Archive for November, 2009
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
Fascinating little detail just came out at the Law and the Internet Conference in Durban today. The South African Legal Information Institute (SafLII, a sister organisation) recounts how users are increasingly Internet-savvy and much more inclined to conduct their own research rather than to consult with a lawyer:
Caller: I’m involved in litigation and I need to find some information.
SafLII: You require legal advice, ma’am? Perhaps we can refer you…
Caller: Nonono, I just want a copy of Smith v Jones, so I can read the decision myself.
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Friday, November 20th, 2009
L’Armistice du 11 novembre 1918, qui marque la fin de la Grande Guerre, a été commémoré au Monument aux Morts de Port-Vila, avec la participation des plus hautes autorités du Vanuatu,)
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Friday, November 20th, 2009
Mme Françoise Maylié, Ambassadrice de France au Vanuatu, s’est rendue le 18 novembre 2009 à Luganville,)
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Saturday, November 14th, 2009
Okay, so I’m leaving in a little over a week for South Africa. I’m the only sysadmin at the Institute where I work – more to the point, I’m the only technical person on the entire campus with the chops to oversee their servers. (That’s a comment about the Vanuatu environment and absolutely not myself or any other IT professional. There are some very talented people there who simply lack exposure to some kinds of technology.)
The challenge: How to make sure that everything’s ticking along more or less as it should when I’m a continent away, in a locale whose Internet decrepitude is surpassed only by the locale I need to monitor? If I wait until something’s gone so wrong that someone has to contact me, I’ve lost the game already.
The solution: I’ve just hacked up a little OSD display in perl that uses SSH::RPC to poll server stats on all my production machines. It sits in the bottom left corner of my screen. As long as everything stays mostly green, I’m okay.
Total bandwidth usage is about 2 Kbps. Given that this is manageable from my pathetically poorly conditioned 128K DSL line from home, I have every reason to believe that it will be viable in SA as well.
For bonus points, I’m going to configure it so that it just pops up for a minute or so every $INTERVAL (which will likely be 15-30 minutes).
For yucks, if load average gets completely out of hand, it starts shouting that my computer is on fire. (Blame Nik for this one.)
I am one very contented geek.
Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
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Saturday, November 14th, 2009
I need to test my (and your) subjectivity. Take a look at this photo, and then post a comment telling me what you gather from it.
I’ll explain my reasons for asking later. If I said anything at all, it might unduly influence you.
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Thursday, November 12th, 2009
L’Armistice du 11 novembre 1918, qui marque la fin de la Grande Guerre, a été commémoré au Monument aux Morts de Port-Vila, avec la participation des plus hautes autorités du Vanuatu,)
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Monday, November 9th, 2009
Claude Lévi-Strauss, l’un des derniers géants de la pensée française du XXème siècle, vient de disparaître, à la veille de son 101ème anniversaire.)
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Monday, November 9th, 2009
[Originally published in the Vanuatu Independent newspaper.]
As Internet services become more common in Vanuatu, local businesses have been using it to supplement their normal advertising and communications channels. In their enthusiasm – and, it must be said, naivete – they’ve overlooked a few fundamental rules of good online behaviour.
Businesses and individuals (there’s no need to name and shame; they know who they are and, if you have an email account, so do you) have more and more often taken to sending unsolicited promotional and editorial emails to hundreds of Vanuatu addresses.
Regardless of their good intentions, these companies and individuals are spamming. In other countries, it would be illegal. Here, it’s a nuisance for virtually all involved.
Read the rest of this entry »
Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
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Saturday, November 7th, 2009
[Originally published in the Vanuatu Daily Post’s Weekender Edition.]
News has leaked out in dribs and drabs over the last several months about a US-led drive to negotiate an international treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. Conducted under a veil of secrecy, these negotiations have been the source of considerable speculation and not a little alarm among advocates of online freedom.
Part of the reason for the alarm is the utter lack of publicly verifiable information concerning the content of the treaty. When US organisations attempted to gain access to a copy of the draft, their government withheld them, citing national security, of all things.
Intellectual Property expert professor Michael Geist writes, “The United States has drafted the chapter under enormous secrecy, with selected groups granted access under strict non-disclosure agreements and other countries (including Canada) given physical, watermarked copies designed to guard against leaks.”
In spite of their best efforts, however, details of the online enforcement aspects of the treaty leaked out last week, following a negotiating round in Seoul, South Korea.
The details don’t look good.
Read the rest of this entry »
Originally published at the Scriptorum. You can comment here or there.
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Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009
M. Jean-Yves CLAVEL, récemment nommé Directeur de l’Agence régionale de l’AFD (Agence Française de Développement) à Nouméa, en remplacement de M. Luc SUPERA, a effectué une première visite de travail au Vanuatu du 19 au 23 octobre.)
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