Paul Krugman Versus Bitcoin: New at Reason

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bitcoinIt will probably come as no surprise that Paul Krugman is a cryptocurrency critic. The Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist is a known skeptic of laissez-faire alternatives to government interventions, and it makes sense that this doubt would carry over to distributed digital money. In 2013, he went so far as to claim that "bitcoin is evil" because he dislikes the "libertarian political agenda" he perceives at its core.

Recently, Krugman issued a more measured take on why he distrusts cryptocurrency. His opposition boils down to two things, transaction costs and volatility. Admirably, he admitted that he indeed could be wrong, and issued a challenge: "if you want to argue that I'm wrong, please answer the question, what problem does cryptocurrency solve?" Andrea O'Sullivan draws from her expertise on bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies to explain.

View this article.



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The Church of Trump

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Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, in late January of 2016, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump announced to an audience in Sioux City: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? It’s, like, incredible.”

Trump, who has always been prone to fantastical overstatement, was derided at the time, but here and now—over two-and-a-half years later—the statement seems prescient.

You could list the scandals—from the Mueller probe to Michael Cohen to Stormy Daniels, from Tom Price to Scott Pruitt to Ben Carson, from Bill Shine to Ronny Jackson to Jared Kushner, from the Trump Hotel to the Trump label, from Charlottesville to Ukraine—and while it would be very long, it would not (at least in the eyes of his supporters) be disqualifying. Politically speaking, the president is standing with his guns blazing in the middle of Fifth Avenue, and he’s not losing anyone. Miraculously, Trump remains on top; so far this year, Gallup has registered an approval rating among the members of his own party ranging from 81 to 90 percent. Despite it all, those numbers have barely budged.

How is such a thing possible? In part, it’s a symptom of contemporary politics—Obama enjoyed similarly high approval ratings from Democratic partisans during his terms in office. And there’s some evidence that Republicans disaffected with Trump are ceasing to identify with their party, leaving only the president’s supporters behind. But Obama never endured a comparable string of scandals; the erosion of the GOP’s ranks doesn’t explain the fervency of those who remain.

Is it Trump—or something larger than Trump? Possibly, it’s both. Last spring, my colleague Peter Beinart looked at the increasing secularization of American society and how it had contributed to the rise of political tribalism:

As Americans have left organized religion, they haven’t stopped viewing politics as a struggle between “us” and “them.” Many have come to define us and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways.

This tribalism has infected both the right and the left—but in particular, Beinart cited the work of W. Bradford Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, who has concluded that “rates of religious attendance have fallen more than twice as much among whites without a college degree as among those who graduated college.”

Non-college-educated whites are the Trump base, now set adrift:

Establishing causation is difficult, but we know that culturally conservative white Americans who are disengaged from church experience less economic success and more family breakdown than those who remain connected, and they grow more pessimistic and resentful.

You could draw a straight line from a disenfranchised, pessimistic, resentful audience to Trump’s brand of fear-driven, divisive politics, but this would leave out an equally important part of the Trump phenomenon, and something critical to its success: the elation. Go to a Trump rally, speak to Trump supporters, and the devotion is nearly evangelical. Their party line is less a talking point than a sermon: His voters have talked to me about the “bad deal” with Iran, the “drug mules” crossing the border, the Robert Mueller “witch hunt.” The language is uniform, as they quote chapter and verse. Here are the true believers: It is no surprise that Trump’s numbers won’t move.

In his research, Wilcox noted the particular isolation of the white working class in the institutional church:

Moderately educated Americans may feel less attracted to churches that uphold the bourgeois virtues—delayed gratification, a focus on education, self-control, etc.—that undergird this lifestyle. As importantly, working class whites may also feel uncomfortable socializing with the middle and upper class whites who have increasingly come to dominate the life of religious congregations in the U.S. since the 1970s, especially as they see their own economic fortunes fall.

The declining economic position of white working class Americans may have made the bourgeois moral logic embodied in many churches both less attractive and attainable.

Trumpism proposes a system of worship formed in direct opposition to bourgeois moral logic, with values that are anti-intellectual and anti-P.C. If mainline Protestantism is a bastion of the educated, upper middle class, the Church of Trump is a gathering place for its cast-offs. Trump's rhetoric about the “silent majority” is indeed a racial dog whistle, but it is also a call to his supporters to unmask themselves. He offers a public embrace of a worldview that has been, at least until this point, a mark of shame. There is belonging in this—but there is also relief.

That part of the Trump phenomenon remains mostly unnoticed, except by those who have witnessed it firsthand. Reporting from a rally in South Carolina in 2015, Molly Ball observed:

Despite all the negativity and fear, the energy in this room does not feel dark and aggressive and threatening. It doesn’t feel like a powder keg about to blow, a lynch mob about to rampage. It feels joyous.

“There is so much love in every room I go to,” Trump says, near the end of nearly an hour and a half of free-associative bombast, silly and sometimes offensive impressions, and insane pronouncements. “We want our country to be great again, and we know it can be done!”

At a rally in South Bend, Indiana that I attended earlier this year, there were offensive T-shirts (“Hillary Sucks … But Not Like Monica”) and angry chants, but there were also goofy costumes and free sandwiches. There was name-calling, but there were also group selfies.

I spoke to Wilcox about this aspect of Trumpism—the strange joy inherent in the shouts of self-designated “deplorable” status, and whether that might signal a substitute for the rapture of the church. “The Trump rallies have collective effervescence,” said Wilcox. “Emile Durkheim wrote about the power of collective effervescence—of engaging in common rituals that give them meaning and power and strength. And those things can be wonderful, or they can be dangerous.”

Durkheim’s theory—that a gathering of the tribe can create a certain energy that renders particular people or objects sacred—goes a long way toward explaining Trump’s infallibility among his supporters. But it also brings to the fore something that Trump critics have missed so far when focusing on his (not insignificant) negatives: Trumpism, like many forms of non-secular worship, makes its believers feel good.

“Among the poor and the working class,” Wilcox told me,“when it comes to both marriage and religion, there has been a real erosion. And that has hit them harder than the upper classes.”

He continued: “These two important sources of solidarity and meaning are now much less a part of working class American’s lives—and leaves them that much more disenchanted and disenfranchised.”

If Trumpism is endowing certain Americans with a sense of solidarity and support that were once found in institutions like the church (or marriage), the implications for the Republican Party—to say nothing of American society writ large—are consequential. At its core, the Church of Trump is irreconcilable with a society that values equal protection, free speech and the separation of powers. And yet strident efforts to convince the faithful of a prophet’s fallacy may backfire, producing redoubled faith. To deconstruct the complicated and visceral relationship between Trump and his supporters, those on the outside must begin to grapple with the oddness of the proposition itself: Trump, in all his baseness, offers his believers something that is, strangely, spiritually elevated.



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How to Track Your Heart Rate With Wearables

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You probably learned how to track your heart rate in school: Put your finger on a pulse point, like the inside of your wrist, and count how many pulses you feel in a minute. That yields your heart’s beats per minute, or bpm. Cool trick! you thought. And you promptly forgot about it.

But your heart rate can be a useful piece of data. It’s a reliable metric for setting fitness goals that puts your cardiovascular health—ahem—at the heart of your workout. Plus, maintaining a healthy heart rate can reduce your risk of strokes, heart disease, and cardiac arrest.

If you have a wrist-worn activity tracker, it’s dead simple to monitor your heart rate accurately and continuously. Here's how to use that data to keep your ticker in top shape.

Listen to Your Heart

From the moment you strap on a Fitbit or an Apple Watch, you'll start seeing your bpm on the screen. But what do those numbers mean?

“It’s important to understand that there is a spectrum of what constitutes a normal heart rate,” says Dr. Gregory Marcus, Director of Clinical Research for the Department of Cardiology at the University of California, San Francisco. He's also part of the research team for the Health eHeart Study, which aims to shed light on heart disease by analyzing digital health data from participants' mobile health-tracking devices.

You might have heard that a healthy resting heart rate—the rate when you’re physically and mentally relaxed—typically falls between 60 and 100 bpm. But Dr. Marcus explains that it’s not so simple, since heart rates vary from person to person.

“In many cases, the more fit a given individual is, the more their heart rate will slow while they’re at rest or while they’re asleep,” says Dr. Marcus. So a person who is very athletic might find that their resting heart rate slows to 30, even 20 bpm. This is because the heart muscle of a physically fit person doesn’t have to strain as much to support the body’s needs.

Your heart rate can also fluctuate widely throughout the day. So if your chest is pounding during a workout, your heart is pumping more oxygen-rich blood to support your physical exertion. Conversely, when you’re lounging on the couch, your heart rate might slow substantially. Your heart rate can also vary depending on your level of stress, if you’re pregnant, or if you’ve just downed a cup of coffee.

Dr. Marcus says that “in general, there isn’t really a heart rate that raises the concern of a cardiologist,” unless those perceived abnormalities in heart rate co-occur with more obvious symptoms. In other words: While it’s good to be mindful of your heart rate, don’t stress out too much. You may, ironically, raise your heart rate worrying about it, and that’s not healthy by any measure.

Take Measurement

Your heart rate is a convenient, objective way to measure how much you’re exerting yourself during a workout. Using the heart rate data from your activity tracker, you can inform and adapt your exercise regimen.

Start by determining your target heart rate. This is the heart rate that you should seek to achieve and maintain during rigorous exercise. Dr. Marcus advises collaborating with a physician or a trainer to determine your target heart rate and the duration for which you should aim to maintain it during a workout.

The American Heart Association offers some rough guidelines for setting your target heart rate. First, calculate the average maximum heart rate for someone your age. You can do this by subtracting your age from 220. So the average maximum heart rate for a 30-year-old would be around 190 bpm. Your target heart rate can be anywhere between 50 and 85 percent of your maximum heart rate. Depending on whether you’re easing back into a workout routine, or if you’ve been training regularly, you can set incremental goals to increase your progress toward your target heart rate.

During your workout, all you need to do is glance at your wearable tracker. You can also check your data afterward. Wearables like Garmin, Fitbit, and Apple Watches have compatible apps that graph your heart rate over time. You can easily see your bpm and have a concrete idea of the intensity of your workout.

Get the Right Fit

You can’t get an accurate read on your heart rate unless your device is charged, functional, and fitted properly. Make sure your wearable fits snugly around your wrist to ensure that it picks up your pulse during your workout.

Be mindful that some wearables give more accurate heart rate readings than others. While wrist wearables are for the most part precise enough for everyday use, chest wearables give the most exact readings. Some devices’ ability to pick up heart rates is compromised when you’re working out in the water, and others aren’t waterproof at all. For accurate heart rate readings, our own reviewer swears by Garmin’s wrist wearables.

Finally, remember not to focus so much on the numbers as much as the quality of your exercise. Use your heart rate data as a motivator—so you can run, dance, swim, and bike your way to a healthier heart.



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Bubble is a hilarious sci-fi spin on modern hipster culture

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There are a ton of podcasts out there, but finding the right one can be difficult. In our new column Pod Hunters, we cover what we’ve been listening to that we can’t stop thinking about.

Imagine life in Brooklyn, Portland, or any other fast-growing, hip metropolis, where people are obsessed with things like brunch, have a side hustle, or want to extoll the merits of Die Hard as a Christmas movie. Now imagine that city under a dome on an alien planet, and the threat from alien monsters. This is the world of Bubble, a science fiction comedy podcast from podcast studio Maximum Fun.

Bubble just wrapped up its first, eight-episode season, and follows an unlikely group of friends who come together thanks to an Uber-like app for hunting monsters called Huntr. This is a type of story that really rests on the shoulders of its main characters, and Bubble delivers that nicely in the form of one unlikely group of friends. Morgan is a hard-working young woman who grew up outside of the dome in the Brush, while Annie is her absent-minded, messy roommate who makes drugs from the planet’s wildlife and who can’t hold down a relationship. They eventually run into and team up with mild-mannered Mitch, who’s trying to survive in the gig economy and Van, a dudebro who’s become a viral star by live-streaming his hunts on the Huntr app.

Life in the “Portland-ish town of Fairhaven,” is a self-obsessed hipster utopia of craft beer bars and jogging paths, and is protected from the Brush by a literal Bubble set up by a corporation called Tandem, which has its own ulterior motives. Along the way, the four deal with their personal hangups and contend with some of the nastier plans that Tandem has in store for the world.

You can listen to Bubble on Maximum Fun’s website, as well as Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Overcast, Pocketcasts, RadioPublic, and Stitcher.

Image: Maximum Fun

Comedian and TV writer Jordan Morris (co-host of Jordan, Jesse, Go!) created Bubble, and told The Verge that he had been “thinking for a while about how difficult it is to live in a cool place, and how many sacrifices people make to live in a Brooklyn, or a Silver Lake, or a Portland ... unless you’re a rich person, it’s a special kind of little hell to make ends meet in those kinds of places. We make these excuses for the places we live because we like them and because of how awesome and fun and alive they can be.” With that observation, he imagined that sort of existence in a sci-fi world, where alongside the high rents, roommates, and hipsters, the residents of his world also had to deal with monsters, the threat of mutations, and corporate drones.

He first scripted the idea as a TV pilot, and did a stage reading with some of the people that he met through the comedy world. The reading was a hit and while there was some interest from the TV world, Morris noted that the general discussion went along the lines of “Hey, we really like it, where’s the story going? Okay cool, well, we’ll never make it, it’s too weird.” He noted that the story and mashup of genres was a weird idea, and that after releasing the stage reading, people began asking for more, which led him to the idea that it would work as a podcast.

The team worked to replicate a TV writer’s room to write the series

This coincided with Maximum Fun’s own interest in branching out into narrative audio storytelling. Morris had worked with the company for a while — he had gone to college with owner Jesse Thorn, and they co-hosted Jordan, Jesse, Go! together. Morris notes that the jump from the unscripted to scripted market was a “difficult and costly” one, because they were aiming for a product that was more polished than a typical radio show or unscripted podcast. The network brought in additional writers to replicate a TV writer’s room “as closely as possible,” as well as Nick Adams, a producer for Netflix’s Bojack Horseman, to turn the idea into a longer story. The writers scripted individual episodes, and worked with outside comedians to punch up the episodes with new ideas, jokes, and character moments. After that, they brought in experienced audio book directors and editors to turn the podcast into a polished story. That effort appears to have paid off — the podcast climbed the charts on iTunes shortly after it was released — it’s currently in the top 100.

Morris notes that he feels that there’s a lot more experimentation going on with podcasting as a form of entertainment. “It’s not just two white guys behind two microphones remembering Star Wars to each other,” he says. “I think we’re in a time when people are fine with genre and comedy mashing up against one another, and a lot of people who grew up with Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Angel, and comics from Gail Simone and Brian Michael Bendis, where the genre stuff lives next to the comedy comfy way.”

The show takes a comedic look at life in places that are a bit like Brooklyn or Portland: hip, expensive, and sometimes in a bubble of their own. Morris notes that he wasn’t specifically going after Silicon Valley culture, but that he “kind of wanted it to be an amalgamation of America’s hip, white gentrified, expensive-to-live-in places,” he says. ... It just seems like everybody there has a side hustle or everyone is trying to make ends meet by doing it with an internet or app-based way, [and it’s] just kind of funny to overhear people talking about these things in serious ways, people talking earnestly talking about their personal brand or disrupting — they’re buzzwords that didn’t exist give years ago.”

‘I hope this is something where people can laugh at themselves a bit’

“You know it’s funny, while we were in the writing sessions, at some point, everyone had a joke that made them go ‘hey...’, in a ‘I do that’ way. Mine came in episode 3, where there’s a line about an office drone guy who thinks that he’s interesting because he’s barrel aging his own whiskey. I remember reading that and going ‘hey!’ because I have recently begun barrel aging my own whiskey. I hope this is something where people can laugh at themselves a bit. I want people to see the silliness around them.”

The show’s first, eight-episode season just wrapped up its run, and Morris says the world of Bubble is a huge one, and that he has “a lot of cool ideas” for where the show can go after this first season.



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Don’t the Rich Deserve to Keep Their Money? (2016)

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Tech tycoons, beloved entertainers, and dazzling athletes nearly always come up in heated debates over taxes. Don’t you like your iPod? What about Harry Potter? Neoliberal economists argue that figures like Steve Jobs, J. K. Rowling, and LeBron James should make more money than the rest of us.

After all, we — the consumers — are the ones buying their products. Their higher pay creates the incentive necessary for the hard work and innovation that even the lazy among us benefit from.

Intuitive as it may seem, this view doesn’t hold up. Advocates for low taxes on the wealthy deliberately choose examples from tech and entertainment, suggesting that the elite are great innovators truly cut from a different cloth.

But a glance at the list of the top-paid CEOs in the United States tells us otherwise. The highest-paid executive is Discovery Communications’ David Zaslav, who made over $150 million in 2014. His great contribution to the human endeavor? Helping to air Here Comes Honey Boo Boo.

Most people understand this and believe the rich should pay more in taxes. According to a 2015 Gallup poll, 62 percent believe that upper-income earners are taxed “too little,” while just 25 percent think they pay their “fair share.” 69 percent believe corporations aren’t taxed enough, while only 16 percent were content with current rates.

But the socialist justification for taxes is grounded in a view — not often captured in opinion polls — about how capitalist wealth is actually created. To explore it, we first need to understand what taxes are and what non-socialists think about them.

Tax policy does two things in capitalist society. First, it determines what share of the total economic pie will be managed by the public, in the form of government revenue, and how much will be left to the use of private actors like individuals and corporations.

Second, it stipulates how that public share is divvied up between the competing needs and wants of individuals, organizations, and corporations. The first is about resource control while the second is a matter of allocation.

Even when a government takes in high tax revenue, it does not necessarily put it to progressive ends. Just consider the huge benefits that flow to corporations through subsidies or state-supported research and development, and it’s easy to see how governments can redistribute up, down, or horizontally.

In a capitalist economy, where productive resources remain privately owned, socialists call for a significant portion of the social product to be controlled publicly and democratically redistributed downward.

However, in the United States today, the libertarian view that “taxation is theft” has seeped so deeply into everyday conceptions of property that even those who support progressive taxation often accept the premise that there is a pre-tax income that people earn and should own outright.

Even the liberal credo that everyone needs to “do their fair share” is based on the implicit idea that workers and capital alike pay taxes out of a civic obligation to give up part of what is theirs for the betterment of society.

On the same grounds, libertarians argue that if pre-tax income is the direct product of a person or corporation’s own effort, it should be theirs to use as they see fit. In this view, even if the government has decided democratically to tax the rich at a higher rate, taxation remains fundamentally unjust. In the extreme formulation of libertarian political philosopher Robert Nozick, “taxation of earnings from labor is on par with forced labor.”

That viewpoint has been rightly criticized by progressives. But socialists should not fall back on the common liberal criterion for taxation: that a person or corporation’s ability to pay should determine the amount they pay. The familiar justification circulates even among leftists, who hear within it an echo of the dictum “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

This perspective suggests one of two things, both of which are inaccurate.

First, that taxes are a kind of necessary evil for those that are being taxed. Even though a person or corporation’s pre-tax income is the result of their own labor, it’s more practical for society to tax some of that income for public purposes than to leave it under private control. Or, alternatively, that taxing the rich more is just being fair.

Both of these views get us tangled back in the libertarian thicket — doesn’t such a tax policy still encroach on the rights of the individual? Should fairness then trump individual rights? And doesn’t the socialist argument for heavy progressive taxation ultimately also violate the rights of the individual as well? Why do socialists hate freedom so much?

The socialist view of redistribution within a capitalist society must reject an important premise at play in nearly all tax policy debates: that pre-tax income is something earned solely by individual effort and possessed privately before the state intervenes to take a part of it. Once we break from this libertarian fantasy, it’s easy to see that individual and corporate income is made possible only through tax-financed state action.

The capitalist economy is not self-regulating. The first precondition for firms to earn profits is state-enforced property rights, which give some people ownership and control over productive resources while excluding others.

Second, governments have to manage labor markets to help ensure that the skill needs of firms are met. States do this through setting immigration and education policies. All capitalist states also try to mitigate labor market risks, whether it be the risk of labor scarcity for firms or unemployment for workers.

Third, most capitalists want states to enforce anti-trust, contract, criminal, property, and tort laws, as it makes market interactions more predictable and reliable. And finally, the capitalist economy needs a working infrastructure. Even most libertarians argue that state control over the money supply and interest rates is necessary to spur or slow growth when the economy needs it.

All of this is done with taxes. In short, the very notion of pre-tax income or profits is a bookkeeping trick. A person’s income or a corporation’s profits are in part the result of governments collecting taxes and actively creating the conditions under which they were able to make money in the first place. In this framework, “tax the rich” isn’t merely a cry of spite or a demand for fairness.

The socialist case for taxation and progressive redistribution is built from three basic factors of how capitalism works. First, as just explored, personal incomes and corporate profits are not simply the result of individual work and business competition — instead they are part of a broader social product.

The total income generated in a capitalist society is the result of a collective social effort, made possible by a specific social and legal architecture, and channeled through both publicly funded and privately controlled and financed institutions.

Second, the class inequality that results from making this social product is relational. Capitalists are able to accumulate large stores of wealth only because workers do not. All things being equal, firms can raise their profits in inverse proportion to the labor costs they bear.

The condition for this relationship is, once again, political and maintained through tax revenue. Firms rely on states to enforce property rights and contracts that keep ownership of society’s productive resources — its means of production — in the hands of very few.

As a result, in capitalism, most people work for others; they don’t hire others to work for them. And capitalists employ workers only when they believe that those workers’ efforts are going to make the firm more money than they will take out in wages — doing otherwise would be market suicide.

Of course, hard work, guile, and luck afford some workers the ability to become capitalists. But the basic structure of capitalism, in which a small number own most of the productive assets, guarantees that the vast majority of people will (at best) spend their lives earning wages, but never profits. Taxation provides a partial remedy to that essential, structural inequality of capitalist society.

Third, redistribution through taxation is a means of extending individual freedom — not curtailing it, as libertarians contend. Freedom, according to the liberal theorist Isaiah Berlin, has a dual composition. On one side, there is negative freedom, the absence of coercion or “freedom from” that is the hallmark of most common conceptions of freedom in the United States today.

With respect to coercion, taxes fund a variety of public provisions that offer citizens some measure of freedom from the private tyranny of firms. They form the entire basis of the state apparatus that, in a capitalist system, is the only force whose power exceeds that of the capitalist class as a whole.

Without laws prohibiting slavery, written by legislatures and enforced in courts sustained by the public coffers, people would be compelled by threat of violence or starvation to work for no money at all. Without regulations, like those that demand at least minimal workplace safety or the ones that compel management to engage in collective bargaining, workers would lose what little say they have in how their work is organized.

In the context of tax policy, however, positive freedom matters as well. Positive freedom is the “ability to” — the capacity to do things, and the possibility of selecting goals and making efforts to realize them. Such freedom requires resources.

In capitalist societies with low levels of redistribution, positive freedom is a zero-sum game in which a few enjoy a great deal of such abilities at the expense of many others. Tax policy that divides the social product in such a way that allows some people to live opulent lives while others scrape by cannot be said to promote freedom.

The public education system, for example, which offers citizens the opportunity to develop knowledge and skills in pursuit of both collective and individual ambitions, is a bedrock of positive freedom that can only be sustained through taxation.

In a truly socialist society, the combination of political and economic equality would offer everyone a far greater degree of both negative and positive freedom than they enjoy under capitalism. Until we realize that world, progressive redistribution through taxation is both a means to redress structural inequalities and the primary way we can expand and extend freedom to as many people as possible.

But we are headed down the wrong path. Over the past few decades, financial gains from growing labor productivity have primarily flowed to the top while tax rates on top earners have been drastically lowered and now approach pre-New Deal levels.

Even a modest increase in the total tax burden on the top 1 percent of earners to a 45 percent rate, far lower than its postwar levels, would bring in an additional $275 billion in revenue. That’s far more than just the $47 billion needed to make all public colleges and universities tuition free.

Such increases also go a long way in generating the revenue needed to finance a universal health care system, increase Social Security benefits, and rebuild our crumbling infrastructure.

Most would agree that we all deserve to live in a society where we are given what we deserve, are free, and have the capacity to be creative and reach our potential. As unglamorous as it may seem, redistributive taxation is a step in this direction. The rich didn’t earn their wealth — they’re just holding on to it for us.



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What Does Immersing Yourself in a Book Do to Your Brain?

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Only connect.

–E.M. Forster

The act of taking on the perspective and feelings of others is one of the most profound, insufficiently heralded contributions of the deep-reading processes. Proust’s description of “that fertile miracle of communication effected in solitude” depicts an intimate emotional dimension within the reading experience: the capacity to communicate and to feel with another without moving an inch out of our private worlds. This capacity imparted by reading—to leave and yet not leave one’s sphere—is what gave the reclusive Emily Dickinson what she called her personal “frigate” to other lives and lands outside her perch above Main Street in Amherst, Massachusetts.

The narrative theologian John S. Dunne described this process of encounter and perspective taking in reading as the act of “passing over,” in which we enter into the feelings, imaginings, and thoughts of others through a particular kind of empathy: “Passing over is never total but is always partial and incomplete. And there is an equal and opposite process of coming back to oneself.” It is a beautifully apt description for how we move from our inherently circumscribed views of the world to enter another’s and return enlarged. In Love’s Mind, his numinous book on contemplation, Dunne expanded Proust’s insight: “That ‘fruitful miracle of a communication effected in solitude’ may be already a kind of learning to love.” Dunne saw the paradox that Proust described within reading—in which communication occurs despite the solitary nature of the reading act—as an unexpected preparation for our efforts to come to know other human beings, understand what they feel, and begin to change our sense of who or what is “other.” For theologians such as John Dunne and writers such as Gish Jen, whose lifework illumines this principle in fiction and nonfiction alike, the act of reading is a special place in which human beings are freed from themselves to pass over to others and, in so doing, learn what it means to be another person with aspirations, doubts, and emotions that they might otherwise never have known.

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A powerful example of the transforming effects of “passing over” was told to me by a Berkeley-trained drama teacher who works with adolescents in the heart of the Midwest. A student came to him, a beautiful 13-year-old girl, who said she wanted to be part of his theater group performing William Shakespeare’s plays. It would have been an ordinary request, save for the reality that the young girl had advanced cystic fibrosis and had been told she had only a brief time to live. That amazing teacher gave the young girl a role he hoped would give her the feelings of romantic love and passion that she might never experience in life. She became, he said, the perfect Juliet. Almost overnight, she memorized the lines of Romeo and Juliet as if she had played the role a hundred times before.

It was what happened next that stunned everyone around her. She went on to become one Shakespearean heroine after another, each role performed with more emotional depth and strength than the one before. Years have now passed since she played Juliet. Against all expectations and medical prognoses, she has entered college, where she is pursuing a dual degree in medicine and theater, in which she will continue to “pass over” into one role after another.

That young woman’s exceptional example is not so much about whether the mind and heart can overcome the limitations of the body; rather, it is about the powerful nature of what entering the lives of others can mean for our own lives. Drama makes more visible what each of us does when we pass over in our deepest, most immersive forms of reading. We welcome the Other as a guest within ourselves, and sometimes we become Other. For a moment in time we leave ourselves; and when we return, sometimes expanded and strengthened, we are changed both intellectually and emotionally. And sometimes, as this remarkable young woman’s example shows us, we experience what life has not allowed us. It is an incalculable gift.

And there is a gift within a gift. Perspective-taking not only connects our sense of empathy with what we have just read but also expands our internalized knowledge of the world. These are the learned capacities that help us become more human over time, whether as a child when reading Frog and Toad and learning what Toad does when Frog is sick or as an adult when reading Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Colson Whitehead’s Underground Railroad, or James Baldwin’s I Am Not Your Negro, and experiencing the soul-stealing depravity of slavery and the desperation of those condemned to it or to its legacy.

Through this consciousness-changing dimension of the act of reading, we learn to feel what it means to be despairing and hopeless or ecstatic and consumed with unspoken feelings. I no longer remember how many times I have read what each of Jane Austen’s heroines felt—Emma, Fanny Price, Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice or in her newest incarnation in Curtis Sittenfeld’s Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice. What I know is that each of those characters experienced emotions that helped me understand the range of the often contradictory feelings each of us possesses; doing so leaves us feeling less alone with our particular complex mix of emotions, whatever our life’s circumstances. As expressed in the play Shadowlands, about the life of C. S. Lewis, “We read to know that we are not alone.”

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“We welcome the Other as a guest within ourselves, and sometimes we become Other. For a moment in time we leave ourselves; and when we return, sometimes expanded and strengthened, we are changed both intellectually and emotionally.”

Indeed if we are very lucky, we may come to experience a special form of love for those who inhabit our books and even, at times, for the authors who write them. One of the most concrete renderings of this latter concept can be found in the most unlikely of historical persons, Niccolò Machiavelli. In order that he might better enter the consciousness and “converse” with the authors he was reading, he would dress formally in the style of dress appropriate to the authors in their various epochs. In a letter to the diplomat Francesco Vettori in 1513, he wrote:

I am not ashamed to speak with them, and to ask them the reasons for their actions; and they in their kindness answer me; four hours may pass and I do not feel boredom, I forget every trouble, I do not dread poverty, I am not frightened by death; I give myself entirely to them.

In this passage Machiavelli exemplifies not only the perspective-taking dimension of deep reading, but also the capacity to be transported from whatever our present realities are to an internal place where we can experience a sharing of the inevitable burdens that typify most human existence whatever our age: fear, anxiety, loneliness, sickness, love’s uncertainties, loss and rejection, sometimes death itself. I do not doubt that some of this was what the young Susan Sontag felt when she would look at her bookcase and feel she was “looking at my fifty friends. A book was like stepping through a mirror. I could go somewhere else.” And surely it is what these authors give witness to in the communicative dimension of reading and what it means at every age to leave oneself to enter the welcome solace of the company of others, whether fictional characters, historical figures, or the authors themselves.

That this freely given immersion in the reading life could be threatened in our culture has begun to emerge as a concern for growing numbers in our society, including an NPR team that spent a whole interview with me on their personal concern about this loss. There are many things that would be lost if we slowly lose the cognitive patience to immerse ourselves in the worlds created by books and the lives and feelings of the “friends” who inhabit them. And although it is a wonderful thing that movies and film can do some of this, too, there is a difference in the quality of immersion that is made possible by entering the articulated thoughts of others. What will happen to young readers who never meet and begin to understand the thoughts and feelings of someone totally different? What will happen to older readers who begin to lose touch with that feeling of empathy for people outside their ken or kin? It is a formula for unwitting ignorance, fear and misunderstanding, that can lead to the belligerent forms of intolerance that are the opposite of America’s original goals for its citizens of many cultures.

Such thoughts and their correlative hope are frequent themes in the work of the novelist Marilynne Robinson, whom former president Barack Obama described as a “specialist in empathy.” In one of the most remarkable of exchanges requested by him during his presidency, Obama visited Robinson on a trip to Iowa. During their wide-ranging discussion, Robinson lamented what she saw as a political drift among many people in the United States toward seeing those different from themselves as the “sinister other.” She characterized this as “dangerous a development as there could be in terms of whether we continue to be a democracy.” Whether writing about humanism’s decline or fear’s capacity to diminish the very values its proponents purport to defend, she conceptualizes the power of books to help us understand the perspective of others as an antidote to the fears and prejudices many people harbor, often unknowingly. Within this context, Obama told Robinson that the most important things he had learned about being a citizen had come from novels: “It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with someone else even though they’re very different from you.”

The desperately real lessons about empathy that Obama and Robinson discussed may begin with the experiencing of other lives, but they are deepened by the work that follows perspective-taking—when something we read forces us to examine our own prior judgments and the lives of others. Lucia Berlin’s story “A Manual for Cleaning Women” is a case in point for me. When I began the story, I saw the protagonist cleaning woman as being oblivious to the everyday tragedies that skirted just below the surface in the places where she worked. Until, that is, I read the last sentence, which ended the story with her utterance “I finally weep.” Everything I had first assumed about the cleaning woman narrator in this story collapsed with the final line. My false and circumscribing inferences flew out one of those windows that open when we see the prejudices we bring to whatever we read. No doubt that was the humbling realization that Berlin intended her readers to discover about themselves.

“What will happen to young readers who never meet and begin to understand the thoughts and feelings of someone totally different? What will happen to older readers who begin to lose touch with that feeling of empathy for people outside their ken or kin?”

James Carroll’s book Christ Actually: The Son of God for the Secular Age describes a similar confrontation with perspective taking in the realm of nonfiction. There he related his experiences as a young, very devout Catholic boy reading Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. He described the life-changing epiphany he had felt upon entering the life of that young Jewish woman with all her undiminished young girl’s hopes and enthusiasm for life, all of which she sustained despite the violent hatred of Jews that ultimately destroyed her and her family.

Entering the perspective of this completely foreign girl provided an unexpected rite of passage for the young James Carroll. From his memorable descriptions of his conflicts with his military general father during the Vietnam crisis in  An American Requiem: God, My Father, and the War That Came Between Us to his descriptions of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity in Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History, each of his books revolves around the need to understand, at the deepest level, the perspective of the other, whether in Vietnam or in a German concentration camp.

In Christ Actually, he used the life and thought of the early-20th-century German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer to underscore the life-and-death consequences of human failure to take on the perspective of other. Bonhoeffer preached and wrote unflinchingly, first from a pulpit and then from a prison cell, about the tragic inability of most people at the time both to understand the perspective of the historical Jesus as a Jew and to see the persecution of Jews in Germany from their perspective. At the heart of his last work, he asked: How would the historical Christ actually respond to Nazi Germany? Only he who shouts for the Jews, he asserted, can “sing their Gregorian chants.” That conclusion led him to act against his own religious beliefs about murder by contributing to two unsuccessful attempts on Hitler’s life and ultimately to being killed in a concentration camp on direct orders from the Führer’s representative.

I write this letter during a time when millions of refugees—most of whom are Muslim—are fleeing horrific conditions and trying to enter Europe, the United States, or anywhere else they can to regain their previous lives. I write this letter on the day a young Jewish boy from my own city of Boston has been killed in Israel during his gap year before college because he was perceived by a young Palestinian boy as the “enemy other.” Developing the deepest forms of reading cannot prevent all such tragedies, but understanding the perspective of other human beings can give ever fresh, varied reasons to find alternative, compassionate ways to deal with the others in our world, whether they are innocent Muslim children crossing treacherous open seas or an innocent Jewish boy from Boston’s Maimonides School, all killed miles and miles away from their homes.

The unsettling reality, however, is that unbeknownst to many of us, including until recently myself, there has begun an unanticipated decline of empathy among our young people. The MIT scholar Sherry Turkle described a study by Sara Konrath and her research group at Stanford University that showed a 40 percent decline in empathy in our young people over the last two decades, with the most precipitous decline in the last ten years. Turkle attributes the loss of empathy largely to their inability to navigate the online world without losing track of their real-time, face-to-face relationships. In her view our technologies place us at a remove, which changes not only who we are as individuals but also who we are with one another.

Reading at the deepest levels may provide one part of the antidote to the noted trend away from empathy. But make no mistake: empathy is not solely about being compassionate toward others; its importance goes further. For it is also about a more in-depth understanding of the Other, an essential skill in a world of increasing connectedness among divergent cultures. Research in the cognitive neurosciences indicates that what I call perspective taking here represents a complex mix of cognitive, social, and emotional processes that leaves ample tracks in our reading-brain circuitry. Brain-imaging research by the German neuroscientist Tania Singer expands former conceptualizations of empathy to show that it involves a whole feeling-thinking network that connects vision, language, and cognition with extensive subcortical networks. Singer emphasizes that this larger network comprises, among other areas, the highly connected neuronal networks for theory of mind, including the insula and the cingulate cortex, which function to connect large expanses of the human brain. Often undeveloped in many individuals on the autism spectrum and lost in a pathological condition called alexithymia, theory of mind refers to an essential human capacity that allows us to perceive, analyze, and interpret the thoughts and feelings of others in our social interactions with them. Singer and her colleagues describe how the very large neurons in these areas are uniquely suited for the extremely rapid communication necessary in empathy between these areas and other cortical and subcortical regions, including, of all places, the motor cortex.

Though it may seem something of a figurative leap to think that the motor cortex is activated when you read, it is closer to a literal, cortical hop. Reconstruct the fleeting image evoked in the last letter with the image of Anna Karenina leaping upon the tracks. For those of you who read that passage in Tolstoy’s novel, you leaped, too. In all likelihood the same neurons you deploy when you move your legs and trunk were also activated when you read that Anna jumped before the train. A great many parts of your brain were activated, both in empathizing with her visceral despair and in some mirror neurons acting this desperation out motorically. Although mirror neurons may have become more popular than they are fully understood, they play a fascinating role in reading. In what is surely one of the more intriguingly titled articles in this research, “Your Brain on Jane Austen,” the scholar of 18th-century literature Natalie Phillips teamed with Stanford neuroscientists to study what happens when we read fiction in different ways: that is, with and without “close attention.” (Think back to the two Collins quotes.) Phillips and her colleagues found that when we read a piece of fiction “closely,” we activate regions of the brain that are aligned to what the characters are both feeling and doing. She and her colleagues were frankly surprised that just by asking their literature graduate students either to read closely or to read for entertainment, different regions of the brain became activated, including multiple areas involved in motion and touch.

In related work, neuroscientists from Emory University and from York University have shown how networks in the areas responsible for touch, called the somatosensory cortex, are activated when we read metaphors about texture, and also how motor neurons are activated when we read about movement. Thus, when we read about Emma Bovary’s silken skirt, our areas of touch are activated, and when we read about Emma stumbling from her carriage to run in pursuit of Léon, her young, fickle lover, areas responsible for motion in our motor cortex activate, and, more than likely, those in many affective areas do, too.

These studies are the beginning of increasing work on the place of empathy and perspective taking in the neuroscience of literature. The cognitive scientist Keith Oatley, who studies the psychology of fiction, has demonstrated a strong relationship between reading fiction and the involvement of the cognitive processes known to underlie both empathy and theory of mind. Oatley and his York University colleague Raymond Mar suggest that the process of taking on another’s consciousness in reading fiction and the nature of fiction’s content—where the great emotions and conflicts of life are regularly played out—not only contribute to our empathy, but represent what the social scientist Frank Hakemulder called our “moral laboratory.” In this sense, when we read fiction, the brain actively simulates the consciousness of another person, including those whom we would never otherwise even imagine knowing. It allows us to try on, for a few moments, what it truly means to be another person, with all the similar and sometimes vastly different emotions and struggles that govern others’ lives. The reading circuitry is elaborated by such simulations; so also our daily lives, and so also the lives of those who would lead others.

The novelist Jane Smiley worries that it is just this dimension in fiction that is most threatened by our culture: “My guess is that mere technology will not kill the novel. . . . But novels can be sidelined. . . . When that happens, our society will be brutalized and coarsened by people . . . who have no way of understanding us or each other.” It is a chilling reminder of how important the life of reading is for human beings if we are to form an ever more realized democratic society for everyone.

Empathy involves, therefore, both knowledge and feeling. It involves leaving past assumptions behind and deepening our intellectual understanding of another person, another religion, another culture and epoch. In this moment in our collective history, the capacity for compassionate knowledge of others may be our best antidote to the “culture of indifference” that spiritual leaders such as the Dalai Lama, Bishop Desmond Tutu, and Pope Francis describe. It may also be our best bridge to others with whom we need to work together, so as to create a safer world for all its inhabitants. In the very special cognitive space within the reading-brain circuit, pride and prejudice can gradually dissolve through the compassionate understanding of another’s mind.

This emerging work on empathy in the reading brain illustrates physiologically, cognitively, politically, and culturally how important it is that feeling and thought be connected in the reading circuit in every person. The quality of our thought depends on the background knowledge and feelings we each bring to bear.

How broken is the USPTO: How is this a patent

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BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

A computer network is a collection of computers and devices interconnected by communications channels that facilitate communications. A computer network may allow sharing of resources and information among interconnected devices. A network may include the Internet, an intranet, and the extranet.

A local area network (LAN) is typically a small network constrained to a small geographic area. A metropolitan area network (MAN) is typically a network constrained to metropolitan area, such as a city. A wide area network (WAN) is typically a network that covers a large geographic area. Wireless LANs are typically the wireless equivalents of LANs and WANs.

Networks may be interconnected to allow communication with a variety of different kinds of media, including twisted-pair copper wire cable, coaxial cable, optical fiber, power lines and various wireless technologies. A network may include routers and routing protocols.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In an aspect of the invention, computer-implemented methods for testing network connectivity for a network device comprise connecting to a network provider; pinging a first server having a static internet protocol (IP) address with the aid of the network provider; pinging a second server having a static uniform resource locator (URL) with the aid of the network provider; and determining whether to maintain connectivity to said network provider based on whether a response was received by said network device from said first server and/or whether a response was received by said network device from said second server. In an embodiment, determining whether to maintain connectivity to said network provider is based on whether a response was received by said network device from said first server and whether a response was received by said network device from said second server.

In some situations, said computer-implemented methods further comprise connecting to an another network provider based on at least one criterion selected from the group consisting of a bandwidth of the another network provider, cost to maintain connectivity to the another network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of the another network provider, a download rate of the another network provider and an upload rate of the another network provider. In an embodiment, the at least one criterion is location-based, time based or bandwidth-based.

In an embodiment, pinging said first server comprises sending a ping packet to the first server. In another embodiment, pinging said second server comprises sending a ping packet to the second server. In another embodiment, connectivity to the network provider is maintained if the first server responds to the network device in response to said pinging the first server and/or the second server responds to the network device in response to said pinging the second server. In another embodiment, said computer-implemented methods further comprise connecting to another network provider if the first server does not respond to the network device in response to said pinging the first server and/or the second server does not respond to the network device in response to said pinging the second server. In another embodiment, the network provider is selected from the group consisting of a wireless router, Bluetooth router, wired router, cellular network router, radiofrequency (RF) device and optoelectronic device.

In some situations, said computer-implemented methods further comprise connecting to an additional network provider; pinging the first server with the aid of the additional network provider; pinging the second server with the aid of the additional network provider; and determining whether to maintain connectivity to the additional network provider based on whether a response was received by the network device from the first server and/or whether a response was received by the network device from the second server. In an embodiment, determining whether to maintain connectivity to the additional network provider is based on whether a response was received by the network device from the first server and whether a response was received by the network device from the second server. In another embodiment, connecting to said second network provider comprises terminating connectivity to said network provider.

In an embodiment, said network provider is selected from the group consisting of a wireless router, Bluetooth router, wired router, cellular network router, radiofrequency (RF) device and optoelectronic device. In another embodiment, the first and second servers are pinged simultaneously.

In some embodiments, computer-implemented methods for testing network connectivity for a network device comprise connecting to a network provider; directing a first data packet from the network device to a first server having a static internet protocol (IP) address, wherein the first data packet is directed with the aid of the network provider; directing a second data packet from the network device to a second server having a static uniform resource locator (URL), wherein the second data packet is directed with the aid of the network provider; and determining whether to maintain connectivity to the network provider based upon a comparison of one or more data packets received by the network device from the first server and the second server. In an embodiment, the first server comprises a domain name system (DNS) server. In another embodiment, the first data packet is an echo request packet. In another embodiment, the second data packet is an echo request packet. In another embodiment, directing said first data packet from said network device to said first server comprises pinging the first server. In another embodiment, directing said second data packet from said network device to said second server comprises pinging the second server. In another embodiment, connectivity to the network provider is maintained if a first received data packet of said one or more data packets received by the network device is the same as the first data packet directed to the first server. In another embodiment, connectivity to the network provider is maintained if a second received data packet of said one or more data packets received by the network device is the same as the second data packet directed to the second server.

In some situations, the computer-implemented methods further comprise receiving a first received data packet from the first server and/or receiving a second received data packet from the second server. In an embodiment, connectivity to the network provider is maintained if a checksum of the first received data packet matches a predetermined data packet. In another embodiment, connectivity to the network provider is maintained if a checksum of the second received data packet matches a predetermined data packet. In an embodiment, the computer-implemented methods further comprise connecting to another network provider if the first received data packet is different from the first data packet and/or the second received data packet is different from the second data packet.

In some situations, the computer-implemented methods further comprise connecting to an another network provider; directing the first data packet from the network device to the first server, wherein the first data packet is directed with the aid of the another network provider; directing the second data packet from the network device to the second server, wherein the second data packet is directed with the aid of the another network provider; and determining whether to maintain connectivity to the other network provider based upon a comparison of one or more data packets received by the network device from the first server and the second server. In an embodiment, connecting to said another network provider comprises terminating connectivity to said network provider.

In an embodiment, connecting to said network provider comprises locating said network provider. In an embodiment, said network provider is selected from the group consisting of a wireless router, Bluetooth router, wired router, cellular network router, radiofrequency (RF) device and optoelectronic device.

In an embodiment, said computer-implemented methods further comprise determining whether to maintain connectivity to the network provider based on at least one criterion selected from the group consisting of bandwidth, cost to maintain connectivity to the network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of the network provider, the download rate and the upload rate. In an embodiment, the at least one criterion is location-based, time based or bandwidth-based.

In some situations, said computer-implemented methods further comprise connecting to another network provider based on at least one criterion selected from the group consisting of the bandwidth of the other network provider, cost to maintain connectivity to the other network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of the other network provider, the download rate of the other network provider and the upload rate of the other network provider. In an embodiment, connectivity to the network provider is maintained upon comparison of a download rate or an upload rate to a predetermined limit. In an embodiment, the network device is selected from the group consisting a personal computer (PC), tablet PC, slate PC, server, mainframe and Smart phone.

In some embodiments, computer-implemented methods for selecting a network provider for a network device comprise connecting to the network provider; pinging, with the aid of the network provider, a first server having a static internet protocol (IP) address and a second server having a static uniform resource locator (URL); and terminating a connection to said network provider based upon any one network termination condition selected from the group consisting of (a) a response was not received by the network device from said first server and/or said second server after said pinging, (b) a network bandwidth (or latency, performance or cost-related factors) of another network provider is higher than a network bandwidth of said network provider, (c) a network cost of another network provider is lower than a network cost of said network provider, (d) network access provided by another network provider is more robust than network access provided by said network provider, (e) connectivity between the network device and another network provider is via wired connection and connectivity between the network device and said network provider is via wireless connection and (f) another network provider is in closer proximity to the network device than said network provider. In an embodiment, the connection to said network provider is terminated based upon at least any two network termination conditions selected from said group. In another embodiment, the connection to said network provider is terminated based upon at least any three network termination conditions selected from said group. In another embodiment, the computer-implemented method further comprises connecting to an another network provider. In another embodiment, connectivity between the network device and the first network provider is via a wired or wireless network access point. In another embodiment, the first and second servers are pinged simultaneously.

In some embodiments, computer-implemented methods for establishing network connectivity for a network device comprise the steps of (a) connecting to a first network provider; (b) pinging, with the aid of the first network provider, a first server and a second server; and (c) selecting a second network provider over said first network provider if said second network provider meets a criterion unmet by said first network provider. In an embodiment, said selecting is in response to said pinging. In another embodiment, said criterion is a location-based, time based or bandwidth-based criterion. In another embodiment, said first server has a static internet protocol (IP) address. In another embodiment, said second server has a static uniform resource locator (URL). In another embodiment, said criterion is selected from the group consisting of (a) whether a response was received by the network device from said first server and/or said second server after said pinging, (b) whether a network bandwidth of said second network provider is higher than a network bandwidth of said first network provider, (c) whether a network cost of said second network provider is lower than a network cost of said first network provider, (d) whether network access provided by said second network provider is more robust than network access provided by said first network provider, (e) whether connectivity between said network device and said second network provider is via wired connection and connectivity between said network device and said first network provider is via wireless connection, and (f) whether said second network provider is in closer proximity to the network device than said first network provider.

In some embodiments, computer-implemented method for establishing network connectivity for a network device comprise connecting to a first network provider; locating a second network provider, the second network provider having a higher ranked order of preference than the first network provider based on one or more predetermined network connectivity criteria; and connecting to the second network provider. In an embodiment, said locating comprises pinging a first server and a second server. In another embodiment, said first server has a static internet protocol (IP) address. In another embodiment, said second server has a static uniform resource locator (URL). In another embodiment, said one or more predetermined network connectivity criteria are selected from the group consisting of network bandwidth, network cost and proximity of the network device to a network provider. In another embodiment, said one or more predetermined network connectivity criteria are location-based, time based or bandwidth-based.

In some embodiments, one or more steps of the methods provided herein are performed with the aid of a processor. In an example, the network device is connected to the first network provider with the aid of a processor. In some embodiments, any of pinging, selecting and locating are performed with the aid of one or more processors, which may be located in network devices provided herein or remotely, such as in remote computer systems.

In another aspect of the invention, systems for establishing network connectivity for a network device comprise a network connectivity controller for locating network providers, the network connectivity controller having a processor for executing machine-readable code configured to: establish a connection to a network provider; ping a first server having a static internet protocol (IP) address with the aid of the network provider; ping a second server having a static uniform resource locator (URL) with the aid of the network provider; and determine whether to maintain connectivity to said network provider based on whether a response was received by said network device from said first server and/or whether a response was received by said network device from said second server. The system further comprises a graphical user interface (GUI) for displaying a list of network providers to a user, the list of network providers generated with the aid of one or more network connectivity criteria. In an embodiment, said one or more network connectivity criteria are selected from the group consisting of a bandwidth of another network provider, cost to maintain connectivity to another network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of another network provider, a download rate of another network provider and an upload rate of another network provider. In another embodiment, said one or more network-connectivity criteria are location-based, time based or bandwidth-based. In another embodiment, said machine-readable code is configured to determine whether to maintain connectivity to said network provider based on whether a response was received by said network device from said first server and whether a response was received by said network device from said second server.

In another aspect of the invention, computer-readable mediums comprise code implementing methods, the methods comprising establishing a connection to a network provider; pinging a first server having a static internet protocol (IP) address with the aid of the network provider; pinging a second server having a static uniform resource locator (URL) with the aid of the network provider; and determining whether to maintain connectivity to said network provider based on whether a response was received by said network device from said first server and/or whether a response was received by said network device from said second server. In some cases, the connection to the network provider is established with the aid of a processor.

Additional aspects and advantages of the present disclosure will become readily apparent to those skilled in this art from the following detailed description, wherein only illustrative embodiments of the present disclosure are shown and described. As will be realized, the present disclosure is capable of other and different embodiments, and its several details are capable of modifications in various obvious respects, all without departing from the disclosure. Accordingly, the drawings and description are to be regarded as illustrative in nature, and not as restrictive.

INCORPORATION BY REFERENCE

All publications, patents, and patent applications mentioned in this specification are herein incorporated by reference to the same extent as if each individual publication, patent, or patent application was specifically and individually indicated to be incorporated by reference.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The novel features of the invention are set forth with particularity in the appended claims. A better understanding of the features and advantages of the present invention will be obtained by reference to the following detailed description that sets forth illustrative embodiments, in which the principles of the invention are utilized, and the accompanying drawings of which:

FIG. 1 shows a method for connecting a network-enabled device (also “network device” herein) to a network, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 2 shows a method for connecting a network device to a network, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 3 shows a method for generating a ranked list of network providers, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 4 shows a system having an electronic device and network providers, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention;

FIG. 5 shows a functional block diagram illustration of general purpose computer hardware platforms, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention; and

FIG. 6 shows a first network-enabled device communicating with a second network-enabled device, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

While various embodiments of the invention have been shown and described herein, it will be obvious to those skilled in the art that such embodiments are provided by way of example only. Numerous variations, changes, and substitutions may occur to those skilled in the art without departing from the invention. It should be understood that various alternatives to the embodiments of the invention described herein may be employed in practicing the invention.

The term “network,” as used herein, refers to a local area network (LAN), metropolitan area network (MAN), or wide area network (WAN). In some situations, a network includes the Internet. A network includes wired and/or wireless components.

The term “router,” as used herein, refers to a device that forwards or relays data packets across one or more networks.

The term “network provider,” as used herein, refers to one or more computer systems or devices for providing network connectivity to, or facilitating network connectivity for, an electronic device. In some situations, a network provider is a router or a plurality of routers.

The term “electronic device,” as used herein, refers to a computer device configured to connect to a network. In some cases, an electronic device is a portable electronic device. Examples of electronic devices include Smart phones (e.g., iPhone®, Android®-enabled phone, HTC® phone, Blackberry®), laptops, tablet personal computers (e.g., iPad®), and desktop computers (e.g., workstations, servers), cameras, gaming stations (e.g., Sony® PlayStation®, Microsoft® Xbox), televisions, music players (e.g., MP3 players, radios, CD players) and video players (e.g., DVD players). Electronic devices may be included in other components. For instance, an electronic device may be part of a residential or commercial building, vehicle, or aircraft.

The term “network-enabled device,” as used herein, refers to an electronic device configured to connect to, reconnect to, and communicate with one or more electronic devices with the aid of a network. In some example, a network-enabled device (also “network device” herein) includes a Smart phone and personal computer (PC). As an example, a network-enabled device is a desktop personal computer (PC), laptop PC, mainframe computer, set-top box, personal digital assistant, cellular telephone, media player, web pad, tablet PC, slate PC, or Smart phone. In some situations, a network-enabled device includes a network interface for facilitating network connectivity. A network interface includes, for example, an Ethernet interface for connectivity to a network through a wired connection, or a wireless interface for connectivity to a wireless provider that in turn provides connectivity to a network. A network-enabled device may include multiple wireless interfaces. A wireless provider may include one or more of a Wi-Fi (or WiFi) router and one or more channel access methods. In some cases, a channel access method is selected from frequency division multiple access (FDMA), wavelength division multiple access (WDMA), orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA), based on Orthogonal, frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), single-carrier FDMA (SC-FDMA) (or linearly-precoded OFDMA (LP-OFDMA)), time-division multiple access (TDMA), code division multiple access (CDMA) (or spread spectrum multiple access (SSMA)), direct-sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA), frequency-hopping CDMA (FH-CDMA), orthogonal frequency-hopping multiple access (OFHMA), multi-carrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA), space division multiple access (SDMA), packet mode channel access methods (e.g., contention based random multiple access methods), duplexing methods (e.g., time division duplex (TDD), frequency division duplex (FDD)), global system for mobile communications (GSM), GSM with GPRS packet, bluetooth packet mode communication, IEEE 802.11b wireless local area networks (WLAN's), high performance radio local area network (HIPERLAN/2) wireless networks, and G.hn. A wireless provider may be configured for second-generation wireless telephone technology (2G), third generation mobile telecommunications (3G), fourth generation cellular wireless standards (4G) or LTE Advanced (LTE) communication standard.

A network-enabled device may include multiple interfaces. In some cases, a network-enabled device includes an Ethernet interface and wireless interfaces for connectivity to a WiFi router, CDMA provider and/or GSM provider.

The term “static,” as used in the context of network parameters herein, refers to a network parameter that does not change during a finite period of time, such as a set or predetermined period of time. A static internet protocol (IP) address is an address that does not change within a predetermined (or set) period of time. In some situations, a static IP address is a dedicated IP address. A static uniform resource locator (URL) is a network (or web) address that does not change within a predetermined period of time. In some situations, a static URL is a dedicated URL, such as a URL dedicated to an entity (e.g., business, individual). A static URL may be associated with one or more servers of the entity.

The term “connectivity,” as used herein, refers to a network-enabled electronic device being in network communication with a network provider, such as a router (e.g., wired router, wireless router). A network-enabled device has connectivity to a network provider if the network-enabled device is able to communicate with the network provider, such as ping the network provider or send data (e.g., data packets) to or receive data from the network provider.

The term “ping,” as used herein, refers to a computer network administration utility used to test the reachability of a host on a network (including, but not limited to, an Internet Protocol (IP) network) and to measure the round-trip time for messages sent from the originating host to a destination computer. In some situations, during pinging, one or more bits of information are sent from a network device to a server through a network provider. In some cases, pinging is also a utility that sends (or transmits) internet control message protocol (ICMP) messages to test for connectivity. In some cases, pinging employs a low-level protocol, such as Internet Protocol (IP) or Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), or other protocols, such as Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), SSH, or Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP). In some situations, a ping packet includes a data packet that enables a user to check or investigate various network connectivity factors, such as connectivity, speed, bandwidth and/or response time.

There are methods currently available for connecting an electronic device, such as a portable electronic device, to a network. However, as recognized herein, such methods have limitations. For example, in certain cases methods for connecting a portable electronic device to a network do not establish the most optimum connection, which may be assessed on the basis of network cost, network bandwidth and proximity to a router, for example. As another example, current methods for establishing network connectivity may not continually optimize network connectivity in view of changing conditions, such as proximity to a router and network bandwidth. Recognized herein is the need for improved methods for connecting an electronic device to a network.

Methods provided herein enable a network-enabled electronic device to connect and reconnect to a network and, in some cases, optimize or improve its network connectivity. In certain cases, methods provided herein enable a network-enabled electronic device to connect to a network that is optimum in view of one or more connectivity criteria (or rules) provided herein. In other cases, if an optimum connectivity is not established, methods provided herein enable a network-enabled electronic device to continually optimize network connectivity in view of changing conditions.

Network Connectivity Methods

In an aspect of the invention, a method for establishing network connectivity for a network-enabled device comprises the network-enabled electronic device (also “network-enabled device” herein) connecting to a network provider. Next, the network-enabled device pings a first server having a static internet protocol (IP) address with the aid of the network provider. The network-enabled device also pings a second server having a static uniform resource locator (URL) with the aid of the network provider. The first and second servers may be pinged simultaneously or sequentially (i.e., the first after the second or the second after the first). Next, the network-enabled device determines whether to maintain connectivity to the network provider based on whether the network-enabled device receives a response from the first server and/or whether the network-enabled device receives a response from the second server. The response in each case may be a confirmation that the first and second servers were pinged by the network-enabled device.

In some cases, upon pinging the second server having the static (or dedicated) URL (e.g., “Google.com”), a domain name system (DNS) server in communication with the network provider resolves the URL to an IP address of the second server. A ping packet is then sent to the second server (at the resolved IP address). A response is generated by the second server and sent to the network provider and subsequently to the network-enabled device. The lack of a response from the second server may indicate that the second server is malfunctioning (or unavailable or unreachable) or that the DNS server in communication with the network provider is malfunctioning. In such a case, the network-enabled device may ping a third server having a dedicated URL (e.g., “Yahoo.com”). The DNS server in communication with the network provider resolves the URL to an IP address of the third server. A ping packet is then sent to the third server (at the resolved IP address). If a response is not received by the network-enabled device from the third server, then the network-enabled device may concluded that the DNS server in communication with the network provider is malfunctioning. In such a case, the network-enabled device connects to another network provider and the steps above are repeated.

In some situations, the network provider is selected from the group consisting of a wireless router, Bluetooth router, wired router, cellular network router, radiofrequency (RF) device and optoelectronic device. The first server has a static IP address (e.g., “123.123.123.123”) and the second server has a static URL (e.g., “Google.com”). In some cases, the static URL is updated, such as upon a network update.

In some cases, the first server is identified by a user-determined IP address, i.e., an IP address that is determined or provided by a user operating the network-enabled device. In such a case, the user may input the IP address of the first server into a network configuration utility of the network-enabled device, for example. Similarly, in some cases the second server is designated by a URL that is user-determined. For example, in the network configuration utility the user provides a string that defines the URL of the second server.

In an embodiment, the first server and second server are pinged simultaneously. In another embodiment, the first server is pinged before the second server. In another embodiment, the second server is pinged before the first server. Pinging the first and second servers involves sending (or directing) a ping packet from the network-enabled device to each of the first and second servers. In another embodiment, only the first or second server is pinged. In such a case, the response after pinging the first or second server is assessed to determine whether to maintain connectivity to the network provider.

In some embodiments, additional servers are pinged. In an embodiment, a third server having a static IP address or dedicated (or static) URL is pined. In another embodiment, at least 2, or 3, or 4, or 5, or 6, or 7, or 8, or 9, or 10, or 20, or 30, or 40, or 50, or 60, or 70, or 80, or 90, or 100 other servers are pinged, each of which has a static IP address and/or dedicated URL.

In some situations, when the first server is pinged, the network-enabled device sends a ping packet to the first server. Similarly, in some situations, when the second server is pinged, the network-enabled device sends a ping packet to the second server. The ping packet may include one or more predetermined characters or character strings (e.g., “Hello world”). In some cases, the ping packet includes a file with machine-encoded data, such as a media file (e.g., encoded media file).

In some situations, if a response is not received from either or both of the first server and the second server, then the network-enabled device connects to another network provider (e.g., router). The network-enabled device then pings the first and second server, as described above.

In some situations, if a response is received from one or both of the first and second servers, then the network-enabled device connects to a second network provider based on at least one predetermined network connectivity criterion (“network connectivity criterion”) selected from the group consisting of the bandwidth of the other network provider, cost to maintain connectivity to the other network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of the other network provider, the download rate of the other network provider and the upload rate of the other network provider. For instance, the network-enabled device connects to the second network provider if the second network provider enables a higher network bandwidth than the first network provider. In such a case, all connections to first network providers may be terminated. In some situations, the network-enabled device continues to determine whether other network providers may provide a network connectivity that is improved with respect to the second network provider based on one or more network connectivity criteria (or rules) provided herein.

In some embodiments, the network-enabled device maintains connectivity to a network provider if, in response to pinging the first server and the second server, the first server responds to the network-enabled device and/or the second server responds to the network-enabled device. In an embodiment, connectivity is maintained if the first server and the second server both respond to the network-enabled device in response to the network-enabled device pinging the first and second server. In another embodiment, connectivity is maintained if either one of the first server and the second server responds to the network-enabled device. In an example, a response from the first server is sufficient for the network-enabled device to retain connectivity to the first network provider. In some cases, however, the network-enabled device connects to another network provider if the first server does not respond to the network-enabled device and/or the second server does not respond to the network-enabled device.

The network-enabled device may connect to another network provider even if the first server and second server respond to the network-enabled device but one or more network connectivity criteria are not satisfied. In an example, the network-enabled device connects to another network provider if the network bandwidth is below a predetermined limit. In some cases, the network-enabled device connects to another network provider if the network bandwidth is below about 100 kbit/s, or 500 kbit/s, or 1 Mbit/s, or 2 Mbit/s, or 5 Mbit/s, or 10 Mbit/s. In an embodiment, the network-enabled device connects to another network provider if the network bandwidth is below a predetermined limit, such as a user-defined limit.

In an example, if the first server and/or second server do not respond to the network-enabled device, or if one or more network connectivity criteria (e.g., network bandwidth above a predetermined limit) are not met, the network-enabled device connects to a second network provider and sequentially or simultaneously pings the first server and second server with the aid of the second network provider.

In some cases, connecting to the second network provider comprises terminating connectivity to other network providers. Next, the network-enabled device determines whether to maintain connectivity to the second network provider based on whether a response is received by the network device from the first server and/or whether a response is received by the network device from the second server.

In some situations, if the network-enabled device does not receive a response from the second server, the network-enabled device determines that it is not in network communication with a domain name system (DNS) server. This may be due to a malfunctioning DNS server, for example. In some situations, the first server is a domain name system (DNS) server.

In some situations, the second server includes one or more servers for hosting the URL. In an example, the second server is a dedicated server for hosting the URL.

FIG. 1 shows a method 100 for connecting a network-enabled device (also “network device” herein) to a network, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In a first step 105, the network device connects to a network provider, such as a wired or wireless network router. Next, in a second step 110, the network device pings a first server having a static IP address. In a third step 115, the network device pings a second server having a static URL. Next, in a fourth step 120, the network device determines whether a response (e.g., ping packet) was received from the first server and the second server. If a response was not received from the first server and the second server, then in a fifth step 125 the network device connects to another network provider, and the method 100 is repeated. If a response was received from the first server and the second server, then in an optional sixth step 130 the network device determines whether one or more network connectivity factors provided herein, such as, e.g., bandwidth, upload rate, and/or download rate, are met. If the one or more network connectivity factors are not met, then the network device connects to another network provider and the method 100 is repeated. However, if the one or more network connectivity factors are met, then in a seventh step 135 the network device maintains the connection (e.g., wired connection, wireless connection) to the network provider. A user operating the network device will then use the network, as desired, such as, for example, to navigate the World Wide Web or send and receive electronic mails.

The network device may connect to another network provider using the same network interface (e.g., WiFi interface) or using another network interface. In an example, in step 105 the network device connects to a WiFi router using a first wireless interface (e.g., WiFi interface) of the network device. Following step 130, the network device connects to a GSM or CDMA provider using a second wireless interface configured to enable the network device to communicate with the GSM or CDMA provider, and the method 100 is repeated using the second wireless interface.

As an alternative to step 120, the network device determines whether a response was received by the second server having the static URL. In such a case, if a response is received, then the network device maintains the connection to the network provider. The response from the first server in such a case may be used for various network diagnostic purposes, such as upload rate and download rate.

As an alternative to or in conjunction with the network-enabled device pinging the first and second servers, establishing connectivity to a network provider includes directing data packets from the network-enabled device to the first server and the second server. In some situations, data packets may be used in place of or in conjunction with ping packets.

In some embodiments, a method for establishing network connectivity for a network device comprises connecting to a network provider and directing a first data packet to a first server having a static internet protocol (IP) address. The first data packet is directed with the aid of the network provider. That is, the network provider brings the network device in communication with the first server. Next, the network device directs a second data packet to a second server having a static uniform resource locator (URL). The second data packet is directed with the aid of the network provider. That is, the network provider brings the network device in communication with the second server. The first and second data packets are directed to the first and second servers, respectively, either sequentially or simultaneously. In some cases the network device directs the second data packet to the second server before directing the first data packet to the first server. Next, the network device determines whether to maintain connectivity to the network provider based upon a comparison of one or more data packets received by the network device from the first server and the second server. In some cases, the comparison comprises performing a checksum to determine the similarity between the data packets received by the network device and the first and second data packets.

Next, the network-enabled device determines whether any data packets were received from the first server and/or second server. In some situations, if no data packet is received by the network device from the first server or the second server, then the network device terminates the connection to the network provider and connects to another network provider, if one is available. A data packet may not be received from the first server and/or the second server for various reasons, such as, for example, a broken link between the network provider and the first and/or second servers, a malfunctioning network, poor network integrity, or dysfunctional first and/or second servers.

In some situations, the first server is a domain name system (DNS) server. In an example, the first data packet and/or the second data packet is an echo request packet.

In some situations, the second server includes one or more servers for hosting the URL. In an example, the second server is a dedicated server for hosting the URL.

In some situations, the network-enabled device (also “network device” herein) directs the first data packet to the first server by first pinging the first server. Upon successfully pinging the first server, the network device directs the first data packet to the first server. Similarly, the network device directs the second data packet to the second server by first pinging the second server. Upon successfully pinging the second server, the network device directs the second data packet to the second server. The network device then determines various network connectivity factors based upon the time taken to receive data packets from the first and second servers, the time taken to upload the first and second data packets to the first and second servers, or whether received data packets match what was transmitted to the first and second servers.

The network device maintains connectivity to the network provider if a first received data packet of the one or more data packets received by the network device is the same as the first data packet directed to the first server. In some situations, however, the network device maintains connectivity if the first received data packet is at least about 1%, or 5%, or 10%, or 15%, or 20%, or 25%, or 30%, or 35%, or 40%, or 45%, or 50%, or 55%, or 60%, or 65%, or 70%, or 75% or 80%, or 85%, or 90%, or 95%, or 99% similar to the first data packet. Such similarity may be assessed by comparing the data packets to one another, such as, for example, by comparing character strings to one another if the data packets are character strings.

Similarly, the network device maintains connectivity to the network provider if a second received data packet of the one or more data packets received by the network device is the same as the second data packet directed to the second server. In some situations, however, the network device maintains connectivity if the second received data packet is at least about 1%, or 5%, or 10%, or 15%, or 20%, or 25%, or 30%, or 35%, or 40%, or 45%, or 50%, or 55%, or 60%, or 65%, or 70%, or 75% or 80%, or 85%, or 90%, or 95%, or 99% similar to the second data packet.

A connection to the network provider may be maintained if a checksum of the first received data packet matches a predetermined data packet. In an example, connectivity is maintained if the first received data packet matches a predetermined string (e.g., “Hello world”). In other situations, connectivity to the network provider is maintained if a checksum of the second received data packet matches a predetermined data packet. As an alternative, connectivity to the network provider is maintained if the first data packet matches the first received data packet and/or the second data packet matches the second received data packet. In some cases, connectivity is maintained if both the first and second data packets match the first and second received data packets, respectively.

In some situations, if the first received data packet is different from the first data packet and/or the second received data packet is different from the second data packet, the network-enabled device (also “network device” herein) connects to another network provider. In an example, the network device searches for, finds and connects to another network provider, such as another wireless router.

One or both of the first and second data packets may be used to determine an upload and download rate of the network provided by the network provider. In an example, the network-enabled device uses the rate at which the first data packet is uploaded to the first server and downloaded from the first server and/or a rate at which the second data packet is uploaded to the second server and downloaded from the second server to determine an upload rate and download rate, which may be an averaged upload rate and download rate for the network. For example, the upload rate is averaged using the upload rate(s) to the first and second servers and the download rate is averaged using the download rate(s) from the first and second servers. This may in turn enable the network-enabled device to determine whether to maintain connectivity to the network provider or connect to another network provider.

If no network access is provided by the network provider or if network access provided by the network provider does not meet one or more network connectivity criteria or factors (e.g., upload rate, download rate, or network cost), then the network device connects to another network provider and repeats the methods outlined above. In an example, if the network device connects to another network provider, the network device directs the first data packet to the first server and the second data packet to the second server. The first and second data packets are directed (or sent to) the first and second servers, respectively, with the aid of the other network provider. In such a case, the network device also determines whether to maintain connectivity to the other network provider based upon a comparison of one or more data packets received by the network device from the first server and the second server, as described above.

In some cases, upon connecting to another network provider the network device terminates its connection to other network providers. In other cases, however, the network device maintains its connection (or connectivity) to one or more other network providers. This may enable the network device to find and establish improved network connectivity if and when it becomes available.

FIG. 2 shows a method 200 for connecting a network-enabled device (also “network device” herein) to a network, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In a first step 205, the network device connects to a network provider, such as a wired or wireless network router. Next, in a second step 210, the network device directs a first data packet to a first server having a static IP address. In a third step 215, the network device directs a second data packet to a second server having a static URL. Next, in a fourth step 220, the network device determine whether any data packets were received from the first server and/or second server. The network device may continually monitor for any received data packets or monitor at predetermined intervals, such as ever 1 second, 10 seconds, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, or 10 minutes. In some cases, if no data packets are received, then in a fifth step 225 the network device connects to another network provider and the method 200 is repeated. In other cases, if a data packet is received from at least one of the first server and the second server, then in a sixth step 230 the network device determines whether the data packet received by the network device is the same as either the first or second data packet. In an example, if a first received data packet is received by the network device from the first server and a second received data packet is received by the network device from the second server, then the network device determines whether the first received data packet is the same as the first data packet and whether the second received data packet is the same as the second data packet. If the data packets are not the same, then the network device connects to another network provider and the method 200 is repeated.

In an embodiment, connectivity to the network provider is maintained if at least one received data packet is the same as either the first or second data packet. In another embodiment, connectivity to the network provider is maintained if the first received data packet from the first server is the same as the first data packet, and the second received data packet from the second server is the same as the second data packet.

In some situations, in a seventh step 235 the network device determines whether one or more network connectivity factors provided herein, such as, e.g., bandwidth, upload rate, and/or download rate, are met when the network device accesses the network through the network provider. In some cases, if the one or more network connectivity factors are not met, then the network device connects to another network provider and the method 200 is repeated. However, if the one or more network connectivity factors are met, then in an eighth step 240 the network device maintains the connection (e.g., wired connection, wireless connection) to the network provider. A user operating the network device may then use the network, as desired.

In some embodiments, connecting to a network provider first entails locating the network provider in a search location. In an embodiment, the search location is a predetermined location determined by a user of the network-enabled device. The predetermined location may be a business or residential location, or public location (e.g., park, street). In another embodiment, the search location is within a predetermined radius from a location of the user. In some situations, the search location has a radius of at least about 1 meter (“m”), or 2 m, or 3 m, or 4 m, or 5 m, or 6 m, or 7 m, or 8 m, or 9 m, or 10 m, or 20 m, or 30 m, or 40 m, or 50 m, or 60 m, or 70 m, or 80 m, or 90 m, or 100 m, or 200 m, or 300 m, or 400 m, or 500 m, or 600 m, or 700 m, or 800 m, or 900 m, or 1000 m, or 2000 m, or 3000 m, or 4000 m, or 5000 m. In some cases, the search location is determined by the user or updated by the network device as the user changes his or her location.

In some cases, once a network-enabled device has connected to a network provider, the network-enabled device determines whether to maintain connectivity to the network provider based on one or more network connectivity criteria selected from the group consisting of network bandwidth (“bandwidth”), cost to maintain connectivity to the network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of the network provider, the download rate and the upload rate. In some situations, the network-enabled device makes a similar determination as to another network provider and connects to the other network provider if improved network conditions are provided by the other network provider.

In one example, the network device connects to a first network provider (e.g., wireless router) and pings a the first server (with a static IP address) and second server (with a dedicated URL). Upon receiving a response from the first and second servers, the network device determines whether network access via the first network provider is optimum (or preferable) by calculating an upload rate and download rate of the network provided by the first network provider. If the upload and download rates are above a predetermined limit, the network device maintains its connection to the first network provider and a user may access the network through the first network provider. In some cases, the network device also connects to a second network provider and pings the first and second servers. Connection to the second network provider may be made while the network device is still connected to the first network device. Alternatively, the network device may terminate its connection to the first network provider and connect to the second network provider. Upon receiving a response from the first and second servers, the network device determines whether network connectivity via the second network provider is optimum by calculating an upload rate and download rate of the network provided by the first network provider. If the upload and download rates are improved with respect to the upload and download rates provided by the first network provider, then the network device terminates its connection to the first network provider and maintains (or establishes) its connection to the second network provider.

In some situations, when the network-enabled device has the option of using multiple network providers (e.g., two, five or ten network providers), such as a first or second network provider, to connect to the network, the network-enabled device uses the second network provider if the network-enabled device determines that network conditions using the second network provider are optimum, improved or preferable as compared to network conditions using the first network provider. This scenario may be relevant if the network-enabled device has pinged the first and second server with the aid of the first and second network providers and in both cases a response was received by the network-enabled device. The network-enabled device uses the second network device (as opposed to the first network device) based upon a determining at least one network connectivity criterion selected from the group consisting of the bandwidth of the second network provider, cost to maintain connectivity to the second network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of the second network provider, the download rate of the second network provider, the upload rate of the second network provider and mode of connectivity (i.e., wired connectivity or wireless connectivity). As an example, if the network-enabled device determines that the cost for connecting to and using the network via the second network provider is lower than the cost for connecting to and using the network via the first network provider, the network-enabled device accesses the network via the second network provider. As another example, if the network-enabled device determines that the network bandwidth via the second network provider is greater than the network bandwidth via the first network provider, then the network-enabled device accesses the network via the second network provider. As another example, if network access via the second network provider is through a wired connection and network access via the first network provider is through a wireless connection, and wired connections are preferable over wireless connection, then the network-enabled device accesses the network via the second network provider.

In some embodiments, a method for establishing network connectivity for a network device comprises connecting to a network provider and pinging, with the aid of the network provider, a first server having a static internet protocol (IP) address and/or a second server having a static (or dedicated) uniform resource locator (URL). Next, a connection to the network provider is terminated based upon any one network termination condition selected from the group consisting of (a) a response was not received by the network device from the first server and/or the second server after pinging, (b) a network bandwidth of another network provider is higher than a network bandwidth of the network provider, (c) a network cost of another network provider is lower than a network cost of the network provider, (d) network access provided by another network provider is more robust than network access provided by the network provider, (e) connectivity between the network device and another network provider is via wired connection and connectivity between the network device and the network provider is via wireless connection and (f) another network provider is in closer proximity to the network device than the network provider. In some situations, the connection to the network provider is terminated based upon any two, or any three, or any four, or any five network termination conditions selected from the group. In other situations, the connection to the network provider is terminated based upon all network termination conditions.

Connectivity between the network device and the first network provider is via a wired or wireless network access point. That is, in some cases connectivity between the network device (also “network-enabled device” herein) is through a wired connection (e.g., coax, opto-electronic) to the first network provider, and in other cases connectivity is through a wireless connection (e.g., WiFi, Bluetooth) to the first network provider. Network providers are connected to a network, such as one or more servers providing network access to the World Wide Web, via wired or wireless connections to one or more machines with access to the network.

In some embodiments, a method for establishing network connectivity for a network device, comprises connecting a network device to a first network provider. Next, with the aid of the first network provider, the network device pings a first server and a second server. In some situations, one or both of the first and second servers have a static IP addresses. In other situations, one or both of the first and second servers have static URLs. In other situations, the first server has a static IP address and the second server has a static URL.

Next, the network device terminates its connection to the first network provider and subsequently (or simultaneously) establishes a connection to a second network provider if the second network provider meets one or more criteria unmet by the first network provider. In an embodiment, the one or more criteria are selected from the group consisting of (a) whether a response was received by the network device from the first server and/or the second server after pinging, (b) whether a network bandwidth of the second network provider is higher than a network bandwidth of the first network provider, (c) whether a network cost of the second network provider is lower than a network cost of the first network provider, (d) whether network access provided by the second network provider is more robust than network access provided by the first network provider, (e) whether connectivity between the network device and the second network provider is via wired connection and connectivity between the network device and the first network provider is via wireless connection, and (f) whether the second network provider is in closer proximity to the network device than the first network provider.

In some situations, the connection between the network device and the first network provider is terminated if, in response to the network device pinging the first server and second server, a response is not received by the network device from the first server or the second server. Alternatively, the connection is terminated if a response is not received by the network device from the first server and the second server.

In some cases, a method for establishing network connectivity for a network-enabled device, comprises the network-enabled device connecting to a first network provider (e.g., wireless router) and locating a second network provider. The second network provider has a higher ranked order of preference than the first network provider based on one or more predetermined network connectivity criteria. For example, the second network provider has a higher network bandwidth than the first network provider. Next, the network-enabled device connects to the second network provider. The one or more predetermined network connectivity criteria is selected from the group consisting of network bandwidth, network cost, and proximity of the network device to a network provider.

In some cases, the network-enabled device selects network providers from a list of network providers generated by the network-enabled device. The list may include network providers within a predetermined location or within a predetermined search radius, such as a radius of at least about 1 meter (“m”), or 2 m, or 3 m, or 4 m, or 5 m, or 6 m, or 7 m, or 8 m, or 9 m, or 10 m, or 20 m, or 30 m, or 40 m, or 50 m, or 60 m, or 70 m, or 80 m, or 90 m, or 100 m, or 200 m, or 300 m, or 400 m, or 500 m, or 600 m, or 700 m, or 800 m, or 900 m, or 1000 m, or 2000 m, or 3000 m, or 4000 m, or 5000 m. Network providers may be ranked by order of preference, which is determined on the basis of network connectivity factors. Alternatively, network providers may be ranked on the basis of whether a response is received by the network-enabled device upon pinging the first and/or second server. A network provider at the top of the list may have received a response from both the first and second servers whereas a network provider at the bottom of the list might not have received a response from either the first or second server. The ranking may be a weighed ranking In some cases, the ranking may be weighed with the aid of network connectivity factors. In an example, the ranking is weighted on the basis of network bandwidth—i.e., un-weighted rank order×network bandwidth/total network bandwidth summed across all network providers in the list.

The rank order may be saved in a storage location of the network-enabled device such as a data file or memory location, and updated manually by a user or at a predetermined interval, such as every 1 or more second, or 2 or more second, or 3 or more second, or 4 or more second, or 5 or more second, or 10 or more seconds, or 30 or more seconds, or 1 or more minutes, or 5 or more minutes, or 10 or more minutes, or 30 or more minutes, or 1 or more hours, or 12 or more hours, or 1 or more days.

In an example, the first network provider has a higher ranked order of preference than the second network provider if the first network provider enables a higher network bandwidth than the second network provider. The network device connects to the first network provider from the list but continually or intermittently determines whether network connectivity is optimum or more preferable network access is provided by another network provider. If network access through the second network provider is preferable with respect to the first network provider, such as if the second network provider offers cheaper internet access or higher network bandwidth, then the network device terminates the connection to the first network provider and connects to the second network provider.

In an embodiment, the network device connects to a network provider only if the network device successfully pings a first server and a second server (i.e., a response is received by the network provider after pinging the first and second servers). In an embodiment, the first server has a static internet protocol (IP) address and the second server has a static (or dedicated) uniform resource locator (URL).

In some situations, the second network provider is located by searching for other network providers within a predetermined or user-selected search radius of at least about 1 meter (“m”), or 2 m, or 3 m, or 4 m, or 5 m, or 6 m, or 7 m, or 8 m, or 9 m, or 10 m, or 20 m, or 30 m, or 40 m, or 50 m, or 60 m, or 70 m, or 80 m, or 90 m, or 100 m, or 200 m, or 300 m, or 400 m, or 500 m, or 600 m, or 700 m, or 800 m, or 900 m, or 1000 m, or 2000 m, or 3000 m, or 4000 m, or 5000 m. The network device then generates a list of network providers within the search radius.

FIG. 3 shows a method 300 for generating a ranked list of network providers, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. In a first step 305, the network-enabled device searches for network providers (e.g., WiFi access points, 2G network, 3G network, 4G network). In an embodiment, the search is within a predetermined search radius, such as a radius of at least about 1 meter (“m”), or 2 m, or 3 m, or 4 m, or 5 m, or 6 m, or 7 m, or 8 m, or 9 m, or 10 m, or 20 m, or 30 m, or 40 m, or 50 m, or 60 m, or 70 m, or 80 m, or 90 m, or 100 m, or 200 m, or 300 m, or 400 m, or 500 m, or 600 m, or 700 m, or 800 m, or 900 m, or 1000 m, or 2000 m, or 3000 m, or 4000 m, or 5000 m. In another embodiment, the search radius is a user-selected search radius. In another embodiment, the search is within a predetermined or user-selected location, such as a building (e.g., shopping mall, school).

Next, in a second step 310, the network-enabled device generates a list of network providers based on the search conducted in the first step 305. In a third step 315, the network-enabled device ranks the network providers based on one or more primary network connectivity factors. In an embodiment, the one or more primary network connectivity factors are selected from the group consisting of bandwidth, cost to maintain connectivity to the network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of the network provider, the download rate, the upload rate, and whether a ping packet is received from a first server and/or whether a ping packet is received from a second server (see above). In an example, a network provider offering network connectivity at a lower cost than another network provider has a higher rank. In another embodiment, the one or more network connectivity factors include proximity to network providers. In such a case, a network provider that is close to the network-enabled device (as measured by the signal strength, for example) has a higher rank than another network provider that is further away from the network-enabled device. The network-enabled device generates a ranked list based on the one or more primary network connectivity factors.

In an alternative embodiment, in the third step 315 the ranked list of network providers is generated by assigning the one or more network providers on the list generated in the second step 310 a random position. This is accomplished with the aid of a random number generator or pseudo random number generator. In such a case, a network provider that would otherwise have a lower rank than another network provider may appear at the top of the ranked list of network providers. As another alternative, the list of network providers in the second step 310 is populated in the order in which network providers are identified by the network-enabled device and the third step 315 is precluded. In an example, the list of network providers is populated in the order in which the network providers respond to the network-enabled device, such as, for example, the network-enabled device pinging the network providers. In such a case, the first to respond is first on the list, the second to respond is second on the list, and so on. In another example, the list of network providers is populated in the order in which the network-enabled device receives some identifiable material from the network providers. The identifiable material includes text or other data that permits the network-enabled device to identify each of the network providers.

Next, in a fourth step 320, the network-enabled device tests the network providers on the ranked list based on one or more secondary network connectivity factors. The one or more secondary network connectivity factors are selected from the group consisting of bandwidth, cost to maintain connectivity to the network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of the network provider, the download rate, the upload rate, and whether a ping packet is received from a first server and/or whether a ping packet is received from a second server (see above). In an example, if the ranked list is randomly populated, then the secondary network connectivity factors aid in refining the list to identify preferable or more preferable network providers. A network provider may be preferable if, for example, the network provider provides an upload rate, download rate and/or a network bandwidth (“bandwidth”) at or above a predetermined limit or greater than other network providers on the ranked list.

Next, in a fifth step 325, the network-enabled device reorders the list of network providers based upon the results of the test in the fourth step 320. In some situations, testing the network providers based on one or more secondary network connectivity factors does not result in any reordering of the list generated in the second step 310 and third step 315.

In a sixth step 330, the network-enabled device connects to a network provider at the top of the reordered list as generated in the fifth step 325. In some situations, the method 300 is repeated to continually or periodically update the list of network providers such that the most preferable network provider is at the top of the list. In an example, if the order of the network providers changes, the network-enabled device connects to a new network provider at the top of the list. In other situations, the method 300 is repeated manually, such as by request from a user operating the network-enabled device.

In an embodiment, the network-enabled device stores lists of network providers in a list or data file in memory, cache, or other storage location (e.g., hard disk) of the network-enabled device. In other embodiments, the network-enabled device stores the lists of network providers on a server. In some cases, the list is continually updated and the server includes the most up-to-date list of network providers. If the network-enabled device has a global positioning service (GPS) feature or is able to triangulate its location, then providing the location of the network-enabled device with the list of network providers enables generation of a map of preferable network providers as a function of location.

Network Connectivity Criteria

Another aspect of the invention provides network connectivity criteria (or rules). Such rules can be used to determine which network provided to employ for network access. For instance, a rule may specify that a network provider will be selected on the basis of upload and download rates. In such a case, a network-enabled device connects to a network provider and pings a first serer having a static IP address and a second server having a static URL. This is repeated for any other network providers. A list of network providers is generated having network provides that enabled the network-enabled device to successfully ping the first and second servers. From the list, the network-enabled device selects the network provider that provides the highest upload and download rates.

In some embodiments, network connectivity rules are selected from a bandwidth of the another network provider, cost to maintain connectivity to the another network provider, cost to transmit information with the aid of the another network provider, a download rate of the another network provider and an upload rate of the another network provider.

In some embodiments, network connectivity rules include (a) whether a response was received by the network device from the first server and the second server after pinging the first server and the second server, (b) whether a network bandwidth of the second network provider is higher than a network bandwidth of the first network provider, (c) whether a network cost of the second network provider is lower than a network cost of the first network provider, (d) whether network access provided by the second network provider is more robust than network access provided by the first network provider, (e) whether connectivity between the network device and the second network provider is via wired connection and connectivity between the network device and the first network provider is via wireless connection, and (f) whether the second network provider is in closer proximity to the network device than the first network provider.

Network connectivity rules may be stored on a network location accessible by a network-enabled device or stored in a storage location (e.g., memory, hard disk, cache) of the network-enabled device. Network connectivity rules may be updated manually or at predetermined times, such as at predetermine intervals (upon a system or software update, for example). Network connectivity rules in some cases are user-defined. In such a case, a user modifies network connectivity rules of the user's network-enabled device. In an example, a user defines a rule prescribing that network connectivity is established using a network provider that enables the fastest network access and the lowest network cost.

In some embodiments, network connectivity rules (or criteria) are dynamic. In an embodiment, network connectivity rules may vary with a location of a network-enabled device. In an example, network connectivity rules in a first geographic location (e.g., New York, the United States of America) are different from network connectivity rules in a second geographic location (e.g., Paris, France).

In some situations, a network-enabled device determines a location of the network enabled device with the aid of a global positioning system, such as global positioning service (GPS), and loads or downloads network connectivity rules for use at the location. In some cases, the network-enabled device loads preset (or default) rules and subsequently updates the rules with location-specific rules once network access has been established using the default rules. The default rules may be stored on the network-enabled device.

Location-specific (location-based) rules may enable a user to optimize network connectivity at various geographic locations. Network access in one location may be optimized using a set of rules that are different for optimizing network access in another location. As an example, network access in Paris may be optimum with the aid of a GSM provider than a CDMA provider, even though a network-enabled device may be able to access a network through either the GSM or CDMA provider. This may be the case if, for example, a user has a plan with the GSM provider but not the CDMA provider.

In some cases, rules may be time-based rules. Time-based rules provide rules that vary as a function of time, such as time of day, day of week, week of month, month of year, and so on. In some cases, a network-enabled device uses one or more morning rules for testing network connectivity in the morning, one or more afternoon rules for testing network connectivity in the afternoon, and one or more evening rules for testing network connectivity in the evening. Morning, afternoon and evening rules may vary based on the cost of network access, the upload rate and/or the download rate for these time periods.

In some cases, rules may be bandwidth-based rules in which rules may vary based on a predetermined level of bandwidth accessible to the network-enabled device. For instance, if a network-enabled device has exhausted its prescribed bandwidth through a network provider, then a network connectivity rule may require that the network-enabled device use another network provider. Some rules may require certain network connectivity guidelines based on the bandwidth (i.e., available or consumed data) available to a network-enabled device. In an example, if a network device has not exhausted its allotted bandwidth (e.g., 10 gigabits per month) through a first network provider, then the network device will use the first network provider; however, if the network device has exhausted its allotted bandwidth, then the network device will use a second network provider. This may be useful if the network device will incur excess usage charges if the network device uses the first network provider.

In some embodiments, a network-enabled device connects to a network through a peer device, such as another network-enabled device. Thus, the peer device may behave as a network provider. In such cases, the network-enabled device has rules that may require the network-enabled device to connect to the peer device when certain conditions are met, such as when network connectivity is preferable through the peer device then through connectivity via a network provider. This may be the case if, for example, the network-enabled device has exhausted its allotted bandwidth (or other usage restrictions) for a particular network provider, and network connectivity through that network provider would be cost-prohibitive.

FIG. 6 shows a first network-enabled device 605 and a second network-enabled device 610. The second network-enabled device 610 has connected to a network provider 615 that in turn is connected to a network 620, such as an intranet or the Internet. The connection may be through a wired or wireless network interface of the first network-enabled device 605 and the second network-enabled device 610. In the illustrated example, the connection is through a wireless interface of the first network-enabled device 605 and the second network-enabled device 610; the connection between the first network-enabled device 605 and the second network-enabled device 610 is wireless (dashed two-way arrow). The second network-enabled device 610, in some cases, has successfully pinged a first server having a static IP address and a second server having a static URL. In addition, the second network-enabled device 610 may have satisfied certain network connectivity rules, such as geographic-based rules (e.g., the second network-enabled device 610 has selected the network provider 615 based on the geographic location of the second network-enabled device 610).

In some embodiments, a network-enabled device connects to a network provider (e.g., a router or a peer device) that is a trusted network provider—i.e., the network-enabled device trusts the network provider. Such trust may be established with the aid of a trust protocol. For instance, a user may generate a list of trusted network providers, or the user's network-enabled device may maintain a record of network providers that the user has previously selected for use.

In other situations, the trust protocol may be provided through a system having one or more servers that provide trust protocols to a network-enabled device. Such trust protocols may be location-based. The trust protocols may be included in the connectivity rules of the network-enabled device, which may be manually or periodically updated.

In some embodiments, a first network-enabled device may communicate with a network (intranet or the Internet) by connecting to a second network-enabled device that is communicatively coupled to the network. The second network-enabled device in such a case may have connected to a network-provided and successfully pinged a first sever having a static IP address and a second server having a static URL. The first network-enabled device may, in turn, provide network connectivity to a third, fourth, or more network-enabled devices. In some cases, the first network-enabled device may received updates (e.g., rules update, software update) from the network via the network connectivity of the second network-enabled device.

Network Credits

In another aspect of the invention, network credits are provided for enabling a network-enabled device to connect to a network through a peer device (e.g., another network-enabled device) that has connected to the network. In some embodiments, network credits provide a network-enabled device an incentive to provide network connectivity for another network-enabled device; the other network-enabled device in such cases may prefer network connectivity through the peer device over a non-peer device type of network provider (e.g., router).

In an example, a first network-enabled device connects to a second network-enabled device that has successfully connected to a network through a router (e.g., WiFi connection or connection through a CDMA access point). In some cases, network connectivity for the first network-enabled device through the second network-enabled device may be preferable if it is cheaper than connectivity through a non-peer device type of network provider, or if the second network-enabled device provides a preferable signal or bandwidth in comparison to the non-peer device type of network provider. This may be the case if the first network-enabled device has exhausted its allotted bandwidth through a particular network provider, such as the router to which the second network-enabled device is connected. In exchange for providing network connectivity to the first network-enabled device, the second network-enabled device receives from the first network-enabled device network credits.

In some embodiments, network credits provide network-enabled devices an incentive to connect to a network through peer-to-peer connectivity (see, e.g., FIG. 6). In an embodiment, network credits are a promise for future payment, such as at a predetermined rate or a rate that is agreed to by users of network-enabled device at the time of peer-to-peer connectivity. In another embodiment, network credits are a promise for future network use. In such a case, if a first network-enabled device pays a second network-enabled device for network access using network credits from the first network-enabled device, the first network-enabled device may provide the second network-enabled device network access at a future point in time.

Network credits may be negotiated between network-enabled devices to capture access use restrictions, such as bandwidth and usage time. For instance, if a first network-enabled device pays a second network-enabled device for network access using network credits, the network credits may provide the second network-enabled device a certain bandwidth (e.g., 2 megabits/second for 30 minutes) of the first network-enabled device at a future point in time. Alternatively, the network credits may be the promise for a payment of a predetermined or negotiated sum of money. In some embodiments, the predetermined or negotiated sum of money is lower than the cost of network connectivity through a non-peer device type of network provider.

Network Connectivity Systems

In another aspect of the invention, a system for establishing network connectivity for a network device comprises a network connectivity system configured to locate network providers. The network connectivity system is configured to establish a connection to a network provider, ping a first server having a static internet protocol (IP) address with the aid of the network provider, ping a second server having a static uniform resource locator (URL) with the aid of the network provider, and determine whether to maintain connectivity to said network provider based on whether a response was received by said network device from said first server and/or whether a response was received by said network device from said second server.

In some cases, the network connectivity system is part of an electronic device, such as a portable electronic device, or associated with an electronic device. The network connectivity system may be a sub-system of a larger system. In an example, the network connectivity controller is a network card and associated software in a portable electronic device. In another example, the network connectivity controller is a stand-alone system configured to provide network connectivity to electronic devices.

The network connectivity system includes one or more devices selected from the group consisting of central processing unit (CPU), memory (e.g., flash memory), transmitter, and a bus (e.g., serial bus). The transmitter may be a radiofrequency (“RF”) transmitter or opto-electronic transmitter. The one or more devices or components may be interconnected, such as by way of a circuit in the network connectivity system, or a system board (e.g., motherboard).

FIG. 4 shows a system 400 having an electronic device 405, a first network provider 410, second network provider 415, a first server 420 and a second server 425, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention. The first server 420 is in communication with the first network provider 410 and second network provider 415 through a first network 430, such as an intranet or the Internet 435. The second server 425 is in communication with the first network provider 410 and second network provider 415 through a second network, such as the Internet 435. The first server 420 may be connected to the Internet 435.

The electronic device 405 includes a network connectivity system for connecting the electronic device 405 to the first network provider 410 and pinging the first server 420 and second server 425 or directing a first data packet to the first server 420 and a second data packet to the second server 425, as described above. The network controller includes computer-executable commands (see below) for facilitating various methods described herein.

In some cases, The electronic device 405 is a portable electronic device, such as a laptop computer, tablet PC or Smart phone. In other cases, the electronic device 405 is a stationary electronic device, such as a desktop computer or server. The electronic device 405 may connect to the first network provider 410 and second network provider via wired or wireless modes of communication. As illustrated, the electronic device 405 communicates with the first network provider 410 and second network provider via wireless communication.

The first network provider 410 and second network provider 415 are wireless routers. In other cases, the first network provider 410 and/or second network provider 415 is a wired router or other device configured to bring the electronic device 405 in communication with the network 435. In addition, the system 400 may include other network providers in communication with the network 435.

In an example, the electronic device 405 connects to the first network provider 410 and pings the first server 420 and second server 425. If the electronic device 405 receives a response from the first server 420 and second server 425, the electronic device 405 maintains its connection to the first network provider and a user may access the Internet 435. Otherwise, the electronic device 405 connects to the second network provider 410 and pings the first server 420 and second server 425 and awaits a response.

In cases in which a response is received from both the first server 420 and second server 425, such as via the first network provider 410, the electronic device 405 may determine whether to maintain connectivity to the first network provider 410 in view of various network connectivity factors provided herein. For example, the electronic device 405 terminates connectivity to the first network provider 410 and connects to the second network provider 415 if the network speed of the first network provider 410 is below a predetermined limit (e.g., 100 kbit/s).

The electronic device 405, or components (e.g., network controllers) of the electronic device 405, may include random-access memory (RAM) for enabling rapid transfer of information to and from a central processing unit (CPU), and to and from a storage module, such as one or more storage units, including magnetic storage media (i.e., hard disks), flash storage media and optical storage media. Additionally, the system may include one or more storage units, one or more CPUs, one or more RAMs, one or more read-only memories (ROMs), one or more communication ports (COM PORTS), one or more input/output (I/O) modules, such as an I/O interface, a network interface for enabling the system to interact with an intranet, including other systems and subsystems, and the Internet, including the World Wide Web. The storage unit may include one or more databases, such as a relational database. In some cases, the system further includes one or more of a data warehouse for storing information (e.g., network providers, network connectivity history) and a relational database. FIG. 5 shows a functional block diagram illustration of general purpose computer hardware platforms configured for use with methods and systems provided herein.

The electronic device 405, for example, includes a data communication interface for data packet communication and/or pining other systems, such as a server. In some situations, the electronic device 405 includes a central processing unit (CPU), in the form of one or more processors, for executing program instructions. The electronic device 405 may include an internal communication bus, program storage and data storage for various data files to be processed and/or communicated by the system, although the system may receive programming and data via network communications. The hardware elements, operating systems and programming languages of such devices are conventional in nature, and it is presumed that those skilled in the art are adequately familiar therewith. Of course, device functions may be implemented in a distributed fashion on a number of similar platforms, to distribute the processing load (see below). Electronic devices and systems provided herein may include subsystems and modules for distributing and/or allocating tasks.

In some embodiments, the electronic device 405 includes a network controller having a processor for executing methods provided above. The processor is configured to execute machine-readable code (source code or compiled object code) to facilitate methods described in various embodiments of the invention.

In some embodiments, the device 405 includes a user interface for displaying a list having one or more network providers to a user. The user interface in some cases is a graphical user interface (GUI). In an embodiment, the GUI shows a ranked list of network providers, with a more preferable network provider at the top of the list. In another embodiment, the GUI enables a user to select a network provided from the list of network providers. In some situations, the list of network providers is generated with the aid of one or more network connectivity criteria, as described above.

Hence, aspects of the methods outlined above may be embodied in programming. Program aspects of the technology may be thought of as “products” or “articles of manufacture” typically in the form of executable code and/or associated data that is carried on or embodied in a type of machine readable medium. “Storage” type media may include any or all of the tangible memory of the computers, processors or the like, or associated modules thereof, such as various semiconductor memories, tape drives, disk drives and the like, which may provide non-transitory storage at any time for the software programming. All or portions of the software may at times be communicated through the Internet or various other telecommunication networks. Such communications, for example, may enable loading of the software from one computer or processor into another, for example, from a management server or host computer into the computer platform of an application server. Media that may bear the software elements include optical, electrical and electromagnetic waves, such as used across physical interfaces between local devices, through wired and optical landline networks and over various air links. The physical elements that carry such waves, such as wired or wireless links, optical links or the like, also may be considered as media bearing the software. As used herein, unless restricted to non-transitory, tangible “storage” media, terms such as computer or machine “readable medium” refer to any medium that participates in providing instructions to a processor for execution.

A machine readable medium may take many forms, including but not limited to, a tangible storage medium, a carrier wave medium or physical transmission medium. Non-volatile storage media include, for example, optical or magnetic disks, such as any of the storage devices in any computer(s) or the like, such as may be used to implement the databases, etc. shown in the drawings. Volatile storage media include dynamic memory, such as main memory of such a computer platform. Tangible transmission media include coaxial cables; copper wire and fiber optics, including the wires that comprise a bus within a computer system. Carrier-wave transmission media may take the form of electric or electromagnetic signals, or acoustic or light waves such as those generated during radio frequency (RF) and infrared (IR) data communications.

Common forms of computer-readable media therefore include, for example: a floppy disk, a flexible disk, hard disk, magnetic tape, any other magnetic medium, a CD-ROM, DVD or DVD-ROM, any other optical medium, punch cards paper tape, any other physical storage medium with patterns of holes, a RAM, a ROM, a PROM and EPROM, a FLASH-EPROM, any other memory chip or cartridge, a carrier wave transporting data or instructions, cables or links transporting such a carrier wave, or any other medium from which a computer may read programming code and/or data. Many of these forms of computer readable media may be involved in carrying one or more sequences of one or more instructions to a processor for execution.

Methods steps may be implemented by a program product, including machine-executable instructions, such as program code, for example, in the form of program modules executed by systems or machines in networked environments. Generally, program modules may include routines, programs, objects, components, data structures, etc., that perform particular tasks or implement particular abstract data types. Machine-executable instructions, associated data structures and program modules represent examples of program code for executing steps of the methods disclosed herein. The particular sequence of such executable instructions or associated data structures represent examples of corresponding acts for implementing the functions described in such steps.

In some situations, systems and methods provide herein are practiced in a networked environment using logical connections to one or more remote computers having processors. Logical connections may include, for example, a local area network (LAN) and/or a wide area network (WAN). Such networking environments may be found in office-wide or enterprise-wide computer networks, intranets and the Internet, and may use a wide variety of different communication protocols. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that such network computing environments may encompass many types of computer system configurations, including personal computers, hand-held devices, multi-processor systems, microprocessor-based or programmable consumer electronics, network personal computers (PCs), servers, minicomputers, mainframe computers, and the like.

It should be noted that although the flowcharts provided herein (e.g., FIGS. 1 and 2) show a specific order of method steps (also “steps” herein), it is understood that the order of these steps may differ from what is depicted. Also two or more steps may be performed concurrently or with partial concurrence. Such variation may depend on the software and hardware systems chosen, and on designer choice. It is understood that all such variations are within the scope of the invention. Likewise, software and web implementations of the present invention could be accomplished with standard programming techniques with rule based logic and other logic to accomplish the various database searching steps, correlation steps, comparison steps and decision steps.

EXAMPLES Example 1

A user is in an area with three WiFi routers within wireless range of the user's laptop computer. A user connects the user's laptop computer to a first WiFi router. The user's laptop computer pings a first server having a static IP address and a second server having a dedicated URL (e.g., “Google.com”). Upon pinging the second server, a DNS serer in network communication with the first WiFi router resolves an IP address of the second server. A ping packet is then sent to the second server at the resolved IP address. If the user's laptop computer receives a response from the first and second servers, then the user's laptop computer maintains connectivity to first WiFi router. The user then uses the web to check his or her email or search the Internet, for example. If the user's laptop computer does not receive a response from one or both of the first and second servers, then the user's laptop computer connects to a second WiFi router.

Example 2

A user is on a plane with a plurality of network access points (WiFi hotspots). The user's Smart phone automatically scans for and generates a list of access points. Next, the user's Smart phone connects to a first network access point and pings a first server having a static IP address and a second server having a dedicated URL. Pinging the second server entails using the ping command with the URL as the destination address (e.g., “ping www.Google.com”). The DNS server will resolve the IP address of the URL to then ping the second server with the resolved IP address. If the user's Smart phone receives a response from both the first and second servers, then the user's Smart phone maintains its connection to the first network access point and the user accesses the network. If the user's Smart phone does not receive a response from one or both of the first and second servers, then the user's Smart phone connects to a second network access point and the steps above are repeated.

Example 3

A tablet PC (e.g., iPad) has a first wireless interface configured to communicate with one or more WiFi routers and a second wireless interface configured to communicate with a GSM provider. The tablet PC connects to a WiFi router using the first wireless interface and pings a first server having a static IP address and a second server having a static URL. Next, the tablet PC connects to a GSM provider using the second wireless interface and pings the first and second servers. The tablet PC then assesses, with the aid of a processor of the tablet PC, network connectivity via the WiFi router and the GSM provider to determine whether connectivity via the WiFi router and/or the GSM provider meet certain predetermined network connectivity criteria (or rules). The tablet PC determines that network connectivity via the WiFi router is preferable because it provides higher upload and download rates and is cheaper than connectivity via the GSP provider. The tablet PC then uses the WiFi router for Internet access.

It should be understood from the foregoing that, while particular implementations have been illustrated and described, various modifications can be made thereto and are contemplated herein. It is also not intended that the invention be limited by the specific examples provided within the specification. While the invention has been described with reference to the aforementioned specification, the descriptions and illustrations of embodiments of the invention herein are not meant to be construed in a limiting sense. Furthermore, it shall be understood that all aspects of the invention are not limited to the specific depictions, configurations or relative proportions set forth herein which depend upon a variety of conditions and variables. Various modifications in form and detail of the embodiments of the invention will be apparent to a person skilled in the art. It is therefore contemplated that the invention shall also cover any such modifications, variations and equivalents.



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Salt not as damaging to health as previously thought, says study

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Salt may not be as damaging to health as is usually claimed, according to a controversial new study which suggests campaigns to persuade people to cut down may only be worthwhile in countries with very high sodium consumption, such as China.

The World Health Organization recommends cutting sodium intake to no more than 2g a day – the equivalent of 5g of salt – because of the link to increased blood pressure, which is in turn implicated in stroke.

A danger to public health? Uproar as scientist urges us to eat more salt

But no country has ever managed to get population salt or sodium intake that low, the authors of the study published in the Lancet medical journal point out. Their research, the Canadian academics say, shows it may be pointless to try in countries like the UK and the US.

The study by Prof Andrew Mente from the Population Health Research Institute of Hamilton Health Sciences and McMaster University and colleagues is large, involving more than 90,000 people in more than 300 communities in 18 countries. But it immediately reignited a simmering row with other scientists who are on a crusade to reduce our salt consumption to near zero.

Mente and colleagues found that the harmful effects of sodium – raised blood pressure and stroke – only occurred in countries like China, where the liberal use of soy sauce leads to sodium levels over 5g a day, the equivalent of 12g of salt. And they found that very low levels of salt actually led to more heart attacks and deaths, suggesting moderate salt intake may be protective.

“Our study adds to growing evidence to suggest that, at moderate intake, sodium may have a beneficial role in cardiovascular health, but a potentially more harmful role when intake is very high or very low. This is the relationship we would expect for any essential nutrient and health. Our bodies need essential nutrients like sodium, but the question is how much,” said Mente.

Two years ago, the same team published a study with similar results, also in the Lancet, looking at individuals. It was lambasted by critics, who called it “bad science” and its findings were rejected by the American Heart Association.

The latest observational study – not a randomised controlled trial which compares different groups of people – looks at communities rather than individuals. It immediately came in for heavy criticism. The chief complaint was that it did not accurately measure the amount of sodium in people’s urine, which needs to be done over a 24 hour period.

“The authors have not addressed any of the serious criticisms from the wider scientific community of their 2016 study,” said Graham MacGregor, professor of cardiovascular medicine at Queen Mary University of London, and founder of the salt-reduction campaign Cash (Consensus Action on Salt and Health). “These criticisms include the use of ill participants in the study, leading to reverse causality (ie those suffering with heart disease don’t eat much food, and consequently eat less salt, but it is the illness that leads to death rather than lower salt intake), and the use of spot urine measurements.”

Some Chinese ready meals found to have more salt than 11 bags of crisps

Tom Sanders, professor emeritus of nutrition and dietetics at King’s College London, said campaigns to lower salt intake have been beneficial in some countries. “Intakes of salt in the UK have fallen over the past 30 years from over 12g per day to 7 to 8g per day, and this has been accompanied by a fall in average blood pressure of the population. Japan used to have a very high prevalence of high blood pressure and high rates of stroke, and took action to cut salt intake in the 1970s and now has much lower rates,” he said.

But it is not easy to persuade people to forgo salt, say Franz Messerli and Louis Hofstetter, experts from Switzerland and New York in a commentary on the Lancet findings. They cite Sir George Pickering, regius professor of medicine at the University of Oxford, who wrote more than half a century ago: “The rigid low-sodium diet is insipid, unappetising, monotonous, unacceptable, and intolerable. To stay on it requires the asceticism of a religious zealot.”

The new study measured potassium as well as sodium levels in people’s urine and found that higher potassium, which is found in fruit and vegetables, cut rates of stroke, heart disease and death. “Perhaps salt-reduction evangelists and salt-addition libertarians could temporarily put aside their vitriol and support the hypothesis that diets rich in potassium confer substantially greater health benefits than aggressive sodium reduction,” they write.



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Who Decides How Much a Life Is Worth?

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After 9/11, Congress authorized unlimited funds to compensate the families of victims. It was Kenneth Feinberg’s job to distribute that money, assigning a monetary value to each of those lives. (Photo: Wally Gobetz/flickr)

Our latest Freakonomics Radio episode is called “Who Decides How Much a Life Is Worth?” (You can subscribe to the podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or elsewhere, get the RSS feed, or listen via the media player above.)

After every mass shooting or terrorist attack, victims and survivors receive a huge outpouring of support — including a massive pool of compensation money. How should that money be allocated? We speak with the man who’s done that job after many tragedies, including 9/11. The hard part, it turns out, isn’t attaching a dollar figure to each victim; the hard part is acknowledging that dollars can’t heal the pain.

Below is a transcript of the episode, modified for your reading pleasure. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, see the links at the bottom of this post. And you’ll find credits for the music in the episode noted within the transcript.

*      *      *

When something terrible happens — something truly terrible, a mass shooting or a terrorist attack — there is a man whose phone, eventually, will ring.

Kenneth FEINBERG: My name is Kenneth Feinberg, I’m a lawyer here in Washington, D.C.

Feinberg grew up near Boston — in Brockton, MA.

FEINBERG: Brockton High School, graduate; University of Massachusetts, graduate; New York University School of Law. And then I was asked by the Chief Judge of New York State to clerk for him.

This was in 1970. As Feinberg’s career progressed, he got to know many of the chief judge’s other former clerks.

FEINBERG: One of whom was the very distinguished eminent Federal District Judge Jack B. Weinstein in Brooklyn.

One day in 1984, Feinberg got a call from Judge Weinstein. By this time, Feinberg had put in time as a federal prosecutor and as chief of staff for Senator Ted Kennedy. Now he was in private practice. What did Judge Weinstein want?

FEINBERG: Weinstein had assigned to him the Agent Orange litigation brought by Vietnam veterans against the chemical industry — Dow, Monsanto — alleging certain physical injuries and deaths attributable to inhaling or swimming in the herbicide Agent Orange while serving in Vietnam.

Stephen DUBNER: For those who don’t recall or know, Agent Orange was an exfoliant meant to burn the shrubs off to give American soldiers an advantage, yes?

FEINBERG: That’s right, so the Viet Cong couldn’t hide and ambush American soldiers. Well, Vietnam veterans came home with chloracne, with soft tissue sarcomas, with other cancers. And Judge Weinstein had that case — very complicated, very complex medical case — and on the eve of trial, he asked me would I be willing to come to Brooklyn to mediate a settlement of that case and then design and administer a compensation program for eligible Vietnam veterans?

DUBNER: So, Judge Weinstein knew that you very much admired him. Was that in any way his putting his thumb on the scale in that case?

FEINBERG: Yes, he put his thumb on the scale to get it settled. I don’t think he put his thumb on the scale as to what the amount should be, or whether the chemical industry had a better case than the Vietnam veterans. He put his thumb on the scale only in the sense that, “Let’s try and resolve this case rather than litigate the case, and then appeals and five or six more years of uncertainty.” He saw the necessity of trying to bring the litigation to closure. And he also saw that legally, the veterans had a tough case, they may not win.

DUBNER: Were you aware of any previous programs, or any previous settlements that were even close to similar to that in terms of scope and magnitude?

FEINBERG: No. Unprecedented. Writing on a blank slate. So I accepted the assignment at the request, of course, of the court. And in eight weeks, we settled that massive, complex litigation. Once I did that, everybody started calling me.

The Agent Orange settlement didn’t please everyone. In fact, there’s barely ever a settlement like this that leaves everyone happy. Because underlying each case is a tragedy that dollars cannot repair, a tragedy requiring a thankless and perhaps impossible calculus. But that’s when Feinberg’s phone rings.

FEINBERG: It might be a Governor — Hickenlooper in Colorado after the Aurora movie shootings. It might be a mayor — Menino in Boston, after the Boston Marathon bombings. It might be the president of Virginia Tech University.

There was one tragedy that differed from the rest — on several dimensions.

FEINBERG: The 9/11 Fund was fascinating because Congress authorized unlimited funds. “Whatever Feinberg thinks is appropriate, fine with us. We don’t know how to value these lives.”

Today on Freakonomics Radio: how do you put a monetary value on a human life?

*      *      *

It’s been happening with increasing intensity, if not quite regularity. The gun massacres at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut; at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando; at the country-music festival near the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas. When the call comes, Kenneth Feinberg sets aside his regular legal work and takes up the case, usually working pro bono.

DUBNER: I know every case is different. There’s a different set of victims, there’s a different motivation, there’s a different pool of money, there’s a different public sentiment. Walk us through how you get involved, how you assess the landscape, and then how you begin to make it happen.

FEINBERG: So, on the agenda — one, somebody initiates it. Not me, I get the call to design it. Somebody initiates it, then the very next question you have to ask: how much money do you have to distribute? That drives everything. Until you know whether you’ve got a billion dollars, $5 billion, $20 billion, $3 million, $8 million, there’s nothing to plan; you can’t decide and design a program until you know how much money there is that you’re going to allocate to victims.

Then you ask, based on the amount of money, who’s eligible? The dead? The physically injured? What about those who didn’t suffer any physical injury, but are now so mentally incapacitated they can’t get out of bed? Are they eligible? Then you have to ask — very important — what is the methodology that will be used to calculate how much goes to each individual? Do we base it on our tort system — if somebody gets hit by an automobile or falls off a ladder — that system? Does one size fit all, all lives are equal, everybody gets the same? You’ve got to decide what methodology will be used.

And then after you’ve got eligibility and methodology decided: what proof does a victim — alleged — have to submit to me to corroborate the claim? And then, finally, do you want to give every eligible victim, or their family, an opportunity to be heard, to come in and talk with me? Once I get that call, those are the issues that have to be addressed.

DUBNER: In the time between the event itself and you getting the call — let’s say it’s the Vegas shooting or it’s the Orlando shooting — what are you thinking? Are you waiting for the call? Are you thinking about that event, are you assessing in any way?

FEINBERG: I’m not waiting for the call. I hope the call won’t come. And if it does come, I hope that it will come later rather than earlier. The more time that goes by after a tragedy, you hope there’ll be a dampening of the emotion of the survivors and the victims. Emotional trauma is the single biggest handicap — obstacle — to successful implementation of these programs.

DUBNER: You’ve said in the past that the single, maybe most common, heartache of 9/11 victims’ families was the lack of a body. Yes?

FEINBERG: Yes.

DUBNER: Did that surprise you?

FEINBERG: It surprised me. The depth of the emotional angst when mothers and fathers would come to see me and say, “You know Mr. Feinberg, you’re offering me $4 million, and they haven’t even found my daughter’s body. And probably never will.” That raises the emotional stakes of a hearing, of a give-and-take, and makes it all that much more difficult to talk in the cold world of dollars and cents.

DUBNER: One of your most unusual settlements was after the 2008 financial crisis, when the government essentially took over a number of firms, and you were called in to set the limits on their top executives’ compensation.

FEINBERG: Congress bailed out corporate America after the 2008-09 financial crisis, in order to prevent Bank of America, or G.M., or Chrysler, or Citibank, A.I.G. from going under. Taxpayer money propped up the private American business economic system. Congress passed a law, and the law said, “Well, now that we have protected these companies and bailed them out from bankruptcy, we are now a creditor.” And until the companies pay us back with interest, we will appoint the Treasury Department to fix corporate pay, the annual compensation of private corporate officials.

DUBNER: And they thought what kind of guy could we get?

FEINBERG: Populist revenge. The Secretary of the Treasury called me up and said, “We’re at Treasury, we don’t want to be in this business setting private corporate pay. What would Alexander Hamilton say?” So, this was my job for 16 months, to set individual corporate packages of compensation for the top 25 officials in the seven companies that received the most taxpayer bailout assistance.

DUBNER: And what kind of blowback did you get from them?

FEINBERG: Tremendous blowback. I did not realize how emotional this would get. Corporate officials, if I go to them and say, “You’re making $5 million a year, now I’m going to cut it back to a million,” I waited for them to say, “Oh, that means I’ll have to sell a third car. I’ll have to get rid of our estate on Long Island at the beach. I won’t be able to send my kids to Exeter and Andover,” that’s what I expected. I was wrong. Very emotional, because these corporate officials viewed their compensation as the sole barometer of self-worth.

DUBNER: And that surprised you.

FEINBERG: Surprised me? It was as emotional as 9/11. “Mr. Feinberg, if you cut my pay by 90 or 80 percent — how dare you? I have worked for 25 years for this company, I have given up my sweat and my blood and all that I could. And now you have made me worthless in my own eyes.”

DUBNER: What did you think of that argument? Did you find validity in it, or no?

FEINBERG: I found validity in the legitimacy and good-faith emotion that they exhibited. But with all due respect, that was not a rationale for me to say, “I feel bad for you, and therefore I won’t cut your pay.” Congress passed a law. I was frankly astounded, at the emotional mirror of self-worth that was reflected in what your check says every week. What about the church and your role on Sundays at the church? What about your three children and how well they’re being raised? What about the loving family that you’ve got? Nope.

There is, of course, a big difference between a government clawback from corporate executives and distributing money to the victims and survivors of a mass shooting or a terrorist attack. And in most of the latter cases, the funds are coming not from an institution or a government, but from public donations. The OneOrlando Fund, for instance, was set up to help victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting, in which 49 people were killed and dozens injured. The fund received more than $31 million in donations. Of that, Feinberg distributed more than $17 million to the families of the people who were murdered. The victims who spent time in a hospital but survived got between $69,000 and $321,000. People who were in the nightclub but weren’t hospitalized got a bit more than $26,000 each. When it comes to putting a price on human life and suffering, Feinberg is hardly reinventing the wheel.

Kip VISCUSI: There are actually lots of different ways to do it.

That’s W. Kip Viscusi

VISCUSI: I’m an economist, and I’m a professor at Vanderbilt University.

Viscusi’s work has focused on a widely used metric called the Value of a Statistical Life.

VISCUSI: The value of statistical life refers to how much it’s worth to prevent one expected death.

Some people — especially if it’s their own death they’re trying to prevent — would put that number at infinity.

VISCUSI: Everybody who thinks that life should have an infinite value should instead ask themselves the question, “How much would you pay for a car that’s safer but by a trivial amount?” And most people are not willing to pay an unlimited amount of money for this slightly safer car.

There’s another complication to statistically valuing a life, an even harder problem to solve.

VISCUSI: Lots of people say that even placing any dollar number on life devalues life. So we shouldn’t be doing it at all. But, as a routine practice, government agencies have to make decisions. So either implicitly or explicitly, they’re going to be valuing life, and we want them to use the right numbers.

Okay, so what are the “right numbers,” and how do you get there? Let’s start with the way it used to be:

VISCUSI: So, used to be, the government agencies — such as the Occupational Safety and Health Administration — did not want to explicitly say that they are placing a value on life. Instead, they called it the cost of death. Well, the cost-of-death figures only capture the income lost to survivors. They don’t capture how much you value your own life and how much you value staying alive. So what you really want to know is, how much are people willing to pay and how much is society willing to pay to prevent the risk of one expected death? And the way I’ve looked at it is by examining how much workers require in terms of compensation to face extra risks of death on the job. And if you do that, you come up with the number in current dollars of about $10 million.

In a perfect world, the compensation for risky work would inevitably price in that risk. But, as Viscusi explains, the world is far from perfect.

VISCUSI: What I’ve found is that whether you get paid or not depends in part on who you are. So, immigrant workers — particularly Mexican immigrants who are not fluent in English — work on jobs that are 50 percent riskier than the average job, and they don’t get extra pay for the risk. These are the areas where we need more government regulation and more vigorous enforcement of the regulatory standards. I would not place a lower value on their lives simply because they have fewer opportunities. If you gave them these opportunities, they would have different values.

Viscusi’s calculations are, well, calculated. Even rational, perhaps. The problem is that rationality often dissipates once a terrible thing happens — when people are hurt or killed by a company’s product and there’s a lawsuit.

VISCUSI: I’ve done studies with mock jurors, hundreds of mock jurors, where I presented them with different case scenarios. In some case scenarios, the companies didn’t place a value on life at all. Other scenarios, the company placed a value based on the lost earnings. Another variant was, the company placed a value on life based on the government’s value of statistical life. What I’ve found is that you get a seemingly perverse result, which is that if the companies value lives more — let’s say they value lives at $5 million or $7 million instead of a few hundred thousand dollars — jurors want to send companies a signal that they disapprove of what the company’s done. So, they want to punish them with an award that exceeds whatever dollar number the company used. If the company used a number of $300,000, then punishing them a million dollars would send them a price signal. But if they valued the life at $5 million, you have to punish them with a penalty of $10 million, in order to let them know that they’ve undervalued life.

And there’s another complication: are all lives valued equally?

FEINBERG: This is a capitalist society.

Ken Feinberg again.

FEINBERG: Money has always been the vehicle to lift up the innocent or the victim, and that is something that is American. “Gee, you’re giving different amounts to different individuals? That doesn’t sound very American.” It is very American. If somebody gets hit by an automobile or falls off a ladder, the stockbroker and the banker get more than the waiter, the bus boy, or the fireman. That’s the American capitalist system, and that’s the role of money in trying to temper the unfortunate.

*      *      *

Kenneth Feinberg is a lawyer in private practice in Washington, D.C.

FEINBERG: And I have the task after certain tragedies of trying to calculate what amount of public or private compensation should be allocated to particular victims.

If you’ve heard of Feinberg before today, it’s likely because one of the tragedies he worked on was the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He sought out that job.

FEINBERG: That’s correct. Once the legislation was passed by Congress and signed by President Bush saying there would be a fund, I suggested to both Senator Kennedy and Senator Chuck Hagel, a good friend of mine, from Nebraska, Republican, I’d be interested. Well, that’s all it took. They together contacted John Ashcroft, the Attorney General, President Bush, and I got the job.

This job was, for many reasons, different from any other — the scope of the tragedy; the political, economic, and emotional tensions; and, perhaps most distinctively, the source of the settlement money.

FEINBERG: The 9/11 Fund was fascinating, because Congress authorized unlimited funds. “Whatever Feinberg thinks is appropriate, fine with us. We don’t know how to value these lives.” And in that program, I spent taxpayer money, $7.1 billion. I thought that the Congress would hang me. And, instead, the Congress was very, very satisfied.

DUBNER: There were a lot of things about the 9/11 Victim Compensation Fund that were unique. The airlines and other industries, for instance, didn’t contribute one cent. The legislation was written essentially to protect the airline industries and other industries, maybe insurance firms, from going out of business.

FEINBERG: It basically — although the program was voluntary — it encouraged all victims who lost loved ones in the World Trade Center, the airlines, the Pentagon, to divert themselves out of the legal system, come in for a special award, and promise on a signed piece of paper, “I will not sue.” If you’re giving immunity, in effect, to the airlines, who can’t be sued for negligence, or Boeing, “the cockpit door wasn’t secure, the security system was negligently installed” — if you are giving them sort of immunity from suit, well, what about the victims, who paid the price?

Congress decided, we better balance it. We’ll make it very difficult to sue the airlines or the World Trade Center, but at the same time we’ll make it very easy for victims to get compensated without suing. So that was the balance that was struck. That meant — the minute I saw that, that voluntary applicants have to sign a paper, “I will not sue” — well, that means everybody who filed a claim has to receive a different amount of money. A stockbroker or a banker or a high-priced lawyer or accountant — their survivors expect more from the 9/11 Fund in return for a promise not to sue than the waiter, the busboy, the fireman, the cop, the soldier. The minute you take a program with public money and join the litigation at the hip of the program, everybody’s getting a different amount, and that causes tremendous divisiveness.

DUBNER: I believe it was Senator Kennedy who said to you, “Listen, you need to understand that a life is a life and that while you do need to recompense more in some cases…” — can you talk about that balance you tried to strike?

FEINBERG: Of course. Senator Kennedy said, flat out, privately, “Now Ken, this is all taxpayer money, coming out of the U.S. Treasury. Make sure that 90 percent of that money doesn’t go to 10 percent of the victims. That will be a real mistake.” So, what I did under the statute, I had discretion. And I could say to a stockbroker’s widow, “You know, if you run the numbers, purely the calculation of lost earnings, your husband, over a lifetime, after taxes etc., would have made $21 million. Well, Congress never intended to give you $21 million. So, I’m exercising my discretion under the statute and I’m going to reduce it to $6 million. Now, there are very, very few people even getting $6 million. But, based on the data and what your husband was earning, and what he was likely projected to earn, you are going to be a high-end compensated individual. Whereas the waiter or the bus boy might have had lifetime earnings after taxes of $800,000, I’m going to raise you, in my discretion, closer, not to $2 million, but closer to the median of about $1.5 million.” And that way, exactly as you point out, I managed — exercising my valid discretion — to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.

DUBNER: Did you hear a lot of complaints from the families of the highest earners?

FEINBERG: Some. A few sued. They went to federal court, claiming that I was violating the statute by not giving them their full economic lost-wage earnings.

DUBNER: They sued within the corridor of the settlement, having agreed to the settlement?

FEINBERG: No, they didn’t accept a settlement. I said, “I’ll give you $6 million instead of $21 million or $24 million.” And they said, “You are violating the statutory language,” they went to court. They all settled their cases five years later. There was never a trial, and people ask me all the time, “Did they get more or less?” Well, some may have got more. Some of may have got less.

DUBNER: Hard for you to know.

FEINBERG: Hard to know because it’s confidential, but don’t forget those families lived with this for five years, and relived it, and relived the tragedy. And at the end of the day, whatever they got, 25 percent of it went to their lawyers.

DUBNER: Do you feel it’s a more complicated calculation to do the kind of calculations that economists like Kip Viscusi do that try to put a price on, among other things, public goods, clean air and water and so on. Do you think that’s inherently a much more—

FEINBERG: Oh, much more difficult. What I do in all of these programs is not rocket science. The tough part, the debilitating part, is the emotion. The stories you hear, you wouldn’t believe. A lady comes to see me, 24 years old, sobbing, “Mr. Feinberg, I lost my husband. He was a firefighter and he died at the World Trade Center. And he left me with our two children, six and four. Now, when you cut the check from the 9/11 Fund, I’m going to get $2.4 million, tax-free. I want it in 30 days.”

“Mrs. Jones, why do you need the money in 30 days? This is public money. The Treasury has to do its due diligence, it might be 90 days. You’ll get your money.”

“I want it in 30 days.”

“Why?”

“I’ll tell you why, Mr. Feinberg, I have terminal cancer. I have eight weeks to live. My husband was going to take care of our two children. Now they’re going to be orphans. Now I’ve got to get this money while I still have my faculties. I’ve got to set up a trust, get a guardian, make sure they’ll be provided for. I don’t have much time. You’ve got to help me.”

Well, we ran down to the Treasury. We accelerated the program. We got her the check. Six weeks later, she died.

DUBNER: Did you try in the beginning to be more empathic perhaps than you realized was a good idea?

FEINBERG: Yes, and I make mistakes. You see, you make mistakes and you learn your lesson. I remember one 83-year-old man came to see me after 9/11. He said, “I lost my son. Mr. Feinberg, a father should never bury a son. I’ll never be the same. Doesn’t matter how much money you give me.”

I made the mistake of saying to this very nice man, “This is terrible, I know how you feel.”

He looked at me. Nice man. Tears. “Mr. Feinberg, don’t ever tell people like me that you know how I feel. You have no idea how I feel. You have a tough job, but those words ring hollow. They’re pretentious, they’re robotic.” Well, I’ll never do that again.

Charles WOLF: I was angry. I was very angry. Yet, at the same time I didn’t want to bite the hand that would feed me.

That is Charles Wolf, whose wife Katherine died on 9/11. He is an Amway distributor; Katherine worked with him on that business and had just started a new job as an executive assistant in the north tower of the World Trade Center. We asked our friend Anna Sale, host of the Death, Sex, and Money podcast, to talk with Wolf about his experience with Ken Feinberg and the 9/11 Fund.

Anna SALE: So, Congress takes action. Ultimately, there is one person, one man, whose job it is to be the person to give you an answer on what of this fund, this money from the government, what will be your share because of your loss.

WOLF: No, that’s not the way it worked. Real simply, this did not have a fixed amount of money allocated to it. He had the entire United States Treasury at his disposal. It was not based on how much of this money were you going to get. They made it exactly like it would happen for a wrongful-death lawsuit, they calculated it based on lost future earnings, and pain and suffering.

SALE: Did that feel like, “If he tells me he’s calculating,” — I feel like there could be more potential for frustration if you feel like he’s underestimating.

WOLF: I understood that. So, my mind was: I needed to prove how much Katherine was worth based on her current income, what her absence in our business would result in, and hopefully that everything would work out.

SALE: And when you say “had to prove,” are you sitting with spreadsheets and doing the numbers yourself?

WOLF: A lot of it, yeah. I’m gathering information, I’m gathering past information, I’m gathering data. Because the whole thing, and the issue was the non-economic damages, pain and suffering.

SALE: What was that worth? That was the question.

WOLF: Exactly. He had picked a number at that time that was 27 years old.

SALE: Based on a 27-year-old formula.

WOLF: Correct, and with no adjustments or anything. I learned that lawyers like to work on precedent, precedence. They don’t like to probe new ground.

SALE: Did you feel like he knew how to communicate with people who were in deep grief?

WOLF: No. Not at that time. No. So, I had to, shall we say, be very diplomatic about it. I had to say things in a certain way. But I had already done my homework. I knew the ins and outs of the whole thing, and I’m making sure that I attack his policies and rules, not him personally. I do remember though — because at this point you don’t know who to trust or who not to trust — and I remember, because I went after him several times. And he says to me, he says, “Charles,” in his Boston accent, he says, “Charles, I’ve heard this all before, but I’ve never heard it said so eloquently.” I’m like, is he giving me B.S.? Is he trying to placate me? Is he trying to soften me? Is he, well what what’s going on here? As he walked out of the room afterwards, he was just walking by me like this, I said, “You picked the wrong benchmark.”

SALE: I don’t know if you use the word closure when you’re thinking about your own grief, but—

WOLF: I just had a dream about her last night. Closure might be for something you go through in a divorce, and remember that old song, “I’m going to wash that man right out of my hair?”

SALE: I’ve felt that.

WOLF: That might be closure, “All right. It’s done.” That’s closure. No, there’s no closure in this. What you do is you move on in your life. But when there’s somebody that you’ve loved, deeply loved, does that love ever go away?

SALE: Would you want Ken Feinberg’s job?

WOLF: I will tell you this. Looking at it now, he had one hell of a hard job. He and I had breakfast together in ‘08. He says, “Charles,” he says, “my lawyer training taught me how to deal with other lawyers. It didn’t teach me how to deal with grieving widows six weeks after they lost their husbands.” I said, “I get that.” He had to learn. People had their spouses taken, their siblings taken, their parents taken. See, this is the thing: unless you’ve been through this —

There were times that I just wanted to be with her. I never thought of committing suicide, but I knew that I wanted to be dead so I could be with her. When you get to that level, it’s about having something in return. It’s about something. Who can value a person’s life? So what they did is they gave us what they would have made in the future. The best estimation they could. That’s the way it was. I still think that’s a fair way to do it.

FEINBERG: I’ll defend the 9/11 Compensation Fund to my grave. I think it did exactly what the American people wanted to show the world: we take care of our own. They wanted to demonstrate their sense of community with the victims. So, I think it was the right thing to do. But I think the 9/11 Fund is better studied in a history class, not a law-school class. You will never see another 9/11 Fund, I do not believe, nor should you.

DUBNER: Because why?

FEINBERG: Because you’re taking public money.

DUBNER: What if there is an event that necessitates?

FEINBERG: There’s an event every day that necessitates.

DUBNER: There’s this word that I’m sure you’ve heard a million times. The word is closure. Does it exist?

FEINBERG: No. I hear that all the time. You know, you hear this argument: “Here’s a check for two million dollars. It will bring you some small closure from the incident and the grief.” Dollars don’t do that. They’re a hollow substitute, I can tell you, for loss.

Thanks to Kenneth Feinberg for speaking with us today. If you want to learn more about his settlement work, he’s written two books: What Is Life Worth? and Who Gets What? Thanks also to Charles Wolf, Anna Sale, and Kip Viscusi.

Freakonomics Radio is produced by Stitcher and Dubner Productions. This episode was produced by Max Miller and Andy Meisenheimer, with help from Alvin Melathe and Anabel Bacon. Our staff also includes Alison Craiglow, Greg Rosalsky, Greg Rippin, Harry Huggins, and Zack Lapinski. The music you hear throughout the episode was composed by Luis Guerra. You can subscribe to Freakonomics Radio on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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