I'll provide one data point of how this affects Canadian internet users.

I currently have no caps with TekSavvy and pay $39 a month. Starting from March 1st, I will pay $31.95/mo with a 25 GB cap. Any gigabyte over the limit will cost about 2 bucks.

Now, you can buy a block at discounted prices. According to TekSavvy, based on my internet usage, I will need to buy at least a 275 GB extra block. Believe it or not, I don't torrent. I simply like to watch NetFlix, HD movies from iTunes, lots of educational videos online, and backup data in the cloud.

That 275 GB block costs $55/mo. So I suddenly go from paying $39 for unlimited data to paying $86.95 per month, and having to be careful about what I download and what not.

Oh, and the first thing I need to do is stop backing up my data, videos, and photos in the cloud. That's pretty much out of the question with the risk of paying $2 per extra GB. I'm buying an additional external hard drive instead.

How is that for innovation?

I guess this is a ringing endorsement of Al Jazeera. It's the network the dictators fear. I can see some people saying they are being shut down because they are supporters of radical Islam but from what I've seen of them this is pure nonsense.

It's nice to have a news network that doesn't suck so bad. It's shocking that this network does better (in my opinion) at news reporting than American news networks given that it comes from a part of the world where free speech isn't a concept rooted in law.

Look for the network the dictators hate. The network that the ruling class denigrates. That's the one more likely to be telling the truth.

Around a month ago a good journalist friend of mine was taken prisoner in Algiers because of his reporting. After a few days of heavy pressure from the embassy he was released unharmed.

A lot of friends were worried and continually asked if he was OK and whether his profession was really worth it. I congratulated him on his new status as a real grown-up journalist, whose reporting was so good that he scared regimes enough that they would want to imprison him.

This is the same - Al jazeera is doing such a good job that they're a threat to the Egyptian regime. They do what journalists are supposed to be doing but often aren't. They should be congratulated for that.

If you have less to lose, you're more willing to take risks.

Thus having the government take care of basic welfare and health care benefits frees people to be entrepreneurial, in a sense.

Compare to the US, where people are tied to a job based on the benefits they have through that job, and before the health care legislation's removal of preexisting conditions clauses, if you had a medical condition and lost your job, you could very easily end up in financial distress.

Personally, I would have transitioned to being independent a full year earlier if it wasn't for health care coverage issues.

Every time Al Jazeera is brought up, people claim that it is anti-semitic, racist, anti-US, etc.

But to that I say: so what? Do you think Americans are that stupid that they won't see antisemitism? Do you think we're little children who can't think for ourselves?

As the old adage goes, "keep your friends close, but your enemies closer". If Al Jazeera is indeed "the enemy", then all the more reason to make Al Jazeera widely available!

Plus: when Al Jazeera started, the staff was almost entirely made up of BBC MiddleEast service people. So while they worked for BBC, they were unbiased; but the moment they started working for AJ, they became biased and completely untrustworthy!!

IMHO, this opposition to Al Jazeera comes from the fact that they (AJ) don't tow the 'company line'. There's a carefully crafted story around which news is reported in the US ("US = good; Middle-Easterners = uneducated religious bigots; Israelis = poor victims who can't do no wrong; etc." ) ; unfortunately for AJ, they refuse to follow this line and hence piss off powerful people here.

And before someone starts putting words in my mouth: I support Israeli people, and want them to live secure, peaceful, happy lives in Israel. In other words: I support the Israeli people, but not necessarily the actions of their government.

"When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth." – Steve Jobs in WIRED magazine, February 1996

This doesn't explaining what's going on very clearly. Small Canadian ISPs are allowed to use the infrastructure of Bell Canada at wholesale rates in order to foster competition. This has been reasonably successful. What has happened now is that the CRTC ruled that Bell is allowed to impose the same per-user bandwidth caps on its wholesale customers as it does on its own users.

Since the smaller ISPs should simply be getting bandwidth from Bell, this is totally ridiculous. Their ability to compete with Bell on price or levels of service is almost totally eliminated. When my friends and family in Ontario were explaining this to me I kept having to ask them to repeat themselves because it boggled my mind how ISPs using bell's infrastructure could be subject to those sorts of restrictions.

As I mentioned below, I find it disingenuous that people often use the term 'anti-semitic' when they mean 'anti-Israel', as if any judgement on the actions of the state of Israel automatically implies hate of Jewish people.

Speaking as one who has started several start-ups in Norway, I'd say: there is still quite a bit to win, there is much less risk, and at the end of the day, we're not really in it for the money, are we?