Bell and Telus called to task

Calling it "an ill-thought out decision", Federal Industry Minister Jim Prentice has called Bell and Telus to Ottawa demanding an explanation over their decision (as I posted earlier) to begin charging customers for incoming text messages.

While I have no desire to interfere with the day-to-day business decisions of two private companies, I do have a duty as minister of industry, when necessary, to protect the interests of the consuming public...

All over the 'net. Read More...

PC Tech's are now P.I.'s... in the deep south

A law recently passed in Texas requires all computer-repair technicians to have a private-investigator license.

?

In order to obtain said license, technicians must receive a criminal justice degree or participate in a three-year apprenticeship. Those shops that refuse to participate will be forced to shut down. Violators of the new law can be hit with a $4,000 dollar fine and up to a year in jail, penalties that apply to customers who seek out their services.

Story here, here, here and the act here.

That's, just crazy.

Update: There is an interesting discussion here. Read More...

Net Neutrality... Part 1

Net Neutrality, Fair Use and the 'free' Internet are common themes that I will speak to. Currently there is an interview here with Sandvine CEO Dave Caputo.

In it Mr. Caputo refers to the concerns of users as "laughable".

It ain't funny.

As you may or may not know, Sandvine is one of the company's (Arbor Ellacoya being another) that provide Rogers (along with Bell Canada) with deep packet inspection technology . This allows the 2 major Canadian ISP's to 'throttle' customer's internet connections/speeds. Recently, Bell began to 'manage' their network in such a way that now, 3rd party ISP resellers of Bell services are also being throttled. This practice has given rise to CRTC challenges.

Just this past week, the head of the CRTC (Konrad von Fickenstein) gave notice that the Net Neutrality issue, may become part of a "major consultation", calling it "inevitable".

There's all sorts of other issues underneath [net neutrality], such as ... blocking of services or Web sites, preferential treatment for certain content providers, the issue of modification of content and in terms of carriage-related issues, the limitations of what devices can be connected to the network...

Sadly, what was once a country seen as being a leader in terms of both access/availability, and speed is no more. Our wireless packages are seriously under-competitive (against ROTW) , with Rogers now injecting code into web pages as a means of notifying it's customers that they were approaching their allowable bandwidth for that given billing cycle, Bell resellers (like Teksavvy), and their customers, getting hit by Bell's 'traffic management strategy', and Rogers themselves having throttled their own customers for over 2 years now, what has become known as Net Neutrality finally looks to be the 'net issue in the near future.

When I say finally I say this because it has now become a mainstream media issue. 'Google' net neutrality, and do it from this page (which should become your new search page). Net Neutrality is not a new topic. This has been discussed widely on-line for close to 3 years now.

And I'll come to it again, sooner rather than later I'm sure.

Until then, do yourself a favour and visit Michael Geist's blog/site. He is a law professor at the University of Ottawa where he holds the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law. He has obtained a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.) degree from Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto, Master of Laws (LL.M.) degrees from Cambridge University in the UK and Columbia Law School in New York, and a Doctorate in Law (J.S.D.) from Columbia Law School.

He's also an author/speaker of some renown.

And he's got a perma-link on my page under links...

The Candia'net...

I wonder what a routine by George Carlin on the subject of free internet would've sounded like. I'm sure it would've included all seven (if not more) words from his infamous bit entitled "Seven Words You Can Never Use on Television".

WARNING! Vulgar humour alert!



RIP buddy...

thanks to ars technica for the heads up on the Sandvine interview! Read More...