Hashemian Blog Web Tools, Financial Markets, Technology Friday, July 03, 2009 Google Translate, Persian  Google Translate has been around for some time. you paste in a block of text or a URL, set the source and target languages and off it goes, translating. Aside from the omnipresent Spanish, German, and French translations, Google had been steadily adding other languages to its list, save one, Persian (known as Farsi in Persian language,) until now. It's a well-known fact that Iranians are one of the most active Internet users in the world, certainly far and above the others in Middle East. That is more noteworthy given the censorship and restrictions by the government. I wonder what the activity level would be if people are given complete freedom of expression. Then again, it may just be the political situation that has given rise to the Internet-savvy generation who has been pushed into harnessing technology for its causes, but I digress. It seems that the interest surrounding the post-election turmoil in Iran finally pushed Google into adding Persian to the list of their languages. They should have done it a long time ago, but better late than never. The Persian translation page is in alpha mode (read, crude), but it's a good start. Being fluent in Persian, I tried the translator for a number of sites and text-passages, and I give it a barely passing grade translating to and from English. In most cases it was coherent enough to get the main concepts across. Of course, translation technologies as a whole still have a long way to go, and they may never reach human proficiency. As an example, this Persian sentence: با گوگل ترجمه فارسی در حال حاضر ، شما دیگر باید با دوستانم تماس فارسی تبلیغ خود را به دولت ایران را برای شما ترجمه :) is translated from: With Google translating Persian now, you no longer need to call your Persian friends to translate Iranian government propaganda for you :) Not exactly a perfect translation. Here's the Persian translation of this blog's home page. google,translation,google translate,persian,farsi,iran,language translation Labels: google, technology <Google Translate, Persian> // posted by rh 0 comments Tuesday, June 30, 2009 Amazon Vs. Internet Sales Tax  As an Amazon Associate (you can see the banners even on this page), I have been following the spat between Amazon and the cash-strapped states that are legislating Internet sales taxes. The states argue that Amazon Associates in their jurisdictions are tantamount to company branches constituting presence and therefore any sales made to their residents are subject to state sales taxes. Amazon counters that associates do not add up to physical presence and therefore it should not be required to collect sales taxes on behalf of those states. To put its money where its mouth is, Amazon has terminated its relationship with affiliates in North Carolina, Rhode Island, and Hawaii and has vowed to do the same in other states where such laws are passed. California, for example, is one such state that Amazon could axe its associates if the state decides to go through with an online sales tax law. Admitting bias in this debate, I think Amazon is right and the states are being short-sighted for something that doesn't amount to much money anyways. By pushing Amazon and others into terminating their resident associates, not only would they lose potential sales tax dollars, but they would financially harm their own residents who would most likely spend their earnings in their own states as well as pay income tax on their Amazon earnings. Online affiliates should be considered nothing more than advertising vehicles. If a company places an advertising in a state's newspaper, that doesn't constitute presence. A Web page is just like any other publication, the only difference being that it's online. There are other factors that complicate matters even more. What if the Web servers used by an associate are housed in a state different than the associate's residence? Suddenly that state may want a piece of the sales taxes too. What if an associate has a second home in another state where weekends are spent tweaking the Web site? In the end, if many states succeed in passing Internet sales tax laws, Amazon will most likely pull the plug on its associates program completely. Or it may decide to only work with associates from a handful of states that are too lucrative to walk away from. That may be bad for Amazon, but it's even worse for those states that would in fact cut off their residents from a source of income, possibly forfeiting tax earnings to other states who may be wise enough not to pass such laws and, as the result, harm their residents and ultimately themselves in the process. amazon,sales tax,income tax,internet sales tax,amazon affiliates, Labels: internet, law, tax <Amazon Vs. Internet Sales Tax> // posted by rh 0 comments Monday, June 15, 2009 Cell Phone Tax  Saw this article the other day that makes one wonder how desperate the government must be. Seems like if you have a company-issued cell phone and you use it for anything personal, the value of that use should be reported as income to be taxed. So guess if I'm in the office and scribble a personal note on a piece of paper, check email, get water from the cooler or coffee from the pot, or have lunch at my desk while surfing the Web, I should pay taxes on the value of all these. I wonder if Google employees pay taxes on all the extra benefits they receive from the company, like free food and gym. Anyways, I don't need to worry about the cell phone tax. I don't have a cell phone nor do I want one. irs,income tax,cell phones Labels: financial, tax <Cell Phone Tax> // posted by rh 0 comments Monday, June 08, 2009 Google or Bing  Microsoft is nothing if not persistent. Last week the company unveiled the latest incarnation of its search engine called Bing. I don't know, but this is probably the 5th iteration of the company's attempt to force itself onto the psyche of the net searchers. You've got to give Microsoft credit for trying. Squeezed by the champion, Google, on one side and the runner-up, Yahoo, on the other, Microsoft keeps on trying and trying and trying. So far they have yet to chip away at the search market share in a meaningful way and this latest salvo, as far as I can tell, is far from impressive. Bing looks sleek for sure but it's so obvious that the underlying engine is the same old algorithm as before. Adding a nice graphic and a bunch of bells and whistles is well and good, but winning converts is another story. To be fair, I tried Bing for a little while, only to slide right back into Google's arms. Don't blame me for being faithful to Google. You did it too. But it's not blind faith. Google still produces much more relevant results without the Web 2.0 trickery, and at the end of day the one that produces higher quality at the same price wins the eyeballs. What really surprised me was when I plugged the terms "search engine" into Google. Google's own site was nowhere to be found in the results page. The top 3 results were AltaVista, Dogpile, and Ask.com. Does anyone really use these search engines anymore? Over on the right-hand side where Google displays sponsored ads, Bing was at the top of the list. It appears that even Google is excited about Microsoft's new search engine, if only to charge them a premium for a top sponsorship spot. It's almost like Google is saying, "who, me worry?" google,microsoft,bing,search engines,yahoo Labels: google, Microsoft, web <Google or Bing> // posted by rh 0 comments Friday, June 05, 2009 Robocopy Slow on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008  A few years ago when I needed to synchronize large collection of files for a number of Windows Server 2003 hosts I stumbled upon a Windows Resource Kit utility named Robocopy. This is a great file synchronization tool with lots of switches that can quickly copy entire folders from one Windows host to another along with their NTFS data such as dates and security details, yielding exact duplicates. There are a number of tools on the market that can do the job, but Robocopy is free, fast, and easy to use. I had a number of hosts auto-synchronized using Robocopy in scheduled tasks and they worked admirably without any hassles. It's one of those set-it-and-forget-it utilities that once configured, it doesn't need any further attention. Apparently Robocopy was such a useful tool that Microsoft decided to bundle it with Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008. There's even a GUI interface for it for those less inclined to run it from a command prompt. The newer bundled version may have a few extra switches but is otherwise almost identical to the previous versions that were part of the Resource Kit. There's also one more difference that is perhaps less noticeable. It runs substantially slower that the past versions. I discovered the performance issue today while doing a routine check on the scheduled tasks I had configured for our newer Windows Server 2008 hosts. It appeared that the Robocopy tasks I had set up on the new servers were taking considerably longer time to finish than comparable tasks configured on Windows Server 2003 hosts. The copy operations were still being performed flawlessly but the completion times were drastically longer, specially for servers with large numbers of folders and files. I spent a number of hours investigating this issue on multiple servers. I took various measurements, tweaked networking parameters, and used various Robocopy switches and values, but no matter what I did the performance issue kept persisting. The Solution Out of options and with no solutions at hand, I made one final attempt that I hadn't thought of before. I copied an older version of Robocopy (a version that came with the Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit) to one of the Windows Server 2008 hosts and proceeded to synchronize folders using that version. To my amazement, the copy operation completed as fast as it used to do under Windows Server 2003. We're not talking a small improvement here. The job ran over 40 times faster than it had using the newer bundled copy of Robocopy. Incredulous, I tested this multiple times on multiple servers and the results were the same. The older version of Robocopy dramatically outperformed the newer version even when executed on Windows Server 2008. There you have it. If you are not happy with the speed of Robocopy on Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, give the older version, included with Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit, a try and see if it does the same for you as it did for me. There are a couple of caveats here you should be aware of. First, I checked and rechecked my results quite extensively but I wouldn't claim that to be exhaustive. Do your own detailed verification before you let the old Robocopy loose on your hosts. Second, I ran the old version of Robocopy (a 32-bit image) on 64-bit Windows Server 2008 hosts and as mentioned, I had great results. But that version of Robocopy is not even supported on 64-bit Windows Server 2003, let alone Windows Server 2008. So I suppose there is a slight inherent risk of malfunction. For me, that risk is worth the performance gain, but your risk tolerance may be lower. robocopy,windows,windows server,microsoft,windows resource kit,vista Labels: computers, Microsoft <Robocopy Slow on Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008> // posted by rh 0 comments

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