CRTC does something that will piss Caydr off.

[SinbadEV]

(or at least I hope)

So, I'm only nominally informed about the issues at hand but what it boils down to is that the CRTC now allows ISP to charge a per-bandwidth charge to companies leasing their lines for resale to end-users... this means that internet phone calls (liike skype), voip services, streaming services (hulu, netflix, youtube) and even games of starcraft could acctually start costing people money instead of just being "part of the internet"... it not just the people downloading torrents of 8GB Linux installations, copies of movies and copies of video games. (remember not to call "downloading copies of movies and copies of video games" piracy in canada because until someone convinces the government otherwise it's still considered legal in Canada... though certain methods used to obtain the originals may not be)

Personally I already got hit by a cap because the only line-based (aka DSL or Cable) high-speed internet provider available at my address had a cap anyways... so it doesn't really affect me any more then it already had...

there's already a petition of 100,000+ people but in general it looks like the canadian government and the telcos are going to get away with it...

So, the question is: How do we get the general public to care enough to start making the telcos or government to stop being dumb?

[Caydr]

Ya ya I know... I've been preparing for a doomsday scenario like this for a couple years now though.

doomsday.png (52.9 KiB) Viewed 3881 times

'm_set.png (13.08 KiB) Viewed 3878 times

Working on the final 60 or so gigabytes atm. In hindsight, I'm probably solely responsible for the new limits. Sorry, Canada. :-/

[Caydr]

In recent developments, there's a shitstorm brewing on Reddit. Probably on Digg too, but it got Keven Rose'd and I don't go there anymore.

http://www.reddit.com/r/canada/comments ... crtcs_ubb/

[Neddie]

How is the Black Lagoon OVA?

[knorke]

click the Advance button!

[Caydr]

How is the Black Lagoon OVA?

Pretty good, picks up where the series left off. Kind of a bummer about the wait between episodes though.

FYI, I buy any shows I enjoy as soon as they're available. Only ones I've actually opened and watched are Death Note and Monster though.

edit: Damn, I swear... I make a post and go back to the forum and suddenly the entire "viewing this forum" is lit up with moderator/administrator colors. You people have just got it in for me.

[KaiserJ]

trick is to keep your old plan and not fold when they call you on the phone

for only $5 more per month, i can get 2x the bandwidth (already get torrents at 800kbps) and a better ping, but gasp, they will give me a 20 gig traffic cap!

but wait... $5 more a month? $5 more than what? i haven't received a bill for my internet in over 4 years, ever since i switched to the unlimited plan, had connection issues, and then someone in tech support in india "updated" my account after i had a good laugh with him on the phone when i was drunk (and then asked to speak to his manager in order to give a good review? co-incidence? perhaps.)

anyways be nice to the tech support guys. and if you need some uncapped downloading, just fedex me a 50-spindle of dvds.

[Caydr]

No, if there was going to be ANYONE to not be complete douchebags it'd be Teksavvy, and they just announced they were going from unlimited transfer to 25 GB and keeping the same price. Teksavvy is basically the best ISP ever. You call and wait 2 minutes at most and speak to someone who has actually used a computer before.

Guy told me once, "No, we just put [something] on our website to try to prevent abuse, we never actually charge that." I recently went from their 250 gigabyte service to unlimited and the guy said "There's a fee for changing your service though, is that OK?" "Uh... not really." "Ok, don't worry about it. I've never actually charged anyone for that anyway."

Their owner ANSWERS QUESTIONS ON BULLETIN BOARDS ALL DAY. And these are the guys going from unlimited to 25 GB. The sky is, in fact, falling.

[Machete234]

250gig is almost no limit
and rofl at 1.3 TB video folder
you will be able to watch for months if the internet breaks down.

[Neddie]

I've gone through 10 TB in a month... in hard mode, i.e. without any piracy.

[Pxtl]

Here's the kicker: the move to get low (60gb or worse) bandwidth caps on every ISP in canada happened within a month of Netflix's announcement of entering the Canadian market.

Every Canadian ISP is also a TV cable/satellite/digital-TV company, many of whom also sell video-on-demand.

They're doing it to kill off the online competition for TV.

[KaiserJ]

the online TV counts towards your cap, its so stupid

[MidKnight]

Well then, Canadians, you know what you must do!
Figure out who the representatives who got the law passed are, and make it clear that they won't be making it to the next Parliament!

[Pxtl]

Outside of Quebec, Canada has 3 main parties:

1) Conservatives. An amalgamation of the sober-economist-type conservative party and the crazy jesus-and-guns type they grow out west. Run by a tight-lipped economist who keeps them from saying anything stupid. He's in charge.

2) Liberals. A centrist party that has taken up the role as sober economist type... but has fallen into complete and utter corruption and leadership crisis. They share the values of most canadians and were running against divided political factions for so long they became hopelessly complacent and utterly lost. They're so hopeless that the Green party has been getting mainstream press even though the Green's platform is nearly indistinguishable from the Liberals and they've yet to win a seat anywhere... people are just that dissatisfied with the milquetoast Liberals.

3) NDP. Labour-left. Pro union and anything that cuts household expenses. Atypically of left-wing parties, they have little interest in environmentalism beyond the occaisional round of sloganeering - any time environmentalism and the people's pocketbook come to blows, they pick the pocketbook.

The NDP are the only party that has even *mentioned* UBB, and stands strongly against it. John Tory, the ironically-named former leader of the Ontario conservatives, is a big man at Rogers Telco and has been mocking all the UBB complainers.

But nobody takes the NDP seriously (they unpopularly back-bite the Federal Liberals who are the only chance of ousting the Conservative government and are famous for shooting their own mouths off), so nothing will change.

[Peet]

At least some companies aren't retarded... their 30 and 100mbit docsis3.0 service is capped but that strikes me as relatively sensible.

[SinbadEV]

So, the question is: How do we get the general public to care enough to start making the telcos or government to stop being dumb?

Well then, Canadians, you know what you must do!
Figure out who the representatives who got the law passed are, and make it clear that they won't be making it to the next Parliament!

Yay, someone joined in on the topic I started...

My problem is that I "personally" don't have the clout to tell the member of Parliament I didn't vote for anyway (my guy didn't win) what he should do and "they" (nebulous entity representing the "bad guys" in government and rogers+bell) have made the whole argument sound like "we" (the power users who use "more then our share" of the internet) are a bunch of pirates and that "they" deserve compensation for feeding our dirty habits (presenting this charge as similar to cigarette tax).

The first thing we need to do is get the "Moral Majority" on board with us (Canada is surprisingly "conservative") which means pointing out the "It's going to cost X ammount a minute to make those free skype video calls to your grandkids", "It's going to cost X dollars to watch an episode of blues-clues on Netflix of the Blues Clues website", "The average user of windows Vista + MS Office receives X number of GBs of updates ever month, you would not be charged X for the privillage" etc.

Second, we need to figure out a way to actually affect the pocket books of the "root" companies (Bell+Rogers)... the best option would be to prove non-competitiveness/collusion but we might be able to figure something out...

[Forboding Angel]

I am glad I don't live in Canada. Your politics and party makeups boggle my mind at the non-sensicalness of it all. Of your 3 major parties, all 3 seems to be kinda looney bin material, as though you have ultra hard right, ultra hard left and nothing in between that makes any certifiable sense. Ungh, screw that

[SinbadEV]

But nobody takes the NDP seriously (they unpopularly back-bite the Federal Liberals who are the only chance of ousting the Conservative government and are famous for shooting their own mouths off), so nothing will change.

I was in a different riding last election and the NDP guy won (I voted Green) I believe... I am personally of the opinion that there has to be some avenue available to ALL people in a given riding to affect policy... not just the ones who backed the winner.

[SinbadEV]

I am glad I don't live in Canada. Your politics and party makeups boggle my mind at the non-sensicalness of it all. Of your 3 major parties, all 3 seems to be kinda looney bin material, as though you have ultra hard right, ultra hard left and nothing in between that makes any certifiable sense. Ungh, screw that

It's not all that crazy, we just let what you call "independents" get a seat if they get enough votes... If that happened in the states almost a quarter of your states would be represented by a different party(by popular vote, who knows how it would work out after the "electoral college" get's done massaging the numbers). I have yet to understand why Canadian politicians are all seemingly insane, but I'll remind you that Nixon, Clinton, Bush JR, Obama, and a few others were/are portrayed as insane in the rest of the worlds history books so let's just put it down to a matter of perspective (and possibly better co-operation of the US media with the ruling party).

[MidKnight]

The electoral college only elects the president. State congressmen are elected via straight-up popular vote, and independents can take office, provided they win the plurality.