Older blog entries for roozbeh (starting at number 79)

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.

The saga continues: The person who called me has now contacted me by email, and is saying that he is from "SCOT DUTCH", a "human resources company operating from Luxemburg", using an email address of 352061746325@vox.lu. He claims in his email that "Like most highly scaled headhunting companys [sic] we approach our candidates and not vice versa, therefore we do not appear on the internet." He then says that he is considering to suggest me "as a Chief Technology Officer (CTO) or as an Information System Project Manager" to a certain group of companies (a somehow famous European one in the defense and aerospace industry)!

I guess I won't be answering his email. Does anyone advise to the contrary?

First legal definition of free software: It seems that we now have a legal definition for free software. Congratulations to Peruvians!

Possible scam: A few days ago, the office phone rang and it was somebody who worked "for a human resources company". He was talking in English, which was a little weird. Most non-Iranians who wish to talk to me usually either have my cellphone number and call it first, or they just send me an email if it's not urgent.

This guy, told me that he has seen my CV and is considering to offer me a job. He said he has three or four cases in mind, but did not provide any more explanation of what the job responsiblities are or what the companies are (or any other information about them, for the matter). He said he is calling from Luxembourg, and wants me to go there (or to Istanbul if it's hard for me to get to Luxembourg, which predictably is) in an all-expenses-paid visit for two or three days to give interviews.

It seemed like a scam to me. Not that I had been ever been a victim of such scams, but it somehow looked somehow like the Nigerian scams, which even some Iranian movie directors have fallen for.

That was specially because the guy failed to provide any kind of details about what kind of job he wants to offer me, or any information about the companies he is considering me for. He only mentioned that they are interested in skilled "mathematicians and computer scientists", and that the jobs are in Europe. When I insisted, he mentioned that I may need to sign NDAs (he asked me if I knew what it is), that he won't be able to provide details otherwise. When I mentioned that it's fine, I can do that, and the time for a courier from Western Europe to reach Iran and get back is usually less than ten days, he said that ten days is too much: they usually connect the employees and the employers in three or four days!

Basically, I mentioned that it's not very easy for me to get out of the country for such an ambiguous matter, unless I have more details. I gave him my personal email address and asked him to email me with all the details he can provide. I told him that I will consider the offers then, based on reserch I would do based on the information he provided. He has not contacted me by email yet, and I consider it already late if this is usually a quick thing for him.

He probably found me over the Internet, and used a previous entry on this blog to get my office's new phone number. There is a change he may read this. There is a chance that this has been a legitimate call. If that is the case, no time is lost: he can still contact me. But I am very sceptical...

The only worry I have in posting this, is educating scammers. But I don't think they would need much more education than they currently have. There will always be easy targets, until the level of awareness of the people of the world reaches the level of awareness that the practice of law enforcement assumes of them to have.

Behdad, you quoting lyrics of a song you are listening to in your blog is very probably fair use (or fair dealing in your case).

I am not interested in random copyrighted text someone mentions in a blog. I am concerned about copyright and license violations in copyleft software, which you have not been careful with. Please be careful with those, instead of joking about my concerns.

When I release (or contribute to) free software, following the license is the minimum I ask for. I understand that you don't care about copyleft for your software and have mentioned a few times that we can consider your free software contributions public domain, but that is no reason for you not following the copyleft license of other people's works.

The new Iran: Iran is starting to become more and more different.

The WSIS regional civil society meeting for West Asia and Middle East, supposed to take place in Kish, for which I was invited to talk about access to information in one's native language, was banned for not enough reasons. We were only about fifty people, forty Iranians and ten foreigners (from Tajikistan and Ukraine to Sweden and South Africa), mostly without any involvement in politics. There were two former politicians and a formerly jailed journalist involved, but only as participants representing their civil organizations: they were not even speakers.

The story was like this: the night before the conference, at around midnight when all participants were already in Kish, the organizers were told that the local provincial security council has met urgently and decided that the meeting may not take place, unless some restrictions in the agenda are guaranteed (as signed) by the organizers:

• No issue about Iran should be discussed. [Update: most of the agenda was directly or indirectly about Iran, it being the one of the largest countries in the region, making this request totally unacceptable.]
• Complete written logs of all communications taking place in the meeting are submitted to the authorities after the meeting.
• The organizers must accept all the responsibilities for any possible implications of the meeting, including everything discussed in the meeting, the opinions expressed, and the possible news coverage.

The organizers tried to reach higher authorities and ask for help, but did not receive any help from higher authorities either.

I can't find much about this online yet, but there is a report in Persian in Rooz and some statement in English by some of the foreign participants.

I have not signed anything about the meeting yet, not wanting to get involved in the unknown politics of the matter. I was only planning to talk about Unicode and the Wikipedia.

GNOME: There is some article titled “GNOME and the way forward” in today’s LWN. If you have a subscription or know someone who does, go read it. But I guess I can quote a little: “the GNOME hackers Know Too Much to listen to those cries as they follow the One True Course.” I guess it will raise some reactions in the GNOME camp.

BTW, it also mentions Jeff’s suggestion of a resignation from being GNOME’s release manager…

i18n and l10n: We now have a wiki page for the locale project.

Behdad, it's not that the font designers "opted" for overlapping fonts. They are simply following the Microsoft recommentation about cursive scripts, including cursive Latin. FarsiWeb fonts, for example, have a tail of exactly 70/2048 em, the exact value recommended by Microsoft.

So, no, the fonts are not broken. They are intentionally meeting the "Microsoft Typography criteria for hinting and quality in TrueType and OpenType fonts." Cutting the tails would be against the recommendations.

i18n and L10n: Apparently, this diary reaches places that email can’t. So I am reposting my and Danilo’s recent announcement here:

We have created a list for discussing of locale-related functionality in
GNOME, and creating a library, mostly using the Unicode CLDR
information, which is not available in glibc locale files. The CLDR data
is currently used in Sun's OpenOffice.Org, IBM's ICU, and Apple's Mac
OS X.

This was needed because most of these things were happening in
translations instead of proper locales, mostly for two things:

1) The glibc locale data and functionality is limited to what it is, and
does not include some features users would require in some locales,
including genitive dates for Slavic languages and alternative calendars
for middle eastern countries.

Also, glibc data doesn't include what many applications could use for
better functionality, like locale-specific exemplar characters,
quotation marks, country, language, locale, and timezone names, extended
currency info, text direction, holiday info, and general data about
which script a language is written in, in which countries there are a
commercially important number of speakers, and how countries should be
divided to avoid a flat list.

2) Getting any patch into glibc locale data files or subsystem would
require spending a lot of time, most of in waiting. (While we understand
some of the reasons behind that, we can't usually wait that much.)

The basic plan is to create a nice and clean API, and then providing
easy access to commonly desired functionality such as date and time
formatting, per-user customisation and broader support for locale data.
We also hope that library resulting from this effort will find its use
beyond Gnome, so we invite everybody else to help us define and
develop it.

The list is at:
http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/locale-list

You can find about the CLDR project at:
http://www.cldr.info/

For the discussion that led to the creation of the list, see: 
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=307121

Looking forward to your feedback and help,

  Roozbeh Pournader,
  Danilo Šegan