Software Vault: The Diamond Collection/The Diamond Collection (Software Vault)(Digital Impact).ISO/cdr16/tc15_110.zip/TC15-110.TXT

Text File | 1995-03-12 | 29KB | 670 lines

TELECOM Digest     Mon, 20 Feb 95 23:52:30 CST    Volume 15 : Issue 110

Inside This Issue:                           Editor: Patrick A. Townson

    David Noble on the Information Highway (D. Shniad)
    500 Place-A-Call Working (David L. Oehring)
    List of Carrior Access Codes (Scott Mehosky)
    Wireless LAN's (A.D. Brinkerink)
    Re: Security of Cordless Phones? (John Lundgren)
    Re: Security of Cordless Phones? (Travis Russell)
    Re: GETS - Government Emergency Telecommunications Service? (Mark
Ganzer)
    Cell Service in NY Metro Area Notes (Stan Schwartz)
    Re: Typical Rates for Campus Phone Systems (John Lundgren)
    Re: Typical Rates for Campus Phone Systems (David G. Cantor)

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----------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 17:10:04 -0800
Reply-To: [e-mail]
From: D Shniad <[e-mail]>
Subject: David Noble on the Information Highway


 From Issue 013 of CPU: Working in the Computer Industry   02/15/95
An electronic publication for workers in the computer industry

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE INFORMATION HIGHWAY

 by David Noble

At the end of November, the truth about the information highway
finally got out.  Protesting the announcement of another 5600 layoffs,
1200 Bell-Atlantic employees in Pennsylvania wore T-shirts to work
which graphically depicted themselves as Information Highway Roadkill.
The layoffs were just the latest round of cutbacks at Bell-Atlantic,
which have been matched by the elimination of jobs at the other giants
of the telecommunications industry -- ATT, NYNEX, Northern Telecom --
supposedly the very places where new jobs are to be created with the
information highway.  In reality, the technology is enabling companies
to extend their operations and enlarge their profits while reducing
their workforce, and the pay and security of those who remain, by
contracting out work to cheaper labor around the globe and by
replacing people with machines. The very workers who are constructing
the new information infrastructure are among the first to go, but not
the only ones. The same fate is facing countless workers in
manufacturing and service industries in the wake of the introduction
of these new information technologies.

What is most striking about the Bell-Atlantic episode is not just the
provocative fashion statement of the workers, members of Communication
Workers of America District 13. Rather, it was the company's
exaggerated response.  Bell Atlantic demanded that the workers remove
the T-shirts and when they refused, their employer suspended them
without pay.  According to Vince Maison, president of the union, the
employer suspended the employees out of expressed fear that their
message would be seen by the public.  Significantly, management was
concerned about adverse publicity not just for Bell Atlantic but, more
importantly, for the information highway itself.  This was the first
time the information highway was unambiguously linked with
unemployment, by a union and workforce presumably best situated to
reap its promised benefits.  Apparently the company believed there was
too much riding on the information highway bandwagon to allow this
sober message to get around.  But it did anyway.  The (probably
illegal) management action backfired. Rather than a few hundred
customers catching a glimpse of the T-shirts during the course of the
day's work, millions throughout North America saw them through the
media coverage of the suspensions; within hours, the union was
inundated with phone calls of support and orders for the T-shirts.
The truth was out.

By now probably everyone has heard of the information highway, as a
result of the massive propaganda blitzkrieg of the last year.
Announcements heralding the dawn of a new age emanate incessantly and
insistently from every quarter.  The media gush with the latest info
highway traffic reports (but not the fatalities), all levels of
government are daily pressured into diverting public monies into yet
another private trough, every hi-tech firm, not to mention every
hustler and con artist in the business and academic worlds is rushing
to cash in on the manufactured hysteria.  The aggressive assault on
our senses is aimed at securing public support and subsidy for the
construction of the new commercial, infrastructure.  Its message,
which has become the mind-numbing multinational mantra, is simple and
direct: We have no other choice.  Our very survival, it is alleged as
individuals, a national, a society, depend upon this urgent
development.  Those without it will be left behind in the global
competition.  And those with it?  A recent "Futurescape" advertisement
supplement to the Globe and Mail by Rogers Cantel and Bell Canada
warned that the information highway "raises the ante in competition.
If we don't act, Canada and Canadian companies will be left behind....
the information highway is not a luxury technology for the rich.  It
is the way of the future.  And those who do not get on the highway
will not have any way of reaching their ultimate destination."

And what exactly is the destiny advanced by the information highway?
Ask the Bell-Atlantic employees.  The propaganda never mentions the
roadkill, of course, but that is the future for many.  Most people in
Canada instinctively seem to know this already.  According to a 1993
Gallup poll, 41% of those currently employed believe they will lose
their jobs.  But, despite this intuition, people have been terrorized
into a hapless fatalism.  It's inevitable. Or else they have been
seduced by the exciting array of new tools and diversions:
home-shopping, home-videos, home-learning, home-entertainment,
home-communication.  The operative word is home, because home is where
people without jobs are -- if they still have a home.  The focus is on
leisure, because there will be a lot more of it, in the form of mass
unemployment. (Some lucky few will get home-work, as their job takes
over their home in the sweatshops of the future).  This is where we
are headed on the information highway.

To see where we are headed requires no voodoo forecasting, futuristic
speculation, much less federally-funded research.  We just need to
take a look at where we've been, and where we are.  The returns are
already in on the Information Age, and the information highway
promises merely more of the same, at an accelerated pace.

In the wake of the information revolution (now four decades old -- the
term cybernetics and automation were coined in 1947).  People are now
working harder and longer (with compulsory overtime), under worsening
working conditions with greater anxiety, stress, and accidents, with
less skills, less security, less autonomy, less power (individually
and collectively), less benefits, and less pay.  Without question the
technology has been developed and used to deskill and discipline the
workforce in a global speed-up of unprecedented proportions.  And
those still working are the lucky ones.  For the technology has been
designed above all to displace.

Structural (that is, permanent and systemic as opposed to cyclical)
unemployment in Canada has increased with each decade of the
information age.  With the increasing deployment of so-called
"labor-saving" technology (actually labor-cost saving) official
average unemployment has jumped from 4% in the 1950's, 5.1% in the
1960's, 6.7% in the 1970's, and 9.3% in the 1980's, to 11% so far in
the 1990's.

These, of course, are the most conservative estimates (actual
unemployment is closer to double these figures).  Today we are in the
midst of what is called a jobless recovery, symptomatic and symbolic
of the new age.  Output and profits rise without the jobs which used
to go with them.  Moreover, one fifth of those employed are only
part-time or temporary employees, with little or no benefits beyond
barely subsistence wages, and no security whatever.

In 1993, an economist with the Canadian Manufacturers Association
estimated that between 1989 and 1993, 200,000 manufacturing jobs were
eliminated through the use of new technology -- another conservative
estimate.  And that was only in manufacturing, and before the latest
wave of information highway technology, which will make past
developments seem quaint in comparison.

None of this has happened by accident.  The technology was developed,
typically at public expense, with precisely these ends in mind by
government (notably military), finance, and business elites -- to
shorten the chain of command and extend communications and control
(the military origins of the Internet), to allow for instantaneous
monitoring of money markets and funds transfer, and to enable
manufacturers to extend the range of their operations in pursuit of
cheaper and more compliant labor.

Thus as the ranks of the permanently marginalized and impoverished
swell, and the gap between rich and poor widens to 19th century
dimensions, it is no mere coincidence that we see a greater
concentration of military, political, financial, and corporate power
than ever before in our history.  In the hands of such self- serving
elites -- and it is now more than ever in their hands -- the
information highway, the latest incarnation of the information
revolution, will only be used to compound the crime.

Visions of democratization and popular empowerment via the net are
dangerous delusions; whatever the gains, they are overwhelmingly
overshadowed and more than nullified by the losses.  As the computer
screens brighten with promise for the few, the light at the end of the
tunnel grows dimmer for the many.

No doubt there has been some barely audible and guarded discussion if
not yet debate about the social implications of the information
highway focusing upon such issues as access, commercial vs. public
control and privacy.  There is also now a federal advisory commission
on the information highway although it meets in secret without public
access or scrutiny, doubtless to protect the proprietary interests of
the companies that dominate its membership.  But nowhere is there any
mention of the truth about the information highway, which is mass
unemployment.

For decades we have silently subsidized the development of the very
technologies which have been used to destroy our lives and
livelihoods, and we are about to do it again, without debate, without
any safeguards, without any guarantees.  The calamity we now confront,
as a consequence, rivals the upheaval of the first industrial
revolution two centuries ago, with its untold human suffering.  We are
in for a struggle unlike anything any of us have ever seen before, as
the Bell-Atlantic employees testify, and we must use any and all means
at our disposal.  It's time we came to our collective senses, while
there is still time. We must insist that progress without people is
not progress. At the very least, as a modest beginning, we pull the
public plug on the Information Highway.

[David Noble is a professor at York University and a historian of
technology.  He taught for nearly a decade at M.I.T. and was curator
of the industrial automation at the Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, DC.  He is the author of numerous books, including _Forces
of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation_ (Oxford
University Press) and, most recently, _Progress Without People_ (a
Canadian edition will be published this spring by Between the Lines).
He lives in Canada.]

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------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 20:05:51 +0600
Subject: 500 Place-A-Call Working


I dialed my True Connections(sm) 500 Number to update my reach list
this past Saturday, and noticed that the first-level prompt (following
entry of the master PIN) had been changed.  Previously, option #2 was
to "Call Home", but is now "To place a call".  I tried out the
"Place-A-Call" feature and it worked (from the 312/708 area).  It
looks like the post cards announcing the feature were only a little (one
week?) early.

Old Main menu:

    - To change where your calls are going, press 1.
    - To call home, press 2.
    - For True Connections Voice Mail, press 3.

    .
    .
    .


New Main menu:

    - To change where your calls are going, press 1.
    - To place a call, press 2.

        - To call home, press 1.
        - To call a different number, press the # key.

            - What number do you want to call?  Enter the area code
              and number followed by the # key.

    - For True Connections Voice Mail, press 3.

    .
    .
    .

David Oehring  [e-mail]


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I tried it from here also now that you
mentioned it, and mine is working also. That prompt 'to call a different
number' also has a condition where you can call the override number if
one is installed. The prompt does not mention it if one is not in place.

I also get 'press 9 for other options' which includes the ability to
change the number of times my phone will ring before the call is passed
along to the next number on the reach list.  Did you notice by the way
that it never refers to your home number by their digits ... only by the
phrase 'your home number'.  If you enter #H she says you entered your
home number .. if you punch in those digits instead, instead of reading
back the digits to confirm as is done with other entries, she still says
'you entered your home number'.  But when I entered my second line, she
read back the digits, apparently not knowing that was also at home.
PAT]

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Scott Mehosky)
Subject: List of Carrior Access Codes
Date: 20 Feb 1995 01:01:13 GMT
Organization: College of Computer Science, Northeastern University.


Hello,

I am wondering if anyone out there has a list of all the carrior
access codes, (10xxx) in the US along with the name of the company the
code belongs to.

Thanks in advance for your help.


Sincerely,

Scott Mehosky - [e-mail] -
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/yidam/top.html


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: As a matter of fact, we do. Check in the
Telecom Archives in the /carriers sub-directory. Use anonymous ftp to
lcs.mit.edu.   PAT]

------------------------------

From: [e-mail]
Subject: Wireless LAN's
Date: 19 Feb 1995 13:37:46 GMT


I am investigating the allocation of radio spectrum for wireless LAN's
in Europe.

Any information from IT companies, manufacturers of radio equipment
and users are welcomed on the following items:

1  Do current allocations fulfil the needs of the IT users?

2  Which new applications does the IT community envisage and
   will these still fit in existing frequency bands?

3  What is the best technology to use in wireless LAN's in terms
   of spectrum efficiency?

The results of this investigation will be brought to the attention

·
of European regulatory authorities.

Please forward info to: <[e-mail]>

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (John Lundgren)
Subject: Re: Security of Cordless Phones?
Date: 20 Feb 1995 10:05:36 GMT
Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network


Jeffrey A. Porten ([e-mail]) wrote:

> Having just gotten a new cordless phone (BellSouth 46mHz), and living
> in the paranoid environs of Washington, DC, I find myself wondering
> just how likely it is that the world is listening to my calls.

> The phone has ten channels, and a security code feature which, so far
> as I understand, exists mainly to prevent another cordless handset
> from tapping into my base unit, but does nothing to scramble the
> signal from the handset.

> I live in an apartment building, with a few others nearby, so consider
> this a high-density area.  Should I go on the assumption that people
> are always listening in?  Sometimes?  Almost never?

> I have a corded set that I keep hooked up for confidential calls; as a
> stopgap, I sometimes scan channels on my cordless so any eavesdropper
> will at least have to fiddle to find me again.  Does this help, or am
> I kidding myself?

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Corded or cordless, the assumption
should
> be that your telephone calls are never secure. In actual practice, it
> may not matter to you; if you are just in idle chatter with someone
you
> aren't going to bother with the trouble of special precautions. My
personal
> belief is the use of scanners to listen to cordless phones is still a
> relatively rare thing; how many people do *you* know that own scanners
> who are within range of your cordless phone? And of those, how many
are
> sophisticated enough to know how to program the scanner for cordless?
> So my feeling is generally its not a big deal, and if you do have
something
> very important and personal to say, you might want to go to a payphone
> anyway.  PAT]

But there are several other ways to eavesdrop on cordless telephone
conversations without using a scanner.  One is to use another cordless
telephone.  Some of them can hear other channels without butting in on
the conversation.

Then there are wireless baby monitors and walkie-talkies, which can
receive conversations easily.  And these are just a few of the more
common ways of doing this.

Treat your cordless phone as if there were others listening all the
time.  Don't give out credit card numbers on the cordless phone.  And
don't say anything you might regret.


John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs
Rancho Santiago Community College District
17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706
[e-mail]\[e-mail]

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Travis Russell)
Subject: Re: Security of Cordless Phones?
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 17:09:45 +0000
Organization: Travis Russell
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Travis Russell)


In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail]
(Jeffrey A. Porten) writes:

> Having just gotten a new cordless phone (BellSouth 46mHz), and living
> in the paranoid environs of Washington, DC, I find myself wondering
> just how likely it is that the world is listening to my calls.

I recently have discovered my calls were being listended to both by a
neighbor (who lives about an acre away) and by some kid down the
street. The neighbor called to inform me that my telephone conversation
was being broadcast over his kids baby monitor, one of those cute
little wireless units that hangs on babies crib (glad I wasn't calling
a 900 number).

And the kid down the street? He was showing my kids how to use a
transistor radio to listen in on our calls, and demonstrated by
listening in on one of my calls. Seems to be one of his favorite
pasttimes.

If its wireless, never assume it is secure. It ain't!


Travis Russell   [e-mail]

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (Mark Ganzer)
Subject: Re: GETS - Government Emergency Telecommunications Service?
Organization: NCCOSC RDT&E Division, San Diego, CA
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 04:42:50 GMT


BOSWELL, RICHARD S ([e-mail]) wrote:

> Has anyone ever heard of "GETS"?  What kind of priority service do
> they offer; who is offering it?

Pat,

   I don't have much info on this, but I did see a booth on GETS at
the recent Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association
(AFCEA) show in San Diego. Just about anybody could get into this
show. There were about 500 high school kids that paraded through one
of the days.

   We also did a worked with GTE last November on a demonstration for
a GETS Symposium of distributed collaborative planning in support of
disaster relief operations using high speed ATM data networks.

   None of this was classified or "top secret" in any way.
Unfortunately,
I don't have the complete picture of GETS to speak intelligently about
it. I was just responsible for seetting up the ATM connections at our
end.


Mark Ganzer          Naval Command, Control & Ocean Surveillance Center,
[e-mail]      RDT&E Div (NRaD), Code 4123,  San Diego, CA
Ph: [phone]   FAX: [phone]


[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: I don't absolutely know that it was ever
secet; one writer here said when he mentioned this to someone in Defense
*that person* claimed it was 'top secret'.    PAT]

------------------------------

Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 18:03:47 EST
From: Stan Schwartz <[e-mail]>
Subject: Cell Service in NY Metro Area Notes


 From: [e-mail] (Doug Reuben)

> After hearing about NYNEX/NY's (Boston too?) "Free Weekend Airtime",
> which allows toll and airtime free calling to anywhere in 212, 718,
> 917, most (all?) of 201, most (all?) of 908, (609 too?), and most
> parts of lower 914, I broke down and had a friend of mine who was
> going to cancel with Metro Mobile in CT sign up with NYNEX/NY rather
> than Cellular One.

While NYNEX/NY is offering free weekends until 7/31/95, BAMS/NJ is
offering free OFF PEEK until 8/31/95!  (It still makes me think about
using my second NAM).  I wonder, though, how BAMS gets away with
charging a .04/minute landline charge when THEY ARE the wireline
carrier.  The free off-peek time from them ends up being .04/minute.

> (Although CO/NY does bill for incomplete calls over 40 seconds, so in
> some rare cases I will suggest that a person use NYNEX instead of CO
> if they make a lot of calls where the party they are calling takes
> over 40 seconds to answer.)

I got a pitch letter from CO/NY this week to remind me to renew my
annual contract.  A quick sentence buried in the letter mentions that
CO/NY no longer charges for incomplete calls!

Re PINs:

> Anyone test this? I'm interested in finding out because if I find that
> NYNEX/NY is billing people from the time they *initially* hit SEND to
> place the call rather than when a caller enters his/her complete PIN,
> I will call NYNEX/NY and demand to have the PIN feature removed.

Does NYNEX require a PIN for each call?  When I had PIN service with
CO/NY, it only required the PIN once and that was if the phone was
turned off for more than 20 minutes.


Stan

------------------------------

From: [e-mail] (John Lundgren)
Subject: Re: Typical Rates for Campus Phone Systems
Date: 20 Feb 1995 07:38:29 GMT
Organization: Pacific Bell Knowledge Network


We get charged (previous to Jan 1) $17.25 a month for a Pac Bell centrex
line, with something like $75 one time fee for establishing dial tone.
But then we also have our own voice mail system, and a PBX, which all
cost money to run.  A single measured business line is $15.00 a month.
So with all the charges added up, it would probably cost about the same.

Prices of phone service went up as of Jan 1, but the cost of toll calls
went down.  Supposedly, the two should balance out.  But being that most
of the calls are within our district and are not toll, I would say that
that isn't true.

We have a marketing agreement with Pac Bell, so there is some
negotiation
and fixing of prices.  The PBX system, and the phone instruments are
under a service contract.  The user has to pay about $300 to purchase a
phone.

There are also the wages for me and my cohorts in our department that
work on the phone and data network, which have to be taken into account.

BTW, the voice mail system is cheaper than Pac Bell's, but it doesn't
have as many features as theirs, and I don't believe it is as user
friendly, either.


John Lundgren - Elec Tech - Info Tech Svcs
Rancho Santiago Community College District
17th St. at Bristol \ Santa Ana, CA 92706
[e-mail]\[e-mail]

------------------------------

Reply-To: [e-mail]
Subject: Re: Typical Rates for Campus Phone Systems
Date: Mon, 20 Feb 1995 15:19:54 -0800
From: David G. Cantor <[e-mail]>


In Volume 15, Issue 106 of TELECOM Digest, Anthony E. Siegman
<[e-mail]> comments on the high (recharge) cost of
telephone-service provided by the Stanford University Centrex and
asks, among other things, "Is the Centrex type campus service really
worth four times what the phone company could give me?"

The recharge rate at UCLA for telephone and many other services is
higher than the prevailing rates in the local community.  I have often
wondered if this over-charging, at least for State Universities, is a
way of transferring charges from the University Administration to the
University Departments.  State Legislatures prefer that funds go to
Departments rather than Administration.  However the major user of
telephone service, and many other services, is the Administration.
For a variety of reasons, most of the University operator services are
used by the administration.  For example, the administration is the
principal user of operator services because people calling departments
and faculty usually know the direct-dial number while numerous
inquiries go to the administration.

By bundling charges and thus over-charging departments and
under-charging administrative services, the administration can, in
effect, transfer money intended for education to administrative
services.

Perhaps this over-charging occurs at private Universities for similar
reasons?


David G. Cantor  Department of Mathematics
[e-mail] University of California
   Los Angeles, CA 90024

------------------------------

End of TELECOM Digest V15 #110
******************************