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Bali Plans To Switch Off Internet Services For 24 Hours For New Year 'Quiet Reflection' (theguardian.com)
Internet service providers in Bali will be switching off mobile services this weekend for 24 hours to mark the Indonesian island's annual day of silence. "Nyepi, or New Year according to the ancient Balinese calendar, is a sacred day of reflection on the Hindu-majority island," reports The Guardian. "Even the international airport shuts down." From the report: This year authorities have called on telecommunications companies to unplug -- a request Bali says firms have promised to honor. "It was agreed that internet on mobile phones will be cut. All operators have agreed," Nyoman Sujaya, from the Bali communications ministry, told tirto.id. The plan, based on an appeal put forward by Balinese civil and religious groups, was announced following a meeting at the ministry in Jakarta. This is the first time internet services will be shut down in Bali for Nyepi, after the same request was denied last year. However, wifi connection will still be available at hotels and for strategic services such as security, aviation, hospitals and disaster agencies. Phone and SMS services will be operational, but the Indonesian Internet Service Provider Association is reviewing whether wifi at private residences will be temporarily cut.
"How the fuck do I get out of Bali?", the bored citizen wondered quietly to himself.
...we should all don our costumes and pretend they've returned to The Planet of the Apes.
We should do this in the US!
like say, a terror attack, no one will know until the day after, because there wouldn't be internet access to report it.
are they going to send people to tell residents to unplug their routers?
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
So what happens when someone who is using VoIP telephone service attempts to contact emergency medical, fire, or police services? Your SOL that day I guess? This is the problem with trying to legislate morality.
How dumb is this? any alarm that use this will be useless, Owners will be un contactable... law enforcement will be un contactable.
Just an open invitation for criminals!
The blackout of 2003 was good for people socializing. This will be too.
I was surprised at first but then i read the article. I thought it was going to be expensive until a saw that it won't effect folks who are living in hotels and such. So with that said, it's not that important to me. I'm not being crass, just thoughtful.
I'm here for the experience, not the Hyperbole.
This is probably a good idea for many places.
People are getting too dependent and addicted and need to step back and reflect.
If we cannot switch off our digital addiction for several days than we have a problem.
Because Bali is sucking my DAMN BALLS!
This is what would happen if we had an internet kill switch in the US.
Except substitute "quiet reflection" with "pray to Jesus in the way my particular denomination does".
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Note how they point out that emergency services personnel, security, hospitals, etc will still have internet? It's only the plebes, lets hope it's not the beginning.
They should require *evidence* of their gods before they shut down an entire countries infrastructure in order to appease them.
This really shows how far humans have to go.
Why don't they just cut all electricity, plumbing, and all other services so people are sure to reflect on the simple joy of life?
This sounds like a good way to give them a full day to do it under the guise of a holiday.
Expect to see more purges from other nation-states happening under this method in the future.
You have to appease the small-minded people who ask for things like this. Having no idea that other people without their knowledge perhaps set up life critical services, these fools block the internet.
Of course anyone else trying to get these people to honor other events like Satans birthday likely fail. It's almost as if the small brain people are really our masters. They really do have the best of both worlds... anyone dumber than them needs help, anyone smarter than them needs to slow down and be less dangerous. Anything that scares them will be banned, anything they don't understand will be taken away, and they will never allow someone more skilled or efficient to exist around them without constant ridicule. They demand the right to exist, demand the tax money from the smarter people, demand to be in the way, and demand the right to ban anything they disagree with.
I'm glad an event like this happens, so I can show the people in my country what would happen if we let the small brain people over here take control. They demand shit like this and actually think they're in the right to enforce it upon others.
There. Plain and simple. While Nyepi:
Observed from 6 a.m. until 6 a.m. the next morning, Nyepi is a day reserved for self-reflection, and as such, anything that might interfere with that purpose is restricted. The main restrictions are no lighting fires (and lights must be kept low); no working; no entertainment or pleasure; no traveling; and, for some, no talking or eating at all. The effect of these prohibitions is that Bali's usually bustling streets and roads are empty, there is little or no noise from TVs and radios, and few signs of activity are seen even inside homes.
sounds good (we could have more of that, people tend to be noisy & stir things up wherever they go), the line following above quote already spoils it:
The only people to be seen outdoors are the Pecalang, traditional security men who patrol the streets to ensure the prohibitions are being followed.
To avoid confusion: I have no problem with religion in general. At all. But too much trouble in this world starts when [population group A] wants to enforce their world views on [population group B]. Above example seems pretty harmless, but the principle still holds. For that reason I hate it whenever this happens. Practical reasons: fine. When an issue must be decided one way or the other, and a super-majority picks the 'least evil' option with minimized harm to others: okay. But forcing some measure upon others for NO GOOD REASON other than tradition / culture / religion / state repression or whatever: not okay.
While looking harmless enough in this case, it includes denying a basic utility service to (also according to WP) around 16.5% of non-Hindus in Bali. Or in the order of ~800k people. Who may or may not choose to participate in the event. But in case not, see their freedom to fill in their day as desired, trampled upon by the majority.
If you want peace & quiet, go some place where there is peace & quiet, and do nothing to disturb that. If you want that as a group, find a place big enough for that group. If you want that for the rest of your live, go live in a place with no / few people around. Otherwise: stop messing with OTHER PEOPLE's lives. They are not your life, and thus (unless your rights are inflicted upon) not your business to mess with.
I'm sure the government asked a business to shut down service and everybody there was just like "Hey, that's a great idea".
Seriously, does anyone else find this disturbing as hell? If you want to shut off your internet for a day go right ahead. Unplug your router. But having the government force the issue is frightening. Especially with the religious overtones. It doesn't help that I've been reading stories of Hindi nationalists out of India, but to be fair I've got no idea if that sort of nationalism exists in Indonesia.
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Sorry messed up the numbers a bit there. Might be closer to ~700k non-Hindus in Bali...
There is an offline paradise
Happy New Day of silence )
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
They could have been Jewish.
Have gnu, will travel.
Foreign country does something that makes sense to them but guaranteed to rile slashdot crowd, get out the popcorn!
...so they can reflect on the good ol' days of when you had to actually meet up to socialize.
That's the same place the President's phone was made!
From my Oz city alone [Perth] there are 3-4 flights just today to Bali, full of Ozzies looking to party and get hammered in Bali. [It is only a 4 hour flight].
They will not be happy when they find out they cannot update Facebook, Instagram etc etc with pictures of them drinking bucket-size cocktails and in general being dickheads.
Is this the same Bali whose women used to run about with bare titties flopping in the wind? Because I'm all for going back to those old timey glory days, as well.
Life did not exist before the internet and mobile phones.
And Jobs said: "Let there be light..."
And Tim Berners-Lee said: "Now there is light"
Fuck you people are idiots.
>> So what happens when someone who is using VoIP telephone service attempts to contact emergency medical, fire, or police services?
It happens the same than when someone has a hard disk failure : he learns the importance of backups.
It happens that this person then realizes that VOIP is not a bullet proof service that should be relied on for emergency, and next time this person and a few around will be better prepared.
aaaaaaa
One hour to maybe install monitoring equipment. That is what I am thinking.
They need to switch them on again on IPv6 only! No other country will ever have such opportunity of a flag day.
Why force on others who do not want to participate? If you don't want internet, you can always turn off for yourself.
That is exactly what democracy is - "rule of the majority".
If you want to avoid it, you should probably move to a non-democratic country, at the risk of succumbing to a tyranny of a much smaller group.
Is to go forcing it on others, is it not?
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
I thought Centurylink was just crappy DSL. Nope. Turns out they are tranquility Buddhist and just want me to have some quiet reflection time. How thoughtful of them.
Doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, religion destroys spirituality
... That way I can finally catch up on my Fidonet Echoes.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
That right there is one of the bigger problems with religion, for some reason religotards always feel the need to impose their idiocy on everyone else.
If you force people to do something instead of them choosing to do so on their own, isn't that cheapening the experience?
I would think this might also make people angry about being given no choice by the religious fanatics rather than cause people to say, "Oh, this is wonderful the way you've forced me to comply with your way of worshiping."
If you have ever lived in Germany, you would be very familiar with this problem as there is a day when you are explicitly not allowed to dance in public because of some Bismark era Christian-based legislation. People kind of know about this and some do think that it's a little weird. What people do not think is weird is that they are not allowed to work on Sundays, which is every single bit a religious law as the dancing one. Neither is getting repealed any time soon though, as the seems to be this general belief among the populace that repealing the latter would somehow lead to worker exploitation and repealing the former would reduce the number of days off in any given year. It's very inconvenient.
I have a problem with elected representatives that are full shit.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
How are people supposed to quietly reflect without cat memes? They contain more wisdom than some entire religions.
Balinese takes its religion very seriously, and it is under serious threat in the modern world. The quiet time is just part of that, they put a lot of effort into festivals.
They are also under cultrual attack from large numbers of Javanese immigrants, and this is a way to assert their Balinese culture.
After, Nyepi they then have a wild party, with the Ogoh-Ogoh -- have a look at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Bali is still a magic place, despite the thousands of yobbo Australian tourists. Let's hope it remains that way.
Making it a 'day of quiet reflection' instead of '2 minutes of hate' doesn't make it any less dystopic.