Microsoft at their game

Want a perfect example of how Microsoft makes business?
Read an open letter to Steve Ballmer, in recent post on a blog by François Bancilhon.
Two best describing quotes from the letter:
This:

Then, your people get in the game and the deal got more competitive. I would not say it got dirty, but someone could have said that.

and this:

Wow! I’m impressed, Steve! What have you done to these guys to make them change their mind like this? It’s quite clear to me, and it will be to everyone. How do you call what you just did Steve? There is various names for it, I’m sure you know them.

In every joke... No2

I've mentioned before, that often, jokes reflect our real life in great accuracy.
This one I've received over email, a few days ago.

A "Zaporojetz" has collided with "Volga" belonging to a General from the FSB.
In short, the driver of the "Zaporojetz" has turned out to be a smuggler, a terrorist, a spy....

Actually, one poor fellow was sentenced guilty for turning on some crazy hotshot path, who driving at speed just below 200Kph. Unfortunately for the poor guy, the "pilot" that had died at the crash site, was from the leading elite, dooming the unfortunate driver before the trial has even began.

The Russian way

While American legislators work to promote freedom of speech, Russian legislators do it in their special way:

"Russian parliament was introduced a bill proposing to register information on each unit transfers of video/audio compilation, software and database on any medium. In addition, manufacturers will be allowed to sell equipment designed for copying listed information (such as typewriters CD and DVD drives), only those with a license for it. Approval of the bill could result in serious problems for the equipment manufacturers as well as for ordinary users who have to register even video recording made by a mobile phone. "

In short, welcome Orwell's 1984.

In my opinion it could be one of the two, or both:
First option is ground checking, what if
Second is a public relations stunt. To make Putin and his heir to be seen as a better alternative. Putin will come as a knight in shiny armor and "save Russia" from evil plot.

Useful Eclipse key shortcuts

I've collected some useful Eclipse key shortcuts:

	Key combination	Effect
	Ctrl+Shift+C	Comment/Uncomment selection
	Ctrl+Shift+/	Comment selection
	Ctrl+D	Delete line
	Ctrl+Del	Delete next word
	Ctrl+Bksp	Delete previous word
	Ctrl+Shift+Del	Delete till EOL
	Alt+Shift+M	Extract method
	Ctrl+F	Find and replace
	Ctrl+K	Find next
	Ctrl+Shift+K	Find previous
	Ctrl+L	Go to line
	Ctrl+Shift+D	Go to matching bracket
	Ctrl+Shift+enter	Insert line above
	Ctrl+Enter	Insert line below
	Ctrl+Shift+F	Auto format selected code

Enjoy :)

Bloggers are included in the new federal journalist shield

Read this piece by Nate Anderson.
We will just have to ask our legally literate friends, what does this new bill actually mean.

Hippo bites a 12 y.o. in a zoo

A 12 year old boy was attacked by hippo in Ramat Gan zoo called "Safari".
You might ask, how might such thing happen?
Well, the explanation is simple, let's just quote the boy's father:

"There was row of a few dozens of cars has stopped, and everybody went out of their cars and began photographing. My son went out to take pictures, as well. Then, suddenly, the hippo ran out to him, grabbed him by his leg and flanged him into the air..."

Right...
It is not that there are about every few dozens of meters big signs telling in 3 languages "Do not leave your vehicles!". They probably should present them with pictures, just like in comic books. Writing in the man's mother language, apparently, just wasn't enough.

But wait there is more! Read what the man has else to say:

"Me and my brother in law, "jumped" at it pulled the boy. We fought it and threw stones at it, until it ran away. Usually I carry a knife, but today it wasn't on me. If i had it with me, I would have killed the beast. I've saved the kid, and luckily it ended this way. If it would grub him at the head it dragger to the lake, it would have ended with death."

What a moron.

African hippo is one of the most dangerous animals in the zoo, and in Africa, hippos are accountable for more human casualties than any other animal. They are highly territorial and will defend their territory fiercely from any intruder.

Business first, logic later.

Our beloved OEM's keep stuffing their product's hard drives with all that annoying bundleware. It even comes to an absurd situations:
Lenovo tech support advises to remove Norton Antivirus in order to improve the appalling performance it causes, while Lenovo keeps bundling Symantec products with all of their consumer and many of the business products.
Pure genius.
This is where money dictates the logic.

Pricey future

I'm so glad that Steve Ballmer saw that the future is in advertising. That's why Microsoft is loosing $1 billion on MSN.
Lucky them, to have deep enough pockets (on our expense).

"Hugo Chavez - a pop star"

This is the headline that I've read in one of the online editions five days ago (I've been busy).
It says that Hugo has recorded an album and it will be shipped nation wide.

When a president records an alboum of traditional music with a bunch of leading artists on a TV show for the occasion, and the CD's are shipped nation wide on the state's expense, this is as a clear sign as it gets. It must be an autocratic regime.

Raw Trerapee

Thanks to Linux Action Show podcast, I've learned about Raw Therapee - a cross platform raw image file editor.
It is free (as a free beer) and clearly based on open source projects, unfortunately it is not an open source project itself. Too bad.
On the bright side, it has a nice set of features, and a solid GUI.
Anyways it is a great piece of software.

A wish granted

Remember me hoping for SCO filing for bankruptcy?
They are!
Not completely destroyed thou, but I hope that investors lost enough money to teach them a lesson.

It must be the date...

It seems that my birthday is some sort of magnet for bad news...

Happy birthday to me!

Birthday balloon from my sister. :)

Apple stubled upon Firefox's bug

The new iPods are out, but I wont be writing about them, there are just too many who already do. ;)
I want to notice that Apple online store site manages to hang Firefox.
They have probably an undiscovered Firefox's bug since the site does load in both IE and Opera, very sluggishly however.

SCO "You are stealing from us, but we won't tell you what" looses legal battle

Happy day to all!

Well, one idiotic, yet dangerous legal battle is over.
Court has stated that all rights for Unix and UnixWare are property on Novell and SCO can't claim any right on it. Furthermore, SCO can't sue anyone for "stealing" something that they don't own and must transfer all the royalties collected by SCO from Unix licences (often by using intimidation) to their rightful owner - Novel.
As a result SCO shares dipped 71% in a single day. I'm waiting for the day that SCO would file for bankruptcy.

Read Groklaw for more.

Inconceivable

I can't believe that that Ehud Olmert is still our PM.
Not this imbecile is speaking of giving parts of Jerusalem to Palestinians.
In what kind of dream world he is living in I don't know.
I don't want to know.
I just want him gone.
For good.

P.S.
Speaking of Ehuds, I would be delighted to see Ehud Barak to join Olmert on his way out of politics.
Even more delighted, to see them go to the place where they belong - behind bars.

The road Internet sensorship laid with IP legislation

Belgian court of law has concluded that the ISPs (Internet Service Providesr) are responsible for IP violation enforcement. Meaning that Belgian ISPs will have to block file sharing in their networks.
What next, the electric companies would be responsible for copyright violation, since the are providing electricity needed for file sharing?

The true meaning of this decision is that the ISPs will have to enforce censorship on the internet. ISPs, or actually the IP owners will tell you what you may or may not do with your Internet.

Lets help this poor oppressed Muslim

Ynet reports that in Iranian newspaper "Ya-Asraat" published a story about the "horrible oppression" that Iranian Muslim "suffer" in the US. They needed some photo of an unknown bearded man for the illustration of "such oppressed" Iranian Muslim. They chose no one other then Avigdor Lieberman.
That just shows how "accurate" the media is in most Muslim countries.

Fedora 7 impressions

I'm by no means a Linux guru. I do know how to make some thing done or how to setup some servers, but not building a Linux system from scratch.
I'm telling you all this since I'm about to tell about my user experience with Fedora 7.

The whole impression, that I have to work harder to get simple tasks done.

At a glance it appears to have more professional flavor than Ubuntu, great artwork (unlike Ubuntu) and a more security driven approach. Here, however the benefits that I've seen end.

For starters, YUM sucks. It is slow, unresponsive with a lot less packages than Synaptic.
Next the tools that were made for ease of administration, the one that would benefit a lot to the overall impression of the distribution, wouldn't work because of some security settings, even with root privileges.
I couldn't make VNC to work for no obvious reason.
Apache wouldn't serve any pages even thou the setup seems to be just fine.

My encounters with Fedora have always been brief. Perhaps it has something to do with the thing that I'm accustomed to, yet neither Debian nor Open Suse weren't as much frustrating as Fedora as has been.

So far, I'm stuck with Fedora because of some hardware manufacturer for a specific, project. It means that I'll have to give it another chance. Who knows, perhaps I'll change my mind?

When pigs cry

A caricature in the 'Israeli' newspaper. The captions say: 'Go trust that Gaydamak!'
Commenting his withdrawal to buy 'Tiv Taam' and make it kosher.

Name your true reasons

Everybody are concerned about the air pollution and the global warming.
One of the sides of this concern is many government's stimulation of more modern and less polluting vehicles. Newer and more economical cars, use less fossil fuels meaning less air pollution. Meanwhile the politicians and automobile industry are happy either, more new cars are sold more money pours, more jobs for the people, while less mechanical related accidents.

Well there is a pit fall that I wanted to mention. What about the pollution caused in the production of all the new vehicles? What about pollution from all the old cars needed to be recycled? Has anyone calculated the benefits of making new cars versus keeping the old? If someone did, who did get to see the results?

I have no issues with all the benefits to economics and traffic safety, just don't expect me to blindly believe that it is done for the ecological reasons and definitely not about global warming. You couldn't care less.

I had a hunch...

I've always thought that the neo-Nazis are a bunch of jerk-offs. Well now it is a scientific fact.

A new study has found that many more women are leaving economically moribund Eastern Germany. The result is a new, frustrated and largely male underclass. And many of them find succor in the neo-Nazi scene.

I wish...

Lebanon army is trying, not too successfully to crush the Palestinian terrorists. I wish them all the luck in the world at this task. I just wish that Israel would get at least half as much tolerance from the world when we try to do the same.

A non convenient victim

As you might have heard, that a few residents of Sderot, backed by the ministry of the Foreign Affairs, went to Paris, with the remains of the Qussam and Al-Quds rockets to show the French and the world their suffering.

Guess what? Nobody (almost) cares. Just a handful of journalists bothered to come to the press conference. I don't expect any academic boycotts over Sderot's continues bombardment either.

RIAA: Radio Ga G...ive us your money

RIAA is always on the prowl.
Now, they put their sights on the terrestrial radio. However the radio is there for a long time, and has some teeth also, therefore it won't be a helpless prey.

I call this whole RIAA and MPAA attitude a legal racketing.

The masterpiece

A poster that I saw on one of the busy junctions:

The Hebrew captions say:
(Avigdor) Lieberman
(is) the "puddle" of
the Russian mafia.
(He is) Selling out Israel.

Mikhail (Michael) Chernoy (beside the photo)

I would really like to know who is the author of this masterpiece.
Unfortunately, he or she didn't bother to sign his or hers name on it.

Admissible vs inadmissible

Quoting the IMAO blog: "You can't spell "unethical" without the UN".

Another screw up from the record industry

It is another example of how greed managed to screw up a good thing.
Remember Pandora.com?
This fabulous web based music service, offers personally adapted internet radio, and thanks to some greedy IP owners, it is available to US listeners only. My guess that they weren't happy enough with the standard licensing fee.

They are so shortsighted that it....
Ahhh, what is the point in saying the same thing over and over...

Not so funny T-shirts

There is a fashion to print all kinds of nonsense on T-shirts, and not surprisingly, it becomes ugly sometimes.
At best, it ends up with tourist in China buying a T-shirt with pretty hieroglyphs saying "I'm a stupid foreigner, who can't read Chinese".
At worst, a British company selling the following shirts with the following message:

For the non-Russian speaking folks, the writing around the Russian coat of arms says:
"We will clean Russia from all non-Russians".
Definitely not funny.

Thank you Novell, very much

Novell - Microsoft deal goes according predicted path. After signing patent swap agreement they started their FUD attack on Linux.
This time Microsoft claims that Linux and other open source software violates about 230 patents owned by Microsoft.

Thank you Novell, very much.

Update:
The responses to MS FUD from Linux Torvads, Sun and Open Source Foundation.

The obvious confession

According to Mignews.com (Rus), Hezbollah has confessed that all of their actions are coordinated and approved by Tehran.
That was much obvious, the only question stands, what do they have to gain from this confession?

One possible explanation is that the Iranians want their neighbors to know who is the boss in town.
Another, that the Hezbollah want their rivals to know that there is a greater power behind them.

Husband for rent

Quite amusing. In case you have wondered, the add offers all kinds of household repairs.

Bringing the worst news...

Yesterday I've watched a TV program dedicated to people whose job is bring the families the worst possible news.
Imagine that you have to knock on the door, to tell a mom that her son was killed.
Or to tell 5-6 y.o. kids that the father wouldn't come home anymore.
Would you be able to do that?

By the way, as far as I know, Israel is the only country in the world, where families get to knw about the disaster in a such humane manner. Anywhere else, it is done by phone call, at best, or by standard official letter delivered by mail, at the worst.

What a character!

Yes, he is drunk. Loves to chat too.

Kazakh answer to Borat

As if an answer to Borat, Qazaqfil'm has released the Nomad, an historical epic set in 18th-century Kazakhstan, where a young man is destined to unite the country's three warring tribes.

Boris Berezovsky decided to piss off Kremlin

In his interview to the Guardian, Berezovsky has claimed to bankroll a coup against Putin.

I don't really understand, what did he try to achieve with this interview, since it only helps to the Kremlin gang to portray him as an ultimate criminal besides Mikhail Hodorkovsky. Actually Kremlin didn't really needed his help anyway since they were doing just fine even beforehand.

Like blaming the assassination of Alexander Litvinenko on him. One of the theories is that Litvinenko was assassinated in order to undermine Berezovsky's refugee status in the UK.

100% pirated

Here is a perfect example for how DRM and skyrocketing the prices benefit only one party - the pirates.

Short vacation

I'm going for a short vacation for 3 days. Long time since I had any. Perhaps I'll do some mobile blogging on the road.

Laughing at M$ Zune expense

An oldie, but nevertheless.
Enjoy!

How much maliciously greedy can you be?

How much maliciously greedy can you be?
The answer from American record and motion picture industries - never enough.

RIAA is suing another 10 y.o. girl, while suing the satellite radio service because there might be a way for subscribers to save the broadcasted compositions. Well done!

Non PC rant...

In oder to fully demonstrate their readinesses for peace talks, Palestinians have conducted the following activities:

• A week of the Holy Martyrs (Shahids) in Beit Lechem university, in order to commemorate the "freedom fighter" Sheikh Ahmed Yassin
  
• New "celebration fireworks" rockets were tested in evacuated settlement Neve Dekalim by peace movement Hammas
• The League of Arab Nations has presented a just claim to stop the Jewish immigration to Israel

Ahh... Anв we are supplying them with electricity and transferring money to them.
Let them drown in their own shit.

Microsoft Executive: If You're Going To Steal Software, Steal From Us

Pirating Microsoft's software actually helps Microsoft, this is what many smart people said in the recent 15 years.
This time Microsoft's executive admits it. And this comes from a company wasting millions on DRM technology research, and infesting their products with it to the core.

While buying Microsoft's products is way worse then pirating it, pirating is a bad thing as well. Because in both ways there is only one looser, the consumer.

New banknote...

From my email box:
The new banknote from the Bank of Israel:

Justice, sort of...

One of the Neturei Karta who participated in Holocaust denial conference in Tehran, found out that he no longer welcome in the Haredi community.

Moshe Aryeh Friedman got famous for the lovely picture of him kissing with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Last Friday he was beaten by other members of the ultra religious movement during events to commemorate one of the leader of the Hasidic movement Ali Melekh from Lijaysk.
When the word passed that there is one of the Holocaust deniers is a member of one of the delegations, it caused a storm among the other delegations. A group of Hasidim have beaten him up and took away his clothes that identify his as a religious Jew, to the satisfaction of all other members.

For Geeks only

OS/2 Warp

Purim!

On a happy note.
It was Purim yesterday!
The kids were walking out of schools in costumes of every shape form or color. Many workers in various places like banks, offices and stores were wearing funny hats, and colors on their faces.
Even the beggars were not missing out:

Developer friendly

I have a feeling that there is an aspect of GNU/Linux, *BSD and other open source development that should have more attention.
In recent years Linux has gone a long way, improving both in server and desktop applications. however in order to surpass it's competitors, it needs to satisfy the needs of both users and the developers.
There are a lot of great tools for developers in open source community, but there is almost no open source rapid development tools present.
One of the most valuable resources that a developer has is his time. This is the reason why many developers prefer Windows as a development platform. Open source community desperately needs something like the Visual Studio in order to bring the developers to their side.
Open source must become developer friendly again.

The media IS to blame

I watched a press conference where MK Asterina Taterman defending herself from the onslaught waged on her by the media.
DISGUSTING!
Disgusting when the press keeps hammering the person, even after he or she presented the proof of the press being wrong. Disgusting was the attitude of the Channel 2, where the reporter allowed himself a cynical remark "the media is always to blame" commenting Taterman's defense.
In this case, yes, you are to blame and guilty as hell!
The attitude of the media, that it can crush anyone they wish, destroy his good name, just because they don't like his political agenda, without the opportunity to defend himself or herself is almost criminal.
Dear journalists, let me remind you your job, because it seams, that you have forgot, what is your job about.
Your job is about bringing the information to the people and letting them to draw their own conclusions. Your job is to bring this information in as objective way as it can be done, no matter how difficult it is. It is not your job to tell us what to think.

Could Dell's IdeaStorm be a roar of a comming avalanche?

The whole tech related media is in a buzz about the Dell IdeaStorm project where Dell's customers had an opportunity to give feedback about the company's products and services.

The most common request was Dell machines with Linux preinstalled with or instead of Windows. Among other requests were: Open Office instead of Microsoft Office, machines without OS preinstalled and many more.

There are skeptics that say that talk is cheap, and it is quite possible that Dell would actually don nothing about people's requests. However there are publications that Dell executives are showing interest in the results of the project.

How comes the real question, should Dell adopt Linux, would it trigger other major players such and HP, Lenovo and others to follow?
If it would, then it would cause an avalanche effect, making Linux Desktop an industry standard in a single day.

What is also interesting, what dirty tricks Microsoft would attempt in order to prevent this from happening and what will they do, if, or when they fail?

There are still a lot of "if"s, but I will hold my fingers crossed, and no, not for Microsoft.

Just an accident

Meir of Moscow, Yuriy Lujkov.

When I first saw this face, I hoped that someone had actually used his hands or some blunt object to cause this, but was disappointed to know that it was just a ski accident. After all, there are more then enough reasons to "rub" his face.

Disclaimer: this is not a call for violence, even if he is on a long list of crooked politicians that I deeply dislike.

Steve against DRM?

Well, public opinion has started to bother Apple Computer's founder, Steve Jobs.
On Apple's site there is Steve's letter, where he opposes DRM, and points the blame at the recording industries.

I really don't know if he was sincere, or it was just to improve his public image, it is a good thing. The more time that DRM issue arises, the greater are the chances that it would make enough negative public sentiment and awareness, so the politicians would have no choice, but to outlaw the DRM.

Update:
Robert Cringely had an interesting insight on this matter. A must-read.

Peace keepers in Lebanon II

Well, obviously, it was something to be expected.
Mignews reports (Rus) that there are already Hezbollah flags on the Lebanon - Israeli border, while the UN and the Lebanese armed forces prefer not to interfere.

For now there are just flags, but the bunkers are just a matter of time.

Remember me telling you that the UN is a joke?

Rephrasing Henry A. Kissinger

Rephrasing Henry A. Kissinger:

Ninety percent of the UN members give the other ten percent a bad reputation.

Morning train prayer

I saw something beautiful this morning.
On the train from Beer Sheba to Tel Aviv, I happened to be in a car with a few religious people. One of them started putting on a tefillin for the morning prayer, the "Shacharit" and soon others followed him. On the way more and more people started joining them. Old and young, army soldiers, and people going to work, Ashkeazi ans Sefearadi, all joined in a common prayer.
I was touched, by seeing this moving improvised synagogue.

Afterwards one of the soldiers asked me if I was a journalist. LOL! He saw me photographing the people praying. I told him that I'm a blogger. Had to explain, what it is a blog afterwards thou.

From him I understood, that was pretty spontaneous, thou it happens occasionally on praying hours of the "Mincha", "Shacharith" and "Arvit".

The farmer and the thief

I suppose it is an old new for you, but I going to talk about the case when an Israeli farmer, named Shay Dromi, shot two of four Bedouin thieves, killing one, wounding another.


There are several perspectives to this incident.
One is that these farmers at the south of of Israel, and not only them are being robed of their property constantly for the last decade and it is getting worse. The police fails to stop or even minimize the proportions of this plague and the farmers and residents of nearby and not so nearby town and cities pay the price. A week and a half ago in Rehovot, a police officer was stubbed in the neck with a screw driver by a Bedouin car thief. He is still in critical condition.
In this particular case the farm owner has slept in his barn in order to protect hos property. Only one month before, like in this case, his dogs were poisoned and his tractor was stolen. This time they were back for sheep.
It is up to the court of law to decide was there an act of self defense or not, but our laws and our courts are a part of that problem.
Unfortunately, while the police is inefficient in apprehending the thieves, they are too effective in prosecuting the defenders of their property.
And the thieves know thins, and they get bold. They go to steal fearlessly, since they know that they are protected by the law.
Now this farmer is going to face criminal charges for murder, in best case for man slaughter.

The second perspective is that from the Bedouin side. The government, busy in filling their pockets and dodging criminal investigations, are too busy to take a look at the abysmal situation the Bedouin population is in. 80% of the Bedouin population in unregistered settlements are unemployed. They are driven away from their traditional way of life and left unequipped to move on. Therefore many turn to crime.

The third perspective, is how the press covers the event.
While most media channels described the impossible situation the farmer was in, and to some extent the situation that the of Bedouin population, some decided to look at it from their subjective point of view. Haaretz, for example, "forgot" to mention that the Mr. Drori was attempting to provide medical assistance to the men he shot when the police and the medical teams arrived. They have decided to tell that he "wasn't cooperative with the investigators and demanded a lawyer", which is, as far as I remember, his legal right.
The public, on the other hand, judging from the comments sections in the MSM web sites, are very supportive of Shay Dromi with an approximate ratio of 300:1.

What happened to The Thought Mill?

I've just noticed that The Thought Mill, run by Deborah is not available.
I hope it is only temporally.

Deborah, is everything alright?

Changing the look

Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert has passed a cosmetic surgery to reshape his brows.

Nice try prime minister, but your eyes still look lying.

Perhaps I'll be back this time...

Every weekend I try to find the time to blog, yet every time I find other important things to do.
i thought that now that I have my new toy it would also help my blogging, but... yep you know the excuse - every time I find other important things to do.
Now that I do have ideas to blog about, I struggle to find the time.

I can't promise but I'll try to improve... :)