The Maple Leaf Lounge

[wayoung]

Didn't want to do the crowds alone at the events and my friends are all either away or sick. Thought, hey I've seen every other JP movie in theaters why not go see this one even if it is terrible.

2 other people in the theater.

Movie was super out of focus. Told OPs, they didn't do anything. Left after 20 min, two free passes. Maybe get some fast food, clean out my car from my road trip last weekend.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Well...not so sure about the posturing.

I meant it in the sense that they're like the big bad wolf, huffing and puffing, but that they wouldn't get far due to the extra security in place, and the fact that Ottawa is ready for them this time around. And sure enough, some of them were already arrested, with vehicles towed.

I told my parents about a week ago how I more or less expected protesters to try and do something on Canada Day.

 

[DEWLine]

Seems to have fizzled. We hope.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

How's everyone doing with the Rogers fail?

I have limited internet using my Telus cell as my hotspot for my PC with VERY limited bandwidth. I can get on here fine, stream Prime for some shows but it won't load movies, can't even log in to Disney+, can't get cable or my DVR saves. I think it recorded Strange New Worlds all right, but I couldn't watch the whole episode last night before it cut off completely.

Hoped it would be fixed by now but goodness knows how long it will take. Can't even get an Uber right now on my cell.

With even 911 affected, seems like there needs to be a public backup system, like maybe using the old 3G bandwidth, available to kick in during something like this. The internet has us relying on it now, should be actually reliable.

 

[Marc]

How's everyone doing with the Rogers fail?

Glad I don't have my main services with rogers (nor do their care billing anymore) though the wife's cellphone is a rogers pre-paid so that was out of action today when she went to call me to met her after lunch with a friend - fortunately the friend's cell isn't with rogers).

Hoped it would be fixed by now but goodness knows how long it will take. Can't even get an Uber right now on my cell.

reading a techincal forum on reddit, mention is being being made that the issue related to BGP (Border Gateway Protocol) which relates to how it rogers advertise their network to other services so the data can be correctly routed (learned about BGP 10 years ago, forget what I learned about BGP).

This could be an equipment failure, an ugprade failure or a network engineer having a really really really bad day.

Iirc the issue that knocked facebook and related services off the net a few months back was also BGP related.

With even 911 affected, seems like there needs to be a public backup system, like maybe using the old 3G bandwidth, available to kick in during something like this. The internet has us relying on it now, should be actually reliable.

As long as phone still have support for CDMA (my Huawei does but it's nearly 3yrs old). Wouldn't be surprised if manufacturer drop the support as cellphone companies turn off their 3G networks.

The cellphone companies would probably want the old stuff gone to free up space, reduce power consumption and ditch the maintence costs to help the bottom line. Would probably argue major outages are few and far between so it's not worth the cost to keep the old stuff running.

Also don't now if they have to continue to pay for the frequencies used or that's a bid once and done.

 

[dupersuper]

How's everyone doing with the Rogers fail?

My internet was fine, but to sign in to the work VPN to work from home you have to enter a code the program texts to you (one of the main reasons I got the stupid cell phone in the first place), but it was taking too long for the text to come in (the password's only good for a couple minutes) so I had to go into the office in my inspection failing car.

 

[Avro Arrow]

How's everyone doing with the Rogers fail?

My ISP uses Rogers infrastructure, so of course it was out all day. Completely messed up my work day now that we are remote. My cell phone is a corporate phone also on Rogers, so no service there, either. The news was reporting that cable customers were also experiencing outages, but my cable is through Rogers and it was fine, although I still have the old-style cable rather than Ignite. It was fortunate that the cable did still work, since it was only through CBC Newsworld that I was able to discover that the connectivity issues I was having were in fact due to a national outage.

My internet came back sometime overnight, although it doesn't seem to be 100% yet, as I seem to be experiencing semi-frequent timeouts. Not sure if that's due to lingering issues with the network, or if I accidentally changed a router setting when I was trying to troubleshoot what I originally assumed was a problem on my end.

Rogers said they are going to "automatically credit" customers, but since I'm not directly a Rogers internet customer, I'm assuming I will get nothing. Of course, I'm sure they'll only credit the cost of one day of the service's fee, so it will probably be just a couple of dollars, rather than the actual loss that many of us experienced.

Hopefully the Competition Bureau will use this as an excuse to axe the Shaw buyout in its entirety.

Fortunately, it doesn't seem that there were any issues here that would have required my immediate attention yesterday.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

The news was reporting that cable customers were also experiencing outages, but my cable is through Rogers and it was fine, although I still have the old-style cable rather than Ignite.

I have Ignite, and it's usually worth it but it was completely out along with the internet. I'd DVR'd Strange New Worlds Thursday night and not only couldn't watch it Friday, when the cable came back on the recording was butchered somehow. Luckily I was able to watch it today on demand.

The internet was dodgy when it first came back, but it's up to speed now. I get both as part of a package through my co-op; I doubt I'll see any compensation. I had an online course for work I'd hoped to finish up this week, hopefully I can get it done Sunday.

I was able to finish rearranging the living room furniture and deep clean whilst the net and tv were were unavailable, so there was a bright side.

 

[Avro Arrow]

The internet was dodgy when it first came back, but it's up to speed now.

My internet ended up being dodgy all day Saturday, but it finally seems back to normal today. No timeouts so far.

I was able to finish rearranging the living room furniture and deep clean whilst the net and tv were were unavailable, so there was a bright side.

I also got started on a major rearranging project on Friday! Unfortunately this is going to be a multi-day procedure, and so right now, things are in worse shape than they were when I started... and now that the usual distractions are back, the motivation to continue is waning...

Canadians' fury over Rogers outage may complicate its merger hopes

Good!

 

[Marc]

Canadians' fury over Rogers outage may complicate its merger hopes

I've worked in a call centre that did rogers care billing and have my cell phone with freedom so if the deal gets nixed big cheers.

 

[LaxScrutiny]

I also got started on a major rearranging project on Friday! Unfortunately this is going to be a multi-day procedure, and so right now, things are in worse shape than they were when I started... and now that the usual distractions are back, the motivation to continue is waning...

Story of my life too, bruv.

The beer store was taking credit, so turned in my empties for cash to use later and stocked up on brews. And I'm thankful for my DVD sets to get me through it all.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Hopefully the Competition Bureau will use this as an excuse to axe the Shaw buyout in its entirety.

Well, it's a good point. The country shouldn't be relying on only two big companies for its infrastructure. This honestly should serve as a wakeup call.

 

[Marc]

Well, it's a good point. The country shouldn't be relying on only two big companies for its infrastructure. This honestly should serve as a wakeup call.

It's a bit more complex than that.

rogers et al provide the retail infrastructure i.e access that gets sold to the customer whether a home or a busienss but there are also providers involved who deal at the wholesale level i.e to the ISPs and provide the really big "pipes" that shifts the data around.

At the retail end, competition in that it can help (in theory) keep prices down but it can't help in situations like this. There is no easy way for customers simply to change providers and advancements in internet technology have made it this way.

For home users, Dialup was easier, get another provider, net account and change the number you dial but that technology is pretty much dead, DSL was could be done by needed some-one to go the exchange and re-patch the DSLAM but with cable and fibre? forget it.

Businesses are more complex because can also be dealing with DNS and IP address issues for e-mail, remote access etc.

If my understanding is correct, the problem was that traffic couldn't be routed in and out of the rogers network. so if you were a customer with Interact who used Bell but your debit machine provider was with Rogers you couldn't connect to complete the transaction. If you were lucky and both ends where with rogers then things might still work (for example my local Freshco could use debit if you were with TD Bank).

In this situation all the ISPs in the world wouldn't have made any difference because there's no way for either end to quicky and easily shift.

And when there's an outage that means the rest of the world doesn't know about about your networks (or autonomous systems as they're known in BGP) having multiple providers for your really big pipes doesn't help.

Network engineering isn't my background (more small level system administration) so I can't really think of a solution but know the answer isn't easy and I don't think the requirement from the feds for the ISPs to work together is will be worth a pitcher of camel spit because of the complexities involved.

 

[Owain Taggart]

In this situation all the ISPs in the world wouldn't have made any difference because there's no way for either end to quicky and easily shift.

It certainly is a complex issue. But surely all that infrastructure shouldn't be at the mercy of the two biggest communications conglomerates. Perhaps an ideal situation would have them spun off into different companies, separate from Rogers and Bell, and run as their own back-end service industries so that neither one holds the reigns.

 

[Marc]

It certainly is a complex issue. But surely all that infrastructure shouldn't be at the mercy of the two biggest communications conglomerates. Perhaps an ideal situation would have them spun off into different companies, separate from Rogers and Bell, and run as their own back-end service industries so that neither one holds the reigns.

Did that in Australia with a project called the National Broadband Network.

The ideas was create a national broadband infrastructure using fibre to the the home and the ISPs would merely retail the service they bought from NBNCo (which would also break the entrenched monopoly of telstra which was like bell but worse as it competed at both the whole sale and retail level).

In started under a labor govt but once the conservatives were back in office they gutted and screwed it over big time (some say a part of that was to protect murdoch media interests).

So instead of having 100Mbps FTTH to the home most people wound up with 25Mbps fibre to the node with much of the last mile done via the crapped out telstra copper network that the conservatives paid $11bil for and which the company was only too happy to be rid off.

 

[Owain Taggart]

Well, it still sounds like there's a need for it to avoid becoming a monopoly. You'd ideally want to completely separate the retail and the wholesale, such as one company that only deals with the industrial needs, leaving the ISPs to deal with internet on a consumer and business level. The problem with most of Canada is that there is so much piggy-backing, where in a case like Teksavvy, an ISP that should theoretically be able to get direct access, instead is forced to rely on the Bell or Rogers for its service to work. They're really more of a 3rd-party seller in that sense. There was a similar situation in my area decades ago where we had a bunch of other smaller ISPs, but they all relied on our big ISP to function as they'd buy their internet from them and resell it to customers. Ironically enough this big ISP of ours in turn had to buy from Bell in its early days.

 

[dupersuper]

In started under a labor govt but once the conservatives were back in office they gutted and screwed it over big time (some say a part of that was to protect murdoch media interests).

So instead of having 100Mbps FTTH to the home most people wound up with 25Mbps fibre to the node with much of the last mile done via the crapped out telstra copper network that the conservatives paid $11bil for and which the company was only too happy to be rid off.

Conservatives are why humanity can't have nice things...

 

[Timewalker]

Bernier had a rant on twitter that makes PP look respectable by comparison. US Alt Right style politics are here. We're just 10 years behind. We'll have our own alt right PM not too long from now, because the CPC loves power more than anything else and will not stop embracing this. This has been the inevitability ever since they merged with Reform.

Considering the effort it took to get rid of Harper and what it's going to take to get rid of the UCP in Alberta (Harper is definitely one of the backroom string-pullers, since he and Kenney probably have a mountain of favors due each other), I shudder to think of what would happen if we got Harper 2.0 as PM.

I actually had a laugh courtesy of one of Adriana LaGrange's loyal sycophants this morning (she's the Minister of Education in Alberta and is basically Betsy deVos lite and without the guns). This woman (the sycophant) is American, lives in Medicine Hat, and worships the ground LaGrange walks on (not kidding; she regularly screeches at me that I have "no right to criticize her because you've never been an mla or walked a mile in her shoes").

Anyway, this woman insists that she doesn't trust the "liberal media", has no idea what Rebel Media is even though many of her posts are word for word RM talking points, makes excuses for not watching the news (her kids don't like it and she doesn't have cable, and it whooshed overhead when I pointed out that since she has a computer she can easily watch online), and insists that she gets her news from her school district's Facebook page (apparently it contains all the news of the city, province, and country). Oh, and apparently from the perspective of Canada, the United States is not a foreign country but China is. Hmm...

Anyway, I made a comment yesterday that she was "uninformed", and this is what she had to say:

listen lady I am far from informed so keep your nasty comments to yourself

Nice of her to finally admit it!

(I took a screenshot as a memento of the occasion )

 

[Timewalker]

Pat John, who played Jesse Jim on The Beachcombers, has died.

I guess the younger Canadians here are wondering who I'm talking about and even what show I'm talking about. The Beachcombers is a Canadian treasure, and this year is the 50th anniversary of its premiere.

CBC is insane not to offer this series for sale on DVD. It's 19 seasons of family-friendly entertainment that's sometimes hilarious, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes creepy (to this day I can still remember that spooky song Gordon Pinsent sang in the episode he was in). They even did a crossover with The Irish Rovers - the Rovers were going to play a concert in Gibson's Landing, and Jimmy Ferguson decided to quit the group and become a beachcomber. The only way they convinced him to change his mind was for Nick to take his place - singing so horribly that Jimmy decided he was irreplaceable and came back (actually, actor Bruno Gerussi wasn't a bad singer at all).

Anyway, the character of Jesse Jim was a nice, likeable guy and the show later wrote in more family for him - his sister, Sarah, played by the granddaughter of Chief Dan George (who had a few guest-starring episodes).

 

[Avro Arrow]

Heads-up, @Mr. Laser Beam :

Government of Canada is re-establishing mandatory random testing offsite of airports for air travellers

CBC is insane not to offer this series for sale on DVD.

I don't know if this helps, but I did some searching, and that show is apparently available on the free (ad-supported) streaming service Tubi. Tubi is, I believe, available in Canada, but I've never used it, so I don't know if this particular show is available to Canadians or geolocked to the US or something.

It is also apparently available on Roku in Canada, but that only helps if you have Roku hardware.