31 Years of the Digest ... founded August 21, 1981
Add this Digest to your personal
or 
The Telecom Digest for February 18, 2013
Volume 32 : Issue 43 : "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: Sun, 17 Feb 2013 15:42:23 -0500
From: Monty Solomon <monty@roscom.com>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: AmEx-Twitter deal taps web of links
Message-ID: <p06240811cd46f076feef@[10.0.1.9]>
AmEx-Twitter deal taps web of links
Drake Bennett
February 14, 2013
This week American Express and Twitter announced a partnership to
allow people to buy things by tweeting. It works like this: You sync
your AmEx card to your Twitter account, and then you can start making
purchases by putting hashtags in your tweets that correspond with
special deals AmEx is offering.
You send your tweet out to your followers - "So excited to wear my
Donna Karan Urban Zen bracelet while playing Halo 4!" or something
like that - and include the hashtags. AmEx sends you a confirmation
tweet, and when you respond to it, the transaction is complete.
To paraphrase Marshall McLuhan, the medium of exchange is the message.
There is, at first blush, something conceptually confusing about the
whole idea. We tend to think of Twitter as a form of communication,
not commerce. Paying by Twitter seems to make as much sense as
keeping up with your old college roommate via PayPal.
...
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/article/AmEx-Twitter-deal-taps-web-of-links-4280485.php
***** Moderator's Note *****
I Northeastern University Century Club has absolutely no problem with
keeping in touch with me via Paypal.
Twitter is a means of graffitti, not of communication.
Bill Horne
Moderator
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2013 22:58:21 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Susan Crawford -- why USA 'Net access is slow, costly, unfair
Message-ID: <20130218035821.GA20216@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 11:40:21PM -0800, Thad Floryan wrote:
> " Susan Crawford, former special assistant to President Obama for
> " science, technology and innovation, and author of Captive
> " Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New
> " Gilded Age, joins Bill to discuss how our government has allowed
> " a few powerful media conglomerates to put profit ahead of the
> " public interest -- rigging the rules, raising prices, and stifling
> " competition. As a result, Crawford says, all of us are at the
> " mercy of the biggest business monopoly since Standard Oil in the
> " first Gilded Age a hundred years ago.
> "
> " "The rich are getting gouged, the poor are very often left out,
> " and this means that we're creating, yet again, two Americas, and
> " deepening inequality through this communications inequality,"
> " Crawford tells Bill.
>
>
> http://billmoyers.com/wp-content/themes/billmoyers/transcript-print.php?post=24164
>
Ms. Crawford's book worries me, and I think it should concern other
Internauts as well. The interview linked above contains what I feel
are unwarranted and unproductive assumptions about the role of the
Internet in education, and I'm not comfortable letting them pass
without mention.
I'm going to say at the start that this isn't some "In my day"
jeremiad. I have no desire to return to the "good old days" of long
trips to the library, or of schools having only "dead tree" media for
their pupils. I am one of the most enthusiastic supporters of efforts
to employ electronic media in education. The question, however, is
about the way that media is distributed to children, and the
compromises adults make while doing so.
With that said, here is a quote from near the start of the interview:
'"The Wall Street Journal" on the front page had an article about kids
needing to go to McDonald's to do their homework because they don't
have an internet connection at home.'
Even if public libraries didn't have Internet access on site, and even
if a quick-serve restaurant was the only place such access were
available in a given neighborhood, I resist the parochial notion that
children need access to the Internet to benefit from a public-school
education. Such a claim is, at best, pandering to the same Internet
giants Ms. Crawford claims to decry, and, at worst, tacit acceptance
of the notion that "poor" children can't understand books and that
"poor" parents are unwilling to fight for alternative content-delivery
mechanisms for their kids.
I will leave aside the location debate, because it's just the first
straw man Ms. Crawford has set up to attack. It doesn't matter if
"Micky D's" is the only WiFi hotspot within walking distance of a
child's home: what matters is that Ms. Crawford presupposes the need
for Internet access, and arrogates that supposition onto the body politic:
"Parents around the country know that their kids can't get an adequate
education without internet access."
... to which I take exception. Parents around the country might choose
to believe that the World Wide Web is something more than a conduit
carrying information from advertisers to eyeballs, but they are unwise
to do so. Parents might assume that the sites teachers ask their
pupils to visit are carefully vetted, that they contain educational
materials that are devoid of political slant, religious bias, and
revisionist history, but they'd be unwise to make that assumption,
either.
My point is this: the adequacy of their children's education is, and
should be, laid at their partents' doorsteps, along with the morning
paper which too many of those parents don't bother reading. We could
debate endlessly about the future of printed media, but that paper
contains the names and addresses of candidates for School committee
seats, and of candidates for local and state legislative offices, too
many of whom are willing to abrogate responsibility for students'
learning to anonymous corporations which are thousands of miles away.
When my son was in school, the parents of my town insisted that all
educational materials which the school wanted to distribute "via the
Internet" were also made available on CD or DVD media, provided to any
child that asked. After a tumultuous debate, the schools complied with
the parents' demands, but in the process by which we found out why
the school was resisting our requests, it came out that the
"educational" material to be distributed via the Internet was, in
fact, being delivered by a for-profit company which had promised to
supply the school with statistics about which students had helped each
other on assignments.
In short, the school bureacracy had made a deal with a for-profit
corporation, which intended to track students' usage, collect money
for advertisements, and rat out anyone who helped anyone else to do
their homework. Whatever you might think of such agendas, my feeling
is that they should not be hidden: ALL the aspects of educational
material delivered online need to be understood and accepted before
a single child hits "Enter".
The problem with the Internet is that it is a pipe, and little more
than that: it can be filled with spring water or sewerage, either of
which can be presented to children whom have neither the experience
nor the maturity needed to separate substance from stench.
Ms. Crawford's assumptions that child "need" the Internet are, in my
opinion, unwarranted.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write me directly)
Date: Sun, 17 Feb 2013 23:37:15 -0500
From: T <kd1s.nospam@cox.nospam.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Susan Crawford -- why USA 'Net access is slow, costly, unfair
Message-ID: <MPG.2b8b79fdabee31a7989da3@news.eternal-september.org>
In article <20130218035821.GA20216@telecom.csail.mit.edu>,
bill@horneQRM.net says...
> Ms. Crawford's book worries me, and I think it should concern other
> Internauts as well. The interview linked above contains what I feel
> are unwarranted and unproductive assumptions about the role of the
> Internet in education, and I'm not comfortable letting them pass
> without mention.
I'm currently working with my city councilor to utilize HUD funding to
build a free public Wifi network in my political district.
It's a tough slog - and we're doing it right - private non-profit
corporation and all.
Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2013 00:42:22 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: telecomdigestmoderator.remove-this@and-this-too.telecom-digest.org.
Subject: Re: Susan Crawford -- why USA 'Net access is slow, costly, unfair
Message-ID: <20130218054222.GA9723@telecom.csail.mit.edu>
On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 11:37:15PM -0500, T wrote:
> In article <20130218035821.GA20216@telecom.csail.mit.edu>,
> bill@horneQRM.net says...
> > Ms. Crawford's book worries me, and I think it should concern other
> > Internauts as well. The interview linked above contains what I feel
> > are unwarranted and unproductive assumptions about the role of the
> > Internet in education, and I'm not comfortable letting them pass
> > without mention.
>
> I'm currently working with my city councilor to utilize HUD funding to
> build a free public Wifi network in my political district.
>
> It's a tough slog - and we're doing it right - private non-profit
> corporation and all.
I applaud your efforts: I hope that, someday, all citizens will have
access to the Internet as a public service.
I will, however, add a caution: assuring citizens access to the
Internet does not assure them of access to the educational materials
their children need.
Perhaps an analogy will help: as a citizen of the U.S., I expect to
enjoy access to my nation's libraries. I think I am entitled to choose
for myself what literature I read, and to explore works from a wide
range of political views, from all available religious tracts, and
from a large assortment of engineering and other technical works. I
insist on this right because I feel that it is the only way to make
sure that I and other citizens are well informed and able to make
responsible choices about our nation, our schools, and our lives.
However, I understand and accept restrictions that are designed to
preserve historic works, to keep sensitive materials out of reach of
those children whom exhibet only a prurient interest, and to assure
fairness in distributing scarce resources. There are the necessary and
commonly-agreed-upon tasks assigned to librarians.
Then Internet doesn't have a librarian. There is no watchful eye to
steer children away from lewd or lascivious works which are only
appropriate for adults, and there is no public - or even professional
- debate over which materials will be made available, or to whom. I
think Ms. Crawford has missed a key issue in her book, and it is that
children need access, not to the Internet, but rather to the
publications that their parents and teachers have agreed are most
likely to provide them with a good education. The two are not the
same.
Bill
--
Bill Horne
(Remove QRM from my address to write to me directly)
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 (4 messages)
Return to Archives ** Older Issues