PureGin.org

OK, I'm starting to get annoyed with Shaw. In general, I've been a happy customer - their service has been reliable, if a tad slow at times; billing is unobtrusive, and service, when I've talked to them, is professional and not unreasonably incompetent.

The first annoyance with Shaw surfaced in an email on the Vancouver Linux User Group mailing list suggesting that Shaw is secretly capping bittorrent streams. There is further discussion of this on digg.com. I'm not a big user of Bittorrent - a couple of times a year, I might download a Linux distribution on DVD. I suppose I don't mind Shaw limiting certain protocols, in the interests of providing better performance. But then tell us up front, and don't claim to sell 'Internet access'. Call it 'Web and E-mail service".

A few weeks ago I travelled from Victoria 'up island' to Ladysmith. I'd been invited by a friend to spend a weekend with him and his family at their beach house near the small town. My friends were travelling from the mainland by ferry; I had spent the day in Victoria, and we'd agreed to meet in Ladysmith at the new Tim Hortons.