Canadian Blogs

We have been in the 3rd millenium of the current era for almost a decade and it is still impossible to order electronics from on country (USA) to be delivered in another country (Canada). Coming from the company that was actually able to screw authors by pulling their books from their catalog in order to negotiate a better profit margin, they still haven't managed, in 2010 to sell you small electronics across the border, claiming phony excuses about warranty or law.

Yes I'm looking at you Amazon. And please train you support monkeys to not tell people to order from their local Amazon web store (Amazon.ca in that case) when said web store does not have said products (electronics). This make it very insulting.

Last October, after moving out west here in Vancouver, I wanted to change my cell-phone number from the 819 area code to the local 604 area code used here in BC (or a 778 as the overlay area code, even though I'd rather not, but that's a detail). There was two reason. First, people calling from Vancouver wouldn't have to pay long distance charges, and I'd stop getting "what country am I calling" from people that forgot that cell-phone exists and that there is life out east. Second, I'd stop getting dinged on roaming[1] charges for incoming calls I receive out of the local area (Ottawa-Hull). I was with Rogers, one of the 3 from the nation-wide-cell-phone cartel.

I called, and everything was fine until the customer service representive at Rogers failed to change the number because the system was rejecting it (after having been given a new number and hung up). I'll skip the part where he failed to call me back, were the number I just got assigned ended up assigned to another person[2] and jump directly to the part were I call back and get told "it failed because you plan is no longer available". WTF? Much like AT&T changed their plans today to provide less for more, the Canadian telcos, RoBelUs do the same. I one make a move, they all follow. Not to do better, to do the same. And believe me, the trend is not to provide more for less. Absolutely not. Bell and Telus started charging for incoming SMS, Rogers, after promising they'd never do it, did it, even for people with a contract. They also do what we call pocket pricing, and practice that should be considered illegal, where they change their offering depending on your geographical location, because sometime there is a local competitor that does better.

In short, they told me that to change my phone number, I had to resign for a contract, to get a seemingly identical offering, more or less a nickel, with a different price structure, or pay a 25% premium to not have the contract. It should be noted that I was near the end of the 3 year contract I was on, so that constitute a unilateral change of the terms, something that ought to be illegal[3] but they have been keeping doing without being worried. Also this just show that the claim that contract are here to protect the subsidy on the locked phone they cell you is an obvious lies. There was no subsidy beyond the 2 weeks left, nor do you get a rebate if you bring your own phone[4]. It was just to lock people in, probably the only way they have to keep customers.

Why would I make business with a company that just wanted to screw their customers each time they can, making doing business with the mob a very pleasant activity? I asked to cancel instead and ended with just an almost useless piece of electronics made by Motorola.

Concerning the price structure here is approximately how it was:

• System access fee: $6.95
• 9-1-1 fee: $0.25
• Voicemail + caller ID + 250 SMS: around $10
• Voice plan with a low number of minutes out, a higher number of minute incoming, $n (I don't remember the amount)

The new pricing:

• No system access fee.
• No 9-1-1 fee.
• Voicemail + caller ID + more SMS: around $11
• Voice plan with a low number of minutes out, a higher number of minute incoming, $n + $5 (to compensate on the above fees they now put in the advertised price)
• Government Regulatory Recovery Fee: around $3

All of these are without the GST and PST (the federal and provincial sale taxes)

I must explain a bit. The system access fee is a very controversial fee that the carriers use to force you pay more than the advertised price, making you wrongfully believe that it is a government fee. They were order to state it was a non-governmental fee after a class action lawsuit was brought in 2006. The 9-1-1 fee is the carrier charging customer for the 911 emergency access that they get charged per line. Again billing it separately allow them to claim a price lower than it is in their advertising. The Government Regulatory Recovery Fee is just a renaming of the two above, with a lower charge, but still, with a name like it clearly show how they treat their customers. It is a bit like adding a surcharge to your billing to compensate the utility bill (water, electricity, heat). In short, it is a gimmick.

There is a lot of work in the area of consumer protection that should be done to address these issues, and the marketplace as it is is just disgusting, with no competition.

The proof that there is no competition: iPad data plans - something very easy to compare - are exactly the same with Roger or Bell (Telus' are worse and it is just their fault because they announced them last).

But what is happening now?

Thursday, June 3rd 2010, WIND Mobile opened in Vancouver. What is it? WIND Mobile is just one of the new new entrants on the cell phone market, probably the only one that is clearly going nationwide, West of Ottawa-Hull. The others are Mobilicity (Toronto only at the moment), Public Mobile (Toronto and Montreal), Videotron (Quebec, not yet open), Shaw (in the West, starting in Alberta, not yet open), and I might forget a few local one. This is the result of a recent airwave band auction in the 1700MHz frequencies held in Canada.

In short, since Thursday there is a beginning of competition in the cell-carrier market, in Vancouver, with the hope to see saner business practices, better prices...

I'll comment more on the offering later.

Notes

[1] telcos here call this long-distance, but you call a cat cat, dont you?

[2] I called it to check

[3] IANAL

[4] actually the tend to frown upon this

MagicFab shared Los delirios del payaso verde. « Censurados: Cero. MagicFab posted 5 items. profnoel: Le gouv du Québec à contrevenu à la loi en achetant des produits microsoft sans appel d’offre. Victoire du libre !? http://tux-pla.net/205 itaromainfo: hi Finally I am competely Windows-free… [...]

MagicFab posted elecnix: !bm Nouveau blogue de vélo sur Cyberpresse, par Caroline Rodgers (la journaliste à bicyclette) à partir du 3 juin: http://is.gd/czAPS. MagicFab shared 2 links. Kerckhoffs’ principle – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Richard Stallman takes a stand against e-books and e-book devices | TeleRead: [...]

MagicFab shared 3 links. How to Get More Privacy From Facebook’s New Privacy Controls | Electronic Frontier Foundation Informatique: des milliards de contrats pour trois entreprises | Denis Lessard | Politique québécoise [Phoronix] Ubuntu 32-bit, 32-bit PAE, 64-bit Kernel Benchmarks

MagicFab shared 4 links. Partimage-manual Backup-partition-table – Partimage Read ePub books in the Firefox Web Browser with the EPUBReader Add-on | epubBlog at epubBooks.com Content >> Blog Archive » Little Brother and Content, the SiSu versions RetroRead – Free Google epubs for your Kindle MagicFab shared Informatique: des [...]

Its been 3 weeks as of this writing since I picked up my Olympus PEN E-P1, and I think its time for a quick review. Olympus E-P1 top view. First Impressions From the moment that I took this camera out of the box, I was impressed. The build quality is fantastic (lots of metal) and the styling is [...]

Back in September of 2009, a cyclist was killed by a motorist in Toronto; I blogged about the beginning of the mess in Automotive Entitlement (Again).

Now the Guardian tells us Top Canadian lawyer told he will not face trial over Toronto cyclist’s death, while the CBC’s headline is Charges against Bryant in fatal crash withdrawn.

Even better, and even more flagrant, road-raging Bryant is considering a return to politics. Anyone running against Mr. Bryant would be well advised not to show up at political events on a bike.

So the moral of the story, folks: killing someone with your car doesn’t even need to be more than an eight-month interuption to your political career. It was only a bicyclist, after all. People who matter drive cars.

Announcing This Week's Kubuntu Bug Day Target - Kdepim - Thursday, May 27, 2010

This week's Bug Day target is kdepim!

* 131 New bugs need a hug

* 5 Incompletes bugs

* 24 Confirmed bugs need a review

Bookmark it, add it to your calendars, turn over those egg-timers!

* Thursday, 27 May 2010

http://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuBugDay/20100527/KDE

MagicFab shared 2 links. Bug #411881 in Ubuntu: “[needs-packaging] mytourbook” Warming up with the a11y stuff « Nothing in particular

MagicFab shared 2 links. Kobo Customer Care : What are the 100 free titles on the Kobo eReader? Kobo Customer Care : kobo ereader case

Drupal and a lot of community modules do not work yet 100% with PHP 5.3. Therefore, in order to make it easier for any drupal administrators who wish to run the ubuntu lucid server, I have created a ppa that allows easy use of php5.2 packages that have been compiled under lucid: https://edge.launchpad.net/~txwikinger/+archive/php5.2

Rules for pinning this version are provided in the description of the ppa.

Because May 20th is not just another day, and this might not be just a stick figure.

And if this stick figure offends you, consider whether it’s the stick figure – or you.

MagicFab posted fsf: FSF statement on WebM and VP8 — http://www.fsf.org/news/free-software-foundation-statement-on-webm-and-vp8 !lp !fsf !gnu.

Travis Millward commented on my Django Quiz project today:

Hey Myles, I believe I'm going to checkout your django quiz. Can you explain what the

{% if score.corrent_anwsers|intequaltest:question %} This wont work {% endif %} is doing? It looks really good!

First I just like to say I love talking to people so if you ever have a question for me about anything (literally) don't hesitate emailing me (me@mylesbraithwaite.com) or chatting with me (XMPP/GTalk me@mylesbraithwaite.com).

def intequaltest(value, arg): return (value == arg)

Okay so intequaltest is got to be the studied template tag in the world. It's sole purpose is to see if two things (i.e. a list, str, dict, etc.) are the same and if they are return True or False. In this case see if the correct answer is equal to the answer they gave. I will go into the history a little later in this post but essentially this application use to work a lot differently and the only reason this template tag is in here is because I have an issue with copying and pasting.

When I first started developing the Django Quiz application in 2008 it was for a client. They wanted to quiz their sales consultants on very complex financial process. The consultants could take each quiz as many times as they want, but their "score" wouldn't be submitted to their manager until they got prefix.

I spent about a two days in July (10th, and 11th) developing this application for the client. In the middle of my second day the client came to me and said they found a better solution, a pice of paper and a pencil.

I have been asked about this application five or six times in the last month, so I guess it is about time I write my formal apology. This application doesn't work. I tried to start up again on April 28, but my heart isn't really there anymore (my heart was not really there the first time but I was getting paid).

So will this application ever be completed? Maybe, if one day I wake up and get really excited about coding it again or a client comes along and ask me to code them a quiz application.

Using your Mac, Linux or windows box, you can automatically manipulate images from the command line using ImageMagick. Most often, I use it to easily add borders to my images. I know I could use a plugin for Aperture, but I often use the “out of camera” JPEG files produced by shooting RAW+JPEG. The best [...]

The Mint.com blog offers up a great info-graphic explaining why you don’t need that $250 monster cable to go with that PS3 and HDTV.  Its succinct and to the point, and if you have recently purchased an expensive cable, you need to take it back and buy the cheapest HDMI cable that you can find. Budget [...]

Its been a while since my last post, and I thought that I would post a few pictures taken on Day 11 of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. It was nice to get out and enjoy a very spring-like Vancouver in the middle of February. The Cauldron in Coal Harbour more photos after the break. [...]

exim -bp | exiqgrep -i | xargs exim -Mrm

Especially useful when you make a small scripting mistake, and your email queue suddenly has over 3500 emails waiting to be delivered to an external email address… (source: NixCraft)

Better late than never, here are some of my photos from day 105 of the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games. On day 105, the torch passed through Deer Lake Park on its way to Vancouver. waiting… The next torch runner waits for the flame to arrive Here comes the flame. The torch “kiss” The opportunity to see the torch along [...]