Entries Tagged 'canadian politics' ↓

Last week Jason Cherniak, President of Liblogs sent out an email to all libloggers announcing the launch of Dalton.ca. I had a chance over the weekend to view the whole thing, and I was quite impressed.

The website is done in flash, and is video of him explaining his goals for next term, as well as some promises he’s broken in the past term, and how he plans to make up for them. It also does a very good job of explaining his history, and his thoughts and views on being Premiere.

The main reason that I believe makes Dalton McGuinty a good Premiere, is his focus on Ontario’s youth. He believes that everyone should be given opportunity, and that finances should not be a barrier. He explained that his parents had never been well-off when they were young, and yet a generation later, their son was Premiere. Throughout the Liberal Leadership campaign I supported Gerard Kennedy because he had a similar focus. I wrote about this in a previous post.

I think the Liberal Party is doomed unless Stephane Dion steps up his game, but I’ll leave that for another post. In the meantime, I suggest you check out http://www.dalton.ca. It’s also good to see political candidates using the new media to reach supporters. I quite enjoyed Andrew Telegdi’s blog while he had it, but I don’t think he does it anymore.

From April 20, 1968 to June 4, 1979 and March 3, 1980 to June 30, 1984, one of the greatest prime ministers, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, was in office. 23 years later, his son Justin Trudeau has decided to throw his hat into the ring and run for the Liberal Party in Quebec.

Justin Trudeau

There is a lot of speculation as to whether or not there is going to be a Trudeaumania 2007. In my opinion, he is going to be completely different from his Dad, and it is going to be very difficult for him to live up to the legacy that Pierre Elliot Trudeau had. That being said, he is what the Liberal party needs right now. The new leader of the Liberal party isn’t exactly off to a strong start. It’s going to be interesting to see where Justin goes in the party in the coming years.

Net neutrality has recently been a hot topic in the tech world, not so much in Canada, but very prominently in the United States. For a working definition of what Net Neutrality actually is, you may want to check out the Wikipedia entry.

Recently a bill to promote Net Neutrality was put forth into Congress in the United States. However, this bill was turned down. You may get a good idea of how and why it was turned down by listening to the mp3 file linked below. It was probably because of the wonderful working definition of Net Neutrality given by Senator Ted Stevens.

Click here to listen to Ted Stevens explaining Net Neutrality

I personally have not had any problems in Canada. Regardless of what Leo Laporte says, I have not heard of any issues in Canada with regards to VoIP and ISP competition. I am currently using Rogers High-Speed Extreme internet. This gives me 6mbps down and 800kbps up. There have been rumours that Rogers throttles BitTorrent traffic. I was not able to get a confirmation of this over the phone, considering all of the PR representatives at Rogers though that BitTorrent was used for ringtones. However, due to regulations in Canada, Rogers does not throttle bandwidth on port 1720 because this is the port commonly used by VoIP providers. I now use BitTorrent on port 1720. I am told I get 6mbps down, and I usually get about 5800kbps. This is very acceptable.

I am slightly worried that in the future Rogers may start throttling ports that VoIP providers use. This may come shortly after Rogers introduces their own VoIP service. As someone that is seriously considering purchasing a service such as Vonage VoIP in the future, this concerns me greatly. I am going to be watching this issue dilligenty. I know a couple of people that have Vonge with Rogers High-Speed Extreme and they have noticed some discrepencies with the quality. It is not all of the time, but it happens quite frequently. Considering the bandwidth Vonage requires compared with the bandwidth readily available from Rogers, this should not be an issue.

This issue is becoming more and more prominent every day.

I just wanted to quickly post this video message from one of the candidates running for Leadership of the Liberal Party. This is aimed towards the youth of Canada. I am quite impressed with him thus far.