Online distribution seems to be growing in popularity every day while your internet service providers are cashing in on your excess bandwidth. Steam is an example of a successful Online distribution which sells gamers online and allows the customer to download their games instead of going out to the store and buy a physical copy of the game. It is an effective way to sell content, but with the bandwidth cap it can be quite limiting. I remember the days when ISPs offered Unlimited bandwidth when the internet was relatively slow (compared to today’s standard). But with advancements in technology you’d think the ISPs can handle the increasing traffic with less resources than before.

What is the point in offering faster download speeds “for file sharing” when the bandwidth cap isn’t even enough for 2 blu-ray discs worth of content. They say majority of the consumer base never go over the bandwidth. And what only 1% actually do. Yet they are spending thousands of dollars to prevent their 1% customer base from enjoying the full experience of the internet. Traffic shaping is already put in place to optimize the network so no one customer uses 100% of the providers speed. But a limit on how much you can download? It’s like putting place a limit on how much air you can breath in before you have to pay for it.

Take my provider for example. Hi-Speed Extreme. Offers 10Mbps down and 1Mbps up, sounds great before you calculate the bandwidth cap of 95GB per month with $1.5/GB afterwards. I know alot of people would say 95GB is alot and that they can’t think of any possible ways to use up all that bandwidth per month. Not yet maybe its hard, but when more full 1080p content show up, you rely 100% on making online purchases for games, music and movies through services like Steam or iTunes. That 95GB or even Comcast’s cap of 250GB would seem like a speck of dust. I can easily go over the bandwidth in downloading legit content from various websites without even breaking a sweat. Downloading a game off Steam is around 4-5GBs, Linux LiveDVD is around 4.7GB, 1080p content is at least 18GBs usually more. Add those up and you’re already half way there to the limit.

It just pisses me off that Providers are trying to control how much we access the internet. With their false advertisements of “Download as much high def content as you want” with the fine print of “as long as you stay with in the limit we set for you then you pay by the GB or in some cases I’ve heard people paying by the MB. We’re in 2009 where HD companies are talking int Terabytes now while Providers are still talking about Gigabytes and Megabytes. :S. I can’t even imagine how much worse ISPs are going to make things. Lower the Cap so they would make even more money while teasing us with Gb/s speeds? lol. But if it keeps up like this. Then the internet as we know it will no longer exist.

All I have left to say is. Stupid Monopolized Internet Service Providers trying to make more money by overcharging us with relatively slow connection speeds. -.-

Anime North was this past weekend (May 22nd-24th) at the Toronto Congress Center, Doubletree International Hotel and Renaissance Hotel. This year they seem to have used more of the Toronto Congress Center hence making it much larger than last year.

Three days is awesome doesn’t even start to describe it. There were alot of kick ass cosplayers and then there were the hilarious ones who tries too hard to play the role they aren’t fit for. There was just too much to do, my friends and I didn’t have time to go to alot of the panels. Next year for sure we will make it to the “How to get a Con Girlfriend” BEFORE the start time since by the time we got there, it was so bad you can feel the heat without having to walk in.

The video game area was at the Renaissance like usual which featured pretty much the usual video games with the exception to Street Fighter IV since it just came out. But generally fighting games and rock band. Doubletree had the usual board gamers and the Moonlight ball at the ballroom.

The Moonlight ball wasn’t all that great, certainly not worth $35 dollars. I don’t know if we’ll be doing that next year or not.

The J-Rave was alright as well. Pretty much people dancing to Japanese or Anime music. The dealer room was crowded as usual with lots of cool things to buy. Sadly, I didn’t make any purchases this year, but next year I will.

I am currently trying to think of what to dress up as next year, this time nothing that involves painting the face white or wearing a huge ass mask. lol I have a whole year to come up with ideas and to watch more anime so I have more ideas. I didn’t bring a camera to Anime North again this year, so I relied on other people to take pictures. They are on Facebook. I might bring my camera next year and post it on my site afterwards.

Can’t wait till Anime North 2010!!

Microsoft has released Windows 7 RC1 to everyone who is wants to grab their hands on a copy of the next big operating system. This is still a developmental stage but this is a much stabilized version than their previous Beta which was surprisingly very stable. I am still running Beta 1 on my Dell and it hasn’t shown signs of problems. It will be upgraded to RC1 whenever I feel like it.

Windows 7 is the next big version of Windows, the successor to the failed Windows Vista or what Windows Vista was suppose to be. Windows 7 requires lower system requirements than Vista did and will run perfectly fine on netbooks where as Vista had trouble running on netbooks. It also has many new features unique to the release of the new Windows you’ll just have to check it out for yourself.

I installed the new RC1 on my MacBook Pro in boot camp overriding Vista and so far it’s been working great. Granted I am using the 32-bit version. The vista drivers work on windows 7, which is a good thing I suppose as this allowed every component to work properly. So far it’s been running great. Most of the programs I normally use works perfectly fine in Windows 7, however MacDrive was the only program that didn’t work. MediaFour has issued a statement saying it will not support Windows 7 until they release the next big issue. However with Snow Leopard coming out soon that will soon change.

Windows 7 is scheduled to be released this October. I will probably be upgrading to that when it comes out like I did with Vista when it first came out. You can download the RC1 copy here. The RC1 is suppose to run until sometime next year. Long after the Windows 7 is finally released to the general public. Microsoft is letting you use their next big O/S for free for a year. Why pass up on this opportunity.