9 posts tagged “canada”
Living in Canada sometimes you just go without the luxuries our neighbours to the south enjoy. No, not Mexico the other one.
Over the years names like Old Navy, Starbucks, Taco Bell and Best Buy have made their way north. And we have rejoiced. Well except Taco Bell, that stuff goes right through me.
But with the good must come the bad (like Taco Bell). It's called traffic shaping. Internet Service Providers (ISP), like Rogers & Bell (well that's pretty much it I'm afraid) are deciding what has priority on their network and degrading your service that you have payed for.
In my opinion the ISPs have painted themselves into a corner by promising customers a certain (high) speed that they can no longer guarantee if everyone actually uses the service at the same time. Here are some examples for perspective. Imagine the electric company downgrading your service during peak hours for fears of brown outs. Or if your city ran out of water in the morning because everyone was having a shower before work. What if your phone only worked sometimes due to lack of lines? There would be huge outrage right? People would demand the level of service that they are paying for and these utilities would be held accountable.
The truth is ISPs don't throttle or pack shape to safe guard the integrity of their networks. They don't want you downloading content because they offer television or downloadable services themselves and you'd be cutting into their margins.
I love eventually getting everything the United States has. Us Too!
Bad enough they had to invade us in the movie, but now this. Though the site does seem to suggest that it's "coming soon". Oh well, par for the course.
Upside? The other 6 billion of us can at least use the Avatar Creator. Though the Simpsons avatar creator is much better than the South Park one.
I paid the now open and packed Micro Boutique a visit on the weekend. It's quite a small and underwhelming store but there must have been 30 people in there. It might have had something to do with celebrating their 25th anniversary.
Now here's the interesting bit. For their anniversary they are having a draw for an iPhone (that goodness it looks like 1.1.3) which ends April 20th. No word if it's the 4, 8 or 16GB version.
So here's the two possible scenarios:
- Apple is releasing the iPhone in Canada and Micro Boutique is giving one away for their anniversary.
- Micro Boutique is giving away a jailbroken iPhone.
The second scenario seems much more plausible but could get Micro Boutique in hot water with Apple. Last year Apple went after sellers in Asia of jailbeaked iPhones with the threat of $1000 fines. I wonder how Apple would feel about one of their official resellers giving away a jailbeaked iPhone for a contest prize? If it is a jailbroken iPhone, who ever wins it might be a little disappointed when they brick it with a future firmware update from iTunes.
Of course this wouldn't be the first time a jailbeaked Apple device has shown up in stores.
I jokingly said with being out the loop the this last week, "oh watch the iPhone get released or something". Well it wasn't the iPhone, but now we (Canadians) can spend too much on television just like our neighbors to the south.
Of course this being Canada you can buy Hockey on iTunes. I just would have thought that they would have nice cover art for the Stanley Cup Classics. It looks very 1996 I think.
Bell satellite has a free preview of Disney Playhouse for the next month or so.
It has the usual stuff that I've seen on any number of the other kids channels. What caught my eye was a new Winnie the Pooh series called My Friends Tigger & Pooh.
They seem to have changed out Christopher Robin for a girl named Darby. Not a big deal, but I'd hate to Christopher Robin's agent.
I know that they are trying to open the demographics of the show by including a girl but it's like replacing Piglet with a dinosaur because studies say kids love dinosaurs. But if they were going to drop a character Christopher Robin
They have a contest to promote the launch of the channel here in Canada but (say it with me) excludes residents of Quebec.
It's $199 at Future Shop and they'll even give you a Tivo branded wireless network adapter for free. It's $198 at the Brick but a Wi-Fi adapter is going to cost you almost $70.
I can't seem to find it at Best Buy but they do have an information page about the Series 2 Tivo.
It really freaks me out sometimes, I still add the difference to American prices. It's going to be years for me to get used to this.
With all the uncertainty of late about the upcoming to never release of the iPhone here in Canada, I have done some leg work to get to the bottom of this.
Last week I dropped in at the local Rogers store and asked them when we might see a release of the iPhone. The response I got from the clerk seemed so bogus you know they have boxes of them in the back collecting dust.
His reason for no release in Canada yet is due to Linksys having the trademark on the name. What? Wasn't that cleared up months ago? I guess no one told him about the third iPhone.
When I attended Apple Demo Days I had to ask the Mac guy about a release of the iPhone. He told me that Fido was going to get it. Fido has a 3G network, so that might make sense if we're going to get the rumored 3G iPhone that Steve talked about in London.
Again thanks again MacSurfer for the traffic.
Demonoid is back up after it's downtime, unfortunately this is the message I receive when I visit the site.
We received a letter from a lawyer representing the CRIA, they were
threatening with legal action and We need to start blocking Canadian
traffic because of this. If you reside in Canada, that is the reason
you are being redirected to this message.
Thanks for your understanding, and sorry for any inconvenience.
Of course this slowed me down by about 5 minutes. Don't tell the CRIA. Besides music is the last thing I download, I have iTunes for that.
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