What Microsoft did to the Persian Language

Recently I installed Microsoft's Persian UI for Windows XP. Seems like Microsoft can't do anything right for Persian. They use SPACE instead of ZWNJ everywhere in the UI. WTF?! After spending about 1.5 million USD on Persian (they even call it Farsi) support on Windows, the real Persian Windows is still a dream. They are practically removing ZWNJ from Persian, just because they don't know how to use it (or rather, their American-grown confused Iranians don't.)

Microsoft is the one who brought U+064A ARABIC LETTER YEH (Yeh with two dots bellow in final and isolate forms) to Persian, instead of U+06CC ARABIC LETTER FARSI YEH (Yeh without any dots in final and isolate forms), with their buggy fonts. Even Windows Persian keyboard layout have never been compatible with the Iranian standard layout. Now it's so common to see Arabic Yeh and Keh instead of Persian ones everywhere, everytime. More info.

This story reminds me of an old joke:
A British guy was arguing with a Hindi guy.
The British guy says:
We f**ked your country for one hundred years!
The Hindi guy responds:
We f**ked your language forever!

Tehran Avenue and Intellectual Property

New issue of Tehran Avenue online magazine has some articles and news about Intellectual Property issues in Iran, in both English and Persian. Here are the items:

• On Intellectual Property
• General Call for the Submission of Works
• Intellectual Rights in the Laws of Iran

Flickr Hack 200C+0001: EasyDownloadr

Behdad and I prefer to have the "Original" size of a photo to view, or use (if it's under a CC lisence). So we wrote a Bookmarklet to make it easy to save the original size of an image on Flickr.

Here is the Flickr EasyDownloadr bookmarklet.

HOWTO: Right click on previous link. Bookmark it (preferably in Bookmarks Toolbar Folder and rename it if needed). Open the Flickr page of the image and use this bookmark to save the original size of the image.

UPDATE: And here are the Flickr EasyOpenr which just opens the original size.

Jalali Calendar for Google Calendar

A couple weeks ago, I wrote the Jalali GCal user script (a JavaScript that Firefox runs on the web page if you have GreaseMonkey extension installed) to add Jalali Calendar (A.K.A. Iranian Calendar) to Google Calendar application.

As you can see in the screenshot, it adds Jalali year, month, and month days beside the Gregorian ones. (which makes it really useful for me! ;) This version (v1.1) supports all views: Day, Week, Month, Next 4 Days, and Agenda!

To use it, you should install GreaseMonkey (for Firefox 1.5), then open Jalali GCal user script and install it. Now refresh Google Calendar page.

Of course it's under LGPL license. I hope you like it.

Update: Jalali GCal moved to Google Code

Your Google public Calendar is NOT public!

I use Google Calendar in day life and also maintain GUADEC 2006 iCal file and keep it synced with the schedule of The GNOME Conference. Stop! don't try to add that iCal link to your Google Calendar account. It doesn't work and you will get an error message.

Here are what happens:

1. Google's robots crawl the web and index all calendar files (i.e. iCal), and of course they check the robots.txt file to make sure they are allowed to do this.


2. Unfortunately, Google Calendar AJAX application checks robots.txt. May be it uses the indexed file at Google's server and so it's a side effect of the previous fact.


3. Unfortunately again Google's robots.txt file doesn't allow crawlers to index your public calendars.

Our iCal link is just an HTTP forward to the address of the file on Google's server. And yes, because of facts 2 and 3, you cannot add our iCal URL to your Google Calendar account! Not Google only, you cannot use it on any other web application that respect to robots.txt files. And of course you won't have your public calendar indexed in any search engine; but Google! It reminds me on how Microsoft tried to make its website somehow Netscape couldn't show it properly.

By the way, if you want to add GUADEC 2006 calendar to your Google Calendar account, just search for "GUADEC 2006" there, and add it directly. And send me a note if you need write access to it.

Update: Problems:

1. An organizer application (feed reader, calendar, etc) SHOULD NOT use robots.txt files, as it's NOT a crawler, it's just a user agent which do exactly what a user tells it (like a browser).


2. Google MUST allow other web crawlers to index public calendars, and NOT make a monopoly .

Intellectual Property in Iran

Center for Technology Studies (SUT) held a workshop on intellectual property at Graduate School of Management and Economics (SUT). Kamran Bagheri, from Iran's Research Institute Of Petroleum Industry, lectured on the Intellectual Property Acts in US, EU and Iran. Here are some interesting news!


The Intellectual Property Act of Iran is under revision! It has been approved in the first vote in Parliament (Majlis), and in about seven months, it will be a law. Some effects of this act (as Mr. Bagheri told) will be increase in registration prices (i.e. you can get a patent for $30~40 by now) and international interest on copyright and patent registeration in Iran.

Update: Current amount of registered patents per year is about five thousands, that may increase up to fifty thousands with the new act.

I'm trying to get more information and will post here as soon as possible.

Journalists' Rights in Iran

A couple of weeks ago, I missed the Speech of Kambiz Norouzi on Rights and Professional Morality of Photojournalism which was held on Iranian Artists Organization.

Based on news reports, Kambiz Norouzi will be in court branch no. 1083 of General Court of Tehran, headed by Judge Husseinian and he will defend himself. He is accused of propaganda against the establishment, irreverent comments and his accuser is general prosecutor.

Hope they let me to get to the session.

Kambiz Norouzi is a Lawyer and Lecturer on Press Rights in University and Media Education Center in Iran. More about Kambiz Norouzi: English, Persian, Persian (misspell)