Two years before he died in 1987, my dad wrote this:

Digital Rights Management (often referred to as Digital Restrictions Management) has been a hot topic of discussion on the internets, especially as it applies to music and video. The record companies have made it clear that they don’t want you to copy music, which in this age of computers and iPods means they don’t want you to use it the way you want to use it. Sure, they’ve sorta-kinda said it’s ok to rip your CDs to your computer so you can put the songs into iTunes and on your iPod, but they don’t want you to EVER use file-sharing networks or make mix CDs for your friends. At the iTunes Store, the biggest online music seller, most songs have been “protected” by DRM, so you can’t copy them to another computer unless it’s “authorized” and you can’t share them with your friends. The DRM also locked you into an iPod–none of the other music players would play Apple’s proprietary format. Yet, from the beginning, you’ve always been able to rip a CD from an iTunes playlist and then create “unprotected” MP3 files from the CD, totally circumventing the DRM.

Where music is concerned, it appears the record companies have finally gotten the message, with all four major music companies allowing DRM-free MP3 files to be sold by Amazon, and some on the iTunes Music Store. It’s inevitable that almost all songs will be available DRM-free soon. And it’s about damn time!

Surprisingly, I’ve rarely heard anyone mention that there have always been easy ways to to get your favorite tunes without paying for them. When I first heard the record companies whining about losing revenues through file sharing, my first reaction was: If you want to keep people from getting your music free, take it off the friggin’ radio!

When I was thirteen years old, I was taping songs off the radio and splicing them together to make mix tapes to share with my friends, and I always had the latest, most popular songs. That was over fifty years ago. True, it wasn’t digital. Still isn’t. It has the stigma of analog, which of course makes it vastly inferior (tongue planted firmly in cheek) even though it has to be analog when it’s recorded and it has to be analog before you can hear it.

Actually, having been a broadcast engineer for many years and with some major stations, I can tell you that under good receiving conditions, an FM radio station is quite capable of delivering near-perfect fidelity–better than most consumer-grade CD players, and better than satellite radio. All that music has been available for a long time to anyone capable of running a simple cable from a decent FM tuner to the audio input of their computer.

This situation has put the record industry on the horns of a dilemma. Radio is still their best way to promote their music, and they do everything they can to get their songs played. (Have you heard of payola?) Remember, too, that radio stations pay to play that music, through contracts with licensing agencies like ASCAP, BMI and SESAC. Satellite has to pay, too, and the RIAA wants them to pay even more. Netcasters, too, have to pay–even more dearly than broadcasters.

So, the plus side is the record companies get paid by the broadcasters and they get incredible promotion value from the air play. The downside is that all that music is out there, free for the ripping. What the record companies have going for them is most people won’t go to the trouble to rip songs off the air, especially now that they have colluded with consumer electronics manufacturers to keep appliances that make the process easy off the market. (Remember when you could buy a boom box that could rip from radio or CD or cassette to a built-in cassette recorder? Why can’t you buy one that copies to CD?)

From the point of view of a consumer electronics manufacturer, it would be trivial to design and market a satellite radio receiver with a built-in hard drive that could record any or all songs from a “channel” and make them available for playback and transfer to your computer. Since satellite radio transmits “metadata” along with the music, all the information for identifying and cataloging songs is there, ripe for the picking. But does anyone actually sell such a box? Hell no. The RIAA has leveraged their influence to make it damn inconvenient and expensive to get the music for “free”. If such boxes were available, the money would go to the electronics manufacturers instead of the music industry. (And keep in mind, you’re paying for the satellite radio service!)

One way or the other, if you want music some money is going to come out of your pocket. Say you bought a magic box that captures the music for $300. For that, you could go to Amazon or iTMS and buy about 300 songs. If you’re a casual listener, that might be enough music to keep you going for a long time. Maybe for the useful life of the device. If you listen to music mostly on your computer or CDs that you rip from it, either choice might be fine. And people like convenience. Personally, I’d rather pay for a song that can be painlessly purchased and downloaded online than to go to Wal-Mart and buy the CD or go to the trouble to find it on one of the file-sharing sites.

So What’s Happened?

The RIAA has gone through contortions, wailing, lobbying, gnashing of teeth and litigation to maintain their business model of distributing music through a tangible, warehouseable, shippable, inventoryable, traceable thing: the CD. By having this model, they retained their stranglehold on (mostly underpaid and abused) artists and retail merchandisers. They seemed to be willing to do anything to control the music and to cram this outdated system down the customer’s throat, even to the point of suing them for trying to get around it. It resulted in new, harebrained laws being passed, frustrating customers by not allowing them to put music on the player or device of their choice, and what amounts to price-fixing to boot.

The question is: Have they really seen the light? It appears that maybe they have. Finally. They have recognized that their customers are not a bunch of thieves, willing to steal instead of pay a reasonable price for something of value. And music is something of value. But in the digital age, it is not a tangible product anymore. Consumers, in the majority, are willing to pay for value; they are willing to support the artists they love. Also, consumers rarely have an interest in really pirating music–that is, making copies and monetarily profiting from those copies. In the minority, there will always be those who will get the value for free, one way or another. And now, there will be some who simply have come to resent the record companies and their tactics to the point they refuse to contribute one red cent to their coffers. So be it. It’s life. The record companies have made their bed, and now, however much they hate it, must lie in in it. If they are smart, they can survive and prosper in the digital age.

The next question is whether the motion picture and television industries can learn a thing or two from the decade-long music fiasco. Time will tell.

While situations and locations change, human nature makes us act very much the same when we believe we have something to gain. Take gambling, for example. In Las Vegas, where it’s legal to gamble in almost every conceivable way, you know when you go in that the odds are against you.

Say, for example, the odds at a particular casino are that your chances of coming out a winner after playing for a long time are 45%. Of course, that means that your chances of coming out a loser are 55%. You an also look at it another way: Suppose you start with 1000 players, all of whom play the their hands at the same game. Of those, 450 will come out winners. Now repeat the process. By the odds, 45% of 450, or 202 of them will be winners again. On the third hand, about 91 will be winners. On fourth hand, there’ll be 41, on the 5th hand, 18, on the 6th hand 8, on the 7th hand 3 or 4, on the 8th hand, it will be down to 1 or 2. Such a person (one or two in a thousand) will have won eight consecutive hands. What a streak of luck! What are the odds? We just figured it out: 1000 to one. Of course, it’s not about luck at all. Mere chance predicts that all things being equal, someone will have been lucky enough to keep winning. Raise the number to 1,000,000 players, and some one or two will win 16 consecutive hands. Oh, so lucky are they!

Now, look at the stock market. With millions of people trading stocks these days, the same situation applies. A lucky few will be right all the time, and still more will be right most of the time in their purchasing decisions. While in Vegas, these guys would be called “winners”, on Wall Street, they are called “experts”. Just as it’s true an expert poker player can improve his chances, being informed about the market conditions and the companies whose stock your buying can improve the odds, but not necessarily by a lot. It’s true, though, that the odds of making money on Wall Street are considerably better than in Vegas. That’s because historically the market has had an overall upward trend, meaning that on average stocks increase in value.

And then there’s the matter of cheating. In Vegas, cheating is against the law and it’s carefully watched for by the casinos–there are cameras everywhere, whether you see them or not. If you cheat in Vegas, you’re not only likely to be caught, you can be banned from the casinos, or worse. On Wall Street, there are also lots of ways to cheat, but the one you hear about most is “insider trading”– which is also very illegal. Unfortunately,it’s hard to define and quantify, and the smart traders know when and how to use it and get away with it. If you’re the CEO of a company and own stock, you’ll probably sell when you realize the company is tanking. And you’ll probably know the company is going down the tubes before anyone else does. Is that insider trading? I wouldn’t know. Is getting a “hot tip” on a stock insider trading? I don’t know that one, either. But I’d guess that many of the successful “experts” and “winners” on Wall Street didn’t gain their success entirely on the odds.
There is another big difference between the Strip and Wall Street: Stock trading is still legal in all 50 states!

As we’re surrounded with holiday cheer, everyone’s thinking of what gift to buy for whom. Retailers, in their near-infinite wisdom and bountiful cleverness offer us a wonderful solution: the gift card.
Think of the convenience! Your gift recipient can take their shiny red $100 gift card into any Target and spend it on whatever he wants, just as if it was an wrinkly old $100 bill. And you don’t have to worry about picking out an appropriate gift. But what if you want to spend your $100 somewhere else?

It might be pretty, but the gift card is useless anywhere else. On the other hand, the grimy $100 greenback works anywhere. So what does the gift card get you? It’s not safer to mail, because anybody can use it, just like the $100 bill. And did you know it depreciates in value even faster than a Federal Reserve Note?

Not singling out Target here, but retailers actually charge a quarterly fee—a reduction in the value of the gift card—if your recipient doesn’t spend it right away. Eventually, it will expire completely.
I read somewhere that 22 BILLION dollars were spent on gift cards in the US over the “black Friday” weekend. How much more will go toward plastic money over the Christmas shopping season? You realize, of course, that the retailers are earning interest on your money from the time you buy the card until it’s spent. Imagine the interest on that amount of money!

While the value of the US dollar isn’t what it used to be, I’ll take it green over red every time.

   As of December 2007, the Mideast War has cost a total of 1.4 Trillion dollars.  That’s $1,400,000,000,000.  It’s too big a number for most people to get a handle on, but not too big to do some calculations.  

     Many say the war is all about energy – oil, to be specific.  And what do we use oil for?  Primarily for transportation, but oil and natural gas can also be used to produce electricity. And vehicles can run on electricity even better than they can run on oil.  

     As a mental exercise, suppose we used all that money to build windmills to make electricity.  $1.4 Trillion is enough to build over a MILLION of them!  That’s one for every 300 people in the US.  A million windmills could produce 24 billion kilowatt hours daily.  That’s enough energy to provide 100% of the electricity used daily in the US, plus enough available energy to provide for the needs of the entire automobile and trucking fleets.  And all that energy would be clean, non-polluting, and completely renewable.  Don’t forget that windmills don’t need fuel, they require only to be built and maintained.

    Just look at some numbers:

I know my numbers may be off quite a bit in terms of cost, but in volume production of windmills, the cost should be in the ballpark.  In reality, a mix of wind, solar electric, geothermal, tidal and other renewable energy resources could produce even greater available output. The energy could also be used to generate hydrogen through electrolysis.  The hydrogen could be locally produced at power plants and used to provide electricity for peak demands, thus evening-out the energy supply.  It is assumed that, over time, the fleets could be replaced with plug-in electric, hybrid, or hydrogen-fueled vehicles.

(This item was posted on my previous blog in December 2005.)

Not long ago I took a five-hour headlong plunge into my 92-year-old Mom’s healthcare.  She is staying in a nursing home in the Raleigh area, after having recently broken her hip and undergone replacement surgery.  All things considered, she is doing quite well.  Her walking is still not back to what it was before the surgery, she has increasing mild dementia, but she has kept her sense of humor and cheerful smile.  

In describing these events, I have refrained from naming names or specific institutions, not just because I don’t want to create problems for them, but also because there’s no one person or group to blame.  The problems I will describe seem to be (as a physician might say) systemic – as you will see.

First, a bit of background.  For many years Mom has exhibited swelling of her ankles, but it recently became more severe, so I was asked by the nursing home to take her in for echocardiography to see if she had heart problems that might be responsible.  She passed the test with flying colors, but last week the staff physician at the nursing home called me, expressing concern about her heart as it might relate to the swelling, saying he’d like to do some tests.  My first clue that something might be amiss was when he asked me if she had ever had an echocardiogram.  He seemed more than a little embarrassed when I reminded him that the nursing home had ordered one a few weeks before, and that I had accompanied her for the test.  I also asked why he had called me, since my sister’s name was at the top of his list and she has better knowledge of Mom’s medical situation.  He said he hadn’t been able to reach her at her office.  (Later, I was to learn that the office number he had for her was two years out of date and was also incorrect by one digit.)  He went on to say he was going to try some different medications and check her kidneys.  

A few days later, the nursing home called my sister, telling her that they had done an x-ray and found a “foreign body” on the film – apparently a piece of a needle or catheter – and they’d like to send her to the hospital for surgery to remove it, since it might migrate to some other part of the body.  Of course, she consented and scheduled the surgery for today, in spite of never being told about when and why Mom had been x-rayed.  Since my sister was unavailable to accompany Mom, I agreed to meet the van from the nursing home at the Medical Office Building, adjacent to the hospital.  

I arrived a little early and greeted Mom as the van arrived.  The van driver unloaded her and we went to the desk.  The cheerful receptionist had never heard of her.  After a few confused phone calls, they were able to determine that she was supposed to be at the Same Day Surgery Unit in the main hospital building, so I wheeled her over there.  A half hour had passed by the time I found out that they had never heard of her either. This turned out to be a matter of hospital policy; Mom has always gone by her middle name, but hospital policy requires admission under a patient’s given first name.  The confusion resolved, Mom was assigned to bed #33.  An orderly (obviously a new hire) couldn’t find the bed in the far corner of the unit, and had to ask for assistance.  When we finally arrived at #33 by a circuitous route, two waiting nurses began to prep Mom for surgery.  This included getting her weight and height (which, mercifully, they skipped since it was obvious she couldn’t stand on the scale), taking her blood pressure and heart rate, and putting her on IV saline.  They got her on the gurney after almost pulling out the catheter and urine bag she was still using after the recent urinary tract infection – a fact that none of us had been advised about.  

Blood work was required, too, but the first wisp of a technician couldn’t manage to get any blood from Mom’s tiny veins, so they sent for a bigger technician who was equally unsuccessful.  Finally, the nurse got the necessary three samples (why 3?) and off they went to the lab – after quite a few loud complaints from Mom about the pain from the four or more holes she now had in her right arm.  During this time, I was being asked questions about her medical history that I had answered countless times before and should have been easily accessible.  Still, I recounted that she didn’t have diabetes, cancer, allergies or AIDS, and included details of her two caesarian deliveries (fifty-one and sixty-four years earlier), while the nurse dutifully recorded my answers in longhand.  I guess you can’t be too careful or too computerized.

It seems Mom had been scheduled for surgery and not for an x-ray, but nobody was able to find any x-ray films or paperwork showing the location of the “foreign body”, so naturally they postponed her surgery until they could get an x-ray.  Fortunately, a suitable room was available, so after a short wait we were introduced to the Radiologist.  He seemed to be a nice guy, but was obviously frustrated because he had no information to indicate what part of her body to x-ray, so he elected to do a whole-body fluoroscopy.  I was asked to retire to the waiting room during this procedure, to avoid the radiation risk.  Presently, the Radiologist returned and announced that he couldn’t find any “foreign body” anywhere.  Without being specific, he told me that someone had found the paperwork and that it appeared to belong to a different patient, that Mom didn’t have a “foreign body” and was OK.   A nurse later asked me if Mom had gotten any x-rays done in Florida.  I told her that Mom hadn’t been to Florida for at least thirty years.

Getting ready to go back to the nursing home, Mom said she was hungry.  Since she had been expected to have surgery, she had no breakfast, and meals hadn’t been prepared for her.  But she could have orange juice.  She promptly guzzled two large glasses and insisted, “Let’s go home.”  In the interim, the hospital had lost the wheelchair in which Mom had arrived.  Fortunately, it was found after a brief search – someone had dutifully put it in storage.  The nurse said she had called the van driver and they’d be there within a half hour.  After forty-five minutes had passed, I took it upon myself to call the transportation service on my cell phone, wondering if they had been delayed.  (I’m not sure whether using the cell in the hospital was prohibited, but I used it anyway.)  I was told they were waiting at the main entrance – nobody had told them to come to the bed #33 alcove.  They arrived moments later, and Mom was safely loaded back into the van and on her way to a very late, much deserved, hot lunch.  She was hungry, tired, rubbing her punctured black-and-blue arms, but otherwise unscathed.

An aside:  During my visits in various areas of the hospital, I happened to overhear fragments of a few possibly telling conversations.  For example, I heard one nurse ask another if she had intentionally left an IV tube clamped.  The answer was “no”, she went to un-clamp it, and commented that she had wondered why the liquid in the IV bag hadn’t dropped in the past two hours.  In another exchange, I heard one nurse ask another where a patient was – she couldn’t find him in the computer.  The other remarked that it happens all the time recently, computer problems are common.  A few minutes after that, another pair of nurses were trying to figure out whether a particular patient was a man or a woman.  

Later, I was able to observe the Radiologist’s report since I briefly had it in my custody before giving it to the driver from the nursing home.  I suppose reading a physician’s handwriting is an acquired skill, but to my untrained eyes it was totally illegible except for an occasional “and” and “the” and the words fluoroscope and Florida.  I even found it difficult to read the doctor’s name on the line labeled “print name here”.   

Mom is on Medicare, Medicaid and a State Employees’ Health Plan which, collectively (mostly at taxpayers’ expense), covered most of the costs of this episode.  At this writing, I have no idea what the total hospital, radiology, lab and transportation costs might be, but I’d speculate they will total $1,000 or more.  Of course, this doesn’t include the intangible but very real costs of my losing a day’s work, the loss of medical resources that could have been used by someone who really needed them, or the pain of multiple needle-sticks and a long and exhausting adventure for a sweet little 92-year old lady, who really had no idea why she was being put through it all.  I also am concerned that somewhere out there is a patient with a “foreign body” floating around, and nobody knows about it anymore – the point of a needle or catheter that could lodge in a vital spot and cause death or serious injury.  

I read recently that 172,000 Americans die every year from medical mistakes, more than from heart disease or cancer.  I recall being skeptical of that number, but having experienced today’s comedy of errors, I am inclined to fear that it’s true.  In this day of medical miracles, marvelous computers and the Internet, it’s hard to believe that communications within the medical community are as inadequate, difficult and jumbled as my observations seem to indicate.  Simple errors, omissions and blatant failures to move information from person to person seemed to haunt my Mom at every turn.

These events aren’t the first to raise doubts in my mind about the healthcare system in general.  I won’t bore you with the details of my Mom’s earlier $2200 case of indigestion or my son’s $1,800 ingrown toenail, nor will I take the time to describe the pitfalls faced by a dear friend who claims that he’d be dead three times over at the hands of the American Healthcare System if he hadn’t been a physician himself.  

Doctors and the medical establishment will dismiss my stories as anecdotal, not supported by properly compiled statistics.  I challenge them (and the U.S. Government) to show me scientific justification for why America has the highest healthcare costs in the world and an appalling number of deadly medical mistakes.  In the meantime, I thank God that Mom hasn’t yet been seriously victimized by any of the errors and miscommunications related to this ongoing series of frightening episodes.  I hope my family and myself can remain healthy enough to avoid putting our lives in the hands of a healthcare system that seems to accept a level of performance that wouldn’t be tolerated in my mechanic’s garage.  Perhaps it’s because (unlike the auto repair shop) you have to pay the hospital whether they’re successful doing their job or not.