2004-01-30

where can I find a lunatic like myself ?

2004-01-24

Sometimes if you don't betray to someone, you've done a bigger betrayal to yourself.

2004-01-21


Thanks to Erland Sommarskog ,
now I know that my problem with SQL
(Incorrect Sort of Farsi Unicode in SQL Server 2000) can not be solved :[
-----------------------


As you know, SQL Server currently does not support a Farsi or Arabic
collation. It depends upon Windows Locale to support Arabic and Farsi.

There was a bug in Windows relating to sorting of Farsi which was fixed.
But we still have some issues relating to that when SQL Server comes
into play.

There are 2 more bugs listed related to the issue. One of them relates
to SQL Server 2000 and the other to Yukon.

1. Bug # SQL Server 8.0 359136 - SQL sorts Farsi characters incorrectly
(SQL Server 2000)

2. BUG# SQL Server 9.0 523203 - Add Farsi collation. Dependent on NLS
addition of Farsi (YUKON)

Both of them are still active and they might be fixed in Yukon. But the
current status is active.

SQL currently does not support a Farsi collation. Books Online tells
users to map the Farsi Windows locale to the Arabic SQL collation, but
given that Arabic sorting rules do not (and should not) sort Farsi data
correctly, what is needed to fix this in SQL is a new Farsi collation
added to SQL that encapsulates the fixed Windows 2000 SP1 Farsi sorting
behavior. I cannot say when this will be implemented.

The good news is that Microsoft is aware of it, but the bad news is that it may not get fixed soon.

What you can do are two things:

1) Open a case yourself with Microsoft and refer to the bug number. If you
have compelling business reasons enough your case may result in a fix.
2) Send a mail to sqlwish@microsoft.com and request that a Farsi collation
is added to SQL Server. I know that the SQL Server developers pay
attention to what comes into this mailbox.

2004-01-19

shoot me again , I'm not dead yet.

2004-01-16

I don't give a damn about Iran's parliament crisis
Parliament members must obey the supreme leader (khamenei)
If you vote to Islamic extremist you'll help khamenei
If you vote to Islamic reformists, you'll help khamenei to decorate his government.

2004-01-13

Of all the things I've lost... I miss my mind the most!

2004-01-12

I don't see what I want, I don't want what I see ...

2004-01-10

araz sent me this link to me , sounds like nostalgia for my childhood.
Happy Birthday TinTin !

2004-01-06

can you imagine downloading 88 MegaBytes over a dialup connection.
yes, I did it !
It was MIcrosoft reporting services beta 2 as a beta tester.
but It can't be installed ,
Damn Microsoft, Damn Dialup, Damn Me, Damn You!
afghanistan , is a prototype for united states an europe. now they directly experience islamic cultures and it's conflicts with modern cultures. jo van der spek forwarded a letter to community radio in Afghanistan.I think it's a good example.
daphne Meijer, a Dutch journalist reflects on her last two years in Kabul.
She worked there, got married and has moved to Delhi now.
...
It was the golden age of Kabul. The weather was good, and the air smelled
faintly of jasmine and hope and promise, and everybody was exited about
all that was happening at the same time. The International Security
Assistance Force were getting their act together, and the government was
taking shape.
If I wanted something done, all I had to do was ask. All the restrictions
and official accreditations and formalities and gatekeepers and personal
body check equipment personnel had not yet been put in place. I returned in
August 2002, for six weeks, and again in January of 2003 for an indefinite
period, as a freelance correspondent for two newspapers. And, as a
sideline, to write a book about the Dutch involvement in Afghanistan's
reconstruction.
Why did I return? A friend of mine recently voiced her disappointment in
my getting married to my Afghan husband. She had been under the impression
that I had traveled back and forth to Kabul for two years because I liked
the country so much. But, instead of being genuinely interested in
Afghanistan's development, it was a banal relationship with a man that had
pulled me back all the time. So. yeah. My interest was not pure. Not
solely professional. The mix of the personal, the professional and the
private was irresistable.

As I changed into We, so did life in Afghanistan change. And my perceptions
of it. Living in a Kabul neighborhood, surrounded by Afghan families, in a
house with three Afghan men and all their guests and visitors, gave
a distinct Afghan flavour to daily life. The traditional culture is very
charming, but spending a summer without any possibility to swim anywhere,
is difficult. This is actually not completely true: the U.N. guesthouse
and the British embassy have pools. But for Afghan women, there is no
possibility anywhere. And I wanted to live the Afghan lifestyle - and
besides, I am not British and the U.N. pool was only open for U.N. and NGO
personnel. How seriously the Afghans take their prohibition of swimming,
was brought home to me by my neighbours. I had brought them a plastic pool
as a gift for their six young daughters, to fill up in their garden and
spatter about in, like children all over the world would do during a long
sweltering summer. But it was never used. Traditional Islamic culture
provides little personal space for women and girls, and certainly does not
encourage physical exertion. You are not supposed to walk just for fun,
ride a bike, fly a kite, swim, skate or do anything in the public domain
that might attract attention. I found these rules increasingly difficult to
comply to. We planned to stay in Kabul for a long time, but things did not
work out so well professionally. Interest in Afghanistan from the Dutch
media dwindled as the war in Irak broke out. And gradually, the
difficulties to get anything done ground me down.
Nowadays, some of the problems that reporters faced a year ago,
have disappeared. I could send emails and access the Internet from
many cyber-cafes. The phone worked, off and on, and at some point we even
got the hot water up and running in our house. But nowadays, Kabul is not
a city anymore where you can just walk into an office to talk to someone,
and find out what's going on. Downtown has become a collection of
fortresses. One travels, with difficulty because of all the roadblocks and
other restrictions put in place, from one heavily guarded facility to the
other. This is not just detrimental to the people on the outside, but also
to the folks indoors. Sometimes a gate swings open, and a armoured car
ventures out, giving the military commander or the ambassador or U.N.
expat or whoever is inside a peek at daily life in Kabul. The rest of the
time these people spend indoors, or at one of the crazily
expensive restaurants that have sprung up and where you can eat braised
veal with asparagus in a white wine sauce. The people inside this loop
don't know what's happening on the street, and sprout propaganda about
human rights and development that they got off the email from NGO's
specializing in the monitoring of human rights, who spend the working day
emailing each other.. And outside the loop, the Afghans are becoming more
and more frustrated. Because so little is being done about their very real
problems of water and sewage and unemployment, and so much false
information is being spread around. The Tajik and Pashtun populations
dislike each other vehemently, and fight for the ear of whoever will
listen to their lamentations. Sympathy has shifted from the Tajik fighters
who were part of the Northern Alliance to the Pashtun intellectuals who
have returned home from abroad. Okay, I'm married to a Tajik from Panjshir
valley. I know I'm not the most objective person. But in this part of the
world, nobody is objective. To me, it is very disconcerting to hear my
foreign acquaintances mouth their dismay about human rights abuses by
Tajiks, and at the same time see them cuddle up with the Pashtuns. The
Tajiks are a undemocratic lot, but so is everybody else in these parts.
Let's not kid ourselves. The sons of the Pashtun elite who are currently
returning to their homeland from their extended stay in
the West have the edge; they posses western table manners and know how to
push the right buttons in the international community. The Tajiks, Hazara's
and Uzbaks don't know how to project a democratic image. They never learned
how to. They never went to college abroad.
To the Pashtun elite, things should more or less go back to the way they
were. Which means: with them on top of their own community, and the other
ethnic communities nicely stratified underneath, with the Hazara's at the
bottom. Not surprisingly, the other ethnic communities want no part of
this. They want fundamental change, but, never having picked up the
diplomatic tools to formulate what they want, they are instead using the
old Afghan ways. They fight. In a sense, this ethnic conflict is really a
classic case of class struggle. However, it is not formulated in Marxist
jargon. The arena for this battle is Islamism. Strangely, the Pasthun
leadership has managed to convey an image of themselves as Islamic
moderates and modernists, while the Tajiks et al are generally seen as
ultra-extremist islamists. This is clever spin, if nothing else. The
premiss being that an American accent is a guarantee for sensibilities
regarding democracy and human rights. And a lack of English, does that mean
you cannot decide your own future?

Returning to Kabul from India in December to do some reporting on the Loya
Jirga where the Afghans were ratifying their new Constitution, I noticed
again how the circus works. The West supports the rule of interim-president
Karzai, which is nice for him, but shortsighted. The media reported how the
different factions at the Loya Jirga vied for power, with the Karzaiites
going for a strong presidential system and most of the Tajiks, Uzbaks and
Hazara's going for a strong Parliament. Hamid Karzai went on record to say
that he would not run for president, if the Grand Assembly did not favour
the Presidential system.
Well goodbye mister democrat, one might think, but oddly enough, the
Western democracies rallied behind Karzai, (e.g. the American ambassador
sent a message stating his support for Karzai and went to a meeting with
Uzbak leaders, right in front of Afghan television news camera's, to win
them over); thereby destroying the chance to get the Afghans a form of
democratically elected government that the western diplomats would have
voted in for themselves, had the shoe been on the other foot. The Tajiks,
Uzbaks and Hazara's did not easily give in, and in the bargaining that had
to follow in order to appease everybody, the Islamic clerics who made up a
substantial part of the delegates managed to gain many small victories.
Which was exactly what the West did not want to happen, because Islamism
freaks us out to no end. One might say that Islam and Islamism need a
Voltaire, a Diderot and a John Adams to come along and change the muslim
outlook on the relationship between
Mosque and State. Then again, is it really any of our Western business? I
sincerely believe it is, but it is equally important to treat people with
the respect they deserve.

As I said, my Dutch-Afghan union got me thinking.
...

2004-01-05

When I say something works well , boooOm , BaaaaNng ... !
It explodes!
last weeks ago I said that our damned Microsoft at least has one product which works without problem.
Now we realized that MIcrosoft SQL Server can not sort farsi unicode strings correctly and this can fuck off all of our apps.
Damn !

2004-01-02

I repeat my question : " so what ? "