Free Time for Candidates
Free TV time plans are making inroads (ChiTrib)
Universal Service
News Digest: E-Rate Legislation (WP)
Regulation
Ruling: Internet calls are local (ChiTrib)
U.S. Court in Illinois Says ISP Calls are Local Traffic
(TelecomAM)
Telephone Carriers To Adopt Policy On 'Cramming' (WSJ)
847 area code 'overlay' is delayed until next year (ChiTrib)
HDTV
HDTV: It is Not Worth Losing C-SPAN (WP)
Spanish Digital TV Services To Merge After Costly Fight (NYT)
New Technology
Interplanetary Internet In the Works (CyberTimes)
Lifestyles
Talk, Type, Read E-Mail: The Trials of Multitasking (NYT)
** Free Time for Candidates **
Title: Free TV time plans are making inroads
Source: Chicago Tribune (Sec 3, p.3)
http://chicago.tribune.com
Author: Tim Jones
Issue: Free Time for Candidates
Description: New York-based television ownership group Granite Broadcasting
has announced its stations in Illinois, New York and California will give
candidates for governor and the US Senate two minutes of free time per week
in the six weeks before the general election this November. Granite said it
will make similar offers to candidates for Congress in some markets.
Granite's CEO Don Cornwell said, "I'm absolutely opposed to the government
mandating free political time. I think it's unconstitutional. Hopefully,
we'll see other TV [ownership] groups step forward and experiment." The
lobbying arm for broadcasters, the National Association of Broadcasters,
opposes free time for candidates.
** Universal Service **
Title: News Digest: E-Rate Legislation
Source: Washington Post (E1)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1998-07/23/178l-072398-idx.html
Author: News services and Washington Post Staff Writers
Issue: Universal Service
Description: Today, Sen.Conrad Burns (R-Mont.) and Rep. Billy Tauzin
(R-LA) will introduce legislation that would direct half of the 3 percent
current federal telephone excise tax into the schools and libraries
universal service fund. The "e-rate" program was cut in half last month as a
result of charges that phone companies have been forced to increase customer
rates in order to fund schools and libraries access to the Internet.
** Regulation **
Title: Ruling: Internet calls are local
Source: Chicago Tribune
http://chicagotribune.com/business/businessnews/article/0,1051,ART-12229,00
.html
Author: Jon Van
Issue: Telephone Regulation
Description: Judge David Coar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern
District of Illinois has ruled that computer dial up calls to the Internet
should be classed as regular, local calls for accounting purposes. The case
involves a significant amount of money as Ameritech will now need to pay
local phone service competitors "reciprocal compensation" for completing the
calls. Judge Coar called the reciprocal compensation agreements arcane and
stayed his order for 35 days so Ameritech may file an appeal.
Title: U.S. Court in Illinois Says ISP Calls are Local Traffic
Source: Telecom AM
http://www.telecommunications.com/am/
Issue: Telephone Regulation
Description: Judge David Coar of the U.S. District Court for the Northern
District of Illinois in Chicago ruled July 22 that calls to local numbers of
Illinois Internet service providers (ISP) are local traffic. To date, every
court or state commission that has ruled on this issue has concluded that
ISP calls are local, TelecomAM reports.
Title: Telephone Carriers To Adopt Policy On 'Cramming'
Source: Wall Street Journal (B5)
http://wsj.com/
Author: John Simons
Issue: Local Telephone Service
Description: In an effort to curb "cramming," or the charging of customers
for services they didn't order, regional Bells and other local-phone
carriers yesterday agreed to a set of "best practices" requested by the
Federal Communications Commission. Under the new guidelines, local carriers
will work to give customers a clear, concise description of services being
billed and a full disclosure of terms and conditions. They also must get
customers' written approval before billing for third-party services and
screen third-party products for misleading advertising and billing. The FCC
will continue to monitor cramming complaints and if the industry doesn't
reduce the practice, the agency plans to draft formal regulation.
Title: 847 area code 'overlay' is delayed until next year
Source: Chicago Tribune
http://chicagotribune.com/news/metro/chicago/article/0,1051,ART-12237,00...
Author: Cornelia Grumman
Issue: Telephone Regulation
Description: As the Illinois Commerce Commission and the Citizens Utility
Board, a consumer group, analyze data to see if there really is a phone
number shortage in Chicago's north and northwest suburbs, a new area code
overlay for the area has been delayed until January 23, 1999. "They're
trying to have it both ways," said Seamus Glynn, associate director of CUB.
"They want the public to think they're running out of blocks of numbers, and
they want the Commission to think that as well, but then they themselves
don't take any steps to indicate there's a fear of number exhaust."
** HDTV **
Title: HDTV: It is Not Worth Losing C-SPAN
Source: Washington Post (A19)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Lars-Erik Nelson (form the New York Daily News)
Issue: HDTV/ Broadcasting & Cable Regulation
Description: While HDTV will provide viewers with "crystal clarity - like
looking at real life through a sparkling clean window, not a TV screen - and
an uncanny illusion of depth," these visual advances are not worth the loss
of low revenue cable channels like C-SPAN argues Erik-Lars Nelson. If cable
operators are required to carry both digital and analogue broadcast signals
during the transition period to HDTV, there will not be enough room on
cable systems for all the stations they currently provide. Nelson worries
that "The victims will be low-profit, cable only networks like C-SPAN. He
concludes:" HDTV is a sparkling technological promise; but C-SPAN has become
essential to our citizenship."
Title: Spanish Digital TV Services To Merge After Costly Fight
Source: New York Times (D5)
http://www.nytimes.com/yr/mo/day/news/financial/spain-telecom.html
Author: Al Goodman
Issue: HDTV/International
Description: Spain's two digital satellite TV services, Via Digital, owned
by Telefonic, the former state telecommunications company, and Canal
Satelite, owned by Grupo Prisa, the nation's largest private media company,
have announced plans to merge. The announcement marks a truce that will end
a yearlong "bare-knuckles" battle for Spain's new digital television market.
** New Technology **
Title: Interplanetary Internet In the Works
Source: New York Times (Cybertimes)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/07/cyber/articles/23space.html
Author: Bruno Giussani
Issue: Internet
Description: The "father of the Internet", Vinton Cerf, recently announced
plans to implement an interplanetary Internet system. "One day we may need
to create a localized '.mars' domain name to be used in Internet address,"
he joked at the July 23 Internet Society conference. The plan includes
placing routers, or Internet Interplanetary Gateways (IIG), into space. Cerf
says that IIG technology will guide Internet traffic in space and "could
help solve the problems of high-speed, high-density Internet traffic down
here on Earth."
** Lifestyles **
Title: Talk, Type, Read E-Mail: The Trials of Multitasking
Source: New York Times (E1,E5)
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/98/07/circuits/articles/23task.html
Author: Amy Harmon
Issue: Lifestyles
Description: More and more people are developing a fondness for
multitasking. They claim that the ability to do many things at once actually
makes them feel better. "Multitasking -- the word describes how a
microprocessor keeps lots of computer programs running at the same time --
has lately become a way of life for many Americans. Inundated with more
information than ever before and -- perhaps perversely -- prone to equate
productivity with pleasure, many people are quietly adapting the rhythms of
their own behavior to match that of their machines. As a result, the number
of tasks to which people are simultaneously applying themselves is
multiplying like some mutant breed of postmodern rabbit. The shift is driven
by the seductive suggestions implicit in the latest high-tech tools that
they can be used not only for the pedestrian purposes of communications and
information retrieval but also to swindle time." John Robinson, director of
a project at the Univ. of Maryland, devoted to gauging Americans' use of
time, says that this trend "is not new, but it is accelerating. You can't
expand time, so what you try to do is deepen time by doing more things in
the same period." There are questions raised about the toll this jumping
back and forth takes on the human psyche, but more studies into this topic
still need to be done. Earl Hunt, a professor of psychology and computer
science at the Univ. of Washington points out: "Our brains function the same
way the Cro-Magnon brains did so technology isn't going to change that."
Hunt says, "you can do several tasks at once, but not all of them get done
as well. That is why I feel car phones are a bad idea." But of course all
jobs don't need to be done as well as others. Maybe one of the joys of
multitasking, or perhaps one of its perils, is the ability to blend work and
leisure time in ways not previously possible.
************************
Good night, Mr. Shepard.