The Telecom Digest for November 26, 2010
Volume 29 : Issue 319 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
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Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 00:30:02 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction
Message-ID: <p0624083bc913a32a9c52@[10.0.1.2]>
Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction
By MATT RICHTEL
November 21, 2010
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - On the eve of a pivotal academic year in
Vishal Singh's life, he faces a stark choice on his bedroom desk:
book or computer?
By all rights, Vishal, a bright 17-year-old, should already have
finished the book, Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle," his summer reading
assignment. But he has managed 43 pages in two months.
He typically favors Facebook, YouTube and making digital videos. That
is the case this August afternoon. Bypassing Vonnegut, he clicks over
to YouTube, meaning that tomorrow he will enter his senior year of
high school hoping to see an improvement in his grades, but without
having completed his only summer homework.
On YouTube, "you can get a whole story in six minutes," he explains.
"A book takes so long. I prefer the immediate gratification."
Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters. But
computers and cellphones, and the constant stream of stimuli they
offer, pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning.
Researchers say the lure of these technologies, while it affects
adults too, is particularly powerful for young people. The risk, they
say, is that developing brains can become more easily habituated than
adult brains to constantly switching tasks - and less able to sustain
attention.
"Their brains are rewarded not for staying on task but for jumping to
the next thing," said Michael Rich, an associate professor at Harvard
Medical School and executive director of the Center on Media and
Child Health in Boston. And the effects could linger: "The worry is
we're raising a generation of kids in front of screens whose brains
are going to be wired differently."
But even as some parents and educators express unease about students'
digital diets, they are intensifying efforts to use technology in the
classroom, seeing it as a way to connect with students and give them
essential skills. Across the country, schools are equipping
themselves with computers, Internet access and mobile devices so they
can teach on the students' technological territory.
It is a tension on vivid display at Vishal's school, Woodside High
School, on a sprawling campus set against the forested hills of
Silicon Valley. Here, as elsewhere, it is not uncommon for students
to send hundreds of text messages a day or spend hours playing video
games, and virtually everyone is on Facebook.
The principal, David Reilly, 37, a former musician who says he
sympathizes when young people feel disenfranchised, is determined to
engage these 21st-century students. He has asked teachers to build
Web sites to communicate with students, introduced popular classes on
using digital tools to record music, secured funding for iPads to
teach Mandarin and obtained $3 million in grants for a multimedia
center.
He pushed first period back an hour, to 9 a.m., because students were
showing up bleary-eyed, at least in part because they were up late on
their computers. Unchecked use of digital devices, he says, can
create a culture in which students are addicted to the virtual world
and lost in it.
"I am trying to take back their attention from their BlackBerrys and
video games," he says. "To a degree, I'm using technology to do it."
The same tension surfaces in Vishal, whose ability to be distracted
by computers is rivaled by his proficiency with them. At the
beginning of his junior year, he discovered a passion for filmmaking
and made a name for himself among friends and teachers with his
storytelling in videos made with digital cameras and editing software.
He acts as his family's tech-support expert, helping his father,
Satendra, a lab manager, retrieve lost documents on the computer, and
his mother, Indra, a security manager at the San Francisco airport,
build her own Web site.
But he also plays video games 10 hours a week. He regularly sends
Facebook status updates at 2 a.m., even on school nights, and has
such a reputation for distributing links to videos that his best
friend calls him a "YouTube bully."
Several teachers call Vishal one of their brightest students, and
they wonder why things are not adding up. Last semester, his grade
point average was 2.3 after a D-plus in English and an F in Algebra
II. He got an A in film critique.
"He's a kid caught between two worlds," said Mr. Reilly - one that is
virtual and one with real-life demands.
Vishal, like his mother, says he lacks the self-control to favor
schoolwork over the computer. She sat him down a few weeks before
school started and told him that, while she respected his passion for
film and his technical skills, he had to use them productively.
"This is the year," she says she told him. "This is your senior year
and you can't afford not to focus."
It was not always this way. As a child, Vishal had a tendency to
procrastinate, but nothing like this. Something changed him.
...
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html
Date: Wed, 24 Nov 2010 21:46:43 -0800
From: Richard <rng@richbonnie.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: US may disable all in-car mobile phones
Message-ID: <fstre6pfqbqjabbq2ou59lh2csr8ecuc9m@4ax.com>
On 24 Nov 2010 23:11:44 -0000, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
>
>>moving faster than a walking pace could be denied service except for
>>911.
>
>Hmmn. Could you explain exactly why I can't use my phone when I'm
>on the train?
Or if I am a passenger in the back seat of an automobile, or better
yet in the back of a taxicab or a motor home which is moving?
***** Moderator's Note *****
OK, guys, we get it.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:33:19 -0600
From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: US may disable all in-car mobile phones
Message-ID: <AANLkTinq+5tc-q-Jr7ueex43G9bm6VKVz9ObZRmPhU1=@mail.gmail.com>
On Wed, Nov 24, 2010 at 5:11 PM, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
>
>>moving faster than a walking pace could be denied service except for
>>911.
>
> Hmmn. Â Could you explain exactly why I can't use my phone when I'm
> on the train?
It's the classic tale of 10% of the population ruining it for the
remaining 90%. For a decade we've heard time and again that we
shouldn't talk or text while driving. Instead of seeing the wisdom in
that we see it as an assault on our rights and this is the end result.
Congratulations America!
John
--
John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA
Date: 26 Nov 2010 00:43:52 -0000
From: John Levine <johnl@iecc.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: US may disable all in-car mobile phones
Message-ID: <20101126004352.15957.qmail@joyce.lan>
>> Hmmn. Â Could you explain exactly why I can't use my phone when I'm
>> on the train?
>
>It's the classic tale of 10% of the population ruining it for the
>remaining 90%.
If you're referring to the 10% of the people who dangerously talk on
the phone while driving, I would agree.
If you think that "moving at more than 20 mph" is synonymous with
"driving a car", I have to conclude that you've never been to New York
or any other large city with useful transit, or ridden in a carpool.
It's possible there is some technical hack to recognize a phone that
is being used by the operator of a moving vehicle, but this isn't it.
R's,
John
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 21:26:38 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: US may disable all in-car mobile phones
Message-ID: <20101126022638.GA347@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
On Fri, Nov 26, 2010 at 12:43:52AM -0000, John Levine wrote:
> >> Hmmn. ? Could you explain exactly why I can't use my phone when I'm
> >> on the train?
> >
> >It's the classic tale of 10% of the population ruining it for the
> >remaining 90%.
>
> If you're referring to the 10% of the people who dangerously talk on
> the phone while driving, I would agree.
>
> If you think that "moving at more than 20 mph" is synonymous with
> "driving a car", I have to conclude that you've never been to New York
> or any other large city with useful transit, or ridden in a carpool.
>
> It's possible there is some technical hack to recognize a phone that
> is being used by the operator of a moving vehicle, but this isn't it.
Gentlemen,
I agree that a blanket prohibition won't work if it's based on only
one test. (Sorry, Tom).
But -
What can we do that will work and will be accepted by drivers?
Let's face it: banning risky behavior cuts right to the heart of what
Democratic governments stand for, and it is justified only when the
majority of citizens agree that the ban does more good than harm.
It may, for example, be a PITA to have to buckle up all the time we're
driving, but the inconvenience is small compared to the costs (human,
societal, and commercial) of not doing it. A majority of people agree
that the good outweighs the bad.
It may be, for example, an offense to some religious beliefs when
children are vaccinated against common diseases. Again, the majority
of people agree that the rights of the children to walk erect and hear
properly and have full possession of their faculties outweigh those of
their parents to worship as they choose.
Cellphones have all the wrong attributes from a public-safety point of
view: they're small, hard to see, complicated, and useful. Moreover,
the cellphone market has grown with extraordinary speed (pun
intended), to the point where cellular-service providers have Billions
of dollars in cash flow every year, and thus the power to influence
public opinion and legislative actions.
This is turning into an elephant fight, and we need to be careful that
grass-roots debate and consensus doesn't get trampled by the giant
companies arrayed on both sides of the issue: HMO's and common
carriers.
Insurance underwriters are on one side, allied with government
actuaries, both keeping track of the ever-increasing expense of
accidents: medical care, time lost from work, and diminished
capacities when survivors must return to normal life. These direct
costs are just the tip of the iceberg: every highway accident during
rush hour causes "ripple" expenses because hundreds or thousands of
other motorists are late for work, unable to shop on the way home,
etc.: costs that policy makers must consider even if motorists are
unaware of them.
In opposition: the _incredibly_ profitable cellular industry, drunk on
the nectar pouring out of the holy grails of deregulation,
de-unionization, and per-minute pricing. Make no mistake: this
technology has, in one generation, accomplished what the Bureaucrats
who ran the telephone networks in Ma Bell's Golden (again, pun
intended) age could never achieve.
1. Cellular carriers have few of the expenses that burden wire-line incumbents -
A. No infrastructure in or over the streets.
B. No pension plans worth mentioning.
C. Little or no requirement to serve unprofitable areas.
2. The expensive unionized workforce of the wire-line telephone
industry has been replaced by a travelling circus of contractors,
non-union limited-task workers, and avaricious owners who care for
nothing but profit and whose notion of "Public Service" is largely
limited to a sincere desire to be rich and gone when problems
arise.
3. Per-minute pricing is now the accepted norm.
So, as you see, the cell carriers have incentives to fight any
restrictions on cell use, and most people have a "It's their business"
attitude that takes no account of the price we must all pay for cell
use by drivers.
Someone is going to lose. My bet is on the public: either the
insurance industry will find a way to deny claims that involve cell
use by drivers, or we'll all get used to paying more taxes for
spinal-injury care. After all, when elephants fight, it's the grass
that gets trampled.
--
Bill Horne
(Filter QRM for direct replies)
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 13:40:15 -0600
From: John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: When Your Company Remote-Wipes Your Personal Phone
Message-ID: <AANLkTi=VCS7ZWhraSpZ-eS4=xUSbSK9uExU=nTg2Z9ky@mail.gmail.com>
Is the iPhone the only smart phone with this "feature"? A friend of
mine claims this is impossible on an Android device, but didn't
elaborate.
--
John Mayson <john@mayson.us>
Austin, Texas, USA
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 12:27:49 -0500
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: early CATV - terrestrial HBO distribution
Message-ID: <MPG.275866a45b099e28989d00@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <20101114122029.71194xwkxe1kdsow@webmail.uslec.net>,
bernies@netaxs.com says...
>
> When I was a kid in the early 1970's I visited my uncle in Allentown,
> PA, who was a research scientist for AT&T Bell Labs there. We
> attended a party at a well-off neighbor's house where the TV was tuned
> to a new channel their kids called "Home Box". They said it came over
> the "box" and there was indeed a special box on the TV stand that
> received it.
>
> They told me it showed movies during prime time, but that they were
> all very dated movies. It was mid Sunday afternoon, and because that
> wasn't prime-time, "Home Box Office" was playing its usual
> non-prime-time endless loop 'interval signal' of a Frenchman riding a
> bicycle. For hours all we could see on "Home Box" was the rear view
> of that Frenchman pedaling away, with a French music loop soundtrack.
>
> My uncle told me the signal was delivered to the house via cable after
> coming over AT&T microwave repeaters located on mounaintops, a concept
> that intrigued me. I've read that in 1975 HBO became the first TV
> network to broadcast via satellite when it showed the "Thrilla in
> Manila" boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier to its
> subscribers.
>
> -Ed
I recall when you could get HBO via RF instead of cable. At least that
was the case in Providence, RI in the late 1970's.
Cable rolled in in the early 80's and it's never been the same.
Date: Thu, 25 Nov 2010 19:47:12 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Did someone call me about a Teletype machine? [nfp]
Message-ID: <20101126004712.GA32551@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
My son told me today that someone had called me about a "really heavy
printer", but he didn't have anymore details and didn't write down a
phone number. If you were trying to reach me about a Teletype or
similar machine, please try again.
Email is actually better, but use 339-364-8487 if you need to phone.
Thanks for trying.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
W1AC
(Filter QRM for email replies)
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