TELECOM Digest Sat, 2 Jan 93 19:12:30 CST Volume 13 : Issue 1 Index To This Issue: Moderator: Patrick A. Townson Administrivia: What You Should Have Received (TELECOM Moderator) Volume 12 Accelerated Index Now Available (TELECOM Moderator) Yet Another Horrible AOS Story (Chris Petrilli) Computer Directed Call Forwarding (Allan D. Griefer) Another Payphone Mystery? (John Schmidt) Status of Old Bell System Books (Howard C. Berkowitz) More Harassment Questions (Jim Rees) Changes to AT&T International Help Line? (Dave Leibold) Internet/UUCP Dial-up Line in Singapore? (Anto Daryanto) The Ultimate Call Screener (Jeffrey Jonas) Telephony of the Future (Dave Niebuhr) Re: The Future of Wired vs Wireless Services (John Adams) Telecomics (Peanuts 1st Jan 1993) (Dave Leibold) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 17:32:19 -0600 From: TELECOM Moderator Subject: Administrivia: What You Should Have Received Several unnumbered items were sent out between the end of Volume 12 which had 928 issues and this, the start of Volume 13 and another year here at TELECOM Digest. 1) A copy of the FAQ. 2) A letter to Usenet comp.dcom.telecom readers about the Digest. 3) An image of the Telecom Archives directory and ftp instructions. 4) An endless supply of Caller-ID messages and replies ... :) (actually, three large files with several messages each in the first two and a single longer message in the third.) If you did not get any of these and feel you must have them, you will find the first three items already in the archives at one place or another; the mailings which went out on January 1-2 will not be put in the archives again (needless duplication). I am not going to put the clean out of Caller-ID messages in the archives either; so if you for some reason did not get Parts 1, 2 and 3 of that, you'll need to annoy me by asking for copies from here. Happy New Year, and welcome to Volume 13 of TELECOM Digest. The Digest was started in 1981 by Jon Solomon, and we'll wrap up twelve years of this in August, 1993. Patrick Townson TELECOM Digest Moderator ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 2 Jan 1993 15:16:38 -0600 From: TELECOM Moderator Subject: Volume 12 Accelerated Index Now Available The Accelerated Index to TELECOM Digest Volume 12 subjects and authors is now available in the Telecom Archives for grabbing via anonymous ftp lcs.mit.edu. It is called an accelerated index since it points to other large files which contain clusters of back issues (in groups of 50) where the subject or author will be located. A typical entry in the index will look like this: 12/101-150: Article Title Here (First Last Name of Author Here) 12/101-150: Re: Response to Article Here (First Last Name of Author) This would tell you to go to the sub-directory in the archives for Volume 12, and pull the large file named 'vol12.iss101-150'. When you have that file available to you, then use grep or other methods of searching within that file for the desired articles and authors. Author's names are always in (parenthesis) but sometimes were shortened in the header (i.e. John Smith became J. Smith or J Smith) as needed to make it fit on the line in the Digests from which the index was created. Searching for the last name is better than the full name since these variances could cause you to miss some entries. The Accelerated Index is sorted in alphabetical order, with "Re:" ignored where it appears. You can dump it out to a printer if desired, however the file is about 9500 lines in length. All articles with identical names will usually have one without 'Re:' and one or more with 'Re:' on the front. Where titles are identical (since the 'Re:' if it exists is ignored in the alphabetical sort) the sorting then continues by *first* name of author. As an example, "Re: My Life Story" by Adam Smith would appear before "My Life Story" by John Higdon. Depending on the name of the original author, the original article (that is, the one without 'Re:' on the front) may appear anywhere in the cluster of identically-named articles. If you see more than one identical titles and none of them say 'Re:', then it is likely the 'Re:' was somehow overlooked in processing -or- they are two articles with similar material but both are 'original'. Conversely, if you see one or more articles with 'Re:' and no offsetting original article (the one in the bunch without 'Re:' on the front) one of two things is possible: either there was no 'original article', i.e. I screwed up in the original publication or the thread started in Volume 11 and the (Re:)plies got carried over to Volume 12. Some help is available in the use of the Accelerated Index within the index itself: grep -i "Intro:" for several lines of help at the start of the file. A companion file covers volumes 9-10-11 from 1989 through 1991. It is set up the same way, and is in excess of 24,000 lines. I was thinking about merging volume 12 into the earlier index, but there were some problems with that, namely the sorting of entries got very difficult, and anyway, some of you already have the earlier edition. Besides, there are simply too many small sites where a file of some 35,000 lines in total simply could not be handled. Final note: If you are at a UUCP or BBS site, I strongly recommend you seek permission from your system administrator before hauling such big files across the wire; and make sure you have room on your spool for the uncompressed results. Remember, these two index files to subject and author names are in compressed format in the archives. (They have the suffix '.Z' after their name.) You must use binary mode to transfer them via ftp, or else the results will be trashed when you try to uncompress them. I hope these indexes to subjects and authors in TELECOM Digest since April, 1989 will be useful to you. It is strongly recommended you have a good working knowledge of the 'grep -i' command and can be creative in your use of 'grep' for searching for the best results. Let me know how it works for you. Patrick Townson TELECOM Moderator ------------------------------ From: petrilli@hal.gnu.ai.mit.edu (Chris Petrilli) Subject: Yet Another Horrible AOS Story Date: 2 Jan 1993 01:13:16 GMT Organization: Department of Redundency Department Just to increase the enjoyment for the holidays, I thought I'd share my AOS story with everyone. I was on the way from Austin, TX -- where I live -- to Dallas to visit a friend, when I stoped in Garland to make a "routine" call to tell him that I would be there shortly (Garland is 30 minutes or so from where he lives), when I foolishly selected a "generic" pay phone at a Texaco gas station. Sicne both the origination number and the destination number were in the 214 area code, I decided to place the call simply using a quarter (hoping it wasn't long distance). Anyway, I reached the party, and spoke to them for a total of about five seconds before the phone decided that it wanted to eat more of my money ... it asked for something around $2.50 for the "next two minutes." At that point, I dialed the phone number against to use my SWBT phone card, hoping to force it to deal with SWBT ... no go, I get a "bong" and a "Thank you for using ATMT" (note this sounds A LOT like "The Phone Company" AT&T). I then dialed the standard 10288, the whole number, and then receive a bong and the same "ATMT" message. Not even forcing through to AT&T ... I'm not a happy camper. To solve the problem, I ended up driving about a block to a SWBT pay phone that liked what I wanted better ... note that THIS pay phone allowed me to make the full call on a quarter. Chris Petrilli petrilli@gnu.ai.mit.edu I don't even speak for myself. ------------------------------ From: usenet_interface@almaden.ibm.com Subject: Computer Directed Call Forwarding Date: 2 Jan 93 05:39:21 GMT Organization: IBM Almaden Research Center I'd like to set up a system that forwards a call to a particular party based on a code number that's entered by the caller. In other words, I want to have the caller call a particular number, say the main number for a business after hours and enter a four digit code. the system would then look up that code and forward the call based on that. This would allow us to have people call for emergencies without releasing the home phone numbers of the employees. Any ideas how this might be easily implemented? Opinions are strictly my own, Allan D. Griefer, IBM Almaden Research Center, San Jose, CA VNET/BITNET: GRIEFER at ALMADEN Fax: (408)927-4004 Internet: griefer@almaden.ibm.com mcimail: 398-8024 ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 02 Jan 1993 00:42:31 EST From: JOHN SCHMIDT Subject: Another Payphone Mystery? I recently visited my Alma Mater, WPI in Worcester, Mass. (A/C 508). When I got there, I wanted to call my mother in Ahmerst Mass. (413-253****).