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This Changes Everything; Capitalism vs the Climate, Naomi Klein, 2014
Naomi Klein in Vancouver BC. Photo taken by Jeff Chant

This was supposed to be a book to give hope to those that want to transition from greenhouse emitting fossil fuel consuming that will make the Earth uninhabitable to a world of renewable and sustainable energy. Klein starts by discussing the many studies that show, not only is such a transition possible, but that it can be accomplished with existing technologies and can happen very quickly, well within the time frames necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change. Great, lets get going. In fact Denmark and Germany have transformed large parts of their energy sources to wind and solar more quickly then predicted, so quickly that existing German coal burning power plants are exporting their power to other countries. Unfortunately, the reader starts to feel like cartoon character Charlie Brown. Every time he gets ready to kick the football, Luci (Klein) yanks the ball away and the reader falls flat on his back.

Klein start with Genesis 1:18 written about 500 B.C.

God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.

The entire Judea-Christian culture is based on the fundamental notion that the Earth and its resources were created especially for man and man is to rule over them and use them however he wishes without limit. Klein contrasts this to the typical indigenous native view that the Earth provides for all living things but man with his intelligence has a particular responsibility to care for the Earth and all living things in it. Guess which view dominates.
She then gives us a brief history of industrialization which started its unstoppable acceleration with James Watt’s invention of the steam engine in the 18th Century. Our burning of fossil fuels has been accelerating ever since. Most of the carbon in the atmosphere is the responsibility of the oldest large economies.

Klein returns to one of her favorite topics; neoliberalism (see The Shock Doctrine)

Indeed, the three pillars of the neoliberal age – privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of income and corporate taxes, paid for with cuts to public spending – are each incompatible with many of the actions we must take to bring our emissions to safe levels.

We measure the success of our economies by the growth rate of the national GDP. A recent long term economic study by French economist Thomas Piketty shows that low GDP growth rates and low population growth has been the typical state of large economies from 1700 until 1914 (WWI) and he expects that in the 21st Century we will return to those stable states baring another major catastrophe like global climate change. But today’s capitalism puts enormous pressure on executives to grow grow grow. No wonder they will go to extreme means and measures to achieve this unnatural growth. This form of unsustainable expansive capitalism must change or the Earth will be uninhabitable.

The deregulating Clinton administration and his climate change alarmist VP Al Gore pioneered worldwide trade agreements starting with NAFTA and creating the WTO that have brought into existence a global economy based on industrial agriculture, the search for lowest labor costs, and massive increase in the need to transport the resulting products and food; in other words an explosive increase in fossil fuel consumption. These same trade agreements have been used effectively to block locally generated alternate energy projects. Clinton also introduced the cap and trade carbon system late in the Kyoto talks and Gore pushed the idea through. There is little evidence that cap and trade has done anything to reduce emissions but it has created a world wide derivatives market (think sub prime mortgages) where a company in India is paid a large sum to produce ozone destroying refrigerants banned in most countries. Figure that one out. Carbon credits and derivatives are an open invitation to game the system.

Where is the environmental movement? Big green sold out to the energy companies who use them in PR campaigns to make them appear to support alternate energy sources – but we need a “transition period”. Many of the biggest environmental groups receive most of their funding, some secretly, from big energy. The biggest, The Nature Conservatory, was given 2303 acres in southeast Texas by Mobil in 1995 to provide a preserve for the endangered Attwater prairie chicken. In 1999 the Conservatory put a gas well on the property. This was discovered and reported by the LA Times in 2002 forcing a promise not to drill again but the Conservatory put in an oil well in 2007. Big green – big carbon producer. By the way, the prairie chickens are all gone from the preserve. Guess they don’t like oil drilling. The Sierra Club (setting a few personal scandals aside), Greenpeace, and 350.org are exceptions to the sellout.

Attwater Prairie Chicken estimated 60 remain in the wild

What do you do when your fortune and livelihood is dependent on producing a deadly product? Or you are a politician dependent on those producing that deadly product? You engage in magical thinking. Step 1 denial. The midterm election that swept Republicans into control of congress will assure that all environmental and energy committee positions will be filled with climate change deniers. Climate Denier James Inhofe new Senate Environment Chairman The alternative is that you are out of a job. Step 2 green billionaires will buy a solution. Richard Branson promised to use $3 Billion in profits from Virgin to develop alternate fuel sources. He also offered a $25 million prize for the inventor of a carbon sequestration system. Virgin flies more routes than ever, the $3 Billion never materialized and the prize has not been awarded. Brilliant PR campaign though. Gates, Pickens are others who have made some alternate energy noises, remain deeply invested in fossil fuel energy. Step 3 Bio engineer a solution (see Climate Engineering) This is the one where you put a sulphite shield in the stratosphere to simulate the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The effects on the climate worldwide are unknowable because you can’t experiment to try it. What is really scary is that Klein admits that if she was desperate enough she might be willing to try it.

Big energy needs to grow and to do so they need to resort to more extreme methods and to extract closer to those more able to fight them, for example attempts to frack natural gas in Ithaca, New York, home to Cornell University – Big mistake. Cornell is the originator of some of the best studies showing how dirty fracking is in the release of methane gas, pollution of water, and earthquakes.

Coal mining in Montana with plans to ship the coal to China ran into the Indian – Cowboy collation with local ranchers joining with native tribes to prevent the hauling of coal over beautiful but dangerous Highway 12, prevented the building of a special rail line and, so far the building of a big port somewhere in the Northwest. Big energy better stay away from the Northwest. Lummi Totem Kwel Hoy (We Draw the Line) traveled 1300 km to the Montana coal site. Kwel Hoy has been planted near Vancouver looking out at the Pacific.
Kwel Hoy at proposed coal port in Bellingham Kwel Hoy visits Seattle

Klein is Canadian with a special interest and concern with the Alberta tar sands. She is on the board of directors of 350.org. Her big hopes here are that the pipelines needed to move the oil can be stopped (choke points like the Montana coal routes). Central to these efforts are native treaty rights and a series of recent court decisions upholding the native treaty rights. It seems, at least in Canada, that the native population never gave up their rights to much of Canada beyond the reservations but agreed to share the land. How to you share something that somebody else destroyed. The liabilities for the Canadian government are in the Trillions. But when natives asked the person responsible for Canada’s AAA credit rating how this rating can be maintained in face of this liability, the individual responded basically you and what army are going to enforce those reparations? Can the native treaties be used to stop the tar sands pipelines or coal routes? We don’t know.
Alberta Tar Sands

Klein talks about the growing divestment movement and hopes it is joined by an equally robust reinvestment in alternative energy sources. What is clear is that most of the stock value of energy companies relies on energy reserves and that extraction and use of those reserves will make the Earth uninhabitable. You can deny the science maybe but Mother Nature is non negotiable. There is now a group of divestment investors whose primary rationale is that values dependent on unusable reserves are not real and energy stock prices must crash at some point. Energy companies won’t continue to be profitable and the window of opportunity is short to use energy profits for reinvestment in alternate energy.

So lets review our situation. The dominant world culture believes that the Earth was created for us to exploit. Capitalism must grow or perish. Globalism requires exploitation of the cheapest resources wherever they are found, prevents regulation of trade, and greatly expands energy needs. Big agriculture requires massive chemical inputs and massive transport and is unsustainable. The climate gets more extreme and unpredictable and climate disasters are vastly more expensive now. Worldwide, politicians are largely neoliberal favoring austerity measures to further their agenda and dependent on corporations for their survival. Courts are largely manned by pro corporate judges. The handful of billionaires that own half the world’s wealth are insensitive to other’s suffering to the point of allowing entire nations to be drowned in the rising seas believing their wealth will protect them from anything. Klein says you can buy an apartment in NYC where you can live underwater like in a submarine if necessary. I wonder what you eat in your submarine. Most of the world’s population won’t be able to grow food or have access to clean water.

Klein is clear that a broad based worldwide grass roots populist movement is the only thing that has a chance to change things. We know the alternative is possible. We just don’t know how to force the changes needed to get there.

Put another way, only mass social movements can save us now. Because we know where the current system, left unchecked, is headed. We also know, I would add, how that system will deal with the reality of serial climate-related disasters: with profiteering and escalating barbarism to segregate the losers from the winners. To arrive at that dystopia, all we need to do is keep barreling down the road we are on. The only remaining variable is whether some countervailing power will emerge to block the road, and simultaneously clear some alternate pathways to destinations that are safer. If that happens, well, it changes everything.

Hence the title of the book. Hope you feel better.

Flash Boys, A Wall Street Revolt, Michael Lewis, 2014

This book is about the fast changing character of market exchanges, the big banks, and their collusion with high frequency traders that have made trading into a totally opaque dive into the shark tank. The book was rushed to market with incorrect words, syntax, and spelling problems, but it is still worth reading.

Wall street has undergone a technological revolution into electronic trading led first by NASDAQ . A few years ago there were three stock exchanges plus the Chicago futures market where an individual stock could be listed on only one exchange. Now there are countless exchanges and stocks can be traded on any of them. After September 11, 2001 there was an exodus of the markets from Manhattan to the suburbs of New Jersey. In 2007 the SEC implemented Reg NMS which required brokers to find the best market price for investors. This new regulation was in response to a growing epidemic of front running in the markets, but its implementation actually increased the opportunity for front running because brokers were required to pass their orders to more exchanges leading to more opportunities to front run. Wikipedia defines and explains front running as follows:

Front running is the illegal practice of a stockbroker executing orders on a security for its own account while taking advantage of advance knowledge of pending orders from its customers. When orders previously submitted by its customers will predictably affect the price of the security, purchasing first for its own account gives the broker an unfair advantage, since it can expect to close out its position at a profit based on the new price level. The front running broker either buys for his own account (before filling customer buy orders that drive up the price), or sells (where the broker sells for its own account, before filling customer sell orders that drive down the price).

As if things were not complicated enough many financial institutions have created something called dark (or black) pool as a total alternative to the mess with the public exchanges. Again Wikipedia defines a dark pool as:

In finance, a dark pool (also black pool) is a private forum for trading securities that is not openly available to the public. Liquidity on these markets is called dark pool liquidity.The bulk of dark pool trades represent large trades by financial institutions that are offered away from public exchanges like the New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ, so that such trades remain confidential and outside the purview of the general investing public. The fragmentation of financial trading venues and electronic trading has allowed dark pools to be created, and they are normally accessed through crossing networks or directly among market participants via private contractual arrangements.

One of the main advantages for institutional investors in using dark pools is for buying or selling large blocks of securities without showing their hand to others and thus avoiding market impact as neither the size of the trade nor the identity are revealed until the trade is filled. However, it also means that some market participants are disadvantaged as they cannot see the trades before they are executed; prices are agreed upon by participants in the dark pools, so the market becomes no longer transparent.

The main focus of this book is high frequency trading defined again in Wikipedia:

High-frequency trading (HFT) is a type of algorithmic trading, specifically the use of sophisticated technological tools and computer algorithms to rapidly trade securities. HFT uses proprietary trading strategies carried out by computers to move in and out of positions in seconds or fractions of a second.

As of 2009, studies suggested HFT firms accounted for 60-73% of all US equity trading volume, with that number falling to approximately 50% in 2012.

High-frequency traders move in and out of short-term positions aiming to capture sometimes just a fraction of a cent in profit on every trade. HFT firms do not employ significant leverage, accumulate positions or hold their portfolios overnight. HFT firms make up the low margins with incredible high volumes of tradings, frequently numbering in the millions.

HFT may cause new types of serious risks and dangers to the financial system. Algorithmic and HFT were both found to have contributed to volatility in the May 6, 2010 Flash Crash, when high-frequency liquidity providers rapidly withdrew from the market.

High Frequency traders trade with perfect information and their speed advantage assures that their trades incur no risk of loss. HDTs never lose money unless their algorithms or machines blow up.

Katsayama with Lewis

Personalizing this mess, Lewis focuses on Brad Katsuyama a young trader at the Royal Bank of Canada who, in 2006 noticed that whenever he placed an order, the price instantly changed. Welcome to the brave new world of trading. What Brad discovers is that HFT and other financial institutions act on his orders before the actual traders can do so. These leaches co locate their equipment with the exchanges and pay fortunes for fast communications links. To gather information they troll tiny orders for a wide variety of stocks and when these tiny orders get a nibble they determine by the stock involved and the trader that this may be a part of a large trade and they rush throughout the exchanges to beat the traders to the stocks being offered. Once owned the front runners can change the price and sell them back.

Katsuyama eventually leaves RBC to start his own “honest” exchange, IEX. The trick is to ensure that his exchange IEX support only the few most common trading types and to guarantee that all connections to IEX are slow enough to prevent front running. If you trade exclusively on IEX, HFT and other financial institutions cannot front run your orders. IEX is new and its survival and success were unknown at publication time. Goldman Sachs placed its first large order on IEX on Dec 19, 2013 which IEX took as a very hopeful sign. Because stocks seldom trade exclusively on IEX, HFT and other financial institutions systematically troll IEX for information that they can exploit on other exchanges. Life goes on as usual.

Sergey Aleynikov and his attorney Kevin Marino

Lewis includes the side story of Sergey Aleynikov charged by Goldman Sachs with stealing proprietary software when he left the company. Sergey was acquitted on appeal but, for this reader, the interesting details concerned the use of open source software defined again by Wikipedia:

Open-source software (OSS) is computer software with its source code made available and licensed with a license in which the copyright holder provides the rights to study, change and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software is very often developed in a public, collaborative manner. Open-source software is the most prominent example of open-source development and often compared to (technically defined) user-generated content or (legally defined) open-content movements.

Open source software is often used by developers to shorten their development time and to produce better software. The trick is to find the right software on the internet that can be modified for the user’s purposes. Sergey’s stolen software was modified open source software that, according to the license of its use must remain open and the modifications made available to the public open source community. Goldman Sachs removed the license notice from the software so it was actually Goldman Sachs, not Sergey who illegally stole the software.

Digital Disconnect; How capitalism is turning the internet against democracy, Robert W. McChesney, 2013

This book is really depressing. If you are at all suicidal you may want to pass this one up. Mercifully, the book is relatively short. About half the book is given to the death of the forth estate, journalism. McChesney attributes this death, not to the internet, but to the media “consolidation” that preceded the public introduction of the internet. Once a handful of huge corporations got control of newspapers, television stations, and cable operators, they slashed costs, fired the journalists and killed journalism. He estimates that 85% of what passes for news on television and in newspapers and magazines are unattributed press releases from corporations and the government. No one has the staff to fact check or even edit these pieces, rendering the “news” organizations pure distribution channels for the corporation and government, i.e. propaganda arms. The absence of journalism allows unparalleled levels of corruption and scandal to go unreported and unknown by the public. The corporations and government both enjoy operating with complete impunity and secrecy. Add to this Obama’s acceleration of classification of documents and his war on whistle blowers and you have a prescription for producing one of the most ignorant publics in the world.

Wasn’t the internet supposed to give us better journalism by making production and distribution of news free? For 150 years journalism has been supported by an advertising model where sponsors were willing to pay to have their ads appear in targeted magazines, newspapers, and news broadcasts. A funny thing happened with the introduction of the internet. As late as 2000 Google had no idea how it was going to monetize its search service and make Google profitable. For Facebook the date of this discussion was much later. The answer for both was to collect personal information from their customers, give that information to corporate (and government) touts who would pay to have their ads or infomercials delivered to a targeted audience of one. The touts proved to be total agnostics about where their increasingly intrusive information appeared (porn sites or news sites) so long as the target met the appropriate (secret) criteria. Advertisers or propagandists no longer needed to subsidize journalism and journalists today have no viable means to support themselves.

McChesney documents that European countries use public subsidies to support journalism with no apparent cost to democratic government. Germany, followed by Scandinavia have the highest levels of subsidy and are among the most economically egalitarian in the world. With corporate control of government, public subsidy of journalism has no chance in this country. The US used to subsidize news distribution via low postal rates for delivery of newspapers and magazines. McChesney estimates that the equivalent government subsidy in today’s dollars would amount to $35 billion annually, enough to support considerable internet journalism. Instead the government today spends $5 billion a year on defense public relations.

McChesney spends some time documenting the unprecedented concentration of wealth in this country. He concludes that the secret to accumulating wealth is monopoly, the elimination of all competition. 40% of Americans have only one choice for broadband internet access. A sizable percentage of Americans have no broadband access at all available because the controlling companies have deemed them insufficiently profitable to serve (too poor or too remote). In the early days of electricity and telephones, the government, through subsidies and regulation, made sure almost everyone who wanted it had access to affordable power and phones regardless of where they lived. Today, a few enlightened small municipalities unserviced by the giants have built their own broadband networks. In reaction, ALEC inspired legislation has been passed in 19 states to make community broadband illegal. What a country. The giants have also been allowed to monopolize the public airwaves often warehousing the spectrum with no use. Television broadcasters increasingly move popular broadcasts (sports and entertainment) to their cable subsidiaries or to satellite providers. A large portion of public airways broadcasting today are paid advertisements with no content whatever. And those are the public’s airwaves.

Far from promoting innovation, the monopoly giant corporation is best at suppressing innovation. Television was delayed at least 20 years by American corporations (RCA). Likewise DSL was invented by BellCore in 1988 but it was 20 years before DSL found its way to our house via baby bell Qwest. So much for innovation. Our cell networks are at least a generation behind the rest of the world and provide lousy service at astronomical public cost. We live in the heart of Phoenix and get no usable cellular signal from any carrier at our house so we use IP voice communication over DSL broadband. You don’t even own the right to use the cell phone you paid for on any other service. This restriction on your own property’s use might be challenged in court but don’t hold your breath. If you unlock your own cell phone today you may be breaking the law.

McChesney also spends time on copyrights that never expire and patents that seem endlessly extendable. In addition to corporate consolidation and bigness, copyrights and patents have the become the tool of choice for corporations to preserve their monopoly. Originally intended to protect individual creators, patents and copyrights have now become the exclusive property of the big corporation. Coogle recently acquired Motorola’s moribund cell phone division for 12.5 billion dollars, not because Google wanted to build cell phones (although they may) but for Motorola Mobility’s 17,000 cell phone related patents. Now Google can hold its own in the cutthroat legal patent battles for the mobile phone market.

Speaking of cell phones, one wag has suggested that “smart” phones should be relabeled trackers because with their built in GPS and massive information collection, that’s primarily what they are good for. Cell phone service is among the most unreliable, antiquated, and expensive anywhere in the world, and almost certainly the most intrusive. Did you know that the government actually pays the corporations when they request phone records and other private usage information? And the government retroactively immunized the companies from privacy invasion lawsuits. Opt out of information disclosure? That’s as useless as adding yourself to the government’s “do not call” list. The public can’t read, much less understand the privacy policies of companies like Google and Facebook. The policies along with the information shared are secret. A few executives at these companies have called the sharing process “icky”. If you knew what was going on, it would make you sick. This from the executives themselves who have no intention to stop doing it.

Icons of the New Gilded Age

The internet has reshaped the corporate landscape. Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Cisco are now among the richest and most powerful corporations in America. Facebook will soon join them. Google (70% of US market 85% in Europe), Amazon, and Facebook all share a tendency toward monopoly. All hide billions in profits offshore to avoid taxes. Periodically, (last under W) a tax repatriation holiday is declared to allow the corporations to bring their stashed hordes home without paying taxes.

McChesney extensively quotes economists Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman (characterized as apoplectic) and reformed neocon Jeffrey Sachs. His best quote is from former Clinton Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin:

Don’t you see. Too big to fail isn’t a problem with the system. It is the system.

Rubin’s Citibank would have tanked were it not for the government’s bailout. The banks today are bigger than ever. Is there hope? Probably not until the whole country crumbles. The revolution will not be televised (or streamed).

Consent of the Networked; The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom, Rebecca MacKinnon, 2012

WWW and HTML Inventor Sir Tim Berners Lee

The Internet was a product of the open source movement and remains at its core self governing. Most Internet servers run open source Linux and operate using open source Apache. A significant portion of browsers are Mozilla open source Firefox and emails are handled by Mozilla open source Thunderbird. Open source WordPress is acknowledged here as a critical source for bloggers including this one. Wikipedia, a non profit, all volunteer organization has created a reliable source of information on just about any subject that would not have been possible by any private company or government anywhere in the world. This book is about threats to these remarkable achievements posed by corporations and governments and wrestles with the problem of keeping the Internet safe and free. The issues are by no means simple.

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales

Focusing particularly on Google and Facebook, MacKinnon likens living under their control and rules as a bit like living under King John in England at the time of the Magna Carta. The king is all powerful and can do anything he wants at any time for any reason. His subjects can only hope for the king’s benevolence. Unfortunately, the king(s) of the Corporate Internet live in Silicon Valley and have very limited life experiences. They are pretty clueless when it comes to imaging the consequences of their Internet policy actions on users, particularly very vulnerable users in Tunisia, Iran, China, and other autocratic places. MacKinnon particularly points out the king(s) attitudes and policies regarding anonymous accounts which they view as an invitation to bad net behavior. They don’t understand that anonymity may be the only way for some to participate in the online world without risking arrest, torture, or death. Yet both Facebook and Google Plus require real world identification (which they do not protect) meaning that dissidents around the world can use these tools only by creating fake identifications and hoping their accounts don’t get removed by the kings. Attempts to create open source social networking software have not been successful because of the dominance of Facebook and Google. Social networkers must go where the users are; they can’t on their own start a whole new country. Facebook is so arbitrary in their policies and constantly change things including the rules of disclosure without warning, notice, or user option. She calls them Facebookistan.

Czar Mark Zuckerberg of Facebookistan

She also highlights problems when Internet companies attempt to do business with autocratic governments and she focuses on China where she worked for years as a CNN reporter. Yahoo set up an in country division to run their services including email. The Chinese government forced the in country Yahoo to hand over dissident emails and several users were arrested, prosecuted, and given long jail sentences. Jerry Yang later apologized, paid reparations to the families, and changed Yahoo policies, but too late to prevent the damage. Google’s struggles to operate in China under the government censorship finally led them to leave China for Hong Kong where they are outside the Great China Firewall.

Regretful Jerry Yang

The threat of US legislation to protect users from arbitrary corporate rule led to the formation of the Global Network Initiative which was joined by Yahoo, Microsoft, and Google. Facebook has repeatedly declined to join. The purpose of the Initiative is to protect user privacy and freedom of expression around the world. But how do the corporate members protect their users in the face of government intervention and rules? Even the US government poses increased threats to privacy.

Director MacKinnon Global Network Initiative

Users through a broad coalition of user groups introduced a Charter of Human Rights and Principles in 2011. Here are their 10 Internet Rights and Principles;

1) Universality and Equality
All humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights, which must be respected, protected, and fulfilled in the online environment.
2) Rights and Social Justice
The Internet is a space for the promotion, protection and fulfilment of human rights and the advancement of social justice. Everyone has the duty to respect the human rights of all others in the online environment.
3) Accessibility
Everyone has an equal right to access and use a secure and open Internet.
4) Expression and Association
Everyone has the right to seek, receive, and impart information freely on the Internet without censorship or other interference. Everyone also has the right to associate freely through and on the Internet, for social, political, cultural or other purposes.
5) Privacy and Data Protection
Everyone has the right to privacy online. This includes freedom from surveillance, the right to use encryption, and the right to online anonymity. Everyone also has the right to data protection, including control over personal data collection, retention, processing, disposal and disclosure.
6) Life, Liberty and Security
The rights to life, liberty, and security must be respected, protected and fulfilled online. These rights must not be infringed upon, or used to infringe other rights, in the online environment.
7) Diversity
Cultural and linguistic diversity on the Internet must be promoted, and technical and policy innovation should be encouraged to facilitate plurality of expression.
8 ) Network Equality
Everyone shall have universal and open access to the Internet’s content, free from discriminatory prioritisation, filtering or traffic control on commercial, political or other grounds.
9) Standards and Regulation
The Internet’s architecture, communication systems, and document and data formats shall be based on open standards that ensure complete interoperability, inclusion and equal opportunity for all.
10) Governance
Human rights and social justice must form the legal and normative foundations upon which the Internet operates and is governed. This shall happen in a transparent and multilateral manner, based on principles of openness, inclusive participation and accountability.

MacKinnon includes a chapter on the “copy wars”, the attempts to shut down Internet sites accused of Intellectual Property copyright violations without due process. Youtube, Flickr routinely remove content at the simple request of supposed copyright holders or even governments without warning or notice to the posters. Flickr removed photos of Egyptian government torturers simply at the request of the Egyptian government. No proof of ownership or copyright violations need be proven and no procedures of law need be followed. This is consistently abused by both corporations and governments as they attempt to control or censor content. Lawrence Lessing founded a non profit group the Creative Commons to allow people to control the sharing of information as an alternative to old style outmoded copyright law. The CC, used by Wikipedia and others, means content is free to be copied subject only to acknowledging the source and accurately reproducing the content. There are no monetary or legal trapdoors.

Creative Commons Lessig

MacKinnon also discusses user attempts to engineer around government Internet and other communications shutdowns during times of crisis. We think of China, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and others, but MacKinnon reminds us that San Francisco’s BART shut down mobile communications during demonstrations protesting the shooting of a citizen by BART security forces in 2011. BART officers killed another man in Oakland in 2009. Attention must be given to the political locations of servers and to alternative communications access means. Egypt used conventional dial access via international calls during their revolution and satellite calls are also accessible. Open source developers are working on decentralized dynamic networks that can reconfigure themselves to maintain network access during government shutdowns or attacks.

An important book that should be read by all Netizens.

Deadly Monopolies, Harriet A. Washington,2011

Washington is a medical ethicist and bioethicist whose attitude seems to be summed up in this quote from Thomas Browne;
“No one should approach the temple of science with the soul of a money changer.”

The Real Henrietta Lacks, unsung hero of Polio vaccine

Who owns our bodies? Apparently not us judging from consistent court rulings. In 1951 tumor cells were extracted without consent from cancer patient Henrietta Lacks for further study. These cells, known as Hela were propagated and sold over and over and are still available for research today. They have generated millions of dollars in fees and have underpinned research breakthroughs and treatments too numerous to mention although their contribution to the development of Salk’s polio vaccine stands out for special mention. Henrietta’s husband had refused to consent to the cell extraction and the family only learned that the Hela line was world famous in 1994 when a son was approached to provide his cells for additional study.

Alistair Cooke’s Body Snatched

Appropriation of body parts without permission continues unabated and is a huge business worth billions today. Among those appropriated without permission were Alistair Cooke, long time host of PBS’ Masterpiece Theater. Some of these bodies including children have found themselves used in auto manufacturers crash tests.

Burroughs Ginsberg writings overturned plant patent

Then in 1980 the Bayh-Dole act was passed to allow the commercialization of patents resulting from government sponsored research. In that same year, 1980, the supreme court ruled that life can be patented leading to a gold rush of patents in plant and animal life. Traditional remedies and medicines known for hundreds or even thousands of years have been patented. Few have been overturned by the courts. A 1980’s patent on a Brazilian psychedelic plant was overturned not because of the plant’s traditional and sacred meaning to a Brazilian tribe but to the 30 year prior writings of Alan Ginsburg and William S. Burroughs. Bio-colonialism is OK but prior documented western “discovery” can be used to invalidate a patent.

While the human genome project itself and its discoveries were placed in the public domain, subsequent work to isolate individual genes responsible for certain diseases were allowed to be patented. That’s right, Alzheimer’s, cancers, and many other deadly diseases are owned and controlled by patent holders. More than 50,000, almost a fifth of all human genes are now patented, more than 36,000 by a single French company, Genset. Many genes were allowed to be patented even though researchers don’t know the gene’s function. These genes patents more than any single cause have stymied, slowed down, or even blocked outright research into tests and treatments of many deadly diseases. At the very least they have dramatically increased the cost of doing research as huge patent licensing fees must be paid.

The pharmaceutical industry was once the most profitable industry ever to exist on the planet. It has now fallen to the third most profitable and profits are in free fall off the cliff. Why? Because drug companies no longer develop important life saving blockbuster drugs like the statins (Zocor is off patent and Lipitor’s patent is expiring), but put their efforts into “me too” drugs and life enhancing drugs like Viagra or cosmetics.

They also pour enormous efforts and resources into defending through litigation and extending their patents with such tricks as combining two drugs whose patents are expiring into a “new” patentable drug, or re-branding a drug for a new purpose such as patenting an existing drug under a new name with FDA approval for use by black people (whatever that means genetically) exclusively. Remember thalidomide the drug that caused all those birth defects back in the 1950s and 1960s. Guess what, thalidomide is back as a relabeled newly patented drug for the treatment of lepers.

It costs upward of $1 million to fight a patent infringement case involving drugs. To prevent “me too” drugs, companies file not only the drug they want to market, but every near derivative they can imagine. One drug patent was surrounded by 1300 similar drug patents to make “me too” drugs virtually impossible to produce. Adding to the mess, some drug patents are 400,000 pages long (not a typo) and the company requesting the patent pays most of the patent office costs. Sounds a lot like the relationship between the ratings agencies and the financial companies who pay them. Imagine litigating over a patent that no one can possibly read or understand.

What can happen once a patent is granted for a drug? One drug capable of eliminating sleeping sickness was never marketed for that purpose but was re-branded as a facial creme to remove women’s facial hair. Not enough money in sleeping sickness? Several effective cancer drugs were not marketed because of low projected revenues and the university inventors were unable to override the company decision. Those drugs sit on the shelf useless.

Available cancer drugs have been singularly disappointing resulting in an overall extension of average American lifespans a mere four months. Yet a single course of cancer drug treatment can cost $200,000 to $300,000 each. In one case, the Canadian health system, unable to reach an acceptable price agreement with the manufacturer, paid $218,000 for one Canadian patient to travel across the border for treatment in the US. We now learn that speculators often corner the market and horde these expensive drugs in order to hold doctors-patients-hospitals hostage for incredible additional markups. Oh the wonders of unfettered capitalism.

Unable to get American consents for drug studies, companies increasingly are testing drugs in Africa and Asia where they ignore consent requirements and feel free to use placebos where they would be required to use the best available treatments for their comparisons. That’s OK, their test subjects won’t be able to get the test drug anyway after the study ends. This is The Constant Gardener on steroids. See also The Body Hunters. And if the patients or their families sue with government help as in a case in Nigeria where 11 children died during a test and many other were disabled for life, the drug company “lost” all its records yet once a settlement was negotiated was able to identify its test subjects through DNA tests. Very mysterious record disappearance. The drug was never FDA approved fortunately.

But avoiding the need for consent is not limited to poor countries but is practiced domestically as well. One company had developed a blood hemoglobin substitute whose early tests showed up bad side effects. Needing another large clinical study to proceed the company came up with a novel idea. They kept supplies of the “blood” in EMT vehicles operating in whose areas contained mostly poor, primarily black and Hispanic populations. Whenever the EMT team picked up a patient who had lost blood they administered the artificial hemoglobin rather than the usual saline solution on the trip to the hospital. The company’s thin justification for avoiding the need for consent was that the subject was unconscious (sometimes), that no family members were present (sometimes) and that treatment was urgently required. (No, saline would have stabilized the subject til arrival at the hospital.) Once in the hospital, the company extracted blood samples three times a day for the study. If a subject asked why they were told it was a normal part of their treatment. In other words the subjects were never informed that they were in the study, of the known risks and side effects of their treatment, they were lied to throughout. The FDA did not approve the hemoglobin substitute.

For those that think the horrors of the Tuskegee syphilis experiments on black soldiers is ancient history, think again. After the military grade anthrax samples were mailed to important congressmen and newsrooms, a drug company rushed to develop a vaccine for anthrax. While the vaccine was in testing and after significant problems such as loss of vision and hearing and miscarriages had already surfaced, the DOD determined to vaccinate more than 100,000 troops with the non-FDA approved drug. Thousands of soldiers refused and were dishonorably discharged from service at great cost to themselves and the military. A pregnant soldier asked to be transferred but her commanding officer not only denied the transfer but forcibly had her vaccinated as an example. She miscarried. The FDA never approved the vaccination but the soldiers learned they had no legal recourse either against the military or the drug company. Today thousands of former soldiers suffer from the side effects.

Also on the subject of bio-colonialism, researchers are increasingly descending on isolated groups of people whose isolation give them a limited gene pool and therefore makes them useful for isolating particular disease’s genetic causes. Thus Easter Island, Hawaiians, a 2000 year old group of Jews in India are recruited for studies for which they are unlikely to benefit. An interesting example is Iceland where an Icelandic researcher formed his own company and set out to collect samples and information promising financial rewards and medical breakthroughs beneficial to Icelanders. Icelanders love genealogy and can track their ancestry often back to a Viking. They also keep extensive medical records tracing back for generations. Thus the researcher was able to put together a uniquely valuable data base with cell samples. Unfortunately breakthroughs and profits eluded him and the company fell into bankruptcy where control of the valuable data was lost. The information has now been sold to drug companies and insurance companies (Did you know your disqualifying pre-condition originated with some ancient viking?) The possible horrors are hard to contemplate.

While government grants still fund the vast majority of research on disease and treatment, the drug companies have dominated the control and marketing of the resulting breakthroughs. Drug companies also include the government subsidies when justifying high drug prices. A Pharma sponsored study put the average cost per drug at $800 million which they round to a billion in talking points. Ralph Nader’s group, using Pharma’s own numbers puts the actual cost at about $100 million, still serious money.

The patenting mess has drawn the universities and other institutions into a dependency on marketing their patents and research that has totally compromised their role as independent investigators. One researcher assembled the worlds most valuable collection of cells and materials to study Alzheimer’s only to see his University of Washington sell the collection to Pfizer. He and his subjects were unable to reverse the sale. In one court case, Duke argued that their university researchers should be protected in their investigations only to have the court rule that since Duke patents research and sells licenses they are indistinguishable from any other corporation and their employees cannot be expected to have special privileges. Universities are no longer special. Further, virtually all researchers whether in the University or elsewhere are on the take from the drug companies.

Professional journals such as JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine have been compromised to the point they are little more than paid drug ads. Journal articles are ghost written by drug employees with the named authors having no access to the underlying research numbers. Because everyone qualified is on the take, independent peer review of articles is no longer possible. The big danger in all this is that drug companies are able to hide and lie about the actual clinical trial results and cover over or minimize side effects. Thus doctors who rely on journals to keep up with medical advances are mislead as to the true risks of the drugs they prescribe.

Even worse, doctors are on the take to the tune of $6 billion a year with an additional $2 billion in junkets. How can a patient rely on a corrupted doctor’s recommendations for treatment?

Drug companies also contribute financially to the FDA’s operating costs. This gives them the power to remove FDA officials who may oppose approval. The FDA has moved from denying approval of questionable new drugs to requiring larger warning labels as if this will prevent or limit the drug’s inappropriate use. When a drug is pulled by the FDA it often is re targeted and relabeled and reintroduced with FDA approval such as the infamous thalidomide.

Lula da Silva announces Brazil’s HIV march-in

Governments all have the ability to require “compulsory licenses” for critical drugs like those for HIV. Brazil shocked Pharma in 2007 by announcing a compulsory license for Merck’s HIV efavirenz. India has long ignored drug patents and have become proficient as reverse engineering patented drugs. Brazil’s action has set off a chain reaction among other governments causing the drug industry to start to rethink its pricing policies for poor countries. In the last 20 years only 4 drugs have been developed for diseases unique to poor countries. One of those is sold only as a vaccine for visitors to those poor areas not for the residents themselves.

The Gates Foundation, WHO, and other groups are experimenting with a new model where entire governments in poor countries guarantee a market for a drug to treat diseases like sleeping sickness or malaria. It is hoped the guarantee will finally induce drug companies into manufacturing drugs for these diseases. International organizations are also encouraging drug companies to think of pricing tiers for poor countries and are helping to police the illegal re-importation of the cheap drugs. The actions of Brazil and India are encouraging this trend but counter pressures come from WTO attempts to enforce intellectual property rights, i.e. patents.

There have also been a few cases where gene patents have been overturned, most famously for the seven ovarian cancer patents on the genes BRAC1 and BRAC2. This case has been appealed and will likely end before the supreme court. Still this temporary limited victory gives Washington hope that things might be reversing and ever optimistic, she looks forward to the day when Bayh-Dole will be eliminated and the plant and animal and gene patent rulings reversed. Dream on. At least patents expire after twenty years unless companies figure cleaver ways to extend them so research and development may be able to resume after this wasteful interregnum.

Everything you thought you didn’t need to know about PC networking and broadband Internet (Beware of Firewalls)

We are a two PC household who were early adapters of cable broadband Internet. Cox wants $8 for each extra PC so we set up one PC with a primary Ethernet connection to the cable modem and a second Ethernet connection to the second PC. This setup meant that cox could only see the primary PC. The downside was that the primary PC had to be turned on and working for the second PC to access the Internet. This was done in the dark ages when an Ethernet card cost less than $10 and a router cost a lot.

Cox then upgraded their broadband to tiers of service with 600KB, 1.5MB, and 7MB. Our prices kept going up but we weren’t told that we were now paying for 7MB service which our old modem couldn’t handle. The modem finally went flaky and we got a hold of a helpful technician at Cox who told us we needed a newer modem that was compatible with the newer tiered services. We purchased and installed the new modem ourselves. The technician had told us of Cox’s Las Vegas Data Transfer Test that measures the actual data transfer rates of a broadband connection. We decided to save $20 a month and dropped to the 1.5MB tier.

DLINK EBR-2310

Next, our oldest PC, an IBM, died, taking the hard disk and granddaughters’ pictures and movies with it, so we bought a new HP desktop with a 19 inch LCD monitor with built in speakers for under $500. The new PC came with Microsoft’s Vista Premium operation system. We decided it was time to upgrade our Ethernet setup to a DLINK wired router which can be purchased now for under $20 and allows us multiple PCs with a single Cox connection. Our second PC was running windows 2000 Professional. Getting Vista and Windows 2000 to network was the first major obstacle and I don’t recommend anyone try it. Microsoft’s Internet site is less than helpful, even their developers site and I am a retired professional. The second major obstacle was Vista’s security system. Routers have built in firewalls which you should turn on. Turn off the firewall on your PC. If you don’t the router and PC get into wars.

The new HP computer came with a trial security suite from a major vendor who will remain unnamed. This software went to war with Microsoft immediately, even with the firewall turned off. Dump this software. Cox offers its customers its own security suite supplied to Cox by a major security vendor. Its anti-virus and anti-spy-ware features appear to work well, but turn off its firewall or you’ll be back to the wars again.

I use the HDTV as the monitor for the second PC and wanted to watch instant movies from Netflix. Netflix only supports XP or Vista running Microsoft Explorer so I decided to upgrade the PC to a dual boot Vista Windows 2000 system. Microsoft has grown increasingly paranoid about software piracy and looking for installation help on the Internet is to enter a battleground between Microsoft and its users who the company seem to view as a bunch of hackers and thieves out to break their system and steal their precious flaky software. Hence, the ground keeps shifting and Microsoft now insists on being able to on-line activate (or not or to deactivate an already active system) and monitor your software forever. Its pretty scary knowing that big brother Microsoft may disable your PC at any time at their slightest whim.

After some study on the Internet, I learned that Microsoft is up to new tricks in licensing. They now offer a single machine OEM license at slightly lower prices. The fine print says that once this OEM software is installed, it is wed forever to that particular piece of hardware to the extent that if you change as few as three component peripherals on the PC the software may be disabled. The educational version requires so much proof that you are associated with an educational institution that I wonder anyone tries to buy it. Will Microsoft disable your PC if you change jobs or retire? The Vista Premium upgrade version is available to anyone currently running XP or Windows 2000 Professional (if you are not running the Professional version forget it).

Vista Home Premium Upgrade

Being budget conscious, I purchased a “new” copy of Vista Premium Upgrade on Ebay for $51 (it can retail for up to $200), about the same price as the educational version (pretty stupid huh?). The seller claimed it had never been installed (activated) and PayPal guarantees they will refund your money if you return the product within 7 days. So I received Vista in its original box and set about installing it. I was terrified Microsoft would try to destroy my Windows 2000 Professional (OEM) installation and all its software including my Microsoft Visual Studio .NET while “upgrading”, but I finally figured out how to install Vista on a separate hard drive and get it to leave the Windows 2000 alone. But when I tried to activate Vista online Microsoft refused to do so. I guess maybe the seller had installed and activated Vista before selling it on Ebay. Rather than immediately returning the package, I decided to try Microsoft’s manual activation procedure which involves Microsoft generating a long series of numbers which must be some combination of Vista’s product id and information identifying your specific PC. You then call an operator (in India judging by the Hinglish accent) who you read the numbers to and try to convince you have come by Vista legitimately. Microsoft makes you feel like a criminal out to defraud them. Fortunately, I succeeded, telling her honestly I had purchased Vista on Ebay and she allowed me to activate the software, probably simultaneously deactivating the seller’s copy if he was still using it.

NetGear WGR614

Our son has a new Toshiba laptop computer with Vista premium which a friend tried to connect to Cox Broadband Internet with a refurbished Linksys wireless router. They couldn’t get it to work and I determined that the router had broken once again, so I picked up a NetGear for less than $30. It has the same problem with firewall wars as the Dlink and when I deactivated the Microsoft firewall and removed the trial security software replacing it with Cox’s, the wireless router started working properly and the laptop can be used from anywhere in the house.

The problems with firewalls and security software needs to be highlighted in the installation instructions for routers and PCs. It took awhile and some trial and error to figure out the problems.

Everything you thought you didn’t need to know about video

After two iterations of trying to figure out the new wild west world of video, I thought some might appreciate a little of what I found helpful as most introductions are not. For more details and numbers see Wikipedia.

Desert Traveler

SHAPE OF SCREEN
The old analog TV had a standard width to height ratio of 4:3. The new HDTV has a standard width to height ratio of 16:9. All standard TVs of either type must conform to these shapes. Both formats are measured diagonally; because of their different width to height ratios a 25 inch 4:3 TV has a screen roughly the height of a 32 inch 16:9 HDTV and a 27 inch 4:3 TV has a screen roughly the height of a 37 inch 16:9 HDTV.

BROADCAST STANDARDS
The old analog standard of broadcast is the NTSC which mandates 525 scan lines, constant since 1953 and broadcast in the VHF frequencies. Starting Feb. 17, 2009 the FCC has mandated that NTSC broadcasts cease forever. Cable and satellite providers will continue to support 4:3 analog TVs with their converters for some time but they can be expected to slowly pressure subscribers to switch to HDTVs.

The new digital High Definition standard is the ATSC that mandates three broadcast formats 1080i with 1080 vertical pixels; 720p, with 720 vertical pixels, and for backward compatibility with 4:3 ratio material the 480i with 480 vertical pixels. The first sets were available in 1998 and broadcasts are in the UHF frequencies.

CABLE AND SATELLITE STANDARDS
There are no HDTV broadcast standards for either cable or satellite other than displaying images with a 16:9 shape. This means that the customer has no way of knowing how much actual resolution is being broadcast for so called “HD” channels. The FCC doesn’t care. Knowing that both media have limited bandwidth, and judging by the programming I have seen, the actual resolution looks pretty limited, I would guess something significantly less than 720i. The actual resolutions are closely guarded secrets.

PHYSICAL RESOLUTION
Each HDTV has a “native resolution”, the actual number of pixels contained in the unit. Each pixel also has a number of bits allocated per pixel to display the color. Most units have been built with less than 1080 vertical pixels because of hardware and price considerations. Our Samsung has 1360 x 768 pixels with 32 bits per pixel for color, typical in cost effective units today. Still, it is easy to see the difference between 1080i and 720i broadcasts on this set even if there are only 768 vertical pixels available on the screen. Technology purists love 1920 x 1080 physical pixel displays and pay dearly for the privilege.

TECHNOLOGY
There are four major types of HDTVs. Plasma and LCD have virtually the same characteristics today. Both are rated to last 20 years although, of course, this claim cannot be proved today after only 10 years actual experience. The LCD units are getting larger and use slightly less power. DLP projection units are being widely hyped today and they are a little less costly than LCD or Plasma. What they don’t tell you is that the lamp is rated for three years and costs $300 plus the labor cost of replacement. A lot of buyers are in for a big surprise down the road. The least developed technology is the old fashioned tube in a 16:9 shape. Once the analog NTSC sets are obsoleted next year, the tube companies can be expected to put all their energies into producing HDTV tube sets. Today HDTV tube sets remain a limited novelty.

SPECIFICATIONS
Specs are important but the most important consideration is to buy a unit that meets your own requirements. The screen size depends on how far you expect to sit from the screen. At 6 feet, a 32 inch screen equals a much larger screen seen from 15 feet away. LCD and Plasma sets appear less bright than tube TVs. Good brightness and contrast specs are desirable but more important is being able to control the light in the room. LCD and Plasma pictures also slowly disappear as the viewer moves off to the side (the viewing angle) until no picture can be seen at all. The importance of viewing angle depends on what angle you need to be able to view the picture clearly from various parts of the room. Response times are mostly important to gamers with 5-8 Ms response being adequate.

51 Elements Ready for Takeoff – 100 Miles to Tucson

ANTENNAS
Taking advantage of over the air broadcasts is important when picture quality is actually higher over the air than is available from cable or satellite. Unlike analog broadcasts where picture quality degrades with snow and ghosts, HDTV ATSC broadcasts are either received perfectly or not at all. This reverses some of the rational for getting cable or satellite as the only means of receiving a clear picture. Like cellular telephones, the number of bars representing signal strength is important. You need a bunch of bars to be able receive the ATSC program. To take advantage of the superior quality programming of over the air broadcast, you will need an appropriate antenna. This may not be as easy as it sounds and judging from the number of visible antennas in Phoenix, most people haven’t tried or haven’t succeeded in getting an antenna to work. We read that the major networks (owning TV towers and frequencies) expect to recapture market share from satellite and cable once all have converted to ATSC. Judging from the lack of antennas in the stores selling HDTVs in Phoenix, the networks better figure out how customers are expected to switch back to over the air broadcast of HDTV. The good news is that the UHF antennas will be smaller than VHF or VHF-UHF antennas.

My own experience is instructive. Our son is 6 1/2 miles from the Phoenix TV Towers mountain which you can see from his roof. A simple $30 antenna, without amplifier, mounted in his attic provides perfect reception of ATSC channels. Our house is less than 5 miles from the TV tower mountain but the entire distance is one big range of mountains and we get no signal with any antenna. We installed the biggest antenna we could find (Lowes) above our roof, supplemented by a 12dB signal amplifier pointed to the TV towers in Tucson, 98.4 miles away. With this setup we receive perfect ATSC broadcasts. Total cost was about $100. (Best of all, we avoid the Cardinal NFL Phoenix blackouts!) The lesson is don’t give up even if you need to hire a professional antenna specialist to help you. The result is free broadcast 1080i reception of all PBS, significant sports and other events, to say nothing of crystal clear soap operas. For information about the distance and direction of ATSC broadcast sites from your residence see AntennaWeb.

PC and MAC MONITOR
The HDTV makes an excellent PC or Mac monitor. I use the Samsung as my only monitor today. Combined with broadband Internet (our Cox gives us 1.5 MB downloads), you can see Internet Video and full movies (NetFlix has 6000 titles for instant viewing) on a full size TV screen. The Netflix downloaded movies are lower resolution than DVD but are perfectly adequate for most movies). Material from utube or TV programs like Charlie Rose can be viewed on demand with a size larger than on your normal PC monitor.

DVD HD DVD and BLU-RAY
Each new step forward in movie formats is accompanied by competing standards; VHS had to compete with Sony’s BetaMax; DVD (4.7GB-8.5GB) had to compete with DIVX; HD DVD (15GB-30GB) and Blu-Ray (25GB-50GB Sony) both record movies in a 1080p format. Few titles are available from Netflix, Hollywood, or Blockbuster today in either HD format. Until a winner emerges, players are designed and priced for early adapters. Blockbuster and Walmart have announced they are dropping HD DVDs and Toshiba looks like they are giving up HD DVD players (after selling a million of them). Blu-Ray players now start at about $250, but for now it is best to stay with DVD but look for progressive scan and support for 1080i compatibility. Don’t spend a more than $80 unless you want surround sound.

SOUND
Stereo is the starting point for HDTV and DVD sound. HDTV models typically support the Dolby Digital (AC-3) format up to “5.1” surround sound. ATSC Broadcasts as well as DVDs support everything from stereo to Dolby 2.1 through 5.1. To get the full benefit of the available sound, you might want to invest in a surround sound system usually packaged with a DVD player. Surround sound is what most people mean by home theater. Surround sound requires 4 corner speakers (front, rear, left, right), 1 center speaker, and 1 woofer. This means wires all over your viewing room. Using your surround sound system with a stereo broadcast sounds like you are in an echo chamber so use it only when Dolby is broadcast. The built in HDTV speakers are usually adequate for stereo. Use sound output connectors on your HDTV to send ATSC broadcast Dolby sound to your surround sound system. A surround sound system with DVD player supporting progressive scan and 1080i compatibility should cost under $200.

INFO BROADCAST
ATSC specifies that information describing the resolution (1080i, 720i or 480i), sound (stereo, Dolby 2.1 through 5.1), call letters, and usually a name and description of the show, be broadcast along with the picture itself. This allows the viewer to easily discover the quality of the broadcast and take advantage of surround sound if it is broadcast.

CONNECTORS
Connecting your DVD, VHS, cable, or satellite converter, HDTV, sound system, PC, etc. can be challenging to say the least. The old coax connector in the HDTV is relegated to the antenna cable. Newer connectors include the component (using 3 RCA cables for red green blue) and S-Video (4 wire). Neither component nor S-Video carry sound so 2 additional RCA cables are needed for left and right sound. DVI and HDMI are new connectors that support both video and sound eliminating the need for additional RCA sound cables. Cables can be purchased to convert DVI to HDMI and vice versa. The PC or Mac can be connected using the traditional 15 pin eVGA connector. Sound may be connected through your HDTV with a mini stereo jack (like your headphones) cable. Some PCs and Macs may also have built in DVI connectors.

HDTV PRICES
Prices are steadily, if slowly dropping for HDTVs. Over the last holiday season several 32 inch LCD models were sold for $500. Their specs didn’t look too bad but they were untested by major labs so they are a bit unknown. One was built by AKAI. Top rated Consumer Reports 32 inch LCD units were available from $700 and the always premium priced but highly rated Sony units sold for $850-900. Sharp now has a 1920 x 1080 resolution 1080p 32 inch LCD unit for as low as $900.The magic number has been $400 for mass market takeoff but I don’t know when this will happen.

NOTE: NTSC 4:3 analog TVs now typically come equipped with component and S-Video connectors for hookup to newer DVD and VHS players, and to cable and satellite converters. Prices are falling fast and for good reason.