Television and Internet services are expensive. And we’re juiced into buying service because we simply need both in our lives in the 21st Century.

I’ve written previously about the tricks and traps that both Verizon and Comcast throw at you. It’s a racket. Everyone knows it. Everyone pays.

But there are things you can do to help mitigate the screwjob. Here are five things you need to do before you sign up for television and/or Internet service.

1. Buy your own modem

SURFboard SB6120

Do not rent a modem from the company. It’s a waste of money, and you will may end up with an older model that actually can’t process data as fast as your cable service can send it out. Translation: Blast! Comcast Internet might not come through any faster than the basic package with an older modem.

If you DO rent a modem, make sure they give you one that is “DOCSIS 3.0.”

The Motorola SURFboard SB6120 is the best modem on the market. The newer SB6121 model is only more expensive. It won’t do anything else for you. Both are supported by Comcast, however, so if you’re one of those people that needs the newest model, go for it.

Generally avoid modems that have wireless routers built in.

Now, you may have to ignore this step entirely if you are bundling your home phone service , because you’ll need to buy or rent a modem that handles your Internet and phone service. One of the best is the Motorola SBV6220, but Comcast currently does not support it. (Check Comcast’s official compatibility list before buying anything)

2. Buy a router

The Netgear N750 WNDR4000

By rule of thumb, here in late 2011, you should buy a Wireless N router with gigabit Ethernet.

The major brands, D-Link, Cisco, Belkin and Netgear are all usually pretty good. I prefer Netgear, but it’s more of a personal preference.

This is not the kind of thing you want to skimp on.

The Netgear D600 WNDR3700 is a good, affordable router. It’s one of the best values in wireless routers. It is great for gaming or streaming movies and does 300 MBPS wireless networking.

If you want to go a little better, the N750 WNDR4000 is probably the best wireless router you can buy for home or small office use. It can do 450 MBPS WiFi and has a USB port to plug a portable hard drive in for an instant network attached storage device.

3. Do not cancel your home phone service ahead of time.

If you’re making the big Comcast (Or Time Warner, Cox, etc) leap, the odds are you’re going to buy a bundle package that includes home phone service. If you’re a big land line user, this could save you some money. Do not cancel your existing home phone service yet. Order the service, give the cable company your phone number, and they will port the number to your new service, just like you do when you switch cell phone companies. Otherwise, you could get stuck with a new number, new area code, and lose the number you’ve had for years.

4. Argue, lie, cheat

When you’re on the phone, ordering your service, don’t accept their offer. Tell them their rival is cheaper. Tell them the price is way too high. Lie if you have to.

They likely will come down on the price or magically discover a hidden deal they can offer you that might save you $20 per month. You might get transferred a few times, but hell, it’s money!

5. Check your wiring

Or have the tech check your wiring. If you live in an old house or are renting, the odds are good that the cable wires have been there for a while. Check for cable splitters too. Nothing is worse for cable Internet than a signal that’s been split a bunch of times over old wiring.

The tech will do some replacing if need be. Broadband is FAST these days. You’re paying the same as everyone else (unless you followed step 4 really well) so you might as well get the same speed in the end.

The environmental impact of so much online time really boils down to energy usage, which in turn affects the amount of greenhouse gases we pump into our atmosphere. Google, which has been carbon neutral since 2007, has been a real leader in the building of green data centers, even powering them with renewable energy. (Media credit/Jurgen Plasser via Flickr)

The environmental impact of so much online time really boils down to energy usage, which in turn affects the amount of greenhouse gases we pump into our atmosphere. For one, each of us can help by limiting computer time (whether surfing the ‘net or not) and shutting them down or putting them into sleep mode when we aren’t using them (this can be automated via the computer’s power management control panel).

Also, when shopping for a new computer, consumers and businesses alike can opt for models certified by the federal government as energy efficient with the Energy Star label. If all computers sold in the U.S. met Energy Star requirements, Americans could pocket $1.8 billion annually in saved energy costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by an amount equivalent to taking some two million cars off the road.

Individual responsibility aside, the creation and management of more efficient data centers by the major online hubs—especially as we enter the age of “cloud” computing whereby most of the software, content and services we look to our computers for resides online and is served to us as-needed—is what can have the biggest impact. Google, Facebook, and Amazon.com are already deeply committed to the cloud computing model, with Microsoft, Yahoo and others following suit accordingly.

For its part, Google has been a real leader in the building of green data centers, even powering them with renewable energy. The company recently released environmental footprint scores for several of its data centers. While the energy usage required to run its cloud services (Google Search, Google+, Gmail and YouTube) seems huge in the aggregate—it used 260 megawatt hours to power its data centers in 2010—it boils down to only 7.4 kilowatt hours worth of energy annually per user. Google reports that to provide an individual user with its services for a month uses less energy than leaving a light bulb on for three hours. And because the company has been carbon neutral since 2007, “even that small amount of energy is offset completely, so the carbon footprint of your life on Google is zero.”

In an April 2011 report entitled “How Dirty is your Data?” the non-profit Greenpeace examined energy sources for the 10 largest IT companies involved in cloud computing, finding Apple, Facebook and IBM especially guilty of getting significant amounts of power from coal-fired power plants. (Facebook had come under fire earlier this year when reporters uncovered that the company planned to buy electricity for its brand new eco-friendly data center in Prineville, Oregon—one of the greenest such facilities ever designed and constructed—from a utility that derives most of its power from coal.) Yahoo, Amazon.com and Microsoft scored best in use of renewable alternative energy sources for cloud services.

In the long run, analysts think that the widespread shift to cloud computing will be a great boon to the environment. A report released in September 2011 by Pike Research, “Cloud Computing Energy Efficiency,” predicts that because of the shift to cloud computing and increasing efficiencies, data center power consumption will decrease by 31 percent between 2010 and 2020.

CONTACTS: Energy Star, www.energystar.gov; Greenpeace, www.greenpeace.org; Pike Research, www.pikeresearch.com.

We reported on this type of problem back in November. A problem with domain name servers may be negatively affecting Comcast internet customers.

Four days ago, a broad DNS attack was reported that hit the sites of UPS, Acer, and others in a coordinated attack that may have been carried out by Turkish hackers. That was a hack on the NetNames DNS provider.

TechCrunch.com also reported at 11:30 p.m. Thursday that Microsoft services, including Hotmail, SkyDrive, and Office 365 were all down because of a DNS problem. Service was restored about four hours later.

Tonight, some Comcast customers in Boston have reported that “the lights are on” on their cable modem, but websites will not load. Changing the DNS servers on your router and/or computer to Google’s public DNS (8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 as secondary) just as we recommended in November, seemed to fix the problem. Make sure you restart your computer or other device before trying to get back online.

Are you having/did you have Internet problems? Let us know where/when by commenting on this story!

Google is no longer top dog. Apple has taken the spot from which Google has had for the past four years. In a study conducted by Millward Brown, a site geared towards marketing trends, they determined that premium trumps free.

The companies have contrasts between them, and with a premium service like Apple, the fact that they pushed Google from the top has to do with their business model.

Per the site “Google is the archetypal Internet brand, with free services and open systems. Premium-priced Apple eschews the open model in favor of what Steve Jobs refers to as an “integrated” model.”

This is working for Apple in a big way, and it is this consistency that makes the brand a strong one. Regardless of which Apple product you use, the interface and design is both easy and familiar for its users which is probably why Apple consumers continue to purchase their products time and time again.

This is good news for the company that has had bad press lately over their tracking system. With this news, can Apple maintain their top spot?

Time was, everyone complained about their electric bill. Time is, everyone complains about their water bill, especially with The Great Boston Water Boil Order going on this week.

But the real ripoff is television and Internet service, and it doesn’t matter which company you select.

Let’s take the example of our fair city.

Comcast enjoys a virtual monopoly over most of the residential parts of the city, and if you go to Comcast.com, you’ll see a variety of innocuous-looking deals.

Digital Preferred Cable, with most of the popular cable channels, including MTV, Discovery Channel, Nickelodeon, ESPN, and CNN. It’s $39.99 per month for the first six months, but it jumps to $79.99 per month after the first year.

Internet has an even bigger jump. It starts at $19.99 per month for the first six months, and goes to $44.95 per month after that.

Of course, they want you to get the “bundle.” So you can move your home phone service — or sign UP for home phone service if you’re like the rest of us — and pay $199.99 per month for TV, phone and Internet.

The average American household has three televisions. Get ready to add $14.95 per month per cable box. Then you either have to buy a cable modem or rent one from them. They charge a monthly fee for each remote control you have, too.

DVR service is also extra.

And Comcast, conveniently, makes it hard to find the “double play” option that let’s you opt out of phone service. They really want you to have to buy the phone service to get the “deal.”

You can get 15 Mbps Internet and Digital Preferred Cable service for $79.99 per month for six months, which then jumps to $119.00 per month. You get one box but would have to pay extra for DVR, any other boxes, and rental fees for remote controls and the cable modem.

Some people even get stuck paying a rental fee for a router that they supply you. Buy your own router.

Add it all up, and you could be paying $200 per month.

Forget about Xfinity. It doesn’t exist. It’s just Comcast with a different logo. If you go to Xfinity.com and click “order,” it forwards you to the same Comcast.com site we just visited.

Verizon is the other player in Boston, but they’ve been so slow to expand their FiOS service — it’s not available in most places, let’s put it that way.

You can get DSL service from Verizon for $19.99 per month, forever, and they throw in a free wireless router. But you still have to rent or buy a DSL modem.

This price sounds great, eh?

Wrong.

This price, advertised at the top of Verizon.com, is only good if you’re a Verizon phone service customer.

Upon closer examination, we also find that the $19.99 plan is the “up to 1 Mbps” plan. That’s as slow as it gets in the “broadband” world. If all you do is send e-mail and visit a few websites, you might get by, but we do not recommend this plan.

The “turbo” Verizon plan, which maxes out at 7.1 Mbps is $39.99 per month to phone customers, and $49.99 per month to regular Joe six-packs.

That’s a higher price for service that’s about 1/3 the speed of cable Internet.

If you don’t have FiOS in your area, you’d have to get DirecTV satellite television service if you went with Verizon.

There’s an interesting bundle there: $84.99 for television, phone and Internet. But let’s dissect that bundle. It gets you more than 210 channels, including your local stations and most popular “cable” channels. It even includes DVR, but you don’t get any HD converter boxes with this package. You’d have to upgrade to the $99.99 bundle to get a box that lets you display in high-definition. Then you’d still have to pay for additional boxes for your other televisions. With any bundle, you’re stuck with home phone service that you may not use.

There’s nothing we can do or say that will make this any better for you. For now, the going rate for fast Internet and most of your favorite television channels is upwards of $200 per month.

Boy, now that sounds sexy.

Blast relies on a big MySQL database for all its stuff. It’s a great technology that let us and millions of others run dynamic websites.

More and more people turning to WordPress and content management platforms on their own domains, through hosting providers that make setting up your SQL database a cinch.

But like any database — or like any pile of data — it gets cluttered, and your hosting provider usually isn’t there to help with these problems.

Just like your computer’s hard drive needs to be defragged every now and then, it’s also a good idea to “optimize” your MySQL tables. Optimizing a messy database can create drastic performance improvements.

Here’s how.

Before you do ANYTHING to your database, make sure you back it up. A good method is to “export” the database to a file on your hard drive. We aren’t responsible if you screw up.

The common MySQL management tool is called phpMyAdmin, and it can usually be accessed by typing the name of your SQL server into your browser and logging in. Once you’re in, click on the database you want to optimize. On the left panel, you’ll see all the database’s tables. Scroll to the bottom and click “check all.”

Then — very carefully — click the dropdown menu and select “Optimize table.” Again, be careful, because “drop” and “empty” are also options in this menu. You don’t want to click those.

Now your server will run an analysis, repair and optimization sequence on your entire database. It can take a few minutes depending on the size of your database.

Enjoy your optimized MySQL database.

While on an epic quest to discover the keys to creating successful web content and setting oneself up as an Internet star, Blast found two things: traditional media wishes it was as popular as online media, and our generation has little to no attention span.

Webisodes are hugely popular at the moment, and when Blast talked to Michael Buckley, from the “What the Buck Show,” Chris Hardwick, the host of the new G4 show “Web Soup,” and Christine Tse Kuecherer, from Take180.com, all three sources agreed that the success lies in the timing.

Take180.com creates Web series fed by viewer participation, like “Electric Spoofaloo,” but none are longer than 180 seconds. Christine Tse Kuecherer, Marketing Director at Take180.com, explained the reasoning for the time limit: “I think one thing we’re seeing with web video in general is that people may not have the long attention span that they might have with television. A great example is Hulu. They highlight Saturday Night Live skits and TV shows. That’s why we’re ‘Take180′ and nothing is over 180 seconds.”

The same concept applies to YouTube videos, and really any other content on the Internet. News ratings have plunged over the years, and it’s really no wonder why.

Michael Buckley blames the drop entirely on the Internet.

“I think people are just on their computers all day,” Buckley said. “They like to just read the little blurb, or they like to go online and see like a little one and a half to three minute video summary. They don’t want to watch thirty minutes, they just want ‘BAM BAM BAM.’ That’s what they want. Our attention span is so terrible anyway.”

While audiences don’t want to wait around to listen to all of the news, the web isn’t about to replace television as a whole any time soon. However, more and more television shows are beginning to produce their own webisodes and create extra content to keep their computer-loving viewers interested.

Kuecherer pointed out shows like “Heroes,” which have uploaded webisodes between regular episodes to keep fans coming back for more.

“TV is realizing that the web is a good way to get fans more interested “" they’re coming out with extra webisodes and back stories to create more interest,” Kuecherer said.

Buckley believes that TV will simply transform just a little more to cater to our culture’s growing need for speedy entertainment.

“Webisodes will probably be regular TV programming at some point,” he said. “The TV timeslots now are so strange, a lot of shows are like an hour and seven minutes or shows on cable channels are like 22 minutes, so I think that TV is going more the way of the web, and on demand. So I think it will definitely be an option to see five minute segments of all types of programming down the line.”

Television producers and writers have obviously noticed the trend, which can only explain the start up of a new spin-off of E!’s “The Soup” “" “Web Soup.” There’s enough interest in viral videos and webisodes online that now TV wants a piece of it too.

Chris Hardwick, tech expert and co-host of G4′s “Attack of the Show,” is now the host of the channel’s “Web Soup,” which is currently the top-ranked comedy podcast right now on iTunes.

Hardwick credits the web video craze to our culture’s descent into geekdom. “We’re coming back to that original definition of geek. A geek used to be a carnival performer who bit the heads of chickens and snakes, and now we’re back to where geeks put videos of themselves online where they’re biting heads off chickens and snakes. Geek culture is pop culture now. I had to suffer from it in grade school.”

And now he hosts his own show. “Take that, guy who stuffed me in a trashcan!”

“Web Soup” takes a critical look at viral videos and other random web hilarity out there with the intermittent appearance of guest celebrities like “Weird Al” Yankovic and the fill-in comedy sketch every now and then. The show won’t completely focus on videos, however.

“Someone had put a mixer online that was a soundboard of David Lee Roth,” Hardwick said. “If you can find it via the Internet, it’s fair game.”

On Tuesday, Karin Gilford, chief of Comcast’s online division, told PCWorld.com about the latest move by the cable giant. “The Comcast On Demand online video service will allow Comcast subscribers to sign in with a username and password, then access any standard or premium cable content that their cable subscription entitles them to watch.”

Fancast has always provided VOD, over 3,000 film and TV titles are currently available, with pricing starting from $3.99 for 24-hour film rentals, $9.99 for film purchases, and $1.99 for TV shows.The difference being, with it’s recent push in both the hardware and now content, it’s stands a chance against the likes of Hulu.com and Veoh.com, among other video sites, when it begins streaming it for free of charge. Available only to those whom already have an cable subscription with them.

While no specifics were mentioned (When will I be able to watch any show from any cable network at any time?), and the issue of recent bandwidth usage caps wasn’t addressed, the most we can be sure of is Comcast’s cautious steps into the wild west of the digital realm. With a complex system of how to pay for all the content it’s going to provide, subscribers to Comcast should look forward to milking this deal before it will surely become a paid-for-service entirely. Who needs Blockbuster or Netflix when you got this?

• The new head of the FCC is an internet expert who is a strong advocate for net neutrality and cheaper broadband access.

As anticipated, Julius Genachowski has been tapped by President Barack Obama to head the Federal Communications Commission.

The move is another indication that incoming leadership in Washington will move decisively to protect the free flowing Internet from those seeking to become gatekeepers to new media.

It also fulfills Obama’s promise made on the campaign trail to appoint an FCC chair who shares his support for Net Neutrality.

• Obama’s secret letter to Russia purportedly said if Russia helps with Iran, the European missile defense system will no longer be needed.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama said on Tuesday he wanted to work with Russia to resolve a nuclear stand-off with Iran but denied reports he had offered to slow deployment of a missile defense shield in exchange for Moscow’s help.

The New York Times reported that Obama had sent a letter to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev suggesting he would back off deploying a system in eastern Europe to intercept and destroy missiles, a move Russia sees as a military threat, if Moscow helped stop Iran from developing long-range weapons.

• Department of Justice halts a death penalty case.

SAN FRANCISCO — President Obama’s Justice Department halted the death penalty trial of an alleged San Francisco gang leader Monday by accepting a 40-year prison sentence that the Bush administration had vetoed.

The plea agreement for Emile Fort remained on hold after a federal judge heard a tearful plea from a murder victim’s mother for a life sentence and summoned prosecutors to a closed-door session to describe their case against Fort.

• The days of no bid government contracts are now over.

WASHINGTON “" President Barack Obama on Wednesday ordered an overhaul of the way the U.S. government awards contracts for private sector work, reversing a Bush administration policy that in some cases led to federal investigations of procurement practices and no-bid contracts.

Obama joined Republican Sen. John McCain, his presidential campaign rival, and other congressional figures to announce an executive memorandum that commits his administration to a new set of marching orders for awarding contracts. Obama said “the days of giving government contractors a blank check are over” and said changes could save up to $40 billion a year.

After unblocking several sites during this summer’s Olympic Games, China has quietly begun preventing public access once again, according to the New York Times.

Liu Jianchao, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said during a press conference that Chinese officials have the right to block websites that violate Chinese law. Apparently the Chinese version of the BBC’s website falls in that category, along with Voice of America and Asiaweek, a Hong-Kong based newspaper.

Jinchao said that China “needs to do the required management of Web sites based on the law, just as what other countries are doing,” according to the New York Times.

Recently, Britain and Australia started‚ limiting the distribution of child pornography over the Internet. Also, Germany requires all search‚ engines‚ to refrain from linking to sites linked to Nazi activity. Because, you know, that’s the same as blocking BBC.

As‚ Rebecca MacKinnon, a specialist in Internet issues at Hong Kong University (whose blog is blocked as well), put it, China has defined crime in a very broad sense. They are offering barely any explanation to the public, which they aren’t really obliged to, since China is ruled by a Communist party.

Personally, I see the point of blocking some of these websites for China, which has been known to‚ tighten Internet regulations during times of‚ political‚ stress or economic instability.‚  ‚ 

Obviously those in charge don’t agree with what is being reported/blogged, but as a child of democracy, I think inflicting those opinions upon the people is ridiculous. ‚ 

But in the end, for them it’s all about politics. What you don’t see, you don’t know. And what you don’t know, in some cases, makes you blindly happy. Blind happiness isn’t true happiness, but for the rulers, it makes for a more oblivious crowd, the ideal public for a Communist party.

The bad guys are going virtual more and more, and American businesses and government networks are getting victimized at a record pace, according to an FBI report.

“The increasing number of such crimes not only impacts the economy but threatens national security,” the FBI said Friday.

The man at the head of the opposition is the FBI’s Shawn Henry, recently appointed head of their Cyber Division. He told reporters Wednesday that the FBI has literally thousands of open cyber crime cases.

“One case in point: We joined our international partners yesterday in announcing a major takedown of a transnational criminal network that was buying and selling stolen financial information through an online forum known as ‘Dark Market‘,” the FBI said Friday.

“The business of the United States is done on the Internet,” said Henry, “And the information that flows electronically 24/7 is increasingly the target of not only identity thieves and scammers, but organized crime groups, terrorists, and overseas governments.”

Yes, even other countries are trying to virtually penetrate the U.S. Henry says about 24 different governments have an “aggressive interest” in obtaining information from or making attacks against American cyber infrastructure.

Henry says that individual hackers and crackers have grouped up into “virtual gangs.”

“In years gone by, if a gang wanted to rob a bank, it needed crooks with various skills — safe cracker, get-away driver, look-out, etc. That’s essentially what we’re seeing in the cyber world today, only these virtual gang members have never met in the physical world,” Henry said.

“There are organized groups that are very successful.”

The day has come for all Comcast High-Speed residential Internet customers: You officially have a usage cap.

The “customer-defined” usage limit is 250GB a month. Comcast‚ says it’s “an extremely large amount of data, much more than a typical residential customer uses on a monthly basis.”

They include in their Terms of Service that this roughly constitutes:‚ 
‚ 
* Send more than 50 million plain text emails (at 5 KB/email);‚ 
* Download 62,500 songs (at 4 MB/song); or‚ 
* Download 125 standard definition movies (at 2 GB/movie).‚ 
‚ 
Comcast also released some of their current customer usage data, which puts the average residential Internet traffic downloads at 2-3 GB a month.

You should‚ notice some key word usage in the statement, that will be coming as a bill stuffer, as harmless and not worthy of another glance. “Managing the network is essential as Comcast works to promote the use and enjoyment of the Internet by all of its customers. The company uses reasonable network management practices that are consistent with industry standards. Comcast tries to use tools and technologies that are minimally intrusive and, in its independent judgment guided by industry experience, among the best in class.”

The italics are mine. With such mitigating word usage, Comcast is trying to drive the point to it’s docile customers that it’s doing this for your good, and the good of the network.‚ 
‚ 
To all the Comcast customers who just check their email,‚ you won’t be reading this unless it’s forwarded, and‚ you‚ won’t care about the limit.

To the people who read news and emails‚ and visit Myspace or Facebook, you might think about it for a second, but disregard it.

For the users who email, social network, game online and download, a notice about this usage cap will hold more weight.

Finally, there’s the Comcast customers whom utilize the Internet more efficiently and can do all of the activities above while running a P2P agent in the background. These users know exactly what it means to them.

So why should anyone who doesn’t live on the Internet care? The speed of technological advancement dictates that pretty soon, this “massive” usage cap will become a noose we so quickly placed on ourselves. With the advent of not only high-definition video on demand, and digital downloads, there are a score of other‚ programs that‚ use the bandwidth while people just check their email, or just check their networking sites.

Even websites have become more content rich. Heavy text news sites have become a multi-media room. What 56K once could handle is‚ a neanderthal-like usage now with higher speeds becoming standard. As Internet speeds rise, and our daily lives connect more to the Internet, the usage cap will seem more and more stringent.‚ 
‚ 
“Though the proposed cap is relatively high, it will increasingly ensnare more users as technology continues its natural progression,” said Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner.‚ 
‚ 
For those Blast Magazine readers live on the Internet and are worried about what would happen if you crossed the line, don’t worry. “As part of our pre-existing policy, we will continue to contact the top users of our high-speed Internet service and ask them to curb their usage.”

“If a customer uses more than 250GB and is one of the top users of our service, he or she may be contacted by Comcast to notify them of excessive use. At that time, we’ll tell them exactly how much data per month they had used. We know from experience the vast majority of customers we ask to curb usage do so voluntarily.”

For now anyway, although the Internet is abuzz with future network shutdowns and or including excessive bandwidth usage fines, all of this is on top of the confirmed diurnal network bandwidth-throttling practices that Comcast got in trouble for.
‚ 
For the non-Comcast customer, all this should be a red flag. Comcast clearly states in their ToS that, “The need to engage in network management is not limited to Comcast. In fact, all large Internet service providers manage their networks. Many of them use the same or similar tools that Comcast does.” Comcast is‚ leading Internet service provider, so it’s only rational to expect other major ISPs to follow suit, especially if they see any Comcast practices as a “success”.

Enjoy the gallows.

Earlier this year, Comcast defended its position on its questionably lawful practice of “diurnal network pattern” (more active in the daytime than nighttime) stoppage, which informed users know as “bandwidth throttling.”

Filing against Comcast, the Free Press and Public Knowledge non-profit organizations prompted the FCC into litigious action. As the battle went on in the courts, it seemed to be going in favor of the consumers. Last Thursday, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin dealt another blow in keeping with that trend.

“The commission has adopted a set of principles that protects consumer’s access to the Internet,” Martin told The Associated Press late Thursday. “We found that Comcast’s actions in this instance violated our principles.”

His word was the tipping point that consumers and organizations supporting ‘net neutrality’ needed.

Comcast has said publicly that the FCC’s policy on broadband standards is not enforceable and that the commission has “never before provided any guidance on what it means by ‘reasonable network management.’” The FCC approved a policy statement in September 2005 that outlined a set of principles as a means to ensure that broadband networks are “widely deployed, open, affordable and accessible to all consumers.” Those standards have been set forth as:

• To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice
• Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement
• Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network
• Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers

Other Internet Service providers argue that this kind of unclear regulation and enforcement, naturally leads them to come up with network solutions, among them ‘network bandwidth throttling’, and ‘ceasing P2P network patterns’, to manage their billion dollar hardware network traffic as they choose. This activity isn’t central to America. Bell Canada Enterprises and Rogers Communications Inc. have also reacted in much the same way as Comcast has.

FCC chairman Martin (a Republican) had strong support from the two Democrats on the commission, who are proponents of the network neutrality concept. Their two votes were enough for a majority ruling on the five-member commission. Without being dealt a fine, but a stern warning instead, the commission asked that Comcast release any information that pertains to the practices of its current mode of ‘network management’, and to divulge to its consumers on how its implementation of any future network management practices will affect them. Any new network management practices will be in use by the end of the year.

“We want to make sure the Internet stays as it is,” said Ben Scott of Free Press, earlier in the year. “Should we give more control to the network owners, who can then decide which Web sites load quickly?” Scott asked. “Can they become the gatekeepers for Internet content?”

Dear EarthTalk: What is the status of sharks around the world? I see occasional stories about sharks attacking humans, but on balance aren’t we a lot more brutal to them then they are to us? – Pam Hitschler, Radnor, PA

It’s true that humans do a lot more damage to shark populations than vice versa. Marine biologists report that sharks are in rapid decline around the world. In the North Atlantic Ocean, shark populations have declined more than 50 percent over the past 20 years alone, with some species now nearing extinction.

Experts see the primary cause as overfishing, which depletes sharks as well as their prey. Sharks are especially vulnerable to illegal "longlines" (fishing nets strung across dozens if not hundreds of miles of ocean), where they get inadvertently snared along with the tuna and swordfish fishermen intend to catch.

Rising demand for shark fin soup in is also contributing to the demise of sharks. According to a report by Wildaid, shark fins are among the most expensive seafood products in the world, selling for some $700 per kilogram on the Hong Kong market. With prices like that, many longline fishermen, who are already operating illegally, are happy to augment their incomes by "finning" a few sharks along the way. (Finning is the practice of removing a fin from a shark and discarding the rest of the carcass at sea.)

Often, threatened wildlife species manage to maintain their numbers in spite of excessive human predation. But sharks face an especially uphill battle, says renowned shark expert Ransom Myers, because they "take a long time to mature and have relatively few babies."

So what is being done to save sharks? In the U.S., the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation Act is the primary law that oversees the conservation of U.S. fisheries and has established various management regulations for 39 species of sharks in the Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico. It outlaws finning if the carcass is discarded but not if the rest of carcass is kept, clearly an unfortunate loophole.

The U.S. also helped develop a United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization treaty (the International Plan of Action for the Conservation and Management of Sharks) whereby 87 countries agreed to develop their own plans for the conservation of sharks. However, only two countries—the U.S. and Australia—have lived up to the agreement. The U.S. plan is administered by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which has been working with regional fisheries authorities to make sure fishermen are sticking to cautiously low quotas regarding the number of sharks they are allowed to catch.

What can consumers do to save the sharks? The Monterey Bay Aquarium in Monterey, California urges consumers to avoid all shark products, not just on restaurant menus but also all souvenirs such as jaws and teeth, and shark-cartilage pills, which have been touted as cancer cures but which have been proven to be completely ineffective and are now widely considered a scam. The aquarium also encourages consumers to support with their pocketbooks conservation groups working to protect sharks and oceans, and specifically those working to set aside marine reserves that are off-limits to fishing.

CONTACTS: Wildaid, Monterey Bay Aquarium.

Dear EarthTalk: What are some of the best online sources of environmental information? — Hip2bGreen, Seattle, WA

One of the best places to start in venturing out into eco-cyberspace is the website of a green group you already know—perhaps one for whom you have donated money or volunteered. Most groups use their websites to keep their supporters updated on the issues they cover, and provide links to many other green websites. Beyond such groups, several independent “third-party” sources also provide useful information on a wide range of environmental topics, from consumer tips to news to action alerts.

One leading green website is Grist (grist.org), which reports environmental news in a witty and engaging manner, billing itself as “gloom and doom with a sense of humor.” Checking out Grist’s daily rundown of environmental news is de rigueur among eco-activists, and many regular folks keep tabs on it, too. Other excellent news sources include Environmental News Network (enn.com), and Environmental News Service (ens-newswire.com). And one new kid on the block is The Daily Green (thedailygreen.com), which bills itself as the "consumer’s guide to the green revolution." Owned by major magazine publisher Hearst, The Daily Green offers news, green tips and advice, and a plethora of green home, food and lifestyle topics.

The Green Guide (thegreenguide.com), run by National Geographic, is probably the best online source for green consumer information, specializing in green living tips, product reviews and environmental health news. Looking for guidance on saving water around the house, choosing among non-toxic paints or packing greener lunches for your school-age kids? The Green Guide would be a good place to start.

If you’re interested in more comprehensive looks at green issues and topics, emagazine.com posts much of the content of its flagship E — The Environmental Magazine, along with weekly news and commentary. Visitors can also access 18 years worth of in-depth articles—the magazine has been turning out bi-monthly print issues since 1990—on just about every green topic imaginable.

Those interested in social networking and the environment should look to Care2 (care2.com), the world’s largest online environmental community. The site offers its eight million members free e-mail accounts and provides lots of background information on just about every environmental issue.

A handful of green blogs are starting to get a lot of media attention and web traffic. The king of them all is Treehugger (treehugger.com), which offers several posts each day from a stable of thinkers committed to environmental issues. Its coverage is not comprehensive, but Treehugger excels at tapping into trends in environmental thinking and culture. Another source of environmental tips and culture online is IdealBite (idealbite.com), a blog-style site offering up "bite-sized ideas for light green living."

And then there are the “click-to-donate” websites, where visitors can read up on a variety of conservation campaigns and then contribute money via credit card. Ecology Fund (ecologyfund.com), the Rainforest Site (the rainforestsite.com) and Red Jellyfish (redjellyfish.com) are some of the leaders in this category.

So cue up that browser and start clicking. You’ll be amazed at what you can learn, let alone accomplish!

GOT AN ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTION? Send it to: EarthTalk, c/o E/The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; submit it at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/thisweek/, or e-mail: earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php.