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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
New HTML Parser: The long-awaited libxml2 based HTML parser code is live. It needs further work but already handles most markup better than the original parser.
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