Manjari and blackmailing journalist

The Nepali movie ‘Manjari’ makers have accused a journalist of blackmailing for advertisement. In a Facebook statement, the director of Tuka Entertainment, Ganesh Dev Pandey accused an online magazine FilmyZoom of asking for money. When the film makers refused to give the money, the journalist had threatened of starting negative publicity of the movie.

In an attempt to defame the movie, a review was published stating that the movie will flop. The prediction wasn’t based on any facts but because the movie named after a female name. At the time of this writing, the article is already removed, but there is a Facebook share, showing a portion of the article in the website’s Facebook page.

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Film Related Websites in Nepal (2012 Update)

I wrote about film related websites in Nepal in August of 2010. The websites reviewed at that time are still in operation. Some have improved in their quality and others have remained the same.

The sites I reviewed were:

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Taking Twitter for granted – Hello Sukrabar

Are you a Twitter user? The micro-blogging platform in which you can’t type more than 140 characters (yes, it is character, not words).

In the recent time, Twitter has become very popular in the world. Some Nepali have also started using it. Encouraged by its popularity in Nepali users, Kantipur Daily has started publishing a section called "Sataka Twits". In the section one of the reporters copies twitter posts of his/her friends and publishes. When I saw the section last week, I felt a bit uneasy. The section this week is really awkward. One guy, in the published post is telling that he has borrowed his friend’s password to check-out the lady friends there (I thought his name deserves to be removed in the following cutting of the newspaper).

I have a couple of questions, for the publishers.

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Kantipur's stray sexual desire – strip dance and women's most sensitive parts

It has been more than a few times Kantipur publication has shown it’s immaturity in it’s role as a mainstream media. It has shown signs of becoming an old lion who can’t hunt but is too proud to accept the truth – it is no longer a media of choice.

Kantipur’s desperate attempts to attract readers is evident in some of the articles with extreme sexual subjects, not suitable for minor. For example, the Dec. 24 edition of Saptahik teaches our kids to ‘strip dance’ and tells that Americans spend more time in strip bars than in theaters or operas. There is another article in the same edition, telling the kids that the inside of thighs are the most erotic parts to touch and kiss.

Now, tell me: What will you do if your 10 year-old kid want to test if Saptahik was right?

I wouldn’t have been complaining if the magazine were ‘adult only’. But, the magazine clearly mentions that it is “for everybody” – that includes kids (See the photo below, showing the title of Saptahik).

They might argue they are publishing articles on “sex education”. But, where in earth teachers talk about strip dance in school?

Well, this is not the first time, the sex hungry bunch at Kantipur have published such articles. Last time articles on Maya Bazin and Smita Thapa looked like articles written by a pimp rather than a journalist. In an attempt to hear what they have to say, I wrote emails to editors and writers but, I never got any replies. This is a perfect example on how they treat their readers.

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Reverse trend – now it's not Wikileaks that goes offline

MasterCard was forced offline for hours by an online assault, led by a group of hackers, to protest against MasterCard’s decision to block WikiLeaks donation. After temporarily taking offline the websites of Post Finance, the Swiss bank which closed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s account, the same group was responsible to the DDOS (distributed denial of service) attack on MasterCard website.

In contrast to that, with numerous mirrors, Wikileaks now is highly unlikely to be taken offline as before. Some researchers suggest that it has grown in such a scale that, it is nearly immune to takedown. 14 different name servers across 11 different networks make wikileaks.ch a lot less vulnerable than wikileaks.org. In addition to that, about 1000 mirror sites all over the world are mirroring the whole of its content, making it difficult to censor the contents.

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Julian Assange – Secret, Suspense, Thrilling, and they have added SEX to make it more interesting

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was arrested in the UK and he was refused a bailout. He was arrested over sex crime allegations in Sweden and it has nothing to do with the release of secret documents by his organization. Wikileaks has told that the arrest will have no impact on the release of the secret documents.

In a BBC report, Australia’s foreign minister, Kevin Rudd, has blamed the US in the release of thousands of diplomatic cables on Wikileaks. He told that its Australian founder, Julian Assange, has done nothing wrong.

The Australia’s foreign minister, in an interview with Reuters said, "Mr Assange is not himself responsible for the unauthorized release of 250,000 documents from the US diplomatic communications network. The Americans are responsible for that."

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Americans block internet too; Julian Assange featured in TIME cover

If you were in the illusion that internet is only blocked in countries like China or Nepal, you are wrong. USA, the world’s largest democracy also block internet if they don’t like contents of some website.

In a latest news, the Library of Congress has blocked access to the Wikileaks site on its internal and wireless network for visitors. I is told that the Department of Education has also blocked Wikileaks. It is also reported that the State Department and the Commerce Department have told their employees not to look at the Wikileaks cables.

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WikiLeaks domain terminated, moves to Swiss domain, prepares for Twitter ban

The domain name provider of WikiLeaks, EveryDNS.net, has said that it has terminated the wikileaks.org domain as the domain has come under massive cyber attacks. As the website started releasing more than 250,000 diplomatic cables, the pressure against the whistle-blowing organization has been increasing from all over the world. The website is renamed wikileaks.ch (a Swiss domain).

The website now features a message "Keep us strong help wikileaks keep governments open," beside a photo of its founder Julian Assange.

Yesterday, the US server, Amazon.com had pulled the plug of the website and it had to move to European servers.

WikiLeaks Twitter response accuses the Amazon’s blog post response a ‘lie’ :

Amazon’s press release does not accord with the facts on public record. It is one thing to be cowardly. Another to lie about it.

Prepared for Twitter ban ?

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WikiLeaks – Amazon has come-up with an explanation

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has come up with an explanation on why they kicked WikiLeaks off its servers after a day of the event. Amazon claims that it has stopped providing service to WikiLeaks as it was breaking rules designed to ensure websites use their own content and that it won’t injure others. Amazon in a blog post explained how the decision was their own and, not taken due to the pressure from the U.S. government. Amazon says, the terms of service clause that was in clear violation by WikiLeaks was:

…you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content… that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.

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WikiLeaks down in US and Europe, Sarah Palin wants US to hunt Assange like Osama bin Laden

WikiLeaks website couldn’t be opened in the US and Europe today. WikiLeaks official said that the site was under a forceful internet-based attack causing site to be inaccessible to the users in U.S. and Europe. A British newspaper, Dailymail, reports that the current attack is most likely coming from China. Earlier, it was reported that China has blocked the website within the country.

Various political leaders have wished to punish the 39 year-old founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange for releasing the confidential diplomatic documents.

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Will Nepal government block WikiLeaks? China has !

The WikiLeaks website was blocked in China on Wednesday in an attempt to save face to during the potentially embarrassing situation when the leaked U.S. diplomatic cables will be posted in the site. Now, WikiLeaks has joined the wide range of Western websites including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Some of the cables related to China are  told to contain communications stating -

• China’s Politburo directed a cyber intrusion into Google’s computer systems…
• Chinese diplomat quoted describing North Korea as a "spoiled child" …
• North Korea’s communist regime would likely collapse within three years of the death of ruler Kim Jong Il
• Chinese leaders were prepared to accept South Korea’s eventual rule

Little is known about what is there in case of Nepal. I wonder if the Nepal government wants to block the website in Nepal.

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US government nightmare – WikiLeaks released US diplomatic cables – 2600 cables from Kathmandu

A website popular for releasing secret military and government documents, WikiLeaks has started releasing more than 251,000 cables from various embassies all around the world. The website says that the cables from the US Embassy in Nepal counts 2600.

According to the chart in the WikiLeaks website, cables from Kathmandu are:

• Secret – 84
• Confidential - 1399
• Unclassified – 795

That makes a total – 2278. I have no idea what other 322 cables are related to.

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Facebook asks me to make it my homepage – one more reasons for Google to worry about

A weekly statistics show that 1 in 4 of all page impressions in the US were in Facebook pages. Hitwise statistics revealed a 60% increase in traffic to Facebook when compared to the same period last year. Now, Facebook is well above its nearest competitor, Google, and well ahead of Yahoo and YouTube. It is to be noted that the data excludes mobile traffic. Due to the social nature, Facebook tends to have more mobile traffic than Google.

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Get Nepali Calendar for free in iPhone and iPod Touch

Today is Kartik 27, 2067. For those who live on November 14, 2010, a date with year 2067 seems like a date in future.

We have our own unique dating system, Bikram Era (BS) but, almost all the rest of the world has a common and widely popular dating system, AD. As, the ‘global village’ only understand AD we need to convert our own BS to AD in every aspects of our lives. I used to go to some date converter websites to do the conversion for me but now the process has become much simpler with the availability of smart phones. I have found an App in  Apple iTunes very useful in this aspect. If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch running iOS 4.0 or higher, you can download the application for free.

Developers note:

Do you live abroad and sometime wonder today’s date or when is the "Holi", what’s the festival  around the corner ? Do you think twice about time in Nepal before calling home? Now you don’t have to, "There’s an app for that". You can download "Nepali Calendar" for iPhone and iPod from iTunes app store. Further details can be obtained from the developer’s website.

Main features of the App are:

• current date/time and list of upcoming holidays/festivals in the main tab
• month by month calendar with both Nepali and English date
• date conversion utility that convert from BS to AD and vice-versa
• foreign exchange rate with graph of exchange rate history for last 30 days.

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Blocked sites in Nepal – Analysis of remaining websites in the list

This post is the second part – continued from the previous post: Blocked sites in Nepal – Analysis of first 10 websites in the list

“… stupidity rules in Nepal …”

… why is our government so worried about P-rn-Watchers’-pillars-of-the-nation? How about minding their own business & drafting Constitution on time?

Those were some of the responses to the ‘internet black list,’ the Nepal government prepared, with so much enthusiasm and dedication! In the previous post, I had given enough examples on what ‘the list’ was made up of. The six out of the first ten websites were no-brainier bull-sh*ts !

Let’s go through the remaining list:

Site No. 12 – This website features some magazine but, I couldn’t find any graphic materials in there. I didn’t bother to read  the content (and, I am more than confident that none of the decision makers of the list did read it!). The only apparent reason, the site falls in the list is that there is a taboo word in the title.

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