December 2013

Missing From Science Class

[Commentary] A big reason America is falling behind other countries in science and math is that we have effectively written off a huge chunk of our population as uninterested in those fields or incapable of succeeding in them.

Women make up nearly half the work force but have just 26 percent of science, technology, engineering or math jobs. Blacks make up 11 percent of the workforce but just 6 percent of such jobs and Hispanics make up nearly 15 percent of the work force but hold 7 percent of those positions. There is no question that women and minorities have made progress in science and math in the last several decades, but their gains have been slow and halting. And in the fast-growing field of computer science, women’s representation has actually declined in the last 20 years, while minorities have made relatively small gains.

New York Asks Cellphone Carriers to Explain Why They Rejected Antitheft Switch

New York State Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman is investigating why American cellphone carriers have yet to embrace antitheft software on Samsung smartphones, raising questions about possible coordination among the biggest carriers.

AG Schneiderman sent letters seeking information to the chief executives of five carriers, Randall L. Stephenson of AT&T, Daniel S. Mead of Verizon Wireless, Daniel R. Hesse of Sprint, John Legere of T-Mobile US and Kenneth R. Meyers of U.S. Cellular. AG Schneiderman requested detailed information on why the carriers were not supporting a so-called kill switch that Samsung Electronics wanted to load on its phones. The feature would have allowed users to “brick” their phones, or disable the devices remotely, to discourage criminals from stealing them.

New York Court Won’t Order Fox Reporter to Testify, Shoring Up State Shield Law

A New York State shield law protecting journalists was bolstered when the state’s highest court refused to require a Fox News reporter to return to Colorado to testify in the case of James E. Holmes, the man accused of shooting 12 people in July 2012 in a movie theater in Aurora. In unusually strong language, the New York Court of Appeals wrote, “There is no principle more fundamental or well-established than the right of a reporter to refuse to divulge a confidential source.” First Amendment experts said that the ruling, written by a 4 to 3 majority on the court, could make New York, already the home to numerous media companies, a kind of safe haven for journalists.

Videogame Makers Fight Efforts to Study Link to Violence

Legislative proposals to study whether videogames are linked to real-life violence or mental health -- prompted by a rash of mass shootings -- have stalled amid a campaign by the industry to quash the efforts, according to lobbying records and lawmakers.

The Entertainment Software Association fought such bills in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey this year and in Oklahoma last year, records and interviews show. The measures either died or are locked in legislative committees. The association, whose 34 members include Microsoft and the U.S. subsidiaries of Sony and Nintendo, now are taking aim at a similar federal bill, according to records and a co-sponsor of the bill. Multiple studies have delved into violent media and its effects with varying and hotly debated results. Some have shown correlations between videogames and aggression, while others said the results are flawed. Critics accuse the industry of trying to discourage scrutiny of a booming business. Global videogame sales outpaced music sales in 2011 and grew faster than movies, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers. Game sales are expected to climb to $82.9 billion annually by 2017 from the expected $65.5 billion this year.

A Gold Rush Hits Wireless Spectrum

The US government's first major auction of wireless airwaves since 2008 has speculators panning for gold. After years of complaining about the need for more airwaves, none of the major carriers have signed up. Instead, the January auction is crowded with people who don't own networks but are hoping to cash in on a scarce asset. At least 10 of the 34 potential bidders are private investors. A number of individual investors are betting they can capitalize on high demand for spectrum by buying up spectrum licenses the way other investors buy up stocks and bonds.

Here’s how AT&T is going to build its gigabit service in Austin

AT&T is set to launch its GigaPower fiber to the home service in Austin (TX) any day now.

Eric Small, VP, fiber broadband planning at AT&T says Austin isn’t a pilot market for AT&T’s fiber to the home effort just because Google has picked the area for its own fiber-to-the-home project (although the government concessions for Google should also help Ma Bell). Small said Austin residents consume 15 percent to 20 percent more broadband than the average AT&T U-verse customer making it a good place to test demand for higher speed services. More Austin residents also have subscribed to AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node U-verse service than currently subscribe to the older DSL technology. The city’s residents are a modern, broadband lovin’ people. Small said that since AT&T’s fiber-to-the-node installation in 2005, in certain parts of the country, in new neighborhoods and in some apartment buildings AT&T has upgraded to fiber to the premise, so the technology involved in the GigaPower service isn’t completely foreign. (Unfortunately for people who live in those neighborhoods, AT&T only offers the standard U-Verse speeds of 24 Mbps or 18 Mbps as opposed to higher speeds associated with fiber to the premise). Now, in Austin, AT&T will upgrade its fiber to the node technology with fiber to the premise and eventually offer the gigabit speeds that fiber can handle. To do this, AT&T is using technology that could be described as “plug and play” to connect homes back to their neighborhood cabinets and terminals. It’s also manufacturing the cables for each neighborhood offsite as opposed to building each fiber strand in the field.

AT&T is considering extending its rollout of ultra-high speed fiber optic broadband service to other cities in the US, said CEO Randall Stephenson.

AT&T’s Stephenson: We can't keep doing big subsidies on phones

AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson says the era of big subsidies for devices is coming to an end, as wireless operators can no longer afford to fund a constant smartphone upgrade cycle.

With smartphone penetration at over 75 percent and soon reaching 90 percent, wireless operators need to work harder to get customers to use more of the network rather than simply getting on the network. "When you're growing the business initially, you have to do aggressive device subsidies to get people on the network," he said. "But as you approach 90 percent penetration, you move into maintenance mode. That means more device upgrades. And the model has to change. You can't afford to subsidize devices like that." Stephenson also acknowledged that breaking customers of their habit of upgrading to a new phone every 18 months to two years is not an easy task. But he said a business model focused on financing rather than providing a subsidy would be "transformative" for the industry. He said the company's new AT&T Next program, which offers no-money down and 0-percent financing, drives smartphone penetration in a way that is more sustainable over time.

Congress Says No With FCC Set to Go on In-Flight Calls

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler isn’t backing down on letting US airline passengers make phone calls even as members of Congress and members of the public say, “No.”

The agency is set to take a preliminary vote on ending its voice-calling ban after commissioners return from a House hearing whose leader said he’ll make Wheeler’s move a “spirited topic of discussion.” The chairman of a House committee overseeing aviation introduced legislation Dec. 9 to prohibit passengers from making voice calls. Chairman Wheeler isn’t budging. “There’s a lot of noise around this issue right now and people clearly do care about it,” said Paul Gallant, Washington-based managing director for Guggenheim Securities. “But this is totally an airline call, and a year from now people will forget the FCC ever had a role in this.” The FCC vote Dec 12 would open a period for public comment; a second vote would be needed to end the ban.

Gannett to Add USA Today to Local Papers

Gannett Company, one of the nation’s largest newspaper chains, will try to expand its advertising and circulation revenue by inserting parts of its flagship newspaper, USA Today, into its local newspapers.

Beginning in January, Gannett will add 12 to 14 pages of USA Today content each day to 35 newspapers in its largest markets, including The Journal News in White Plains (NY), The Tennessean in Nashville and The Cincinnati Enquirer. That means readers, along with their local news, will get a broader mix of news from the USA Today content. Gannett has been testing the program at four papers -- in Indianapolis; Rochester; Fort Myers (FL); and Appleton (WI) -- since October and plans to add the new markets throughout the first quarter of 2014. Eventually it plans to extend the program to all of its 81 local newspaper markets. By incorporating USA Today into local papers, Gannett is able to increase the national paper’s circulation by roughly 1.5 million readers during the week and 2.5 million readers on Sundays, and then try to sell advertising against these larger numbers.

How a blind person ‘sees’ the Internet

Dragging and dropping, bringing up right-click menus on a specific part of the screen or just reading through a webpage become complicated tasks when you are blind.

There are organizations like Lighthouse and other tools that help the visually impaired navigate a computer. But Kevin Jones has been speaking recently at small software development conferences on how to make considerations for the visually impaired. “When you look at a computer screen, you think of it as a two dimensional array,” he says of sighted people, pointing out the huge amount of information — “the bigger picture” — available with a quick glance at a monitor. “But with a screen reader, it’s a one dimensional display.” Jones has a computer science degree and uses a Braille reader to read code, a device that generates the tactile language on a small pad. He’s learning AppleScript to, eventually, write accessibility improvements for VoiceOver. But Braille readers can come up short for navigating the Internet.

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