ICT Regional Conference - Part 1
by ShahI’ll hereby write about the conference - streams 1,2, and part of stream 4. I’d missed stream 3 and the beginning of stream 4 for I’d to watch the kaimushi.
Anyway, stream 1 started on Thursday 7th August 2K8.
There was no table!!! There were chairs though.
The Honourable Etienne Sinathamboo inaugurated the conference.
His speech was not boring for part of it was laughable. He stated Infotech was no longer a fair for sales but for the promotion of new technology. *cough* I, for one, don’t think so. Sorry dear Minister dude (the youth culture likes the term “dude” - hence the reason for which I’m using it,) but new technology is not just about new gadgets, but innovative gadgets and pieces of software (and I’m not referring to Office Suites.) Programmers were left out. (Speaking for those left out, I’d seen no booth dedicated to open source technologies.) Enough of the rant!
The IT Minister dude also stated that the country is still aspiring to become a cyber island.
2 weeks ago (so he said,) our dear Honourable Etienne Sinathamboo became aware of the fac that the ICT sector was responsible for the power wastage and contributed to 2.5% of the greenhouse effects. He was confident that Mauritius would overcome the e-waste and that through brainstorming, new ideas could come up to reduce the e-waste.
He was right about 1 point - “the only way forward is evolution towards a knowledge economy.” Of course, he did not talk about the “how” part.
He stressed on the importance of e-governance, and stated that it is through e-governance that an e-society can be created and flourished.
The laughable part of his speech was - “2 months ago, some idiot downloaded 2 big files off the government portals, using a device which enabled the download to be done at 600 times than normal speed, and the portal collapsed.”
He considered such an action as a security problem.
The device, of course, is a download manager. One is not dumb for using a download manager. It was not an intentional DDoS attack, and it’s pretty sad that the NCB folks don’t know much about preventive measures of intentional and non-intentional ‘DDoS attacks.’ - so it is perceived. Dear readers, derive your own conclusion on this matter.
After his speech, the IT Minister dude left the conference room to attend to other important matters.
Questions for my dear readers: Does e-governance create e-society or is it the other way around? Can an e-society exist without e-governance?
I await for your answers. Thank you.
Part 2 will be posted soon.
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