31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
Previous Issue (Only one)
Add this Digest to your personal
or 
The Telecom Digest for May 10, 2012
Volume 31 : Issue 113 : "text" Format
====== 31 years of TELECOM Digest -- Founded August 21, 1981 ======
|
Telecom and VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) Digest for the
Internet. All contents here are copyrighted by Bill Horne and
the individual writers/correspondents. Articles may be used in other
journals or newsgroups, provided the writer's name and the Digest are
included in the fair use quote. By using any name or email address
included herein for any reason other than responding to an article
herein, you agree to pay a hundred dollars to that person, or email address
owner.
Addresses herein are not to be added to any mailing list, nor to be
sold or given away without the explicit written consent of the owner of
that address. Chain letters, viruses, porn, spam, and miscellaneous junk
are definitely unwelcome.
We must fight spam for the same reason we fight crime: not because we
are naive enough to believe that we will ever stamp it out, but because
we do not want the kind of world that results when no one stands
against crime. - Geoffrey Welsh
See the bottom of this issue for subscription and archive details
and the name of our lawyer, and other stuff of interest.
|
Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 22:29:04 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Paying Internet users to surrender their data
Message-ID: <p06240859cbce34807723@[10.0.1.5]>
A market for unbiased private data: Paying individuals according to
their privacy attitudes
Christina Aperjis, Bernardo A. Huberman
First Monday, Volume 17, Number 5 - 7 May 2012
Abstract
Since there is, in principle, no reason why third parties should not
pay individuals for the use of their data, we introduce a realistic
market that would allow these payments to be made while taking into
account the privacy attitude of the participants. And since it is
usually important to use unbiased samples to obtain credible
statistical results, we examine the properties that such a market
should have and suggest a mechanism that compensates those
individuals that participate according to their risk attitudes.
Equally important, we show that this mechanism also benefits buyers,
as they pay less for the data than they would if they compensated all
individuals with the same maximum fee that the most concerned ones
expect.
Contents
1. Introduction
2. The market
3. The advantages of risk aversion
4. Discovering privacy and risk attitudes
5. The pricing menu
6. Bundling across requests
7. Conclusions
...
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/4013/3209
Date: Tue, 08 May 2012 10:28:37 -0400
From: Fred Goldstein <fgoldstein.SeeSigSpambait@wn2.wn.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: How the Blind Are Reinventing the iPhone
Message-ID: <20120508142847.138E11E66E@mailout.easydns.com>
Bill Horne noted,
>In the U.S., we think nothing of investing millions of dollars to
>retrofit public buildings for access by physically challenged persons,
>and nothing worth mentioning when we order that private property be
>modified in the same ways. Our society, which prizes individual
>effort, has decided that all those who can do things for themselves
>should be encouraged to do so. To that end, we have provided
>extraordinary measures to further that goal, including extensive - and
>expensive - governmental efforts to help the hearing and
>speech-impaired communities reach resources that others take for
>granted. As an engineer at Verizon, I helped to address problems with
>the TDD and telephone setups in the Access center at Marlborough,
>Massachusetts: a place where those whom depend on TDD devices are able
>to get text-to-speech translation services as well as to deal with
>phone company bills, services, and sales.
>
>Here's the problem, as I see it: many of the government offices and
>private companies that contract to provide services to the government
>(parking ticket collectors, for example) have been openly flouting the
>rules that require TDD's for years, either claiming that their email
>capability is "good enough", or brazenly lying by claiming that
>they're no longer required to do so. This marginalization of what I
>consider a public necessity is reflected in the shift alluded to in
>the story Monty posted about the iphone being used by the visually
>impaired. As far as it goes, it's a modern miracle - but it signals,
>to my mind, a political sea change: a de facto shift away from
>inexpensive, purpose-built devices that were supported as a matter of
>public policy - to expensive, privately owned electronics.
You make a good observation; at some times, society has enacted laws
that may not be cheap, but which go out of their way to practice
inclusion. And at other times, those laws are honored in the breach,
with poor maintenance and enforcement. I'll suggest what you're
seeing are varying political moods, where the group in power changes
and thus practices change. The ADA and similar rules were passed at
a time when there was little political opposition. Disabled veterans
and other handicapped people were a politically safe
constituency. So they got things passed. Then came the "tax revolt"
of the landlords and the truly wealthy. They treated all public
expenditure as evil, and made "personal responsibility" the mantra,
as if being sick or disabled were your own fault. The ADA would not
get a second reading in a House committee today. And thus there's
not enough money to maintain its facilities.
The iPhone tie-in is a bit more indirect. TDDs were purpose-built to
aid the deaf; until touch screens, telephones were generally friendly
to the blind. Touch screen phones are actually bad for a lot of
people, not just the blind! They presume a certain degree of hand-eye
coordination and sharp eyesight. I wish my retinas were as good as a
"retina display"! The whole Apple ecosystem is built for that world,
the maybe 2/3 of the population who are most coordinated and who deal
in a visually-guided tactile world. Blind people, of course, deal
only in a tactile world, or an audio-guided one. And people with
less hand-eye coordination put tactile ahead of visual. I am a
really good touch-typist, which involves not seeing the keyboard
(rule #1 of typing class is "don't look" -- typing is 99+% tactile);
IOS, in contrast, is for hunt-and-peck artists whose fingers are
guided by their eyes, not the ridges on the keys.
So an app that makes the iPhone usable by the blind is really clever,
presumably ignoring the IOS norms and using audio and maybe vibration
(I haven't seen it). And having that cell phone act as a talking GPS
is also a clever concept, leveraging the phone's built-in GPS and
audio capabilities along with its being able to fetch business and
other site locations off of a map database.
As to having a purpose-built device instead, I suggest that for the
purpose of making phone calls, a normal cell phone, the clamshell
kind with raised keys, is a pretty good one. It doesn't run "apps",
but at least it's a usable phone. The iPhone app makes sense,
though, in that it is making use of "COTS" (commercial off the shelf)
products, which are mass-produced at a lower cost than customized,
low-volume devices. This is more of an issue today, when everything
is on a chip, than it was 50 years ago, when circuits were wired
together. It costs a bazillion renminbi to design a chip and only a
few yuan to make one more. So we end up with more products that are
only superficially different.
I'll also note that the clamshell form factor can support GPS apps,
as it alraedy has Verizon Navigator on it. Sendero could perhaps be
ported to it; the big touch screen of the iPhone seems
counterproductive. But since most clamshells only use BREW, they may
not be as easy to develop for, or have all of the needed functions.
--
Fred Goldstein k1io fgoldstein "at" ionary.com
ionary Consulting
http://www.ionary.com/
+1 617 795 2701
Date: Tue, 8 May 2012 01:36:05 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Understanding the net neutrality debate
Message-ID: <p06240803cbce608f9c76@[10.0.1.5]>
Understanding the net neutrality debate: Listening to stakeholders
Alexander Ly, Bertrum H MacDonald, Sandra Toze
First Monday, Volume 17, Number 5 - 7 May 2012
Abstract
The Internet is increasingly seen as integral to economic progress
and prosperity. Yet how the Internet will be managed as it grows and
diversifies remains a hotly contested topic, as the debate on net
neutrality demonstrates. Whether the Internet is neutral or not has
serious implications for Internet service providers (ISPs),
businesses operating online, governments, and civil society. With
these stakeholders and varying interests at play, the debate about
net neutrality is often characterized in terms of polar positions,
and the discussion has seemed intransigent and ongoing with an
uncertain end point. To increase understanding about the debate, this
paper combines a review of the literature on net neutrality with
evidence from interviews with four individuals, each representing the
viewpoint of a major stakeholder group in Canada. Analysis of the
similarities and differences among key stakeholder positions shows
that in fact the positions are more complex and considerably more
nuanced than typically depicted. By focussing on components of the
issues, and staying away from the politics of contesting net
neutrality, progress in the debate can be made. While this paper
gives attention to the Canadian context in particular, the findings
echo those of international organizations, and adds to the global
conversation on the future of the Internet.
...
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3857/3205
Date: Mon, 7 May 2012 22:28:57 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Digital inclusion and data profiling
Message-ID: <p0624085acbce352c9f65@[10.0.1.5]>
Digital inclusion and data profiling
Seeta Peña Gangadharan
First Monday, Volume 17, Number 5 - 7 May 2012
Abstract
In the United States, digital inclusion policies designed to
introduce poor people, communities of color, indigenous, and migrants
(collectively, "chronically underserved communities" or "the
underserved") to the economic, social, and political benefits of
broadband lie in tension with new practices and techniques of online
surveillance. While online surveillance activity affects all
broadband users, members of chronically underserved communities are
potentially more vulnerable to the harmful effects of surveillant
technologies. This paper examines specific examples of commercial
data profiling against a longer history of low-tech data profiling of
chronically underserved communities. It concludes by calling for
issues of online privacy and surveillance to punctuate digital
inclusion discourse. Until this happens, digital inclusion policies
threaten to bring chronically underserved communities into online
worlds that, as Gandy (2009) argued, reinforce and exacerbate social
exclusion and inequalities.
Contents
Introduction
Three cases of low-tech data profiling
Surveillance in the twenty-first century: Commercial data profiling
and the underserved
Rethinking digital inclusion
Conclusion
...
http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/3821/3199
Date: Wed, 9 May 2012 10:49:53 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: AT&T Chief Regrets Offering Unlimited Data for iPhone
Message-ID: <p0624082dcbd02f4c0bc0@[10.0.1.5]>
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/att-randall-stephenson/
AT&T Chief Regrets Offering Unlimited Data for iPhone
By BRIAN X. CHEN
MAY 4, 2012
When Randall Stephenson, AT&T's chief executive, spoke about the
state of the wireless industry at a conference this week, he shared
some surprisingly frank comments about the iPhone. In particular, he
said that he wished the company had never offered an unlimited data
plan for the device and that he loses sleep over free texting
services like Apple's iMessage.
If AT&T hadn't offered unlimited data, it would have been able to get
people who used more data to pay up for it, as opposed to having the
light data users subsidize the heavy ones, he said.
"My only regret was how we introduced pricing in the beginning,
because how did we introduce pricing? Thirty dollars and you get all
you can eat," he said in the on-stage interview at the Milken
Institute's Global Conference on Wednesday. "And it's a variable cost
model. Every additional megabyte you use in this network, I have to
invest capital."
AT&T discontinued unlimited data in 2010, and it has since moved to
limited, tiered data plans. The switch is working out well for AT&T.
In the last quarter, the company reported $6.1 billion in revenue
from mobile data alone. Ralph de la Vega, chief executive of AT&T
Mobility, said 70 percent of the people on tiered data plans were
paying for the more expensive options.
...
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/04/att-randall-stephenson/
Date: Wed, 9 May 2012 10:49:53 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Google Tries Again With Google TV
Message-ID: <p06240830cbd0322cb837@[10.0.1.5]>
Google Tries Again With Google TV
By NICOLE PERLROTH
MAY 7, 2012
Google, once again, is making a push into the living room.
It is a destination the search giant tried - and failed - to reach
when it first brought out its Web-enabled Google TVs in 2010. The
goal all along has been to bring Google's search and YouTube services
to Internet-enabled television so it could capture a share of
spending on TV advertising, which still commands the biggest portion
of ad budgets.
But Google TV never lived up to its hype. Reviewers called it
"chaotic," major television networks blocked their online content
from streaming to Google TVs and consumers complained the system was
too slow and flaky to justify the price tag. Less than a year after
its debut, Logitech, one of Google's initial manufacturing partners,
abandoned the effort, called the partnership a "mistake" and said it
cost Logitech $100 million in operating profit.
But with Apple widely expected to bring out its own full-fledged
Apple TV - one blog reported that a prototype has been floating
around - Google is not giving up. It is determined to replicate the
success of its Android operating software for smartphones on
television screens.
This time Google has partnered with the set-top manufacturers LG,
Samsung, Sony and Vizio. It announced those partnerships at the
Consumer Electronics Show in January, but consumers were not told
when they would become available or how much they would cost.
LG confirmed on Monday that it would ship two Web-enabled Google TVs,
a 47-inch screen (47G2) and a 55-inch screen (55G2), to the United
States and that the models would go on sale later this month. The TVs
will cost $1,699 and $2,299, respectively.
...
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/07/google-tries-again-with-google-tv-2/
***** Moderator's Note *****
I guess this is telecom related: it crosses so many lines that I can't tell.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Wed, 9 May 2012 10:49:53 -0400
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Disruptions: Indiscreet Photos, Glimpsed Then Gone
Message-ID: <p0624082fcbd031a698e1@[10.0.1.5]>
Disruptions: Indiscreet Photos, Glimpsed Then Gone
By NICK BILTON
MAY 6, 2012
People once took photographs so they could capture a moment for
themselves and keep it forever. Then digital cameras and cellphones
turned photos into something more ephemeral and more easily shared.
But as the case of Anthony Weiner demonstrated, photos that are
shared but are not meant to last, sometimes stick around.
Mr. Weiner's downfall does not seem to have discouraged people from
sharing risqué photos. According to a study by the Pew Research
Center's Internet and American Life Project that is due out later
this year, 6 percent of adult Americans admit to having sent a
"sexually suggestive nude or nearly nude photo or video" using a
cellphone. Another 15 percent have received such material. Three
percent of teenagers admit to sending sexually explicit content.
All of this sexting, as the practice is known, creates an opening for
technology that might make the photos less likely to end up in wide
circulation.
This is where a free and increasingly popular iPhone app called
Snapchat comes in. Snapchat allows a person to take and send a
picture and control how long it is visible by the person who receives
it, up to 10 seconds. After that, the picture disappears and can't be
seen again. If the person viewing the picture tries to use an iPhone
feature that captures an image of whatever is on the screen, the
sender is notified.
...
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/disruptions-indiscreet-photos-glimpsed-then-gone/
***** Moderator's Note *****
If I had a nickel for every copy protection scheme I've seen come and
go, I'd be a rich man.
Bill Horne
Moderator
TELECOM Digest is an electronic journal devoted mostly to telecom-
munications topics. It is circulated anywhere there is email, in
addition to Usenet, where it appears as the moderated newsgroup
'comp.dcom.telecom'.
TELECOM Digest is a not-for-profit, mostly non-commercial educational
service offered to the Internet by Bill Horne. All the contents
of the Digest are compilation-copyrighted. You may reprint articles in
some other media on an occasional basis, but please attribute my work
and that of the original author.
The Telecom Digest is moderated by Bill Horne.
This Digest is the oldest continuing e-journal about telecomm-
unications on the Internet, having been founded in August, 1981 and
published continuously since then. Our archives are available for
your review/research. We believe we are the oldest e-zine/mailing list
on the internet in any category!
URL information: http://telecom-digest.org
Copyright (C) 2013 TELECOM Digest. All rights reserved.
Our attorney is Bill Levant, of Blue Bell, PA.
Finally, the Digest is funded by gifts from generous readers such as
yourself who provide funding in amounts deemed appropriate. Your help
is important and appreciated. A suggested donation of fifty dollars
per year per reader is considered appropriate. See our address above.
Please make at least a single donation to cover the cost of processing
your name to the mailing list.
All opinions expressed herein are deemed to be those of the
author. Any organizations listed are for identification purposes only
and messages should not be considered any official expression by the
organization.
End of The Telecom Digest (7 messages)
Return to Archives ** Older Issues