Category: tech

Is Shaw Cable deciding what I can and cannot download? Are they censoring the Internet? BoingBoing.net claims that Shaw Cable has installed a monitor that blocks certain protocols and discards packets based on some hidden criteria.

If this is true, then it explains a lot of the effects that I see. I admit, I use a file sharing application to download MST3K episodes — not only is it (currently) legal to do so in Canada, but the producers have stated that they don’t mind if fans share the episodes that aren’t available for sale on DVD. Right, so I used to be able to download these things fairly quickly, but a while back, everything slowed to a crawl. Transfer rates slowed from 80Kbps to 1Kbps. Packet loss went through the roof, especially when I played online, multiplayer games like Second Life, which streams graphics and sound over the net.

I’d be outraged if this turned out to be true. Shaw has no right to secretly dictate what I can or can’t access on the net. I really want to know if this is true.

Link: BoingBoing.net: “Shaw is censoring Internet feeds and lying about it”

I’m becoming more interested in these elusive wireless “hotspots” where you can surf the web wirelessly. It sounds like an intriguing idea, but just how many hotspots are there in my neighbourhood?

I found one site (jiwire.com) that not only lists them, but allows me to search for hotspots near my current location and show them on a map. How cool is that? Here’s an example of the results you get, displayed in a MapQuest map:

By the looks of it, a lot of really nice hangouts in Vancouver still don’t have wireless. Also, there are at least a couple of hotspots that I know of that aren’t on that map.

Does anyone know of a more complete, searchable hotspot map for Vancouver?

As I passed a little café today, I noticed that they had an 802.11 wireless hotspot. Inside, a woman with a sleek little notebook computer happily surfed the web with a tall, foamy beverage on the side. And I thought to myself, I want to try that.

Sure, my Dell laptop is a little too chunky to be fashionable, and doesn’t sport the cool glowing-apple logo on the lid, but I could relax in a pleasant atmosphere and… do whatever it is that I usally do at home in a more comfortable chair. I guess I’d read the news sites or something. E-mail? I could log onto my favourite multiplayer game, I suppose, although it would be dead slow.

Even though I occasionally see the bohemian-geek in the corner of Lugz or The Grind or Starbucks or Blenz, typing out their manifesto-poem/one-act socio-eco-political play, I couldn’t possibly focus on writing with so many distractions.

It might be more relaxing to sit with a newspaper instead of a keyboard and screen. And at home, instead of a hard chair. Ah, screw it. I’m not going wireless.

Well, Cable Guy showed up precisely between the hours of 5:00 and 9:00 the other day and swapped out the old cable modem for a new Motorola cable modem. It wasn’t as simple as that, however. Because Cable Guy didn’t really know how to use a computer, I had to help him test to see if it worked. He was grizzled-looking guy, and I could tell he was a Newfoundlander by his accent and the fact that he called everyone “my friend”. As in, “Hello, my friend, I’m here to work on your cable modem.”

Cable Guy had to wait twenty minutes on hold while phoning the technicians at Shaw. Apparently they keep their own employees on hold too. When he finally got through (“Sacred Heart, my friend, where is everyone?!”) he got me a new IP and a roaring fast 5 Mbps account. The wait was worth it. Downloads are zippy.

Today I will recieve an honoured guest into my home. Today, between 5:00 and 9:00 PM on-the-dot, the cable guy will visit and fix my net connection. Well, he’ll look at it, to be accurate, and see if it can be fixed. I’ll hope for the best.

For the last few weeks, I’ve had a packet loss problem. 75% to 100% packet loss is not a good thing, as it basically cripples any network connection. I don’t know where these packets are going, exactly, but this kind of packet loss is only exceeded by the folks at Canada Post.

Where are these packets going? I can only imagine. Maybe there’s some guy in Sweden, sitting at his BØRK pine-laminate computer desk when up pops a bunch of my stray packets.

“Hey Ingemar, did yøu write sømething abøut de cubicles?”

“Nø. Wøuld yøu like anøther meatball?”

No worries. The Cable Guy will fix it for me.