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Free Software In Iran, KDE In Farsi
Elektroschock writes "KDE, the leading *nix desktop environment, is translated to Farsi (=Persian). Now native language KDE can be used in Iran as well. Farsi is written from left to right. Full story at Dot KDE. Arash Zeini (KDE Farsi) wrote an intresting article about FLOSS in Iran. His view: "It is not a secret anymore that FLOSS is gaining momentum all over the world. We witness an international move and acceptance of FLOSS in the private as well as in the public sector."" Update: 12/29 16:37 GMT by T : That should read "Farsi is written from right to left." (Thanks to Thomas Zander for pointing that out.)
Farsi is written RIGHT to LEFT. not the other way around. fix please
Now that the war in Iraq and Afganistan have died down... I see the KDE/Gnome wars are finally getting the front page /. attention they so deserve.
Am I the only one who read the summary and thought the description "the leading desktop environment" seemed to be included just to stir up trouble?
Disclaimer: I prefer KDE but really like Gnome config menus
Farsi is written from left to right.
!si ti egaugnul yzarc a tahw dna
http://www.flora.ca/floss.shtml
This is a farce!
The importance of FLOSS for developing countries has repeatedly been mentioned in the media and is a known subject by now. As Michael Dunham puts it "there is no question that Linux is a natural fit for developing countries with educated, talented entrepreneurs but limited capital."
It is not a secret anymore that FLOSS is gaining momentum all over the world. We witness an international move and acceptance of FLOSS in the private as well as in the public sector. Even though this acceptance can be recognized worldwide, we can guess that different reasons may be behind each country's or even individual's decision to use FLOSS. For the purpose of this paper however we would like to make a general differentiation between economically developed and economically developing countries.
The importance of FLOSS for developing countries has repeatedly been mentioned in the media and is a known subject by now. As Michael Dunham puts it "there is no question that Linux is a natural fit for developing countries with educated, talented entrepreneurs but limited capital." These countries have unique characteristics, which may pose new challenges to the free software movement.
Using Iran as an example we will discuss some of the advantages that FLOSS in general and GNU/Linux in particular have to offer. We don't make any theoretical distinction between Free software, open source and FLOSS for the purpose of this paper and use these terms as equals. Why FLOSS in Iran Iran is a unique case when it comes to its software industry. From one side it is under sanctions of USA, which prevent American companies to maintain a direct business relationship with Iranian companies, and on the other hand, Iran has not signed the international copyright law, which prevents almost any foreign company from having interest in Iran as a software market.
Even though it may look strange at first sight, an immediate result of these circumstances has been the fact that Iran never developed its own software industry. In fact many people in Iran equal a software company to a CD burning company.
Another very sad result of these limitations is the fact that Iran's official language, Farsi, has rarely been supported by foreign operating systems or applications. We have felt more than once that among other factors, a lack of knowledge of the English language stands as a burden in widespread adoption of computers in Iran. It has long been assumed that in order for someone to be able to use a computer, he/she should be fluent in English. Most if not all computer users seem to have forgotten that there can be a Farsi Graphical User Interface.
Given the mentioned limitations and the need for a Farsi environment, FLOSS's most significant advantage over proprietary software in Iran is obvious. With the source code being available to us, we can act on our own and add Farsi support where needed. We are aware that this is a simplification of technical circumstances and problems we may face, but in general it describes an approach, which has shown in practice that it works. In fact most free software desktop environments like KDE and Gnome have adopted standard methods of localization and internationalization. It is not without a reason that KDE is available in more than 50 languages. FLOSS offers a maximum on customizability, which is needed in order to achieve Iranian's unique needs.
Aside from the availability of source code, and the inherent customizability of free software applications, FLOSS enjoys another advantage in Iran. Unlike developed countries, a great number of Iranians have never touched a computer. Many small businesses in Iran still function without the use of any computer. Introducing GNU/Linux to these users is far easier than converting an existing Windows user. Experience shows for example that, as opposed to existing Windows users, new computer users are easier to introduce to the console and commands. The fight against the habits of a computer user is not necessary in this case. Go
If it's true that floss is gaining momentum throughout the world, you wouldn't know it by looking into the mouths of most Slashdotters.
I can only hope FLOSS is catching on in Great Britain also.
Fluoride also.
> Farsi is written from left to right
Actually, Farsi is written from right to left.
My dog ate my sig...
Though desktop Linux is definitely useful wherever it is found, an embedded Linux system would be very useful in Iran.
Iran, in case you've just crawled out of a hole in the ground, is located in one of the world's most geologically active areas. In fact, a large quake has recently struck a populated area of the country and it is estimated that around 20,000 people may have lost their lives in the quake.
Earthquake recorders based on an embedded Linux operating system could be used to predict and divert deadly earthquakes like that recent one.
Imagine a beowulf cluster of those!
But seriously, using Linux is just one step in the long fight to bring about serious long-term stability to a region racked by tribal warfare and religious persecution. Software freedom is one component of true democracy, and I hope that these inroads made in Iran shine as an example to other dictator-led countries that software Freedom and true Freedom are the fruits of Western ideals. I'm against globalization as much as anyone, but seeing Linux spread in this way just shows what can be done when enlightened globalization is pursued.
I have been pwned because my
Poster is a known troll
> I'm glad to see that the ragheads are finally doing something right.
Actually the persians are indoeuropeans not semites, which means theye're ethnicly closer to us then say finns or hungarians.
This is an obvious troll
that such a concept as LINUX and free-software in all its spectrum of variants is becoming the choice of many dictatorial regimes that have no access to the microsoft and apple cadre of products....
is LINUX gonna be a troyan horse that brings freedom through software or a tool that will make tech savvy to many non-democratic states...
... y Dios vio que Linux era bueno... Genesis 99.666
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Farsi, like most middle-east languages, appears to be written right-to-left -- the same as our numbers are -- When the original algebra texts from Persia were translated, the translator kept the right to Left form of the numbers (little-endian). This is the reason for the big-endian / little-endian dicotomy in modern day computers -- we've been writing our numbers backwards for the last thousand years!
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Iran isn't an Arab language, and Persians (primary ethnic group of Iran) aren't Arabs.
Similarly, people in Iceland use Latin script even though they're not Italian.
The Arabic script is used in other non-Arab countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan, and in the past had been used in Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia, and I'm sure others. The script had spread along with Islam, but in many places was abandoned during the second half of the 20th century as part of pushes to westernize/modernize.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
Hello. Did you know Chali is a disgusting whore? Please surf over to Stile's Stileproject.com to see her latest pornographic material. This bitch disgusts me in her lasivious lifestyle. All day she hungers for sex and masturbates and in general pollutes the human condition. Redeem yourself at #teens4christ. Thanks for reading this.
Poster is a known troll :(
farsi kde has been around for a while. ive been giving it to a lot of relatives to use when their computers go down because of virii, etc and they wish to use farsi. so yeah. this is good though. the majority of farsi software for windows ends up completley screwing up the computer. its usually virii infected and when you remove it the keymap doesnt restore properly leaving you with a well screwed computer.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
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Semites are worthless
I guess not in the snoop dogg sense "cause I'm flossing, boss ballin' guilt free And Feds can't ..."
like most ignorant people, you think farsi is an arab language.
its persian =D
I would like to know how to use two languages on one system so that I have a Farsi environment or an English environment at will.
I have many friends, among them Iranians, Turks and Israeli, who would like to have a bilingual system. Multiple keyboards are also an issue. Preferably it would need a switch to go from one language to the next alternatively a reboot would be acceptable.
Any ideas, resources that I might look at?
Thanks,
Gerard
Oops, of course I meant "Farsi isn't an Arab language."
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
To me, it did not seem that the term "the leading desktop environment" was used in an exclutinary manner - rather, it seemed that the intention was to explain what KDE is (to the occasional Windows-only user that happens upon /.)
Sort of like Ford, the leading auto maker (even though they are probably not the worlds largest).
-tor
PS. I use Gnome and WindowMaker. KDE is a bit too "all-or-nothing" for me.
If you think KDE is a trouble making tool of oppression, appearently you haven't tried Gnome!!
Actually the persians are indoeuropeans not semites, which means theye're ethnicly closer to us then say finns or hungarians.
I always thought hungarian chicks looked oddly peasantlike and wholly alien.
Don't mean to be a pedant--but Farsi is actually an Indo-European language--meaning it's related to Latin, German, Spanish, etc (and Hindi!). You can see this in some cognate words--mother in Farsi is madar, father is pedar, brother baradar, etc.
.. very different).
Arabic is a semitic language, related to Hebrew. In Arabic these words are very different. (My Arabic is weak but mother can be "umm," father "ab"
Both languages do use the same basic script--the Arabic script, though Farsi does have several additional letters.
KDE in Iran yo!
Persians are Aryan, which means they are more closely related to Germans.
They state that a major factor in adopting open source is the fact that most persians don't speak english and commercial companies can't supply native language versions. But since it's an islamic country most people speak arabic and could probably use already available version propriety software from neighbouring arab countries.
Secound since Iran is under sanctions will it be (technicly) illegal to cooperate with Iran based projects, accept patches from their developers and help them get "our" software?
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I can well imagine that, as with any article on /. relating to anything not understood/foreign/not american there will be a fairly high noise to signal ratio around here. So, I thought I could mention that Farsi (written from right to left in a modifed Arabic script) is an Indoeuropean language with no relation whatsover to Arabic, apart from the script (The Alphabet for those who think that script means VBS or Perl) and loan words.
Iran, with its odd mix of religious and democratic government (The religious side seems to be making it very hard for the elected officials to do anything), also has an interesting approach to copyright. According to Islamic law If I understand it correctly(), God is the source of all invention and creation and therefore the holder of all copyright. That means that things like MS anti-piracy drives are unknown there, as practically everything is pirated.
While it certainly is an interesting way of looking at things, I can see countries like the US (surprise, they don't get on well with the Iranians) making it very difficult for the Iranians ever getting into the WTO because so called IP has no value there (Read: Britney will not make much cash on CD sales in Teheran and the Matrix 2&3 will flop just as it did in the west, but for other reasons).
Hello. Did you know Chali is a disgusting whore? Please surf over to Stile's Stileproject.com to see her latest pornographic material. This bitch disgusts me in her lasivious lifestyle. All day she hungers for sex and masturbates and in general pollutes the human condition. Redeem yourself at #teens4christ. Thanks for reading this.
kde or gnome.. I might get the chance to make the decision if someone would get this fucking building off my head
According to what I know of Iran, Azeri, the language of Azerbaijan is spoken by about 25% of the population, but uses the same Arabic script and is interestingly referred to as Turkish by most Iranians.
Mamma in Chinese is mama and Papa in chinese is baba. You think just fucking maybe, those instinctive phonetic elements were given significance way back in the day to give otherwise lazy parents something to be happy about.
Really? Who honestly cares? KDE is dying anyways. Where is the BSD troll when you need him?
If you find semis... they are not worthless
Semis: these coins were mostly of bronze with very little silver. The coin was issued from the time of the Republic on, and appeared in various sizes and types. It was also used for the Roman half aureus. The term semissis was used to designate the semis when used as a half of the aureus or solidus.
...any news yet whether North Korea and Syria have plans to adopt free software?
Arash Zeini (KDE Farsi) wrote an intresting article about FLOSS in Iran. His view: "It is not a secret anymore that FLOSS is gaining momentum all over the world. We witness an international move and acceptance of FLOSS in the private as well as in the public sector."
Yes, dentists the world over agree that the collective state of mouths in Iran and the world over has improved since this widespread adoption of FLOSS technology.
--
But seriously, some acronyms work and others don't. FLOSS never seemed like a very good one to me.
KDE, the leading *nix desktop environment
come on... I blinked twice when I saw this... that is a pretty daring header...
Here's the Ethnologue entry for
Farsi and its position
in the family tree. The Ethnologue is the best
single source for reliable information about where
languages are spoken, by how many people, etc.
Well I know my saying for the next war, "No Blood For Proprietary Software"
forget it.
Please don't mix languages and ethnic roots! They often are separate. Finnish and Hungarian are Uralian languages, not Indoeuropean. However, Finns and Hungarians are genetically quite near to their neighbours.
Same old typical juvenile flamebait crap on slashdot front page, different day.
DAMN those teachers taught us Farsi the wrong way... right to left.
Now I have to take corrective training.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Even thoe I don't write or speak the language I think that it is great that the world is getting closer to using Linux in their respective languages! I don't believe we should force english or any other European language on to any one.
This SIG pulled due to lack of funding. (This damn war is costing too much!)
This FarsiKDE project is a very important undertaking for
Iranians. It gives us the ability to use computational devices
in conjunction with OSS the way "we" want to use them and not be
dictated the rules about what things we can or can not do by
commercial products. Its gives the ability for Iranians not to
first of all learn another language in order to enjoy using a
computer, surfing the net etc...
It also gives us the opportunity to make our contribution to the
human collective of knowledge in the world. Hopefully KDE wont be
the first and last project of its kind, hopefully gnome and other
environments will be translated in order to give a wider range of
choice and diversity to the people using them. and hopefully
through diversity comes innovation and understanding.
I'm sure there are many Iranians out there that want to
contribute to the world, and farsiKDE is one those tools which
will give them their much deserved opportunity.
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
yvan eht nioj!
Well, according to the article, Iran is not a signer of the international copyright law. This means, as far as I understand (I'm no lawyer), that "copyright" as we understand it has no legal standing there.
I associate "free" and "open source" software with software made available under various licenses, i.e. pieces of legalese that use the power of copyright to control what can and cannot be done with the software. Now, if Iran's laws don't recognize even basic copyright for whatever reason, then surely these licenses are meaningless there, and everything can be legally copied in the eyes of local law?
From this perspective, I would be a bit catious as a free software (GPL licensed) author to actively support Irani users. I mean, if they give themselves the right to circumvent my license, and thus "steal" my software, why should I help them by making the software more attractive? Now, of course there is no monetary loss to me from limitless copying of software that is free to redistribute to begin with, but the different legal "flavor" of it all disturbs me somehow. Maybe it's just me being cheap, again. I think I need to meditate a bit over this.
main(O){10<putchar(4^--O?77-(15&5128 >>4*O):10)&&main(2+O);}
I assume that FLOSS is "Farsi Language Open Source Software/System"
Why should dentists in Iran - many of whom were educated in the US - not have discovered the importance of FLOSSing.
Finns and Hungarians may be ethnically Europeans, but our respective languages are not. That's exactly what sets us apart (together with Estonians and a bunch of other even smaller languages) from most other Europeans. Go and check it out on Wikipedia (if you can). The search term is "Finno Ugric languages".
These languages are therefore not directly related to your fashionable - only few thousand year old - English, Latin, Farsi, French, Russian, etc.
And they get mad when you tell that they're Arabs. (they consider Arabs as being dumb)
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
If they'll pirate commercial IP, what makes you think they'll respect GPL IP? Who's gonna be the one to tell a Muslim coding house that using GPL code and not releasing source is in violation if the license? You? Linus? Allah would join the Backstreet Boys before any of you dared to try to correct a Muslim.
Actually, you can write Farsi or Arabic left to right, just like you can write English from the right to left. It's just harder because you're writing the letters in the opposite direction you normally read them.
In any case, it's great to see these more difficult langauges and scripts being handled by the non-Microsoft world of software.
The religious side (Islam) seems to be making it very hard for the "elected" officials to do anything.
You're just figuring this out? Islam IS the government in those places. Every notion of free action you take for granted here, forget it there. Try making fun of Islam in Iran as you might here in the USA about Christanity, you'll be lucky if you aren't stoned by a mob before the punchline leaves your lips.
It's written in three different planes, from foreground to background, from bottom to top, and from left to right. This makes for a very complex language.
I always thought it's Ugro-Finnic.
Windows 2000, XP and 2003 allow per-user multilanguage interfaces without reboot or dual boot. It's called the Multilanguage User Interface and has been available for years. The OS handles the issue just fine; the problem with multilanguage and bidirectional user interfaces is that most third party software is not designed to cope with it.
the leading *nix desktop environment,
What a load of rubbish. c'mon slashdot - you can do better than this. At least read these things before posting them.
That site s4x0Rz. No reference to 733t sP34k
Of course, this is exactly what the people of BAM need after the earthquake...
then I FLOSS my bitch, back and front
If Iran really belongs to the axis of evil, wouldn't it be the right time to infiltrate that country now?
Instead america offers them money and help that they'll certainly spend on more WMD's.
You may mod this down. But at least one person will read this and think about it.
I'm from Europe myself, but I think I speak for the majority when I say that if there's a nice project where the lead author happens to be Iranian, I would be happy to send him or her a patch, assuming I'm capable of coming up with such a patch in the first place.
Who gives a hell about the "sanctions". They seem to be changing every quarter of the year anyway, probably as some function of the wind.
I live in Europe, a friend of mine went to Iran recently and met his cousin. She is studying computer technology at a Teheran University. She does not have a computer. My friend brought her an old pentium 2...
OS X is not for Iran, export is propably not allowed. Windows is available and cheap. for EUR 3,- you can have XP or Longhorn. I want Farsi support on Linux for my sister who is learning Farsi.
Open Office does not (yet) support Farsi.
Thanks,
Gerard
arabic and hebrew are very, very similar:
FATHER:
arabic: ab
hebrew: av (the v in hebrew is the same letter used for b)
Salam, Shallom
et cetera. It continuously shocks me how close our languages are, and how far apart we are as 'peoples'. Ah well.
Excuse me for being a pedant here. But the only reason the word "Farsi" has become current in English is because back in 50's, 60's, 70's neither the f_____g State Department nor the CIA knew that we had a perfectly good and venerable word in English for the language, i.e. "Persian." Listen, to anyone who knows the language (own horn tooting here) it sounds silly. It's completely mispronounced as it's employed in English, the accented syllable for one is just wrong. We don't say, "Do you speak francais?" (imagine it said with American accent, butcher the vowels, heavily glide the last syllable, clearly pronounce the "n"), and the same with any other language. Why? Because we already have perfectly good words for these languages in English. Calling it "Farsi" only highlights Western ignorance and it's exoticisation of the Eastern/Muslim/Oriental other. So why use it? Az kasi ke nedane va nedane ke nedane.... or words to that effect (if memory serves)
How do other people, who are forced to comply with US export restrictions address computing needs in countries like Libya, Sudan, Iraq and Iran. Is there any possibility to comply and still be able to have a moderately modern system.
VIA C3 CPU comes to mind and Via Mainboards. Almost anything except software should be optainable.
It is not possible to use technology to solve social problems
Where do you get your figures about KDE being the leading. Last I read, Gnome was leading.
2 people I work with use KDE, they also come from a heaving MS Windows environment. the rest of use use Gnome, fluxbox or wmaker, and have been using *nix for ALOT longer than the KDE users. So, whats that tell you? Those awed by pretty icons and fancy menu's (i think ugly, but whatever) use KDE, those that plan on getting real work done, use something else.
(yes, this is offtopic, but SOMEONE has to wake up these nerds as to what desktop env is NOT good.)
We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully "designed" to have come into existence by chance.
Gerard
Aryans were the nomadic race which invaded India in the past. They were blonder than the people who lived there before then, who happened to be quite dark.
Aryans as blue-eyed white hair people is a Nazi fantasy.
What the hell is floss? Neither in the main blurb nor in the article about it does it specify what floss is. And because they named it with a completely generic word, my google search gave hundreds of dentistry-related sites. Lame.
hey, downvote this mofo fast! he's been making similar posts elswhere. thanks.
Free software... but no one left to use it :/ (check cnn.com fools)
_________ Help me get a PSP!
It looks like the same old flamewars are starting again. Here is some information to debunk the myths and trolls on this thread.
KDE/Gnome is ugly
Well if don't like the look, change the theme. Both desktops are very themeable. Go into the control panel and change it. Also check Gnome art and KDE look. You will soon see that the most popular Gnome downloads are Klones of kde themes (Such as Crystal, Keramik and Plastik).
The leading desktop environment.
This is the most controversial point. While people try to convince themeselfs that Gnome is leading, it is actually KDE. Look at most of the Linux Distros out there. All the desktop distros (Mandrake, Lindows, Gentoo, Suse) use KDE by default, while distros aimed at Servers and geeks (Like redhat, debian, slackware) use Gnome. Recent surveys show that 70% of users prefer KDE, 20% for Gnome and 10% for others such as Windowmakers, BoxFlux, Twm, etc.
KDE/Gnome is bloated
Nonsence, both desktops are modular, and when only the base pakages are installed, they are very light. Its only when you install the add on packs such as kdeutils, koffice that you get USEFUL utillites. Not to mention that part of the reason why gnome feels lighter is because a lot of the configuartion has been removed, and they have to use tools such as gconf-editor to edit the advanced stuff. KDE lets you have all the stuff and dosent hide it.
This is meant to be insightful. I choose KDE as my preferred desktop enviornment, but I'm fed up of gnome trolls spreading noncence about KDE and fed up of kde trolls spreading noncence about gnome. Make your own choice, but dont spread FUD about the competition. KDE 3.2 is coming out soon and I think 90% of trolls will be silenced by its improvements, its that good!
So Knoppix, a single CD with KDE and whatever else you want to put on it that just works when you boot it, should sell better than the half a dozen Microsoft CDs that would do the same thing with much more effort.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Ports to languages like Farsi are interesting, but maintainers of applications really need to focus on Arabic, Hindi, whatever the primary Chinese used for computers is, Spanish and English. If your application ships with these languages, you cover your bases VERY nicely. Let localized distributions help you out on the smaller languages (*cough*klingon*cough*).
Don't get me wrong, I applaud these people for their work, but package maintainers can easily get caught up in a sort of fad around certain translations, and sometimes that hurts if the biggest languages are not covered well.
On another front, Gnome also supports right-to-left languages, so don't feel you have to chose KDE... choose whichever supports your needs best from an application standpoint.
That's good, from what I can tell from the pictures of mullahs that I've seen, they could stand to floss a bit more, or indeed at all...
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. --Edmund Burke
... but the people of Iran, that might be another thing entirely.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
> I always thought it's Ugro-Finnic.
The author was probably a Finn.
One language option that my RedHat installation at work came with was Farsi. Just for kicks, I selected that, and most text was indeed little squiggly lines. To get actual work done, I changed back to English, though for unknown reason one bit of Farsi stuck around. So I still have a home directory called squiggle-squiggle-squiggle.
-Lars
Because then you would have read to the end of my sentence, where I mentioned loan words.
?
--
Good moderators mod up, not down - that's a waste of a mod point.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Keep your advertisements for porn sites off the message boards. We all know where to find porn when we need it, and are here to talk about other things.
I've spent a few hours here and there trying to get farsi support in KDE and mozilla working without success.
I defy you all to point me to a place on www.kde.org that explains how I get from a standard install of KDE to let me edit a document in farsi using KWord.
I seem to be missing the fonts I need and I don't know where to find them. I also don't know how to install fonts in KDE.
That's the same reason I mentally add numbers left-to-right. My wife thinks I'm nuts, but it's easier for me. You can get a quick estimate of the results by only adding the leftmost 2 or 3 digits instead of working through the entire problem; the numbers with the largest effect on the result are processed first.
The only problem is that you have to maintain a stack instead of a bit to handle carrying, but that's pretty straightforward.
Example: 1747+241. The first operation is "1747+200=1947". Next is "1947+40=1987". Finally, "1987+1=1988". Note that the partial sum converges much more rapidly with the end answer than it would in right-to-left addition.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Who cares? The Mexicans are the Irish of Europe.
Yeah, but they're still ragheads, like the most of the Albanians and the Bosnians
As others have mentioned, Farsi and Arabic are very different languages. They do share a common script, with minor variations. For example, Arabic has a B but no P and Farsi has a P but no B (pronunciation-wise, the scripted letters are obviously different).
Because they share a similar script however, one of the hardest parts of doing a Farsi translation (a right to left script), is already done. The only thing left to do is to translate the text in the programs, which of course, is no small affair. Kudos to the guys that did it. Having done some localized versions of my own apps (English & Spanish, primarily), I have an idea of what an ordeal it can be. I can't imagine doing an OS.
Latin is written from left to right, and roman numerals have the bigger units on the left
Yeah, I'm Canadian, and I agree with you (the Aussie), I think the American is on crack. Or maybe just being perverse.
The "200 six packs" phrase is a good example. Maybe he should say "two hundred and zero six packs" for clarity? No, the people would think there was 0.06 bottles of beer (a bottle cap?) extra. I guess he's stuck with "6 packs, two hundred of them".
Any way you count 'em, though, let me know where the party is.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Gnome is *dying*! Let the death knell ring!
I think the aryan-german connection was just a Hitlerian fantasy because he percieved the Aryans as a conquering race and figured they must be the ancestors of the Germans after learning the linguistic connection.
or something like that.
common cultural traits don't imply common genetics
Try adding the following numbers by hand:
92937545168
88484564556
===========
Then try multiplying them, or even subtracting them. The only 'simple' operation that we do from left to right is division, and division is clearly an inverse operation. Even then, many of the interim operations occur right to left.
It's in that respect, that the 'natural' order for numbers would be 'little-endian' (least significant digits first).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
That would be Little-Endian. Endian-ness specifies which end you start with,. Intel X86s are little-endian, while Motorola (680X0) is Big-Endian (as is english, other than in the teens).
The naming convention is taken from "Gulliver's Travels", where one of the societies was suffering a schism between those who chose to break their eggs starting at the little end (little-endian) and those who started at the big end (big-endian).
(bit of trivia: Issac Asimov did an 'Annotated Gulliver's Travels'. He considered it to be one of the earliest examples of English science fiction).
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
i agree with you. and i really don't like nationalist/racist people. but if we wanted to just look at this historically, then there is a lot of evidence pointing to a common ancestry between many of the peoples of europe and the early settlers of the persian platue. Hitler was simply using this as an excuse to take over the western areas of russia. This was really simply a resource grab. He's an asshole, don't get me wrong! ;o)
Guess what? Any candidate in a US election that refuses to sign or swear a loyalty oath will not be able to take office. Hell, you can't even get a government job in many states without signing a loyalty oath. The presence or absence of loyalty oaths is hardly the best register of democracy to look at here.
I think you meant to say "linguistically", since from language perspective you are correct. Germanic languages are somewhat related to persian (amongst other languages), more so that fenno-ugric (finnish, hungarian, estonian) ones. But ethnicity implies much wider range of things, from cultural to genetic attributes... in which case fenno-ugrians and persians both are fairly distinct from anglo-saxons.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization -- Oliver Wendell Holmes
...after the first line, which reads:
;)
The importance of FLOSS for developing countries has repeatedly been mentioned in the media and is a known subject by now.
Please, let's put a stop to using this acronym ASAP.
The Ethnologue is the best single source for reliable information about where languages are spoken, by how many people, etc.
The Ethnologue is written by splitters, though; for example, where most people count one language, Farsi, the Ethnologue has two, Western and Eastern Farsi. They count at least a dozen dialects of Arabic as seperate languages, four different dialects of Romanian as seperate languages and at least eight different dialects of Italian as seperate languages. Linguistically correct or not (some are unarguably correct from a linguistic standpoint, some are very iffy), they tend to give smaller numbers for any one language then other sources, especially as written language tends to be shared; all dialects of Arabic, no matter how little two speakers can understand each other, read and write the same language.
Why, I floss sometimes twice a week!
My dentist tells me it will help prevent gingivitis and gall darnit, it feels pretty good, too!
I think everyone should floss.
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
My understanding is that very few Iranians actually speak fluent Arabic, and that the Arabic/Persian lingustic divide is somewhat analogous to the English/French one in terms of national pride and pissiness. :)
News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters? Like hell.
No, the original Arians (note spelling) migrated from central Europe 5 to 7 k years ago
Hitler had no part in that undertaking
I agree - the Ethnologue does make finer splits than are sometimes warranted and this does result in smaller speaker numbers than other sources would give. Sometimes this unjustified, but in most of the cases mentioned I would argue that it is justified. Now and then, the Ethnologue is simply wrong. In my experience, this occurs in cases where only a few specialists have the up-to-date information and it hasn't yet reached the compilers. But there's a reason that I said that the Ethnologue is the "best single source": although for particular languages, regions, and language families there are sometimes better sources, there isn't any other single source that is comparable in scope or accuracy to the Ethnologue. If you really need detailed and accurate information, you shouldn't stop with the Ethnologue - you need to look for more specialized reference works and, especially in the case of smaller languages, talking to specialists may be necessary. But the Ethnologue is the place to start.
No it's not, it's like reading a poltizised introduction to lingusitcs written for children
Hmm, I admit I don't know much history of the Middle east from about 600AD 'till the renaissance, but I seem to recall that Persia (never called Persia!) spent a lot of time fighting Rome as a nation in decline, and then Rome started to decline.
Now look what you did, you've gotten me onto one of my longwinded ramble topics.
One of the problems people have with keeping the kingdoms in this area straight is that they tend to share the same name. Iran is simply the last in a sequence of little-related governments which have occupied the same area for several thousand years.
Persia as we know it - Iran - and the ancient/classical Persia share little more than their name between the two. The area known classically as the Persian Empire stretched from roughly the Indus River into the middle east, generally as far east as Iraq in Roman times, but during Greek times as far as modern Turkey and Egypt. That original Persian Empire began showing up in the mid-500s BC under Cyrus the Great, overthrowing what was left of the Babylonian kingdoms, a sequence of generally short-lived and ephemeral affairs running back almost, but not quite, into deepest antiquity.
(Even then, the ruling Achaemenid dynasty (which the kingdom was also named after) were from Media, a different region and culture within the area!)
Now, this particular Persian empire went down because of a young fellow named Alexander (y'might have heard of him) in the 330s-320s BC, and the whole region was ruled by a sort of pseudo-Greek monarchy for awhile. They were an attempt to impose a Hellenistic (NOT Hellenic, which is the democratic style most people know, but an absolute and militarist monarchy instead) veneer over the old Persian-style monarchy, and didn't do terribly much other than create a period of instability in the area for several generations as Alexander's "successors," and later their own successors, warred and plotted with one another. They were just starting to burn themselves out when the Romans came onto the scene in the west - and someone else in the east.
When people think of the particular Persian empire which tangled with Rome, they're thinking of the Arsacid monarchy, known at the time as Parthia. The Parthians hail from, well, Parthia, in the Iranian plateau, first started to chew at the Seleucid Empire's fragmented holdings around 250 BC and built up their own empire on top of the Hellenistic ones for the next century, before finally starting to tangle with the Romans in the first century BC. It was this Persian empire, the Parthians, which first started slapping the Romans around at battles such as Carrhae, Marc Antony's embarassing campaign in the east, and so on.
The Parthians soon tore themselves apart in dynastic squabbling, as well as having the major economic cities of the east torn apart in the great Roman invasions under the emperor Trajan. By 224 BC, a fellow named Ardashir came once again out of the east - in this case, if memory serves me, actually from the region of Persis/Farsis, proceeded to overthrow the Parthian empire, introduced several reforms in economics, military, and government, and became the first ruler of a very powerful, revitalized kingdom known today as the Sassanid or Sassanian Empire. This one is the Persian Empire you're thinking of, and fought a number of embarassingly successful campaigns against Rome, cumulating in the disaster of 260 when Shapur I actually captured the Emperor Valerian in battle. This empire continued along, doing very well for itself and being one of the great powers of the world, until the great Islamic wars of expansion blew out of Arabia. Pretty much nobody could stand against these guys, and the Sassanids were no exception, their last gasp being the Battle of Nehawand in 642 AD where their last great army was destroyed.
It's only by this date that an actual Islamic Persia exists, but it's still just the latest in a long string of Persias. The one now called Iran
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
Iran is democratic. It is, after all, the Islamic Republic of Iran. President Khatami was initially elected through mass voter turnout in 1997 to democratically overthrow the ruling "party" (I can't remember the name of the incumbant). Granted, there are a few limitations. To run for president you have to be a cleric and all candidates have to be approved by the religious authority, but the American republic has similar limitations. Presidents have to be 45 years of age (or something like that) and have to be born in the U.S. (And, for all intents and purposes, have to be affiliated with the duopoly of ruling parties.)
Do a little research before you label a country a "dictatorship".
-Lawrence
Visit Zymurgy Records!
Persians are not just Aryan, The term Persian is a collective
name for the people that live in Persia. That includes turkemen,
kurds, baloochi, afghani etc...
On another note the Germans are not the only Aryan, the English
and French are also Aryan as far as I know.
But these are all matters of race, in today's globalized world such
futile issues are meaningless because they bring about
indifference and disunity. Who cares who comes from what race all
that matter is that, that person is moral and ethical in their
dealings.
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
It more than English/French in linguistic terms. Farsi and Arabic come from completely different language families. Farsi is Indo-European (like Latin, French, German, Hindi, and English) whereas Arabic is Semitic (like Hebrew).
In terms of nationalism, the English/French analogy works. Persians, in my experience, aren't all that fond of Arabs.
They share a script and some vocabulary, but that's about it.
And Arabic is not commonly spoken in Iran at all.
-Lawrence
Visit Zymurgy Records!
"KDE, the leading *nix desktop environment,
-1 flamebait, right there. No need to read further.
OK... you've got a lot of stuff wrong here.
...) are NOT Aryans. They are, however, Indo-Europeans.
1. Persians are Persians. Turkomen are Turkomen, not Persians. Kurds are Kurds, not Persians (though Kurds are Aryans and speak a dialect of Persian). The other peoples in Iran are NOT Persians. Lurs are Lurs. There are more; I can't think of them all right now. Persians are a small majority in Iran, making up just over 50% of the population.
2. Germans are not Aryans. Hitler simply didn't know what the term Aryan meant. It does not mean "white" or Indo-European. Aryans are a sub category of Indo-Europeans who live, primarily on the Iranian plateau and in India. The English and French (and Germans and Norwegians and Danes and
And all this stuff is not futile and meaningless in the modern world. Nationalism based on real or percieved ethnicity is still one of the most potent unifying forces for a sovereign state.
-Lawrence
Visit Zymurgy Records!
Dosen't sound like a true democracy to me.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
The US president has to swear an oath as well.
They also only elected a parliment, and president not their head leaders.
>>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;
The US republic originally did not allow election of senetors or of the president. It was still a democracy.
I might be mistaken, but I beleive the "Assembly of Experts" is a group of Islamic Clerics who are still very fundmentalist.
>>>>>>>>>>>>
"Leader of the Islamic Revolution" is not the same as the leader of Iran. While he has a great deal of power, he is not the sole bearer of power.
I agree that the past election was a giant step foward but is not were near a real election. No third parties (such as the U.N.) were there to verify the votes.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The UN didn't verify the votes in the last US election either...
If Iran is a democracy so was Iraq too since the elected Saddam Hussien as their "president" in the past year (before we "liberated" them.)
>>>>>>>>>>>
*That* wasn't a real election. There is no reason, however, to believe that the last election in Iran was the same way, because there was wide public support for Khatami.
I wouldn't consider Iran anything close to a democracy yet.
>>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;
More accurately, Iran's government has democratic elements within a theocratic framework. That's not a democracy, but its also a huge step away from totalitarian regimes like Iraq. Saddam took power by force. Iran's clerics were put into power by the people.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
People who live in mud houses, shouldn't fling shit.... dumbass.
| 12 -29-2003::09:48|reuters.html
http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/245963|top
The 3rd from last paragraph is especially telling.
The US republic originally did not allow election of senetors or of the president. It was still a democracy.
Benjamin Franklin disagreed. He was adamant that what they had created was a republic, not a democracy. Considering the only people who could vote were landowning men and most of the people in the federal government, including the president, were appointed (the electors actually had power, unlike now), it's questionable whether the American government actually was a democracy to start out.
My kid's program, Tux Paint, has been translated into over 30 languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Hebrew (right-to-left) and Tamil. :^)
;^) )
I'll gladly accept a Farsi translastion. (Or any other that's still missing
--
-- My oppinion isn't worth much, look at my karma.
Please just do us all a favor and spell opinion correctly. Thanks.
Love,
Julian