Received: (from ptownson@localhost) by massis.lcs.mit.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) id OAA27447; Mon, 24 May 1999 14:17:15 -0400 (EDT) Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 14:17:15 -0400 (EDT) From: editor@telecom-digest.org Message-Id: <199905241817.OAA27447@massis.lcs.mit.edu> To: ptownson Subject: TELECOM Digest V19 #96 TELECOM Digest Mon, 24 May 99 14:17:00 EDT Volume 19 : Issue 96 Inside This Issue: Editor: Patrick A. Townson Refinements Made to Search Engine (TELECOM Digest Editor) An Anonymous Email Service For Us (TELECOM Digest Editor) Re: World's First Video Cell Phone Debuts in Japan (Arthur Ross) Re: Airtouch in NYC? (Arthur Ross) Re: Delivery of Tariff Services (William Wheeler) Re: Simemens Gigaset 2020 (support@sellcom.com) Re: Smartjack and CSU (Gil Stamper) Re: Smartjack and CSU (Richard Campbell) Re: Smartjack and CSU (Daniel J. Cody) Re: Why Do RBOCs Form CLECs? (MCSMAN) Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed (Ron Bean) Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed (Bill Ranck) 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 networks such as Compuserve and America On Line, and other forums. It is also gatewayed 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-copywrited. You may reprint articles in some other media on an occassional basis, but please attribute my work and that of the original author. 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Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only and messages should not be considered any official expression by the organization. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 01:58:10 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: Refinements Made to Search Engine The other day, reader Lazlo pointed out that an index reference to an article of his was present, but the article itself did not show up in the index. After a bit of digging around, I found what appears to be the trouble. * The spider was stopping short of reading the whole file in the case of the huge back issues files .... * In any file longer than 100 K, the spider was stopping at that point and going no further. So if you showed up early in a local index, but very deep in one of the old files, you were getting missed. I do not actually run the spider myself; it is a free service to this group given by whatUseek.com which provides 'intrasearch' on sites that request it. I've had some correspondence with the administrator and a few exceptions to his usual rules have been made in the case of the telecom-digest.org site. One, instead of the spider running once each week, it now runs on my demand, as often as once each day if requested. Thus, the latest issues get picked up fairly soon. The second exception he made for this group is that the spider will now go to a depth of 500 K as needed, which would only be the case in the very old back issues archives. I asked him how about making the spider eat a whole meg as needed ... he looked at me like I was nuts, which I probably am, but said okay; now the spider goes absorbs almost all of those old files. Three, he greatly expanded the number of files per site he would handle in our case. The 'typical' site he deals with is much smaller, and much less detailed. So you should see a substantial improvement in the search engine used on telecom-digest.org effective immediatly. On my side, I have to quit packing the old issues in such large bundles effective immediatly. Starting with the current volume as of this past January 1, you will see *individual issues* in the archives rather than clusters of fifty issues. If I can figure out how to do so successfully, I will 'unpack' at least one or two prior year's worth as well, which will give us close to one hundred percent on the search engine for all intents and purposes. If you are looking in the very old issues and the spider gives an HTML link to an entry in one of the local indexes I have kept but does not somehow find the actual item itself, note what the local index says for a reference, then pull the associated cluster and use your browser's 'find' command to narrow things down a bit more. But now that the spider is going a meg deep into the file, there is not a lot that should be missed. The last time the spider was run it was set for 500K, but watch for a re-indexing later this week. We are getting all this for *free* from whatUseek.com and when I first heard it was 'advertiser supported' I was a little leary about it, but it is something that has been needed here for many years, and the 'advertising' is very seldom, and very low-key when it does appear on the spider's result pages. So do me a favor please, and click on the ads there occassionally; he is doing us a big favor by covering as much territory as we have here. His output is also available to the entire net in his search engine. PAT ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 02:24:00 EDT From: TELECOM Digest Editor Subject: An Anonymous Email Service For Us The other piece of news from over the weekend is that we now have available for use an anonymous email service. I say 'anonymous' since when you use it, you just select whatever name you want to use. Your email address then becomes username@telecom-digest.zzn.com and you are free to send and receive email that way. I envision it mainly as a way for people who do not want to use their 'main' email address to send messages (here or to other newsgroups) because of the spam and privacy-invasion problems on the net. On the other hand, maybe your 'main' email address is now so polluted with spam that you want to start over from scratch. Either way, you are welcome to one of these addresses for free. They can be used as 'throw-away' addresses, meaning when they become too spam-ridden you just dump it and start another one. There are some good system-wide spam filter rules built in, and each user can also a few additional rules as desired. You can have it check up to three POP mail accounts if you wish, and it will transact with you in about a dozen different languages. So the way to get your very own username@telecom-digest.zzn.com email address is by going to http://telecom-digest.org/postoffice and following the simple steps to set it up. It should take you a couple minutes at most. Be as creative as you like with names chosen, but do NOT spam or do other offensive things. If that happens, I have no choice in the matter, that mailbox will be closed. There is a bot which looks after things there when I am not around, and although it has no sense of shame (grin) -- so use the box as you wish -- it does know how to count and make some logical decisions about the volume of mail it sees and types of phrases used, etc. At the telecom- digest postoffice, your privacy is absolute. Even I will not know who belongs to which box, nor what names you are using. I hope you enjoy it! http://telecom-digest.org/postoffice PAT ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 08:24:35 -0700 From: Arthur Ross Subject: Re: World's First Video Cell Phone Debuts in Japan > http://www.computerworld.com/home/news.nsf/all/9905204videocell > TOKYO -- The world got its first glimpse at what could be the future > of mobile telephony this week when Japanese component vendor Kyocera > Corp. unveiled the first cellular phone able to transmit a caller's > picture and voice simultaneously. [snip breathless marketing hype] Pat, et al - This seems to be a phenomenon that recurs with a cycle time of about one generation -- takes that long for the old generation of enthusiastic engineers and marketing folks to forget about the last attempt, and to try to sell the picturephone again. It's similar to the marvelously periodic phenomenon of Motorola trying to break into the computer business ... equally futile. Reminds me of those airplane seat back screens that apparently thought that the formost activity on the mind of airplane passengers was checking stock prices and playing dumb video games. I think these are mostly gone now. And then there are all those LEO systems .... Bell Labs was trying to do this back in the 1950s (actually, I think they had it in mind pre-WW-II, but the technology most definitely wasn't up to it then). I actually saw some of this stuff, as my dad was good friends with a bunch of the folks at the BTL Crawford Hill (NJ) Radio Research laboratory back then. They had developed a whole family of transmission components for plumbing 50 GHz carrier systems around the country, with these pipes hung on telephone poles. Existing transmission plant didn't have enough capacity to support the anticipated, non-compressed, video traffic. Was really neat, clever stuff, if you're a radio geek. That part worked fine. Problem was, nobody wanted the product, as they found out when they belatedly did the market research. I don't think they ever really got around to productizing the subscriber terminal. They tried again, I think it was about 15 years ago, with a CCD camera, LCD display gizmo, digital video compression algorithm, compressed enough that it would work over any ordinary analog subscriber line. Price was almost reasonable too - something like $1500 at retail as I recall. Nobody wanted that one either, even though, IMHO, it worked reasonably well. Seems like it must be the Japanese' turn to find this out. I was shown a mockup of a similar product a few months ago by some of the 3G wireless crowd. Same general idea. Gets a lot of points for good technical design. But, just like all those other attempts, it won't sell, IMHO. I doubt that human behavior has changed all that much - I think people still don't want picturephones! I'm awfully skeptical about all this "wireless data" hype. I can't find ANYONE with a credible notion of what all those "killer apps" are that are going to consume these high data rate wireless services. If its only e-mail, they should forget the exotic services. An awful lot of e-mail equals not-very-much speech. A friend, who shall remain nameless because he works for a Fortune 500 company, that probably would not be thrilled by his sarcasm, suggested that the killer app is a guy driving down an LA freeway, downloading porno movies, and talking on the sex line. This is about the most credible thing I've heard of. Sad. -- Best -- Arthur -- Dr. Arthur Ross 2325 East Orangewood Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85020-4730 Phone: 602-371-9708 Fax : 602-336-7074 ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 08:37:05 -0700 From: Arthur Ross Subject: Re: Airtouch in NYC? jlindqui@enterprise.uiuc.edu (Jason A. Lindquist) wrote: > James Gifford writes: >> Then I discovered >> in NYC that the phone wouldn't work (I got a Hell Atlantic operator). >> I was told by Airtouch that they don't provide service in NYC because of >> the massive level of cloning-- even their digital plans don't work there >> because they don't have digital service, so the fallback to analog >> enables the cloners to work. > Bell Atlantic certainly does have CDMA digital service in New York. > There's no technical reason why an Airtouch digital phone would not > work there. > Well, either that, or they like throwing away money on all the > BAM-labeled handsets I see rolling out of Qualcomm's factory, > bound for Broadway ... That CSR should be sent back to kindergarten. BAM's CDMA service works just fine in NYC. I use it regularly (daughter is in school there) with my QCOM phone, which is homed on Airtouch in Arizona. Daughter has a Sprint PCS CDMA phone. It works fine there too. I do recall, tho, that I had to specifically REQUEST Airtouch that I be allowed to roam in NYC. Default was, they told me, to NOT allow it, the rationale being pretty much as above. One of my complaints has been that international calling from portables seems to be blanket forbidden from NYC, this too for fraud protection reasons. Apparently a very large percentage of fraudulent calls are international. Too bad, as I often could have really used it, e.g., when sitting in the airport waiting for flight to Europe somewhere, which I do fairly regularly. -- Regards, -- Arthur -- Dr. Arthur Ross 2325 East Orangewood Avenue Phoenix, AZ 85020-4730 Phone: 602-371-9708 Fax : 602-336-7074 ------------------------------ From: William Wheeler Subject: Re: Delivery of Tariff Services Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 10:27:50 -0700 Organization: so many books too little time John Starta wrote: > I need some advice. I'm trying to order a tariff service from my telco > (USWest) and they're refusing delivery saying either 1) I'm too far > away from the CO; or 2) the switch/CO is incapable of providing the > service. (Their reason alternates depending upon the department I > speak with.) I know for a fact that I'm not too far away as I have > ISDN service, and the network disclosure information they have filed > with the local utilities commission indicates that all switches/CO's > servicing my city are capable. > Is there some way of forcing USWest to uphold their commitment? Aren't > telco's required to deliver tariff services? As I am getting the same thing from USWEST here in Portland let me know if you get anywhere with them. ------------------------------ From: support@sellcom.com Subject: Re: Simemens Gigaset 2020 Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 23:49:15 GMT Organization: www.sellcom.com Reply-To: support@sellcom.com stiewe@my-dejanews.com spake thusly and wrote: > I just moved from Germany to San Francisco and am trying to hook up my > Gigaset 2020 phone. Besides the problem with the electric currency and > the difference in wiring, Germany uses the black and yellow wire vs. > US uses the green and red, I have problems making the phone ring! Has > anybody dealt with this problem and knows an solution? > Any help is greatly appreciated! You may wish to also investigate the legality of using that phone here in the US as it might be using an unapproved frequency. Regarding the wiring, there are only two ways to hook up two wires. If neither way works then there are probably also differences here with the ring signal. (there may also be voltage differences and a lot of other differences as well, I recommend caution and research). Siemens has a US tech support number of 877-267-3373 Steve http://www.sellcom.com (Opinions expressed, though generally wise and accurate are not officially positions of SELLCOM) Cyclades / Siemens (May REBATE) / Y2K ODIU support / Zoom / Palmer Safes (Tech assistance provided without warranty express or implied) Check us out at http://www.thepubliceye.com ------------------------------ From: gstamper@us.hsanet.net (Gil Stamper) Subject: Re: Smartjack and CSU Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 21:00:55 -0400 Organization: Posted via RemarQ, http://www.remarQ.com - Discussions here! Having just gone through a 90 node T-1 installation, I will tell you to recrimp the cable connections at the CSU and at the SmartJack. Also check the ground resistance between the CSU and the SmartJack. They don't need to be grounded together, but there should be minimual resistance. Next check the LBO at both the CSU and the SmartJack. Some of the runs I just went through were in excess of 130 feet, but we did have to adjust the LBO on the channel banks and on the SmartJacks to accomodate the longer run. Gil ------------------------------ From: Richard Campbell Subject: Re: Smartjack and CSU Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 21:34:40 -0500 Organization: AT&T WorldNet Services Make sure that the Smartjack is grounded properly. If it was not, then check your CSU to make sure it was not damaged by the smartjack. Of course, always check the cabling. Rich ------------------------------ From: Daniel J. Cody Subject: Re: Smartjack and CSU Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 01:27:47 -0500 Kevin Lundy wrote: > Every time we have a problem, the techs can loop up the smart jack and > stress test error free. They loop the CSU, and they see errors. So Where are they looping it from? The smartjack or your endpoint. This will tell you exactly where the problem is. I have a 150 foot piece of CAT-5 from my smartjack to router and don't get any errors. For you, there could be electrical interferance(shielded CAT-5 would take care of that) or your CSU might not be config'd correctly. On my Adtran TSU120 there is an option to tell it how far your line is from the smartjack, and I assume it makes some corrections based on what you tell it. More info would be A Good Thing(tm). ..djc. ------------------------------ Date: 24 May 1999 13:29:13 GMT Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com From: mcsman@aol.com (MCSMAN) Subject: Re: Why Do RBOCs Form CLECs? The LEC has tariffs to obey. The CLEC does not have to obey the same tariffs. ------------------------------ Subject: Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 08:32:41 CDT From: Ron Bean Monty Solomon writes: > http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/19777.html > Some experts say credit-card companies are so anxious to make consumers > feel safe about shopping online that they've made it too easy to dispute > charges. In many cases, if a customer disputes an online charge, the > issuing bank will remove it with no questions asked. If this were not the case, credit cards would quickly become unusable. I'd cancel mine in a minute. It's bad enough that some company I've never heard of can add stuff to my phone bill, without having to prove that I ever did business with them. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll tell you another hassle that > merchants on the net have that they are not very anxious to talk about > and that is the 'abandoned shopping cart' situation. For whatever > reason, people will go to a commercial site on the web, start pushing > around their 'shopping cart' picking out nice items, then just walk > out, and go to a different web site leaving their cart full of > goodies sitting there. Those "carts" should time out after a while, unless the programmer was really stupid. Unlike a physical store, there are no actual "goodies sitting there" until the user completes the order. It's like filling out an order form from a mail-order catalog, and then not mailing it. I've run into a couple of sites that crashed my browser, so that it was impossible for me to complete an order. I eventually copied down their snail-mail address and sent the order that way. ------------------------------ From: Bill Ranck Subject: Re: Sex Sites Getting Screwed Date: 24 May 1999 14:16:00 GMT Organization: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA Monty Solomon wrote: > Adult sites frequently offer a free week's membership that reverts to a > paid membership if the surfer doesn't cancel after seven days. > As a result, legions of surfers who didn't read the fine print have > called to dispute the charges. In the process, they've found how easy it > is to have a charge removed. Well, this is just bad business practice, and I personally see no reason it should be rewarded. It reminds me of these telemarketers who call me, and when I ask, "what are you selling?" they say, "Nothing, we want to give you blah-blah." Well, I know damn well that at some point that "free trial" whatever will become a not free billable of some sort. And, yes, consumers should read the fine print, but it's still a bad business practice and I can't feel too sorry for the scam^H^H^H^H merchants in these cases. > Over time, a sizeable population of savvy Web surfers have figured out > how to go on a spending spree on the Web scot-free. Now, don't get me wrong. I am *not* in favor of people using credit card fraud to get things. I think those folks who knowingly dispute legitimate charges should be held accountable. But that "knowingly" piece needs to be clear. > "For shipped goods, if you've got proof of delivery, that's a way [for > the merchant] to resolve a disputed charge," said CyberSource's Arnold. Clearly, for on-line subscriptions, software downloads, and other hard to track items the merchant needs to make sure that their network storefront makes it very clear what they are selling and that a purchase is taking place. Better written user interfaces and order confirmation processes are what is needed, not whining about how unfairlife is. > While some merchants have been clamoring for a change in the way the > banks resolve online disputes, they claim that the card companies have > refused to act. > "They are focused on the consumer," said Barry Bahrami, the owner of Awww! Poor babies. Big daddy won't make the mean kid down the block stop taking my lunch money. Oh, boo hoo. Come on! Merchants have to protect themselves, not rely on some outside authority to intervene for them when they haven't done sufficient work to prove their case. Life is not fair and business even less so. You have to look out for yourself, etc. If people are taking advantage of a company on line, then that company better figure out its own solutions for catching the deadbeats. > Other merchants agree. "The credit-card companies aren't addressing a > blatant situation," said the owner of the jobs listing site. "And it's a > blatant situation that could affect all e-commerce." Again, I don't want to see legitimate on-line merchants being hurt by fraud, but there are two sides to this issue, and there are plenty of questionable sites that try to pull a fast one on the consumer. > [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I'll tell you another hassle that > merchants on the net have that they are not very anxious to talk about > and that is the 'abandoned shopping cart' situation. For whatever > reason, people will go to a commercial site on the web, start pushing > around their 'shopping cart' picking out nice items, then just walk > out, and go to a different web site leaving their cart full of > goodies sitting there. This, in my opinion is just plain bad programming. If an "abandoned shopping cart" is a problem, then they need better programming. I know in some web sites I've seen you can't find out the shipping costs for things without putting them in the shopping cart. If I'm pricing things, I want to know shipping cost as well. If I change my mind and abandon an on-line shopping cart, so what? Why should that be a problem at all? It's not like they have to physically reshelve the items. ***************************************************************************** * Bill Ranck +1-540-231-3951 ranck@vt.edu * * Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Computing Center * ***************************************************************************** ------------------------------ End of TELECOM Digest V19 #96 *****************************