If I start having dreams of an old black lady and a Nebraskan corn field, I'll start worrying.

Here are the facts:

- Of the developed world, Canada has among the worst Internet speeds for the worst prices.
- Our Internet providers are all posting record profits year after year.
- Our Internet providers are all buying up big media companies so they can control the gateways and the content itself for their own benefit.
- Alternative forms of content distribution are between throttled and bandwidth-capped.
- I can get better service for significantly less money through a competitor who is a fraction of the big company's size. If Wal-Marts taught us anything is that the little guys can't compete with the big guys. If the big companies don't have to undercut the little companies to stay in business or to keep their customers, they're obviously doing other uncompetitive things.

It's safe to say that Usage-Based Billing, or anything else these companies are advocating for, are not in the best interest of everyone. You can argue the theory of pricing models and justify traffic management policies until you're blue in the face, but as long as the facts are laid out like this there is no reason to trust anything the companies are pushing for.

Google does not certify Android phones.

They probably should, but they do not.

Show us this alleged Google list of certified phones.

That's apples and oranges.

Measuring market segments by OS is like measuring Windows vs. Apple vs. Linux desktops. It's about the software people are running and the applications they can use. Whereas Dell/HP/Acer/Apple/etc. market segments are used for comparing hardware.

Why is that so hard to understand?

That's fair to say. The same comparison can be made between PCs and Macs, due to the Macs only being sold in a limited choice of first-party hardware configurations.

But any Linux using Microsoft hater has plenty of justification to bash Microsoft for crashes when they have PCs at home that have run for years without crashing or rebooting.

What a garbage article.

An Android phone is not the same as an Apple or Blackberry phone. Google just makes the software. Apple and Blackberry make their own hardware.

Therefore you can't really say "Android phones have a high rate of defect". More accurately, you could say "Low-end no-name brand Android phones for that cost under $100 have a high rate of defect". High-end Samsung or HTC Android phones are just as good as their Apple or Blackberry counterparts.

Low-end phones have existed forever, and they've always had more technical issues. They just never had a high-end operating system. Since Android is free you can get it on even the cheaper phones. This is a good thing because it allows cheaper phones to have top-of-the-line software on a budget price.

It's no wonder that if you search for the study all you find is links to this and similar articles about this bogus study, but no references to the company or the studies themselves. Obviously a paid interest study.

And the point of a cellphone is to make and receive calls. That didn't stop us from using them for dozens of other things.

And why wouldn't you want to screw around on the Internet? You don't want news on demand? Traffic and weather reports? Maybe Google Latitude or some "Find My Car" app so if you can't remember where you parked (or your car gets stolen) you can track it from your smartphone?

I wouldn't mind being able to visit websites like tomorrowsgaspricetoday.com in a hands-free manner without having to break the law by operating my smartphone on the road.

Not to mention Skype video-calling. That could easily be done.

I wouldn't mind syncing of my music collection (or cloud music service) from home, to phone, to car, etc.

Plus maybe I don't want to listen to the radio on the way to work, maybe I want to listen to a YouTube vlog.

The hardware for all of this stuff is cheap, as evidenced by the $500 smartphones. You could easily share minutes and share your data plan with your cellphone.

People already pay for things like this in their cars, but they overpay thousands of dollars to get something far inferior.

Why are automobiles still so far behind technology?

We can get $500 smartphones that can do substantially more than any $30000 car. Our phones have a touchscreen, GPS, compass, accelerometer, multiple microphones, HD camera, 3G chip, WiFi, Bluetooth, Internet browsing, video and audio playback, voice control and speech-to-text, and access to thousands of apps to use all that hardware.

OK, in an automobile you need a bigger screen (albeit lower dpi). Does that justify paying thousands more for a "Limited" feature package to get basically inferior products running on inferior software?

I want NFC in my vehicle so I can pay for parking wireless from my car console.

The only real innovation that Apple can be credited for, is popularizing of certain product types (MP3 players, touchscreen phones and tablets) and bringing them into the mainstream with their huge marketing campaigns and their hipster appeal.

All of those product types already existed for years before Apple started making them. Apple did not revolutionize them from a technical engineering standpoint. They just made them cooler to have.

You can't patent that. You can't say that just because you brought tablets further into the mainstream that you own that market segment. There have been dozens if not hundreds of models of Microsoft Tablet PCs since 2001 and many of them looked like the iPad does now. These are prior art and invalidate Apple's patent.

Yes, companies are copying Apple by pushing cool new tablets right as Apple expands the market for tablet PCs. That's perfectly legal. It's like if a trendy clothing label started pushing a new bellbottom fashion lineup and they started selling like crazy. Any other clothing labels could also pick that time to push new bellbottom lineups. If they didn't invent the bellbottom pants, and they can't patent it after the fact, even if they try adding on stupid modifications to the style like "rounded corners".

In Command and Conquer: Generals, you just nuke them. They'll be sitting in a field with a laptop.

While it's true that Canadian ISPs already blatantly throttle whatever they want, they try to describe their throttling practices in such a way that doesn't inflame the masses to force more strict regulation. Not enough people care about VPN to make a stink. However, if we can catch them throttling other traffic, like Rogers was caught throttling World of Warcraft traffic (and claimed innocence through ignorance), it could make a lot of people angry. All they need is to get caught throttling something popular like YouTube, Facebook, Netflix, etc. to raise a lot of heads.

Don't confuse server lag and capacity limitations with throttling. Lowerping services have nothing to do with throttling. A lowerping service will create an encrypted tunnel between you and a physical location near your destination server, so it gets there faster. Encrypted traffic has a higher priority on the Internet. So the result is that even though you are bouncing off a proxy, you will still get a lower ping. Any server can limit your connection speed or prioritize whatever traffic it wants to in and out. For example a download server prioritizing paid downloads over free downloads. Or a free-to-play MMORPG prioritizing paying subscribers. You also could experience lag due to their servers not being fast enough. This is a private server and is not within the scope of net neutrality. Net neutrality is the neutral traffic management of the gatekeepers to the Internet. It's the roads and intersections, not the endpoints.

Will my webpage suddenly become inaccessible and point to an "Account suspended" page?

Don't forget that most big box retail stores set their pricing based on selling these cables and selling extended warranties. They often lose money on the TVs. If you're savvy, you'll buy the cables for $5 from elsewhere, and you'll buy the TV for below cost when there's a sale at a big box store. I respect what Kogan is doing but I'm not going to be a crusader for lazy consumers so I can pay higher prices.

I think there is a difference between geeks and nerds. They both like Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons... but geeks hate school and nerds love it.