Anders gets in again. What is wrong with the people in this riding?

For the likely 2011 federal election, I refuse to vote for *any* party that runs attack ads. Stand *for* something, not against.

My ISP, Shaw Cable, has a “High Speed” internet service. It is now capped at 60GB per month. Every GB above that is billed at $2 each. It apparently costs the ISP about 1 penny to move 1GB of data. Real UBB would have my monthly bill increased by approximately 1 penny, rather than $2. Maybe the ISP can make a case for a 10x charge. Fine. So a rational UBB at 10x cost would add 10¢ per GB, rather than $2.

But, 60GB? That’s a lot of data, right?

Not really. On [Shaw’s own page on data usage](http://www.shaw.ca/en-ca/ProductsServices/Internet/newdatausage?utm_source=shawca&utm_medium=textlink&utm_content=hslanding&utm_campaign=datausage), they don’t recommend that I access streaming media with my “high speed” connection:

Suppose I listen to Radio #ds106 (a student-run internet radio station used by a single course) for a month. A quick calculation shows that will use 42GB of data just for that. Leaving less than 20GB for using the web, or streaming media. Take Netflix – the streaming service uses approximately 3MB/sec of bandwidth to stream a high quality movie. That’s 1.35GB per hour of video. So a 2 hour movie takes 2.7GB.

The real move here is for the ISPs trying to kill Netflix to protect their video-on-demand streaming video services. The ISPs would now like to charge you an additional $4 bandwidth disincentive tax to let you watch a high quality movie on Netflix. Or, you could just give the ISP the $4 in the first place and watch the video through their streaming service.

What does this mean for education? Most courses now have online components – videos to watch online, videos to publish by students, applications to download. Now, students will have to monitor their monthly bandwidth usage to decide if they can fully participate, or if they’ll risk publishing a contribution and take a potential hit on their monthly bill.

Many courses take place in online meeting rooms – with streaming audio, video, and media. A student in such a class may be chewing up substantial bandwidth, pushing them toward their monthly cap with every session they participate in. Instructors often provide large files for students to download – each of these files, which can be over 100MB, counts against the student’s monthly data cap.

A student trying to survive on a budget connection is imposed a 15GB/month cap (with an additional bandwidth throttle) by their ISP. That means they are now functioning as second (or third) class citizens online. The ISP is imposing the bandwidth cap at an artificially low limit, and then charging obscenely high overage fees as disincentives for use.

If I want to watch Al Jazeera English, whose coverage of the protests in Egypt have been exceptional and far more useful than those of North American news channels, I can tune in to their live video stream online. The Al Jazeera English channel isn’t part of my basic cable package, so unless I want to pay for another tier package, the online stream is the only option. Watching their outstanding coverage for an hour uses about 720 MB of data. Approximately 0.72GB/hour. That will eat up the allotted data very quickly. I’d better cough up for the Digital Premium channel package if I want to avoid surprise bills from my ISP.

Or, if I want to buy a copy of Call of Duty 4 via the new Mac App Store, I’d better make sure I have room left in my monthly data cap to accommodate the 7GB download. Same thing, if I want to buy some albums or HD movies via iTunes. Or follow course materials via iTunesU.

Usage Based Billing has **nothing** to do with charging for actual usage. It’s about using extraordinarily inflated penalties to shape social behaviour in an attempt to protect services offered by the large Canadian ISPs. It’s about punishing people for fully using the internet.

In 2011, this is not OK.

I wear the flag on a regular basis – my fave bike jersey. I had to sprint home after work today because I forgot my wife was working. No time to stop for a shot of a normal flag today

2010/06/14: Make a photo of a flag today: national, state, or otherwise. Try to compose it in a unique way. (@kterhaar) #ds211

the canadian and american teams shake hands after an EPIC gold medal game at the 2010 winter olympics. Epic.

I normally hate the obligatory tv-photo, but this captures today so completely…

Evan and I played tag on the rink at the Kananaskis Lodge. It’s become a tradition for us to head out there every family day weekend – this time, just for the afternoon, however.

the family’s set up at a campground for the weekend, but I had to book it back into town to participate in an online session for my Qualitative Methods course. If I had internet out in the mountains…

grafitti on a GoC grain transport car

Documentaries like Being Caribou. Churchill’s Island. Short films like 23 Skidoo. Art films like 21-87. Animated films like Afterlife.

I will now do my best attempt at channeling The Reverend…

One of the crown jewels. Log Driver’s Waltz.

Or, perhaps, Balablok, which still represents tolerance and diversity (and what happens without them) in my mind.

Blackfly?

Cat Came Back!

and, of course, The Sweater

The other crown jewel would be *cough* Bambi Meets Godzilla, but that doesn’t appear to be online yet… (but thankfully, there is at least a temporarily available illicit copy on the Tube).

I grew up with the NFB. I love the NFB. And now it’s (at least partially) available online. Gods bless teh intartubes. I could spend days mining this archive, and I probably will…