I'm really sorry my readers, I'm not having much time to post here, due to exams mainly. Revisions are taking a lot of my time.

Also, as I mentioned previously, I haven't stopped blogging. It's just that I partnered up with Neel and opened GeekScribes.

That's where you'll be finding all my tech-related articles as from now. This site will not be closed down. Instead, I'll use it to post about my personal views, if ever it mattered to anybody. But not for now. Maybe in 1 month, after exams are over. Till then, this blog's updates are frozen. :)

But for now, I don't have enough time, so I'm really sorry for the lack of updates here. I'm doing my best to maintain a good flow of articles on GeekScribes, so check there if you want tech articles.

It was reported by the radio and news earlier today. After today's heavy rainfall, 4 deaths were reported.

A 14-year old schoolgirl perished and her brother is reported missing. They were carried away during a sudden flooding of the road where they were. The body of the brother is still missing apparently.

I don't know about the other 2 deaths yet, and I will update this post as soon as I find anything. Maybe today afternoon after the newspapers write about it.

There is also a report that a 4x4 was carried away by the water, together with its occupants. Again, not much here.

This is what happens when Meteo services do not issue warnings early. Considering the rainfall of this morning, schools should have been closed, but no they were not. The result? The death of a student. As you might expect, the Minister of Education came under direct fire from the public, but as with most of our political people, he diverted the blame to the "Crisis Committee" and "Meteo Services" and "That Meteo Guy" and whatnot. People never shoulder their responsabilities here.

Anyways, there is no school or university today on this 27th of march. Classes are apparently flooded and require cleaning. For now, there is no rain and the weather is very calm. Eerily calm... I suspect rain in the morning though.

The tests scheduled for yesterday and today have been postponed to an ulterior date, and this date has not been communicated yet.

Guess what the Minister said on the radio! Man! That guy needs to learn when to shut up!

"We are concerned about the security of 350,000 students. If one of them dies, we cannot do anything about it."

The expression "STFU man" goes well in here. So? One life is not worth it? One life of a 14-year old? What if 350,000 were votes? And he needed that 1 vote to get elected? Wouldn't he do everything he can to save that 1 vote? Why didn't he save that one life then? Votes are more important than life for our politicians?? Why does he say such things about human life?

That would be all for now. RIP to the people who lost their lives today because of the carelessness of our decision-makers. May they find peace.

Edit: The girl's brother was found alive after a search. He survived the flood's raging waters.

Yes. Apparently it is out of beta, as you can see from this Microsoft site.

For now, I do not have any details about what it does, or how stable it is, or even what's new about it. I'll research a bit when I have time, and post the results here. For now, check it out if you are curious.

Edit: I've found a Change Log for SP1. It's quite extensive, and has a number of improvements but not many new features introduced. It also seems that the anti-piracy measures implemented in Vista have been relaxed a bit according to this Washington Post article.

I was reading a couple of newspapers lately, and there was mentions that MASA (Mauritian Society of Authors) is gearing up for a new round of anti-piracy campaigns this year. What's piracy all about?

Wikipedia defines Copyright Infringement (Piracy) as follows:

Copyright infringement (or copyright violation) is the unauthorized use of material which is covered by copyright law, in a manner that violates one of the original copyright owner's exclusive rights, such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, or to make derivative works.

Today, the term Piracy would often be used to refer to multimedia content and files obtained illegally through the Internet, or without the publisher/author/owner's consent.

Enough formality. Most of us know what it's about. Downloading stuff which you could otherwise buy. In the general jargon, you'd here people talking "Hey, I downloaded that new movie yesterday" or "Do you have the crack for that game?". That's what piracy is about. Piracy is stealing. Is it?

It may. It may not. It depends on the point of view. If you are MASA or the law, yes it's stealing. It's depriving developers and artists about their rightful gains. You are stealing their stuff. Now, if you are the average Mauritian, it's not. Why? Dunno. It's Mauritian logic. Or it's purely logic. The fundamental question is: Why buy something with cash when you can get it for free? That's the invulnerable claim that piracy-consumers make. How do you counter that argument??
Another form of piracy that we see often these days is the mass-sale of copied CDs/DVDs for ridiculously cheap prices. While strolling through Port-Louis, you'll most probably see "4 DVD pou Rs.100" or similar. That's Rs.25 per DVD, that same DVD that would be selling around Rs.1000 genuine, or a cinema ticket priced at Rs.150. Which one to choose? The Rs.1000 or the same Rs.25 priced DVD?

Can the consumer be blamed? I don't think so. Considering the actual state of affairs in Mauritius, it's fairly impossible for somebody to spend Rs.1000 on a single DVD when he/she cannot even afford basic necessities. Food and basic needs' costs have risen so much that life's real tough. Same applies to most countries. That person who buys a pirated DVD may want some entertainment during the weekend, after a long and tough work week. That student that buys a pirated Audio CD gets only Rs. 50 as pocket-money per day, and cannot afford a genuine Rs.900-priced CD.

That's for consumers. Then there are downloaders. These will scour the net, looking for the newest and hottest things, and download them off torrents, or P2P programs. Some years back, we all saw the ruckus that these two programs made: Napster and Kazaa. The fight was long and tough, and both (original Napster and Kazaa) finally bowed. Today, torrent is the new hype, with major players like ThePirateBay (TPB) and others. TPB is notorious for mocking the law when it comes to lawsuits filed against it for listing copyrighted stuff.
According to me, people buy/download pirated stuff for 2 main reasons. This applies specially to Mauritius:

- The genuine product is way too expensive
- The genuine product is not available

Wikipedia lists other reasons, but these are most applicable to Mauritius.

Genuine software is not available. That latest album from my favourite artist costs Rs.1200. That movie I wish to watch is not available. The list is long.
What can be done? In my humble opinion, what the Indians did is best. The latest movies are being sold on DVD for Rs.200 Indian Rupees. The latest albums are priced at Rs.100. That's almost the price at which pirated movies are being sold in Mauritius, but those are genuine. See for yourself. I magnified and highlighted the price. The best and most effective solution would be to lower the price of the genuine content. If it's fairly priced, I doubt that people would prefer a pirated version, when they can get the genuine one with all its features. If a movie is priced at Rs.100, people would buy it. At Rs.1000? Forget it! Rs.1000 represents almost 1/5 the monthly consumables bill of the average Mauritian home.

The second reason is more difficult to address. The solution lies with importers. One simple example I like to mention is the lack of genuine anime in Mauritius. There is a big market here, but unfortunately, genuine products are rare and overpriced (Rs.800 at least per DVD). The only remaining solution is to download fan-subs, and that's what most Mauritian anime-fans do. Same for other types of content. There is no availability, so we just go and download it for free.

Switching sides, piracy is a real head-ache for law-enforcers. Campaigns are varied. Warnings are seen everywhere. Nag-screens are... annoying. There are even anti anti-piracy campaigns! At one point in time, restrictions were even placed on consumers, in the form of DRM. This measure however, proved to be very very unproductive, to such extent that it is finally abandoned. Amazon has recently started offering DRM-free tracks at reasonable prices, following the move from Apple via its ITunes Store.

As if it was not enough, RIAA acquired some kind of lawsuit-firing cannon, and arbitrarily assaulted people for illegal downloading, even 12-year old kids!
The biggest trick is this: offer the consumer things at a very reasonable prices, and they will willingly buy. Try to restrain them, or try to purely make profits, and you can be sure that they'll do everything to annoy the hell out of you. You can't fight a Hydra by sheer brute-force.

You can't fight piracy. It's like a Hydra. Cut one head, another one pops up. Here, it's not one head. It's like zillions of heads pop out. Napster and Kazaa went down. Shareza, Ares, Limewire and countless others replaced it. Annoy TPB, and they want to buy Sealand! That's not the way to fight. You will need to convince consumers. Tempt them. Attract them. Not restrain their freedom through DRM. They will hate you for that. You can't just walk in with your lawsuits and tell consumers "Hey buy my stuff, even if it's available for free on torrents and hosting sites! To hell! BUY! Or lawsuits!" And the result? Declining sales. Offer competitive prices? Rising sales!
There is no for or against piracy. Consumers just go wherever the prices are lowest. Developers and artists, I know you work hard. I respect your work. But if your creations are unaffordable, what can I do? For software, there exists Open-Source. For music, there is public-domain, and artists like Radiohead who offer albums almost for free. The Piracy war won't be won by violence. Repression never works. The anime industry knows that well. Instead of firing lawsuits everywhere, publishers humbly request hosting sites to take down their products. It works!

Time to stop. And time for you to comment! :P

And as the saying goes on the net: "If you like it, buy it. Support the developers."

One of my contacts on MSN sent me a link: http://www.free-offers-your-clicks.com.

I immediately thought it was some kind of spamming program that sends its links to the person's contacts.

Being curious, I went to the link and saw it redirected to www.blockdelete.com

More info here:

Peter Bromberg's Blog
Whirlpool Forums

Via Engadget:

Remember that blisteringly fast channel bonding modem Comcast showed off earlier this year? Turns out that the firm's CEO is apparently aiming to roll out internet services that can reach up to 160Mbps down / 120Mbps up sometime in 2008. As in, next year. In a recent interview with Fortune, Brian Roberts stated that service based on DOCSIS 3.0 technology would start "rolling out" sometime in 2008, and casually noted that it should provide "more than enough bandwidth to do multiplayer online gaming." Additionally, Cable Digital News explains that the firm has plans to cover some 20-percent of its footprint with the uber-quick service before 2009, and while we're left to guess what areas will be covered, we'd bet locales fetching FiOS could entertain some competition. Granted, we've still got aways to go before we can go toe-to-toe with a certain Swede, but we'll take any progress we can get.

Only three words comes to my mind: WTF OMFG WOW!

But that's sooo friggin awesome!! 160 friggin Mbps DOWNLOAD! 120Mbps UPLOAD! That's even faster than 100BaseTX LAN!! That means a damn maximum of 20MBps down and 15MBps up. That's the theoretical maximum, but it's still awesome. Even 10MB/5MB would be bliss!

In comparison: You'll a full 4.5GB DVD of your aXXo rip Linux Distro in like 70 seconds considering 10MB down. 1 minute. That's all.

And that would be in.... 2008. Next month. NEXT MONTH IS 2008! That's not 2009. Not 2018. It's 2008!

Now, imagine 160Mbps in Mauritius. Right... 2098. Nothing before! Till then, enjoy your crappy bandwidth that sux, like Avinash Meetoo says. :P

Note: It's not bad enough yet. 160Mbps is nothing. We need THIS!

By now, most Mauritian bloggers and Internet users must be aware of "The Facebook Affair", to which the Mauritian Blogosphere reacted quasi-immediately, with criticism popping out from everywhere. It was considered to be a drastic measure and a step towards curtailing of the basic Freedom of Information of Mauritians.

Now, another event came on to the foreground, and acts as a real confirmation that our freedom, our rights and our ethics are really being messed with. What is that event? Read on!

If you have read Le Defi Plus of Saturday, you'd have seen the main article. Our Minister of I.T and Communications imported a certain device that allows people to listen-into conversations of people. Yes people, Mr. Etienne Sinatambou imported a spy gadget. The worst thing is, it was to be installed at his workplace, the Ministry of IT and Comms.

Now, if that is not invasion of privacy, I don't know how to term it. What did he want to do with that gadget? To spy of fellow colleagues? To know what they are saying about him? In one word: To spy.

Utilisé par les militaires, selon l’Icta

Cet appareil devait être installé au ministère des Technologies de l’Infor­mation et de la Com­m­­unication au bâtiment Paille-en-Queue. Il pouvait intercepter les conversations dans un rayon de 400 mètres

According to the article, the range of this gadget is around 400m. Now imagine that being installed in Paille en Queue building in Port Louis. Imagine the coverage! Everything from around KFC, to Rogers and to SBM would be covered. Now this is nasty.

I leave you to your conclusion, but according to me, we are in for some troubles. I don't know how this Government thinks, but I don't think it considers our rights and freedoms.

Here are two very interesting articles I found. One on the Facebook Affair, and the other on the Spy Gadget thing of Etienne Sinatambou. Beware folks, we'd be having Men In Black in Mauritius now, using ear-pieces and having tranquilizer guns and all. :)

For some of you, you must have seen that Facebook seemed to be down for the past few days. Today, we learn that it wasn't down. It was just that ISPs were banning access to Facebook from Mauritius. Why? Read below.

Apparently, somebody usurped our dear Prime Minister, Dr. Navinchandra Ramgoolam's identity and registered a Facebook account under his name! I didn't confirm it, but apparently, some other politicians also seem have their accounts.

In case you don't know, usurpation of identity is a criminal act.

The ICTA was investigating, and access to Facebook was banned from Mauritius by our local ISPs. Radio Plus just announced the news today. Pascal Grosset has noticed that earlier. For my part, I didn't know about what had happened until today, and thought I might share it with you folks, in case you didn't know too.

And yes, TheMediaGuru has completely reviewed the affair, IMHO. Give it a check.

Ur views on that?