Education
NYT: U.S. Program Wires Remote Native Americans
Telephone Rates
WP: AT&T Imposing Fee On Residential Users
WSJ: AT&T May Impose a New Monthly Fee on Some Customers
HDTV
NYT: TV Networks Pushed on Digital Standards
WSJ: TCI's Hindery Speaks to HDTV Remarks Ascribed to Malone
WP: Technical Glitches Threaten Digital TV's Fall Debut
Microsoft/Antitrust
WSJ: Gates, U.S. Meet as New Lawsuit Looms
Internet
NYT: For Seriously Ill Children, Chat Rooms Are More Than a Diversion
WSJ: Dell, Cisco and US West to Announce Plans for PCs With
High-Speed Modems
NYT: "Dynamic Encyclopedia" of Philosophy Stays Current Online
** Education **
Title: U.S. Program Wires Remote Native Americans
Source: New York Times (CyberTimes)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/05/cyber/education/06education.html
Author: Pamela Mendels
Issue: Education
Description: A school wiring project launched earlier this year by the
federal Bureau of Indian Affairs will officially debut on May 16 with an
event called Access Native America Net Day. If the project goes according to
plan, all 185 schools financed by the bureau will be connected to the
Internet by December 1999. "Our kids are already left out of mainstream
society in almost every respect," said Peter H. Camp, an education
specialist at the Bureau of Indian Affairs Office of Indian Education
Programs in Washington, D.C., and one of the coordinators of the wiring
initiative. "If our kids are to participate in society, they have to have
the technology. It's absolutely critical." The administration's push over
the past year to wire all classrooms has sparked the debate over whether
technology helps to improve education or is just an expensive and
ineffective teaching tool. But there seems to be consensus on both sides of
the debate that technology does have the potential to assist kids living in
remote areas. "Even most skeptics, including me, agree there are at least
strong sets of anecdotal evidence that kids in isolated areas tend to
benefit more from computers in school than kids in general," said William L.
Rukeyser, coordinator of Learning in the Real World, a Woodland,
Calif.-based organization that questions the advantages of technology in the
classroom. Supporters of the project see the Internet as a way to offer
students access to a wider array of educational material and thus overcome
some of their remoteness.
** Telephone Rates **
Title: AT&T Imposing Fee On Residential Users
Source: Washington Post (C11,C13)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-05/06/036l-050698-idx.html
Author: Mike Mills
Issue: Long-Distance
Description: Over the past month, AT&T has begun to charge a
95-cent-per-month fee to customers who subscribe to one of its discount
calling plans. The company said yesterday that additional charges are needed
to pay to help subsidize universal phone service and to connect
long-distance calls to local networks. The fees and others like it run
counter to what federal regulators promised last year "when they ordered the
largest restructuring of telephone rates since the AT&T monopoly was
dismantled in 1984." Last May, former FCC chairman, Reed Hundt, said: "We...
guarantee that long-distance prices will fall." Many rates did fall but
"fees are now pushing the levels back up, in some cases to levels higher
than before." Mark Rosenblum, AT&T's vice president of law and public policy
said that because the company must pay the local phone companies AT&T is
justified in imposing the new fees. "We cannot simply eat these costs," he
said. "...We're not using [the fees] as a source of independent revenue."
Title: AT&T May Impose a New Monthly Fee on Some Customers
Source: Wall Street Journal (B15)
http://www.wsj.com
Author: WSJ Staff Reporter
Issue: Long-Distance
Description: AT&T said it is likely to start charging its basic-rate
customers a new monthly fee of about 95 cents to recover per customer
access charges the company pays to local carriers, whether the customer
makes any AT&T long distance calls or not. Special-rate customers have
been charged this fee since April. AT&T's letter to the FCC says the fee
also helps address losses to so-called "dial-around" services like MCI's
"10-321" plan that allows customers to access on a call-by-call basis a
long-distance carrier other than the one they're signed up with.
** HDTV **
Title: TV Networks Pushed on Digital Standards
Source: New York Times (D8)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/05/biztech/articles/06cable.html
Author: Bloomberg News-The Associated Press
Issue: Digital TV/Spectrum
Description: Cable giant Tele-Communications Inc. is threatening to not
carry NBC's and CBS's new high-definition digital TV channels unless they
switch to a format that will take up less channel space. TCI chairman, John
Malone, said to reporters yesterday: "If they want to play spectrum hog, I
think it is almost suicidal for them. I think is would be very foolish for
them." In an interview, Bob Okun, an NBC vice president said: "We are
disappointed." Malone's threatened action "will disenfranchise consumers and
there is always the possibility of a consumer backlash." Okun added that the
network has no intention of changing its format but is hopeful that an
arrangement can be worked out with TCI.
Title: TCI's Hindery Speaks to HDTV Remarks Ascribed to Malone
Source: Wall Street Journal (B8)
http://www.wsj.com
Author: WSJ Staff Reporter
Issue: Digital TV/Spectrum
Description: Leo Hindery Jr., CEO of cable giant Tele-Communications, Inc
(TCI) revealed that several broadcasters have privately discussed the
possibility of charging consumers for new high-definition television
services, possibly including some sort of revenue-sharing arrangement with
cable companies that seeks to circumvent possible heavy tax levies. This
despite the deal they made with Congress in 1996 to offer HDTV and other
new digital fare in exchange for valuable free spectrum. The originator of
the comments appears to be John Malone, TCI's chair.
Title: Technical Glitches Threaten Digital TV's Fall Debut
Source: Washington Post (C11,C12)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-05/06/038l-050698-idx.html
Author: Paul Farhi
Issue: Digital TV
Description: TV stations in several markets around the country say they are
encountering problems as they prepare for their first digital broadcasts,
scheduled to start on Nov. 1. The problems -- "ranging from difficulty in
erecting transmission towers to international signal-interference issues" --
threatened to make HDTV's debut this fall a "patchwork affair."
** Microsoft/Antitrust **
Title: Gates, U.S. Meet as New Lawsuit Looms
Source: Wall Street Journal (B6)
http://www.wsj.com/
Author: John R. Wilke & David Bank
Issue: Antitrust
Description: At his request, Bill Gates met with senior Justice Dept officials
last night to present his view of what's at stake should the department
move forward on its antitrust case against Microsoft. This followed a
rally in New York City yesterday that had been billed as an anti-antitrust
action into a marketing blitz for Windows 98.
** Internet **
Title: For Seriously Ill Children, Chat Rooms Are More Than a Diversion
Source: New York Times (CyberTimes)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/05/cyber/articles/06children.html
Author: Bob Tedeschi
Issue: Kids/Health
Description: An increasing number of children are turning to the Internet to
help them cope with the more serious side effects of illness, such as
disability, physical disfigurement and isolation. It seems certain that the
trend will continue to grow given three factors: "increased computer
spending in pediatric hospitals; greater technological know-how among health
care providers; and improving Internet content." "The Internet gives kids
privacy and distance, and that lays the groundwork for an exchange that's
really powerful," sid Liz Marshall, webmaster for Paul Newman's Hole in the
Wall Gang Camp, which serves children with life-threatening diseases. "It
addresses isolation, it doesn't take physical strength, and the value of
putting kids in touch with each other is tremendous." Health care providers
agree. "It relaxes them, gives them control," said Eileen Henzy, a
child-life specialist with Connecticut Children's Medical Center in
Hartford. "The computer is the one thing our kids can look forward to when
they know they have to come to the hospital."
Title: Dell, Cisco and US West to Announce Plans for PCs With
High-Speed Modems
Source: Wall Street Journal (B6)
http://www.wsj.com
Author: Stephanie N. Mehta
Issue: Computer Technology
Description: Dell Computer, Cisco Systems and US West Communications Group
will announce today plans to roll out this fall personal computers with
high-speed digital modems that work over traditional copper telephone lines.
Title: "Dynamic Encyclopedia" of Philosophy Stays Current Online
Source: New York Times (CyberTimes)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/05/cyber/articles/06philosophy.html
Author: Matt Richtel
Issue: Internet
Description: Because philosophy encyclopedias take so long to compile they
are already out of date by the time they are released. Edward N. Zalta, an
associate professor at Standford Univ., thinks the Internet may be the
solution to this problem. Zalta is the creator of the Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy, a constantly updated text published on the Internet that he
calls the world's first "dynamic encyclopedia." The idea works by requiring
contributors, many of whom are some of the world's top philosophy scholars,
to update their articles, definitions and citations at least once a year.
"It's a living document," said Zalta. "It will evolve as research
progresses." Anthony Beavers, an associate professor at Evansville Univ. in
Indiana who runs a similar site, said that his and other pre-screened
academic sites are linked to each other providing a kind of academic quality
control. "What we're doing is filtering information for the public because
it's hard to know what's accurate anymore," Beavers said.
*********