Subscribe to this blog in Radio:
Didn't find what you were looking for?
E-mail this blog's author, Bruce Umbaugh:  |
|
 |
Monday, May 01, 2006 |
The truthiness hurts. Stephen Colbert's brilliant performance unplugged the Bush myth machine -- and left the clueless D.C. press corps gaping. [Salon]
8:32:05 PM 
|
|
Two Benton Headlines:
IT IS TOO SOON TO IMPOSE NET NEUTRALITY
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: John Gapper]
[Commentary]
Central control of the Internet need not go
hand-in-hand with increased download speeds. Regulators can prevent the
obvious abuses and the blanket imposition of a net neutrality rule
immediately would have unpredictable consequences. The first priority
for the US is to push enough investment into fibre-optic lines to
create the kind of high-speed Internet that is becoming widespread in
countries across Asia and Europe. Despite some of the rhetoric, the
Internet already has slower and faster lanes. Companies such as Ebay
and Google plug into it through big pipes and store their data on
servers around the world so that their pages load more rapidly.
Telecoms companies exchange traffic in order to make it travel faster
than it would through the public hubs that were the foundation of the
Internet. The "best efforts" nature of
Internet architecture -- all packets of data are delivered as fast as
they can be with no discrimination -- also works better for some
applications than others. It does not matter too much if an e-mail is
delayed by a split second or a photograph takes a fraction longer to
load. But videos and films fare less well under these egalitarian
rules. They may run jerkily or freeze
if too much data is delayed. The best approach is to give the telecom
companies some leeway on net neutrality now and watch to see the
results over the next few years. They have promised not to block any
Internet applications and services and
to ensure that all traffic is delivered as fast tomorrow as it is
today. But this is only a start: to merit their newfound freedom, they
must do a great deal better than that.
(requires subscription)
ARE VIDEO NEWS RELEASES ALL BAD?
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Kevin E.
Foley, creator of "sponsored news content"]
[Commentary]
A video news release apologist argues that fake news
is good news. "Times have
changed, and the commercial interests in television today demand
financial accountability
from news operations. With fewer resources at their disposal, the
pressure is on the producers
to fill airtime with newsworthy, informative and even entertaining
content. It's a daunting challenge in many TV markets without outside
help. Indeed, one of the most common practices in print journalism is
to lift quotes and even blocks of copy from press releases. Reporters
from local weekly newspapers to The New York Times do it every day
without ever disclosing to the reader the source of the material. And
you know what? Nobody cares."
10:38:14 AM
|
|
Duke U. Stops Giving Students Free iPods but Will Continue Using
Them in Class, by Brock Read, CHE (subscription required).
[T]he university will offer two options to any student
enrolled in a course that requires the device: The student can either
borrow an iPod, at no cost, for the duration of the course, or purchase
an iPod at a discounted price of $99.
. . .
After passing out iPods to more than 1,600 freshmen in the fall of
2004, Duke officials insisted that the devices were to be used not just
for entertainment but for academic studies. Critics of the program,
meanwhile, argued that the giveaway was a public-relations ploy, not a
carefully considered educational plan.
The officials conducted a review of the project last spring and,
finding that iPods had educational merit, thought not in every course,
decided to continue handing out the devices. But instead of awarding
them to freshmen, the university started giving iPods to students who
enrolled in courses for which Duke's Center for Instructional
Technology had authorized the use of the tools.
At the same time, Duke rechristened the iPod project as the Digital
Initiative -- a program that helped professors use a number of
technological tools, including iPods, tablet PC's, and digital-video
equipment. As the initiative's focus grew, so did the university's
success at working iPods into the classroom. According to a new review
of the initiative's second year, 47 courses this spring incorporated
iPods, and Duke actually gave away more of the devices during the past
academic year than it did in 2004, when it offered them to the entire
freshman class.
7:37:44 AM
|
|
|
From the documentary Beautiful Minds: A Voyage into the Brain, savant Stephen Wiltshire takes a 45-minute helicopter ride over Rome, seeing it for the first time. For the next five days, he draws a remarkably accurate panorama of city on a fifteen-foot long sheet of paper. 