Author Archives: John S. Quarterman

TV, Literacy, and the Internet

Whether Ray Bradbury is right about the cause being TV or not, it appears that U.S. adults don’t read very well:
In the International Adult Literacy Survey (IALS) assessment, 1994-98:
  • The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with primary or no education, ranked 14th out of 18 high-income countries;
  • The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with some high school, but no diploma or GED, ranked 19th out of 19 high-income countries;
  • The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with a high school diploma or GED (but no college), ranked 18th (tie) out of 19 countries;
  • The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with 1-3 years of college, ranked 15th out of 19 countries; and
  • The mean prose literacy scores of U.S. adults with a bachelor’s degree or higher, ranked 5th.

— The Twin Challenges of Mediocrity and Inequality: Literacy in the U.S. from an International Perspective, Sum, Andrew, Irwin Kirsch, and Robert Taggart, Educational Testing Service, Princeton, NJ, February 2002. Quoted in Fact Sheet Overview, National Institute for Literacy, accessed 7 June 2007.

Apparently U.S. adults only really learn to read in college, and not all that well even then. And if they can’t read very well, it’s a safe bet that they don’t read very much. Continue reading →

Big Ed Retires

“Who else they gonna listen to? The public?”
Savetheinternet.com produced a memorable satire on the policies of just-retired AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre. We’ve already seen that new AT&T CEO Randal Stephenson isn’t steering a much different course, and Time-Warner CEO Ed Parsons seems to think the cablecos and telcos are the original natives of the Internet and will win at Little Big Horn. Meanwhile, the FCC has time to try to regulate Cher. Maybe the FCC needs to hear some different opinions.

-jsq

Indecent Reaction

20061221cher.jpg I don’t usually post in the middle of the night, but this one is too amusing, or appalling, or something:
Today, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said the use of the words “fuck” and “shit” by Cher and Nicole Richie was not indecent.

I completely disagree with the Court’s ruling and am disappointed for American families. I find it hard to believe that the New York court would tell American families that “shit” and “fuck” are fine to say on broadcast television during the hours when children are most likely to be in the audience.

The court even says the Commission is “divorced from reality.” It is the New York court, not the Commission, that is divorced from reality in concluding that the word “fuck” does not invoke a sexual connotation.

— STATEMENT OF FCC CHAIRMAN KEVIN MARTIN ON 2ND CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS INDECENCY DECISION, FCC, 4 June 2007

When I first read this, I thought it was in the Onion, or that Jonathan Rintels, on whose blog I found it linked, was having a little joke. Continue reading →

TV451

tv451.jpg Ray Bradbury didn’t go collect his Pulitzer special citation because winners aren’t permitted to say anything, so he created a press event instead:
He says the culprit in Fahrenheit 451 is not the state — it is the people. Unlike Orwell’s 1984, in which the government uses television screens to indoctrinate citizens, Bradbury envisioned television as an opiate. In the book, Bradbury refers to televisions as “walls” and its actors as “family,” a truth evident to anyone who has heard a recap of network shows in which a fan refers to the characters by first name, as if they were relatives or friends.

— Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted, L.A.’s august Pulitzer honoree says it was never about censorship, By Amy E. Boyle Johnston, Wednesday, May 30, 2007 – 7:00 pm

Yet the state, or politicians, can leverage that opiate for their ends just as well, perhaps even better, than if the government sold the drug directly. Continue reading →

Presidential Spectrum

John Edwards A presidential candidate sends a letter to the FCC about reallocating 700Mhz spectrum currently used by analog TV:
In recent years, the Internet has grown to touch everything and transform much of what it touches. It’s not the answer to everything, but it can powerfully accelerate the best of America. It improves our democracy by making quiet voices loud, improves our economy by making small markets big, and improves opportunity by making unlikely dreams possible.

— Edwards Calls On FCC To Make Internet More Available And Affordable, John Edwards ’08, 30 May 2007

The letter goes on to propose sensible concrete actions. So not only is this letter remarkable in that a presidential candidate sent it, but also that what he writes makes sense.

-jsq

PS: Seen on Art Brodsky.

Monopoly Municipal Internet

fiberoptic.jpg Monopolies sometimes come in small sizes:
Seven years ago, the neighborhood’s homeowners association, set up by the developer Van Metre Homes, inked an exclusive deal with OpenBand, a small Dulles firm, to provide Internet, cable and phone service to all 1,100 homes. Residents say they are now locked into an expensive, decades-long contract for second-rate services.

Erika Hodell-Cotti, who lives on Sunstone Court, says she cannot work from home because her Internet connection frequently fizzles out. The teenagers who live next door play online Xbox games at friends’ houses where speeds are faster. Dozens of neighbors have installed satellite dishes on their roofs and backyard decks, fed up with cable channels that sometimes dissolve into snowy static.

In Suburbs, Locked Into a High-Tech Lure, Fiber-Optic Service Disappoints Many, but Contracts Span Decades, By Kim Hart, Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, May 21, 2007; Page A01

The problem appears to be that the provider used a single technology and now has no incentive to upgrade. I suppose this is another example of how what Internet participants actually want is the Internet, not a specific delivery technology. A better contract, requiring the provider to at least keep up with prevailing standards, would have helped a lot.

-jsq

No Blocking, No Throttling

David's Sling, by Bernini Big telcos have been blocking calls by conference call services that route through places such as Iowa that have low rural rates for backhaul. Now one of them, freeconferencecall.com, is declaring victory:
As most of you know, we have been engaged in a battle with several major telecom carriers over the last few months. While we continue to take every precaution to safeguard our customers, several have undoubtedly been affected by the carriers’ strong-arm battle tactics. Their decision to block incoming calls to our conferencing and voicemail numbers interrupted thousands of users including small businesses, non-profits, universities and entrepreneurs alike. We have taken this issue to the courts, the government and the press, but the pivotal difference has been the outcry and support from our customers. The Federal Communications Commission, the State Attorney Generals and the telecom giants heard your collective voice and agreed to stop all call blocking. We would like to thank you for getting involved and colleague. Together we can redefine the communications industry!

—Freeconferencecall newsletter, 27 May 2007

I don’t know about redefining the communications industry, but they do seem to have won this round. Even the FCC agrees. Continue reading →

Not Virtual

Linnar Viik John Robb quotes an Estonian on a basic point:
“This is not some virtual world. This is part of our independence. And these attacks were an attempt to take one country back to the cave, back to the Stone Age.”
Linnar Viik, an Estonian government IT consultant to the Washington Post.

Internet Systems Disruption, John Robb, Global Guerrillas, 21 May 2007

A society is its communications, and increasingly the Internet is the matrix of those communications. Such communications are virtual only in the same sense that society is virtual. And it doesn’t take an attack by a foreign power to disrupt those communications. Too few ISP owners can reduce participatory communications to limited broadcast, just as has already happened in radio.

-jsq

Slow and Expensive U.S.

Larry Cohen, President, CWA Speed is trivial, but you’d think we could do better than this:
The average broadband download speed in the US is only 1.9 megabits per second, compared to 61 Mbps in Japan, 45 Mbps in South Korea, 18 Mbps in Sweden, 17 Mpbs in France, and 7 Mbps in Canada, according to the Communication Workers of America.

— US high-speed Internet is slow, Submitted by Canada IFP, Press Esc, on Sun, 2007-05-20

And as we’ve seen, that list of countries could soon include Hong Kong and India, because they’re taking the problem seriously. More interesting was this was said to. Continue reading →

Eerily Familiar

Office of the Army Chief Information Officer The Pentagon video and blogging ban is circumventable primarily due to multiple Internet providers in Iraq:
Deployed troops can still post their videos to YouTube, despite the recently announced Pentagon ban against accessing that site and ten others from government computers. The trick, says Rear Admiral Elizabeth Hight, is to use your own internet access or visit one of the rec center internet cafes, which plug into separate, commercial networks. The ban, she says, applies only to the 5 million computers worldwide connected to the official Department of Defense intranet.

— Getting Around the YouTube Blockade, David Axe, DangerRoom, 17 May 2007

I suppose we could resort to going to the local Internet cafe to get around such bans if they occur stateside. Continue reading →