Archive for 'Mauritius'
45% increase in students at UoM next year!
June 25, 2008 by InF, under Mauritius, UoM.
This is the astounding news that the L’Express Newspaper reports today to us, starting with those lines as the article header.
L’UoM se propose d’accueillir 4 467 nouveaux étudiants, soit 1388 de plus que l’année dernière. Elle offrira par la même occasion davantage de formations : 23 licences supplémentaires et sept maîtrises de plus.
I’ve been at UoM for a year now, and my year 1 class had around 110 students. The labs were nearly packed full. The cafetaria could barely contain the crowd during peak hours. Common room was often so full that there were no chairs or tables, so students had to find somewhere else to hang out. Same goes for Raised Plaza.
Now, I see this article about a 45% increase in the number of students at UoM and I tell this to myself: “Are our decision-makers insane?”
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Budget 2008-2009: Points of Interest
June 7, 2008 by InF, under Mauritius, News.
As you probably know, the 2008-2009 budget was presented today by Dr. Rama Sithanen. So for this post, I’ll be dissecting the budget to see what truly concerns students and people involved in IT in general. There are not many sections about these. According to me, if I had to resume the whole budget in one key phrase, it would be “The Poor’s Budget”. If you read the budget speech, available here, you will notice how many times the words “poor”, “needy” or “poverty” are mentioned! It’s just astounding!
So, Mr. Speaker Sir, I will now move on to dissecting the speech, and putting up the relevant sections, which according to me, are most relevant to the title. Of course, if you found anything worthy of being added or something that interests you in the speech, you can still post it via comments and I’ll add it here. Here goes:
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Orange FAQ Updated: More details on FUP?
May 23, 2008 by InF, under IT, Mauritius, News.
It seems I’m always late with catching up the latest news updates! 
Anyways, according to TheMediaGuru, the Orange FAQ, particularly the sections on FUP (Fair Usage Policy) have been updated. They can be accessed here. Bear with me for the long analysis. This will probably be the last FUP article for a while, since I’m kind of tired about writing on the same subject over and over, specially when we are dealing with unreasonable limits, and unfair practices.
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Orange FUP in News on Sunday!
May 18, 2008 by InF, under IT, Mauritius, News.
Finally, the issues about FUP have hit the local newspapers! Guru just sent me a scan of the article, and here it is, for you to feast on!
This article brought me out of my temporary blogging hibernation (due to exam), but had to blog on it! I couldn’t resist! I must thank News On Sunday for publishing the article and Yannick Rivet for reading Mauritian blogs, and considering our opinions. At least, we now know that Mauritian bloggers are being taken seriously!
Btw… Congrats CarrotMadMan! Your title (Stab in the back) goes to print! 
Here is Mr. Avinash Meetoo’s heavily commented and discussed post about FUP. I’m really sorry since I forgot mentioning this great article.
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Rapidshare.com DOWN in Mauritius only? (Solved)
May 7, 2008 by InF, under IT, Mauritius, Tech News.
This article is now out-dated. Rapidshare is back online in Mauritius, discarding the concept of orange applying Internet Censorship. It was probably a problem with their servers, or a broken thing somewhere.
It’s back to normal now. I can access it and download normally. 
I don’t know since when, but it’s impossible for me, an Orange ADSL user, to access rapidshare.com. I can access rapidshare.de though.
Rapidshare.com can be pinged, can be trace-routed, albeit very slowly, but when loading rapidshare.com in a browser, you get a “page loading” thing (progress bar starts filling) then it freezes.
I managed to get 1 download going, but it failed after 7KB downloaded, with a miserable speed of 1.5KBps, which is lame.
This can mean 2 things:
- There are issues with the Rapidshare servers and they are doing some kind of maintenance.
- Access to rapidshare.com has been blocked by the local ISPs, or Orange.
I had a friend using Nomad’s network to try to access rapidshare.com and launch the same download I’ve been trying to get. No result. It was blocked too.
This is not a local DNS issue since I’m using OpenDNS. Trace-route to rapidshare.com works. If there was a blocking, the request would have stopped at the ISP, or maybe they are letting requests go through but block HTTP requests or something similar?
For now, I don’t know. I’m writing this article without having every fact, so take what you read with a pinch of salt. It might be censorship. Or it could be a simple server problem. Still, Rapidshare is unusable on Orange’s network.
Another weird issue. If you try accessing rapidshare.com via a proxy, it works fine. This is making me seriously consider censorship. Nothing confirmed yet. It might be that Orange started blocking access to Rapidshare to prevent heavy downloading or some kind of weird reason. If you want to check, go to YouHide and use it to access rapidshare.com.
However, if there is censorship in place, there will be an all-out war between Orange and Internet users. They are violating the basic philosophy of the Internet, which is the free and unrestricted flow of information. We can accept capping, but we can’t accept being censored and restricted like that.
I agree that Rapidshare has loads of illegal content, but also, loads of totally legal content. That doesn’t mean that it should be totally blocked. This is plain unfair. If there is indeed censorship, we could send an email to rapidshare, telling them that their premium users are being denied service in Mauritius, and we demand a refund? That should get their attention! 
The Media Guru also wrote about this problem, so you might give his article a check.
More on this as I get updates… Nothing confirmed yet, remember this!
Ps. Sorry for the lack of articles on GeekScribes. Both Guru and myself are in exam period and will finish by end of May. So, if there are no frequent updates, you now know why.
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Orange’s Brochure
April 24, 2008 by InF, under IT, Mauritius.
I dunno how that Orange propaganda brochure (as if there wasn’t enough Orange advertising already) landed at my place, but I thought I’d look through it. And guess what? It lands on GeekScribes! I ain’t got a scanner, so bear with the cam-pic quality! Here’s the cover:
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Orange is here, your connection suffers!
April 18, 2008 by InF, under IT, Mauritius.
Take that orange fans! :/
The company is here, and as soon as it lands here, it starts changing things. Sometimes for the best, most of the time, for the worse! Read on!
21 Comments
Mauritian Internet: Are We Obsolete?
April 16, 2008 by InF, under IT, Mauritius.
I think it is official now. Orange is here and is nearly taking over Mauritius Telecom (MT). From what I read and heard, Orange will be handling Internet and mobile services. I haven’t heard anything about landlines, but I’m pretty sure this is included. Heck, seeing the massive advertising campaign the MT has put up, they must be very eager to show off their new partner. This tempted me to write a post about our Internet services in Mauritius. I know this has looonggg been discussed, criticized, flamed, approved and disapproved, but hey, we didn’t have a post on that topic yet, so it doesn’t hurt, right?
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The MBB in Le Mauricien Newspaper! :P
April 12, 2008 by InF, under MBB, Mauritius.
Hehehe! Congrats to the folks at MBB! You people finally made it to the newspapers! It’s on Le Mauricien of Saturday 12th April, on Page 15.
We know what the MBB is about, but just a small refresh. The MBB, or the Mauritian Blog Brethren, is a blog which tracks other blogs, specifically Mauritian blogs. They often post reviews about Mauritian blogs, giving its readers an opportunity to discover other Mauritian bloggers. There is also a forum where bloggers and non-bloggers, Mauritians or International can participate.
There’s also some comments made by Jevin and Morina about blogging in general.
For a better coverage of the event, check out TheMediaGuru who has an extensive article on this.
So big thanks to all those trying to bring the Mauritian Blogging Community to light.
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Mauritius Telecom and Orange??
April 11, 2008 by InF, under Mauritius, Tech News.
You must have noticed by now that Mauritius Telecom, the major Mauritian ISP, is conducting a major advertising campaign, promoting its change of identity. The famous blue “t” logo has changed to an orange colour. Same for the “Mauritius” in “Mauritius Telecom”. There’s also this big billboard advert that says “Le 17 Avril, nous aceuillons un invité de marque” (”On the 17th April, we welcome a distinguished guest” in French). This heralds the partnership of Mauritius Telecom with Orange (former Wanadoo)?
I believe yes. This has been hinted for a long time now. Orange will now be a partner of Mauritius Telecom, if not administering it. Apparently, Orange will now be active in the Internet Service sector, as well as the Mobile and Telecommunications sector.
There’s not much information about this event circulating around for now, and there has been some issues raised by the trade unions about a name change from Mauritius Telecom to Orange or something similar. Not much, apart from that.
What this means for us? Do you think there will be better services offered to Mauritians? More bandwidth, resulting in better Internet speeds? Better customer support? Let’s hear your views!
