Education

Noulakaz.net is five years old today (Part 2)

18 March 2009 By Avinash Meetoo 7 Comments

As promised two days ago, today I’ll briefly revisit a few posts from 2007-2008 on this blog:

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 pÃ© pli tipti ki BondiÃ©” (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 GaietÃ© 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.

Noulakaz.net is five years old today

16 March 2009 By Avinash Meetoo 18 Comments

20090316-five

I wrote my first post, Noulakaz.net Weblog online!, on 16 March 2004, exactly five years ago. Since then, the following took place:

I wrote 456 posts,
containing 146,141 words,
received 6,115 comments (13.5 comments per post on average),
with 438,726 words in them (exactly 3 times more than what I wrote myself.)

I would like to thank all of you who have contributed to my blog. I sincerely think that without your insightful comments, it would have made no sense for me to continue writing.

Someone once asked me: “How can I create a successful blog?” I gave that a thought and rapidly came up with: “A successful blog is one which is read!” with its corollary: “A successful blog is one which is read because it has interesting posts!” and its uber-corollary: “A successful blog is one which is read because it has interesting posts which prompt people to leave comments!”

As this is a special birthday post, I’m going to revisit some posts I wrote from 2004-2006 (say 2 per year to keep the length of this post reasonable.) They are not necessarily interesting but they count for me:

25 March 2004: Kill Bill

The European Union had just fined Microsoft 497.2 million euros (more than Rs 15 billion at that time) for using its monopoly to hinder the progress of competitors and this was my first anti-Microsoft post. Of course, I was already a geek at that time having founded the Linux User Group of Mauritius around 2000 but still…

Since then, nothing substantial has changed. Microsoft is still hindering the progress of humanity by harming competition and Bill is still one of the richest guys on the planet. Fortunately, we Apple fanboys and *nix geeks have found a way to limit our exposure to Microsoft and we are very happy. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people suffering…

Naturally, the title refers to Quentin Tarantino’s two masterpieces as well as the infamous William Henry “Bill” Gates III.

15 September 2004: Kyan is here !

Our son, Kyan, who is four now, was born in the morning and I wasted no time making the whole world aware! In a certain sense, this was a first. It was the first time (I think) that a dad in Mauritius blogged on the birth of his son on the very same day he was born! And I have to tell you all that that photo was made using my previous film camera, a Canon EOS 500N, and I had the film developed on the same day, dashed home, scanned the photo and wrote the post. Things are much simpler now with digital cameras but I’m sure Kyan will love that story when he’ll be a bigger boy.

Interestingly, Kyan was a name Christina and I came up by simplifying Keanu (Reeves.)

28 February 2005: A new adventure begins

I left the Mauritius Chamber of Commerce & Industry on the 28 and started at the University of Mauritius as a lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering the next day on the 1st of March.

The reason why I left the MCCI was that I felt I had done everthing that I could have done there and that I wanted a fresh challenge. The reason I opted for the UoM was that I really wanted to be in an environment full of intellectuals, both academics and students. Unfortunately, I got bored after less than three years. I was disappointed to discover that some academics were not really intellectuals. I was also disappointed to discover that some students did not really care about acquiring knowledge. And I was also disappointed in the lack of support and facilities exiting there for academics to do their work properly.

So, last year, I decided to quit the University and try to obtain a visa for the USA. Of course, that didn’t work out but I never thought about going back to UoM. I belong elsewhere I guess.

25 May 2005: Liverpool King of Europe

Liverpool is the most successful football team in England and I’ve been a Liverpool fan for at least 20 years now. On 25 May 2005, something magical happened: Liverpool won the Champions League for the 5th time after having been down 3-0 at half-time.

How? By combining the brains and brawns of two special persons: Steven Gerrard and Rafael Benitez.

The match was practically lost at half-time. And then something happened: the Liverpool right back got injured. Normally, when this kind of thing happens, a manager tends to ask a defender to come on. But Benitez did differently. He introduced Hamann, a midfielder, to mitigate the effect of Pirlo et al and asked Gerrard to help the (now) three man defense cope with the AC Milan attackers. And Gerrard did something only a handful of players throughout history can do: he did everything. He headed. He tacked. He marked. He passed. He shot. And he scored. From every position on the field. And, of course, he won.

Zidane was god. Gerrard is next to godliness. Zidane says so. And who am I to argue?

20090316-avinash

18 August 2006: Hello World! My MacBook has arrived!

I finally got an Apple computer after years and years of craving. When I was still at college, I discovered screenshots of the NeXTstep operating system and it was love at first sight. When Apple acquired NeXT and Steve Jobs announced that their new operating system, Mac OS X, was going to be NeXTstep and Unix based, I knew it was time for me to make the plunge. And still it took some years before I actually did it.

But now, after having used a Mac for about two and a half years, I can say that there is nothing comparable on the desktop: neither from Microsoft and, unfortunately, nor from the open source world. In fact, I can safely say that Mac OS X is the best desktop operating system ever and Linux (et al.) is the best server operating system which can be easily obtained and installed on commodity hardware.

I love both.

29 November 2006: We are going to India

I don’t like watching Indian movies a lot. I feel most of them have feeble scenarios and I find the actors very caricatural (the actresses are beautiful though…) So, I had a somewhat distorted image of India, partly caricatural (because of the films) and partly frightening (because of what people have told me of India over the years.)

But when I went there, sponsored by Data Communications Ltd, for the ACM Inter-Collegiate Programming Contest to accompany three UoM students, I found out that India was just a great place to visit! I loved the people, the food, the trains, the auto rickshaws, everything! And I loved the fact that I felt practically at home all the time even though I didn’t understand a word of Hindi.

Incidentally, I have just watched Slumdog Millionaire and I think it is a very good film. Not exceptional but very good and which gives a relatively true image of India as far as I know.

Once again, thank you a lot for your participation on my blog. Let’s hope we’re all still around in 2014 to celebrate the 10th anniversary. (Tomorrow, I’ll do the same exercise for posts written from 2007-2009.)