This is a white paper that was prepared for the Electronic Mail Association (EMA) PRMD Operators' Committee in 1993. The paper deals with problems and risks associated with email attachments. While primarily in X.400 context, the relevance to Internet Mail MIME attachments are also discussed. The abstract topics of this paper have become very real as Email viruses and warms became part of the email experience. Many of our recommendations of 1993, remain valid even more than 10 years later.

This is a white paper that was prepared for the Electronic Mail Association (EMA) PRMD Operators' Committee in 1993. At the time, Internet Email was regarded as somewhat fringe and EMA was mostly on the X.400 band wagon. In this paper, the author -- Mohsen Banan -- subtly makes the case for Internet Email and away from X.400.

This book was originally published by Prentice Hall. Got the copyrights back and republsihed here.

From time to time I write reviews of movies that I see. This document is a collection of such reviews.

From time to time I write reviews of books and articles that I read. This document is a collection of such reviews.

Informed Comment is patterned after Juan Cole's model of commenting on current affairs regularly.

In December of 2006, I - Mohsen Banan - came across a series of articles that link Shab-e Yalda with Christmas. Most Interesting!

I decided to combine them all in one place and formed this short collection.

Domain Notation used throught Internet is backwards. This is another example of an noticed engineering mis-design.

As a consultant I am always interested in hearing about projects that are a good fit with my skills and experience. Please contact me if you have something you'd like me to consider.

Speech synthesis, the production of intelligible speech from computer data, is no longer a novelty. Text-to-speech products with unlimted vocabulary are available. Soon, these products will be incorporated into telephone based inquiry systems that will give users access to data-bases from any phone. These systems would enable ordinary telephone sets to function as limited computer terminals. To accomplish this, in addition to the ability of sending information to the user in the form of computer generated speech, the system should be capable of accepting the data transmitted by the telephone (entries on the keypad of a Touch-Tone telephone set).

The aim of this project has been to study possible approaches leading to implementation of a system that would enable a computer to fully use an ordinary telephone set. The six major functions associated with using the phone are:

1. Picking-up the receiver
2. Dialing a number
3. Talking (transmitting information)
4. Listening (receiving information)
5. Hanging-up
6. Recognizing the ring.

Lifting and replacing the receiver is accomplished by using a solenoid that mechanically controls the cradle switch. Dialing is implemented by generating DTMF signals on the voice channel. A Votrax SC-01 phoneme synthesizer enables the system to talk. A MSD 3201 CMOS DTMF decoder/receiver can provide the ability to accept information (listen). Ring recognition may be accomplished through the use of a sound switch.

By using the above mentioned functions, a computer could allow for the use of an ordinary telephone set as a limited terminal. Although not in the form of a %G�%@nal product and totaly operational, the outcome of this project demonstrates the feasability and the practicality of implementing means of interaction between a computer and an ordinary telephone set.

This summarizes my experiences and observations on a recent trip to Iran. I, Mohsen BANAN, spent June 26, 1999 through July 14, 1999 in Tehran.

With the strong message of "No Iran War", accompanying a delegation of Green Party of Washington State to Senator Murray's office, Mohsen BANAN (as an American, as an Iranian-American and as an Iranian) addresses Patty Murray.

The original publication point of this document is: http://www.ido.ir/a.aspx?a=1385023101.

It was reprocessed with Farsi LaTeX and is now available in PDF, PS and HTML formats below. This re-publication makes reading of the document easier with the intent of making its readership wider.

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This is a translation of a best-selling Japanese book called "The Japan That Can Say No." If you read no further in this introductory note, please at least read this: the group that has typed in and posted this translation wishes to secure for it the widest possible distribution. Please mail [this document] either in print or electronically, to colleagues, newspaper editors, members of the national and local government, academics, radio talk-show hosts, friends, and family; hand them out at work; leave piles of them by the coffee machine. Note that the book is rather short, and so can be conveniently Xerox-copied.

By the time of the Iranian revolution in 1978 there was recognition and consensus of many of the thoughts that first appeared in جلال آل‌احمد 's غرب زدگى published and subsequently sensored in 1964.

This book played a significant role on the path that has brought Iran to where it is today. It remains necessary that it be read widely and that it be readily available to anyone who wishes to read it.

In 2008 I attempted to locate an Internet published copy of the book. I found it at: http://www.islamicecenter.com/ketaabkhaaneh/gharbzadegi/gharbzadegi

That publication however does not accommodate cover to cover reading as a book. I took that text and formatted it more like a traditional book and am web publishing it in PDF and Postscript formats.

Here it is.

[NOTYET: Make the case for importance of web publication. And that a sequel is needed.]

I dedicate this restoration effort to all tax payers to the American federal government who recognize that by being a financier of such atrocities, they have blood on their hand and who are doing something about preventing such atrocities in future.

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In english "free" is confusing because when using the term "free", it sometimes mean free of charge, sometimes free of speech, and sometimes both !

So we want to encourage the use of the word "Libre" when the freedom aspect of "free" is intended.

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Part of Khodzadgi

This article is part of tha series of Khodzadegi (Self-Toxxication) articles. The trust of Khodzadegi is that when the balance between self and society is overly in favor of the individual, as it is in America to the extreme, professions start to die.

Death of the American Academic

Academics play an important role in the well being of the society. Their role falls into two broad categories:

Teaching

Research

The process that has made the American economic model the American societal model has corrupted both teaching and research. I use my own school (and my son’s) – University of Washington – as an example and case study.

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Khodzadegi (Self-Toxication) is the disease that inflicts a society when capitalism becomes not just the economic model, but also the societal model as well. It takes an Iranian Software Engineer to identify America as a terminally ill society and to identify the ramifications of propagation of the Western Intelectual Property Regime to the East. It may be too late for America, but there is an Eastern solution.

Many symptoms of the rotting of the American society have become more clear in the past several years. The absolute total failure of health care, lack of truth in mainstream American media, bogus invasions of sovereign land are some such symptoms. These in turn signal failures of the professions of Journalism, Medicine and Politics in America.

The ill that has brough these symptoms is that capitalism kills professions.

There are measures that members of each profession should take to defend their profession. The key measure that I focus on for my profession (Software Engineering) is the rejection of Intelectual Property regime.

In raw American model of capitalism money rules all and the notion of a profession is limited to that of a revenue source for the individual.

Needless to say that model leads to societies the likes of America.

However, elsewhere with humanity in the picture, society and professions have responsibilities towards each other.

Progress and change (e.g., technology) bring about situations where the welfare of the society may be adversely impacted unless the profession most intimate with that change acts on behalf of the society for the benefit of the society.

The Internet has had profound effects on societies and as an Internet engineer, I have certain responsibilities.

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This article explains the flaws in the design of the metric system and provides a rationale for why it has not been universally adopted.