I live in Quatre-Bornes and, this week-end, we were victims of that stupid thing called 24/7.

My daughter, Anya, was still awake at midnight last night because, brace yourself, a concert was still on (at midnight!!!) at the Municipality of Quatre-Bornes and the noise was deafening (even though we were 1-2 km away…) Don’t the organisers know that kids should sleep early on Sundays to be fresh for school the next day?

What’s the purpose of organising a concert until midnight? The only reason I can think of is that the Human Resource Development Council knows that no one gives a s*it about that 24/7 thing and the only way to attract a few people is to have such a concert. But come on guys! On Sunday?!? At midnight?!?

I only hope the millions that are being wasted are going to be recouped one day. But I have my doubts… once more.

As I suppose you all know by now, the British Council has decided to close its public library in Mauritius. This decision, which, as far as I can tell, is based on economical reasons, is very debatable as this will prevent people who like to read to have access to English books.

I have very fond memories of the British Council library. I was a subscriber when I was a kid then again when I came back to Mauritius in 1998. I remained a subscriber until two years ago when I decided to stop subscribing for two main reasons:

The library, which was originally a real library with real books and a very studious atmosphere, became a médiathèque with Web-enabled PCs, LCD TVs showing English movies, etc. From total silence, the place became noisy… But, more problematic, someone there decided that most books should be kept somewhere hidden and only retrieved when asked for. This made stumbling by accident on a book more or less impossible.

See, I became a Computer Scientist in large part because, at the British Council library, I stumbled by accident on one book when I was a kid. That book was the formidable Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley:

I read that book when I was 14-15 and fell in love. I discovered that very special type of literature called computer programming. From there I read books on algorithms, data structures, computer architecture, etc, all of them obtained at the British Council library. I can’t imagine what my education would have been without them…

A second reason why I stopped subscribing was that I felt that the subscription fee was becoming too high. I think it was around Rs 1000 per year which is waaaaaaay above what a normal Mauritian can pay. For the record, other libraries in Mauritius, and especially Charles Baudelaire library (which is the French alter-ego of the British Council library) charge substantially less per year.

If I were cynical, I would say that this was a deliberate decision by the British Council to have fewer and fewer subscribers until closing down would become the only viable thing to do.

But I prefer not to be cynical (once), this is just a result of very bad judgement.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister of Mauritius announced that he is willing to reactivate capital punishment in the country (following its suspension a few years ago.)

Personally, I am against death penalty. Judicial errors are possible (and have happened) especially when the accused is not rich enough to afford the best barristers (watch The Green Mile.) And I am fundamentally against the idea of retribution: killing someone who has killed makes no sense to me.

The situation in other countries

According to Amnesty International, “more than two-thirds of the countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or practice.”

Among the 58 countries in the world still practicing the death penalty, we have, for example, Afghanistan, China, India, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, United States Of America, Yemen and Zimbabwe.

Among the 139 countries which have stopped killing people, we have, for example, Australia, Canada, Cote D’Ivoire, Denmark, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Seychelles, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Togo, Turkey, United Kingdom and Mauritius.

It is important to understand that law has been amended in Mauritius to suspend the death penalty and if, and this is a big if, it it to be reactivated, then law will have to be re-amended.

My personal opinion

Mauritius has laws against the death penalty. Mauritius has also ratified agreements at the level of the United Nations to signify its intention not to practice death penalty anymore. And the Prime Minister knows this.

He also knows that the population loves blood. I strongly think that he said what he said yesterday to win some additional votes for the coming elections. I don’t think Mauritius will reintroduce the death penalty. It’s all about politics… and political agendas.

I’ve just finished reading an article on Le Mauricien entitled Computing : des Courseworks sous-traités et tarifés. In the article, the journalist explains how HSc students in Mauritius pay some teachers, some lecturers, some past students and even some  IT professional (what this may mean) to do their projects for money and this is done with the benediction of parents.

Here is a revealing quote from the article:

Les “services” de ces “helpers” sont tarifés selon la complexité du travail. “Pas moins de Rs 5 000 ; cela peut aller jusqu’à Rs 15 000. Un contractuel qui ne se contente que d’un coursework par an demandera un prix élevé. Mais celui qui produit plusieurs projets réclamera Rs 5 000 à Rs 6 000 à chaque candidat ” affirme cet enseignant. Des enseignants de Computing relatent ce cas référé à la police, il y a trois ans, et impliquant un enseignant qui avait réclamé Rs 4 000 pour chaque “commande” reçue. [...] Le plus grave, indique-t-on, c’est que ces travaux réalisés à l’école se font, dans la majorité des cas, avec la bénédiction des parents.

Plagiarism too…

The article also states that some students are now adepts of copying prior works from the Internet or even from past students. The journalist writes that more frequent and thorough verifications from the MES would be a good thing in order to help reduce this problem.

Personally, I feel the problem runs deep in our education system where accent is on succeeding at exams instead of acquiring knowledge and mastering a skill. Students and parents both wrongly believe that what is important is that piece of paper from Cambridge. They forget that the essential reason why people study is to become productive adults who can work efficiently so as to have time to enjoy life.

Work is not about waking up in the morning at six, leaving home at seven, getting in an office in Port-Louis at nine and having to work overtime (more or less) everyday because one is not productive enough. This is a recipe for catastrophe and frustration (which sometime characterises our society.)

Work is…

According to me, work is loving what you do and finding it easy. Work is also about getting home early to have time to play with your kids. Work, finally, is also about being good enough for your boss (yourself in case you are self-employed like me) to pay you a nice salary.

And it so happens that a lot of parents don’t know that. This is where things need to change if we want our society to evolve.

En apparté…

Taking tuitions seven days a week and focussing 100% on succeeding at exams is also a bad strategy. Sure, it creates a scholarship holder or a laureate but I’m afraid a lot of them lack creativity (because they were imposed so many constraints over so many years.) The problem is that, according to the World Economic Forum, organisers of the Davos forum, Mauritius has an “educational system [which] gets mediocre marks for quality” and the country will have a lot of problems to transition to an innovation-driven economy due to a lack of people who can innovate.

Let’s hope they are wrong. But, I’ll be frank, I think they are right.

While reading Dan Cederholm’s blog, I found this small gem:

Like anyone who used to blog with frequency pre-2005, I’d like to post here more often — not just to fill up bits and bytes, but to write again. Remember when blogs were more casual and conversational? Before a post’s purpose was to grab search engine clicks or to promise “99 Answers to Your Problem That We’re Telling You You’re Having”. Yeah. I’d like to get back to that here.

Then again, history teaches us that it probably won’t happen.

I guess this is why I blog less now.

Incidentally, I have been listening to a lot of Electroclash (aka Electro IV aka New wave III aka Synthpop II) during those past months. Fischerspooner is excellent. It’s healthy noise…

I am just discovering that Barack Obama has won the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between people.”

What can I add?

Barack Obama has really changed the way non-Americans (like me) now perceive Americans following the damage done by George Bush when he started a war without being allowed to do so by the United Nations. Thanks to Obama, we now know that Americans are not egoistic and fanatical but can also show signs of intelligence and understanding.

I like that America now sees things in various shades of grey instead of that utterly stupid “Either you’re with us, or against us” stance they had before.

The world is complex. People are complex. And no one is 100% good and 100% bad. The thing is, we have to live together. And I think Obama understands this.

While browsing today, I came up across this Gallup survey done in February on the importance of religion in different countries all over the world:

The countries where people give a lot of importance to religion are: Egypt, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Congo, Sierra Leone, Malawi, Senegal, Djibouti, Morocco and the United Arab Emirates. Notice that most of them are countries where a lot of people are poor (and some people are extremely rich.)

Countries where people generally do not give a lot of importance to religion are: Estonia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Hong Kong, Japan, France, Mongolia, Belarus.

Apart from Mongolia (?!?), these countries can be separated into two groups:

• ex-USSR countries like Estonia, the Czech Republic, Azerbaijan and Belarus where religion was suppressed by the state and
• countries like Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Hong Kong, Japan and France.

Now, I don’t want to jump to conclusions but it seems to me that  Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Hong Kong, Japan and France are countries which are rich, fairly democratic and which have a good (and, for some of them, excellent) education system. Does this imply that educated people tend to give less importance to religion? And, more interestingly, does this mean that atheists (those without a belief in any God) generally have a high level of education? Yes, it would seem.

And what about Mauritius? People give a lot of importance to religion in our country (especially if they need to be elected and/or they have problems.) And the Minister of Education said our education system has failed to deliver. Is there a correlation between the two?

By the way, I’m an atheist.

According to The Economist,

What identifies an area as a tax haven (paradis fiscal) is the existence of a composite tax structure established deliberately to take advantage of, and exploit, a worldwide demand for opportunities to engage in tax avoidance.

In Mauritius, law allows for the creation of companies with a Category 2 Global Business Licence. Those companies share the following characteristics (as confirmed in this official document from the Financial Services Commission):

• Not resident for tax purposes (i.e. those companies do not pay any tax on their profits to the Mauritius Government)
• Audited financial statements need not be filed (Why? I do not understand why the nascent Knowledge Seven Ltd will have to file one at the end of the financial year whereas a companies with potentially billions of dollars of profit won’t.)
• Records are not available to the public (Why? Are they dealing in anything, ahem, controversial?)
• Business with residents is not possible
• etc.

Google currently returns 44,900 pages when searching for the phrase “Category 2 Global Business Licence Mauritius” which shows that a lot of people are really keen about Category 2 Global Business Licences in Mauritius…

Two days ago, Eco89, which is a spinoff of Rue89, which describes itself as a “Site d’information et de débat sur l’actualité, indépendant et participatif”, published an articled entitled Maurice, Singapour, Delaware : ma planète off-shore en 3 clics. The article explicitly says that Mauritius is a tax haven because the Category 2 Global Business Licence allows companies from developed countries to evade tax in their own country by setting up their headquarters in Mauritius. The article even mentions that “le nom du propriétaire n’est pas révélé aux autorités” which is something I find very dangerous. Who knows what kind of people own companies in our country?

Yesterday, the French President, Nicolas Sarkozy said during an interview in Le Figaro:

Il existe un paradis fiscal dont le PIB est de 2 milliards de dollars et dont les institutions financières hébergées en son sein ont garanti 1.800 milliards de dollars.

Il serait inacceptable que des décisions concrètes ne soient pas mises en œuvre concernant les paradis fiscaux dans les jours qui viennent. Nous voulons un capitalisme d’entrepreneurs et pas un capitalisme de spéculateurs. 62% des hedge funds sont logés dans les paradis fiscaux.

Reading these articles as well as the official documents from the Government of Mauritius, I can’t prevent myself feeling very concerned. Is Sarkozy talking of Mauritius? Has Mauritius really become a tax haven? And, more importantly, à qui profite le crime if this is true?

Since creating Ideas to make Mauritius better one month ago, 43 different people have submitted 145 ideas and cast 1,570 votes which is great.

For example, here are a few ideas which have proved to be very popular:

• All young people must be taught about the economy, how to spend wisely and why it is important to save money (yes, everyone gets old after some time…) This might be done at secondary level for that matter.
• Mauritius Telecom should offer powerful hosting facilities (e.g. Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) for free. If this is done, a lot of Mauritians will choose to host their websites locally hence decreasing international traffic. Everyone benefits.
• People should stop thinking in terms of communities, casts and their “own”. We are all just Mauritians.

Some ideas have proved to be very controversial:

• People ,who can afford, should be made to pay in the public health sector (Hospitals, Community and Local area health centres) so that quality of care dispensed can be improved and load on government budget decreased.
• There are too many casinos in our towns and villages. Something must be done before people lose too much money and start doing bad things. Incidentally, casinos seem to attract prostitutes and drug dealers too…
• Death penalty should be introduced for some extreme cases. “Extreme cases” should be decided very carefully though. Our current laws are IMHO, too kind towards rapists, molesters, murderers….

The experiment is still on. You can easily participate by visiting

http://www.noulakaz.net/ideas/

29 April 2007: I’ve been interviewed by Google…

At the end of April 2007, something particularly amazing happened to me: I got a phone call from the Googleplex! A lady informed me that Google has found out about me (how? Using Google maybe!) and asked me if I was keen to answer a few questions. I said yes, got the questions and managed to answer them satisfactorily. A few days later, someone else from Google called me and I had to endure a very long and relatively tough phone interview. Of course, I didn’t do that well (or else I would have been in the Googleplex instead of being in Quatre-Bornes) but I’m happy I went through this.

Since launching Knowledge Seven Ltd, I’ve realised that I love being my own boss. I don’t know if I would have really enjoyed working in such a major company as Google. Of course, I’m still a fan of Google… but maybe a little less than in 2007. All in all, that unsollicited interview from the Googleplex confirmed something I’ve have believed since I was a kid: I am not half bad. And this is what drives me to do what I do.

8 November 2007: Facebook: A Mauritian tragedy?

For a few hours in November 2007, Facebook was blocked by Mauritian ISPs at the request of the ICTA while they were contacting the Facebook admins to delete the false profiles of a few Mauritian politicians (including the Prime Minister.) I wrote at that time that I didn’t like the smell of that and the whole issue felt like someone was being overzealous.

Mauritius has always been a country where people glorify politicians beyond the reasonable. For instance, once someone said to the then Prime Minister: “ou zis ein pé pli tipti ki Bondié” (which translates to “You are just a little less formidable than God”.) I wonder what Obama would say if he heard that from someone. Maybe something like “Stop being an idiot!” The problem is that a lot of people do not understand how democracy works and do not realise that a member of Parliament or the Government is, strictly speaking, elected by the people to represent them and work for them. Nothing more. Nothing less.

The guy from the ICTA who asked ISPs to block Facebook (Must be a guy! Girls are more intelligent.) and the ISP guys who ceded (ditto) only managed to prove that they were completely clueless about how the Internet and, consequently, that real world inhabited by the Obamas, Kawasakis and Scobles really works: based on reputation only.

3 March 2008: What is the fair use policy?

In March 2008, Mauritius Telecom introduced the fair use policy which essentially states that the bandwidth of those who download too much will be decreased and, if that person continues downloading, drastic measure might be taken. I questioned the legality of retrofitting such a policy in our existing contracts and up to now I have had no satisfactory answer.

What is fair use actually? Can we compare someone watching stupid videos on YouTube all day long with someone watching videos from the MIT or Harvard all day long? They are both using a large amount of bandwidth but are they the same? And what’s wrong with watching stupid videos? They MT guys and girls do watch stupid serials when they get home, don’t they? What I mean is that something which is important to me might not be important to you. As the MT people cannot decide what is important or not, they limit everyone. And this is dangerous.

Society evolves because people innovate. And to innovate, one must be exposed to what is happening elsewhere, use those things, stumble upon problems and come up with exquisite solutions. Mauritius, being far from the center of the world, people mostly use the Internet to know and to experiment with what is happening elsewhere.

Imposing a fair usage policy is, in this sense, antipatriotic.

28 November 2008: Launching the Knowledge Seven Ltd website

Knowledge Seven Ltd started its public life in November 2008 with the launch of its website. As you all know by now, Knowledge Seven Ltd is my company and we provide consultancy, support and training services for Linux, Java as well as other open source software. We have organised two Linux training courses up to now and they have been relatively successful. An Object-Oriented Programming in Java training course is starting on 20 April 2008. Places are limited and I advise people to book their seats early.

I have also consulted for Constance La Gaieté Ltd to set up a secure connection between Constance and their Port-Louis office using commodity hardware, open source software and a normal ADSL line. And I’m happy to say that they are very satisfied. I have also signed a support contract with FUEL Sugar Estate which is the biggest sugar factory in Mauritius to make sure their massive Linux servers there work well. I want consultancy and support to be a side business for Knowledge Seven Ltd for the time being. The reason is that I do not want to strain myself. On the other hand, I really want the training part to thrive.

Founding a company is a lifetime experience. During the past few months, I’ve had to learn about business strategy and business plans, finance, accounting, marketing and public relations. I’ve also spent a lot of time traveling to various offices and talk to myriad of people to get all the papers sorted out. But I have to tell you that I am loving it. I also have to tell you that I’m currently getting substantially less than what I was getting as salary at the University of Mauritius. But I also have to tell you that I couldn’t care less as being your own boss is really something extraordinary.

2009 will be an important year for Knowledge Seven Ltd because I am planning for the company to grow substantially and I’ll need to recruit a few people. Of course, I’ll keep you all posted.

Once again, thanks for visiting my blog and giving me the incentive to write.