Archive for 'Mauritius'
Internet Filtering Coming To Mauritius Soon?
May 24, 2010 by InF, under IT, Mauritius, News.
I have found an interesting article coming from Le Mauricien newspaper of Friday 21st of May. You can see a shot below.
It deals with some measures ICTA (Information Communication Technology Authority) wishes to introduce or see implemented. While some are laudable, such as promotion of ICT as education tools and enhancing performance of communication systems, the last part of the article ticks off my Paranoia Alarm.
The shot of the scary paragraph, with highlighted portions can be seen below.
Well, what do I see? ICTA wants to implement Internet filtering in Mauritius.
I remember Ex-President, Mr. Cassam Uteem’s wish to see some pages of Facebook blocked due to some offensive content. There have also been past instances of Facebook being blocked in Mauritius, for example, due to the usurpation of our PM’s identity to create a profile. These cases may have warranted a blocking of the incriminating pages, but I doubt censorship was the only possible solution.
Now imagine if our local politicians or authorities have the power to block sites at a whim. Tomorrow, Mr. X doesn’t like a parody video of his speech on Youtube, and the site is blocked? No thanks!
Something strikes me as funny in this article: “the idea is not to implement censorship”. Can somebody enlighten me about the difference between “filtering” and “censorship”? I thought that content that was filtered out was censored. Am I wrong?
Giving censorship powers to a Government is too much in my opinion. The Internet should be a free-flow of information, and not to be controlled by anybody. I agree that there are some content that deserve censorship, but I believe it’s best left to its users to know what should be accessed and what should not. Such situations exist in real-life too. There are some places in cities where it is dangerous to go. However, I do not see any barriers erected to prevent people, especially children from going there. So why should this apply to the Internet?
If parents do not want their kids accessing unauthorized contents, well, they can be educated into how to implement filtration software on their machines locally. Or make the government-filtering opt-in. So people who want to see the Internet filtered can install software locally to do the job, with the use of a Government-managed database. Others can continue using the Internet as they see fit, taking their responsibilities if ever they are caught doing nasty stuff.
On a side note, we see the Internet from the social and crowd aspect nowadays. You have social networking, social bookmarking, social music discovery, social-tea-making, social-what-not. Why not social filtering? I have no idea how this would work, but hey, we do democratic voting to elect out leaders, we could do some democratic voting on what we want off the Internet too right?
I leave you to the views and your comments…
4 Comments
Swine Flu in Mauritius: A Tale of Mismanagement
August 22, 2009 by InF, under Mauritius, News.
By now, all Mauritius should be aware that there is Swine Flu – AH1N1 in Mauritius, and that there have been more than 5 deaths. I might be blogging this article a bit late, but I wanted to keep a record for myself, and everybody else about how this crisis was handled. I shouldn’t say “was” I think, since the worse may still have yet to come. But anyway, let’s be optimist for a tiny fraction of a second, and keep the “was” there.
3 Comments
Why 24/7 concept fails in Mauritius
August 3, 2009 by InF, under Mauritian Events, Mauritius.
I should add “for now” in the title. If I consider what the newspapers are reporting, the first 24/7 festival was not that much of a success. People who work at the Central Market were idling due to a lack of customers. The hawkers seem to be quite happy though. Shops were closed by 22h due to that same lack of buyers. The only place which was very active was the Caudan Waterfront.
So, what went wrong? Nothing as such. It was a perfectly engineered festival. They had planned a concert, had the shops of Port Louis participate in the event by remaining open, and even had a few hawkers and food sellers around to help. The only problem was the people who were supposed to be there. The expected crowd was absent, for some very simple reasons. Then, what are those reasons anyway?
12 Comments
Seacom goes live, connects Mauritius?
July 24, 2009 by InF, under IT, Internet, Mauritius, Tech Posts.
That’s the latest news on submarine cables that come near Africa.
I have read before that there was some buzz about the Seacom cable connecting Mauritius in 2009, and will offer even higher speed internet to our small island.
The BBC reports that the Seacom cable has gone live! What does this mean to Mauritius? Higher internet speed soon? Lower costs?
But first things first. Are we even connected to the cable? From the picture, it connects to the SAFE cable that connects to Mauritius. Does that mean we are connected? I haven’t heard any news about this. I’ve looked in the newspapers I have available, and haven’t found anything recently, unless I missed some small article somewhere.
The last I heard about Seacom cable was that it was having some troubles because of the pirates in the region. Nothing on Mauritius getting connected to it so far.
The most relevant article I found was from L’Express, dated 15 January 2009. It does mention that there are 5 submarine cables being laid in our region, and that we will “benefit” from those cables. There’s another article with nearly same content, again from L’Express, for those who want reading material.
For now, we’ll patiently wait for the next speed boost while keeping the price same.
What are your views on this matter? Do you think we’ll see any boost or benefit anytime soon?
3 Comments
New ISP in Mauritius soon?
July 14, 2009 by InF, under IT, Island News, Mauritius.
Or so L’Express Newspaper claims.
The offer seems interesting. They, yes “they” since the article doesn’t mention what ISP it will be, but I suspect it will be Outremer Telecom, since it’s already in Mauritius. There is no confirmation yet, so it’s just my supposition.
7 Comments
5 possible and cheap improvements at UoM
July 10, 2009 by InF, under Mauritius, UoM.
Undeniably, there are lots of things that UoM needs to do to improve, and it’s almost impossible to list them all. Students often ask for unreasonable things which will cost a lot of money to implement, like “buy new computers for the labs”, or “get LCD screens” or even “a faster Internet connection”. The problem in all of these is that they require quite a lot of money to implement, and money is something that UoM is always in short supply of.
Therefore, this list of 5 improvements I’ve compiled here have one thing in common: they do not cost a lot to implement, or they do cost, but are one-time investments. Some may even be implemented at almost no cost. Of course, if you got suggestions or disagreements, you know where the flame comment box is located: below! 
Here goes:
8 Comments
Is Microsoft THAT afraid of Firefox?
June 18, 2009 by InF, under Fun, IT, Software.
EDIT: They changed it! Ahhh they finally found some reason! Note the different tone of language. Note the less number of points! Good good!
Hey readers, check out what I found in my feeds today! It’s a competition hosted by Microsoft! 10K prize money offered. The catch? You need to have Internet Explorer 8. The ad in itself is really funny, almost laughable. It seems Microsoft is really scared about losing market share to Firefox especially, and other browsers considering the tone of the ad. I’ve included a copy below, and for your viewing pleasure, here’s the original link.
A small comment: Since the page can only be opened in IE8 which got a lousy score in ACID3 test, it the page where the money is hidden must be so quirky that Firefox refuses to even find it! Also, note point #2! “Microsoft’s best ever browser” but not simply “best ever browser”. Does Microsoft itself know that its browser is not the best out there?
Enjoy your lulz, and comment! Seriously, I lol’d hard! Couldn’t resist blogging this as soon as I saw it! 
Click the image for the larger version
