Older blog entries for roozbeh (starting at number 88)

20 Oct 2005 (updated 20 Oct 2005 at 12:48 UTC) »
New blood: Farzaneh and Elnaz (both GNOME Persian contributors and members of the FarsiWeb Project) are now members of the GNOME Foundation. Congratulations! There are now five FarsiWeb members that are GNOME members: Farzaneh, Elnaz, Meelad, Behdad, and me.
19 Oct 2005 (updated 20 Oct 2005 at 11:39 UTC) »
Photos: Elnaz is back from the FOSS Road conference in Tajikistan, and has now posted some of her photos, which includes a Monday bazaar from Dushanbe (Dushanbe means Monday in Persian, when the weekly bazaar is being held since more than a century ago in the town). Some of the more interesting (non-bazaar) ones:
Nice people: Wow! You won't believe how much a nice guy Federico is. I spent an hour or something to do something that I could somehow do easily (I had already thought about all the details), and he has thanked me three times for it, once in his blog and twice by email! It makes one love to do him favors.

Joel on Software: If you have not read the book, go and get it now. I got my hand on it last night, and was reading it until 7:45 in the morning, when I couldn't keep my eyes open any longer (hint: I was not a fan of Joel before, I just ordered the book since I thought it may be a nice thing to read). When I woke up at 15:30 or something, I couldn't get out of the bed until I finished it. It's incomparable to the blog, so don't use the blog as a sample of what's really in the book. The book is much superior.

14 Oct 2005 (updated 14 Oct 2005 at 20:51 UTC) »
Women in Iran: Adding to my last post, the largest Iranian automobile manufacturing company (automobile manufacturing is one of the major industries in Iran, possibly the largest), which is a governmental company, has now provided new uniforms to its female employees. Please note that this is not all female workers, but all female employees: the female employees usually work in offices, etc; the workers are mostly male. As far as I can tell, similiar uniforms are not issued to all male employees.

The exact text is something like this: "the company is asking the colleague ladies to wear the uniform that has been provided to almost all of them. Using the uniforms is obligatory, and the presence of the hounorable ladies in the company will be only possible if [they are] wearing the uniform."

Women in Iran: The new Iranian administration is somehow limiting women activies. First, the new Vice President in charge of Sports and Physical Education has mentioned that women's sport program should not be very long, or otherwise "problems" may be created for their husbands. Then, the new Minister for Culture has forbidden the female workers of the ministry and the organizations and offices under the ministry (which include the official Iranian news agency and a newspaper) to work after 6 pm.

The minister has mentioned that this is because "the sensitive role of the country's women in the elavation of the Islamic society and the necessity of effective presence of ladies in the warm focal point that is the family, in order to fulfill the sensitive responsibility of educating the children". I won't say much about the case of mothers, but if you don't have children at home to raise, I guess it's only the first part, your sensitive role in the elevation of the Islamic society, that applies to you. So, logically, it seems that the new minister believes that if a single or childless woman leaves work at 6 pm (or earlier), their absence elevates the Islamic society.

It may not be a coordinated act in the whole administration and may only be random opinions of inexperienced public servants, but it still takes its toll, and results in seeing less women in the society. As someone who has tried to help a few women find their place in the work environment, I am very concerned about this.

10 Oct 2005 (updated 10 Oct 2005 at 16:28 UTC) »
Unicode: Mark Davis has posted a set of globalization gotchas.

WYSIWYG: AbiWord 2.4 has nice mathematical typesetting features it seems: screenshot by Martin Sevior. The horizontal spacing in the formulas still looks horibble to me, having spent so much time with TeX. But I guess not many users do care that much about formula aesthetics. Update: I am not an AbiWord user. I only based my observation on Martin's screenshot. I can't even think about using anything other than TeX for typesetting mathematics.

Hoder: "Neo-Racism: Instead of saying all people from the Middle-East should be treated differently, the US government says people from Afghanistan, Algeria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Eritrea, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Lebanon, Morocco, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Somalia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen should be treated differently. This dosn't matter even if you have citizenship froma country like Canada. I was born in Tehran and it's enough for the US to treat me like a potential terrorist."
8 Oct 2005 (updated 8 Oct 2005 at 17:03 UTC) »
Run, Luis, Run!

(BTW, Run Lola Run appears to be one of the favorite movies of DEK. It was only being a DEK fan that made me find and watch the movie. I loved it, of course.)

More developments: Well, more interesting things have happened now. First, it was some anonymous mail from a random Gmail account asking me (in Persian) to not write about the email in my blog, not telling anyone about it, and then advising me that I don't follow the matter with the scammer (not that I wanted to follow it). He mentioned that very possibly more monetary offers will be forthcoming from such people, and that he has followed a similar story "to some mid-point" but fortunately found about it "and returned". He wrote that the sender name is not his real name and that he can't reveal his identity. So, I can't see a reason why I should not write about it here (not that there was anything non-trivial in it).

Then, just now, someone (who seemed to be an Iranian intelligence officer) called my office. He mentioned my previous blog entry and that I had asked for advice there. He asked me to meet him in the governmental Office of Alien Affairs (where foreigners usually go to extend their visas in Tehran). He mentioned that this is definitely a trap and wanted to advice me about possible other traps that I may encounter in my "foreign visits". He mentioned that he and his colleagues appreciate the advice of us "computer guys" and we should also appreciate theirs. I am thinking whether or not I should try to meet him. It may practically take half a day out of my time, which is very bad for the very busy days I have now. I guess I will think about it for a few days, to see if it will be worth the time.

In other developments, I contacted the company that the "headhunter" mentioned as a possible employer and asked them to confirm that they have such a "human resources" company working for them. They have not answered yet. I guess they, being so large, won't even care about such scams and the possible victims!

But generally, I find it very interesting that random Iranian people have read this English blog, although I have not advertised it much anywhere. It may only be linked from Planet GNOME and Advogato itself. I wouldn't even have been on Planet GNOME if Jeff hadn't discovered my Advogato diary.

This is becoming a total time-waster. I should try to not even think about it anymore.

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