ISP Information:
Sony's name for the IEEE 1394, or FireWire, interface. For some reason Sony decided to pick its own name for the IEEE 1394 interface when it is used on Sony's devices. There are no differences between "i-Link" and IEEE 1394.
ISP Glossary:
i-Link - Pat, please conceal my e-mail address as usual.On Sun, 01 Aug 2004 13:48:07 GMT, joel@exc.com (Dr. Joel M. Hoffman)wrote: As you probably know, one of the claims often made by the shills for the big phone companies is that VoIP is less reliable that POTS ("Plain Old Telephone Service"). Well, it turns out that's not necessarily true -- it depends a lot on where you live and which Once again, I feel compelled to comment on "VOIP News," which continues to look like propaganda for VoIP. This time, the "news" story being reporting is merely one person's post in a chat room. I think c.d.t is a wonderful place for dialog, and the VoIP vs. POTS debate is clearly the defining telco debate of our time, but it helps no one to hide opinion behind the title "news."I quess I should point out that VoIP News is the title of the YahooGroup in which these posts originate. I picked that title because itwas originally my thought that most of the posts would be pointers tonews items that mention VoIP from various online sources.Now, in many towns near where I live, there is a publishing companythat puts out a product called a "newspaper." Some of these productseven have the word "news" in the title, such as the Detroit News, theAnn Arbor News, or the Saginaw News. Every one of these carries newsfrom various sources, but also a variety of other things that arearguably not news - including, usually, at least one or two pages ofopinions. And that's not even counting things like movie reviews,which are also opinion. But is Mr. Hoffman picking at them becausethey have the word "news" in the title?As for Mr. Hoffman's assertion that some of my posts "look likepropaganda for VoIP", well you see, it's a group about VoIP (fromwhich Pat selects articles to repost in the Telecom Digest) and Idon't think very many people would want to read it if I was constantlyknocking VoIP, now would they? But "propaganda" is an interestingword. I went to look it up on Google, using their "define:" feature,and it presented a wide range of definitions, which anyone interestedcan view at:http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=define%3ApropagandaBut the definition I liked the best, for probably obvious reasons, wasthis one:n. All utterances by the opposition, particularly if true.In describing my own posts, I would simply say that I am an advocateof the VoIP option, but only for so long as I actually believe it's agood option for consumers. I realize it's not for everyone, andparticularly it's not for those who have no need or desire forbroadband Internet service. But, the shills for the big phonecompanies are trying to spread a lot of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, andDoubt) about VoIP right now, and it seems to me that if they had theirway, they'd simply remove the VoIP option from the consumer (at leastuntil they can come out with their own VoIP offerings).The only point I was really trying to make is that you cannotgeneralize about reliability -- that is, you cannot say that for anygiven customer, or that in every situation a POTS line will be morereliable than VoIP. Some customers seem to have gold-plated POTSservice and lousy cable broadband service, so for them POTS mightindeed be far more reliable. But others, particularly those living inrural areas or in big cities where the wiring is so old thatMr. Watson might have helped inspect it, may find that VoIP is morereliable, particularly if (as is not infrequently the case) the cablecompany has recently strung all new fiber optic cable throughout thearea so they could offer broadband and digital cable. In this case, suppose all of the posters "VOIP News" refers to *never* had any service. Suppose even that there are 75 such people with 100% downtime rates. I don't know how many POTS lines are in use in the U.S., but let's supose that there are only 10 million. Then we'd have a collective downtime from these 75 hypothetical people of 0.00075% (yes, percent, also known as a downtime of 0.0000075). In other words, even 75 reports of intermittent fai
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