I found this while surfing around and thought it might make a good Christmas gift for that geek in your life.... or for someone who just has strong opinions :-)
An LED scrolling belt buckle.... I like it, now if only I could get one of these for my car window to let commuters know exactly what I think of their driving habits, but that is another blog entry.
Here's the link - Scrolling belt buckle
on Monday, November 07, 2005 - 12:38 AM CST - 1022 Reads
News Shaw cable has, this year, begun to roll out traffic-shaping technology on their network using technology from Ellacoya, and reportedy by this Wall Street Journal article. It seems they started using this service in early 2005 in the greater Vancouver area, probably because Shaw's network is most overloaded in that market. There have been reports that they are rolling it out to Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Winniepg. Check out the reports, there's a lot of talk.
Ellacoya's technology works by "deep packet inspection" which is a type of firewall that's super-intelligent. That is, it doesn't just know about IP and TCP or UDP ports, it can also look inside the packet and see if it's FTP, HTTP, Bittorrent, kazaa, and etc. Therefore, it's not affcted by port numbers. This technology, while impressive, is not perfect. It can mis-identify packets, and requires constant upgrades to keep track of all potential types of data traversing the internet, of which there are many, and the possibility to create a new one today exists.
I find Shaw's actions here completely reprehensible. I do not pay for "Xtreme-I" service because i want slow Bittorrent uploads. I pay because i want the speed they advertise. If their network is not capable of providing the service they are selling me, is would expect them to upgrade their network. Afterall, Shaw made about $160 million income on revenues of about $2.2 billion in FY2005 (see the Q4 2005 report (PDF)).
And even if the economics are such that they must cap, lying about it is completely unacceptable. I have contacted Shaw about this issue and so far, have recieved completely unsatisfactory responses, which can be summarized as "The problems are definatly not Shaw's that's for sure. Oh, and go suck a lemon."
If you do not have bittorrent caps now, enjoy it while it lasts. The limiter is coming.
The question now is: what can we, the Shaw customers, actually DO about this?
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If Shaw is giving priority to certain applications on its network, are there not legal ramifications? What if they downgraded Vonage's or Skype's priority and elevated the Shaw VOIP offering? This *may* be an acceptable move if they were only crippling verified illegal traffic, but we all know that Blizzard uses BitTorrent for its World of Warcraft updates.
They offer a $10/mo "QoS/Quality of Service" enhancement for VOIP applications, but only the VOIP applications that they recognize. This puts competetors at an unfair advantage, does it not?
Reaper is right -- it's Shaw's responsibility to upgrade their networks, especially in light of the fact they charge EXTRA for the Extreme-I (DOCSIS) plan. This is a blatant abuse of a Monopoly. I guess there is always Telus... :oS
I found this in my wanderings and thought it appropriate to post here on Cablesucks - the original can be found here.
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Thursday, October 27, 2005
With Friends Like These...
Worst ISP on the fucking planet.
Cox Communications, your friend in the digital age? With friends like this who needs any fucking enemies? Let me tell you about Cox Communications based in Atlanta, Georgia.
Not only do I get my internet service from Cox, I also get cable television and telephone service. The whole digital nut, the whole package, a complete telecommunications smorgasbord from my friend in the digital age; that is until their shit doesn’t work – which more often than not, is all the fucking time. Then we're not friends anymore...
One can expect outages from time to time, but when I can predict when the shit is going to go down, as in time of day (night), the impression is that they're not a very good friend.
My internet service went out at exactly 1:58 this morning. I wait a few minutes to see if it comes back, because I'm used to this shit now...
It doesn't.
Half Hour later -- The first call to Cox - I talk to a cartoon for 20 minutes (Digital Max), who is asking me to reset my modem, router, ping Yahoo, enter IP addresses, go to the command prompt – none of which worked, and THEN I get to speak to a fucking human being.
“Yeah… my internet is down…”
“What city do you live in?”
We go back and forth for a bit over what I’ve done to fix the problem, (why the fuck do I have to fix YOUR problem Cox?), and then the human decides to schedule a service call for the morning.
“Look… I’ve had you assholes out here at least a half dozen times… and I’m telling you… it isn’t my shit… “
Though I make the appointment anyway just in case I’m wrong, (I’m not), and it is my shit. Even though I point out that the cable TV and the phone are fucking fine, and the home network and everything else is working, so if something is fucked up, it’s the cable modem which looks fine to me.
Three hours go by, and I’m getting more pissed off by the minute because I still have no internet, so I decide to call back.
“Yeah… what’s up with the internet?”
“Oh… they’re working in the area…” (she rattles off the names of three towns right next to me)
“Really? So… like when is it going to be back up? And why did someone make an appointment for a service call?? Don't you people know when your shit isn't working??? Why can't someone just fucking tell me that it's down when I call the first time??? WHY DO I HAVE TO TALK TO A CARTOON FOR 20 MINUTES AND DICK WITH MY SHIT BEFORE I CAN SPEAK TO A HUMAN WHEN IT'S YOUR SHIT THAT'S FUCKED UP?!?!?!?!?!”
“I’m not sure… but they’re working on it…”
“Let me ask you something… is Cox under the impression that people don’t use the internet after midnight? Because it goes down at least once a night, usually twice, every single fucking night”
“I’m sorry sir… let me call over to dispatch…”
She puts me on hold, where I’m entertained by the cartoon – my fucking friend in the digital age.
“Sir? Yes… I’m being told that it’s back up now… have you reset your modem?”
“Uh yeah… three times already”
“Recently?”
“What, as in the last two minutes?”
“Yes.”
“No”
“Well… please try that and it should come back up…”
“Okay… whatever… fine…”
So I go to the modem and router and cut the power. I wait the prescribed two minutes that cartoon boy says I should, and then turn it on. No surprise, no fucking internet. Now I’m pissed and I’m already dialing Cox back. Fucking lying ass cocksuckers.
“Yeah… I was told the internet was back online…”
“There’s an outage.”
“Yeah… no fucking shit Bill Gates, when the fuck will it be back online?”
“They’re working on it.”
“Great”
So there I sat looking at my monitor – in bandwidth withdrawal, unable to connect, unable to get any work done, unable to do a damn thing. I’ve been lied to, my intelligence has been insulted, I’ve talked to a cartoon, and I still have no internet… until…
At exactly 6:00 AM East Coast Time, things on my desktop light up, and I’m back online. Now tell me that shit wasn’t planned.
I wouldn’t be as upset as I am right now if my outages only happened every once in a while, but when I actually have to plan for service disruptions, I get bullshit from Cox, AND have to talk to a cartoon – enough is enough.
Though they have me by the short hairs. What am I going to do? Go to AOL?
If there was a reasonable choice, it would already be done at this point. DSL in my area sucks, and forget dial-up. You would figure that when you pay a company 70 bucks a month for premium tier, extra extra bandwidth service, that the shit would work – all the fucking time.
To make matters worse, the shit went down again at exactly 6:35 AM, and as I write this – I have no clue when it will come back! Whoops... it came back up... and went down again at exactly 6:45 AM! Thanks a lot Cox! So glad I can depend on you guys for great service... what are you going to do this time? Give me the titty channel free for a month... again???
Since dealing with customer service, technicians, and anyone else has got me no where -- I'm left with one alternative... Public Service Anouncements.
So to Cox Communications, I once again say, “Blow me you assholes…”
While having one of those 'water cooler' conversations at the office, we discussed the possibility of documenting an experiment to successfully fill a bathtub with Jell-O to see if it would actually set at room temperature, we thought it would be a great thing to blog about and had a good laugh when calling the local food wholesale outlet to inquire about purchasing mass quantities of Jell-O powder. A few more questions came up... would it melt? and how would you dispose of it? Well, someone seems to have had the same idea, so thank you for saving me the time, expense and clean up of doing it myself :-) .... and for the curious - see the complete and (very well done) documentary of a tubofjello