problem, "separate or not". In
about a week the emails stopped.
Speaking of commercial spam emails, one time I sent a news note to an
engineering trade magazine, a pretty staid publication. I wouldn't
have expected them to be into spam, but they were. They did not
acknowledge my news note. However, several weeks later I began to get
email ads from them as well as their advertisers. An attempt to
unsubscribe didn't work. I didn't bother phoning them; fortunately it
was an old email account.
It bugs me that mail order films send me emails every few days about
their products. How many freakin' bathing suits does one person need--
so why does a bathing suit maker spam me every few days?
Date: Sun, 09 Jan 2011 23:36:14 -0500
From: Fred Goldstein <fgoldstein.SeeSigSpambait@wn2.wn.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: U.S.T.S.
Message-ID: <20110110043622.0516634112@mailout.easydns.com>
On Sat, 8 Jan 2011 wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) wrote,
...
<markjcuccia@yahoo.com> wrote:
> >The US competitive OCC (Other Common Carrier) IXC side of ITT/USTS,
> >aka "ITT Longer Distance" (the marketing name), ultimately found its
> >way into MCI (now VeriZon-Business/MCI), due to several mergers or
> >takeovers, by way of ... "MetroMedia Long Distance" (which BTW was
> >indeed at one time also associated with the 1960s/70s media company
> >of the same name which owned radio and TV stations,
Yes, and I have a 1995 "LDDS Worldcom" network map identifying its
source as the engineering group in East Rutherford. That was ITTs
before Bernie bought it. IIRC the Worldcom name itself came from
ITT, which used it for its International Record Carrier division.
Metromedia Long Distance was never much of anything, but MetroMedia
Fiber Network was a fairly large CAP for a time. It had started as
National Fiber Network. MMFN's idea was to pull a lot of strands
around cities, to make dark fiber available. Alas, it didn't last...
MMFN acquired AboveNet in 1999, chaptered out in 2001, and the assets
were acquired and now operate under the AboveNet name.
>Metromedia founder and CEO John Kluge died just last year. He started
>Metromedia by acquiring the assets of the failing DuMont television
>network from its founder and owner, Allen B. DuMont. Metromedia was
>also in the cable TV business, if I recall correctly, but I can't find
>immediate corroboration.
I'm not sure if Metromedia had its own cable operations. One of its
better-known operations, though, was its cellular
company. Metromedia owned a number of cellular franchises for a time
and was the actual owner of the Cellular One brand. They allowed
other A-side ("non-wireline") licensees to use it, making it a
national brand, even though it was not operated as a real
franchise. Metromedia sold its cellular interests to SBC in 1987 and
they used the Cellular One name until switching to Cingular. (Of
course after SBC acquired AT&T, they rebranded it AT&T Mobility.)
--
Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com
ionary Consulting http://www.ionary.com/
+1 617 795 2701
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 Bill Horne. 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 moderated by Bill Horne.
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) 2009 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 (5 messages)
|
| |
or 