MEDIA OWNERSHIP
Analysis: FCC Chief Puts Law Above Politics and Gets Rebuked
Bush Fights Congress on TV Cap Rollback
Commentary: A Slap at the Media
DIGITAL DIVIDE
Summit Seeks Content Experts for Awards Panel
Baghdad Calling! Mobile Phones Spring to Life
CABLE
NCTA: Quality Programming Justifies Cable Rate Hikes
EDTECH
Penn State: Simulations Boost Online Student Performance
INTERNET
Do-Not-Spam List Favored, Study Finds
War on Spam Draws in Innocents
Genealogists Launch Database of Jewish Cemeteries
Poetry Website Goes from Bad to Verse
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MEDIA OWNERSHIP
FCC CHIEF PUTS LAW ABOVE POLITICS AND GETS REBUKED
[Analysis] Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications
Commission, finds himself in a political hot seat in the wake of yesterday's
400-21 House vote seeking to rollback the FCC's recent media ownership
decision. "This is a real dangerous spot for Powell," said Andrew
Schwartzman of the Media Access Project. "He is facing a kind of
congressional repudiation of a rare kind." Powell has defended his efforts
by stating that a federal court last February ruled that the current media
ownership rules were "arbitrary and capricious and contrary to law." Powell,
an anti-trust lawyer by profession, crusaded against the previous rules
"with subtle legalistic arguments that fail to stick in the public mind,"
the Times writes. The paper adds, "What Mr. Powell failed to understand is
that given a choice between big government and big media, the public often
sides with the government."
SOURCE: New York Times; AUTHOR: Jennifer Lee
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/business/media/24POWE.html
BUSH FIGHTS CONGRESS ON TV CAP ROLLBACK
Despite the growing opposition to the June FCC media ownership decision, the
White House today said that it would encourage Congress to strip out
legislative language that would effectively overrule the FCC. White House
spokesman Scott McClellan said that the administration would work with
legislators when the House and Senate meet to negotiate the final version of
a spending measure that includes the media ownership amendment. The White
House hopes both houses of Congress will choose to remove the amendment. "We
are going to work with the Congress to try to fix that in conference," he
said.
http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=3152570
A SLAP AT THE MEDIA
[Commentary] Washington Post media critic Howard Kurtz focuses his column on
press coverage of the media ownership debate. Quoting editorials and news
reports from a variety of newspapers and online magazines, Kurtz examines
how the issue, once ignored by major news outlets, is becoming a major
story. "Nobody much likes Big Media these days," he writes. "But who woulda
thunk that it would become a hot political issue? Not me." Kurtz goes on to
say, "The rare move by the Republican-controlled House to buck the
administration on a regulatory issue -- especially given the clout of the
broadcast industry, which hands out plenty of campaign cash -- suggests that
this issue has struck some kind of nerve."
SOURCE: Washington Post; AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39295-2003Jul24.html
DIGITAL DIVIDE
SUMMIT SEEKS CONTENT EXPERTS FOR AWARDS PANEL
The United Nations Industrial Development Organisation and the Austrian
government, among others, will sponsor the World Summit Award, honoring
excellence in digital content creation from around the world. Awards will be
given country-by-country for content in eight categories: e-government,
e-health, e-learning, e-science, e-culture, e-entertainment, e-business and
e-inclusion. These categories will cover content created on the Internet, as
well as DVD and CD-ROM. Awards organizers are currently seeking experts from
around the world to represent their countries as official nominators for the
competition. Each expert would make the selection for best content from his
or her country. Nominations for experts must be submitted by August 10.
SOURCE: World Summit on the Information Society
Call for Experts:
http://www.geneva2003.org/wsis/documents/world%20summit%20award%20shortd...
iption_engl..pdf (English)
http://www.geneva2003.org/wsis/documents/world%20summit%20award%20shortd...
iption_fr..pdf (French)
http://www.geneva2003.org/wsis/documents/world%20summit%20award%20shortd...
iption_span..pdf (Spanish)
Nominate an Expert:
http://www.europrix.org/wsis-award/content/register.htm
BAGHDAD CALLING! MOBILE PHONES SPRING TO LIFE
Mobile phone service, which was banned under Saddam Hussein's regime in
Iraq, is widely available for the first time in Baghdad this week. The US
Provisional Authority isn't quite sure how it happened, however -- it
planned to issue a Request for Proposals for three cellular licenses next
week and was unaware of the availability of cellular service. Citizens with
foreign-registered GSM phones were able to roam in Baghdad via networks
based in Bahrain and Kuwait. Batelco, the Bahraini firm, has already asked
the US-led authority for a license and proposes building a $50 million GSM
network in Iraq. An important undecided issue in this debate is whether Iraq
will adopt the GSM standard, which is used in Europe and the Middle East, or
the US-backed CDMA standard, which most US firms would likely build out in
Iraq. GSM would allow Iraqis greater flexibility to travel outside the
country without changing phones.
SOURCE: USA Today; AUTHOR: Reuters
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2003-07-22-baghdad-cell_x.htm
CABLE
NCTA: QUALITY PROGRAMMING JUSTIFIES CABLE RATE HIKES
Cable rate increases are indeed outpacing inflation, but prices reflect the
rapidly rising cost of programming, says the National Cable and
Telecommunications Association. Consumer groups reacted harshly to an FCC
report earlier this month indicating that cable rates rose over eight
percent in the 12-month period ending in July 2002 - more than five times
the rate of inflation. NCTA was quick to point out that cable systems have
invested heavily in infrastructure upgrades and have had to keep pace with
the increasing license fees for programs, particularly sporting events. The
group says that programming costs increased by $1.1 billion in 2002 and have
doubled since 1998.
SOURCE: Yahoo! News; AUTHOR: Megan Larson, MediaWeek.com
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/mediaweek/20030718/ad_bpi...
ctaqualityprogrammingjustifiescableratehikes
(URL may need to be pasted together if broken)
EDTECH
PENN STATE: SIMULATIONS BOOST ONLINE STUDENT PERFORMANCE
According to Penn State researcher Brian Cameron, using high-quality
simulation software improves student achievement, motivation and graduation
rates compared to other online methods. Cameron's findings were based on a
study of two sections of a web-based introductory networking and
telecommunications course he taught. The students who used a commercial
network simulation package scored higher and retained more information than
students who used a popular network-diagramming software tool that depends
on instructor evaluation for feedback. The simulation software allowed
students to build and test different networking components and
configurations and receive immediate feedback. Students who used the static
software package didn't experiment with different configurations because
they had no way to verify their designs worked other than submitting them to
Cameron. Based on his findings, Cameron suggests that educators seek
programs that closely mimic real-world experiences. The need for effective
online teaching tools is underscored by a new report from the US Department
of Education, which finds that enrollment in distance education courses has
nearly doubled since 1995 to 3.1 million enrollments.
SOURCE: eSchool News; AUTHOR: Cara Branigan
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStoryts.cfm?ArticleID=4518
See also:
US Department of Education report on distance learning programs in higher
ed:
http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2003017
INTERNET
DO-NOT-SPAM LIST FAVORED, STUDY FINDS
A survey of some 1,200 Internet users found that three out of four Americans
favor a "do-not-spam" registry, along the lines of the Federal Trade
Commission's "do-not-call" registry. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) hopes to
include a do-not-spam proposal in an anti-spam bill that could come up for
vote in the Senate before it adjourns for summer recess next week. Critics
say that the list would be widely ignored by spammers and would divert
resources better spent tracking down peddlers of dubious get-rich-quick
scams. In the House of Representatives, the Energy and Commerce Committee
has delayed a vote on the issue until September as they debate two competing
bills.
SOURCE: MSNBC News; AUTHOR: Andy Sullivan
http://www.msnbc.com/news/943214.asp?0cv=TB10
WAR ON SPAM DRAWS IN INNOCENTS
In the war on spam, it is not clear who's winning. Whether the lost time and
productivity is due to spam or the need to get legitimate information around
spam filters, industry experts say the fight against unwanted email costs
about $8.9 billion a year. One weapon is Spam Arrest, software that works
"like an annoying personal assistant," asking unrecognized senders of email
to verify themselves by clicking on a link to a special website and typing
in a word shown on a picture. This approach trashes messages from spam
robots, which can't read a picture. America Online, where spam accounts for
almost one out of every two emails processed daily, has been blocking what
it considers suspicious emails sent by tens of thousands of customers of
broadband Internet providers. Sometimes innocent users get caught in the
spam squeeze, however. "Filters are blunt instruments," said Paula Bruening
of the Center for Democracy and Technology. "They are far from a perfect
solution." She added that spam is challenging the growth of the Internet
because the sheer task of dealing with it is making email less reliable as a
communications tool.
SOURCE: Middle East North Africa Financial Network; AUTHOR: Mike Wendland
http://www.menafn.com/qn_news_story.asp?StoryId=CpX4iqeicq1bulufoveLtuefn
GENEALOGISTS LAUNCH DATABASE OF JEWISH CEMETERIES
At the 23rd International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Washington DC
this week, the genealogy website JewishGen.org launched the JewishGen Online
Worldwide Burial Registry. The online database is a compilation of data
collected from 643 cemeteries in 25 countries, including 314,778 burial
records and 11,461 tombstone photographs. "Jewish cemeteries throughout the
world are threatened with vandalism and even extinction," said Susan E.
King, Managing Director of JewishGen. "It is vitally important to preserve
information on existing Jewish cemeteries so future generations will have
the benefit of this aspect of cultural heritage." Founded in 1987, JewishGen
became one of the first genealogy organizations in the mid 1990s to grasp
the potential of the Internet as a tool for tracing family histories. The
website has received family historical data from thousands of amateur
genealogists from around the world, allowing users to search family names
and towns from dozens of countries. Over the coming year, JewishGen plans to
add information for an additional 242 cemeteries, 150,461 burial records and
22,400 tombstone images from 36 cemeteries across Eastern Europe.
SOURCE: JewishGen.org
For more information, contact Susan E. King (susan.king( at )jewishgen.org)
Search the database:
http://www.jewishgen.org/databases/jowbr
POETRY WEBSITE GOES FROM BAD TO VERSE
David Rea, a programmer from Greenwich, Connecticut, has developed a website
to see if poetry can "evolve" from a random collection of words. Rea started
his "Darwinian Poetry" site by generating 1,000 poems, each containing four
lines of randomly selected words chosen from a pool of 30,000 possibilities.
When users visit the site, they are presented with two poems and are asked
to vote for the better one. The chosen poem "survives" and continues to
evolve with words added or subtracted, while the losing poem is "killed
off." The newly evolved poems are then put up for a vote, and the cycle
repeats itself. With thousands of users visiting the site, Rea says that the
random collections of words are beginning to evolve into actual poetic
structures, but the eloquence of the current generation of poems remains
debatable. For example, a test of the website this morning generated the
following: "Distill jumbled little sifting millstones /
Shield to the further fueling / Old but of interfere unfinished in the."
SOURCE: New Scientist; AUTHOR: Duncan Graham-Rowe
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993971
Darwinian Poetry:
http://www.codeasart.com/poetry/darwin.html
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