Last month, I blogged about my woes trying to get consistent internet service.
I had assumed that by now I would have jumped from TekSavvy to a new provider. But every time I start the process, the service improves… for several hours. It’s almost like I’m becoming accustomed to shitty service, and have started becoming okay with it.
This weekend I ran some speed tests:
First, I got this:
I live online. I think that’s pretty clear. And I’m well employed. So I tend to pay for the fastest, widest bandwidth available. And so I seek reliable, fast internet service.
For a long time I was with Rogers in Canada. Rogers as the deserved reputation for overpriced service and rotten customer service. A few years ago, I switched to competitor TekSavvy who offered lower prices and better customer service. As an aside, I just switched my parents from Internet/TV/phone service with Rogers to an almost identical package with Bell Canada, and saved them… wait for it… $125 per month.
Of course, Rogers offered to match the offer, or at least to come close. But the customer service experience I’ve had with Rogers has been simply atrocious, including having their representatives outright deny that the thing I was complaining about was happening.
So, I’m supportive of the little guy, anyone who breaks up the Internet monopoly of this country. This applies to our wireless phone services, as well, which are also dominated by Rogers. I presently use Wind Mobile, having recently switched from Mobilicity, though I have no really good reason for having done so.
So… long story short, I’m at a loss for what to do next. See, TekSavvy is essentiallya re-seller of Rogers (and limitedly Bell) infrastructure, packaging it better and offering a more competitively priced suite of services. But I gather that Rogers has been fucking them around a bit, putting TekSavvy-based service calls low on their priority list.
Here are my internet speeds logged the past few weeks/months:
TekSavvy speek – Sep 15, 2013
TekSavvy speed, Sep 15, 2013, later in the evening
TekSavvy internet speed, Sep 16, 2013
TekSavvy internet speed, Oct 8, 2013
The speeds have been so slow that I’ve been forced to rely upon my cell phone data plan to get all my work done, despite paying top dollar for one of TekSavvy’s most expensive, fastest packages. Here’s how fast the cell phone data service has been:
Wind Mobile internet speed, Sep 15, 2013
I’m giving TekSavvy until the end of the month to give me reliable service before I start shopping for a new provider.
While prowling through Facebook’s various rules and regulations (and there are many), I came across this one, How to Report a Sex Offender:
It seems that, “Convicted sex offenders are not allowed to use Facebook.” I found this to be an interesting civil liberties perspective, given how ubiquitous and multifunctional Facebook and other social media sites have become in today’s society. It’s almost like denying a group of people access to the very Internet itself. It’s also further problematic, again from a civil liberties perspective, when one considers that it overtly targets individuals who have, by definition, already served their time and their so-called “debt to society.”
Of course, our society has already declared that it is reasonable to restrict the freedoms of such individuals beyond the term of their punishment, in such ways as requiring them to register on government websites and not living near schools, etc (depending upon jurisdiction). Frankly, I have a problem with any restrictions on people’s freedoms after they have already completed their court-ordered period of punishment— for a lot of reasons, not the least of which being that this practice is unevenly applied. For example, financial criminals are usually free to go back to work in the financial industry after they serve their sentences. Convicted arsonists aren’t prohibited from living near wooden houses. And murderers are free to return to society with nary any restrictions placed upon them at all; and all of the above have suspected high rates of recidivism.
I will also point out that a “convicted sex offender” is not necessarily a pedophile, or an online predator. Facebook has made this blanket exclusion for all manner of sex offence, which can include a host of adult-only activities.
But that’s not really what I wanted to talk about here. Instead, upon doing some quick Googling, I discovered that Facebook’s enforcement of this 2008 exclusion was deemed illegal by a US court of appeals earlier this year. The challenge was brought forth by the ACLU, using many of the same arguments I put forth above. I found two particular newspaper articles noting the ruling, one in the Right-of-centre Canadian newspaper The National Post, and the other in Wired Magazine.
The content of the articles is fairly the same. They just describe the court ruling and the stated justifications for the ruling. But it’s the comments after the articles that are in stark contrast!
The Wired audience writes:
“The government has no business interfering with anyone’s use of a service which is wholly privately owned and operated. This is a good ruling.”
and
“If overly broad laws can affect the worst of our society what is to stop it from affecting the best of our society? The Federal Judge and ACLU acted appropriately even if the whole idea of a sexual predator on Facebook scares me.”
Whereas, the NatPo audience writes:
“If they would just put all sexual offenders to death we wouldn’t have to worry.”
and
“They say that misery enjoys company but after seeing the American courts turn their backs on children’s safety just like Canadian courts, I just feel sadder.”
Is this dissonance a reflection of the political stripes of the two audiences? Or of the pet concerns of the two? (Since NatPo is a general news audience, while Wired caters to computer nerds.)
Of course, I tend to side with the Wired comments above, especially the second one. But that’s irrelevant. What’s really interesting is the manner in which our new society struggles, not just to express its values through law, but to even agree upon what those values are.
Apparently I have a PhD in Biostatistics, which is quite a surprise to me, since I know very little about statistics. Apparently, I also teach statistics at the university level, which further confuses the previous sentence. And apparently there’s a whole new suite of statistical tracking tools available to bloggers, none of which were available when I first starting blogging.
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