Date: 29 Aug 2000 06:15:11 -0400 Message-ID: <20000829101511.27292.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com> From: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org (Telecom Digest) To: telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Subject: Telecom Digest V2000 #37 Reply-To: editor@telecom-digest.org Sender: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Errors-To: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Precedence: bulk X-UIDL: 04c78d4cc2350bb0b8346a0708087078 Status: RO X-Status: Telecom Digest Tuesday, August 29 2000 Volume 2000 : Number 037 In this issue: Re: Telephony and billing Re: Cannot change my long distance provider? Re: NYTimes.com Article: What City, Please? Vexation in Dialing Can Start With 411 2600 (was Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site) 2600, was: Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site RE:NYTimes.com Article: What City, Please? Vexation in Dialing Can Start With 411 Re: 2600 (was Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site) Re : US West Continues (?) to Burn Re: Cannot change my long distance provider? FORW: 2600, was: Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site Re: Another one of AT&T's contribution to network radio Re: Another one of AT&T's contribution to network radio Re: 2600 (was Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site) Ostankino Communications Tower fire in Moscow Re: 2600 (was Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site) Re: Wired News : New Toys for Cheating Students ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 28 Aug 2000 18:29:16 -0400 From: sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steve Sobol) Subject: Re: Telephony and billing >>From 'Gunnar Liknes': >Hello, > >We are looking for a company in the US which can deliver 100 digital >subscriber lines to a location in Florida. We also need 1000 numbers >and a billing solution enabling us to charge 10-15USD per minute on >inncomming calls. $10-$15? Ten to fifteen *dollars* per minute? For what? That's about five times more expensive than your typical 900-number... >I have tried AT&T, Bell south and MCI but I just get put trough to a lot of >people who doesnt understand what I want. I don't understand what you want. :) 1000 numbers is a lot of numbers. What's your justification for asking for that many? - -- North Shore Technologies, Cleveland, OH http://NorthShoreTechnologies.net Steve Sobol, BOFH - President, Chief Website Architect and Janitor Linux Instructor, PC/LAN Program, Natl. Institute of Technology, Akron, OH sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net - 888.480.4NET - 216.619.2NET - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 19:07:08 -0400 From: Joseph Singer Subject: Re: Cannot change my long distance provider? 28 Aug 2000 12:07:11 -0400 joemitchellsc@yahoo.com wrote: >I don't know if this is the right ng, but here goes: I called my local >phone provider this morning and requested that they change my long >distance provider. The person I spoke with politely told me that "with >SimCom, you cannot change your long distance provider". Is this >possible? > >If this is true, I'm thinking about using 10-10-220 (or similiar codes) >to get around my local provider. Any hidden charges (connection fees) >that I should be aware of? You do not indicate who your local telephone company is, but as far as I know all the Bell companies (USWest/Qwest, SBC,) as well as Verizon should allow you to choose any carrier you wish unless you are in an apartment complex which has a special relationship with a telephone company or carrier. As for connection fees if you change to a new carrier your telco will probably levy a $5.00 service charge to change carriers. Many carriers will absorb this fee if you ask them to. As far as 10-10-220 (MCI dba Telecom USA) be aware of just what you're getting when you call this number. The rate may look attractive with 20 minutes for $.99, but what they don't make obvious is that you're going to pay $.99 even if you talk one minute! Could be a rather expensive short call! If you're going to be using a dialround you'd be advised to check out what their terms are. I recommend that you go to and read up on the different 'dialaround' carriers such as Telecom USA's 1010220 or 1010321. There are some gotcha's in there if you're not careful. Joseph - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joseph Singer Seattle, Washington USA [ICQ pgr] +1 206 405 2052 [voice mail] +1 206 493 0706 [FAX] - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 19:18:13 -0400 From: dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) Subject: Re: NYTimes.com Article: What City, Please? Vexation in Dialing Can Start With 411 In <20000828173601.EB61C24521@email4.lga2.nytimes.com> itsamike@yahoo.com writes: [big snip] > As for long-distance number inquiries, that game changed radically >about four years ago when AT&T, the No. 1 long-distance carrier, >began intercepting its customers' long-distance calls to 555-1212. We discussed this way-back on CDT, and the question I raised was whether these intercepts were legal. When I call directory assistance I'm looking for a specific party to respond, namely the local telco servicing that area. Kind of like when I call Joe's Pizza, I want Joe's Pizza. Of course it's gotten more complicated with the CLEC issue and number portability and lots and lots of other issues... - -- _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 19:25:06 -0400 From: Joseph Singer Subject: 2600 (was Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site) 28 Aug 2000 18:21:34 -0400 jsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steve Sobol) wrote: >>>From 'Joel B Levin': >>In <8oc547$rfo$1@panix5.panix.com>, >> dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) wrote: >>}danny 'does "2600" have any telco history meaning?' burstein >> >>You're kidding, right? > >I'd like to know its significance, myself. 2600 hz is the tone that was used in MF (multifrequency) signalling as part of the connection tone to disconnect a connection. Someone discovered that this frequency could be used to hack the network and make toll calls without getting billed for it. It was for "phone phreaking" and used by the telephone hacker community for many years to circumvent the regular telephone billing system. 2600 quartely magazine and today the newsgroup alt.2600 are part of that community. The infamous "blue boxes" were used to mimick the frequencies that the operator would dial with "key pulse." I believe that the telephone system at present uses different switching technology so MF hacking isn't as "proffitable" as it once was. Joseph - --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Joseph Singer Seattle, Washington USA [ICQ pgr] +1 206 405 2052 [voice mail] +1 206 493 0706 [FAX] - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 19:26:55 -0400 From: dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) Subject: 2600, was: Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site In sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steve Sobol) writes: >>From 'Joel B Levin': >>In <8oc547$rfo$1@panix5.panix.com>, >> dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) wrote: >>}danny 'does "2600" have any telco history meaning?' burstein >> >>You're kidding, right? >I'd like to know its significance, myself. I hear it had something to do with cereal boxes... spoiler alert spoiler alert spoiler alert last chance ok, one more last chance that's it: The automated Bell System long distance network used multi-frequency tones to set up the call. Occassionally you would hear them as a 'boop-beep-beep-boop-beep-boop-boop' right after you finished dialing. Multi frequency tones are similar in concept to the more familiar "touch tone" sets you get on a phone, but they are a different set of frequencies. If you inserted them yourself, you could do some pretty interesting things with your phone call. One of these tone sets, or rather, a _single_ tone, was 2,600hz. If you threw that across the circuit (and you were the original caller) you'd be disconnected from the person you had called _but_ would still have an active long distance trunk available. You could then send out the various other multi frequiency tones and do all sorts of fun things. Think of it as the telco equivalent to a buffer overflow bouncing you into root... Alas, these tricks no longer work. The phone network has moved away from this method (called "in-band signalling") to a system where the control channels are _separate_ from the voice channel. - -- _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 19:29:35 -0400 From: Joel B Levin Subject: Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site In , sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steve Sobol) wrote: }From 'Joel B Levin': }>In <8oc547$rfo$1@panix5.panix.com>, }> dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) wrote: }>}danny 'does "2600" have any telco history meaning?' burstein }>You're kidding, right? }I'd like to know its significance, myself. I may get the exact mechanism wrong, but in days gone by, a chirp of 2600 hz tone would disconnect the far end (for some definition of "far") of a long distance call, leaving a line open to the internal system multifrequency tones (not the touch tones but those used between switches and tandems etc). A blue (black?) box capable of emitting MF tones could do just about anything in the system once the 2600 hz tone had been given. Supposedly a whistle that came in Cap'n Crunch cereal emitted such a tone, hence the handle of a notorious phone hacker of those days. Filters and traps made this trick available from consumer phone lines years ago. (story told me ca 1971 by a supervisor at Boston 5, a wideband test center in AT&T Long Lines: test engineers arrayed along the long bench in the room were often diagnosing problems between there and New York. To talk to a tech in New York often took many tries to redial because of a shortage of trunks between the city. Occasionally some guy would be listening to line quality on a loudspeaker when the far end of his link disconnected and his speaker emitted a 2600 hz chirp. Much and loud was the swearing when everyone's voice call to New York or wherever was terminated by that chirp.) /JBL - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 20:07:37 -0400 From: Paul Hrisko Subject: RE:NYTimes.com Article: What City, Please? Vexation in Dialing Can Start With 411 Just a quick note re. wireless service & 411. I use Verizon for cell service in the NYC area because it (at least to me), has better call completion & fewer dropped calls, though quality can be (and usually is), poor. Either way, I needed to check a movie time last week and put a 411 call in to get the theater listing. The woman on the other end asked me what theater I was looking for, then what movie I wanted to see. She floored me by giving me the listed times, then asking if there were other movies I wanted to check because the closest showtime was only 15 min. away. I was a few blocks form the theater so I was fine. She thanked me, then hung up. And this was during the Verizon strike!!! I'm curious to know who or what service actually answered the call. Anyone know? P. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 20:36:33 -0400 From: kamlet@infinet.com Subject: Re: 2600 (was Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site) In article <3.0.5.32.20000828162446.0087e4c0@oz.net> you write: >28 Aug 2000 18:21:34 -0400 jsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steve Sobol) >wrote: > >>>>From 'Joel B Levin': >>>In <8oc547$rfo$1@panix5.panix.com>, >>> dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) wrote: >>>}danny 'does "2600" have any telco history meaning?' burstein >>> >>>You're kidding, right? >> >>I'd like to know its significance, myself. > >2600 hz is the tone that was used in MF (multifrequency) signalling as part >of the connection tone to disconnect a connection. Someone discovered Someone discovered? The detailed article appeared in the public "Bell System Journal" for one and all to read. >that >this frequency could be used to hack the network and make toll calls >without getting billed for it. It was for "phone phreaking" and used by >the telephone hacker community for many years to circumvent the regular >telephone billing system. 2600 quartely magazine and today the newsgroup >alt.2600 are part of that community. The infamous "blue boxes" were used >to mimick the frequencies that the operator would dial with "key pulse." I >believe that the telephone system at present uses different switching >technology so MF hacking isn't as "proffitable" as it once was. Back then the signaling and voice network was the same network, and call setup was done on the same circuit as the eventual voice path. So tricks like calling a known busy (no billing) and then re-routing to the desired call-ed number occurred after billing. Once Common Channel Interoffice Signalling went in, there were quite a few changes: Blue Boxes no longer worked on CCIS circuits since the call setup was done over the signalling network and calls were completed faster. A side effect was someone in NY calling LA, would be used to it taking 20-30 seconds before hearing ringing. When CCIS was used and ringing came in just 5 seconds, many people figured they misdialed, were not getting a toll call, and hung up to dial again! I worked with a fellow at Bell Labs whose job was writing software to detect odd patterned calls, such as a call to busy that stayed off hook for 20 minutes, and the software flagged those. He got to go along on raids of blue box users. The phone company (PNB was the first) would get the DA to request an arrest warrant and the police would then invite the phone company along to identify what a blue box was. (Not all blue boxes were blue :^) After the trial, he sometimes got to keep the blue box. - -- Art Kamlet Columbus, Ohio kamlet@infinet.com - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 21:38:19 -0400 From: Wlevant@aol.com Subject: Re : US West Continues (?) to Burn > Someone, or some computer program, mistakenly posted the article in > the news groups clari.tw.telecom.misc, clari.tw.telecom.phone_service, > and clari.tw.telecom. I imagine it caused some concern for a moment > or two among those who believed it really was a telecom story. Just another example of how computers "improve" our lives. No one proof-reads anything any more, either. And spellchecking doesn't count. Bill - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 21:50:32 -0400 From: charles Andrews Subject: Re: Cannot change my long distance provider? No-way. I've heard of PIC freezes but that is usually at the customers request. In fact I'm sure the FCC would be interested in hearing a comment like that. Make a report on the bastards On 28 Aug 2000 12:07:11 -0400, joemitchellsc@yahoo.com wrote: >is true, I'm thinking about using 10-10-220 (or similiar codes) >to get around my local provider. Any hidden charges (connection fees) >that I should be aware of? - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 22:26:20 -0400 From: davidll@toad.net (David Lee) Subject: FORW: 2600, was: Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site Found this <8oesfo$irm$1@panix5.panix.com> in comp.dcom.telecom: == BEGIN forwarded message == From: dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: 2600, was: Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site In sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steve Sobol) writes: >>From 'Joel B Levin': >>In <8oc547$rfo$1@panix5.panix.com>, >> dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) wrote: >>}danny 'does "2600" have any telco history meaning?' burstein >> >>You're kidding, right? >I'd like to know its significance, myself. I hear it had something to do with cereal boxes... spoiler alert spoiler alert spoiler alert last chance ok, one more last chance that's it: The automated Bell System long distance network used multi-frequency tones to set up the call. Occassionally you would hear them as a 'boop-beep-beep-boop-beep-boop-boop' right after you finished dialing. Multi frequency tones are similar in concept to the more familiar "touch tone" sets you get on a phone, but they are a different set of frequencies. If you inserted them yourself, you could do some pretty interesting things with your phone call. One of these tone sets, or rather, a _single_ tone, was 2,600hz. If you threw that across the circuit (and you were the original caller) you'd be disconnected from the person you had called _but_ would still have an active long distance trunk available. You could then send out the various other multi frequiency tones and do all sorts of fun things. Think of it as the telco equivalent to a buffer overflow bouncing you into root... Alas, these tricks no longer work. The phone network has moved away from this method (called "in-band signalling") to a system where the control channels are _separate_ from the voice channel. - -- _____________________________________________________ Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key dannyb@panix.com [to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded] - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. == END forwarded message == The name we're all looking for is Captain Crunch (a toy whistle inside every box just happened to be 2600 hz). He's still around, at: http://webcrunchers.com/crunch/ The "Phone Hacking Stories" link makes for some good reading. Dave - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 23:15:01 -0400 From: BH Subject: Re: Another one of AT&T's contribution to network radio RCA did not create ABC. The Red and Blue networks were both NBC. RCA had to divest itself of one of the networks when the FCC upheld the chain broadcasting rule in 1943. The Blue (not Red) network was sold to WMCA whose owner was Edward J. Noble, for $8 million. Nobel made his fortune in Life Savers candy. In 1945 the Blue network became ABC. On the subject of the NBC Chimes, there is an article that tells the complete history of the chimes at: http://home.flash.net/~billhar/chimes.htm Bill Harris Steven Scharf wrote: > What are you smoking. NBC is still a wholly owned subsidary of General Electic > and has been since RCA was sold to them in 1986. What you may be confusing is > that RCA created both NBC and ABC as the Blue and Red networks. They were > forced to give up one of those networks (don't know when, late 30s maybe). > They sold the Red network which became ABC. > > Steven Scharf > SCS Media Services > 57 East 11th Street, 9th Floor > New York, New York 10003 > 212-822-8555 > 201-547-3510 Direct Phone and Fax (Please call first before faxing) > SCSMedia@aol.com > > dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) commented: > > and, just as a reminder, the NBC chimes are the musical notes... > > G - E - C > > yes, yung'uns. Once upon a time the National Broadcasting Corporation was > owned, in part, by the Generel Electric Company. > > However, due to anti-trust action by the US gov't, they were forced to > split apart. > > danny 'until recently, of course' burstein > > Mark J Cuccia writes: > [snip] > > >(followed by a staff announcer, "This is the NBC Radio Network", and then > >the NBC chimes, bong-bing-bung) > -- > The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail > messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 28 Aug 2000 23:15:01 -0400 From: BH Subject: Re: Another one of AT&T's contribution to network radio RCA did not create ABC. The Red and Blue networks were both NBC. RCA had to divest itself of one of the networks when the FCC upheld the chain broadcasting rule in 1943. The Blue (not Red) network was sold to WMCA whose owner was Edward J. Noble, for $8 million. Nobel made his fortune in Life Savers candy. In 1945 the Blue network became ABC. On the subject of the NBC Chimes, there is an article that tells the complete history of the chimes at: http://home.flash.net/~billhar/chimes.htm Bill Harris Steven Scharf wrote: > What are you smoking. NBC is still a wholly owned subsidary of General Electic > and has been since RCA was sold to them in 1986. What you may be confusing is > that RCA created both NBC and ABC as the Blue and Red networks. They were > forced to give up one of those networks (don't know when, late 30s maybe). > They sold the Red network which became ABC. > Steven Scharf > SCS Media Services > 57 East 11th Street, 9th Floor > New York, New York 10003 > 212-822-8555 > 201-547-3510 Direct Phone and Fax (Please call first before faxing) > SCSMedia@aol.com > > dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) commented: > > and, just as a reminder, the NBC chimes are the musical notes... > > G - E - C > > yes, yung'uns. Once upon a time the National Broadcasting Corporation was > owned, in part, by the Generel Electric Company. > > However, due to anti-trust action by the US gov't, they were forced to > split apart. > > danny 'until recently, of course' burstein > > Mark J Cuccia writes: > [snip] > > >(followed by a staff announcer, "This is the NBC Radio Network", and then > >the NBC chimes, bong-bing-bung) > -- > The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail > messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Aug 2000 00:42:36 -0400 From: AES Subject: Re: 2600 (was Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site) In article <200008290026.UAA03635@shell.oh.voyager.net>, kamlet@infinet.com wrote: > > Someone discovered? The detailed article appeared in the public > "Bell System Journal" for one and all to read. > Just to preserve the memory of a once truly important technical journal which over many decades published pioneering and landmark papers in many areas of electronics, signal processing, optics, and lasers, it was the "Bell System Technical Journal", aka BSTJ. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Aug 2000 00:57:22 -0400 From: The Old Bear Subject: Ostankino Communications Tower fire in Moscow THE NEW YORK TIMES Monday, August 28, 2000 Firemen Put Out Blaze in Moscow - ------------------------------- By Michael Wines MOSCOW, Aug. 28 -- Dodging falling globs of molten cable, firemen finally put out a searing blaze today that turned the television tower that is Europe's tallest structure, Russia's pride and Moscow's communications hub into a 1,772-foot kitchen match. As the television screens of an estimated 20 million Russians flickered with snow, firefighters battled for nearly 26 hours before smothering the fire in the Ostankino tower. As they fought, they were forced to retreat steadily as flames licked downward through makeshift asbestos barriers and across firebreaks where flammable wiring had been torn away. Late today, officials announced that the bodies of a firefighter and an elevator operator had been found in one elevator that had fallen nearly 1,000 feet sometime during the fire into a basement. A third body was believed pinned in the debris of the crash. Before the firemen declared victory about 6 p.m. today, the fire had engulfed all of the pre-stressed concrete section of the tower above the 225-foot level, as well as much of a 410-foot metal antenna planted at the top. The concrete part appeared in no danger of collapse, engineers said, although they refused to say the same of the heat-seared antenna. To Russian leaders and the public alike, the disaster delivered yet another blow to the nation's diminishing standing as a technological power of the first rank. As with the explosion and sinking of the nuclear submarine Kursk two weeks ago, rescuers proved to lack the equipment and know-how to deal with the emergency, even when it reached the level of an ordinary high-rise. And like the Kursk, the Ostankino tower has long been regarded as a triumph of Russian know-how -- which is to say Soviet know-how, in the days when the Kremlin was bent on impressing friends and enemies with its ability to think in gargantuan terms. The Ostankino tower was the world's tallest free-standing structure when it was built in 1967 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Soviet revolution. One writer then compared it to a giant syringe for ideological injections. In 1993, when communist plotters tried to seize Ostankino in a failed coup against President Boris N. Yeltsin, it came to symbolize the importance of the free exchange of information in a democracy. Today, President Vladimir V. Putin suggested it was a metaphor for Russia's current status as a pitiful, helpless giant. "This latest accident shows the shape of our vital installations and the overall state of our country," he said. "We should not forget the large-scale problems or current economic issues here." The fire apparently began about 3:20 p.m. Sunday on that antenna, in a mass of wiring at about 1,500 feet, and burned its way earthward for most of the next day. The battle against it was fatally hamstrung by the fact that the only safe way to fight the blaze -- as firefighters belatedly discovered -- was to carry extinguishers by hand up more than 1,000 feet of stairs. The victims of the fire apparently were trapped sometime Sunday after power to an elevator failed as they were ferrying supplies upward to firefighters. Officials said they probably died of suffocation or heat even before the fire melted cables and caused the elevator to plunge into the basement, more than 21 feet below ground. They were the only human casualties in the harrowing emergency. Seven other firefighters were rescued from an elevator that plunged several hundred feet Sunday evening, only to be stopped by emergency brakes about 950 feet above ground. Vadim Romanchik, a 36-year-old banker who lives with his wife and daughter in the tower's reedy shadow, said he took the fire to heart. "My wife was born here in 1965, and I moved here in '72," he said today. "This tower can be viewed as one of the symbols of Moscow. I'm proud to say I live here, and if it ceases to exist, it will be a great loss." "I don't want it to fall down," he continued. "But they can't leave it like this." While the fire briefly knocked out television across the entire nation, its effects were mostly confined to Moscow, where the overwhelming majority of viewers rely on over-the-air broadcasts instead of more expensive cable programming. Virtually the entire line of television channels, from state-controlled RTR and ORT to the independent NTV network to Russia's version of MTV, were knocked off the air, as was one frequency of the popular news radio station Echo Moskvy and a host of specialized radio and paging services. About all that remained was the Russian movie channel TNT -- no relation to the identically named Time-Warner channel in the United States -- which quickly converted its broadcasts to accommodate NTV and RTR newscasts. But reception for even that station was quirky. In fact, no one today seemed sure of the 51,400-ton tower's fate. The tower's designer, Nikolai Nikitin, shared a birthday with France's Gustave Eiffel, whose tower was a bit over half as tall. Mr. Nikitin frequently said his work would withstand the elements for at least 300 years. But he apparently was thinking of wind and rain, not fire. While the concrete rings that comstitute the tower's frame seemed structurally intact today, 80 of its 149 high-tension steel cables -- strings that hold the tower upright -- had melted or warped in the heat. Engineers said the structure was built to withstand such damage, but government officials also said it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars to repair it, money this cash-strapped nation can ill afford. Eduard Sagalayev, the president of Russia's National Association of Television and Radio Broadcasters, slipped into a eulogy today when talking about the fire, telling Echo Moskvy that the tower "was a unique structure." "Let us not speak in the past tense," an interviewer said. "It gives you a funny feeling." But Mr. Sagalayev replied: "Unfortunately, one has to speak in the past tense. If it does not collapse, I doubt that it will be able to perform its functions." Mr. Putin, who was criticized for a lackadaisical response to the Kursk disaster, wasted no time today, ordering engineers to restore television and other communications to Moscow within a week. By day's end, brainstormers were proposing to mount transmitters everywhere from beneath helium balloons to atop the roofs of Moscow's hilltop state university. The fire could have been much worse. It surprised the city on a brilliant Sunday afternoon, when throngs of sightseers had come to the Ostankino tower for the elevator ride to its 1,105-foot-high observation platform and a meal in the nearby Seventh Heaven restaurant. The fire began above them, in a section of the antenna used by a paging service, and tourists and workers were safely evacuated before it spread. As the fire sputtered out this afternoon, hundreds of onlookers and nearly as many journalists gathered several hundred yards from the tower -- as close as police would allow -- to take pictures, gawk and speculate about whether the spire looked as if it were leaning. (It was not; workers for the city's geological agency monitored the tilt, and said it was within normal limits.) Most people here seemed to suffer the loss of entertainment good-naturedly. "I watch MTV practically all the time," 12-year-old Ivan Lionov said as he stood along a cordoned-off street in north Moscow that provided a good view of the tower. "But we'll live. Of course it's bad. But soon we'll be in school." And an elderly woman selling sunflower and pistachio seeds to the throngs of gawkers on the street had a contrarian view some Westerners might appreciate. "You can bury my TV," she said. "There's nothing to watch; just bad things and naked people." Copyright 2000 The New York Times Company - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Aug 2000 02:59:48 -0400 From: Terry Kennedy Subject: Re: 2600 (was Re: CWA Operating verizonREALLYsucks Web Site) Joseph Singer writes: > 2600 hz is the tone that was used in MF (multifrequency) signalling as part > of the connection tone to disconnect a connection. Someone discovered that > this frequency could be used to hack the network and make toll calls > without getting billed for it. It was for "phone phreaking" and used by > the telephone hacker community for many years to circumvent the regular > telephone billing system. 2600 quartely magazine and today the newsgroup > alt.2600 are part of that community. The infamous "blue boxes" were used > to mimick the frequencies that the operator would dial with "key pulse." I > believe that the telephone system at present uses different switching > technology so MF hacking isn't as "proffitable" as it once was. Actually, it was the idle tone (continuous) on a trunk. If you called an 800 number (so you didn't get billed, and allegedly so there was no record of the call) and sent a 2600 down the line, it would tear down some part of your call, leaving you connected to a digit receiver that you could then send tones to. Using this, you could dial pretty much anything operators could dial, including normally non-dialable numbers and operators in other areas. Of course, you could call regular numbers, too... This didn't work on the oldest trunks, which signaled using 10 or 20 PPS pulses instead of tones. If you heard "braaaaap brap brap braaap" after you dialed but before ringing, you had a pulse trunk, while if you got "boop beep boop bleep", you had a tone trunk. Most long-distance calls went across at least one tone trunk, so you could box them. AFAIK, every digital-fabric switch has a feature to detect 2600 (mostly for humor purposes these days). 2600 detectors were a hardware option on the 1AESS, if I remember correctly. Terry Kennedy http://www.tmk.com terry@tmk.com Jersey City, NJ USA - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 29 Aug 2000 03:13:21 -0400 From: ebohlman@netcom.com (Eric Bohlman) Subject: Re: Wired News : New Toys for Cheating Students Dale Neiburg (DNeiburg@npr.org) wrote: : The new computer-administered GRE, at least, creates the test as it goes, : based on the applicant's answer to the previous question. As you miss : questions the computer asks you easier ones, and when you give right answers : it asks harder ones. : : In the good old days, everyone got the same questions and you were graded on : the variable of how many you got right. Now (at least in theory) everyone : will get about the same number of right answers and you're graded on the : variable of the difficulty of the questions you're being asked. This actually makes a lot of sense because it allows the test to make meaningful distinctions between high performers. The problem with traditional tests is that they can't draw fine distinctions between high performers (or low performers, but that doesn't matter for something like the GRE) because if you have a group of test-takers who have gotten at least a certain (high) score, that means that they've answered almost all of the questions correctly and therefore there are only a few questions left to distinguish between them. For example, if you have a 100-question test and you need to answer 98 of them correctly to achieve a certain score, you've got only two questions left to determine how much better than that score anyone can do. Since performance on only two questions is much more likely to be influenced by random chance than performance on a lot of questions, scores become less and less reliable the higher they get because even if all the questions are of equal difficulty, the higher someone scores, the more each question contributes to the score (IIRC, the difference between a 750 and an 800 on the SAT verbal test is only one question, whereas the difference between a 500 and a 550 is about ten questions). And of course, the fewer questions you have left at any point, the fewer levels of performance you can distinguish; if you've got, say, 100 people who scored at least 98, you can distinguish only four levels of performance among them. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ End of Telecom Digest V2000 #37 *******************************