Bob Furst's List: Media

• In fact, adults are exposed to screens — TVs, cellphones, even G.P.S. devices — for about 8.5 hours on any given day, according to a study released by the Council for Research Excellence on Thursday. TV remains the dominant medium for media consumption and advertising, the study found. The data suggests that computer usage has supplanted radio as the second most common media activity. (Print ranks fourth.)
• 350 subjects — most of whom were former members of the Nielsen television ratings panel — and recording each person’s behavior in 10-second increments
• 952 days of behavior. People under 18 were not included in the study.
• 45-to-54-year-olds, who spend on average an extra hour in front of screens each day, the study found.
• people in their 20s, 30s, 40s and early 50s essentially multitask for the same amount of time. People over 55 are markedly less likely to be multitasking. “That’s where the generation gap, if there is one, may exist,” Mr. Bloxham said.
• Nielsen has found in past studies, namely that television remains by far the dominant medium for video viewing. The Ball State study found that the average American adult was exposed to five hours and nine minutes of live TV each day, almost 15 minutes of TV via a DVR device and 2.4 minutes of video on the computer.

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• Can the United States take the lessons of Iraq to the faltering war in Afghanistan?
• Colombia offers a far better classroom for learning how to beat the Taliban.
• Today, assisted by billions of dollars in U.S. military and development aid, the Colombian government has pushed a Marxist insurgency deep into the jungles where it was born four decades ago. Isn't that what Obama wants to accomplish in Afghanistan?
• As Pakistan does for the Taliban, Venezuela and Ecuador provide sanctuary to Colombia's insurgents.
• Colombia has relied on brutal paramilitary forces to support a weak army, alienating much of the population in the process. In Afghanistan, that role is played by U.S. forces, which, although by no means as savage as the Colombian irregulars, have cost Afghanistan's government support among a people famously hostile to foreign invaders.
• ambassador in Pakistan, Anne Patterson
• ambassador to Afghanistan, William Wood
• Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, noted that some of that country's lessons are applicable "specifically to Afghanistan."
• First, a surge of U.S. combat forces to Afghanistan may be less useful than further increasing the number of military trainers being deployed to help build a viable Afghan army. Second, the administration should focus less on stopping the heroin trade and more on establishing functioning state institutions -- from schools to health clinics. Third, efforts to seal off border sanctuaries do not work and divert military resources from the central job of protecting civilians. The fourth lesson is a stark one: It will take time. The Colombian effort has taken nearly a decade and counting.

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• fewer than ten percent of the Afghan population support the Taliban, according to recent polling; neither do the Taliban and the other anti-government insurgents have a unifying or charismatic leader.

• BM today unveiled Watson, an advanced computing system that engineers hope will be able to compete against humans on the long-running game show Jeopardy.
• They are expected to soon announce plans to air a show pitting human against machine
• Ari Fishkind, a spokesman for IBM, told Computerworld that the company is not sure what the configuration for the computer will look like. There's no word on what chips it will run, how fast it will be able to process data or how big it will be. Fishkind also said there's no word on when Watson will be rolled out or when it will appear on an episode of Jeopardy.

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• The company has sent out a survey to its newspaper subscribers, asking them whether they’d be willing to pay between $2.50 and $5.00 for access to nytimes.com. Such a move wouldn’t be unprecedented for the Times – as Bloomberg notes, the company offered something called “Times Select” several years ago that charged for some content, generating $10 million per year in revenue until the program was shuttered in 2007.
• 14.95/mo
• The Wall Street Journal has provided limited access to its content with a weekly fee for full access for years (the current rate is $1.99 per week) with some success.
• 200 million per year

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• "Rather than tailoring his fair use defense to suggest a modest exception to copyright protections, Tenenbaum's defense mounted a broadside attack that would excuse all file sharing for private enjoyment," the judge wrote in a 38-page decision. Such a broad definition of fair use would "swallow" all copyright protections, Gertner said.

• Her ruling means Tenenbaum will be required to pay $112,500 to Sony BMG Music Entertainment for five songs, another $250,000 to Warner Bros. Records Inc. for sharing 10 songs, $45,000 to Arista Records for two songs and $292,500 to UMG Recordings, Inc. for 13 sound recordings.

    

  A hearing on the constitutionality of the size of the damages awarded in the case is scheduled for Jan. 5.
• The RIAA sued Tenenbaum in 2007. The case shot to prominence last year when Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson announced that he would represent Tenenbaum in his fight against the RIAA.

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• This week, aldermen Patricia Haugeberg, John Robinson, Matt Bogusz and Rosemary Argus voted for the two-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase, while Jean Higgason, James Brookman, Mark Walsten, and Dan Wilson voted against it.
• Des Plaines Mayor Marty Moylan broke the tie, approving doubling the local option gasoline tax to provide increased funding for street drainage system improvements and the city's rear-yard drainage program in 2010.
• "I go to ward meetings all over the whole city and residents have made it clear that they want flood protection," Moylan said. "They've made it loud and clear, when we go to these meetings, they want flood prevention projects completed. They want stormwater to drain. They want backyard flooding to stop."
• effective Jan. 1, with a sunset provision of Dec. 31, 2013
• A water rate increase of 5.7 percent or 18.4 cents per 100 cubic feet effective Jan. 1.
• An increase to the electric utility tax imposed on residential and nonresidential consumers
• eliminating between 38 and 41 positions next year as part of 201

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• Two up‐and‐coming snowboarders, who have been gaining momentum in the past year, are Nike 6.0’s Matt Ladley and Greg Bretz. Ladley and Bretz, both 18, turned heads last year as two of the season’s most unexpected, yet impressive young‐guns on the contest scene. Representing the next generation of snowboarders, they have the snowboarding community buzzing about their chances of making the Olympic team.

• Most people pay in excess of $50 a month (and some much more) to the cable companies. For what? Mostly for a bunch of crap they don’t want and will never watch (nor would they even have time to).

• Christoph Waltz

   

    Inglourious Basterd

• Mo'Nique

   

    Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire

• Up

   

    Pete Docter

• Avatar

   

    Rick Carter and Robert Stromberg (Art Direction); Kim Sinclair (Set Decoration)

• The Young Victoria

   

    Sandy Powell

• Music by Prudence

   

    Roger Ross Williams and Elinor Burkett

• Star Trek

   

    Barney Burman, Mindy Hall and Joel Harlow

• Crazy Heart

   

   

  "The Weary Kind (Theme from Crazy Heart)"
  Music and Lyric by Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett

• Logorama

   

    Nicolas Schmerkin

• The New Tenants

   

    Joachim Back and Tivi Magnusson

• The Hurt Locker

   

    Paul N.J. Ottosson

• The Hurt Locker

   

    Paul N.J. Ottosson and Ray Beckett

• Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire

   

    Screenplay by Geoffrey Fletche

• The Hurt Locker

   

    Written by Mark Boal

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• Vince Vaughn fans may get a glimpse of the comedian at the Choo Choo Restaurant in downtown Des Plaines, where the movie star is expected to film a television show pilot Wednesday.

• He played football and wrestled at Buffalo Grove High School, and later graduated from Lake Forest High School. The city will be giving up its employee parking lot for the day to accommodate equipment that will be used for taping, a city employee said. The pilot is about two college graduates who move from the suburbs to the city, according to an application filed with the city for the filming.

    

  Vaughn is listed as the director of the show and Vail Romelin as producer. The production company is Funny Little Man Productions LLC.

    

  The company will be hiring two off-duty Des Plaines police officers for security at the filming.

• The Federal Communications Commission's proposed expansive broadband plan will require multichannel video program distributors to install a gateway device or equivalent in all new subscriber homes and in homes requiring set-top box replacement beginning Dec. 31, 2012. The move aimed at making home video more competitive will survive anticipated legal challenges from cable and telco operators whose set-top boxes dominate 76 million US households, according to Andrew Lipman, partner at Bingham McCutchen's Telecommunications, Media and Technology Group. Cisco (CSCO) and Motorola (MOT) manufacture 95% of the boxes.

• but Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz’s iPad was the VIP. 
• Other lawmakers, including Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), recently placed their iPad orders, and it’s “only a matter of time” before Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), whose district is home to Apple, breaks down and purchases her own, her spokesman said. 
• iPad is going to revolutionize the way Congress does business — potentially, in a bigger way than the BlackBerry has — allowing members instant access to their staff, constituents and other details that make a congressional office tick, with more typing, editing and communication abilities than any smartphone.

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