Smaller ISPs buy network resources wholesale from the big players (Bell/Rogers/Shaw) to resell to us. This arrangement was put into place because, as I understand it, those resources were subsidized by our tax dollars and because the massive telecom companies needed some competition. Previously, a decision was made to allow the big ISPs to impose throttling (based on the type of traffic) on the resellers, which was met with a great deal of disapproval from consumers. The big telecoms seemingly backed off of this, or at least they don’t explicitly state that they practice it. As a Rogers customer I’ve seen no evidence of throttling of specific types of traffic on my cable internet connection. But that was apparently not enough.

Now, the CRTC has decided that the large telecoms are allowed to impose usage-based billing on the resellers. This means that ISPs buying wholesale network resources from the big guys have a cap on their usage of those resources and overage is charged at rates similar to what is charged to consumers. Naturally, the smaller ISPs must pass those costs on to their customers.

For example, TekSavvy is announcing that they must drop the cap on their 5Mbps “High Speed Internet Premium” plan from 200GB to 25GB and that overage will be charged at almost $2/GB. Their unlimited plan will be no more. This pretty much puts their pricing in lockstep with plans from Bell, which illustrates the consequence of the CRTC’s decision: mandating usage-based billing on the reseller ISPs effectively eliminates competition for the large ISPs. Providers like TekSavvy can no longer differentiate themselves from the big boys in any significant way.

While the official line is that this is a measure to prevent “bandwidth hogs” from congesting the networks, there is speculation that this is actually the big telecoms attempting to tighten their grip on old media business models. After all, these companies also own companies that produce content and provide satellite and cable TV services. It’s not hard to see that Rogers, for example, might be interested in pulling the plug on Netflix’s on-demand TV and movie service. Why pay for deluxe digital cable plans with HD channels ranging from $50-100 (separately from any Internet plan and with the cost of the receiver) when you can pay Netflix $7/month to stream a growing library of shows and movies in HD (plus many, many more in SD) over the Internet connection you’re already paying for?

(Oh, hey, did you know that Rogers has an online on-demand service? Did you know that Bell’s got one too? How very interesting… I wonder if they’ll apply the caps and usage billing to those, too. Food for thought.)

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Netflix is worried about this. But Netflix is just the tip of the iceberg. Video and teleconferencing via Skype, iChat, and Facetime. Software delivery via Steam, Playstation Network, and the shiny new Mac App Store. This decision will have a greatly negative impact on innovative Internet services and threatens to set back our technological progress by at least a decade. We can literally get better prices for data transfer by putting our data on expensive solid-state hard drives and shipping it to its destination, even if we throw out the hard drives afterward!

So what do we do? I’ve written my MP. I’ve signed the “Stop the Meter” petition, which has soared into the hundreds of thousands of signatures. You should do the same. This nonsense cannot be allowed to continue. We already pay some of the most exhorbitant rates for some of the worst Internet plans in the developed world, mobile and broadband. We cannot let ourselves fall behind while the rest of the world, with access to the seemingly unlimited potential of the world’s high-speed Internet infrastructure, dances circles around us.

This is an anti-competitive cash grab and must be stopped.

My love affair with JRPGs started with the purchase of my Playstation and a copy of Final Fantasy VII. It was the first disc-based epic in a series that I’d largely ignored to that point. I bought it because it came highly recommended by the owner of the video game shop where I purchased my system. I hadn’t been an RPG fan previously (at all) but I trusted the man’s opinion and decided to give it a chance. Well, it goes without saying that I was incredibly impressed at the game and the ball just started rolling from there.

But looking at the current generation consoles, it seems that the Japanese RPG is becoming an endangered species. The Wii library has very little in JRPGs, though based on the mass exodus of third-party RPG developers from Nintendo after the jump from SNES to N64 — to say nothing of the jump from N64 to Gamecube — that was to be expected. While the PS2′s library is filled with many JRPGs, the genre has much less representation in the PS3 library. There are a few notable titles (which is more than I can say for the Wii) but in particular Final Fantasy XIII has left a rather sour taste in my mouth. The Xbox 360 is not even on my radar largely due to my seething hatred of almost everything Microsoft but also due to the fact that I see the library as basically an extension of PC games, which I’ve had little to do with. Apparently improvements have been made here, but I wouldn’t be able to say for certain.

(If you’d like to prove me wrong, I would love to see an annotated list of your favourite Japanese-developed RPGs for each of these systems, but I think the point still stands that none of the current generation systems have as plentiful a selection as the PS2. And for the record I’m willing to admit the Strategy RPG genre, too.)

So what was happened to this fan-celebrated genre?

The video gaming market has shifted significantly. The Japanese used to rule the industry with an iron fist but looking at some of the best titles of the current generation, more and more of them are being produced by Western studios. Nintendo has had a great deal of success handing some of their franchise titles over to a Western studio but the one they developed in tandem with a Japanese studio got some terrible reviews over the pond. Some of the best titles in PS3′s library are developed by Western studios. There has been a shift and Japanese developers are finding themselves scrambling to catch up on the world stage.

Why the sudden shift? Co-worker and best friend @maplealmond offered a very interesting theory: while Japanese developers have definitely ruled in the console market (which they also largely created), Western developers have always done better in PC gaming. As gaming consoles are now very close to PCs, those PC game sensibilities translate over to console gaming much better. Consoles have incredibly powerful graphics and processing power, Internet connectivity, and even hard drive storage. While Fallout 1 and 2 couldn’t have possibly been ported to the NES or SNES due to the large amount of storage needed just to save, Fallout 3 stands as one of the very best titles in the PS3 library and has won a number of “Game of the Year” awards, leading to a special “Game of the Year” edition with all of the downloadable content bundled in. The games are now being made on Western turf, so to speak.

Also, it is possible that the tastes of the market have changed, too. While I do love Valkyria Chronicles and the Disgaea series, I haven’t finished any of those games yet. Why? They all take way too long to get through, and it’s not even all the fun stuff. Japanese RPGs suffer from a “grinding” problem, sometimes requiring a great deal of repetition and administration to train your uber squad of heroes to own that boss who keeps on handing you your spleens on a silver platter. That might’ve been quite acceptable to me when I was young but as I’ve accumulated more responsibilities and obligations, it has become harder and harder to justify allocating precious leisure time to killing the same group of monsters over and over again to farm experience points.

(Valkyria Chronicles 1 suffers from a different problem: it won’t give me enough game to play, so I get inclined to switch to something else for shorter gaming sessions. If I’ve got an hour to spend gaming, I’m sure as hell not spending 30 minutes of it watching cut-scenes.)

Grinding is so endemic to the Japanese RPG experience that Disgaea’s main selling point is that it places almost no limits on how much you can grind to create the ultimate killing machine. Level 99? Try level 9999! Much of the “fun” of playing Disgaea is finding new and interesting ways of “cheating” the system (i.e. exploiting loop holes that developers purposefully left in the game) so that you can achieve your ultimate killing machine in 70 hours instead of 100. Really? I’m lucky if I can squeeze an hour or two of gaming into my day now. Games I want to play are released at a rate much higher than I can actually finish them and that means I’m inclined to play games that give me much more for my commitment. Is it possible that has the audience has grown up, they’ve also grown tired of the grind?

There are probably many more factors at play here. What do you think has affected the success of the JRPG in North America?

Today, a global fundraiser for Autism called “Communication Shutdown” kicked off. The idea? Encourage people to pay for and download a “chapp” (charity app) and shut off Twitter and Facebook for the entire day.

Wait, why are we being asked to do this? Let’s ask their info page!

We realise that nothing can truly simulate what it is like for people with autism.

I absolutely agree. So why are we not using Twitter and Facebook then?

Our aim is to simply encourage a greater understanding from people outside the autism community. Social network users have become reliant and even addicted to platforms like Facebook and Twitter. And if they shutdown for 1 day, they will feel a sense of disconnection and a sense of frustration. By creating a little empathy, we hope to encourage a wider understanding and acceptance of people with autism – an understanding we recognise those in the autism community already have.

Wait, what? These people have managed to simultaneously get the point and ignore it entirely.

The notion that not using two of (arguably) the Internet’s largest social networking sites simulates the communication difficulties that people on the Autism spectrum face every day even remotely enough to engender empathy is at best misguided and at worst downright insulting. Clearly, neurotypical people would have so much trouble communicating with each other if they weren’t using Twitter or Facebook. Come on guys, get real. We might as well be posting our bra colours. =P

Even putting the blatantly asinine and insulting nature of the campaign aside, what good does it do for some small fraction of the world to fall silent? If 5% of everybody I followed on Twitter stopped posting updates for a day, I would not even notice. I’ve gone entire days not posting to Twitter without being noticed as well. How does doing something that most people would not even notice do anything to raise awareness at all? If nothing else, the “I Like It” meme on Facebook managed to drum up attention, even if it was sometimes of the highly negative variety.

No, I agree with Corina Becker: autistics should be doing the exact opposite. Staying silent doesn’t do nearly as well at getting anybody’s attention as speaking out does. While the so-called “high-functioning” or “verbal” autistics can’t speak for those who don’t have a voice (digital or otherwise), they can speak for themselves and personally I think more should be done to encourage that. Or perhaps the neurotypicals who do sympathize with autistics can share their thoughts. In any case, it’ll achieve a lot more than saying nothing at all.

Unrelated: This is my first blog post for November and in the spirit of NaNoWriMo, I will be attempting to write a full blog post every single day this month. I realize that my blogging has started to fade and I consider this an excellent opportunity to commit myself to writing more.

My subway ride was smooth as usual. Having left the office later, the subway cars were not as crowded and almost halfway through the trip I managed to snag a seat and sit comfortably for the rest of the stops leading up to the north end of the Yonge line, Finch station.

This is where the fun begins.

I reach the top of the three sets of stairs that lead from the subway platform to the bus platform. Then I move through a set of double doors to my left leading outside. The picture above fails to show the full magnitude of the crowd of people that I had to squeeze through to get to the location from which I shot it. The two lines of people that usually form for the 36 Finch West buses both curve in the same direction and run parallel to each other on the other side of the platform.

At this point, I know I’m in for a long wait in the cold and I’m visibly anxious. I watch all the buses that pass by.

Out of service. Out of service. 60. Another 60. 36C (to Jane, not far enough for me). Another 36C. A 36D (Weston, still not quite far enough). Out of service sign that switches to DETOUR ON ROUTE (wait, what?). Another 60…

As the 36′s stop to pick up people, I start to move closer and closer to the front of the line. But my bus is still to arrive. About an hour passes. I make fists with my hands to keep them a bit warmer. My feet hurt I am shivering. I continue to wait, wondering if maybe there was a detour on Finch West causing delays in getting buses back to the station.

Finally, a 36B. This one will go all the way down to Humberwood, well past where I need to get off. I’m close to the back door and desperate to get out of the cold. As we file onto the bus, I feel an unpleasant sensation between my shoulder blades: I’m being pushed from behind. Another passenger turns to yell at the man behind her, demanding to know why he’s pushing her. Clearly, the people behind us are as desperate to get on the bus as we are and considerably less polite about it.

The bus is packed as tight as a sardine can. The driver tells riders at the front door that he has no more room and that another bus is behind him; he doesn’t know if it is another B. The back door is particularly crowded. The riders there exit the bus and re-enter, playing a precarious game of human Tetris (no, not that human Tetris) against the two bars that trigger the door to open at stops. The driver tells people to try entering via the back door. Each time he does, the passengers near the back door groan.

We pass by the major stops: Dufferin, Bathurst. The bus is still roughly as packed as it began.

At Keele, a person further to the front squeezes past me to get to the back door. As he passes by, the messenger bag that is hanging on my right shoulder is pushed behind me and lifted way up. Finally, he manages to break through and exit the bus.

Not until Weston do enough people clear out to give me some space to breathe. There are still no seats however; I’ve been standing the whole time.

Now I’m home, quite irritated and wondering why my usual commute had suddenly doubled in length. TTC’s official Twitter feed for service notices says nothing about it. It reminded me of a customer service tip that might be useful to the TTC: perception matters.

Even if you’re doing the best you can, if that’s not what it looks like to your customers, you have lost them. That’s why the photo of the sleeping fare collector caused such a stir in the community. We now pay more than ever for each ride, including Metropass holders, and we want to see the return on that investment.

Robert Fischer wrote a post titled “Dear User of My Open Source Project” and many of the proggit comments were quite vicious. I noticed that some of these commentators seemed to have the same understanding of “open source”: that an open source project is a product, like any other product, that is simply distributed with its source code. Therefore, Robert is clearly creating and releasing “inferior” products and this behaviour should be punished. Being open source is not an excuse.

If this is your understanding of open source, you have missed the point. Entirely.

Yes, there are open source projects out there that are very well-documented, quite reliable, and have attracted large communities of contributors that tirelessly work to improve every aspect of the software. But by my count, that seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Most open source projects out there are maintained by just one person who scratched an itch and thought the solution might be useful to others. Some of these projects might be lucky enough to have a few passionate contributors. These projects may have some rough edges in their code or their documentation, and perhaps the contributors might be too busy to put on the appropriate polish.

You might think that irresponsible, or even reprehensible. How dare this person release this garbage and pollute the open source community!

News flash: it is these people who drive open source software. Those large, reliable open source projects with all of the sparkle and polish? They became that way because large groups of people found them useful enough that they decided to invest their time in making the project even better. But in all cases, for open source software to progress, people have to be willing to give up their time and energy for free and with no expectation of reward. Open source is driven by pure altruism.

And yes, as a programmer using open source software, you may sometimes have to roll up your sleeves, get into the code, and make the changes that you need. Or perhaps you can find other ways to contribute. But complaining like a petulant child that it doesn’t serve your particular purpose is, frankly, incredibly rude considering that you were given this software entirely for free and given the power to inspect its source code and change it to suit your needs. If that is the way that you’re going to approach these projects, go use something else.

Like Christmas, the true spirit of open source is giving.

Edit: Some one on proggit rightly pointed out that I’ve made a common mistake of grouping “open source” software with “free” software, a subtle distinction that this pagefrom the FSF makes very clear. However, I believe that Robert Fischer’s post and his complaints also referred more to “free” software than “open source” software. Consider, for example, that he prefers to use the WTFPL for his projects, the spirit of which is “I’ve decided to put this out here, and you guys can do whatever you’d like with it.”

This is not to say that all “open source” software doesn’t adhere to the values of “free” software or that all “open source” software necessarily follows the values of “free” software.

It’s the same reason why scientists have by and large stopped explaining away the world with “God”. Saying that something in our natural world is “magic” or the work of a “God” is a cop-out. Why even study the world at all? We could just say it’s all hocus-pocus and never have to worry about it! The same idea can apply to programming as well.

I used to think that Ruby meta-programming was dark magic. I didn’t understand any of it and felt like I just couldn’t break through the barrier of clever one-liners and idioms, but I started to read the source code of Ruby projects that I used in my day job and side projects. I studied carefully, taking the time to understand even the most complex-looking constructions. I learned some things about Ruby that I didn’t know before and picked up some common patterns. Suddenly, Ruby made a lot more sense and my skill with it grew rapidly. Every day, I’m learning more and more.

So here’s the first part of the message that Giles was trying to deliver: Rails is not magic. It’s Ruby.

(There are also some supplementary thoughts about how, from a Lisp lover’s point of view, languages like Ruby and Python, even with all of their meta-programming power, might be annoying because there is still a subtle distinction between data and code.)

This is not to say that Rails is perfect or pure. The Rails team is making great efforts to bring in ideas from Merb to reduce some of the pain that developers feel when trying to go against the grain of Rails’ conventions. I am very much looking forward to Rails 3 and I think many others in the Rails developer community are too. But it is not “dark magic”; it is a tapestry of abstractions (albeit sometimes of the leaky variety) that are weaved together with clever Ruby programming. Maybe some of the code is too clever for its own good but it is a potent demonstration of just how expressive Ruby can be. But the upshot of Rails’ design is that, inevitably, something in Rails won’t behave the way you might desire it to and you will find yourself forced to dive into the source code of the framework to find out why.

While I don’t disagree with the notion that Rails could be documented a lot better, I’ve realized that source code is the most reliable form of documentation. API docs and tutorials and blog posts may be out of date or missing details, but the source code is the current set of instructions that is being given to the computer. It is always the most comprehensive and accurate picture of how the system works at any given moment. And, more frequently than ever, we have the power to dive into the source of the software we use to enhance our understanding where its documentation fails.

Now here comes the second part of what Giles was trying to say:

If you love Ruby (as even some anti-Rails folks do) but you’re vexed by Ruby “magic”, read the source. Study it carefully, ask for help if you need to, and contribute your findings back to the community. But don’t just dismiss it as magic, or you might be missing out on a chance to learn some incredibly useful and powerful things.