Me wish me had a ladder.
No ordinary ladder.
One that reaches the sky.
Me would climb and climb, reaching new heights at each step.
Its a long way up there, me knows.
Its tiring me knows.
But me would continue until reaching the clouds.
Me then would sow pumpkins in the clouds.
But no pumpkins grows in clouds. Damn it!
Me need to climb down. Sigh!

I recently subscribed to MTML’s AZU EV-DO internet package and opted for the USB EV-DO modem (model: AnyData ADU-310C). I was handed a small black box which contained the modem, a one page installation procedure and a mini CD. The CD contained a manual in pdf format, drivers for windows/MAC and a dialing utility.

I did install the same on Windows Vista and the procedure was straight forward, in essence install the driver, reboot, install the dialing utility, configure (username and password) and dial.

I normally connect to the internet on Ubuntu instead of windows. No drivers or instructions were provided for GNU\Linux. I decided to give it a shot.

My kernel version is as follows

kailash@matozoid:~$ uname -a
Linux matozoid 2.6.24-21-generic #1 SMP Tue Oct 21 23:43:45 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
kailash@matozoid:~$

I plugged in the modem in a usb slot and called dmesg to ensure that it was detected by the Kernel.

kailash@matozoid:~$ dmesg | tail
....
[  927.208146] usb 1-2: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 4
[  927.308058] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[  927.304196] option 1-2:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
[  927.304360] usb 1-2: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[  927.305347] option 1-2:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
[  927.305489] usb 1-2: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1
kailash@matozoid:~$

The modem was detected out of the box and was attached to /dev/ttyUSB0.

The next step was to configure wvdial, my favorite dialing utility on linux, with my username, password and dialing number. I first opened wvdial’s configuration file /etc/wvdial.conf.

kailash@matozoid:~$ sudo gedit /etc/wvdial.conf
[sudo] password for kailash:

and edited the file as follows:

[Dialer Defaults]
Stupid Mode = on
Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
Baud = 9216000
Init = ATZ

Phone = #777
Username = 952XXXX@evdo
Password = 952XXXX
New PPPD = yes

The username and password is the MDN number printed on the modem’s packaging.

The final step was to dial. (I used sudo here since I am too lazy to give my user dialing permissions)

kailash@matozoid:~$ sudo wvdial
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60
--> Cannot get information for serial port.
--> Initializing modem.
--> Sending: ATZ
OK
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT#777
--> Waiting for carrier.
ATDT#777
CONNECT
--> Carrier detected.  Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Thu Nov 27 09:32:56 2008
--> Pid of pppd: 16877
--> Using interface ppp0
--> local  IP address 41.222.96.208
--> remote IP address 2.2.2.2
--> primary   DNS address 41.223.76.1
--> secondary DNS address 203.94.227.70

The LED on the modem changed from green (Idle state) to blue (Busy state/Data mode).

I launched firefox. Yay! There I was on the web. No hassle, no reboot actually.. Long live GNU\Linux! Its easier than on windows

Note: I still need to find a way to show the signal strength though. Any ideas? Gnome ppp or Kppp?

Mo pas conner si sa arrive zots souvent, mais moi boucou fois kan mo coz ek certains dimounes en creole zots repone moi en francais. Boucou fois arrive moi sa dans bannes grand magasins oussa kan mo p deal ek dimounes ki p travail dans bannes grand compagnies. Ene lexemple lotte fois la mo ti dans avion, air mauritius, be ti ena ene hotesse de l’air ki ti reconet moi lacoz nu ti etudier dans mem universite. Li vini li coz francais ar moi.. be mo dir moricienne em sa, li bisin comprend creole.. mo repone li en creole… alala li recommencer ek so francais.. mo ine persiste ek mo creole pou guet so reaction.. mais encor francais em… situation la ti assez cocasse lacoz nu deux ti tetu.. mo crwar li ti p attane ki mo coz francais mais mo pas ine fer li. Li paret ki ena ene sorte hierarchie invisible dans langaz ki nu swazir pu cozer. Apriori francais li siposer ena priorite lor creole. Si ena 2 dimounes, ene coz francais ek ene coz creole, saki coz creole la bisin changer par default.

Mo d’accord ki culturellement francais li fort comparer ek language creole. Mais mo penser ki dans moris li pas obliger etre necessairement le cas. Ena certains ki penser ki creole pas pou amene nu nullepart. Ena mo sire truv dimounes ki coz creole vulgaire. Ena hypocrite, lacaz koz creole ek declare pas conne creole dans travail. Mo ena fami, zot piti pas conne creole. Esceki nu cav dir ki nu gagne honter nu vrai culture? Francais mo d’accord forme parti nu culture.. mais creole aussi forme parti integrale nu culture ek li bete pou accepter ki li dominer par ene l’autre.

Mo pas ley rentre dans debat sipa li vaut la peine apprane en creole, mais saki mo conner c ki li vaut la peine la guerre pou so culture.. abe anou coz nu creole! Ki zots dir?

I am impressed by the impact web 2.0 and the internet has on our lives. I am also concerned but also, dare I say, very amused about how the pre-internet generation are getting overwhelmed by its impact.

The facebook cambridge paper leakages is one such example. I think that procedures simply got outdated when faced with the reach that web 2.0 has on our lives. Exams are based on information secrecy; the information, i.e. the paper, is kept in strict confidentiality until disclosed when students sit for the paper. The internet through speedy dissemination of the data has enabled such information to reach others in no time.

I have always hated exams. Students are expected to know their stuff by heart and to work in isolation. I think humans by their very nature need to share and to collaborate to find solutions to their problems. Any attempt to hinder the same is not natural in my opinion. Exams are not natural but I must admit there are little viable alternatives I can think of. Open book exams seem more viable now though.

I believe in freedom and access to knowledge. The internet and web 2.0 has enabled the same: opensource software, mp3/divx, peer to peer networks.. etc Technology is breaking traditional barriers and I am amused when I see the pre-internet generation being overwhelmed. They seek lame solutions, Lucien Finette was mentioning closing down facebook. LMAO! This phenomena is beyond their reach… clearly it is.

Notwithstanding the above, I am very concerned about the fate of those who took the exams this year. I hope an acceptable solution is found as soon as possible.

The University of Technology, Mauritius’ convocation ceremony was held at Octave Wiehe Auditorium, Reduit on Thursday. One of the highlights that really struck me was that on top of the 3 schools already set up, UTM has the ambition of initiating 3 more schools including a School of Medicine and a School of Media. I must say that I am really impressed by UTM’s expansion with respect to the diversity of programmes being offered.

When I joined the then called School of Business Informatics and Software Engineering (SoBISE) in 2002, I had only 2 undergraduate programmes to pick from, Software Engineering and Business Information Systems.

The same school now renamed School of Innovative Technologies and Engineering (SITE), can now boast a variety of courses like Mathematics, Web Technologies, Graphic Design, Telecommunications, Web technologies, Computational Science, Security, networking etc. UTM is also very close to industry, there are even Enterprise Systems courses in collaboration with enterprise solution giants like SAP.

SITE also ensures the student are trained using the latest software used by the industry, SAP, Oracle, .NET, Adobe etc. Same goes for opensource tools, there are modules dedicated to open source technologies, unix programming (freebsd) etc.. Heard SITE students are gaining notoriety with the industry in this respect.

Coming back to the Convocation one of the highlights which I appreciated was when students gave their lecturers a standing ovation. I think it is a very humble but telling reward for their good work.

The one thing I really enjoy the most at the guesthouse, I am staying right now in Stellenbosch, is the view and the nice breakfast we have there. It is served from 0700 to 0900 and you need to climb the stairs to the terrace and you are greeted with a buffet of fresh fruits and juice, cereals, milk, coffee, salads, different types of bread, cheese, jam, butter and marmalade. The lady there kindly asks if you would like to have some bacon and eggs. “Only eggs please”, I would say. Then she would ask how I would like my eggs. I didn’t know how to say “mirroir”, I would say “medium”. She would then smile and go prepare my eggs. I am still wondering if I made a fool of myself.

Anyway everyday I would sit near the terrace and enjoy the view, with some nice breakfast.

I have been to Stellenbosch, South Africa since Monday for research meetings with the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR).

The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in South Africa is one of the leading scientific and technology research, development and implementation organisations in Africa. It undertakes directed research and development for socio-economic growth.

Stellenbosch is a relatively small and calm town with lots of people of european origin who speak Afrikaans, I believe a dialect of dutch. I am staying at Roland’s Uitspan, the place is nice, clean and we get a feast as breakfast.

Need to rush sight now will keep updating the post.

An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds. Removing access barriers to this literature will accelerate research, enrich education, share the learning of the rich with the poor and the poor with the rich, make this literature as useful as it can be, and lay the foundation for uniting humanity in a common intellectual conversation and quest for knowledge.

For various reasons, this kind of free and unrestricted online availability, which we will call open access, has so far been limited to small portions of the journal literature. But even in these limited collections, many different initiatives have shown that open access is economically feasible, that it gives readers extraordinary power to find and make use of relevant literature, and that it gives authors and their works vast and measurable new visibility, readership, and impact. To secure these benefits for all, we call on all interested institutions and individuals to help open up access to the rest of this literature and remove the barriers, especially the price barriers, that stand in the way. The more who join the effort to advance this cause, the sooner we will all enjoy the benefits of open access.

The literature that should be freely accessible online is that which scholars give to the world without expectation of payment. Primarily, this category encompasses their peer-reviewed journal articles, but it also includes any unreviewed preprints that they might wish to put online for comment or to alert colleagues to important research findings. There are many degrees and kinds of wider and easier access to this literature. By “open access” to this literature, we mean its free availability on the public internet, permitting any users to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of these articles, crawl them for indexing, pass them as data to software, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without financial, legal, or technical barriers other than those inseparable from gaining access to the internet itself. The only constraint on reproduction and distribution, and the only role for copyright in this domain, should be to give authors control over the integrity of their work and the right to be properly acknowledged and cited.

While the peer-reviewed journal literature should be accessible online without cost to readers, it is not costless to produce. However, experiments show that the overall costs of providing open access to this literature are far lower than the costs of traditional forms of dissemination. With such an opportunity to save money and expand the scope of dissemination at the same time, there is today a strong incentive for professional associations, universities, libraries, foundations, and others to embrace open access as a means of advancing their missions. Achieving open access will require new cost recovery models and financing mechanisms, but the significantly lower overall cost of dissemination is a reason to be confident that the goal is attainable and not merely preferable or utopian.

To achieve open access to scholarly journal literature, we recommend two complementary strategies.

I. Self-Archiving: First, scholars need the tools and assistance to deposit their refereed journal articles in open electronic archives, a practice commonly called, self-archiving. When these archives conform to standards created by the Open Archives Initiative, then search engines and other tools can treat the separate archives as one. Users then need not know which archives exist or where they are located in order to find and make use of their contents.

II. Open-access Journals: Second, scholars need the means to launch a new generation of journals committed to open access, and to help existing journals that elect to make the transition to open access. Because journal articles should be disseminated as widely as possible, these new journals will no longer invoke copyright to restrict access to and use of the material they publish. Instead they will use copyright and other tools to ensure permanent open access to all the articles they publish. Because price is a barrier to access, these new journals will not charge subscription or access fees, and will turn to other methods for covering their expenses. There are many alternative sources of funds for this purpose, including the foundations and governments that fund research, the universities and laboratories that employ researchers, endowments set up by discipline or institution, friends of the cause of open access, profits from the sale of add-ons to the basic texts, funds freed up by the demise or cancellation of journals charging traditional subscription or access fees, or even contributions from the researchers themselves. There is no need to favor one of these solutions over the others for all disciplines or nations, and no need to stop looking for other, creative alternatives.

Open access to peer-reviewed journal literature is the goal. Self-archiving (I.) and a new generation of open-access journals (II.) are the ways to attain this goal. They are not only direct and effective means to this end, they are within the reach of scholars themselves, immediately, and need not wait on changes brought about by markets or legislation. While we endorse the two strategies just outlined, we also encourage experimentation with further ways to make the transition from the present methods of dissemination to open access. Flexibility, experimentation, and adaptation to local circumstances are the best ways to assure that progress in diverse settings will be rapid, secure, and long-lived.

The Open Society Institute, the foundation network founded by philanthropist George Soros, is committed to providing initial help and funding to realize this goal. It will use its resources and influence to extend and promote institutional self-archiving, to launch new open-access journals, and to help an open-access journal system become economically self-sustaining. While the Open Society Institute’s commitment and resources are substantial, this initiative is very much in need of other organizations to lend their effort and resources.

We invite governments, universities, libraries, journal editors, publishers, foundations, learned societies, professional associations, and individual scholars who share our vision to join us in the task of removing the barriers to open access and building a future in which research and education in every part of the world are that much more free to flourish.

February 14, 2002
Budapest, Hungary

Source: http://www.soros.org/openaccess/read.shtml
To sign the initiatie

It is with great pride, and I must admit with a little envy, that I note that University of Maurtius (UoM) is increasingly going open source.

Over the last few years there has been an impetus towards the adoption of free and open source software (FOSS) at the University. Previously there has been the Radio Telescope of Mauritius, that has been one of few examples of use of FOSS at UoM that I know of, but now the examples are many. I believe credit goes primarily to the lecturers for putting FOSS ahead. I have heard that lecturers come in class with Ubuntu or Kubuntu linux installed laptops and they encourage students to make use of OpenOffice.org. They are even teaching Python to students. A few minutes ago my younger cousin, an information systems student at UoM, was inquiring about the best IDE to use for Python development.

Insider information reveals that there are some initiatives for the funding of open source projects from the government. Few days ago, a UoM faculty was even inquiring about RedHat enterprise support licensing on the local LUG. Would that mean what I think it means? Can we dream of day where outdated proprietary OS would be wiped out of computer labs?

Well mentality for one is certainly changing. The cousin of mine is an example, a one time MS die heart now has GNU/Linux installed. Imagine entire generations of FOSS enthusiasts coming out of the University.

Ena ene programme ki mo habituer ecouter malgres moi , kan mo ale travail, lor radioplus tou les gramatin: Cam et Leon. Mo pas conner couman pou decrire sa programme la. Li siposer humoristique ek satirique, mais ena fois mo demane moi esceki zots p rod passe bannes messages discretement avec l’humour.

L’histoire tourne autour deux characteres, Leon ek Cam, bolom bolefam a priori. Tous les gramatin zots fer bannes especes sketches  lor radio ki siposer amuse bannes dimounes. Cam ene bolfam ki relativement plis gopiah ki Leon mais ki essaye passe pou plis instruite ki li ete. Leon mo pou dire li plis instruit ek li passe letemps corrige bannes erreurs Cam.

Trois quart du temps zottes passe le temps coz kk. Enfin mo pena nanrien contre bannes la coz kk. Li siposer humoristique ek mo bisin avouer des fois mo em mo habituer coz kk. Mais saki mo trouve assez grave, c ki bannes la exprime bannes opinions lor bannes differents sujets d’actualite. Et zottes paret couman dire bannes donneurs de lecons pou pas dire bannes pseudo experts dans sa bannes sujets la.  Mais quand nou pense bien nu trouver ki bannes la p coz “nonsense” la plupart des fois. Des fois mo revolte kan mo pense a la consequences zottes bannes “nonsenses” lor bannes dimounes pas avertis.

Esceki bannes la p rod insulte intelligence de l’auditeur? Zots penser ki nou pou gobe sa bannes nonsenses la? Si nou ale plis loin escequi bannes la p rod influence l’opinion publique?

Zordi gramatin bannes la ti p demander kifer gouvernment bisin investi dans l’energie renouvelabe. Kifer bisin asterla pense a faire le consomateur produire so propre electricite? Mo demane moi sipa ena “hidden agenda” et mo ti envi conner kisanla finance sa programme la?

Capave mo p vinne parano ou peut etre mo pas p reussi comprend niveau satirique sa programme la. Mais kan mem ine arrive l’ere pou demane nou sipa bannes la p prend nu pou plis gopiahs de saki nou ete..