Date: 18 Sep 2000 06:15:12 -0400 Message-ID: <20000918101512.24201.qmail@xuxa.iecc.com> From: owner-telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org (Telecom Digest) To: telecom-digest@telecom-digest.org Subject: Telecom Digest V2000 #57 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: bf29b55994d784274e1d1e99863bc23a Status: RO X-Status: Telecom Digest Monday, September 18 2000 Volume 2000 : Number 057 In this issue: Re: More Area Code Fun in Eastern Massachusetts Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) Re: NO long distance carrier on phone, but Hacker calls overseas on my line! Re: eFax beholden to spammers? Re: Caller ID and answer supervision? Re: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner, but is privacy compromised? IP/Computer Telephony Resource The Emperor's new privacy Re: CellOne San Francisco and AT&T Wireless Re: Landline to Wireless Number Portability (article) Re: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner, but is privacy compro mised? Re: Telecom Digest V2000 #55 Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) iname.com: Front For Targeted Spam? Re: Telecom Digest V2000 #55 Re: Sorry, but... Re: Sorry, but... Re: Sorry, but... Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) Re: More Area Code Fun in Eastern Massachusetts CLEC Puts ISP Customers Out Of Business In Northern NJ Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) annoyances, was: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away Re: annoyances, was: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away Re: Sorry, but... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: 17 Sep 2000 16:54:55 -0400 From: "Ed Ellers" Subject: Re: More Area Code Fun in Eastern Massachusetts Fred Goldstein wrote: "We just split all of Eastern MA two years ago, creating 781 and 978 to relieve 617 and 508. They split in order to retain seven-digit dialing, since the FCC, again causing unnecessary pain, demands that overlays be accompanied by ten-digit dialing." Somebody ought to take that one to court. How in the bleeping bleep does the FCC get to define how a call *that does not cross a state line* has to be dialed? - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 17:13:29 -0400 From: "Ed Ellers" Subject: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) Joel B Levin wrote: "I frequently skip articles in html (1) because they're not worth the trouble to decipher..." More ad hominem attacks, hmmm? I suppose you have kill files for all AOL and WebTV users, too. "...and (2) because if I did have an html-aware newsreader they could easily be a source of web bugs I don't want to enable." Why would they be any more so than Web sites themselves? - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 17:38:09 -0400 From: Peter Morgan <$nospam$@webnet.clara.net> Subject: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) In comp.dcom.telecom I saw that on 17 Sep 2000 17:13:29 -0400 "Ed Ellers" wrote: >"...and (2) because if I did have an html-aware newsreader they could easily >be a source of web bugs I don't want to enable." > >Why would they be any more so than Web sites themselves? One doesn't have to look at web sites. Sometimes my mail client may "open" the latest message which has arrived and an HTML page comes up with some script error... I am usually grateful it has but the point is that unsolicited e-mail can contain pages/code which one would perhaps never go looking for, even if you did get to one of them somehow (and using lynx from a unix shell means that quite a number of things can be avoided, like graphics heavy pages or awful background music (which both annoy me :-) etc - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 18:02:11 -0400 From: Clarence Dold Subject: Re: NO long distance carrier on phone, but Hacker calls overseas on my line! peny_lane2@my-deja.com wrote: : computer or phone. We live alone with our 3 year old grandaughter. We : do not access porno sites on my computer; We do not have a microphone If you have a cordless phone, make sure you put it back in its cradle. If it is left off hook, and an older model phone, someone driving by can grab dial tone from your base, and make whatever calls they please. - -- - --- Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - San Jose & Pope Valley (Napa County) CA. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 18:02:10 -0400 From: Clarence Dold Subject: Re: eFax beholden to spammers? Dave Garland wrote: : I use a distinctive email address with them, and aside from their : newsletter have never received _any_ mail to that address. ditto my efax signup. My recollection of the signup stuff implied to me that they would be able to target certain banner ads towards me based on something or other, but since I signed up for "linux", I get tiff files, and I don't use their viewer, so I've never seen any of their banner ads. - -- - --- Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - San Jose & Pope Valley (Napa County) CA. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 18:02:11 -0400 From: Clarence Dold Subject: Re: Caller ID and answer supervision? Rich Wales wrote: : Recently, she tried several times (without success) to reach a cousin : in another state. Each time, the phone rang about six times, but no : one answered. When her phone bill arrived, she discovered that the : "10-10" provider had billed each of these unsuccessful calling attempts : as a one-minute call (and charged her about a dollar per call, since : the plan is one of those "up to X minutes for only Y cents" deals). Some switches have a programmed "assumed supervision". The default on the Dex600 is 60 seconds, so if you listen to ringing, or a busy signal, for more than 60 seconds, you will be billed for the call. This is separate from hardware answer supervision, but it falls into the billable category in most billing systems. - -- - --- Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - San Jose & Pope Valley (Napa County) CA. N38o36'06.6" W122o21'50.6" NAD27 True - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 18:02:12 -0400 From: Clarence Dold Subject: Re: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner, but is privacy compromised? Andrew Green wrote: : "By comparison, getting yet another proprietary barcode system into common : use is going to be a bigger hurdle for them -- how many people are still : using those VCRplus codes in the TV listings?" I fetched a program from the web that is a javascript for reading the codes, but I find that there is a program included with the scanner that reads the codes. catscan.exe will display scanned codes, but you need to turn off the :CRQ program first, else it causes an illegal instruction ;-) - -- - --- Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - San Jose & Pope Valley (Napa County) CA. N38o36'06.6" W122o21'50.6" NAD27 True - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 18:27:47 -0400 From: "Keith Harper" Subject: IP/Computer Telephony Resource A new website has been launched to provide a comprehensive resource for locating IVR, CTI, VoIP and Computer Telephony products and services. The site also offers forums where you can buy and sell surplus equipment, or request solutions to telephony related projects and services. Visit - http://www.TelephonyIndex.co.uk/ Regards, Keith Harper. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 18:51:17 -0400 From: Monty Solomon Subject: The Emperor's new privacy The Emperor's new privacy WASHINGTON D.C. -- Calling privacy policies and seal programs the equivalent of the Emperor's new clothes, privacy advocates -- and some industry privacy officers -- called for Federal legislation to simplify the privacy landscape for both consumers and companies. http://www.lycos.com/cgi-bin/pursuit?query=242589&fs=docid&cat=zdnet&mtemp=zdnet - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 19:33:51 -0400 From: "Michael D. Sullivan" Subject: Re: CellOne San Francisco and AT&T Wireless "John David Galt" wrote in message news:39C1B3FD.1D6BF975@diogenes.sacramento.ca.us... > FWIW, AFAIK, Pacific Bell has never held any interest in McCaw/BAC1 and > wasn't allowed to, though PB did act as one of many resellers of that > same (but rebranded) service for several years before the AirTouch > spinoff. PacTel Mobile Access (Pacific Bell's cellular affiliate way back when) acquired a 23.5% minority interest in Bay Area Cellular Telephone Co. before it went on the air. In 1985-86, PTMA acquired an additional 23.5% interest held by a subsidiary of Communications Industries, Inc. in a merger, and it acquired a majority interest as the result of litigation concerning the 23.5% then held by McCaw. (I believe that before PTMA acquired its interest in BACTC it held a 3% interest in the GTE wireline license, which it divested, but I may be mistaken.) The PTMA majority interest in BACTC was subsequently spun off to AirTouch (and is now part of Verizon Wireless). Before this occurred, PacBell created a new subsidiary, PacBell Mobile Services, that acted as a reseller of BACTC and also, ultimately, became a PCS operator. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 19:33:53 -0400 From: "Michael D. Sullivan" Subject: Re: Landline to Wireless Number Portability (article) wrote in message news:8pt9tb$4pi$1@solaris.cc.vt.edu... > Michael D. Sullivan wrote: > >> wrote: > > > Wireless carriers in the US are currently under an obligation to implement > > local number portability (LNP) by November 2001. The wireless LNP date has > > Will this obligation be like the obligation to provide caller ID > info? i.e. they won't really enforce it to any phone company's > inconvenience? I can't speak to that. As it stands, once this goes into effect, a wireless carrier will have to be able to participate in porting of numbers in the same manner as wireline carriers. This won't happen by magic. Any carrier wanting to port a number from another carrier must incur costs for the facilities needed; I frankly don't know whether this is or will be required in advance of customer requests for number porting. At this point, I believe number porting is only required among wireline carriers who both have numbers in the same rate center. In other words, I couldn't port my Verizon wireline number in Bethesda, Md. to a CLEC who isn't present in Bethesda, but only in Rockville, fifteen miles away. Assuming this policy is in existence when wireless carriers become subject to LNP, you will only be able to port your wireline number to a wireless carrier if the wireless carrier has numbers from your rate center. Since wireless carriers typically take numbers from only a few rate centers in each NPA, this may limit the utility of wireline-to-wireless number portability. Likewise, wireless-to-wireless (e.g., moving my cellular number from Verizon Wireless to VoiceStream) will be limited to situations where both wireless carriers take numbers from the same rate center. Eventually, the rate center limitation may become toast as the scope of number portability is broadened. > So, the cellular companies designed a poor system for looking up > roaming phone numbers. This problem should have been obvious to > them when they were building the infrastructure. I can see at least > two ways this could have been implemented better. Either they should > have used the entire phone number as the search key, or they could > just fire queries at *all* the wireless carriers in the NPA-NXX > and see which one responds. Ah, the benefits of hindsight. The kernel of the roaming system was developed in the mid-1980s, when there were two cellular carriers per market, no serious prospect of more carriers per market. There was no concept of number portability at that point. Digital cellular was still being developed. Europe's GSM hadn't rolled out yet. The carriers developed roaming without any government mandate. It was something that made the service more attractive, and they worked out a way to make it possible. It was actually a pretty amazing development, even if in the early days it was much less automatic than today. There was no, nada, zilch reason for the carriers to make the roaming system more complex than it was, and plenty of reasons for making it as simple and efficient as possible. The roaming system was carrier-oriented because there were only two carriers in a market and because many of the carriers (the RBOC affiliates) were under an obligation to avoid carrying interLATA traffic; they had to hand off interLATA calls to the customer's chosen carrier -- including handing off the transport of an incoming call between the home switch and the host switch to that carrier. There was enough complexity without adding more. If a six-digit lookup identified the carrier with 100% accuracy, there was no possible justification for multiplying the size and cost of the database by a factor of 10,000. (Remember how much disk drives cost back then? I remember buying that a 40 MB drive for a PC-AT in the late 1980s cost over $250. Gigabyte PC drives were but a dream.) Mainframe drives were *very* expensive. Scaling up a database by a factor of 10,000 would have been insanely expensive, required a much more massive complex of mainframes and external disk drives, and slowed the database lookups significantly. In fact, the clearinghouse that was at the center of the roaming system was run by an independent company. If it had increased its costs by a factor of 10,000 without a good reason, another company would have come along with a cheaper system. > > The wireless industry has been working on a solution to this: separate the > > number used inside the phone for identification from the number used for > > dialing. Right now the same number (your phone number) is used for both, > > and is known as the Mobile Identification Number or MIN. The new system > > will continue to use a MIN to identify the phone, but it won't necessarily > > be your phone number. Your phone number will be the Mobile Directory Number > > or MDN. The separation of the MIN and MDN will allow the roaming database > > to identify your home carrier from the MIN. The carriers will translate > > between MIN and MDN for placing or receiving calls by reference to a > > translation table or database. > > Sounds like they are building another bad idea on top of the old one. > Why don't they just use the whole 10 digit phone number instead of > creating another "hidden" number just to figure out who the home > carrier is? The short answer is that reinventing the roaming system from the ground up would take a lot more time than the FCC has allowed and would be much more expensive to develop and operate. Also, I'm not sure there is a single database in existence that will identify the actual serving carrier and switch of a ported phone number. (I believe that when you make a long-distance call to a ported number, it gets routed initially on the basis of the NPA-NXX, and only when it arrives in the area called is the actual serving carrier looked up, but I may be wrong on this.) Even if there is, your system would require the roaming clearinghouse to rely on that external database, which will increase costs and slow performance. Doing a ten-digit external lookup is much less efficient than doing a six-digit internal lookup. (Also, maintaining the six-digit carrier/switch database doesn't require massive constant changes; it only needs to be updated when a carrier adds an NXX code.) Keeping costs down is important because a roaming phone results in a clearinghouse check every time it comes into a new carrier's service area, whether or not it's used to make a call. Your approach would make roaming much more expensive even if you don't make calls. The increased cost would inevitably be passed on to the customer. > The first 6 digits cuts the possibilities down to > at most 7 carriers, so you can either just set up the clearing house > database to hold the entire 10 digits, or blind query all 7 possible > carriers and only one should answer. Huh? The first 6 digits allows identification of up to one million (10^6)destinations. All the carriers and switches in the NANP currently have to fit in that space, wireline or wireless. That's how the phone system works. The number of wireless NPA-NXX combinations is a small subset of the million. Why have ten billion database entries when there can be no more than one million NXX codes (actually less than 800,000, due to exclusions for N11, NPA-555, no 0 or 1 as the NPA's leading digit, etc.), much less switches? Given that the first six digits identifies one and only one carrier and switch in the current system, why change this? LNP breaks the six-digit identification when looking at phone numbers. That's why the wireless carriers will use a separate MIN that won't necessarily represent the phone number; it can hold a dummy number whose first six digits unambiguously identify the actual home carrier and switch and whose last four digits provide a mapping to the phone number or MDN. I don't understand your question about blind querying the seven possible carriers. Which seven carriers? There are hundreds of wireless carriers and many thousands of wireless switches. > Oh, I understand. It is always difficult to modify a well established > infrastructure like this. It just seems like they should have seen > this coming. Why should the wireless industry have seen number portability coming in the mid-1980s? There were no CLECs. There was no wireline number portability. Most states prohibited local wireline competition, in fact. The FCC hadn't even begun dreaming about local number portability. It was struggling with the notion that independent companies wanted to begin accessing wireline facilities for the provision of competitive access instead of using the LEC's access tandem. > So maybe next year (Nov. 2001) I'll be able to cancel my wired line > and go cellular. I look forward to it, because there is no other > competition in my area. Wireline LNP is in place now. That doesn't mean that there are companies in place everywhere who can make a successful business of porting numbers. I'm not surprised that CLECs haven't made it to Blacksburg, VA (home of Virginia Tech) yet; they have to make a profitable business case. If the wireless companies don't see porting wireline numbers as a profitable endeavor, they won't spend the money to do it. You can cancel your wired line and go cellular right now; you just won't be able to keep your number. There is no assurance that your cellular company will rush out and spend billions of dollars in November of next year to be able to port every wireline number in their service area just because they have to become LNP-capable. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 19:38:32 -0400 From: Clarence Dold Subject: Re: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner, but is privacy compro mised? Green, Andrew wrote: : Time does not permit a detailed response to that lengthy post so I'll just : make the following observations: : o There's a similar big push for it going on in "Parade" magazine, the : flimsy supplement stuffed into Sunday newspapers When I brought it home, my wife commented that she had noticed lots of bar codes in recent magazine advertisements. : o The barcode is only "italicized" for recognition by the (human) reader; : the scanner doesn't care I think the Radio Shack italicized bar codes are to emphasize that you are going deep into the web site, rather than a main page, in search of a particular item or class of items. : o I do think it's a clever idea to provide a lookup table enabling : consumers to scan the UPC of a product and go directly to that Clever? Holy bar codes, Batman! What a phenomenal idea! I've used it. It works very well, for a range of products that I might not expect to participate in this scheme. Certainly the lookup table is not maintained for free. Or maybe it is, surviving on the reference click-through already pioneered by the banner ads at other sites. My Brother label printer linked to a Japanese-language Brother site, though... technical hurdle there. It reads standard bar codes, obviously, in order to get to those miscellaneous manufacturers. There is a javascript posted on the web that translates to standard bar codes, as opposed to the specialized key sequnce that nominally comes floating in on your keyboard input... be careful what program you have in the foreground when you do a scan. : o Anytime you're asked for an email address in a situation like this, use a : free throwaway account such as Hotmail that you can walk away from after the : followup spam reaches excessive levels My ISP offers time-limited email aliases as a subset of my regular mail. : o Yes, it's tracking what you select. Of _course_ it's tracking what you : select; so are the "Preferred Shopper" discount cards at the supermarket : (which seem to go to much more effort in their signup procedures to identify : who you really are). Its only useful function to the consumer appears to be : to allow more accurate entry of URLs into browsers by people who cannot : type. : In this day and age, you need extra common sense about what you're signing : up for and what information you're going to be revealing. Indeed, the signup doesn't get very personal. It only needs one email address, and I've used that one code on multiple cue-cats already. The individualized serial numbers are no more or less useful than the double-click cookies that are the subject of their own debate. Other web pages indicate that it is simple to disable the serial id, giving either a floating number, or a fixed 000 id. - -- - --- Clarence A Dold - dold@rahul.net - San Jose & Pope Valley (Napa County) CA. N38o36'06.6" W122o21'50.6" NAD27 True - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 19:38:35 -0400 From: "Ed Ellers" Subject: Re: Telecom Digest V2000 #55 Fred Goldstein wrote: "Second, this digest is an email digest gatewayed to Usenet, not a web site Both email and Usenet are "plain text" media by specification. HTML is abusive." Oh, not this old chestnut again. If, in fact, HTML is so inappropriate, why do both Microsoft and Netscape include that option in their mail and news programs? I fully agree that HTML *can* be abused (especially since many list servers don't pass it properly), but I do not agree that it *is* abusive by definition. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 21:32:35 -0400 From: Joel B Levin Subject: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) In <8q260j$e86bb$1@ID-39509.news.cis.dfn.de>, "Ed Ellers" wrote: }Joel B Levin wrote: } }"I frequently skip articles in html (1) because they're not worth the }trouble to decipher..." } }More ad hominem attacks, hmmm? I suppose you have kill files for all AOL }and WebTV users, too. Ad hominem? Try again. I don't killfile by domain, and I often read text articles from AOL and webtv. Your straw is defective and your little man fell apart. }"...and (2) because if I did have an html-aware newsreader they could easily }be a source of web bugs I don't want to enable." } }Why would they be any more so than Web sites themselves? I don't open web sites when I'm reading mail or news unless I decide to follow a URL. Random web-bug (1 pixel images, for instance) don't do anything in a text only mail / news reader. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 21:35:21 -0400 From: "Alan Boritz" Subject: iname.com: Front For Targeted Spam? I checked out iname.com's website, after being referred by a friend who uses the service and Netscape redirected to ad.doubleclick.net and unable to go any further. I have all, or most, of doubleclick's domains defined as "127.0.0.1" to kill banners and cookies from being retrieved, and every attempt to access http://www.iname.com results in a 404 error. I checked again with MSIE and was able to get most of the site, except for most of the graphic buttons, which are Doubleclick graphics and links. When I checked further on their sponsor, mail.com, I found that they pitch ISP's for their services to make their email a revenue generator rather than a cost center. If doubleclick is running most of their web site, it's fairly obvious where some of their income is coming from. Are these slimeballs also harvesting email addresses from people who send mail TO iname.com subscribers so they can abuse both the receivers AND senders? - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 21:35:52 -0400 From: Joel B Levin Subject: Re: Telecom Digest V2000 #55 In <8q1k5j$e9io3$1@ID-39509.news.cis.dfn.de>, "Ed Ellers" wrote: }Oh, not this old chestnut again. If, in fact, HTML is so inappropriate, why }do both Microsoft and Netscape include that option in their mail and news }programs? Worse, they (or some of them) default to HTML on! Often because MS decides to do something one way is a pretty good indication that one shouldn't. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 21:59:38 -0400 From: Alan Boritz Subject: Re: Sorry, but... wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) wrote: >[This message would have been sent privately except that the original >author has a broken reply address.] > >In article <4.3.2.7.2.20000915134221.00dcf9c0@pop.novagate.com>, > wrote: >>At the same time, in the year 2000, I cannot understand why >> >>anyone is using a newsreader that can't handle line wrapping. > >It is not the business of a news client to wrap lines, or do anything >else to damage the original article author's presentation. Sure it is. Newsreaders and email clients that can't wrap lines are brain dead. >X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test74 (May 26, 2000) >Originator: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Get a better newsreader, perhaps on a more flexible platform, and you wouldn't have that problem. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 22:12:15 -0400 From: Alan Boritz Subject: Re: Sorry, but... sjsobol@NorthShoreTechnologies.net (Steve Sobol) wrote: >>From 'blackhole@handheld.net': >>I am sorry that some of you could not read my previous message. >> >> >>Since this list is Robo-Moderated it apparently does not accept >> >>Usenet posts. > >Read the confirmation message you got from the bot - you >must confirm that you actually made the original post before >it gets posted. No you don't. >This is done to prevent spam, and you only >need to do it before the first post you make to the group. Only needs to be done ONCE. Then a potential spammer can blast the digest until someone turns him off. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 22:24:11 -0400 From: Alan Boritz Subject: Re: Sorry, but... wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) wrote: >[This message would have been sent privately except that the original >author has a broken reply address.] > >In article <4.3.2.7.2.20000915134221.00dcf9c0@pop.novagate.com>, > wrote: >>At the same time, in the year 2000, I cannot understand why >> >>anyone is using a newsreader that can't handle line wrapping. > >It is not the business of a news client to wrap lines, or do anything >else to damage the original article author's presentation. Sure it is. Newsreaders and email clients that can't wrap lines are brain dead. >X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test74 (May 26, 2000) >Originator: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Get a better newsreader, perhaps on a more flexible platform, and you wouldn't have that problem. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 22:24:41 -0400 From: Alan Boritz Subject: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) John De Hoog wrote: >Matt Ackeret wrote in response to BlackHole... > >>Your post has a lot of strange cut-off lines like this, with !s added at >>the end of the cut off lines. > >I don't quite understand your complaint or that of Matthew Black. Don't >your readers have the option of fitting text to your view window? >BlackHole's message looks fine here, and conforms to any window size I >give it. The problem is not with the writer, but the reader. Some usenet junkies run reader or client software that's somewhat outdated. Rather than increase their capabilities, or find more flexible supported platforms, they choose to complain. >In the distant past it may have been correct protocol to put in hard >carriage returns a la the typewriter; but this is the age of HTML and >format=flowed, where the person viewing (or listening to) a message can >adjust it to individual needs. First of all, it's not that "distant" a past, and HTML is a poor example, since it's not generally supported on all platforms, and only supported on a select few news clients (like Netscape and Outlook Express), and often mis-used by clueless spammers and AOL wienies. Although some snotty arrogant news client authors decided for their users that free-flowing text (also known as "generic wp format) would not be supported, there's no reason why it can't. >If you consider the needs of the visually >impaired, for example, it makes more sense to send messages that can >easily be reformatted with large type, etc. That's the beauty of >electronic messages -- the recipient does not have to be bound to the >format used by the sender. At the risk of sounding insensitive, this is not the appropriate forum for that function. This is an Internet email digest that's gated to usenet, that crosses many different networks, platforms, and email and news clients. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 23:57:42 -0400 From: "Michael D. Sullivan" Subject: Re: More Area Code Fun in Eastern Massachusetts "Ed Ellers" wrote in message news:8q1kf3$eapfc$1@ID-39509.news.cis.dfn.de... > Somebody ought to take that one to court. How in the bleeping bleep does > the FCC get to define how a call *that does not cross a state line* has to > be dialed? Simple. Congress gave the FCC exclusive authority over the U.S. portion of the North American Numbering Plan and allowed the FCC to delegate authority to states, in Section 251(e) of the Communications Act, added in the 1996 Telecom Act. The NANP is clearly interstate in nature, and Congress preempted any independent state authority over the entire dialing and numbering system. States can only act in this area to the extent the FCC allows. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 17 Sep 2000 23:57:53 -0400 From: "Alan Boritz" Subject: CLEC Puts ISP Customers Out Of Business In Northern NJ Quite a few ISP customers in Northern NJ this weekend have been without Internet service due to bad interoffice trunking from Verizon/Bell Atlantic, and there's no solution in sight. All POP's in the 973-358 (Erskine Lakes) and 973-363 (Hawthorne) exchanges served by Adelphi Business Solutions are experiencing static noise and bad distortion, when called from Verizon/Bell Atlantic numbers. That by itself isn't news, except that both Verizon and Adelphi are stonewalling attempts to get it fixed. When I called my ISP, Cybernex (recently purchased by NuNet of Bethlehem, PA), tech support said they were getting a lot of calls about the problem. I also called Verizon to report the trouble on my end. However, this evening, Verizon had no record of a trouble ticket (oh, what a surprise ;), and Adelphia had no knowledge of the problem and no way to take a trouble report from me (since I wasn't their direct customer). These particular exchanges go through Rochelle Park, where a flood took out all interoffice trunking and 911 for several days. I also checked ABS numbers in Kearny, Rutherford and Oradell, and got the same distortion and bad static. Apparently, all customers served by switch PSWYNJ69DS0 (Kearny, Union City, Hackensack, Jersey City, Oradell, Rutherford, and Bayonne) are in the same boat. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 2000 01:16:26 -0400 From: "Ed Ellers" Subject: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) Joel B Levin wrote: "Ad hominem? Try again." You were saying that a whole class of Usenet posters is not worth reading, based solely on their following a practice of which you do not approve. To me that's just as bad as the oft-cited prejudice against WebTV users, and AOL users before them, and Delphi (online service) users before them, and before *that* any posters from domains other than .edu, way back when the Internet was just starting to spread beyond academia. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 2000 01:49:44 -0400 From: John David Galt Subject: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) Alan Boritz wrote: > The problem is not with the writer, but the reader. Some usenet junkies > run reader or client software that's somewhat outdated. Rather than > increase their capabilities, or find more flexible supported platforms, > they choose to complain. The standard says you're wrong: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1036.txt - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 2000 02:02:51 -0400 From: John De Hoog Subject: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away barcode scanner...) John David Galt wrote... >> The problem is not with the writer, but the reader. Some usenet junkies >> run reader or client software that's somewhat outdated. Rather than >> increase their capabilities, or find more flexible supported platforms, >> they choose to complain. > >The standard says you're wrong: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1036.txt The standard is dated 1987. Time for an update? I'm always amused when certain Internet users want to stop the clock on progress at the point when *they* started using the Internet. - -- John De Hoog http://dehoog.org - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 2000 02:21:19 -0400 From: dannyb@panix.com (danny burstein) Subject: annoyances, was: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away In <200009180602.PAA15525@mail156.nifty.com> John De Hoog writes: >> >>The standard says you're wrong: http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1036.txt >The standard is dated 1987. Time for an update? >I'm always amused when certain Internet users want to stop the clock >on progress at the point when *they* started using the Internet. Well, it's quite simple. If you want to be read _on this newsgroup_ then you post in ascii. If you insist on polluting it with extraneous crap, then I, and many other folk, will either ignore you or killfile your postings. Anyway, I have better things to do with my time than argue with someone as self-deluded as you seem to be. And yes, that's my final answer. - -- _____________________________________________________ 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: 18 Sep 2000 02:50:12 -0400 From: John De Hoog Subject: Re: annoyances, was: Re: Message format (was: Radio Shack gives away danny burstein wrote... >Well, it's quite simple. If you want to be read _on this newsgroup_ then >you post in ascii. If you insist on polluting it with extraneous crap, >then I, and many other folk, will either ignore you or killfile your >postings. No one is talking about extraneous crap. The issue is whether or not to make allowance for old news readers that cannot word-wrap at a user-designated point. At no point have I advocated posting to Usenet in HTML or any other rich format. - -- John De Hoog http://dehoog.org - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ Date: 18 Sep 2000 03:35:31 -0400 From: mau@beatles.cselt.it (Maurizio Codogno) Subject: Re: Sorry, but... In article , Alan Boritz wrote: : Newsreaders and email clients that can't wrap lines are brain dead. : : >X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test74 (May 26, 2000) : >Originator: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) : : Get a better newsreader, perhaps on a more flexible platform, and you : wouldn't have that problem. Never had any problems in having line wrapped. .mau. - -- The Telecom Digest is currently robomoderated. Please mail messages to editor@telecom-digest.org. ------------------------------ End of Telecom Digest V2000 #57 *******************************