I titled this, “Network Neutrality or Network Brutality”. It was written via the form at Save The Internet (check out that site if you haven’t already).

Network Neutrality or Network Brutality

The current state of the Internet in the U.S. is abysmal and it will get much, much worse if we do not guarantee the neutrality of the network. As so much speech exists in the form of bits and bytes it is essential that we guarantee freedom from discrimination on the network it traverses.

Big ISPs do not like the idea of network neutrality precisely because they plan to reserve the majority of their pipes for their own channels of communication. Their vision of the Internet has them as both the carriers of information as well as its source. They want to divide everyone’s connection into two unequal parts: An incredibly fast connection reserved for their own purposes and a slow connection for everyone else.

I ask you, if we allow ISPs to have their own exclusive dedicated connections into everyone’s homes how can any business or individual compete with that kind of access? The answer is that they won’t and they can’t. All it would take for an ISP to crush a business is to start offering the same services over their extremely fast, exclusive connections. Every business that exists on the Internet today will either have to pay the ISP extra for access to their upper-tier channel or will suffer with slow speed into people’s homes.

But it is the citizens who will suffer the most. They will have high-speed access to content chosen for them by their ISP and slow, unreliable access to everything else. Even worse, the voices of our own citizens will be relegated to the lowest class of service. ISPs have absolutely no intention of allowing home users to compete with their own services and will remove perfectly legitimate speech that becomes too popular—just as they do today with unspecified bandwidth caps and unjustified disconnections of service.

We must stop the ISPs before they enshrine these abusive systems into the networks. Before it is extremely expensive to replace them. Before businesses are destroyed. Before citizen voices are choked into irrelevance. NOW is the time to protect America from this threat.

It would be extremely unwise and naive to allow the market to be afflicted by this destructive force before anything is done about it. The FCC must embrace Network Neutrality and enforce it as quickly as possible before the networks are all built and any damage is done. The longer it takes, the more we’ll end up paying.

I’ve been arguing with a certain individual about health care and as a result I’ve looked up lots of numbers. Since this information is likely to be useful for anyone talking about health care I’ve decided to share it—some might call it being a good Samaritan.

How much do we pay for health insurance?

Employers:

9.95% of salaries: In the U.S. employers currently pay on average 8.5% of their payroll on private health insurance (goes up every year). They also pay 1.45% on Medicare taxes for a total of 9.95% of their payroll.

Employees:

Varies: Family health care premiums for employees are currently averaging about $3000 annually (taken from here) regardless of how much a person makes (no idea how good that coverage is). Therefore; the more money you make the less of a percentage it is of your income. Also, the less money you make the more of your money you’re devoting to health insurance premiums. This does not include co-pays for doctor’s visits, hospital care, drugs, etc.

Totals:

$2.16 Trillion: That’s how much the U.S. spent on private health care in 2006. Or, about 16% of the U.S. GDP.
~25%: That is how much of every dollar spent on health care in the U.S. goes to corporate profits, executive salaries, advertising, marketing, and the cost of paperwork (related to billing). In other words, that’s the overhead of private health care. Otherwise known as “inefficiencies”.

How much would we pay in a single-payer system?

The following assumes that HR 676 is what we go with for a single-payer system

Employers:

4.75%: 3.3% on top of the 1.45% they’re already paying for Medicare via payroll taxes (i.e. not taxed on income).

Employees:

1.45%: What you already pay for Medicare. HR 676 does not call for increased income taxes on individuals unless you’re in the top 5% of income earners (more below).

The Rich:

6.45%: The top 5% of income earners will have to pay a “health tax” on top of their existing 1.45% to Medicare. How much money do you have to earn to break into the top 5%? According to the IRS, about $137,000 (AGI)/year (AGI stands for Adjusted Gross Income which is IRS BS for about $330,000/year in reality—this is an injustice in itself, I’ll put more info in the comments).

Totals:

1.85 Trillion: That is a conservative estimate of how much it would cost yearly to give all Americans health coverage with zero co-pays and no premiums (i.e. free health care). It will probably cost considerably less (the reduced drug prices and paperwork costs alone could cut this figure in half).
3%: The overhead associated with a single-payer system. You can’t get away from all the paperwork, just most of it. This is actually the overhead associated with Medicare right now (believe it or not).

Other scary statistics:

• On average, if you’re under 65 and already spending more than $2000 on health care, you’re spending 41.3% of your income on it (2003 figure from the nchc.org link above).
• Half of all bankruptcy filings in 2006 were the partly result of medical expenses. 68% of them had health insurance.
• 30% of Americans say someone in their family delayed getting treatment (in 2006) due to the high cost of health care.
• Every 30 seconds in the United States someone files for bankruptcy in the aftermath of a serious health problem.

• 46 million Americans have no health insurance whatsoever.

I know I still haven’t fixed my website yet but I just had to post about this movie:

It was amazing

If all my economic arguments for a single payer healthcare system haven’t convinced you yet, you need to see this movie. It shows the other side of the argument. It shows precisely how and where private healthcare fails. Michael Moore has done an amazing job.

You owe it to yourself to see how health insurance companies intentionally bankrupt people to save money (they hire private investigators to invent undisclosed pre-existing conditions), how hospitals abandon patients that don’t have insurance (they drop them off at Skid Row, literally!), and how DOCTORS ARE PAID TO DENY TREATMENT to people so companies like Humana, Blue Cross, and Kaiser Permanente can save a few bucks… At the expense of people’s lives. They are literally killing people with their business practices.

Sicko also made passing mention of the drug companies but that could probably be its own movie (any takers?). There were so many details in this movie that you might miss… A drug that costs $120 in the U.S. costs $0.05 in Cuba. Why? Is it simply because the Cubans subsidize it through their taxes? Actually, no: it is because Cuba negotiates prices on behalf of all Cubans (and doesn’t allow bullshit patent extensions). If Cuba can get that drug for $0.05 imagine what the U.S. could get negotiating on behalf of all Americans.

Private healthcare is failing America. It is time we ended it.

There’s a difference between something being right and something being lawful. Many have made the argument that violating copyright laws is the right thing to do in many circumstances for various reasons but rarely do you hear the argument that copyright law has become unenforceable and irrelevant.

I say this because every single U.S. citizen has violated copyright and all of them will do so again. Even the most pro-copyright bulwark will commit copyright infringement several times this year and they probably won’t even realize it. Yet, despite these facts copyright law still stands unchanged and millions still believe it to be something it is not: Necessary, useful, or both.

The most compelling argument I’ve ever heard that copyright law is useful is that it protects the Linux kernel (and open source software in general) from being used in ways that violate the license (i.e. distributing your own customized version of Linux without releasing the source code). This argument is flawed because copyright is a mandatory license that Linux and Linux distributors must adhere to whereas the distribution license (the GPL) is actually a contract.

If copyright went away tomorrow contract law would still exist and the author of a work would still be able to take advantage of it. If they released their work without a license it would immediately fall into the public domain. This is actually the way it was envisioned to work with the exception that if you wanted you could opt-in to the copyright program by registering your work with the copyright office. This would entitle you to an exclusive right to distribute your work however you saw fit for 25 years. If you were still alive after that period (which was rare at the time) you could re-register for another 25.

By requiring creators to opt-in to the system the government solved two problems at once: 1) Works that had no perceived economic value would be public domain and 2) it provided a central place where people could figure out if something was copyrighted or not. Without a central location to check copyrights it is damned near impossible to determine if a work is being distributed without permission.

Copyright law is not necessary. A central place to look up distribution licenses is; for the sole reason that if a dispute occurs over whether or not a work is in the public domain you will have a place where you can look up the license. Disputes such as these can be settled in courts without statutory damages such as ”$250,000 per violation” (which is what the law lists right now—talk about the punishment not fitting the crime!).

Copyright law has also become irrelevant. Every time someone sings the “Happy Birthday” song without paying ASCAP they have violated copyright. I kid you not! How many times a day is that song sung? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? ASCAP could claim they’ve lost billions to verbal piracy!

Every day trillions of files are traded illegally on the Internet. Yet only a fraction of a percentage of these will ever be litigated against. Not only that, but the only reason why litigation is even on the table as an option is because of the ridiculous damages dictated by law ($250,000 per birthday song, per singer). Would the MPAA or RIAA sue someone if the damages were something a bit more reasonable such as, oh, the actual cost of the work times ten (say, $150 for a pirated movie or CD… as determined by a jury)? Hell no. It would cost more than that just to show up in court.

It would be worth it to take people to court who profit from piracy. The more infringement you rack up the more likely a jury is to award some serious damages. It is important to note, however, that because of the nature of the Internet, copying things is far too easy, far too anonymous, and far too global for accountability. At least not for intangible, low-value goods such as digital movies, digital songs, or even digital books. Real accountability only works for physical equivalents: DVDs, CDs, and printed books. These things are actually traceable and measurable (in a practical way). Transactions between file sharers on the Internet are not—and furthermore, it is difficult to actually prove a file was shared in the first place.

It is wildly naive at this point to think that copyright in a digital age is enforceable. Anything that can be represented as 1s and 0s can be copied effortlessly and (reasonably) anonymously over the Internet. Copyright law in its current form doesn’t benefit the public. It only serves (admittedly large and powerful) industries that have failing business models. We need to get rid of it and replace it with something else entirely. Here’s what I’d recommend:

• Expiration after distribution stops. After a work is no longer being distributed or sold in some way it should enter the public domain. I don’t care if it happens in 2 years: If Disney stops selling Snow White it should enter the public domain. A grace time of 1 year would be acceptable. The moment a work stops being distributed by its owner/creator it serves no benefit to the public for that work to be locked away in copyright jail. Works still being distributed must be both registered at some central government office and be published for sale and/or licensing in public.
• Expiration upon the death of the author. The author’s children will reap the benefits from their parent’s work in the form of their inheritance. No one should have to pay an author’s child for the privilege of using their parent’s (or grandparent’s) creation. A 10-year “family ownership” from the date of the work’s publishing would be acceptable in the event that a creator dies before they can reap the rewards of their creation.

• Works owned by corporations should have mandatory expiration of 10 years. If a business can’t recoup the cost of a work by then they are not serving the public; either by keeping a work locked away in their portfolio or by the fact that such poorly-managed businesses are not great for the economy.

  That is all that is necessary for a copyright-like law in the age of the Internet. Things like Linux will still be able to benefit from distribution licenses and corporations can make even more lucrative and restrictive contracts than they currently get now with copyright (IMHO, that would be bad for business but hey, it would be their choice!). Enforcement of these laws would fall into the hands of the owners of the works through the courts—just as it does today. Except that regular citizens would be able to use things like Bittorrent to copy works with a more realistic litigation risk (which is very, very minimal regardless).

  Copyright in its current form is not realistic and doesn’t benefit the public. It cannot be properly enforced and its theoretical implementation is not even good for society (lasting for hundreds of years, stupidly large fines, no way to verify ownership, etc). We should change it so that it has the potential to benefit the public and the potential to be accepted by the public. The current form of copyright has neither.

There’s an article at Treehugger that points to a recent presentation by Matthew Simmons (a member of the National Petroleum Council) regarding Peak Oil. Essentially he outlines the insanely dangerous situation we’re currently mired in, how we’re about to be seriously screwed regardless of what we do, and what businesses will suffer the most as a result (i.e. who not to invest in).

I read the entire presentation and I would sum it up the same way Treehugger did, “Everything you wanted to know about Peak Oil”. It is far more thorough and to-the-point than the Wikipedia page and if you thought I had some scary things to say about it then you need to read it and see what the most powerful investment bankers in the world were just informed of. If I were an investment banker that attended this presentation I’d be investing in bunker right now.

My prediction: The U.S. will get its first taste of what Peak Oil is like in August of this year with the oil flow resuming by the end of September. The real Peak Oil apocalypse will hit on the 4th of July, 2008 (a long weekend).

Nanci Pelosi recently asked on Yahoo! Answers, Congress is working on legislation to address global warming – what would you like to see included?. I wrote my own response and afterwards I read some of the other answers… Wow! Either there’s a lot of people out there who don’t have the first clue about global warming or there’s some astroturfing going on (which I think is highly likely).

Some of the answers were just downright ridiculous. The amount of bullshit was staggering. If you were playing global warming bingo you’d “win” on every page.

I watched the Democratic debate tonight and I’m severely disappointed. Not by the candidates, no, but by CNN. The amount of microphone time that was given to Senators Clinton, Obama, and Edwards was absolutely unconscionable. I’m not sure if it is because these three candidates represent CNN’s ideals more than the other candidates or if some other other candidates’ positions might conflict with CNN’s (Time Warner’s) interests.

An example of a candidate that CNN would not appreciate being elected: Dennis Kucinich. Why? his health care reforms would do away with private insurance (advertisers on all of Time Warner’s media outlets) and force drug companies (the biggest advertisers of all) to lower prices (by way of negotiation on behalf of all Americans). Not only that, but I believe he’s also against big media conglomerates owning such a large percentage of the market (hah!).

Once the debate was over CNN had Anderson Cooper talk with a bunch of pundits. All of whom seemed to be singing a chorus of “Clinton!” Odd, I thought… I didn’t think Clinton said anything terribly interesting at all. Not only that, but her one crowd-pleasing moment was when she made fun of the vice president. I can’t even remember anything regarding “what she’d do as president”—that’s how notable she was.

Here’s what caught my eye during the debate:

• Obama’s plan for universal health care sounded like a naive, “As President I’ll shape the health care market” plan. In other words, it wasn’t much of a plan at all. His big plan is to somehow force health insurance companies to cut costs without so much as a hint as to how he’d do it. It sounded like a 20th century left-wing play for votes among the ignorant… “I’m going to force the big mean corporation to make their products cheaper!” Sure you are. As if the problem was simply a matter of cost cutting.
• When Clinton was given the opportunity to talk about health care she totally avoided the question—surprising when you consider that a decade ago she was pushing it like her life depended on it.
• I loved it when Edwards pointed the finger at Clinton and Obama saying something to the tune of, “Real leaders don’t act the way they did.” (regarding the recent war funding bill votes). Way to go Edwards!
• Mike Gravel kicks ass. Wow! Before tonight I never even gave him a passing thought but he really hit it home when he said that the other candidates will never do anything to fix earmarks, pork, the overbearing power of special interest, or the budget since they’re currently thriving on the system the way it is. It was the truth and it was powerful.
• Senator Dodd surprised me when he practically demanded publicly funded elections. Of course, everything he said sounded like a demand but on this particular issue he was spot on. I could be wrong but it sounded like the crowd was cheering him and then was suddenly muffled. Did CNN censor them?!?
• Bill Richardson totally blew it when he insinuated that if he were President he would “grow the economy 1.6%”. As if the President is the “man behind the curtain”. What a load of pandering bullshit. The President’s primary duty is to frame the budget, sure, but most of the budget is fixed costs (by law) which means that the amount up or down it can go is primarily dependent on action from Congress.
• I thought Kucinich’s answer on the question of whether or not he would assassinate Osama Bin Laden showed serious leadership—and chutzpah. He took the ethical high ground when most of America is down with, “Kill em’ all!”

• Regarding the same question, I thought Obama’s answer was unbelievably stupid. “He declared war on us.” A single person does not a war make. He may represent the worst side of humanity but he’s still just one guy. Just be honest Obama: You’d kill him and anyone else around him because it is what you and the people want… Even though it isn’t a very moral thing to do.

Today I read a post at the Volokh Conspiracy talking about a ballot measure to ban same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. It has been a while since SSM crossed my RSS reader so I thought I’d take a look at the comments to see if people were still spewing the same arguments. It seems they are! Specifically the, “they’re trying to redefine marriage!” argument.

Why don’t we redefine marriage? I mean, we (as in Western civilization) have redefined it several times before: Marriage used to be a social contract between two families. Rarely was it about just two people. For thousands of years it was about allegiances, shared resources, and good will. I’m not sure when it changed (the Renaissance?) but at some point we created the following “definitions” which are world’s apart from the definition of the past:

• When a man and a woman live together for over 10 years.
• When a man and a woman love each other and go through a religious ceremony; taking vows respective of their shared religion.
• When a man and a woman love each other and go through a civil ceremony; vowing whatever they please.
• When a man and woman love each other and go through a brief ceremony by way of a sea captain; not having to vow anything in particular.

• A legally-binding contract between two parties of the opposite sex that affords them special rights and privileges.

  If it weren’t for that last one—particularly the “special rights and privileges” part—the whole issue of SSM wouldn’t have been an issue at all. If it remained merely a ceremony outside of law homosexuals would not have had anything to fight for. It would not have gone to court and people would find something else to get angry about.

  So why don’t we just settle this once and for all and redefine marriage to something a bit more basic?

• A specialty, legally-binding contract between two parties that covers the rights of two people regarding family affairs (such as inheritance, visitation, children, alimony, etc).

  Then the religious can have their religious ceremonies, the non-religious can have their civil ceremonies, the pirates can have their rum at sea, and gay couples can attain equal treatment under the law.

For those of you unfamiliar with Network Neutrality (NN) it is the idea that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should not be allowed to discriminate packets based on their origin. What does that mean? Here’s an example of how an ISP would violate NN:

Let’s say that you’re google. You compete with services from Yahoo, MSN, and others. Today you pay for Internet access in a typical fashion, “X dollars/month for a connection of Y speed.” You pay for enough bandwidth that you’ll never have to worry about “running out”. No matter who uses google.com they can view the site as fast as their connection allows.

Now some ISP comes to you and says, “If you pay us extra money we’ll give you priority access to our network. That way google.com will always load faster than yahoo.com on our network.” Sounds good in theory, right? Why NOT pay for priority access? Quite simply: To prioritize one site, you must downgrade everything else. Yes, everything. Essentially it is no different than a protection racket (racketeering)… “Pay us or who knows how long your packets will take to reach your customers.”

That isn’t the only problem with it. It also severely discriminates against smaller businesses and provides the means for existing monopolies to prevent new competitors from entering their markets. Imagine if YouTube—being the biggest online video site—started paying for access like this. All other video services would have to compete, auction-style, for enough “priority” to get a quality of service as good as YouTube.

The Content/ISP Conflict of Interest

Now that I’ve explained the basics I want to point out a violation of Network Neutrality that I’m positive most people don’t know about: ISPs that also sell TV services (i.e. content). Consider combined cable TV and Internet services. Both services come into your home by way of a coaxial cable. That coaxial cable has a total amount of bandwidth of about 160 megabits download/120 megabits upload using the latest DOCSIS technology (3.0).

DOCSIS 3.0 uses a technique called, “channel bonding” whereby your cable modem will use more than one channel to obtain that increased bandwidth. What does that mean? Well, a cable TV channel uses up ~6MHz of spectrum on the coaxial cable. That 6MHz constitutes a “channel”. The plan is for each cable modem to use up to four channels simultaneously to send and receive Internet traffic. The current pre-3.0 (it isn’t certified yet) DOCSIS equipment can use a maximum of 96 channels so that means you can have 24 customers using all available channels simultaneously.

The technology allows those 96 channels to be dynamically allocated on-the-fly as customers use up the available bandwidth. The reason for this is so cable companies can over-sell their Internet packages (i.e. more than 24 customers on a local node). That way when 48 people are using the Internet simultaneously they’ll just get half the bandwidth. Since most people aren’t uploading/downloading 24 hours a day, 7 days a week they should be able to over-sell a significant amount before anyone notices (unless something comes along that makes more people use up more bandwidth).

That’s all well and good but there’s another problem: What about Cable TV? In order for a company like Comcast to continue selling traditional “digital cable” TV service customer cable TV boxes will have to be “switched” just like a cable modem. That means that as each customer changes the channel, that channel will be “tuned” on the node as opposed to the existing setup whereby your cable box always has all channels coming into it simultaneously. This way, no matter what the selection of TV channels the cable company offers the customer’s cable box will always use up only one channel at a time. This is a violation of Network Neutrality.

How is a violation of Network Neutrality? Because it provides the cable company with exclusive, priority access to your bandwidth for the express purpose of providing TV service. That is discriminating on packets based on their origin. Under this setup it would be impossible for an IPTV company on the Internet to provide “as good” service as what you’d get from Comcast’s own IPTV service (because that’s really what it is—even though it would be delivered differently).

What I’m saying is that cable companies should not be allowed to cut into your Internet bandwidth to exclusively provide their TV service. It would be one thing if you could subscribe to any IPTV company you wanted by way of this mechanism but you can’t. The people who operate the network (the cable company) will never allow some 3rd party provider access to their data centers to hook up their video service that competes directly with their own.

We need new laws that will prevent this kind of abuse and we need them before cable companies start selling these services. No one wants their Internet bandwidth being taken over by someone else’s TV viewing but that is precisely how the cable companies want it.

Telcos Are Doing It Too

The cable companies aren’t the only ones building out their networks for their own exclusive access. The only difference is in the technology. Verizon has already rolled out fiber-optic service (FIOS) whereby they split the fiber coming into people’s homes into two channels with 80% of the bandwidth reserved for their IPTV service

Verizon thinks this is justified because without that exclusive bandwidth they would not be able to compete with companies like Comcast who will be providing a similar service. So in other words, because the cable companies can get away with it Verizon should be able to as well.

I don’t buy it and neither should you. If their argument is, “It isn’t fair” then they’re right: The cable company arrangement is unfair to IPTV operators of all kinds. However, the solution isn’t to allow companies like Verizon to be equally as reprehensible. It is to make sure everyone competes on a level playing field.

What, Precisely Is Needed

Codifying Network Neutrality into law isn’t easy. ISPs already discriminate packets based on the kind of packets they transmit and this is actually quite a good thing. If a virus is working its way around the Internet it would be pertinent for an ISP to block that traffic. The same goes for prioritizing voice-over-IP (i.e. real-time) traffic over bulk peer-to-peer traffic (i.e. not so real-time).

The law must differentiate between good discrimination and bad discrimination. It must also create a level playing field for all manner of services provided over the Internet; whether they be web sites or IPTV services. Here’s a start:

• No Internet Service Provider (ISP) may degrade, slow, or otherwise purposefully interfere with Internet traffic based on that traffic’s origin or destination.
• No Content Provider may offer their service(s) exclusively to any ISP or group of ISPs.
• No Content Provider may prioritize or optimize their services for a single ISP or group of ISPs.
• No ISP may offer content or content services in an exclusive or prioritized arrangement to their own customers.

• Content providers must utilize open-access networks (e.g. the Internet) to provide their service. Exceptions will not be provided for broadcast TV and radio (they should have to offer their content on the Internet along with their traditional methods).

  Note: I tried to write this in such a way that a cable company couldn’t claim its content service was not IP-based and therefore could be exclusive.

This morning I read that the House is considering a bill to make price gouging on gasoline a federal crime. It made me wonder if Congress knows that is not going to fix the problem or if they’re intentionally showboating. Then there’s the conspiracy theorist in me thinking, “I wonder if the oil and gas lobbying groups suggested it to them as a misdirection campaign?”

Just about everyone knows (now) that gas is expensive “because oil inventories are down.” It has been repeated in the news over & over. But what does that really mean? Is it really a simple problem of supply and demand?

The problem is the rate of consumption. Imagine a bucket being filled with water at the same time as water is being pumped out. As long as you pump out at the same rate as you’re filling the bucket everything is fine. If the rate of water going into the bucket is reduced while the amount you’re pumping out stays flat you’ll run out of water. How long it takes to run out of water in the bucket depends on the size of the bucket and the rate you pump it out.

U.S. gasoline inventories are that bucket and it isn’t a very big one. In a good week we have 10 days worth of gas waiting to be sold. Starting about March, gas inventories dropped every week to a low of about 8.8 days worth of gas (see this). Last week inventories started going up again so the price of gas might go down but then again, it might not because Memorial Day weekend is coming up and that means a lot of gas is about to be burned.

When oil inventories start dropping again and there isn’t an excuse like, “we had a fire at a major refinery” or, “it was a long weekend” you can be rest assured that the U.S. is entering what I’m calling, “the permanent oil crisis.” We may already be in a permanent crisis if you consider that the smallest little disruption causes oil speculators to jump and gas prices to skyrocket.

So the question remains: Will Congress ever work to solve the problem or will they just wait until the U.S. economy is destroyed by it? Don’t say “the market will solve the problem” because the “problem” is an externality outside of the control of the market. Does a shipping line wait until oil prices drop before they ship things? Do you decide to not drive to work because gas prices are high? Does the power company decide not to meet demand because oil prices went up? No. When the rate at which we can obtain and refine oil falls below demand it will already be too late for the market to adjust.

We need to forcibly diversify the U.S. energy portfolio now. Which would you rather have: An economy that suffers for a few years while we invest in alternative energy (particularly infrastructure) or an economy that is suddenly destroyed as a result of inaction? By doing nothing our government will ruin us. The market cannot correct itself without a catastrophe. No one in our present government at any level can say, “no one saw this coming.”