net127

Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 10:10:02 -0400
From: BroadVoice
Reply-To:
Subject: Service Notification

Dear Valued Customer,

BroadVoice has been notified by one of our underlying carriers that there is a possibility of losing inbound service to your BroadVoice number today (April 25, 2006). One of our underlying carriers has been in an ongoing dispute with Verizon. Verizon has notified the carrier that they will terminate service in Massachusetts, anytime after noon today. Unfortunately BroadVoice can not avert the underlying carrier’s potential service termination but we will be working very closely with all parties to ensure that if a service interruption occurs, the impact will be minimized. Please note that BroadVoice is not in dispute with any carrier. This will only affect your inbound service. Your ability to dial out using your BroadVoice service will not be affected.

BroadVoice apologies in advance for any inconvenience that this MAY cause.

Regards,

BroadVoice

Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 12:02:29 -0500
From: “NuFone Operations”
Subject: NuFone Update: Number Outage Update

We realize many people rely on the telephone numbers that we provide, but unfortunately the situation is currently out of our control. We are currently working to resolve the issues with our provider and hope to have service restored soon. NuFone is committed to keeping our customers in the loop during this outage and we will provide daily updates with our progress at http://www.nufone.net/press/.

Thank you for your continued support during this difficult time.

The NuFone Network
http://www.nufone.net/

The Associated Press, via CNEWS, reports:

ALTA, California (AP) - It was like a scene from a horror film: A 27-year-old man plummeted into a gaping hole that suddenly opened beneath a house, trapping him beneath foundation rubble and killing him.

Authorities say the home, built in the 1980s, may have been sitting atop a decades-old underground mine. Recent rains could have softened the ground under the home, in an isolated area near Lake Alta.

“It’s unbelievable,” Placer County Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman Dena Erwin said. “From the front of the house, it’s absolutely normal. Then, in the middle of the house, is this enormous hole.”
(more…)

Ron Cowen, Science News reports:

Did last New Year’s Eve seem a trifle tedious? Did your celebration go on a little too long? Maybe that’s because just before midnight Greenwich Mean Time—6:59:59 Eastern Standard Time to be exact—the international authority on timekeeping ordered everyone to wait a second. For the 23rd time since 1972, the International Earth Rotation and Reference System Service added an extra second to the time standard, a worldwide network of some 200 atomic clocks.

The clocks, most of them governed by the ultrasteady vibrations of electrons in cesium atoms, are accurate to a tenth of a billionth of a second a day. However, humankind’s oldest clock—Earth’s rotation—isn’t nearly so precise. Primarily in response to the moon’s tidal pull on the oceans, our planet isn’t turning quite as fast as it used to. To keep Earth time and atomic time in sync, experts have agreed to insert a leap second every few years into the official atomic-based standard, which is called Coordinated Universal Time.

Because the rate at which Earth slows isn’t perfectly predictable from year to year, leap seconds are announced only 6 months in advance. That’s a concern for software designers, operators of satellite-based systems, and anyone else who relies on split-second communications. Six months isn’t much warning for engineers who operate computer programs or types of equipment that require precise time information and are intended to last for at least a decade. Some operations, such as the Global Positioning System, use custom time scales that eschew leap seconds entirely.

A glitch in inserting a leap second, these researchers say, could throw everything off, whether it’s the timing of an international business deal, the location that a missile hits, or the star that the Hubble Space Telescope observes. “A 1-second hiccup in the phasing of North American power grids would likely cause a hemispheric blackout,” notes Daniel Kleppner, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology–Harvard Center for Ultracold Atoms in Cambridge, Mass., in the March Physics Today.

Inserting a leap second “is a little bit like walking along the San Andreas fault,” comments Tom Van Baak, a self-described precision-time hobbyist from Bellevue, Wash. It’s typically an innocuous experience, but there’s always the potential for catastrophe lurking beneath the surface.

With Earth continuing to grow more sluggish, scientists note, leap seconds will have to be introduced more and more frequently. “Eventually, you get to the point that the paradigm involved in this won’t work,” says Dennis McCarthy, a time specialist now retired from the U.S. Naval Observatory. “You’ve got to do something different. The addition of leap seconds is going to be an increasing nuisance for people who are counting on a time scale where a minute actually contains 60 seconds.”

That’s why a group of U.S. time-communication specialists, part of the International Telecommunications Union, proposed in 2004 to do away with leap seconds altogether. Let atomic time be out of whack with Earth rotation–based time, these scientists say. Their proposal is now under review by a working group of the union.
(more…)

Date: Fri, 21 Apr 2006 11:56:37 -0500
From: “NuFone Operations”
Subject: NuFone Update: DID Outage

Telesthetic has chosen to terminate our DID services before allowing us
to properly migrate the network elements to our new carrier.

A solution is in progress, but due to Telesthetic’s lack of cooperation
in this situation, your Toll-Free and Michigan DID services have been effected.
Outbound calling has not been effected by this situation whatsoever.

Unless Telesthetic elects to do the right thing and restore our services,
your Toll-Free numbers will be down for a few hours if not most of the day
although we hope it will be much shorter.

As for Michigan DIDs, we currently have no other carrier that is capable
of porting those numbers and Telesthetic has been completely uncooperative
with providing us with recommendations on who we could turn to. If anyone
has any suggestions, we more than welcome them.

We will post updates on our website as we have more information to provide.

Thank you for your continued support.

The NuFone Network
http://www.nufone.net/

WILLIAM McCALL , The Associated Press, :

A tiny chemical reactor that can convert vegetable oil directly into biodiesel could help farmers turn some of their crops into homegrown fuel to operate agricultural equipment instead of relying on costly imported oil.

“This is all about producing energy in such a way that it liberates people,” said Goran Jovanovic, a chemical engineering professor at Oregon State University who developed the microreactor.

The device - about the size of a credit card - pumps vegetable oil and alcohol through tiny parallel channels, each smaller than a human hair, to convert the oil into biodiesel almost instantly.

By comparison, it takes more than a day to produce biodiesel with current technology.
(more…)

Poul-Henning Kamp, Slagelse, Denmark, writes:

When I contacted D-Link back in November 2005 about the way D-Link products abused my NTP-server, I expected to get in touch with somebody who understood what they were talking about, I expected them to admit that D-Link had made a bad decision and I expected that D-Link would make good on the damage they were responsible for.

For the last five months I have wasted a lot of time trying to reach some kind of agreement with the Californian lawyer which D-Link put on the case. I can’t quite make up my mind if D-Link’s lawyer negotiates in bad faith or is merely uninformed, I tend to suspect the latter, but either way, as of this morning I decided to cut my losses.

Since no one else at D-Link has reacted to my numerous emails, I have no other means of getting in touch with D-Link other than an open letter. I realize that it will be inconvenient and embarrasing for D-Link to have this matter exposed in public this way, but I seem to have no other choice.

I will now lay out the case below in such detail that any moderately knowledgeable person should be able to understand it, and hopefully somebody, somewhere in D-Link will contact me so we can get this matter resolved.
(more…)

Marci Piltz, Record-Courier staff writer, reports:

Five teenage girls allegedly playing a game they learned about on the Internet could face criminal charges after leaving 17 suspicious packages throughout Ravenna.

The first suspicious package was reported around 7:15 a.m. Friday when a passerby flagged down a passing officer regarding a strange box on the steps of Immaculate Conception Church, ., according to Ravenna Police Chief Randall McCoy. The box was wrapped in gold paper and had black question marks painted on the sides.

Church employees told officers they had no idea what the package was and were not aware of any packages of this nature having been left at the church before.

The Portage County Hazardous Materials Unit was contacted, along with the Portage County Sheriff’s Department Bomb Detection Unit. The HAZMAT team checked for radiation and chemical warfare agents, none of which were detected.

McCoy said at the same time agents were dealing with the situation at Immaculate Conception, more calls came in to the Ravenna Police Department that other similar packages were being found in various locations.
(more…)