Archive for the ‘Miscellaneous’ Category:
Happy New Year!
Hello everybody. I wanted to take a bit of time off from the holiday festivities to wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
I wish you all happiness and prosperity in 2011!!!
Cheers!
Alan
Merry Christmas!
Hello my dear readers and visitors. I’d like to take a moment to wish you all a:
Merry Christmas!!!
..and also if the world does not end in 2012 (lol I’m sure it won’t!) a happy and prosperous new year!
Cheers,
Alan
The size of Greece’s debt
Hi everyone. Here is an interesting visualization of Greece’s debt. It boggled the mind just how much money that is. Most of us can’t quite wrap our minds around abstract numbers like that but visualizing it really helps, and this is what this video provides. Enjoy:
Happy Easter!
Hello everybody. Just a brief post to wish you all a HAPPY EASTER!! 
Cheers,
Alan
Attention Fellow Canadians – Stop The Meter On Your Internet Use
Dear fellow Canadians. I’m sure by now you’ve heard about the recent CRTC decision to allow big telecom companies to force usage-based internet billing (UBB) on Canadians. This decision is a major strike against market competitiveness. Basically what this allows big telecom companies such as Bell to squash their competitors by preventing them from offering consumers better internet access packages than them! Welcome to Canada folks – the land of big monopolies! The lack of competition will lead to stagnation in the internet access market, and guess what, the rest of the world will leave us behind.
The big problem here in Canada is that large major ISPs (ie Bell) are also prolific content providers so they have no real motivation to improve their internet aceess offering. They know that if you had faster internet with no download limits you would have a choice to NOT use their media products. You like to use Netflix? You like to watch a lot of YouTube videos? You’re a heavy user of VOIP products (eg Skype, etc)? Well guess what, with the new 25 GB per month bandwidth cap you’ll easily go over that and be forced to pay exorbitant rates for any overages. Even if you don’t currently use more than 25 GB a month I can almost guarantee you that given the current rate of internet progress eventually you will. Still not convinced? See the following reasons why you too should OPPOSE UBB (taken from antiubb.com ):
1) Internet in Canada is already amongst the most expensive in the world. UBB will make it even more expensive.
A high-speed internet costs between $50 and $60 per month. In the United States, UNLIMITED packages with similar speeds are offered for $29.99. We already pay too much for our internet and we are about to get Internet as it was in 2003.
2) Usage-Based Billing is a scam because it’s sold at 100x times what it costs to make
According to research, data cost maximum $0.02 per GB to transmit – and that number is getting lower and lower every year as optic fiber gets cheaper and cheaper.
Bell wants to sell it $2.00 per GB. This is an absolute scam. Would you agree to pay $700,000 for an entry-level car? Would you pay $35.00 for an apple?
3)Usage-Based Billing will kill Internet TV, cloud computing, High-Definition movie downloads and more.
Folding at home, as offered on the PS3, offer owners the chance to run a program and help science progress by modeling proteins. With UBB, this entire segment will die.
Let’s not even talk about Internet TV. Unsurprisingly, watching television using Bell’s Fibe service DOES NOT COUNT TOWARDS YOUR DOWNLOAD LIMIT, ALTHOUGH IT’S THE EXACT SAME DATA TRAVELLING ON THE SAME LINES! This is a scam, plain and simple.
Bell rents you movie for $4.99 each. Netflix offers thousands of movies for $6.99 per MONTH. However, if you factor the download costs for Netflix, it simply cannot compete – it would cost more to download a movie from Netflix than simply renting it from Bell. This is a clear anti-competitive situation.
Want to buy a game? You’ll have to buy it in store because a game can easily take 10-12 GB. Thus, if a store sells a game for $59.99 and steam sells it for $49.99, it’s actually cheaper to buy it at the store because that game will cost $20-24 to download!
Want youtube? You’ll have to live with a few hours of it per day. Want to upgrade your programs? Check your download limit first. By the way, get ready to check your limit every day.
4) The caps proposed are ridiculously low and can be reached in a single day. Many, many Canadians already break it.
25GB is an absolutely ridiculous amount. At a 7MB/s, which is a regular high-speed internet, it can be reached in 7 hours.
5) Bell is obviously trying to increase its profits. Make no mistake: UBB is a purely profit-driven incentive.
There is no network congestion and there has never been one. Bell argues that it is acting against extreme downloader – 1,000GBs and more. If that’s so, why doesn’t Bell impose a 250GB cap? Or why doesn’t Bell charges, let’s say, $0.05 per GB? More than twice the production cost.
Bell is lying every second of it. There is no network congestion. There’s one and only one reason behind UBB: profits. Bell wants to make money whether you use their television service or not. Bell wants to pay nice bonuses to their CEOs and nice dividends to their shareholders. This sounds very nice, except that’s what Bell is already doing. It does not need to kill the Internet to get it.
6) There is no network congestion.
We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again: there is no network congestion. Even if there was one at peak hour, there is no reason why people should pay extra for downloading at 3AM. After all, nobody could argue the network is congested at 3AM. In fact, the cables are just standing there, useless. UBB doesn’t make sense.
7) Even if there ever is network congestion – which MIGHT happen – Bell should be updating their networks, not punishing people for using a good they pay for in the first place.
We don’t even have optic fiber yet. Don’t believe that crap Fibe thing from Bell, it’s not real optic fiber. Just a remember this is 2011 and the average canadian still gets the same speed from ten years ago. Oh, Comcast’s CTO said it cost $6.85 per house to double the bandwidth in a sector – but Bell doesn’t want that because people could actually use services such as Netflix, which compete with their overpriced TV services and also TV stations they own.
Unlimited Internet is offered in many countries in the world. Even in countries where caps are imposed, the caps are much higher, often 250GB.
In fact, Canada will be one of the first country where unlimited Internet is not offered. Are you going to let Canada behind? Thank you so much, Bell.
9) A single game can take 25GB. According to Bell, downloading this game should cost $50.
Grand Theft Auto 4 (a two-year-old game, by the game) takes 25GB to download. At $2.00 per GB, this is $50 – more than the actual cost of the game!
10) Every profession which depends on the internet is at risk.
Daytraders, researchers, consultants ALL risk a severe loss of service. Soon, they will be unable to upload critical files for fear of paying too much. The entire independent worker in Canada is at risk.
11) The “Use more, pay more” argument is worthless.
Data doesn’t cost anything to transport. Let’s take a deep breath and imagine electricity is actually produced for free. That’s right, you do not need to pay for electrical use (in real-life, electricity costs money to produce and that’s why we pay per KWh). In that case, would you pay for electrical transport? Would you pay the company everytime electricity travels to you?
That’s what UBB is: charging you every time you use a line. In fact, even if you factor the microscopic hardware cost (that is, a nod sending and receiving the data), the cost is $0.02 per Gigabyte under the worst scenario. Yet Bell and Rogers want to charge $2.00 for it – 10,000% of the actual cost.
12) Usage-Based Billing will kill the internet as we know it.
Forget youtube. A video can reach 100MB. That’s $0.20 to view. Forget working on large files over the internet. If you have to upload and download it several times… Heh. Forget high-definition. A single movie can be 4GB – that’s $8.00 to download and at this point, you’re better off renting it from Bell for $4.99.
UBB will kill the Internet as we know it. Period.
13) It’s anticompetitive and violate antitrust laws.
Bell owns a television service. An alternative is Internet TV. Bell possess the Internet. Bell acts so that Internet TV, a competitor to their television service, is no longer an option.
This violates antitrust laws. Clearly, Bell has a trust on the internet service and uses its dominant position to keep competitors such as Netflix out.
14) Bell owns large television networks (CTV, etc.) and want to make sure people will continue to a)Pay for cable television b) Watch television. Bell has little control over the internet and they are so deeply afraid of it.
Furthermore, Bell owns some television networks. To keep people paying and watching them, Bell acts so that alternatives – such as watching shows on Hulu and other websites – are impossible due to cost.
Bell makes money when you watch television – and ads – on its network.. But they don’t make money when you watch the same program on Hulu.
15) It’s a step back for all canadians.
Technology progress, it does not regress. We should be getting more as time pass, not less.
We do not get less medication year after year. Why should we get less Internet?
16) How can Bell and others decide what is a “fair” use of the Internet?
Bell decided “25GB” was a fair use of the internet. Now, how could they come to that number and what right do they have to decide FOR YOU what you should pay?
17) It opposes Net Neutrality
Bell is effectively controlling information. You want to watch a news report online? Sure, but… Do you really want to spend $0.10 for it when you can get it for $0.00 by opening the television?
This violates Net Neutrality. In fact, Bell can influence what you choose to watch and reduces the lure of competitors.
18) Bell already controls the cellphone markets and rips off customers month after month.
Everyone I know who has a plan with Bell has complaints about it. Unauthorized charges, extra options that won’t be cancelled, etc. Do you really want the same thing with your Internet?
19) You do not control your download.
Your modem sends and receive data all the time. You have no control over this. And it will soon cost you.
Programs automatically update themselves. Windows alone can download 1GB of updates in a month. That’s $2.00 just to upgrade your system!
20) In fact, the download meters are not even accurate.
When you buy gas, the amount of gas you buy is closely monitored. However, there is no such monitoring for download. You have no idea if you even used the data they charge you for.
21) It will kill independant internet providers.
Independant internet providers will no longer be able to differentiate their products from Bell. They’ll have to have a pricing structure much more similar to Bell. This, in a free market economic system, is an extremely negative element for competition.
22) UBB encourages pirating
If you have to choose between downloading a 500MB television show (and keeping it for good) from a torrent website or streaming it (and losing it after 24h) from Netflix, which one would you choose? Especially since that that television show would cost $1.00 to download?
23) UBB exists in only a handful of countries in the world
In fact, Canada will get one of the worst internet in the world. Every european and asiatic country offers unlimited internet – even Australia, which has an older network than us, offers unlimited plans.
24) It’s the only medium we control and the only “free” source of information we have
If you think about it, radio, newspaper and television are controlled by a handful of individuals.
Internet, on the other side, offers thousands of different news network – most not controlled by large corporations. It’s FREEDOM and free sources of information. If you think about it, it’s the ONLY free medium because anyone can start a website.
However, with UBB, you’ll have to choose between 1) Watching a news report on television and paying $0.00 2) Watching a news report on the Internet and paying $0.25.
25) Some canadians will keep unlimited Internet. Others won’t have this chance simply because they “chose the wrong province”. It’s totally unfair that some canadians should have unlimited internet and others not.
Can we do anything about this? YES! The first thing you can do is visit the link below and sign the petition form there:
http://openmedia.ca/meter
The second thin you can do is post the link to this petition on your Facebook account, Tweet it, or simply e-mail your friends and colleagues.
Email the link: http://stopthemeter.ca
Share it on Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/45nmvcv
Tweet it: http://tinyurl.com/4nxd52y
Please help make a difference!
Cheers,
Alan
Happy New Year!
Hello everybody. I wanted to take a bit of time off from my holiday festivities to wish you all a HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
I wish you all happiness and prosperity in 2011!!!
Cheers!
Happy Thanksgiving!
My dear American readers. I’d like to take a moment to wish you all a very very Happy Thanksgiving!
Now I’ll let you all go back to assaulting that juicy turkey.
Cheers,
Alan
Happy Canada Day!
Hi everyone. I’d like to take a brief moment to wish all my fellow Canadians a very Happy Canada Day! May God keep our land glorious and free!
Cheers,
Alan
Happy Easter!
Hello everybody. Just a brief post to wish you all a HAPPY EASTER!!
Cheers,
Alan
Please Help The Families Of Five Slain Police Officers
Take a good look at these faces folks as they are genuine heroes who dedicated their lives to serve and protect us all. Sergeant Mark Renninger and Officers Ronald Owens, Tina Griswold, and Greg Richards were all loyal and dedicated servants of the public good at the Lakewood Police Department but sadly their lives were needlessly and brutally snuffed out by a cold-blooded and savage coward. I pray that justice is done upon him swiftly and with fitting measure to the crime he committed. For what it’s worth I offer my sincere condolences to the families of these fine officers.
A good friend of mine and member of the law enforcement community who also happens to be a member of a forum I run has started a awareness campaign asking good citizens such as yourself to kindly support the families of the slain police officers. So I ask you dear reader to read his message below and consider making a donation to support these families.
– quote –
As some of you may know I am in law enforcement and it really pains and saddens me to have to write about this. Our community has just suffered one of the biggest tragedies my state has ever endured. Four Lakewood, WA police officers where shot and killed at a coffee shop right before their shift began earlier this week. And just three weeks before that a Seattle police officer was shot and killed. This is five families lives that have been shattered and each police officer had children. These families need our help and support. If any of you can donate even the smallest amount it will go a long way to help these families. The funeral ceremonies for the four officers will be on the 8th of December.
Below are a few links to check out to read the whole story.
http://lpig.us/?zone=/unionactive/view_page.cfm&page=Lakewood20Officers20Slain20by20a20coward
To make a donation please click on this link and then please click on the donation link. It will then bring you to a PayPal donation page.
http://www.seattle.gov/police/
If you have any questions please PM or email me.
Thank you for all your support.
– end quote –
You can get in touch with my law enforcement friend by visiting the following forum thread:
http://www.forexnirvana.com/f4/slain-police-officers-1279/
Once again please consider donating.
Thank you for your attention!
Sincerely,
Alan
