Vedder Heads West For Spring Solo Shows

Vedder Solo Shows

Eddie Vedder

Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder will embark on his first solo tour this spring, on the heels of his Monkeywrench/J soundtrack to the acclaimed film "Into the Wild." Dates begin April 2 in Vancouver; Liam Finn will open.

Vedder was uncertain about presenting the material live when he spoke to Billboard late last year. "I like the idea. It'll happen when it happens if it happens," he said with a laugh.

But he has since come around to the idea, perhaps encouraged by a well-received performance of "Into the Wild" music at a private party in Los Angeles in November.

"This will be an amazing opportunity for fans to see Eddie Vedder in such intimate settings," RCA Music Group VP or A&R/marketing Matt Shay tells Billboard.com. "Working with Eddie on the music from 'Into the Wild' has been an honor, and the tour will be a true highlight for all of us."

At present, it hasn't been announced whether Vedder will be playing the shows completely on his own or with help from other musicians. Ticket information, including pre-sale access for members of Pearl Jam's Ten Club fan organization, can be found at PearlJam.com.

Vedder's "Into the Wild" soundtrack has sold 243,000 copies in the United States, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The track "Guaranteed" won the Golden Globe for best original song, while "Hard Sun" enjoyed success at radio, peaking at No. 13 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart.

Before Vedder hits the road, Pearl Jam is expected to regroup and start sketching out material for its next studio album. As previously reported, the band will also assemble to co-headline the Bonnaroo festival in mid-June in Manchester, Tenn.

There's other new Vedder music in the offing as well. His track "No More" will serve as the first single from "Body of War: Songs That Inspired an Iraq War Veteran," due March 18 via Sire.

Here are Eddie Vedder's tour dates:

April 2: Vancouver (the Centre)
April 5: Santa Cruz, Calif. (Civic Auditorium)
April 7: Berkeley, Calif. (Zellerbach Auditorium)
April 10: Santa Barbara, Calif. (Arlington Theatre)
April 12-13: Los Angeles (Wiltern Theatre)
April 15: San Diego (Spreckels Theatre)

Alicia Keys, Jordin Sparks Team For Tour

Alicia Keys

Jonathan Cohen, N.Y.

Alicia Keys will embark on a two-month North American tour April 19 in Hampton, Va., with support from 2007 "American Idol" winner Jordin Sparks. The run comes in support of Keys' latest J album, "As I Am," which has spawned two big hits.

First single "No One" logged time at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, while "Like You'll Never See Me Again" was a long-running chart-topper on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.

As for Sparks, debut single "Tattoo" peaked at No. 8 on the Hot 100 and is No. 16 there this week. Second single "No Air" featuring Chris Brown jumps 25-19 this week on the Pop 100; a Chris Robinson-directed video for the track will arrive in late February.

Here are Alicia Keys/Jordin Sparks' tour dates:

April 19: Hampton, Va. (Hampton Coliseum)
April 20: Philadelphia (Liacouras Center)
April 22: Pittsburgh (Petersen Events Center)
April 24: Chicago (Allstate Arena)
April 26: Columbus, Ohio (Value City Arena)
April 27: St. Louis (Scottrade Center)
April 30: Minneapolis (Target Center)
May 1: Kansas City, Mo. (Sprint Center)
May 5: Los Angeles (TBA)
May 9: Las Vegas (MGM Grand Garden)
May 10: San Jose, Calif. (HP Pavilion)
May 12: Phoenix (Jobing.com Arena)
May 14: Dallas (Nokia Theatre)
May 18: Houston (Toyota Center)
May 22: New Orleans (New Orleans Arena)
May 24: Tampa, Fla. (St. Pete Times Forum)
May 25: Miami (American Airlines Arena)
May 28: Atlanta (Philips Arena)
May 30: Greensboro, N.C. (Coliseum)
May 31: Cincinnati (U.S. Bank Arena)
June 3: Detroit (Joe Louis Arena)
June 5: Cleveland (Wolstein Center)
June 6: Toronto (Air Canada Centre)
June 8: Montreal (Bell Centre)
June 11: Boston (TD Bank North Garden)
June 13: Washington, D.C. (Verizon Center)
June 15: Baltimore (1st Mariner Arena)
June 17: Newark, N.J. (Prudential Center)
June 18: New York (Madison Square Garden)

Meet The Spartans (Movie Review)

Hollywood.com Says

There’s nothing funny here only sad. Sad in the sense that enough people will see Meet the Spartans to warrant a continuation of this franchise. And until that next spoof comes, there will not be a worse movie. It’s just not possible.

Story
To say that Meet the Spartans is a spoof of 300 is to suggest that there is some semblance of a storyline mocking that the 2007 blockbuster epic; I refuse to give it that much credit. Rather, this movie is a lame-ass excuse to randomly throw jabs at pop culture and, in extreme emergencies, “advance” the “plot”--which only really makes fun of 300’s subtexts, not its story. It all starts in ancient Sparta, where a young Leonidas (Sean Maguire) is groomed to defeat the evil Xerxes (Ken Davitian, “the fat guy from Borat,” which is essentially how the movie introduces him) and the invading Persians (led by Method Man). But really, Spartans is all about the atrociously unfunny parodies that litter its not-brief-enough 80 minutes: Transformers, Stomp the Yard, Happy Feet, American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Ugly Betty, Anna Nicole, Britney, Paris, homosexuality, bodily functions--they’re all spoofed here! A truly groundbreaking concept, indeed.

Acting
Formerly up-and-coming British actor Maguire (England's EastEnders) must’ve thought a lead role, no matter how bad the movie, would beget bigger jobs in the near future. Oops! Didn’t he ever hear of Adam Campbell, the like-minded bloke whose biggest role since headlining Date Movie was last year’s Epic Movie? In short, actors looking to break out should not be tempted by crap like this. It’s the same story: Maguire can obviously act, but he makes a complete fool of himself in the process and now must give his career time to recover. He only bears a slight physical resemblance to the actor he’s parodying, Gerard Butler (when heavily bearded), and otherwise spends the movie uttering the worst possible lines when not subjecting himself to scenes so mortifying that they’re like some kind of Fear Factor for Actors. Elsewhere, the usual D-listers pop up for a shot at regaining quasi-relevance. Carmen Electra, now a veteran of this franchise--lucky her!--plays Leonidas' wife and is leaned on for nothing more than her hotness. Which is more than can be said about everyone else, from a clearly desperate-for-work Kevin Sorbo (Andromeda) as one of Leonidas’ ‘yes’ men, to Method Man, whose heretofore-horrible film résumé just got worse.

Direction
Whereas Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer’s Scary/Epic/Date Movie spoofs might’ve bore the “this probably wasn’t as easy to come up with as it seems” tag, Spartans looks like something from a script they found in the garbage can at a middle school: Not only is it pure trash unworthy of being released, but the “jokes,” if you will, were seemingly written by and for 13- to-14-year-olds. Not one second of the movie is even implicitly deserving of a snicker; instead, it’s actually antagonizing to watch, as Friedberg and Seltzer bombard us with scene after scene of the shallowest material ever committed to celluloid. This is the absolute dreg of cinema, the lowest of the low, not to be confused with “lowbrow,” which would be an unfair compliment in this case. Spartans even fails miserably in trying to make fun of the few pop-culturisms that deserve it, and the least the writer-directors could’ve done was hire actors who physically resemble the celebs they’re spoofing! Friedberg and Seltzer are just utterly allergic to originality: Obviously you don’t expect the story to be original, since it’s all a rip-off to begin with, but they can’t even spin any of it into a single original gag. And they're so lost during the few non-spoof scenes that they resort to the dreaded pratfalls. Seriously, these dudes make Uwe Boll look like Orson Welles.

Hidden children 'serious problem'

Schools can often pick up on children's problems

MPs and voluntary organisations have said there is a serious problem of children in need slipping "under the radar" of social services.

Many do not get help because they are not known to the authorities or keep their problems from them, MPs heard.

The Commons children's select committee heard that homeless youngsters, those in care, young carers or trafficked children were most at risk.

Schools and GPs could do more to help, children's charities told the MPs.

Labour MP Fiona Mactaggart, who chaired the committee, said: "We have a pretty clear picture that this is a not a small scale problem, that it's a serious problem.

"The view of all our witnesses is that there is a key issue of professionals being able to connect with young people and listen to them and give them a voice."

'Particularly cruel'

Kathy Evans, policy director at The Children's Society, told the MPs there were concerns about two groups of children - those in touch with social services who were going to school or the GP but whose needs were not being spotted, and those who were disengaged from services.

"We have a lot of questions about how do we helpfully and ethically but proactively seek to find out whether there are any problems at home for children," she said.

Groups of children who might have hidden needs could include gypsy or traveller families, young carers or refugees and disabled children placed away from home, she said.

John Reacroft from the charity Barnardo's said children living in temporary accommodation often moved frequently and slipped "under the radar" of services.

If you are homeless your needs are increasing as a family but your access to services can often decrease

John Reacroft Barnardo's Children might end up out of school and without access to GPs, community support or day centres, he said.

"It's particularly cruel because if you are homeless and in temporary accommodation, your needs are increasing as a family but your access to services can often decrease because many families are housed very long distances from where they originated."

Mr Reacroft said there was a particular problem when local authorities moved a homeless family out of their area into private accommodation in another.

Local authorities now had a responsibility to pass on details of people being moved into another area - but that did not mean they would then get the support they needed, he said.

Another key factor in children slipping through the net was fear, the committee heard.

Children were afraid that telling anyone about their family problems might lead to its being broken up and their being taken into care, said Kathy Evans.

Box of chocolates

Schools and GPs were often in a good position to pick up on family problems but did not always do so, said Dr Jo Aldridge, director of Young Carers Research Group at Loughborough University.

"School is critical here. There used to be people who were more obvious in schools - educational welfare officers. They now seem to have much bigger case loads and who is there to deal with the welfare of the children?"

"A lot of teachers don't see that as their role or feel uncomfortable."

Dr Aldridge said some teachers needed more training on how they should respond if they found out a child was caring for a parent at home or had a parent who was mentally ill.

Good News: Bad News Arrives Quickly

Good News: Bad News Arrives Quickly

IT has not been a great year so far for Enfield High School. Beyond the two snow days the school district has racked up, students at the high school, in northwestern Connecticut, received an unexpected extension on their holiday break when a pipe burst on Jan. 1, letting water pour in for hours before the break was discovered. The school was closed for three days, reopened, then shut down again the next week, when the main electrical box caught fire, possibly as a result of the flooding.
Skip to next paragraph
In the Region
Long Island, Westchester, Connecticut and New Jersey
Go to Complete Coverage »

In each case, Superintendent John Gallacher checked the damage, then immediately went into emergency-notification mode. That meant activating the school’s hot-line phone number, notifying local radio and television stations and sending out school cancellation notices to the high school’s e-mail chain list, which reaches about one-third of the 950 students’ households. During the latest cancellation, Dr. Gallacher said, “only three or four kids showed up not knowing we were closed.”

“It’s not the most high-tech system,” he acknowledged, “but this is a small-town suburb with a close-knit school community. I’m sure the 300 people who got the e-mail notice picked up their cellphones and called their friends.”

But in this day of heightened security and ready alert, Enfield is the exception rather than the rule.

Since the 1999 school massacre that left 14 students and a teacher dead at Columbine High School in Colorado, followed by the Sept. 11 attacks and the shootings at Virginia Tech last April, schools across the region have been revising their emergency-notification and emergency-planning systems. Long gone are the days of parent phone chains, except perhaps in the smallest communities. In their place, school districts are investing thousands or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to upgrade their methods of dealing with an emergency.

In Old Bridge, N.J., the Police Department’s Office of Emergency Management started looking into improving the schools’ emergency-response system in 1999. Officials came up with a plan that Capt. Robert Bonfante said first had to be sold to the Board of Education and the Town Council and then took three or four years to fully activate.

“After Columbine and 9/11, the parents were very upset,” Captain Bonfante said. “They wanted the schools shrink-wrapped. I’m sure Osama bin Laden is not coming to Old Bridge for one of our schools, but we recognized we needed an improved safety system for the kids.”

Considered a forerunner in New Jersey for school safety management, the Old Bridge program serves 15 public schools and 9 private ones in this Middlesex County town.

The system includes aerial and internal photography of all the schools, walkie-talkies for some 70 teachers and administrators who are assigned to the emergency planning committee, doors numbered with reflective tape on both sides, and constant updating of emergency numbers for students and their families.

Increasingly, the Internet has become the main tool to let parents know when school is canceled or to distribute any other notice that needs to get out quickly. Virtually every school district has a Web site, which usually has school-closing links that provide updates during inclement weather and emergency situations.

Most schools also request parents’ e-mail addresses at the start of the year, which some use to create an e-mail database that can be readily activated to send urgent or routine notices. But keeping this data current can be a full-time job, so many school districts have placed the task of notifying parents in the hands of companies that specialize in such instant communication.

Nearly every school district in Westchester, Putnam and Rockland Counties in New York uses either Connect-ED, based in California, or K-12 Alerts, based in White Plains, to handle parent notifications. So do many districts on Long Island and in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Using information provided and regularly updated by parents, K-12 Alerts’ Triple-Play service uses voice mail and text and e-mail messages to notify thousands of students, parents and staff members in a matter of minutes.

T. Gregory Bender, president and chief executive of K-12 Alerts, said that he came up with the idea after 9/11. Noting that 30 percent of cellphone numbers and e-mail addresses change annually, Mr. Bender said his goal was not only to provide schools with an efficient, updated means of instant communication, but also to save money and resources.

“Districts are really getting our mission,” he said, “to increase communication, lower costs and save some paper and maybe some trees.”

K-12 Alerts and Connect-ED charge districts on a per-student basis, typically $4 to $5 per student per year for unlimited use.

Some districts, like Bellmore-Merrick in Nassau County, which began using the Connect-ED system this year, limit its use to emergencies. Other districts say that the more they use the system — for sending out notices of meetings, fund-raisers and other announcements that might normally be mailed home — the more they are recouping the cost.

In Danbury, Conn., the superintendent, Sal Pascarella, said that regular use of the system also helps keep information current.

“If we only wait for the big incident, the data is not accurate,” he said. “The more you use it, the more conversant you become with it.”

W. L. Sawyer, the new superintendent of the Mount Vernon school district in Westchester County, views its instant-notification system as a way to communicate with families, not only with what he calls negative messages, like school closings, but also positive ones, like reminders that students should get a good night’s sleep before test days.

Since instituting the K-12 Alerts system last fall, Dr. Sawyer said, he had used it at least 10 times for systemwide messages and daily for calling the parents of students who were absent. He said it had helped introduce him to the community.

“I’ve gone into stores and a parent will say, ‘Yeah, you were talking to me last night,’ ” Dr. Sawyer said.

Britney's dad given power to sack management

Britney Spears Pic: PA Photos

James Spears already has rights over singer's affairs

Britney Spears' father has been given power to fire her business management, it has emerged.

James Spears has already taken control of the singer's affairs this week, a right he will hold until at least Thursday (February 14). And now, according to court documents, he has been given the right to fire Howard Grossman.

Court commissioner Reva Goetz also said that Mr Spears was entitled to see all of the management's "documents, records and assets relating to Britney Spears," reports the BBC.

However, Mr Grossman has not divulged whether he has been fired by Mr Spears, commenting: "My reputation speaks for itself."

Spears was admitted to a Los Angeles psychiatric ward on January 31, but she left on Wednesday (February 7), against the wishes of her parents.

Simmons: 'The internet killed music'

(Sunday February 10, 2008 09:30 AM)

Kiss star Gene Simmons has blamed internet downloads for destroying the music industry - insisting there will never be any more legendary bands like The Beatles.

The 58-year-old rocker is convinced illegal downloading has forced record labels to conform to a new way of working that will eventually put them all out of business.

Simmons, who is known for his entrepreneurial skills, insists there is now less opportunity for talented new bands to find recognition because the internet is swamped with wannabes.

He says, "The very same people that love the music the most have slit its throat and they're surprised it's dying. 'How come my new band can't get a shot?' 'Because you killed it, bitch.'

"Every day college kids who probably love music more than anybody are the same people slashing the record industry's throat by file sharing and downloading. It's the saddest thing for new bands. Doesn't affect me or Kiss. We can continue to play stadiums and do very well, and we release DVDs.

"But there isn't a chance for a new band to become the next Beatles or Kiss because there isn't the infrastructure to do it."

(from http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com)

Secret hearing in Spears court case

The Los Angeles court commissioner who placed Britney Spears under her father's guardianship has held a closed-door hearing on an emergency motion.

The unspecified motion, a day after the troubled pop star was suddenly released from a psychiatric hospital, was brought before Superior Court Commissioner Reva Goetz by the singer's father, James Spears, and lawyer Andrew Wallet, court spokesman Allan Parachini said.

Mr Parachini would say only that the motion was unopposed.

"Everything about this matter is sealed," he said after the hearing.

In court were lawyers for James Spears, along with Mr Wallet and a court-appointed lawyer for Spears, 26.

The singer was taken to a psychiatric hospital at UCLA Medical Centre on January 31 under police escort but was discharged on Wednesday against the advice of her psychiatrist and the wishes of her parents.

"We are deeply concerned about our daughter's safety and vulnerability and we believe her life is presently at risk," the statement from James and Lynne Spears said.

"We ask only that the court's orders be enforced so that a tragedy may be averted."

Ms Goetz named Mr Spears last week as conservator of his daughter and named him and Mr Wallet conservators of her estate. The commissioner has ordered the conservatorship to last until at least February 14.

Courts place people under conservatorships when it is determined they can no longer care for themselves or their affairs.

(Saturday February 09, 2008 07:02 AM) (from http://uk.news.launch.yahoo.com)

Health Insurance in Australia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The public health system is called Medicare. It ensures free universal access to hospital treatment and subsidised out-of-hospital medical treatment. It is funded by a 1.5% tax levy.

The private health system is funded by a number of private health insurance organisations. The largest of these is Medibank Private, which is government-owned, but operates as a government business enterprise under the same regulatory regime as all other registered private health funds. The Coalition Howard government had announced that Medibank would be privatised if it won the 2007 election, however they were defeated by the Australian Labor Party under Kevin Rudd which had already pledged that it would remain in government ownership.

Some private health insurers are 'for profit' enterprises, and some are non-profit organizations such as HCF Health Insurance. Some have membership restricted to particular groups, but the majority have open membership.

Most aspects of private health insurance in Australia are regulated by the Private Health Insurance Act 2007.

The private health system in Australia operates on a "community rating" basis, whereby premiums do not vary solely because of a person's previous medical history, current state of health, or (generally speaking) their age (but see Lifetime Health Cover below). Balancing this are waiting periods, in particular for pre-existing conditions (usually referred to within the industry as PEA, which stands for "pre-existing ailment"). Funds are entitled to impose a waiting period of up to 12 months on benefits for any medical condition the signs and symptoms of which existed during the six months ending on the day the person first took out insurance. They are also entitled to impose a 12-month waiting period for benefits for treatment relating to an obstetric condition, and a 2-month waiting period for all other benefits when a person first takes out private insurance. Funds have the discretion to reduce or remove such waiting periods in individual cases. They are also free not to impose them to begin with, but this would place such a fund at risk of "adverse selection", attracting a disproportionate number of members from other funds, or from the pool of intending members who might otherwise have joined other funds. It would also attract people with existing medical conditions, who might not otherwise have taken out insurance at all because of the denial of benefits for 12 months due to the PEA Rule. The benefits paid out for these conditions would create pressure on premiums for all the fund's members, causing some to drop their membership, which would lead to further rises, and a vicious cycle would ensue.

There are a number of other matters about which funds are not permitted to discriminate between members in terms of premiums, benefits or membership - these include racial origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, nature of employment, and leisure activities. Premiums for a fund's product that is sold in more than one state can vary from state to state, but not within the same state.

The Australian government has introduced a number of incentives to encourage adults to take out private hospital insurance. These include:

• Lifetime Health Cover: If a person has not taken out private hospital cover by the 1st July after their 30th birthday, then when (and if) they do so after this time, their premiums must include a loading of 2% per annum. Thus, a person taking out private cover for the first time at age 40 will pay a 10 per cent loading. The loading continues for 10 years. The loading applies only to premiums for hospital cover, not to ancillary (extras) cover.

• Medicare Levy Surcharge: People whose taxable income is greater than a specified amount (currently $50,000 for singles and $100,000 for families) and who do not have an adequate level of private hospital cover must pay a 1% surcharge on top of the standard 1.5% Medicare Levy. The rationale is that if the people in this income group are forced to pay more money one way or another, most would choose to purchase hospital insurance with it, with the possibility of a benefit in the event that they need private hospital treatment - rather than pay it in the form of extra tax as well as having to meet their own private hospital costs.

• Private Health Insurance Rebate: The government subsidises the premiums for all private health insurance cover, including hospital and ancillary (extras), by 30%, 35% or 40%.

Health Insurance in Canada

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Most health insurance in Canada is administered by each province, under the national law that requires all people to have free access to basic health services. Collectively, the public provincial health insurance systems in Canada are frequently referred to as Medicare. Private health insurance is allowed, but the provincial governments allow it only for services that the public health plans do not cover; for example, semi-private or private rooms in hospitals and prescription drug plans. Canadians are free to use private insurance for elective medical services such as Lasik surgery, plastic surgery such as liposuction, and other non-basic medical procedures. Some 65% of Canadians have some form of supplementary private health insurance; many of them receive it through their employers. Private-sector services not paid for by the government account for nearly 30 percent of total health care spending.

In 2005, the Supreme Court of Quebec ruled, in Chaoulli v. Quebec, that the province's prohibition on insurance for health care already insured by the state could constitute an infringement of the right to life and security if there were long wait times for treatment as happened in this case. Certain other provinces have legislation which financially discourages but does not forbid private health insurance in areas covered by the public plans. The ruling has not changed the overall pattern of health insurance across Canada but has spurred on attempts to tackle the core issues of supply and demand and the impact of wait times.

Health Insurance in The United States

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The U.S. market-based health care system relies heavily on private and not-for-profit health insurance, which is the primary source of coverage for most Americans. According to the United States Census Bureau, approximately 84% of Americans have health insurance; some 60% obtain it through an employer, while about 9% purchase it directly. Various government agencies provide coverage to about 27% of Americans (there is some overlap in these figures).

Public programs provide the primary source of coverage for most seniors and for low-income children and families who meet certain eligibility requirements. The primary public programs are Medicare, a federal social insurance program for seniors and certain disabled individuals, Medicaid, funded jointly by the federal government and states but administered at the state level, which covers certain very low income children and their families, and SCHIP, also a federal-state partnership that serves certain children and families who do not qualify for Medicaid but who cannot afford private coverage. Other public programs include military health benefits provided through TRICARE and the Veterans Health Administration and benefits provided through the Indian Health Service. Some states have additional programs for low-income individuals.

In 2006, there were 47 million people in the U.S. (16% of the population) who were without health insurance for at least part of that year. About 37% of the uninsured live in households with an income over $50,000.

In 2004, U.S. health insurers directly employed almost 470,000 people at an average salary of $61,409.

Other Factors Affecting Insurance Prices

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A recent study by PriceWaterhouseCoopers examining the drivers of rising health care costs in the U.S. pointed to increased utilization created by increased consumer demand, new treatments, and more intensive diagnostic testing, as the most significant driver. People in developed countries are living longer. The population of those countries is aging, and a larger group of senior citizens requires more intensive medical care than a young healthier population. Advances in medicine and medical technology can also increase the cost of medical treatment. Other factors that increase utilization and therefore insurance prices are lifestyle-related: increases in obesity caused by insufficient exercise and unhealthy food choices; excessive alcohol use, smoking, and use of street drugs. Other factors noted by the PWC study included the movement to broader-access plans, higher-priced technologies, and cost-shifting from Medicaid and the uninsured to private payers.

Moral Hazard

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Moral hazard occurs when an insurer and a consumer enter into a contract under symmetric information, but one party takes action, not taken into account in the contract, which changes the value of the insurance. A common example of moral hazard is third-party payment — when the parties involved in making a decision are not responsible for bearing costs arising from the decision. An example is where doctors and insured patients agree to extra tests which may or may not be necessary. Doctors benefit by avoiding possible malpractice suits, and patients benefit by gaining increased certainty of their medical condition. The cost of these extra tests is borne by the insurance company, which may have had little say in the decision. Co-payments, deductibles, and less generous insurance for services with more elastic demand attempt to combat moral hazard, as they hold the consumer responsible.

Adverse Selection

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Insurance companies use the term "adverse selection" to describe the tendency for only those who will benefit from insurance to buy it. Specifically when talking about health insurance, unhealthy people are more likely to purchase health insurance because they anticipate large medical bills. On the other side, people who consider themselves to be reasonably healthy may decide that medical insurance is an unnecessary expense; if they see the doctor once a year and it costs $250, that's much better than making monthly insurance payments of $400 (example figures).

The fundamental concept of insurance is that it balances costs across a large, random sample of individuals (see risk pool). For instance, an insurance company has a pool of 1000 randomly selected subscribers, each paying $100 per month. One person becomes very ill while the others stay healthy, allowing the insurance company to use the money paid by the healthy people to pay for the treatment costs of the sick person. However, when the pool is self-selecting rather than random, as is the case with individuals seeking to purchase health insurance directly, adverse selection is a greater concern. Some individuals have extremely high medical expenses, in extreme cases totaling a half million dollars or more. These represent a relatively small percentage of the insured population, however. Adverse selection could leave an insurance company with primarily sick subscribers and no way to balance out the cost of their medical expenses with a large number of healthy subscribers.

Because of adverse selection, insurance companies employ medical underwriting, using a patient's medical history to screen out those whose pre-existing medical conditions pose too great a risk for the risk pool. Before buying health insurance, a person typically fills out a comprehensive medical history form that asks whether the person smokes, how much the person weighs, whether the person has been treated for any of a long list of diseases and so on. In general, those who present large financial burdens are denied coverage or charged high premiums to compensate. One large U.S. industry survey found that roughly 13 percent of applicants for comprehensive, individually purchased health insurance who went through the medical underwriting in 2004 were denied coverage. Declination rates increased significantly with age, rising from 5 percent for individuals 18 and under to just under a third for individuals aged 60 to 64. Among those who were offered coverage, the study found that 76% received offers at standard premium rates, and 22% were offered higher rates. On the other side, applicants can get discounts if they do not smoke and are healthy.

Inherent Problems With Insurance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Insurance systems must typically deal with two inherent challenges: adverse selection, which affects any voluntary system, and ex-post moral hazard, which affects any insurance system in which a third party bears major responsibility for payment, whether that is an employer or the government. Some national systems with compulsory insurance utilize systems of risk equalization to overcome these inherent problems.

Health Plan vs. Health Insurance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Historically, HMOs tended to use the term "health plan", while commercial insurance companies used the term "health insurance". A health plan can also refer to a subscription-based medical care arrangement offered through health maintenance organization,HMO, PPO, or POS plan. These plans are similar to pre-paid dental, pre-paid legal, and pre-paid vision plans. Pre-paid health plans typically pay for a fixed number of services (for instance, $300 in preventive care, a certain number of days of hospice care or care in a skilled nursing facility, a fixed number of home health visits, a fixed number of spinal manipulation charges, etc.) The services offered are usually at the discretion of a utilization review nurse who is often contracted through the managed care entity providing the subscription health plan. This determination may be made either prior to or after hospital admission (concurrent utilization review).

How it Works

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

December 2007 A Health insurance policy is a contract between an insurance company and an individual. The contract can be renewable annually or monthly. The type and amount of health care costs that will be covered by the health plan are specified in advance, in the member contract or Evidence of Coverage booklet. The individual policy-holder's payment obligations may take several forms :

• Premium: The amount the policy-holder pays to the health plan each month to purchase health coverage.
• Deductible: The amount that the policy-holder must pay out-of-pocket before the health plan pays its share. For example, a policy-holder might have to pay a $500 deductible per year, before any of their health care is covered by the health plan. It may take several doctor's visits or prescription refills before the policy-holder reaches the deductible and the health plan starts to pay for care.
• Copayment: The amount that the policy-holder must pay out of pocket before the health plan pays for a particular visit or service. For example, a policy-holder might pay a $45 copayment for a doctor's visit, or to obtain a prescription. A copayment must be paid each time a particular service is obtained.
• Coinsurance: Instead of paying a fixed amount up front (a copayment), the policy-holder must pay a percentage of the total cost. For example, the member might have to pay 20% of the cost of a surgery, while the health plan pays the other 80%. Because there is no upper limit on coinsurance, the policy-holder can end up owing very little, or a significant amount, depending on the actual costs of the services they obtain.
• Exclusions: Not all services are covered. The policy-holder is generally expected to pay the full cost of non-covered services out of their own pocket.
• Coverage limits: Some health plans only pay for health care up to a certain dollar amount. The policy-holder may be expected to pay any charges in excess of the health plan's maximum payment for a specific service. In addition, some plans have annual or lifetime coverage maximums. In these cases, the health plan will stop payment when they reach the benefit maximum, and the policy-holder must pay all remaining costs.
• Out-of-pocket maximums: Similar to coverage limits, except that in this case, the member's payment obligation ends when they reach the out-of-pocket maximum, and the health plan pays all further covered costs. Out-of-pocket maximums can be limited to a specific benefit category (such as prescription drugs) or can apply to all coverage provided during a specific benefit year.

Prescription drug plans are a form of insurance offered through many employer benefit plans in the U.S., where the patient pays a copayment and the prescription drug insurance pays the rest.

Some health care providers will agree to bill the insurance company if patients are willing to sign an agreement that they will be responsible for the amount that the insurance company doesn't pay, as the insurance company pays according to "reasonable" or "customary" charges, which may be less than the provider's usual fee.

Health insurance companies also often have a network of providers who agree to accept the reasonable and customary fee and waive the remainder. It will generally cost the patient less to use an in-network provider.

History and evolution

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The concept of health insurance was proposed in 1694 by Hugh the Elder Chamberlen from the Peter Chamberlen family. In the late 19th century, "accident insurance" began to be available, which operated much like modern disability insurance.This payment model continued until the start of the 20th century in some jurisdictions (like California), where all laws regulating health insurance actually referred to disability insurance.

Accident insurance was first offered in the United States by the Franklin Health Assurance Company of Massachusetts. This firm, founded in 1850, offered insurance against injuries arising from railroad and steamboat accidents. Sixty organizations were offering accident insurance in the U.S. by 1866, but the industry consolidated rapidly soon thereafter. While there were earlier experiments, the origins of sickness coverage in the U.S. effectively date from 1890. The first employer-sponsored group disability policy was issued in 1911.

Before the development of medical expense insurance, patients were expected to pay all other health care costs out of their own pockets, under what is known as the fee-for-service business model. During the middle to late 20th century, traditional disability insurance evolved into modern health insurance programs. Today, most comprehensive private health insurance programs cover the cost of routine, preventive, and emergency health care procedures, and also most prescription drugs, but this was not always the case.

Hospital and medical expense policies were introduced during the first half of the 20th century. During the 1920s, individual hospitals began offering services to individuals on a pre-paid basis, eventually leading to the development of Blue Cross organizations. The predecessors of today's Health Maintanence Organizations (HMOs) originated beginning in 1929, through the 1930's and on during World War II.

Health Insurance

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The term health insurance is generally used to describe a form of insurance that pays for medical expenses. It is sometimes used more broadly to include insurance covering disability or long-term nursing or custodial care needs. It may be provided through a government-sponsored social insurance program, or from private insurance companies. It may be purchased on a group basis (e.g., by a firm to cover its employees) or purchased by individual consumers. In each case, the covered groups or individuals pay premiums or taxes to help protect themselves from high or unexpected healthcare expenses. Similar benefits paying for medical expenses may also be provided through social welfare programs funded by the government.

Health insurance works by estimating the overall risk of healthcare expenses and developing a routine finance structure (such as a monthly premium or annual tax) that will ensure that money is available to pay for the healthcare benefits specified in the insurance agreement. The benefit is administered by a central organization, most often either a government agency or a private or not-for-profit entity operating a health plan.

Led Zeppelin Confirm Reunion Gig

The surviving members of legendary rock group Led Zeppelin are to reform for a star-studded tribute concert in London.

Singer Robert Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page and bassist John Paul Jones will play at the show to remember the late Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun.

The one-off concert, the trio's first performance for 19 years, will take place at the O2 arena on 26 November.

Tickets will cost £125 and be allocated by ballot. Pete Townshend, Bill Wyman and Paolo Nutini will also perform.

Ertegun, who signed Led Zeppelin in 1968, died last year.

The place of Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, who died in 1980, will be taken by his son Jason.

Plant said: "During the Zeppelin years, Ahmet Ertegun was a major foundation of solidarity and accord.

"For us, he was Atlantic Records and remained a close friend and conspirator. This performance stands alone as a tribute to the work and life of a longstanding friend."

The news is likely to spark a huge rush for tickets as devoted fans scramble to get into what could be the band's last show.

Tickets will only be available to those who register on a dedicated website, ahmettribute.com, and will be limited to two successful applications per household.

With their pounding, blues-influenced anthems and explosive stadium shows, Led Zeppelin paved the way for artists across the worlds of heavy metal and alternative rock.

Their best-known songs include Stairway to Heaven, Whole Lotta Love, Rock and Roll, Kashmir and Communication Breakdown - although they never released singles in the UK.

Led Zeppelin's last full concert was in Berlin in July 1980 - two months before John Bonham died.

'Whole set'

Page, Plant and Jones performed at Live Aid five years later, and also get back together at a concert to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Atlantic Records in 1988.

But a rift between Jones and the other two band members opened after Page and Plant started working together without him in the 1990s.

Rumours of a reconciliation surfaced several years ago, leading to speculation about a reunion.

Harvey Goldsmith, who is promoting the concert, said that he had originally asked the three band members to play a 30-minute set.

"Jason Bonham became part of the catalyst, and they did a week's rehearsal," he said. "We had a meeting and Robert turned around and said we're not going to do 30 minutes, we're doing to do a whole set."

"It's a day I never thought would come," said Dave Lewis, editor of Led Zeppelin fan magazine Tight But Loose. "The four people on stage in 2007 - wake me up, I'm dreaming!"

The concert coincides with the release of a new two-CD best of compilation, Mothership, on 13 November.

Profits from the show will go towards scholarships in Ertegun's name in UK, the USA and Turkey, the country of his birth.

His wife Mica said: "He would be very proud that Led Zeppelin have chosen to reunite and headline a benefit concert in his name featuring so many of his friends.

"I would like to thank all of the artists for their generous contribution to help make Ahmet's vision a reality."

Goldsmith said Ertegun "became a friend and was my mentor".

"Our industry deeply misses such a giant of music," he said. "It is a fitting tribute that these great artists have all come together to perform in his memory."

He also warned that tickets being sold on the black market would be cancelled.

Paolo Nutini, Ertegun's last UK signing, went on to score a hit album last year.

"He touched my life with his amazing personality and opened a few doors when I was starting my career," he said.

"He was a special guy, a real gentleman and it's such a shame he's gone but a massive tribute that all his music lives on - and will do forever."

(From http://news.bbc.co.uk)

Internet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

For the more general networking concept, see computer network, computer networking, and internetworking.

For other uses, see Internet (disambiguation).

Visualization of the various routes through a portion of the Internet.

Internet Portal

The Internet is a worldwide, publicly accessible series of interconnected computer networks that transmit data by packet switching using the standard Internet Protocol (IP). It is a "network of networks" that consists of millions of smaller domestic, academic, business, and government networks, which together carry various information and services, such as electronic mail, online chat, file transfer, and the interlinked web pages and other resources of the World Wide Web (WWW).

Terminology

The International Network, or more commonly known as the Internet and the World Wide Web are not synonymous. The Internet is a collection of interconnected computer networks, linked by copper wires, fiber-optic cables, wireless connections, etc. In contrast, the Web is a collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. The World Wide Web is one of the services accessible via the Internet, along with various others including e-mail, file sharing, online gaming and others described below.

Creation

The USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as ARPA, in February 1958 to regain a technological lead.^[1][2] ARPA created the Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) to further the research of the Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) program, which had networked country-wide radar systems together for the first time. J. C. R. Licklider was selected to head the IPTO, and saw universal networking as a potential unifying human revolution.

Licklider moved from the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University to MIT in 1950, after becoming interested in information technology. At MIT, he served on a committee that established Lincoln Laboratory and worked on the SAGE project. In 1957 he became a Vice President at BBN, where he bought the first production PDP-1 computer and conducted the first public demonstration of time-sharing.

At the IPTO, Licklider recruited Lawrence Roberts to head a project to implement a network, and Roberts based the technology on the work of Paul Baran^{[citation needed]} who had written an exhaustive study for the U.S. Air Force that recommended packet switching (as opposed to circuit switching) to make a network highly robust and survivable. After much work, the first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA and SRI International in Menlo Park, California, on October 29, 1969. The ARPANET was one of the "eve" networks of today's Internet. Following on from the demonstration that packet switching worked on the ARPANET, the British Post Office, Telenet, DATAPAC and TRANSPAC collaborated to create the first international packet switched network service. In the UK, this was referred to as the International Packet Stream Service (IPSS), in 1978. The collection of X.25-based networks grew from Europe and the US to cover Canada, Hong Kong and Australia by 1981. The X.25 packet switching standard was developed in the CCITT (now called ITU-T) around 1976. X.25 was independent of the TCP/IP protocols that arose from the experimental work of DARPA on the ARPANET, Packet Radio Net and Packet Satellite Net during the same time period. Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the first description of the TCP protocols during 1973 and published a paper on the subject in May 1974. Use of the term "Internet" to describe a single global TCP/IP network originated in December 1974 with the publication of RFC 674, the first full specification of TCP that was written by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine then at Stanford University. During the next nine years, work proceeded to refine the protocols and to implement them on a wide range of operating systems.

The first TCP/IP-wide area network was made operational by January 1, 1983 when all hosts on the ARPANET were switched over from the older NCP protocols to TCP/IP. In 1985, the United States' National Science Foundation (NSF) commissioned the construction of a university 56 kilobit/second network backbone using computers called "fuzzballs" by their inventor, David L. Mills. The following year, NSF sponsored the development of a higher speed 1.5 megabit/second backbone that become the NSFNet. A key decision to use the DARPA TCP/IP protocols was made by Dennis Jennings, then in charge of the Supercomputer program at NSF.

The opening of the network to commercial interests began in 1988. The US Federal Networking Council approved the interconnection of the NSFNET to the commercial MCI Mail system in that year and the link was made in the summer of 1989. Other commercial electronic email services were soon connected, including OnTyme, Telemail and Compuserve. In that same year, three commercial Internet Service Providers were created: UUNET, PSINET and CERFNET. Important, separate networks that offered gateways into, then later merged with the Internet include Usenet and BITNET. Various other commercial and educational networks, such as Telenet, Tymnet, Compuserve and JANET were interconnected with the growing Internet. Telenet (later called Sprintnet) was a large privately-funded national computer network with free dial-up access in cities throughout the U.S. that had been in operation since the 1970s. This network was eventually interconnected with the others in the 1980s as the TCP/IP protocol became increasingly popular. The ability of TCP/IP to work over virtually any pre-existing communication networks allowed for a great ease of growth although the rapid growth of the Internet was due primarily to the availability of commercial routers from companies such as Cisco Systems, Proteon and Juniper, the availability of commercial Ethernet equipment for local area networking and the widespread implementation of TCP/IP on the UNIX operating system.

Growth

Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost a decade, the network did not gain a public face until the 1990s. On August 6, 1991, CERN, which straddles the border between France and Switzerland, publicized the new World Wide Web project. The Web was invented by English scientist Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.

An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW based upon HyperCard. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993, the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word "Internet" had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its misuse as a reference to the World Wide Web.

Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks, such as FidoNet, have remained separate). During the 1990s, it was estimated that the Internet grew by 100% per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and 1997.^[3] This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network.^{[citation needed]}

University Students Appreciation and Contributions

New findings in the field of communications during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s were quickly adopted by universities across the United States.

Examples of early university Internet communities are Cleveland FreeNet, Blacksburg Electronic Village and NSTN in Nova Scotia ^[4]. Students took up the opportunity of free communications and saw this new phenomenon as a tool of liberation. Personal computers and the Internet would free them from corporations and governments (Nelson, Jennings, Stallman).

Graduate students played a huge part in the creation of ARPANET. In the 1960’s, the network working group, which did most of the design for ARPANET’s protocols was composed mainly of graduate students.

Today's Internet

The Opera Community rack. From the top, user file storage (content of files.myopera.com), "bigma" (the master MySQL database server), and two IBM blade centers containing multi-purpose machines (Apache front ends, Apache back ends, slave MySQL database servers, load balancers, file servers, cache servers and sync masters).

Aside from the complex physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral commercial contracts (e.g., peering agreements), and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to exchange data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is essentially defined by its interconnections and routing policies.

As of September 30, 2007, 1.244 billion people use the Internet according to Internet World Stats. Writing in the Harvard International Review, philosopher N.J.Slabbert, a writer on policy issues for the Washington DC-based Urban Land Institute, has asserted that the Internet is fast becoming a basic feature of global civilization, so that what has traditionally been called "civil society" is now becoming identical with information technology society as defined by Internet use. Some suggest that as low as 2% of the World's population regularly accesses the internet.

Internet protocols

In this context, there are three layers of protocols:

• At the lower level (OSI layer 3) is IP (Internet Protocol), which defines the datagrams or packets that carry blocks of data from one node to another. The vast majority of today's Internet uses version four of the IP protocol (i.e. IPv4), and although IPv6 is standardized, it exists only as "islands" of connectivity, and there are many ISPs without any IPv6 connectivity. ^[7]. ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) also exists at this level. ICMP is connectionless; it is used for control, signaling, and error reporting purposes.

• TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and UDP (User Datagram Protocol) exist at the next layer up (OSI layer 4); these are the protocols by which data is transmitted. TCP makes a virtual 'connection', which gives some level of guarantee of reliability. UDP is a best-effort, connectionless transport, in which data packets that are lost in transit will not be re-sent.

• The application protocols sit on top of TCP and UDP and occupy layers 5, 6, and 7 of the OSI model. These define the specific messages and data formats sent and understood by the applications running at each end of the communication. Examples of these protocols are HTTP, FTP, and SMTP.

Internet structure

There have been many analyses of the Internet and its structure. For example, it has been determined that the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks.

Similar to the way the commercial Internet providers connect via Internet exchange points, research networks tend to interconnect into large subnetworks such as:

• GEANT
• GLORIAD
• The Internet2 Network (formally known as the Abilene Network)
• JANET (the UK's national research and education network)

These in turn are built around relatively smaller networks. See also the list of academic computer network organizations

In network diagrams, the Internet is often represented by a cloud symbol, into and out of which network communications can pass.

ICANN

ICANN headquarters in Marina Del Rey, California, United States

For more details on this topic, see ICANN.

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the authority that coordinates the assignment of unique identifiers on the Internet, including domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, and protocol port and parameter numbers. A globally unified namespace (i.e., a system of names in which there is at most one holder for each possible name) is essential for the Internet to function. ICANN is headquartered in Marina del Rey, California, but is overseen by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business, academic, and non-commercial communities. The US government continues to have the primary role in approving changes to the root zone file that lies at the heart of the domain name system. Because the Internet is a distributed network comprising many voluntarily interconnected networks, the Internet, as such, has no governing body. ICANN's role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central coordinating body on the global Internet, but the scope of its authority extends only to the Internet's systems of domain names, IP addresses, protocol ports and parameter numbers.

On November 16, 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society, held in Tunis, established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues.

Language

For more details on this topic, see English on the Internet.

Further information: Unicode

The prevalent language for communication on the Internet is English. This may be a result of the Internet's origins, as well as English's role as the lingua franca. It may also be related to the poor capability of early computers, largely originating in the United States, to handle characters other than those in the English variant of the Latin alphabet.

After English (31% of Web visitors) the most-requested languages on the World Wide Web are Chinese 16%, Spanish 9%, Japanese 7%, German 5% and French 5% ^[8].

By continent, 37% of the world's Internet users are based in Asia, 27% in Europe, 19% in North America, and 9% in Latin America and the Carribean^[9].

The Internet's technologies have developed enough in recent years, especially in the use of Unicode, that good facilities are available for development and communication in most widely used languages. However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display of foreign language characters, also known as kryakozyabry) still remain.

Internet and the workplace

The Internet is allowing greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with the spread of unmetered high-speed connections and Web applications.

The Internet viewed on mobile devices

The Internet can now be accessed virtually anywhere by numerous means. Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to connect to the Internet from anywhere there is a cellular network supporting that device's technology.

Common uses of the Internet

E-mail

For more details on this topic, see E-mail.

The concept of sending electronic text messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet. Even today it can be important to distinguish between Internet and internal e-mail systems. Internet e-mail may travel and be stored unencrypted on many other networks and machines out of both the sender's and the recipient's control. During this time it is quite possible for the content to be read and even tampered with by third parties, if anyone considers it important enough. Purely internal or intranet mail systems, where the information never leaves the corporate or organization's network, are much more secure, although in any organization there will be IT and other personnel whose job may involve monitoring, and occasionally accessing, the email of other employees not addressed to them.

The World Wide Web

For more details on this topic, see World Wide Web.

Graphic representation of less than 0.0001% of the WWW, representing some of the hyperlinks

Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (or just the Web) interchangeably, but, as discussed above, the two terms are not synonymous.

The World Wide Web is a huge set of interlinked documents, images and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. These hyperlinks and URLs allow the web-servers and other machines that store originals, and cached copies, of these resources to deliver them as required using HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol). HTTP is only one of the communication protocols used on the Internet.

Web services also use HTTP to allow software systems to communicate in order to share and exchange business logic and data.

Software products that can access the resources of the Web are correctly termed user agents. In normal use, web browsers, such as Internet Explorer and Firefox access web pages and allow users to navigate from one to another via hyperlinks. Web documents may contain almost any combination of computer data including photographs, graphics, sounds, text, video, multimedia and interactive content including games, office applications and scientific demonstrations.

Through keyword-driven Internet research using search engines, like Yahoo!, and Google, millions of people worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and diverse amount of online information. Compared to encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the World Wide Web has enabled a sudden and extreme decentralization of information and data.

It is also easier, using the Web, than ever before for individuals and organisations to publish ideas and information to an extremely large audience. Anyone can find ways to publish a web page or build a website for very little initial cost. Publishing and maintaining large, professional websites full of attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition, however.

Many individuals and some companies and groups use "web logs" or blogs, which are largely used as easily-updatable online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to fill them with advice on their areas of specialization in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, whose product developers publish their personal blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work.

Collections of personal web pages published by large service providers remain popular, and have become increasingly sophisticated. Whereas operations such as Angelfire and GeoCities have existed since the early days of the Web, newer offerings from, for example, Facebook and MySpace currently have large followings. These operations often brand themselves as social network services rather than simply as web page hosts.

Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce or the sale of products and services directly via the Web continues to grow.

In the early days, web pages were usually created as sets of complete and isolated HTML text files stored on a web server. More recently, web sites are more often created using content management system (CMS) or wiki software with, initially, very little content. Users of these systems, who may be paid staff, members of a club or other organisation or members of the public, fill the underlying databases with content using editing pages designed for that purpose, while casual visitors view and read this content in its final HTML form. There may or may not be editorial, approval and security systems built into the process of taking newly entered content and making it available to the target visitors.

Remote access

Further information: Remote access

The Internet allows computer users to connect to other computers and information stores easily, wherever they may be across the world. They may do this with or without the use of security, authentication and encryption technologies, depending on the requirements.

This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and information sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These accounts could have been created by home-working book-keepers, in other remote locations, based on information e-mailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the Internet, but the cost of private, leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice.

An office worker away from his desk, perhaps the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can open a remote desktop session into their normal office PC using a secure Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection via the Internet. This gives the worker complete access to all of their normal files and data, including e-mail and other applications, while away from the office.

This concept is also referred to by some network security people as the Virtual Private Nightmare, because it extends the secure perimeter of a corporate network into its employees' homes; this has been the source of some notable security breaches, but also provides security for the workers.

Collaboration

See also: Collaborative software

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has made collaborative work dramatically easier. Not only can a group cheaply communicate and test, but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups to easily form in the first place, even among niche interests. An example of this is the free software movement in software development which produced GNU and Linux from scratch and has taken over development of Mozilla and OpenOffice.org (formerly known as Netscape Communicator and StarOffice). Films such as Zeitgeist, Loose Change and Endgame have had extensive coverage on the internet, while being virtually ignored in the mainstream media.

Internet 'chat', whether in the form of IRC 'chat rooms' or channels, or via instant messaging systems allow colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way when working at their computers during the day. Messages can be sent and viewed even more quickly and conveniently than via e-mail. Extension to these systems may allow files to be exchanged, 'whiteboard' drawings to be shared as well as voice and video contact between team members.

Version control systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents without either accidentally overwriting each other's work or having members wait until they get 'sent' documents to be able to add their thoughts and changes.

File sharing

For more details on this topic, see File sharing.

A computer file can be e-mailed to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a Web site or FTP server for easy download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks.

In any of these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication; the transit of the file over the Internet may be obscured by encryption and money may change hands before or after access to the file is given. The price can be paid by the remote charging of funds from, for example a credit card whose details are also passed—hopefully fully encrypted—across the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other message digests.

These simple features of the Internet, over a world-wide basis, are changing the basis for the production, sale, and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of print publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of these products.

Internet collaboration technology enables business and project teams to share documents, calendars and other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research, software development, conference planning, political activism and creative writing.

Streaming media

Many existing radio and television broadcasters provide Internet 'feeds' of their live audio and video streams (for example, the BBC). They may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet 'broadcasters' who never had on-air licenses. This means that an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. The range of material is much wider, from pornography to highly specialized technical Web-casts. Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where—usually audio—material is first downloaded in full and then may be played back on a computer or shifted to a digital audio player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual material on a worldwide basis.

Webcams can be seen as an even lower-budget extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full frame rate video, the picture is usually either small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships in the Panama Canal, the traffic at a local roundabout or their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat rooms, video conferencing, and remote controllable webcams are also popular. Many uses can be found for personal webcams in and around the home, with and without two-way sound.

YouTube, sometimes described as an internet phenomenon because of the vast amount of users and how rapidly the sites popularity has grown. Youtube was founded in February 15, 2005. It is now the leading website for free streaming video. It uses a flash based web player which streams video files in the format FLV. Users are able to watch videos without signing up however if users do sign up they are able to upload an unlimited amount of videos and they are given their own personal profile. It is currently estimated that there are 64,000,000 videos on Youtube and it is also currently estimated that 825,000 new videos are uploaded every day.

Voice telephony (VoIP)

For more details on this topic, see VoIP.

VoIP stands for Voice over IP, where IP refers to the Internet Protocol that underlies all Internet communication. This phenomenon began as an optional two-way voice extension to some of the Instant Messaging systems that took off around the year 2000. In recent years many VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the Internet carries the actual voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a normal telephone call, especially over long distances and especially for those with always-on Internet connections such as cable or ADSL.

Thus VoIP is maturing into a viable alternative to traditional telephones. Interoperability between different providers has improved and the ability to call or receive a call from a traditional telephone is available. Simple inexpensive VoIP modems are now available that eliminate the need for a PC.

Voice quality can still vary from call to call but is often equal to and can even exceed that of traditional calls.

Remaining problems for VoIP include emergency telephone number dialling and reliability. Currently a few VoIP providers provide an emergency service but it is not universally available. Traditional phones are line powered and operate during a power failure, VoIP does not do so without a backup power source for the electronics.

Most VoIP providers offer unlimited national calling but the direction in VoIP is clearly toward global coverage with unlimited minutes for a low monthly fee.

VoIP has also become increasingly popular within the gaming world, as a form of communication between players. Popular gaming VoIP clients include Ventrilo and Teamspeak, and there are others available also. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 also offer VoIP chat features.

Internet by region

[show] Internet in Africa
Sovereign states	Algeria · Angola · Benin · Botswana · Burkina Faso · Burundi · Cameroon · Cape Verde · Central African Republic · Chad · Comoros · Democratic Republic of the Congo · Republic of the Congo · Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast) · Djibouti · Egypt · Equatorial Guinea · Eritrea · Ethiopia · Gabon · The Gambia · Ghana · Guinea · Guinea-Bissau · Kenya · Lesotho · Liberia · Libya · Madagascar · Malawi · Mali · Mauritania · Mauritius · Morocco · Mozambique · Namibia · Niger · Nigeria · Rwanda · São Tomé and Príncipe · Senegal · Seychelles · Sierra Leone · Somalia · South Africa · Sudan · Swaziland · Tanzania · Togo · Tunisia · Uganda · Zambia · Zimbabwe
Dependencies, autonomies and other territories	Canary Islands (Spain) · Ceuta (Spain) · Madeira (Portugal) · Mayotte (France) · Melilla (Spain) · Puntland · Réunion (France) · St. Helena (UK) · Socotra (Yemen) · Somaliland · Southern Sudan · Western Sahara · Zanzibar (Tanzania)

[show] Internet in North America
Sovereign states	Antigua and Barbuda · Bahamas · Barbados · Belize · Canada · Costa Rica · Cuba · Dominica · Dominican Republic · El Salvador · Grenada · Guatemala · Haiti · Honduras · Jamaica · Mexico · Nicaragua · Panama* · Saint Kitts and Nevis · Saint Lucia · Saint Vincent and the Grenadines · Trinidad and Tobago* · United States
Dependencies and other territories	Anguilla · Aruba* · Bermuda · British Virgin Islands · Cayman Islands · Greenland · Guadeloupe · Martinique · Montserrat · Navassa Island · Netherlands Antilles* · Puerto Rico · Saint Barthélemy · Saint Martin · Saint Pierre and Miquelon · Turks and Caicos Islands · U. S. Virgin Islands
* Territories also in or commonly reckoned elsewhere in the Americas (South America).

[show] Internet in South America
Sovereign states	Argentina · Bolivia · Brazil · Chile · Colombia · Ecuador · Guyana · Panama* · Paraguay · Peru · Suriname · Trinidad and Tobago* · Uruguay · Venezuela
Dependencies	Aruba* (Netherlands) · Falkland Islands (UK) · French Guiana (France) · Netherlands Antilles* (Netherlands) · South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands (UK)
* Territories also in or commonly reckoned elsewhere in the Americas (North America).

[show] Internet in Asia
Sovereign states and other territories	Afghanistan · Armenia · Azerbaijan1 · Bahrain · Bangladesh · Bhutan · Brunei · Burma · Cambodia · China (People's Republic of China [Hong Kong · Macau]) · Cyprus · East Timor1 · Egypt1 · Georgia1 · India · Indonesia1 · Iran · Iraq · Israel · Japan · Jordan · Kazakhstan1 · Korea (North Korea · South Korea) · Kuwait · Kyrgyzstan · Laos · Lebanon · Malaysia · Maldives · Mongolia · Nepal · Oman · Pakistan · Palestinian territories · Philippines · Qatar · Russia1 · Saudi Arabia · Singapore · Sri Lanka · Republic of China (Taiwan) · Syria · Tajikistan · Thailand · Turkey1 · Turkmenistan · United Arab Emirates · Uzbekistan · Vietnam · Yemen1
1countries spanning more than one continent

[show] Internet in Europe
Sovereign states	Albania · Andorra · Armenia1 · Austria · Azerbaijan2 · Belarus · Belgium · Bosnia and Herzegovina · Bulgaria · Croatia · Cyprus1 · Czech Republic · Denmark · Estonia · Finland · France · Georgia2 · Germany · Greece · Hungary · Iceland · Ireland · Italy · Kazakhstan2 · Latvia · Liechtenstein · Lithuania · Luxembourg · Macedonia · Malta · Moldova · Monaco · Montenegro · Netherlands · Norway · Poland · Portugal · Romania · Russia3 · San Marino · Serbia · Slovakia · Slovenia · Spain · Sweden · Switzerland · Turkey3 · Ukraine · United Kingdom
1 Entirely in Southwest Asia; included here because of cultural, political and historical association with Europe. 2 Partially or entirely in Asia, depending on the definition of the border between Europe and Asia. 3 Mostly in Asia.

[show] Internet in Oceania
Australasia	Australia · Norfolk Island · Christmas Island · Cocos (Keeling) Islands · New Zealand
Melanesia	East Timor1 · Fiji · Indonesia1 · New Caledonia · Papua New Guinea · Solomon Islands · Vanuatu
Micronesia	Guam · Kiribati · Marshall Islands · Northern Mariana Islands · Federated States of Micronesia · Nauru · Palau
Polynesia	American Samoa · Cook Islands · French Polynesia · Niue · Pitcairn · Samoa · Tokelau · Tonga · Tuvalu · Wallis and Futuna
1 countries spanning more than one continent

Censorship

For more details on this topic, see Internet censorship.

Some governments, such as those of Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Myanmar, the People's Republic of China, and Saudi Arabia, restrict what people in their countries can access on the Internet, especially political and religious content. This is accomplished through software that filters domains and content so that they may not be easily accessed or obtained without elaborate circumvention.

In Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily (possibly to avoid such an arrangement being turned into law) agreed to restrict access to sites listed by police. While this list of forbidden URLs is only supposed to contain addresses of known child pornography sites, the content of the list is secret.^{[citation needed]}

Many countries, including the United States, have enacted laws making the possession or distribution of certain material, such as child pornography, illegal, but do not use filtering software.

There are many free and commercially available software programs with which a user can choose to block offensive Web sites on individual computers or networks, such as to limit a child's access to pornography or violence. See Content-control software.

Internet access

For more details on this topic, see Internet access.

Wikibooks has a book on the topic of

Online linux connect

Common methods of home access include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or copper wires), Wi-Fi, satellite and 3G technology cell phones.

Public places to use the Internet include libraries and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in many public places such as airport halls and coffee shops, in some cases just for brief use while standing. Various terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", and "Web payphone". Many hotels now also have public terminals, though these are usually fee-based. These terminals are widely accessed for various usage like ticket booking, bank deposit, online payment etc. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi-cafes, where a would-be user needs to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. The whole campus or park, or even the entire city can be enabled. Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial WiFi services covering large city areas are in place in London, Vienna, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The Internet can then be accessed from such places as a park bench.^[10]

Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular phone networks, and fixed wireless services.

High-end mobile phones such as smartphones generally come with Internet access through the phone network. Web browsers such as Opera are available on these advanced handsets, which can also run a wide variety of other Internet software. More mobile phones have Internet access than PCs, though this is not as widely used. An Internet access provider and protocol matrix differentiates the methods used to get online.

Leisure

The Internet has been a major source of leisure since before the World Wide Web, with entertaining social experiments such as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much of the main traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short cartoons in the form of Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs or message boards as a means of communication and for the sharing of ideas.

The pornography and gambling industries have both taken full advantage of the World Wide Web, and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other Web sites. Although many governments have attempted to put restrictions on both industries' use of the Internet, this has generally failed to stop their widespread popularity.

One main area of leisure on the Internet is multiplayer gaming. This form of leisure creates communities, bringing people of all ages and origins to enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing games to online gambling. This has revolutionized the way many people interact and spend their free time on the Internet.

While online gaming has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with services such as GameSpy and MPlayer, which players of games would typically subscribe to. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of gameplay or certain games.

Many use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation. As discussed above, there are paid and unpaid sources for all of these, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer technologies. Discretion is needed as some of these sources take more care over the original artists' rights and over copyright laws than others.

Many use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and book holidays and to find out more about their random ideas and casual interests.

People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. Social networking Web sites like Myspace and Facebook many others like them also put and keep people in contact for their enjoyment.

The Internet has seen a growing number of Internet operating systems, where users can access their files, folders, and settings via the Internet. An example of an opensource webOS is Eyeos.

Cyberslacking has become a serious drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spends 57 minutes a day surfing the Web at work, according to a study by Peninsula Business Services ^[11].

Complex architecture

Many computer scientists see the Internet as a "prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly complex system".^[12] The Internet is extremely heterogeneous. (For instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of connections vary widely.) The Internet exhibits "emergent phenomena" that depend on its large-scale organization. For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity. Further adding to the complexity of the Internet is the ability of more than one computer to use the Internet through only one node, thus creating the possibility for a very deep and hierarchal based sub-network that can theoretically be extended infinitely (disregarding the programmatic limitations of the IPv4 protocol). However, since principles of this architecture date back to the 1960s, it might not be a solution best suited to modern needs, and thus the possibility of developing alternative structures is currently being looked into.^[13]

According to a June 2007 article in Discover Magazine, the combined weight of all the electrons moved within the internet in a day is 0.2 millionths of an ounce.^[14] Others have estimated this at nearer 2 ounces (50 grams).^[15]

Marketing

The Internet has also become a large market for companies; some of the biggest companies today have grown by taking advantage of the efficient nature of low-cost advertising and commerce through the Internet, also known as e-commerce. It is the fastest way to spread information to a vast number of people simultaneously. The Internet has also subsequently revolutionized shopping—for example; a person can order a CD online and receive it in the mail within a couple of days, or download it directly in some cases. The Internet has also greatly facilitated personalized marketing which allows a company to market a product to a specific person or a specific group of people more so than any other advertising medium.

Examples of personalized marketing include online communities such as MySpace, Friendster, Orkut, Facebook and others which thousands of Internet users join to advertise themselves and make friends online. Many of these users are young teens and adolescents ranging from 13 to 25 years old. In turn, when they advertise themselves they advertise interests and hobbies, which online marketing companies can use as information as to what those users will purchase online, and advertise their own companies' products to those users.

Further information: Disintermediation#Impact of Internet-related disintermediation upon various industries and Travel agency#The Internet threat

The name Internet

For more details on this topic, see Internet capitalization conventions.

Internet is traditionally written with a capital first letter, as it is a proper noun. The Internet Society, the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, the World Wide Web Consortium, and several other Internet-related organizations use this convention in their publications.

Many newspapers, newswires, periodicals, and technical journals capitalize the term (Internet). Examples include The New York Times, the Associated Press, Time, The Times of India, Hindustan Times, and Communications of the ACM.

Others assert that the first letter should be in lower case (internet), and that the specific article “the” is sufficient to distinguish “the internet” from other internets. A significant number of publications use this form, including The Economist, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times, and The Sydney Morning Herald. As of 2005, many publications using internet appear to be located outside of North America—although one U.S. news source, Wired News, has adopted the lower-case spelling.

Historically, Internet and internet have had different meanings, with internet meaning “an interconnected set of distinct networks,” and Internet referring to the world-wide, publicly-available IP internet. Under this distinction, "the Internet" is the familiar network via which websites exist, however "an internet" can exist between any two remote locations.^[16] Any group of distinct networks connected together is an internet; each of these networks may or may not be part of the Internet. The distinction was evident in many RFCs, books, and articles from the 1980s and early 1990s (some of which, such as RFC 1918, refer to "internets" in the plural), but has recently fallen into disuse.^{[citation needed]} Instead, the term intranet is generally used for private networks, whether they are connected to the Internet or not. See also: extranet.

Some people use the lower-case term as a medium (like radio or newspaper, e.g. I've found it on the internet), and first letter capitalized as the global network.

Major aspects and issues

• Internet democracy
• History of the Internet
• Net neutrality
• Privacy on the Internet

Functions

• E-mail
• File-sharing
• Instant messaging
• Internet fax
• World Wide Web
• Voice over IP
• Mobile VoIP

Underlying infrastructure

• Internet Protocol (IP)
• Internet Service Provider (ISP)