WAY OT: phones, et al (was Re: OT: click license (was Re: Software Licensing and Sanity (was...)))

[Bill Vermillion]

2^216193 -1 on the wall, he suddenly said":

> Yo, homey, in case you don' be listenin', Bill Vermillion done said:

> > Not since the DCMA went into force.  Now you can look at the code
> > without violting the law let alone modifying it.  There are

> I think you meant "cannot".  :)

Hm. Spell checker missed that :-)^32.

> > In that case you may find them with a little machine to drill under
> > the earth and pass you a new cable.  "could not fix" often means a
> > new cable run, so they have to schedule a truck with cable to do 
> > a reinstall.

> The lines here are all above ground. The chase from the
> phone pole to the building is a 40-foot span of cable that's
> less than sufficiently shielded. SFAIK, nothing around this
> neighborhood is actually underground. I could be wrong, but I
> know exactly where our iines come in from, and it's off the top
> of a pole, over to the 2nd storey, and then down to a break-out
> box outside the building for the complex.

Typically there will be an underground feed coming to a pole and
then lines will go overhead from the pole to the individual houses.
Last time I lost a line the checked from the house to the pole -
across the street - and then found that the wires coming up from
the ground to the pole had a pair go bad.

It's usually mixed with underground and overheads.  But you are in
Louisville - so anyting can happen :-)

> > That's not hard to figure if you look at how things are handled.
> > Voice is basically carried on bare copper and must be able to carry
> > a current.  DSL is more like RF.  Not a great analogy but I hope
> > you get the idea.   

> Explains why with that nice 40' span, whenever there's a storm
> my DSL gets flaky and bursty, not to mention drops like a rock.
> Doesn't even have to be terribly close sometimes...just like
> 45min on either side of being over us will do it.

So something is leaking and the high-frequencies are getting
killed.  It's like running a TV coax cable and then getting it
crushed and/or stepped on and flattening it and then wondering why
the picture has gone bad.  Or like the flat TV cable that someone
runs under an aluminum framed window.  RF just likes to play games
with your best laid plans.

Bill
-- 
Bill Vermillion - bv @ wjv . com