31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981

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The Telecom Digest for August 22, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 201 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: AT&T sets deadline for 2G sunset in 4 years (Gordon Burditt)
Re: Converting Lat/Long from degrees-minutes-second to decimal degrees (Barry Margolin)
Re: Converting Lat/Long from degrees-minutes-second to decimal degrees (Bill Horne)
Don't download that app: US presidential candidates will STALK you with it (Monty Solomon)
Another chapter in history (redacted)

====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======

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Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 23:43:01 -0500 From: gordonb.q31vc@burditt.org (Gordon Burditt) To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: AT&T sets deadline for 2G sunset in 4 years Message-ID: <QcKdnYxmb6JIjK7NnZ2dnUVZ_vKdnZ2d@posted.internetamerica> >>> AT&T sets deadline for 2G sunset in 4 years > I still have and use my RAZR V3 solely for telephony which is all I need > since I have more computers in my home office than do most small offices > and businesses. In other words, I have no need for a smartphone or any > texting or mapping or app capabilities at. So what's the bottom line? Assuming all the other cellphone providers follow suit, is my Motorola RAZR V3 going to be unusable junk in 4 years? How about if I only care about voice? I actually haven't used it much since I upgraded to a Blackberry, but it occasionally has been lent out as a 911-only phone. I won't be that upset if it becomes useless, but it seems a waste for people who don't need or want smartphones, apps, web browsing, etc. Gordon L. Burditt
Date: Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:57:32 -0400 From: Barry Margolin <barmar@alum.mit.edu> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Converting Lat/Long from degrees-minutes-second to decimal degrees Message-ID: <barmar-282A21.19573220082012@news.eternal-september.org> In article <k0sebh$ldi$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>, wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) wrote: > In article <E1T3Iqi-0003JI-1V@telecom.xen.prgmr.com>, > <bill@horne.VALID-IF-THIS-IS-ELIDED.net> wrote: > >Here's a great FCC site that converts Latitude and Longitude in > >Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds to or from Decimal Degrees. > > > >http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/DDDMMSS-decimal.html > > > > Of course, with no disrespect to Dale Bickel, it's also trivial to do > with a calculator. And if you don't need much precision, it's not too hard to do in your head. 10 minutes is .167, 20 minutes is .333, 30 minutes is .5, etc. -- Barry Margolin, barmar@alum.mit.edu Arlington, MA *** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 18:13:41 -0600 From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Re: Converting Lat/Long from degrees-minutes-second to decimal degrees Message-ID: <k1187l$eak$1@dont-email.me> On 8/20/2012 5:57 PM, Barry Margolin wrote: > In article<k0sebh$ldi$1@grapevine.csail.mit.edu>, > wollman@bimajority.org (Garrett Wollman) wrote: > >> In article<E1T3Iqi-0003JI-1V@telecom.xen.prgmr.com>, >> <bill@horne.VALID-IF-THIS-IS-ELIDED.net> wrote: >>> Here's a great FCC site that converts Latitude and Longitude in >>> Degrees, Minutes, and Seconds to or from Decimal Degrees. >>> >>> http://transition.fcc.gov/mb/audio/bickel/DDDMMSS-decimal.html >>> >> >> Of course, with no disrespect to Dale Bickel, it's also trivial to do >> with a calculator. > > And if you don't need much precision, it's not too hard to do in your > head. 10 minutes is .167, 20 minutes is .333, 30 minutes is .5, etc. I think you guys want to drag out the slipstick that's on display, IIRC, in the M.I.T. AI Lab: the one that's mounted in the fire-extinguisher case, with the label that says "*In*Case*of*Power*Failure,*Break*Glass*". (Pause for laughter to finish). Now, I agree that, if I were the captain of a square-rigger rounding the Horn (pun intended), I might want to have an Astrolabe on hand, or to have the table of logarithms memorized the way Bowditch did it. I am, however, only occasionally in need of such expertise, and I'm content to let a machine do the calculation for me. The late Michael Crichton (1942-2008) was on my side: he wrote an essay about why he flunked a math course at Harvard Medical school because he refused to do calculations by rote after calculators had been invented. OBTelecom: There was a researcher at Bell Labs who pointed out that measures of traffic load for exchanges could be done more simply (and faster) by merely recording the power consumed by an office during the desired time period. He was told that it would take too much effort to retrain workers who were used to tallying call counts and using Poisson tables. Bill -- Bill Horne (Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:06:48 -0400 From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com> To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Don't download that app: US presidential candidates will STALK you with it Message-ID: <p062408a9cc58d75c09d5@[10.0.1.9]> Don't download that app: US presidential candidates will STALK you with it Romney mobe application even requests permission to record audio ... By John Leyden The Register 20 August 2012 Security researchers have uncovered privacy shortcomings in the mobile applications offered by both the Barack Obama and Mitt Romney presidential campaigns. The campaign teams of the incumbent US President and his Republican challenger have each released apps for both iOS and Android, in good time for the election on November 6. Experts at GFI Software looked at the Android versions of both apps, discovering both to be surprisingly invasive. Obama for America and Mitt's VP request permissions, access to services and data and capabilities beyond their core mandate. For example, each of the apps features the ability to cross-post on users' behalf and report back to base. One app even has a tool to encourage users to go canvassing on behalf of the candidate, which in GFI's test directed Obama supporters to an unsafe part of a US town - just north of downtown Clearwater, Florida. Both Android apps slurp the details of users' contacts and log location data, as a rundown by GFI on both apps and the permissions they seek explains. The Romney app even requests permission to record audio for unspecified (and so-far unactivated) purposes. ... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/08/20/us_pres_campaign_mobile_app_privacy/
Date: Tue, 21 Aug 2012 20:55:06 -0400 From: redacted@invalid.telecom-digest.org To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org. Subject: Another chapter in history Message-ID: <E1T3zDu-0000NU-3Z@telecom-digest.org> Today marks the start of the thirty-second year of continuous publication for the Telecom Digest.
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.
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