Return-Path: Received: by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.7.4/NSCS-1.0S) id BAA26270; Fri, 24 May 1996 01:36:25 -0400 (EDT) Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 01:36:25 -0400 (EDT) From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Message-Id: <199605240536.BAA26270@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Subject: TELECOM Digest V16 #245 TELECOM Digest Fri, 24 May 96 01:36:00 EDT Volume 16 : Issue 245 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Sorry About That! Another Heart Attack Got Me (TELECOM Digest Editor) Book Review: "The Internet Instant Reference" by Hoffman (Rob Slade) FTC Online Workshop on Privacy (Monty Solomon) Supreme Court Topples Last Obstacle to Caller ID (Tad Cook) Book Review: "Packet Communication" by Metcalfe (Rob Slade) Book Review: "The Java Programming Language" by Arnold/Gosling (Rob Slade) Bellcore to Charge For NANP Letters (Pierre Thomson) Fugitive Surrenders After Photo Seen on FBI Website (Tad Cook) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 24 May 1996 00:10:19 EDT From: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu (Patrick A. Townson) Subject: Sorry About That! Another Heart Attack Got Me Hello Folks, When we last chatted, last weekend in fact, I was feeling pretty good physically. Saturday night about midnight a friend suggested we go down to the Village Inn for 'a few' and that seemed like a good idea. I said I would meet him over there in maybe a half hour. After several days of temperatures in the *forties* all of a sudden Friday and Saturday brought us temperatures in the *nineties* with a great deal of humidity. Maybe that is what did it, I dunno ... Walking down the street, not even a block from my house, all of a sudden those *awful* pains in the upper chest. If you have had a heart attack before (and I have, late in 1994) then you know the kind of pain I mean. With it came the voluminous amounts of perspiration. It makes no difference -- it could be below zero in January -- a person having a heart attack is going to sweat profusely. I sat down there for a few minutes on a bench gathering my thoughts wondering if this time it was going to be the end since last time I got off sort of easy. A Skokie police car pulls up to the curb and the cop says, "Hey, Mr. Townson, you don't look like you feel well. Want me to have someone come and get you?" I am stubborn; I tell him I don't feel like having the wagon-man come to pick me up off the sidewalk and take me home. It is not 'that kind' of a problem. He suggests the medics could 'come over from Rush-Prez' but I told him no on that also. He drives away. I think to myself if I sit here a few minutes everything will be fine. I do NOT want to go to the hospital; I do NOT want -- or intend -- to have this get 'out of control' (i.e. me not in control of my own affairs) as it did the time before in the fall of 1994. With my trusty cellular phone at hand I call the person I was supposed meet on his cellular phone and told him where I was sitting and why. He arrives five or ten minutes later while I am still sitting there in pain worse than ever. Not the sort to listen to my BS, he and the person with him load me in their car and we set out for the hospital which is only four blocks away. We pull up in the emergency driveway and I am still detirmined to do my own thing, so I get out and walk inside. The first people I see when I get inside are two paramedics; the two guys who make the emergency runs here in Skokie at night. Amazingly, the one called me by name and actually remembered me from a year earlier. "You said he would be here in a few minutes," he said to someone I did not see at first, but then I saw it was the police officer who had seen me originally. He had been over by the vending machines. Then to me the paramedic said, "How come you did not take Officer Ass-Kick's advice when he found you laying on the sidewalk on Church Street and let him call 911?" The cop laughed at that and said something about how he was afraid I might have kicked his ___. "Well the dude has to deal with us now," said the one, and with that they literally each picked me up and carried me into one of the little exam/emergency treatment rooms. Before I could protest much -- and it would have been a half-hearted one if I had -- these two had me totally stripped laying on the table and they were variously doing an EKG, checking my blood pressure and otherwise prodding me. Overhead I hear the speaker in the ceiling saying "a code in ER, a code in ER; a walk in, paramedics are calling for assistance." About that point the two people who had driven me there had parked the car and come inside, and hospital staff members were starting to arrive. The computer was 'down' at the moment so they were unable to get my earlier chart from a year before which might have saved a little time but probably did not matter. The EMTs turned me over to the hospital staff at that point, and these are not the kind of guys that you die on; you just don't. With very contagious smiles and upbeat attitudes they let me know (and I don't think I am any exception) that they were in control. By about 5 AM the staff had moved me up to the intensive care unit where I saw a couple more people I recognized and who greeted me *by name* ('oh, we remember you from last year when you were here'). The routine was the same as before. All day Sunday I felt like hell, loaded with morphine, ISMO, and whatever else. Sunday night was the worst with periods of 'sleep' that ranged from five minutes at a time to as much as an hour at a time. In one sense sleep is good because it is nature's own anethestic. But with the sleep would come outlandish dreams and then suddenly I would wake up and in the seconds after wakening try to make sense of the outlandish dream as it would quickly slip away only to see the sides of the bed I was in and the walls around me and wake to the terrible realization of where I was at and was going on. Then in a few minutes, maybe, off to sleep again. Sunday night into Monday morning was a l----o-----n----g night. But each time I would awaken within seconds there would appear Daniel Del a Torres; he liked being called Danny and was a registered nurse. As full of optimism as any you would find. No angiogram this time, however they did have me do the stress test and the heart photos which are part of it. And of course with the blood thinning stuff they use (seriously, it makes your blood look sort of like strawberry soda) there had to be a lot of blood drawn and tested. If they draw blood three or four times daily, then of necess- ity once or twice will be in the middle of the night. That long Sunday night, about three o'clock Monday morning -- I can't remember if I was awake or sleep -- Danny comes over to my bed along with another fellow. This one is a tall (like 6'5") black guy with a sort of Michael Jordan kind of build. His name is Isaac, I am told, and I should plan on seeing him a couple times nightly for the next few nights since he is the overnight lab tech. He is wearing a cute little button which says "I want to suck your blood out". Whoever taught him how to draw blood taught him well ... I feel nothing on the several occassions we meet. A joke I heard a couple times while there was 'check the patient's social calendar (medical chart) and see if s/he has a date with Isaac later tonight' They let me out Thursday afternoon, with several new prescriptions to be filled. I hope to be around a few more years. The ObTelecom part to it all: same phone system as was in use before but with the change in area codes they have updated the 'local call' versus 'toll call' tables in the switch. When this was all 708, they had it arranged so that Evanston, Skokie, Wilmette and Winnekta were treated as local (that is, patients could dial 9 and the seven digit number at no charge; all other calls were dialed 8 + 0 + ten digits and billing instructions to the Bell operator). Now they have it arranged so that none of 708 is local. All of the above (now in 847) is local along with just a few exchanges in 312 on the far north side of Chicago. They have also upgraded the pagers they are using so they have a longer range, but I did not get a chance to look into that very much. Anyway, given now the Memorial Day holiday, give me a bit of rest and I will try to get this Digest back on a regular schedule the first of the week. Unfortunatly, approximatly 850 messages will be deleted from the queue unused. I will be unable to use any 'please look at my webpage' type messages, and I will be unable to print any commercial press releases until further notice. Also, I won't be able to use any further press releases from Sprint; please do not send them to me. I am not going to risk being called on the carpet for running fraudulent advertising. Also, while I was in the hospital, the people at MIT somehow managed to completely screw up the Telecom Archives, losing a few files and getting some other junk mixed in, etc. Whether or not reconstruction will be possible is not known at this point, and today I frankly don't care one way or the other. So until further notice the Archives is closed. If you wish, you can pick through the remains there. There have been enough users in recent months *totally rape* the archives by copying them in total without even bothering to say thanks, so possibly some of them can be prevailed on to send *me* the stuff MIT managed to lose if I can figure out what is what. Irritated and very bitter. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 12:17:56 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "The Internet Instant Reference" by Hoffman BKININRF.RVW 960511 "The Internet Instant Reference", Paul E. Hoffman, 1996, 0-7821-1891-7, U$14.99 %A Paul E. Hoffman %C 2021 Challenger Drive, Alameda, CA 94501 %D 1996 %G 0-7821-1891-7 %I Sybex Computer Books %O U$14.99 510-523-8233 800-227-2346 Fax: 510-523-2373 %P 324 %T "The Internet Instant Reference" Like "Internet in Plain English" (cf. BKINTIPE.RVW), this is a presentation of the net via glossary. It does start with a quick overview, and its small size makes it fairly "instant" and a reasonable reference. The definitions (and thus the material of the book) are generally OK, though not outstanding. Many entries have pointers to net resources for further information, and these are commonly well annotated. They are not always complete: the "List of (mailing) Lists" entry cites none of the three major lists (although "Mailing Lists" does include one of them). Given the limitations of space, it might not be surprising that there are no entries for such items as browser, PGP or rtfm, but that makes the inclusion of a set of instructions for the ee editor all the more surprising. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKININRF.RVW 960511. Distrobution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca Institute for rslade@vanisl.decus.ca Research into Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1/ User .fidonet.org Security Canada V7K 2G6 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 11:49:54 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: FTC Online Workshop on Privacy Reply-To: monty@roscom.COM Forwarded to the Digest, FYI: Date: Sun, 19 May 1996 14:41:06 -0700 From: Adam Starchild Subject: FTC Workshop on Consumer Privacy in Cyberspace FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION WORKSHOP ON CONSUMER PRIVACY IN CYBERSPACE TO BE HELD IN JUNE 1996 The Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Education will hold a public workshop on June 4 and 5 to focus on privacy issues in the online marketplace. The development of technologies such as the Internet and the World Wide Web has allowed online businesses to collect and use personal information about consumers, often without consumers’ knowledge or consent. The workshop will examine consumer privacy issues in this new marketplace, consumer and business education about the use of personal information online, and ways to enhance the growth of the online marketplace by fostering consumer confidence. Workshop topics will include the use of consumer information, the use of medical and financial information online, the collection and use of information about children, electronic approaches to protecting consumer privacy online, and the European Union's directive on the protection of personal data. The workshop will be open to the public and will be held on June 4, 1996 from 9:00AM to 5:00PM in Room 432 of the FTC headquarters building, 6th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., in Washington, D.C. On June 5, 1996 the workshop will be held from 9:00AM to 12:30PM in Room 332 of the FTC headquarters building. The Bureau invites representatives of consumer groups, industry, government agencies, and other groups to take part in the workshop. Any person wishing to be considered for participation in the public workshop must file a written request, on or before May 24, 1996, to Martha Landesberg, Division of Credit Practices, Bureau of Consumer Protection, Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC 20580. Posted by Adam Starchild Asset Protection & Becoming Judgement Proof at http://www.catalog.com/corner/taxhaven The privacy list is run automatically by the Majordomo list manager. Send a "help" command to majordomo@ftc.gov for assistance. ------------------------------ From: Tad Cook Subject: Supreme Court Topples Last Obstacle to Caller ID Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 17:08:06 PDT Supreme Court Topples Last Obstacle to Caller ID Service By George Avalos, Contra Costa Times, Walnut Creek, Calif. Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News May 21--Caller ID may be just around the corner: The U.S. Supreme Court Monday toppled the last legal hurdle to the start of the controversial telephone service, Pacific Bell intends to launch in June in California. The service enables a telephone customer to see the number from which a phone call was placed before he or she chooses to answer it. A phone must be equipped with a special display screen to show the phone number. But a side effect of the technology has stirred fears among those seeking to preserve their privacy. "People have a right to the privacy of their phone numbers, and every time they pick up that phone they should not have to share the number," said Nettie Hoge, executive director with Toward Utility Rate Normalization, which favored the more restrictive PUC rules. A person who is making a call -- even someone with an unlisted phone number -- could have that number displayed on telephone call screens at the other end. "People have a right to the privacy of their phone numbers, and every time they pick up that phone they should not have to share the number," said Nettie Hoge, executive director with Toward Utility Rate Normalization. To avoid the number being transmitted to phones with display screens, a customer must arrange to block their number from being displayed during every call, a process called per-line blocking. The Supreme Court rejected a state Public Utilities Commission request to block a customer's phone number on every call unless the person specifically asks to have the phone number displayed on selected calls. The PUC sought the restrictive regulations because of fears that people would unwittingly transmit their phone numbers. Instead, phone numbers will be automatically transmitted if people don't request per-line blocking. "This ruling makes it more important than ever that consumers fill out the forms sent to them in their telephone bills and to choose either selective (per-call) blocking or complete (per-line) blocking," said Diane Dienstein, a PUC spokeswoman. The new rules mean some customers might wind up getting all sorts of product and service pitches they didn't expect, TURN said. "Telemarketers will be able to gather data on people because they'll have your phone number," Hoge said. "People are doing everything they can to be left alone. A business that subscribes to Caller ID will have your phone number." All the blocking in the world, though, won't be enough to prevent your number from being transmitted and displayed if you call a phone number with an area code of 800, 888, or 900. "People aren't aware that these numbers are being passed, even with an unlisted number," Hoge said. About 40 percent of California residents have unlisted phone numbers. In the Bay area, the rate is 43 percent. In the East Bay, about 67 percent of residential numbers are unlisted. Pac Bell plans to charge residential customers $6.50 a month for Caller ID and business users $7.50 a month. About 500,000 to 1.5 million customers, or 5 to 15 percent of Pac Bell's customers, are expected to use Caller ID by mid-1998, according to Mark Pitchford, a Pac Bell executive. That means the service could generate about $38 million a year for the phone company two years from now. [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Furthermore, I don't really need any more articles like this sent in either. I get so sick and tired of reading about how every privacy freak is so upset and paranoid about having their phone number -- the phone they use to make rude and careless wrong number calls with -- made available for someone else to see and yet those of us who get these calls apparently have no rights at all to hear the loonies tell it. Twice tonight the phone rings. I look at the box and see 'private'. I answer the phone and someone on the other end demands 'who is this?'. You ask who they are or who they want, and they just hang up without so much as an apology or anything. PAT] ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 14:14:09 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "Packet Communication" by Metcalfe BKPKTCOM.RVW 960424 "Packet Communication", Robert M. Metcalfe, 1996, 1-57398-033-1, U$39.95/C$55.95 %A Robert M. Metcalfe bob_metcalfe@infoworld.com %C P.O. Box 640218, San Jose, CA 95164-0218 %D 1996 %G 1-57398-033-1 %I Peer-to-Peer Communications, Inc. %O U$39.95/C$55.95 800-420-2677 408-435-2677 fax: 408-435-0895 %O info@peer-to-peer.com %P 224 %S Computer Classics Revisited %T "Packet Communication" Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet. He contributed to the early development of the Internet. He founded 3Com Corporation. All of which makes him a significant contributor to modern technology, but why would anyone want to read his doctoral dissertation? The ideas in "Packet Communication" are fundamental to a great deal of network operation. The theories Metcalfe explored in his dissertation were later used in the development of Ethernet, but they have also affected network design and analysis right up to modern ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) systems. In fact, most books that try to explain Internet concepts make reference to Ethernet technologies. Metcalfe has also added a retrospective outlining the general work going on at the time his paper was originally published (1973) and following from it. This work is therefore of both technical and historic relevance. The book also contains a reprint of RFC (Request for Comments) 62 by Dave Walden (on interprocess communications) and RFC 89 by Metcalfe, discussing activities in the first year of development of what would become the Internet. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKPKTCOM.RVW 960424. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. Vancouver ROBERTS@decus.ca Institute for rslade@vanisl.decus.ca Research into Rob.Slade@f733.n153.z1/ User .fidonet.org Security Canada V7K 2G6 ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 19:41:50 EST From: Rob Slade Subject: Book Review: "The Java Programming Language" by Arnold/Gosling BKJAVAPL.RVW 960420 "The Java Programming Language", Ken Arnold/James Gosling, 1996, 0-201-63455-4, U$34.38 %A Ken Arnold %A James Gosling %C 1 Jacob Way, Reading, MA 01867-9984 %D 1996 %G 0-201-63455-4 %I Addison-Wesley Publishing Co. %O U$34.38 800-822-6339 617-944-3700 Fax: (617) 944-7273 bkexpress@aw.com %P 352 %S The Java Series ... from the Source %T "The Java Programming Language" The preface says that the book is intended for those "familiar with basic programming concepts". I suspect the definition of "basic" needs to be stretched to cover this material, but I can generally accept that. It also "is not an introduction to object-oriented programming". Fair enough. There is also an attempt to dissociate the work from the mere designing of applets. Again, fair enough: there are going to be a great many books about using Java for quick and dirty applet creation. What that does, though, is to remove the book from the purview of the majority of readers interested in it, who have been told that Java is a wonderful (and easy) new language for programming fancy stuff on Web pages. The target audience is therefore experienced object- oriented programmers who want to use Java for more sophisticated projects. These people will be delighted with the book, but they are a fairly select group. With the creator of Java as a co-author you might expect an "insider" book, and, from the joke on the dedication page on through, this is so. This work concentrates on the design and intentions of Java, rather than on specific programming or tutorials. There are examples enough throughout the book, but the emphasis is on how the concepts work rather than simply what particular keywords do. A running Java programming environment will also be very helpful to the reader. There are exercises, particularly in the early chapters, but they work better as practice and exploration than as teaching assignments. The first paragraph of this review might be taken as a negative comment about the book itself. That is not my intention. Java is probably one of the most significant developments in language design in many years. That it is currently being perceived as a tool for creating Web animation is a problem of public relations, not the system. Arnold and Gosling's book is an important and useful text for those who are serious about Java. It is not, however, for those who have yet to master the ALT tag in HTML. copyright Robert M. Slade, 1996 BKJAVAPL.RVW 960420. Distribution permitted in TELECOM Digest and associated publications. DECUS Canada Communications, Desktop, Education and Security group newsletters roberts@decus.ca slade@freenet.victoria.bc.ca Rob_Slade@mindlink.bc.ca Author "Robert Slade's Guide to Computer Viruses" 0-387-94663-2 (800-SPRINGER) ------------------------------ From: Pierre Thomson Subject: Bellcore to Charge For NANP Letters Date: 23 May 1996 15:36:21 GMT Organization: MHVNet, the Mid Hudson Valley's Internet connection Bellcore just mailed a letter (# PL-NANP-000) stating that after July 1, they will start charging $10 or more for each Planning Letter (formerly known as Bellcore Informational Letters) they send out. In addition, they now request that these letters be copied only for use within your company, and not outside. In the past, NANPA provided information on new area codes and dialing plan changes free of charge. While it may be true that their mailing list is getting out of hand (with all the changes, it's no surprise), ten dollars sure sounds overkill to cover the cost of mailing. (the postage paid on the letter I got was 32.4 cents). I'd be glad to pay the actual cost of mailing, but I can't afford to line their pockets. At the rate these letters have been coming out, the bill would come to around $1000 annually. And who's to say Bellcore won't publish more letters than neccessary, once they find how lucrative it is? If you receive the Bellcore letters, or are interested in numbering plan issues, please contact the Bellcore NANPA Director, Ron Conners, at the below addresses to express your opposition to this plan. Ron R. Conners, Director Bellcore NANPA 8 Corporate Place Piscataway, NJ 08854-4156 (908) 699-3700 rconners@notes.cc.bellcore.com Pierre Thomson Telecom Manager Rifton Enterprises ------------------------------ From: Tad Cook Subject: Fugitive Surrenders After Photo Seen on FBI Website Date: Thu, 23 May 1996 15:21:18 PDT U.S. Fugitive Surrenders In Guatemala After Photo Is Seen On Internet WASHINGTON (AP) -- For the first time, the FBI has nabbed one of its most wanted fugitives thanks to the Internet. Leslie Isben Rogge, who had been on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list for six years, surrendered to U.S. authorities in Guatemala after his picture was seen on the Internet, the FBI said Sunday. The bureau said this was the first time that listing the most wanted fugitives on the Internet has led to a capture. His picture had been placed on the FBI's home page and was spotted by someone in Guatemala, who had seen Rogge and alerted the authorities. Guatemalan police launched a manhunt and Rogge, "feeling the intense pressure," turned himself in at the U.S. Embassy on Saturday, the FBI said. Rogge, 56, had escaped from federal custody in Idaho in 1985 following a conviction for armed robbery. He also was wanted for bank robbery, transporting stolen property across state lines and wire fraud, the FBI said in a written statement. He was placed on the most wanted list in 1990. Police want Rogge in connection with a 1986 robbery in North Carolina and a 1991 robbery in Missouri. He was flown to Miami, where he was being held awaiting a hearing scheduled for Monday before a U.S. magistrate, the FBI said. ------------------------------ TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly but not exclusively to telecommunications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in addition to various telecom forums on a variety of public service systems and networks including Compuserve and America On Line. It is also gatewayed to Usenet where it appears as the moderated newsgroup 'comp.dcom.telecom'. Subscriptions are available to qualified organizations and individual readers. Write and tell us how you qualify: * ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu * The Digest is edited, published and compilation-copyrighted by Patrick Townson of Skokie, Illinois USA. You can reach us by postal mail, fax or phone at: Post Office Box 4621 Skokie, IL USA 60076 Phone: 500-677-1616 Fax: 847-329-0572 ** Article submission address: ptownson@massis.lcs.mit.edu Our archives are located at mirror.lcs.mit.edu and are available by using anonymous ftp. The archives can also be accessed using our email information service. For a copy of a helpful file explaining how to use the information service, just ask. ************************************************************************* * TELECOM Digest is partially funded by a grant from the * * International Telecommunication Union (ITU) in Geneva, Switzerland * * under the aegis of its Telecom Information Exchange Services (TIES) * * project. Views expressed herein should not be construed as represent-* * ing views of the ITU. * ************************************************************************* In addition, TELECOM Digest receives a grant from Microsoft to assist with publication expenses. Editorial content in the Digest is totally independent, and does not necessarily represent the views of Microsoft. ------------------------------------------------------------ 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 twenty dollars per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above. 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 TELECOM Digest V16 #245 ******************************