Facebook censored! What a shame!

It's been a real buzz among the Mauritian Facebook community: yesterday Facebook was put offline in Mauritius just because the Prime Minister Navin Ramgoolam wanted to remove a humorist parody of a profile bearing his name! Le Mauricien reported the news yesterday's morning. Eddy's blog entry, Pascal's blog entry and Avinash's blog entry have serious thoughts about this stupid act.

I join the cause since this is an insult to free speech, especially since Mauritius is a democratic country.

And second, what about the other humorist parodies of Paul Beranger, our President Sir Aneerood Jugnauth and the very funny minister Gawressoo? Shall they also express their concerns and shut Facebook for a while in Mauritius, while 'their' profiles are being cleaned, as expressed by Pascal?

After going against the press, the Government is now going after the online community. Are we going to see another Great Firewall of China in Mauritius, as expressed by Eddy?

The picture shows what I get when I search for 'Navin Ramgoolam' today. Of course, there are other profiles and groups that have been created in the same spirit, which I have not shown. Is it only us in Mauritius who don't have access to Navin's profile? Or has Facebook genuinely removed them? I'd love to know if we're being fooled and if there's a special Facebook page for Navin for Mauritian users generated by local ISPs...

Wikimapia describing the whole world

Last week I wanted to see what's there around me and how the things around me look like. You may not agree with me over what I did, but I think that it's a nice way to get what I wanted.

In fact, I went discovering some magnificent satellite pictures of the earth! The following sites proved to be very attractive:

• Google Maps
• Yahoo! Maps
• Live Search Maps

But you'll agree that there aren't that so many things for a small island like Mauritius. Perhaps some user-generated content could bring some more excitement about the maps. So welcome to Web 2.0 maps: Wikimapia.

Wikimapia is based on Google Maps. But here, registered users may say "here is my home", "this is a garden", "that's a football pitch", etc. by defining areas, tagging them, and describing the places in their own words!

For the more enthusiastic, for whom 2D is not so exciting, 3D satellite images come handy. Google Earth is certainly well known. NASA World Wind is another service that's as enjoyable.

Happy discovering :)

My first report goes in style with LyX

I'm finally very happy about being able to give my first report for Software Architecture in style! In fact, I've used LyX (pronounced 'licks').

So what's LyX? It's just a simple word processor which does "What You See Is What You Want", and not "What You See Is What You Get", as with other word processors. To put it simple, it's a simple word processor with pre-defined styles for headers, footers, paper format, font size, and so on. You don't change them. You only bother about your content. And then apply the pre-defined styles to your text! After all, is it not that content is the most important thing?

LyX is a graphical front-end for LaTeX (pronounced 'la-tek'), a markup language for TeX (pronounced 'tek').

Back to school!

Photo courtesy: T.H.I.N.K.

After months of wondering about goals in my life, I've finally decided that I'm better back to school!

Yes! In fact, I've joined the University of Mauritius again, doing Computer Science...

I should say that it's an all new exciting adventure with new friends and new things to learn, share and have fun at!

Safari: exploring the net

A few weeks ago, Apple announced the public free release of Safari, it's legendary web browser. As an enthusiast, I downloaded it. And started to adventure on the Internet to see what's so amazing at it.

Safari's website claims that it's got major advantages. I do admit that Safari's indeed faster than any other web browser I've used; may it be for surfing or for downloading. Of course, it's not going to beat a download manager which supports threads!

The other feature which I think is new is the idea of 'private browsing'.

I get all the other features in my favourite Mozilla Firefox on the other hand.

But I've got a question: why has Apple made a release for Windows? And not for any distro of Linux? Well, I think it's following the same concept as it did for iTunes. Apple wants to make Windows users shift from their OS to Mac OS.

So how does it do so? Simple:

1. introduce some new idea
2. work well on the graphics part - that's what every user want nowadays
   
3. make things as simple as possible
4. don't give too many options that will overwhelm users
5. make it free!
   

So saying, I don't find the download rate in Safari nor the status bar to know what's happening, like a page is loading, it's fethcing some images so I should wait, etc. (Not to confuse with the percentage a page has loaded!)

NFSU2 LAN experience

Last Thursday, Yanesh, a friend, invited me to his house for a LAN party. Our plan was to connect some PC's and to play NFS Underground 2 on LAN!

That was just fantastic!

Our plan was like this:

• Connect as many PC's together. However, we had no network hub. So we decided to do with only two computers.
• No hub also meant to modify existing LAN cables! We had to arrange for a crossover cable. Luckily, I use one at home. So I brought it to Yanesh's.
• Another friend, Kavin, brought his computer too! Great!

We started our first hour by configuring LAN (simple using Windows XP). But the great challenge was to be able to start a game on LAN! Wow, after an hour Kavin and I succeeded in finding the right sequence of buttons to push!

Here are the steps in some simple words:

• Select a PC to be the server and create a game with server mode
• With other computer, select "filter" and choose the right settings
• Then click the game to enter
• Click "Ready" on top
• Click "Start" on server

And did the game start!

We were seven in all; we made three teams and each team played against each other team a few times...

We did not encounter any technical issue.... that was cool.... NFSU2 played well....

The tournament finished at three in the morning!

Yannick, a friend, had to go to an interview at eight! We accompanied him home.

As for me, I had to get to work at nine. So I went to bed at Yanesh's at four! Got up at seven-thirty.... and obviously wouldn't make it on time!

No need to say that I was a bit sleeping at work that day!

But it was all great fun! Thanks very much guys!

Next time we're planning to play with more computers and using a network hub, of course!

Open source in the news

It's good news that Click has finally talked about open-source and more specifically about Ubuntu since the last few weeks.

A few years ago, Stephen Cole (remember that Click Online presenter?) said that he did not consider Linux to be an OS since it was not enough user-friendly and many hardware wouldn't work. But nowadays, all this has changed. Most linux distros have a superb GUI (Gnome and KDE, amongst others) and many devices like printers, scanners, webcams, ADSL modems, and others, have drivers in-built in the Linux distro.

And on top of all, open-source is everywhere today!

I'm using Ubuntu Server at work and Kubuntu Desktop at home. I should say that the server is really easy to install and deploy. Apt-get is really a nice thing (thanks Debian!): installing and upgrading packages are simply a pleasing thing.