Omantel blocks Google Scholar
The importance of education in Oman's development is a matter of which the nation is aware at all levels. As an educator and researcher who has been based here for several years, I am acutely aware of the value access to quality information has for Omani students. Due to the dearth of academic books and libraries in the country, the tertiary education sector is largely dependent on the Internet in this respect. While search engines such as Google offer general information, academic research is enabled far more effectively by the research-specific Google Scholar website (http://scholar.google.com/schp).
To my great shock I have discovered that this website –– perhaps one of the most vital to research development in this emerging nation –– has been blocked by Omantel for the past week (http://www.omantel.net.om/new5.html?category=Pornography). Although I have emailed the company for a reversal of the decision, there has been no response as yet, and five calls to the company's internet helpline have delivered no satisfactory explanation.
The implications of disabling one of the most powerful research tools available –– and one of the few available in Oman –– send shivers down the spine of any academic community this nation may aspire to. While the World Wide Web teems with morally dubious potential, this is not usually the concern of desiccated academics such as ourselves.
Information, of course, is a dangerous thing. However, we have to weigh that up against the greater danger of the lack of information. Yet the greatest peril of all is the lack of wisdom to select and use information wisely. That is the peril that actions such as these –– justifiably –– inspire.
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Oman
8 Comments:
In the last week they blocked and unblocked everything from Yahoo to Hotmail and they still have problems with dsl
Maybe that site remained blocked
The problem is that with the new system [email the adm directly from the blocked page] they're not answering anymore while in the past they checked my complains
This is obviously blocked by mistake.
I have just checked the site, it works via Nawras connection.
also works on Nawras for me (without the /schp)
It works - just make sure you include www at the beginning. It's the same with many Google sites
google totally works.
unlike www.goremy.com
spooky!
More than once this scholar has been displaying personal ignorance in the digital space.:)
The site works with a proper url
http://scholar.google.com (even without www).
Earlier reference: difficuly to find Omani bloggers is also questionable. You find one or two and they link to many others (the Oman Community Blog has a bunch of links).
A birdie tells me, it is also the source of the SPAM mails due to ignorantly exposing email address book!!!
Mr. Cariappa, it works.
2ndly, Omantel has recently had some new management members, including a lady in the connections department. Working for a large commerical customer of Omantel, we need supprt from them very frequently, and since start of March, we've been surprised by the frankness and speed of replies. Work progress is also improved, but not much, however, let-me-tell-you-whats-going-on has improved drastically.
Similarly, last month, Omanhell sat and recategorized 'all' the DNS resolved websites requested through the browsing gateway. Some email sites were being blocked in the "pornography" sections and some smut sites were coming under "proxy" sites. So they resorted them, not-manually. This created DNS resolution havoc & for 3/4 days, we were unable to open gmail/yahoo/even our corporate ftp (it hosts some tunneling softwares :( )
Seems the kinks have been worked out. GScholar was one of them!
Peace!
-TFK
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