I downloaded a version of wxpython for Python 2.4, but the installer looks like it was trying to locate a 2.4 version of Python somewhere else.

Any help would be appreciated.

John

I did claim that
Iran “was” the most democratic country in the middle east.
that does not mean that its “Real” democarcy as I would like democracy to be.

I do think that Iran “was” great democracy for any one who bellives in Islamic constituion the same as Israel is great democracy as long as you are Zionist.

these claims are as kind of “counter” examples for democracy of Israel.

unfortunately latest elections did make me understand that the Iranian regime “does not even obey its own laws” and is moving towards dictatorship.

There is a minority of people who are genuinely supporters of the regime (some estimate them as being 10 to 20 percent of the population). There are also others who think it’s not appropriate for Iranians to talk to foreigners about the horrible actions of the regime. Some of them justify this as keeping a good international image for our country, while others say letting these things known might cause a foreign invasion of Iran. I cannot agree with any of them. Showing a good but false image of Iran helps no one and fearing a foreign invasion cannot possibly justify hiding the oppression of people.

The fact that I and many others write whatever we want in our blogs and don’t fear going to jail is not that the regime is tolerant. They have done everything in their power to prevent this, including jailing and torture of bloggers, but they cannot possibly track all the people who write anonymously on their blogs many of which are hosted abroad. The regime has gone as far as asking people to register their websites and blogs (they later reduced it to registering those blogs with a top level domain name). This has become a joke to the people. Virtually no one has followed this law, and they found out it’s very hard to enforce it.

So how free are we? Very little as far as the government is concerned, but we have learned the ways of civil disobedience. We push the limits of the dress code as far as we can (and sometimes get arrested for it!). We drink alcohol at private parties though it is forbidden. The same goes for any other law that we can ignore or push to limits. And the current demonstrations are another example. Constitutionally speaking, we have every right to have peaceful protests, article 27 of the constitution clearly states that and article 9 prohibits the regime from passing laws to limit the constitutional freedoms of people. But the regime does not even obey its own laws. The constitution of the Islamic Republic definitely does not guarantee us democracy and freedom, but if they would follow it, people might have been happy enough to let them have their rule, but this way they are nothing but tyrants, and sooner or later they have to go.

Isn’t there a difference between posting anti-regime opinions and posting information on upcoming demonstrations and calling people to show up?

I would expect the Iranian regime to focus their interest on the later. It is possible to use automatic filtering to dig such messages from the mass of information flowing on the Iranian Internet.

I hope you will notice this comment and share your opinion on the following:

In the western media Iran is often described as a terrible dark dictatorship regime oppressing the people. On the other hand I have a friend who insists Iran is actually the only model democracy in the Middle East.

This duality shows up in many other ways.

For example, in your own words when you write that you and many other Iranians publicly express your anti-regime political opinion without fear and on the other hand you write that once someone is arrested the regime will make them confess to crimes they never did - which implies torture of political prisoners.

On one hand there is a general election of the president and parliament and half the population has access to the Internet and on the other hand people and even minors are publicly hanged for being homosexual.

On one hand there are reports of people being kidnapped from their houses and hospitals, or shot by police, and on the other hand police brutality in demonstrations does not seem to exceptionally exceed that inflicted by western regimes like the US, France or Israel.

US Los Angeles riots in 1992 - 52 dead
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Los_Angeles_Riots

France civil unrest in 2005 - 2888 arrested
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_civil_unrest_in_France

What is your opinion?
How free would you say you are?
Is Iran a democracy?

I live in Iran, and I regularly post anti-regime material to my blog without much fear, despite the fact that the Islamic Republic is the first government in world to have arrested a blogger.

Even if you regularly twitter or e-mail via HTTPS you are still exposed.

1) They can (and probably did) temporarily block HTTPS communication forcing the people to communicate with regular HTTP.

2) If someone is willing to pay 100,000 USD for the twitter server certificate, someone will deliver it - maybe it is already in the black market. Once they have it they can be the man in the middle for all communication. This could have been done long ago.

3) They control the network and can therefore infect any computer on it by exploiting browser vulnerabilities, no matter where you surf to. Once your computer is infected they can monitor it. If it has a microphone attached, they can even physically listen to anything you say in the vicinity of the computer. This could have been done long ago.

4) University, work-place and Internet cafe computers can potentially be pre-installed with monitoring software - depending on the nature of the regime.

Even in liberal western regimes, governments have confidential sections in the contracts given to communication corporates. You can guess what these sections cover.

Imagine that after 10 years of professional software development I already know the difference between downloads and usage.

I only resent a little when people write nonsense without reading first.

a common mistake made by software developers is to equate downloads with actual usage. people download thousands of software, but a lot of them are never used. this is not limited to downloads only, but people pay for software and not ever using it.

good thing your software is not _downloaded_ millions of times or else you would really go over the top with your rant

its alright to ask for donations, but dont resent them if they dont donate. dont make them look like ungrateful bastards for using your software (if they ever use it at all) and not giving back.

for those you use winpdb regulary and somehow has helped them in anyway, and _have the means_ to donate, should.