According to the Peter Principle:

In a hierarchy, members are promoted so long as they work competently.

Sooner or later they are promoted to a position at which they are no longer competent (they have reached their level of incompetence), and there they remain, being unable to earn further promotions.

The obvious deduction is:

In time, every post tends to be occupied by someone who is incompetent.

Now I understand a lot of bizarre things happening in our beloved country every day…

I have just upgraded my weblog to WordPress 3.0 and, as you can see, I have decided to use the new default theme, Twenty Ten, but with a circuit diagram as the header image to reflect the new subtitle which is “A blog on Technology Convergence.”

In parallel, I’ll continue to blog elsewhere on different topics. For instance, I blog on Knowledge7.com about Information Technology, Computer Science, Personal Development and Career Advancement because, well, this is what Knowledge Seven Ltd is all about. I also blog on Elections.mu on politics in Mauritius including the Government’s strategy for IT in the country as well as for our education system. Finally, I also write articles on Open Source on Lugm.org, the official blog of the Linux User Group of Mauritius.

To be frank, I blog less often now. But I try to make my articles more insightful and useful. So it is as demanding as before.

You will notice that I have enabled the CommentLUV plugin on Noulakaz.net in order to enhance the interaction between you who regularly leave comments on my blog and me. I also have fewer Google ads on the blog because I am not doing Noulakaz.net because of Google’s money.

In fact, and I wrote about this before, I have been blogging for more than 6 years now because this creates the opportunity for me to interact with more interesting people.

Thanks to you all.

In two weeks, all adults of Mauritius will have to go and vote for those who will have the responsibility to run our country for the next five years. Over the years, many bloggers (including Christina and myself) have written posts on politics but we didn’t really have a political blog in Mauritius where anyone (if serious enough) might become a contributor in the spirit of citizen journalism.

This is why I am very happy to launch Elections.mu today: the first political blog in Mauritius. Visit

http://www.elections.mu/

and spread the word. If you want to become a contributor, just send me an email at avinash AT noulakaz DOT net. Thank you!

We, Mauritians, will elect the people who will represent us in the Parliament for the next five years. I know politics might seem bizarre for young people as our politicians are so disconnect to (and somewhat clueless of) the kind of life the new generation has now. Heck, even I don’t relate to most of them, even though I’m 36…

But, and this is a major but, voting is a right and a duty. Our votes count.

So don’t forget to vote on 5 May 2010. Who knows? Maybe we’ll discover our own Mauritian Barack Obama in the process.

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.