Marouen Bloggin' his Life

I’m sorry for not having reported on time what happened during the 9th meetup I was supposed to organize downtown Tunis (which wasn’t welcomed by all the participants). I feel myself very lazy these days with writing especially with the coming of my new baby at home. Don’t worry, it’s just a new laptop which took all my weekend plus two days to understand some technical issue I’ll explain in a dedicated post later. Anyway, Adib did the great job of compiling some comments of the participants you check here. Thank you man, I’m looking to see your 24/7 webcam !

This post is a kind of answer to Sup’cominan life’s inquiries about the reasons of having expensive ADSL connectivity prices in Tunisia comparing it to the situation in Europe. I’ve been thinking on the same way five years ago. But day by day, while entering into the IT field and discovering the professional world, I understood that it is more complicated than what we can imagine.

I had the opportunity to answer to this question many times, when I did introductory presentations on Internet Governance, few weeks before the WSIS week, in two computing universities in Tunis. And since I have often this question at the beginning, I always ask the person asking to wait until the end of the presentation and I’ll be back to him. Then, when I did that, he told me he get the answer. Internet governance is one of the mojor topics of the WSIS and I don’t think it would be if it wasn’t a very complex issue involving many actors including governments, telecom companies, ISPs, IBPs (Internet Bandwith Providers) etc… . And all these actors are responsible of the digital divide they are trying to bridge.

I’m not going to defend Tunisie Telecom’s pricing policies but I want just to remind you that this “BIG” company (at least for Tunisia), still having the monopoly in wired connections, is just the last link a long chain (on the technical and international level). It’s not fair to compare xDSL rates in Tunisia with rates in Europe or North America because we don’t have the same levels of opportunities. Many variables at the national and the international levels are deciding this price (ie: IBP rates, contracts with “carrying” companies, peering between countries, ITU laws ….).

At the end, I want you just to compare what happened 4 years ago in France concerning the issue of ADSL between France Telecom and the other operators/ISPs with what is happening now. The same with Morocco and Tunisia. Things are changing smoothly …. but at least changing.

Ciao, sono sempre io, lo stesso marouen, lo stesso tunisino e sempre dello stesso paese, la Tunisia. Non so perche scrivo in italiano questo messaggio. Forse perche ho avuto un bisogno urgente di parlare in italiano, di scrivere in italiano, di ricordare l’italiano che non ho più usato da quando ho lasciato in liceo. Magari é perché ho visto che ho ogni settimana più d’italiani che leggiono il mio blog dell’Italia anche se ho sempre scritto in inglese. Oppure perché ho avuto l’idea che nessuno nella blogsfera (se questa parole esiste) tunisina nessuno non l’ha mai fatto (non sono securo). Comunque sono contento di poter’ ancora esprimermi in italiano anché se sono certo che farò un sacco di sbagli ma questo non mi preoccupa molto. Non so se scriverò ancora in italiano nel futuro ma almeno posso dire che sono orgoglioso di questo piccolo paragrafo che significa molto per me perché amo molto la lingua italiana che ho imparato della TV prima del francese oppure l’inglese. Mia madre dira anche che l’ho imparato prima dell’arabo.

Allora a presto !!!

After missing the 8th meetup which took place about a month ago, I decided to not miss the next one by being the first to suggest the date and the time (clever no ?). I think that next Sunday, December 25th will be the best because we may make a small celebration while discovering the results of the Tunisian Blog Awards 2005 through some of the board members. We may even invite all the nominees if they are in Tunisia and make a show like the Grammies or the Oscars (we may organize that really).

Well, my suggestion is:

• Date: Sunday, December 25th 2005
• Time: 4pm Tunis Time
• Venue: Café 112; end of Av. Palestine Tunis Downtown (almost in Place Pasteur)

The date is suitable for those who will be in Tunisia for Christmas holidays and I know the venue very well since I did a lot of meetings there (I may ask if we can use their projector and sound system if we need it).

Suggestions for topics:

• - A Drako’s new question
• - Report from our representatives in London’s Summit 
• - Tunisian Blog Awards 2005 results
• - Wishes for 2006

Welcome to any comments or suggestions or early confirmations (I have Tom’s one and I don’t need to ask Karim’s one)

A quick post about an interesting thing (at least for me) I did yesterday which is the 1st unofficial FLOSS community meetup organized in hurry through the - unofficial too – mailinglist Tun_LL. The meetup took place in the Café Etoile du Nord which is private cultural space downtown I’ve visited few years ago and, I have to confess, I never liked it because it overcrowded of people not caring of non-smoking people and thinking that attending this place is enough to prove they are “artists” or linked to art. Well, even after yesterday I have the same feeling but meeting old friends there and speaking about our “boring” “geek” topics gave me hope that I may back soon. I’m happy because we had a very good discussion about new topics – compared to our usual bloggers meetups – like FLOSS movement (and competition) in Tunisia or the future of ATU2L (the first FLOSS NGO in Tunisia) and it’s impact on the academic and the decision making process levels in IT field and even some extra topics like “Hardoussmania” (Hard rock mania) in Tunisia and Stallman’s behaviour during the WSIS. I hope attending more this king of meetings especially in case that we agree of someone’s suggestion of having it every month on a same day.

While waiting my computer which is downloading a website of 800 Mb (hopefully through FTP), I had the idea of writing a post about a through I had 2 days ago.

This post is related to the seminar I’ve attended a week ago in my ex-university INSAT . This seminar was about the FLOSS: Integration or Migration. Without getting into technical explanations about this huge discussion of IT people (like me), I wanted to share a funny analogy which went through my mind linking this topic to what happened few weeks ago in the surroundings of some big cities in France.

All these events were described as the result of years of fury of immigrants’ families for all the issues of integration and acceptance they are facing everyday especially during the latest years. Let’s try to have this image of analogy:

• The French government is the IT manager
• The historical “Europeans” inhabitants of France are the proprietary softwares
• The immigrants are the FLOSS

Let’s now try to translate some IT sentences into our topic:

• The original inhabitants of France are almost only Europeans
• Previous information systems were running only proprietary softwares

• For historical and economical reasons, France was welcoming many immigrants from especially the African continent to work on the industry
• FLOSS started getting into information systems for especially economical reasons (not only)

• The problem of the French government is how to integrate the immigrants into the French society
• The problem of IT managers is how to integrate the FLOSS into the information systems to work with the proprietary softwares

• A lot “original inhabitants” activists are afraid of loosing the “original” French identity in case that immigrants will be well integrated
• Proprietary softwares editors are afraid that FLOSS will invade their markets and stop their monopoly of knowledge and technology.

I will leave for you the translation of this sentence: “some people are convinced that the best thing to do is to migrate completely to FLOSS”

Today I did something I’ve been thinking about it since I saw the ad on a daily newspaper 3 weeks ago. Finally I decided to go to my ISP office and give back my ADSL modem.

The reason is not because I’m not satisfied by the bandwidth or the quality of the service which are very good and I don’t remember I had any troubles with internet since July when that same modem has been connected to my computer. The problem is that, having 2 computers at home, one on dual boot Linux/XP and the other running “often” Ubuntu Linux (my experiments machine), I’ve been trying several times to try to install my USB ADSL modem on Linux without success because my Italian made modem is “designed for MS products” (what I found after “googling” internet for many weeks). So I had the idea of making the XP one a proxy server for the Ubuntu one, but I never felt myself comfortable with this solution.

Today I had the best solution. My ISP Company (T…… to not promote it even if they deserve it) is renting ADSL/Router/Wireless AP (Access Point) modems for 5 Dinars per month (about 3 euros). I think it’s a good price to solve all problems with a lot of new features to gain. You can check all these features having a look on the manufacturer page (sorry only in french).

Tonight I felt myself like a child discovering a new toy while installing the modem and trying all the features and even setting up again all the connection parameters that the ISP technicians refused to let me do it the first time.

I think that this modem/router will open the way for a lot of other discoveries in these cold nights. But the first thing I have to try is the wireless network …. I don’t have any wireless network adapter

Today I had an interesting discussion with a seller in a computers shop in “Avenue de la liberté”. I’ll try to write here what I can remember:

• Me: Hello, do you have 12 inchs laptops ?
  
• Seller: No, why do you want it 12 inchs ?
  
• Me: for many reasons !
  
• Seller:Yes, tell me !
  
• Me: Well; I want it only for work, and the weight is important too !
  
• Seller: About the weight, we have good ones….
  We have this Acer, it’s a Celeron M so it should be less heavy.
  
• Another Seller: No, it’s 2.7 Kilos.
  
• Seller: Oups, anyway it’s not expensive at all. About 1100 Dinars
  
• Me: Linux inside it, cool. Do you know which distribution is installed ?
  
• Seller: Emmm, no ! I know only one thing, I’m used to format and install MS Windows when I find linux.
  
• Me: Why ?
  
• Seller: Costumers do not want Linux. And it’s only for experts. About the “type” of linux, it should be written printed on it like Windows.
  
• Me: I doubt of it. (After checking) I’ve told you. It cannot be written.
  
• Seller: Why ?
  
• Me: Because ACER is already making enough trouble to MS by selling computers running Linux but they still have other agreements for other computers sold with MS Windows. So they are avoiding problems with MS and for sure they should be paid for printing “Designed for MS Windows XP” on the other products.
  
• Seller: I see, but since it’s installed, it should be indicated on the constructor’s CDRoms.
  
• (After looking for the CDRoms)
  
• Seller: Well, it’s not written
  
• Me: Can I have a look ? … It’s written in Chinese and English, it’s including LinPlus Linux …. I’ve never heard about this distribution. But it’s funny anyway.
  

After, we started discussing about Linux and I guess he was a old user of Unix systems and he missed all the Linux revolution since was comparing Linux to Alpha systems and MS DOS …. Maybe he was on another planet on the meantime but I think he’s back to the IT world and with his communication skills, I’m sure he’s selling a lot everyday … of “MS Windows designed” computers.