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Israeli Government Suspends Microsoft Contracts
MartinB writes "According to The Register, in a double blow to Redmond, the Israeli government has both suspended all government contracts with Microsoft until at least the end of 2004, and Israeli Antitrust Authority director general Dror Strum has ruled that Microsoft is subject to US court limitations. At issue in part is Microsoft's refusal to support Hebrew in Mac versions of Office."
That DOES make Israel the holy land. For linux advocates at least. Bah, I got nothing. But hey, FP?
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
No, wait, the other thing: tedious.
Whats wrong with the world? Seems office on mac was meant for a dream at least in isreal coat of many colors that is!
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
They probably bought licenses for one seat of all of Microsoft's products and then loaded them on every government computer, not to mention all the copies the Israeli government workers took home and installed on their personal PCs
m$ hates god
i have found, you can find,happiness in slavery!
Hope there are no tunnels at the Microsoft compound that could be used for smuggling.
Are the Israelis going to build a wall around Microsoft's buildings?
Interesting story!
I find it very interesting that apple doesn't support Hebrew support either.
This must be too expensive and painful for these big guys to sink the money into it...
Davak
Foolish of Israel to so publicly pick a fight with MS.
Foolish of Microsoft to resist such an upgrade to their own software.
I am an Isreali citizen living in the United States. It's true that I as a professional do almost all of my work in English. But I am writing to say that being able to use my native hebrew means an awful lot to me and my family. It's not a matter of convenience, it touches on our religous and cultural beliefs. I am very glad to see the government take this action.
The linux hacker
I just checked and it seems to be true, though there may be some issues with it.
Microsoft obviously doesn't care about adoption of the Macintosh in Israel, and that makes them a monopoly? WTF?
At issue in part is Microsoft's refusal to support Hebrew in Mac versions of Office.
This is particularly important because the font handling in OS X is beautiful with native support of Hebrew making implementation issues for Microsoft trivial.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
No hewbrew in MS-Office on Mac... So we "ban" Microsoft? Riiight! everyone would do this! (or at least should... :P)
...and we like j00Z too. oh, I get it... Nevermind.
Oi Veh!
Why won't Microsoft support 3% of 7% of the total desktop systems out there?
that arabic, hebrew, and urdu will be supported in mac office 'real soon now'.
Ministry is said to be examining OpenOffice as an alternative.
And all the open sourcers rejoice!
Davak
Both Windoze and the Mac support Unicode fonts so I would assume (maybe wrong on this one :) that the Unicode font sets would work in both worlds -- Mac Unicode on the Macs and Windoze unicode on Windoze and Linux Unicode on Linux ...
Office supports Unicode so, how is it that the Mac using Office can't run multi-national font sets and thus Hebrew, Cyrillic, Chinese, etc.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
Time to strap some explosives onto your body, run into the Israeli public and blow yourself up until you get the contracts you want. I bet you could strap a lot onto Steve Balmer!
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
I thought software internationalization
took some real time to set up initially,
then was easy for each additional language.
What are the technical issues involved?
Thanks, Joel
on Jesus's palm pilot
tcd004
Israel to Gates: Kush mir in tuches!
Do the Jews feel like they are entitled to everything?
Because linux's support for goatse is shit
Amen.
--Chag
Typically, customers revolting against your software is the first sign that things, as they say, "ain't right(tm)". Sometimes, these are the precursors to the death of a company. Unfortunately, MS is so large, the normal rules go right out the window.
But if they finally are dying ( which I doubt ), we're in for a hell of a nasty ride.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If they're talking about evaluating OpenOffice as an alterntive, that means MS is not a monopoly. Man, people are stupid.
That (at least at a glance) Open Office seems to have really stepped up the multi-language support... including Hebrew. Next we'll barricade Microsoft's Israel headquarters and make Bill Gates spend a romantic evening with Yasser Arafat...
Jews are born evil. Everyone knows this.
They control the media.
Could be an easy problem solver there if Star or Open Office has it. Does it?
It is a messy subject. Localization decisions are made to open up new markets. For a company to make a decision to localize they have to justify the cost with the new market share. The problem with languages like Catalan (Spanish variant) Nynorsk (Norwegian variant) and Hebrew is that the populations that speak them are almost all fluent in another language that the products are already localized to. There are a few people that are monolingual to these languages but they are generally not the kind of people that use computers.
On the flip side these kinds of languages often carry some sort of cultural significance. The decision not to support looks like a snide towards the culture.
The Chosen ones have a DIVINE RIGHT to have all office apps support their backwards language!
They were pretty happy that MS products didn't work on the sabbath. What really got them mad was that they didn't work any other day either.
This story showed up on The Register a couple of days ago and then Newsforge cited The Reg article after that. But, as yet I have not seen anyone else report it or corroborate the story. It would be really great if some "News" site were to investigate the validity of this story.
why are they entitled to get software from elsewhere? Well, they are YOUR overlords, not Israels.
The Israeli govenment said it temporarily suspended contracts with Microsoft because they cost too much and the economic conditions are not grand. Examining Open Source as an alternative has been going on for quite some time.
As far as the spokesmen for the different government offices go, it's going to be a short while before Israel renews the contracts.
"Programming is life, the rest is mere details"
... for fighting for Urdu and Arabic language support in Microsoft Office! I wonder if native Arabic speakers appreciate this...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
I see plenty of coverage about Palestinians dying from Israeli attacks.
Please PLEASE don't go there with that "The news media only shows israeli's pain!" type rhetoric.
Everbody tries to say the media only shows the opposing side. I see both sides, especially if it's scandal. If I can see it, how come you(and your ilk) cannot?
So please drop that crap.
Mellel : $25 shareware word processing in OS X 10.*. Superfast, ultrastable, damn slick -- sort of what Word used to be in its 5.0 version : just the important things, without any of the bloatware. I've used it for a year now, and it's wonderful. They've just integrated bibliography handling, and their footnote handling is excellent and more useful than Word's.
Most importantly, however, it handles Hebrew like a dream (it was written by two Israeli programmers), as well as a huge number of other languages with different requirements -- such as Arabic and Persian. I find Mellel "just works" in the way Mac OS X does.
Check it out. I'm gushing because Mellel is one of the few bits of "real" Shareware that I use every day for something important, and it does the job amazingly well.
Wouldn't it be wonderful if the Israeli government told MS where to stick it and bought in bulk from RedleX?
Does anyone actually like the Jews besides the Jews? Are they more hated than America? How about an American Jew? Are they the worst? They seem to be trouble makers, worse than the Muslims in their claim to resources and proclamations of being Gods chosen folk, etc. Oh well, they will keep being blown up as they act this way.
The bodycount matters? The number of people who died decides right and wrong? Maybe you should question your Poli Sci 1 professor a little more than it sounds like you do.
The jews are just mad that Microsoft is the last big American corporation not run by jews.
Remember, if you are on the political left of the spectrum, they are not "suicide bombers" they are "freedom fighters."
I always wondered why the Left likes to call those on the Right "Nazis." It seems to me that the Left are the ones that would be happy if the Jews were exterminated.
Hypocrites!
Ya think Ballmer will be flying to Israel in First Class, or Business Class? Or maybe they bought an old SR-71 to get out to these upstart countries _Real Soon Now_? :)
Remember if you are on the political right of this argument it is "homicide bombers" not "suicide bombers"
Sh*t head liberals believe in freedom of expression, but only for those people that express the same thoughts as they do.......
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
Arabs get real excited about Urdu word processors.
wtf?
Way back before you were born, Egypt and everybody tried to wipe Isreal off the map, they stood up, and kicked ass, and ever since then it's been a pride issue on both sides. AFAICT you have the arabs on one side who won't be happy till Isreal is flat gone, and Jews who at worst are pretty damn callous -- but that's called the right of survival.
The hugest irony to me is that both have right-to-left script, both have similar glyph structures, hell both *LOOK* kind of the same. You can tell Jews and Arabs share common genetic history. It reminds me of those two races in the Dark Crystal.
All the college students bitching about the Jews really need to watch out. Western Europeans have a dangerous pogrom tradition that goes back 1000 years. It's a serious case of glass houses.
...the wall around the Gaza Strip and West Bank is actually there to protect the terrorists^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Palestinians from one George W Bush and his war on Islam^H^H^H^H^H terrorism.
Monopolies do not have to be absolute in order to be a monopoly.
Slavery is also illegal, even though the slave could run away. The Master is not in absolute control of the slave either. Imagine the shock and awe when we were able to identify the phenomenon of slaver at all!
This is one of the most informative posts I've seen on slashdot in awhile. A succinct, if not simplified, HOWEVER CORRECT assessment of the mide-east mess.
Under MacOS X, you can *sometimes* do a no-compile Localization, even if you are not the original developer.
I *know* that Office for Mac isn't exactly a well-behaved "normal" Mac app - heck, it isn't even a normal *Carbon* app. I did work at Microsoft as a Mac developer, so I am somewhat familar with the architecture of Office.
My suggestion is that they could look at the possibility of doing a no compile loc themselves, if they have Arabic support (very ironic!).
Both Arabic and Hebrew are hard to support because both require bidirectional (BiDi) text support. Meaning that text is layed out both left to right and right to left.
If your supporting international, French, Spanish are the easiest because you're still dealing with Roman character sets and one direction of layout. You just have to make sure you read the strings in from a resource someplace. Next hardest is Cyrilic languages like Greek or Russian. Next hardest is languages like Japanese where you need to have double byte characters or Unicode. The hardest is Arabic and Hebrew because of BiDi. People may often choose to do an Arabic version and not Hebrew because the market for Arabic is larger.
However, if you've put in BiDi support already and you're already internationalized, getting Hebrew to work shouldn't be insanely hard and could possibly be done by a third party, though there would probably be some bugs they couldn't fix (although they could report these back the MacBU and maybe work something out.)
Or they could use heavy handed "the customer is always right" tactics. Either way...
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I know KDE (and its related tools) support both Hebrew and Arabic, but does OpenOffice do it as well? If not, what are the alternatives?
Slightly off-topic: I've recently tried OpenOffice the latest version and was very impressed how well it converted PowerPoint presentation. I really *hate* when some scientific presentations use PPT format (and give no other alternatives). It doesn't happen that often, but unfortunately it *does* happen. I wish scientific community were a bit more aware of the 'open vs closed standards' issue.
Stupid jews. Figures they'd do something like that.
Three times as many Palestinians have died as have Israelis, but nobody in the mainstream media seems to want to report that fact, expect maybe AFP.
Of course there have been more Palestinian casualties. When they keep BLOWING THEMSELVES UP, what do you expect??
Feature management is a very, very simple concept. You look at what percent of your customers are demanding this or that feature, and what bugs are affecting X percentage of your customers, and make your decisions about how to allocate development resources from there.
With Apple having a sub 5% market share worldwide, MS Office being on perhaps half of those, and perhaps less than 1% of the worldwide Apples requesting Hebrew support, we're talking about a very small customer base here requesting this feature. Especially if there is a bug fix that is affecting 90% of your customers that hasn't been addressed yet.
If this article is true, the Israeli government seems to be strong-arming Microsoft to implement a feature that doesn't make economic sense. What's worse, according to the article, they are suspending MS contracts that have already been signed. I am no contract lawyer, but to me, that sounds very abusive and arbitrary, and would be illegal if anyone but the government were to attempt such an action...
Where the hell do these racist idiots come from? I thought we were all fairly intelligent here, not brain-damaged rednecks. Sand-niggers? Watch some other news channel besides Fox, moron.
Jews is okay, but I hate Zionist, they also should be exterminated.
Bill Gates should be able to aquire a nuclear arsenal considering the amount of pirated material available in the ex-Eastern Bloc, just file a few lawsuits at the respective governments and et voila! an ICBM or ten, he could then relocate his Redmond base to Syria and we could have the first ever government vs corporation cold war! Think of the possibilities! Think of the outcome! der der der der der der der "Now on News at Ten, the Israeli Prime Minister has declared on state television that he will release a virus-patch that will render all Windows OS's inoperable until hebrew is installed as the default language der der der der der.... he also added that Steve Jobs and Linus Torvalds would be joining Mossad as counter agents".
This may or may not be a sarcastic post...
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
There is an ambulance service here in NYC called Hatzhola EMS. They cater to the jewsih community, are mostly volunteer, and respond to calls from work or school, usually in whatever attire they happen to be in at the time.
One day I was working with an old timer, and he started to sing a tune as we watched one the Hatzhola guys race past us:
Oy vey!
Outta the way!
The Matzah box is on the way!
(mimicks siren)
Heeebreeew Hebreeeew!
He meant no harm buy it, he actually has a few friends in that particular service, but I almost pooped in my pants when I heard it.
--
Well, you're mostly right.
Implementing internationalization for hebrew is trivial in Cocoa-based apps. It is significantly more difficult for Carbon based apps (which MS Office likely is). Microsoft also has a *serious* NIH syndrome when it comes to anything Apple-based and seems to prefer to implement their own versions of everything rather than use Apple's built-in libraries, so even if they could use Apple's internationalization (which I should add is absolutely gorgeous for Hebrew), I have a sneaking suspicion they would want to implement and use their own.
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
The parent post is misleading. Apple does have Hebrew support in MacOS X and has been supporting Hebrew for many years. (And Arabic, too.)
Heck, they even demoed a Klingon version os MacOS X to really drive home how well they nailed international support in MacOS X.
The issue is Microsoft Office for Mac which is not an Apple product.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
And they have every right not buy MS's patently inferior software.
So why are you upset? And you think MS should retaliate? Come on man! Admit it, you're a paid MS shill!
The Israeli government is just holding out in order to get a better deal on MS products for the upcoming years. Too much of the government and the army's software is tied too MS for a transition to Linux to take place. Besides, no other platform, sadly, has as good a support of Hebrew as MS. Although it's getting better constantly - the latest OpenOffice, for example, is quite an improvement.
There's also the issue of MS's political power through the US government. Israel gets quite a bit of money from the US and large portions of it are conditioned on the buying of American products with this money. So I wouldn't bet on Israel doing the Munich thing. At least not for a while.
The power of Christ compiles you!
Yews? Yes, yew trees are nice. I hear there are a lot of them in Israel.
2. Macs don't support Hebrews
THEREFORE G-D USES WINDOWS!
Best Buy can have you arrested
I have wondered before if some developers at Microsoft might have a hidden anti-semitic agenda. Before you brush me off as a tin-foil hat conspiracy theorist, try the following exercise:
1. Open MS Word.
2. Type the letters "NYC" (capitals) into a blank document.
3. Highlight the text NYC and change your font to Wingdings.
4. Voila!
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
Mod up the parent who portrayed the Arabs as the nasty aggressors ?
This is the type of propaganda that only appeals to (a) non-Arabs and (b) people who don't know their history. You have only to go back and review the history of the creation of Israel; the western powers were very generous in giving up land as long as they could steal it from the Arabs in order to "give it up".
word already supports right to left for several other languages (chinese, japanese, arabic)
so microsoft's refusal to support hebrew isnt technical. word already supports right to left, top to bottom, bidirectional, etc.
The Europeans don't like to be reminded about their past harassment, oppression and extermination of Jews. Hence, the flamebait mod. Don't worry, this one is going down too because it tells the truth about them.
Can't be having that, can we? Unfortunately you might succeed in downmodding a post on Slashdot today, but we will always know the truth about you.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Actually, considering the amount of cash MS earns off MS Office for the Macintosh, they actually have a lot of 'reasons' to 'give a crap' about Mac users. The Macintosh division is one of the most profitable.
I suppose you think apple was 'saved' by MS with that $150M stock purchase, too, don't you?(even though Apple had billions in the bank at the time.)
Please help metamoderate.
While I understand that you're trolling, these kindof comments are too common to let slide...
If anyone needs the help of force it is not the Jews with their Apaches, tanks and nuclear weapons. It is the Muslims.
The sooners people stop treating international issues as simple populatity contests (e.g. Iraq war), or worse, black and white moral issues (e.g. the war on "Terror"), the sooner the world will get back to normal.
And note, I don't have any problems with the Jewish people. My only problem is with small groups of people (or large groups for that matter) welding disproportionate amounts of power.
The Palestinians were offered everything they wanted, but Arafat denied the offer. The Palestinians were also the ones who ended the last cease fire. The Palestinians blow up buses filled with children. The Israelis at least make an effort at hitting terrorist related targets. The Palestinians are just as agressive as the Israelis (if not more).
How strange. I have never meet anybody from the middle east who could be classified as being from the left. None are classified as communist. They are all monarchist that we (the US) help prop up, or they are fasicist/dictators (some of which we prop up as well). The only place that any communism thrives is Israel itself.
In Israel, it's about using their position in one area (office software) to try and force another of their products (Windows) on consumers.
The only difference is how they're doing it. With IE, it was a matter of forcing you to have software and not letting you get rid of it without damaging a completely unrelated other piece of software - the OS.
With Office on the Mac, they're denying a key service - language support - to try and force you to use the product on THEIR operating system.
In a world where MS doesn't control everything, the makers of the office software wouldn't be the makers of an OS, and would have no duty but to serve their cusomers. Instead, we have MS crippling an important piece of software (where all other competition has been driven out) to try and force customers to use the software on their OS.
If they support Hebrew, they should support other antiquated languages such as Summerian and ancient Egyptian!
Steve's Computer Service, Hobbs, NM
I thought we were all fairly intelligent here
Bzzzt
Please pay again.
its interesting that Israel is suspending all its Microsoft contracts.. i wonder if MS will send its own suicide bombers to attack..
then what that occurs, Bush will conclude that MS has weapons of mass destruction and the marines will storm Redmond, take over, topple the statue of Bill, then get attacked by guerilla MS supporters with rocket-propelled grenades.
Beware!!
Those who laugh at you for you having a Mac.. are the people who constantly call you to fix their PC.
Here is Microsoft's official statement on the issue:
So, while it fails your tin-foil hat test, it doesn't look like it's really connected. Correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
after all japanese not only has left to right, but top-bottom right to left.
and tah dah, microsoft already supports it.
arabic and hebrew are child's play in comparison.
and woot, microsoft supports arabic.
so microsoft's objection to supporting hebrew isn't technical, at all.
Quit crying you bunch of oily faced, kinky haired, asthmatic, inbred, back-stabbing, money grubbing Jews!
Can you sing with me?
Troll!
Come on, that was one of the few funny, on topic posts to this thread.
His shiny head would prolly absorb the explosion.
"Youse." It's Yankee for "Y'all."
"Microsoft has perfectly valid reasons for not giving a crap about Mac users. If I were Bill Gates, I would reply to this by removing Hebrew support from Office for Windows."
Wow, you think a business should retaliate against its customers because they refuse to deal with MS?
Let me know if you run any businesses so I can be sure not to buy from them, your customer service departments would be horrible!
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
> If I were Bill Gates, I would reply to this by removing Hebrew support from Office for Windows.
Since when does it makes sense for a company to respond to a reasonable feature request by retaliating against the customers who asked for it?
This is a very straightforward issue: Israel says it needs Hebrew support, and Microsoft needs to provide it to keep Israel as a customer. Perfectly reasonable. There's no need to get mad or retaliate. Just act like a professional.
The five year agreement (remember Jobs grovelling before Gates on the big screen?) under which Microsoft provided support for Microsoft Office on the Mac is over. It expired August 7, 2002. Microsoft has already stopped development of Internet Explorer for the Mac. It's expected that they will pull the plug on Office for the Mac, too. So what's suprising about this?
I will not purchase MS products until they support a language from the motherland.
Per the US military, the estimated size of the marxist groups is only 500. Not much of a real threat.I suspect that you will find far more than that in Israel who are defined as Communist or Marxists.
In response to the right-left thing, I have noticed that freedom fighters are simply the ones fighting on our side and suicide bombers are always on the other side. Right now, many Iraqis and Al Qaeda are calling themselves "freedom fighters" and refering to us as "targets".
Lord Voldemort's wand is made from the Yew tree.
This news is very interesting considering the fact that Bill Gates during his visit in Poland today has made a great deal in supporting Polish language, giving Windows to every school, to the government (even the source code with the ability to modify and compile!) like the 99.8% (plus being the only OS supporting the mandatory tax software) was not enough. Poland, like Israel, has been repeatedly exploited by Germans (and Poles, just like Jews, often hate Germans for what they did to their people) who incidentally are opposing Microsoft domination, scientology roots of core Microsoft developers and the recent SCO FUD campain, but now, when Poland is joining the EU, it is much better camrade for Microsoft to fight Germans than Israel is, thanks to its veto power in European Parlament and corrupted government (from the lowest levels up to prime minister). Or is it just US being grateful because Poland has blindly followed Bush in his Iraq invasion? Obviously nobody can be sure about it, but certainly I can't wait to see how it will end.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Both the Israelis and the Palestinians make claim for the same land. For decades, both sides have made it obvious that neither will leave.
My question: why must one side lose and the other win? Why don't the Israelis and the Palestinians work together and create a secular democratic government? Jews and Arabs can work and live side by side. This is a win/win situation! Let economic freedom and inter-dependencies foster peace.
If the Israelis and the Palestinians are arguing JUST over land, then this is the solution. If the issue is about revenge, then there is no solution.
cpeterso
So are you saying that reasonable people should respect the opinions of others, even if they don't agree with those opinions? What a great idea!
Now do it.
Wow, you think a business should retaliate against its customers because they refuse to deal with MS? Let me know if you run any businesses so I can be sure not to buy from them
Sounds like he works for SCO.
remember that
And with it's newly obtained security assured by using Anything Other than Windows(TM), the already piss-poor accountability of Israel drops once more.
Something intelligent here.
Geez the racism is quiet pathetic around here. This subject is not to be used as an excuse to insult Arabs nor Israel nor Jews.
As for Mac Office in Hebrew, well they should have to use Windows. I don't see Apple porting it's software to PC.
racist idiots?
...ah yes!
mmmmm
let me search...
they come mostly from the USofA, just have a look at their current government.
Studies have shown that everyone sees the same exact articles as biased against their POV. You seem to be echoing that.
Microsoft will have to build a "fence" round Isreal?
-1 Troll
-- Free software on every PC on every desk
spell "jew" and change the font to wingdings... Hmmm you'll find that it translates to "become a Christian and you'll be happy" if you read it right to left like Hebrew...
and what with that two towers thing, bit much for co-incidence hey?
Welcome to slashdot.
You thought the anti-Chinese comments from yesterday from their successful launch were bad and racist? This is really the worst thread discussion I have seen on /. in a LONG time. Seriously. Maybe about 15% tops of the comments posted so far are related to the topic at hand.
If it was any other country with similar or worse human rights record, say Sudan, people would be rejoicing at their rejection of MSFT. But Israel bashing is just too chic these days.
I'm saddened that with the China thread on slashdot many open-minded people went out of their way to say "Don't bash China for their human rights, let's celebrate this achievement instead." But only hours later, there's silence as the ignorant masses troll away.
make world, not war
This is a very straightforward issue: Israel says it needs Hebrew support, and Microsoft needs to provide it to keep Israel as a customer. Perfectly reasonable. There's no need to get mad or retaliate. Just act like a professional.
Professional?? Microsoft? You haven't seen Steve Ballmer's "Monkey Dance" video yet, have you?
When the numbers of children who died are concerned, I'd say yes.
318 Palestinians under 18 killed by the IDF from 2000-2002. That's not including the dozens more in the past year. I know Israeli children died as well, but I don't know how many.
I don't see homeless Israelis in the news, but as of today over 1200 Palestinians are homeless in Rafa refugee camp due to the bulldozing over the past 4 days.
1715 Palestinians were killed by the IDF during 2000-2002. Only 20 investigations by the IDF into incidents where Palestinians died, which led to only 2 indictments.
I wouldn't generalize all 200 million Arabs the same way though. A huge proportion support a two-state plan, which meant they would live with an existing Israel. If everything went back to the 1967 boarders, terrorism would drop by 95% IMO.
Remember, Arafat accepted the two-state Road Map immediately, while Ariel Sharon refused.
prove that, where do they say that? Link?
b10tsh!
Your post made no sense.
Israel has long been considered to have the best intel/security...perhaps this also says something about computer security? ;)
That would be true if it weren't for the fact that England, France, European countries also condemned Israel for some of their actions. Arabs didn't lead the condemnation, other Western governments did. There have been 74 UN resolutions concerning Israel that Israel has defied.
Why are you changing the subject to Sudan? That's another injustice yes, but how does that relate in any way to Israel? Israel's politics are responsible for 9/11, according to Bin Laden. You sound like George W. Bush, when confronted with his "affirmative action" stance at colleges, he replied that Saddam is a menace and must be stopped.
Should a business retaliate against customers? No, that is dumb. Should it retaliate against governments? You bet.
Of course that is because Israel is not a Communist country, therefore it doesn't get much sympathy from Linux lovers.
Too bad there's historically no such thing as "Palistinians," and has never been a soveriegn nation called "Palistine."
Too bad that the Six Day War didn't go the way you think it should have. Since when does regions conquered in wartime count as "stolen?" It was won, fair and square.
Too bad nobody realizes that there will never be peace in the Middle East until one side wins. Whom ar you rooting for?
I kinda prefer murder/suicide bombers, myself. Everyone knows the concept of a murder/suicide. The term "Homicide Bomber" is just a propaganda phrase that means absolutely nothing.
(Sorry to post off-topic but I had to pipe up.)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Remember all the leftists that came out yesterday and today trying to prevent criticism of China and it's human rights record in the slashdot discussions? Don't be racist and complain about China, let's look at their aerospace accomplishments instead.
Notice that these kind of emails are notably absent now? Yeah. It's bad to criticize other countries if not about the current topic. Oh wait, unless it's Israel, those damn zionist racist apartheid colonial occupying thieves.
make world, not war
Open Office has had Hebrew support for quite some time.
2002 Hebrew OpenOffice Files
Open Office Hebrew HowTo
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
Yup the Europeans sucked when it came to the treatment of the jews, but shit does that give the jews the right to do exactly the same to others?
Its like the man who was beaten up on a regular basis when he was a kid, turning into a thug when he grows up because thats the only thing he knows. An eye for an eye is all very well until there aren't any eyes left to pluck.
Israel has some of the most communistic communities on the planet (truer to Communism than the commie nations). They are the kibbutz's. They're actually pretty cool, you can even visit them for short times. Work the fields in the daytime and eat the harvest at mealtimes.
I bought a replacement keyboard for a Gateway Solo 2500 on ebay for 9.95 USD, list price is something like 60 USD. The only "caveat", which I think is cool, is that listed under the english keys, are Hebrew letters. I thought that was pretty cool.
I hate sigs.
What does this mean? Well that means if you have more threads making queries than the number of CPU's, it's likely you will max out the CPU utilization on SQL Server 2000. To find out more, I decided to run a single thread against SQL Server and found it causes 1 of the 4 CPU's to average 85-90% CPU utilization for the duration of the test. The queries use stored procedure, so it shouldn't cause this kind of behavior. Don't be believe, try it for yourself. I ran these tests 3-4 dozen times for different number of concurrent queries and the result is always the same.
they divided the land into countries. Notice nobody complained when borders were drawn for Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc etc from the Ottoman Empire.
No, but they create a land to be for Jews (nothing about kicking anybody out) and the Muslims of the area throw a hissy-fit. Would you say, then, that the creation of Muslim countries where Jews lived (say Jordan) thus stole those Jews land too?
Oh wait, let's blame Israel and Jews for everything. Muslims outnumber Jews by 60 to 1, therefore better take their side. Especially to keep the access to oil. Don't want to piss them off and get an oil blockade to your country, now, would you?
Look at history, everybody has been bad. Muslims and Jews. If the Arab countries didn't attack Israel in the first place (not to mention the next 3 times over 20 years) it would be significantly smaller than it is now, and the number of refugees would be less than 1/3 of those now.
and i think all jews and muslims should be exterminated
"All the college students bitching about the Jews really need to watch out. Western Europeans have a dangerous pogrom tradition that goes back 1000 years. It's a serious case of glass houses."
Uhhhh? What you're saying is a no one descendent of European stock has a right to criticize anything Isreal does in the Palestine because of acts performed before they were born? That form of 'logic' aptly demonstrates why the Middle East is so fucked up.
Confusion, war, and terror is the normal state of the world. It is peace and understanding that is fleeting.
We can only hope that the world will one overcome over the normal state of affairs and outbreaks of peace will be more than just pleasant footnotes in history.
(Score: -1, Stupid)
I don't know that "off-topic" is correct for the parent. Troll and/or Flamebait, sure, but I think the comment that "MS got Owned" is actually appropriate for the article.
Maybe the parent was automatically modded down because it was:
1) a First Post, and
2) the guy spelled it "Frist"
And you don't find blaming the sins of the neighbour's great-grandparents on 'us' bigotry? Tell me again why generational hatred is ripping the middle east apart.
How the hell do you type nekudot (vowels) in OpenOffice 1.1? For the life of me, I've been unable to figure it out!
Otherwise, awesome work. Assuming you install the Hebrew fonts, Hebrew support is "out of the box" in RH9, and it even has the Culmus fonts!
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I wonder what the range is on Israel's fighters? Maybe they have some old missiles around to send to Redmond? Israel _has_ been in a really pissy mood lately.
I've often wondered the same. The term "Nazi" is slang for "to nationalize" and the full name of their party was "The National Socialist Workers Party of Germany." Now call me crazy, but that doesn't sound like the name of a right-wing organization to me.
When Jordan was the only country to support Iraq in Gulf War I, I thought the proper punishment should have been to rename the country 'Palestine' and tell all those who consider themselves 'Palestinians' that they had a homeland now and could stop fighting.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Just before 9/11, this site had a poster of the 19 "freedom fighters" who died. It was a celebration of them in the UK. In addition, throughout this site, they move this to a fight of islam vs. west (of which it is not). This is probably not a true al qaeda site, but it has been very informative to me.
You might recall a recent article about how OpenOffice for Mac OS X is being delayed for several years. That means he'll have to use it in X11. Doable, but not as satisfying.
"I've got to stop masturbating! It makes me too lazy! Stop it, Albert. Stop it." -- Albert Einstein
i would like to see that ...... i really would. especially since the gov't is more likely than not acting in the best intrests of its citizens.
Microsuck is just being a bunch of stuborn assholes, they could very easily use the mac osx hebrew libraries. but they prefer to cripple office for mac by writting some half assed butcher job to implement hebrew. this obviously pissed of the isreali gov't since their native language is hebrew.
they will end up using openoffice/star office, because it already supports hebrew, and they wont suffer from MS's bullshit lock in/overpricing problems.
"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe." --Albert Einstein
Huh? Sharon accepted it.
Anybody know if OpenOffice.org supports Hebrew?
Its not that simple.
An eye-for-an-eye may prevent someone from plucking out an eye due to fear of having his own eye plucked out.
Maybe it's just a way of giving a benefit to the local software market. Mellel, produced by Redlers is an excellent Mac word processor written with Hebrew and other right-to-left scripts in mind (I have no affiliation with the company).
apparently, you know nothing about the middle east. how many middle east nations allow palestinians citizen ship? how many middle east nations allow palestinians to vote? how many middle east nations allow palestinians to serve in the government? one. israel. now, they are hardly the agressor. i would be mad, but you're simply ignorant not spiteful. except for egypt, no other arab/muslim nation even recognizes israel's right to exist. now, look at palestinian text books. any mention of israel? none. according to oslo, they were supposed to totally revamp their texts. have they? not at all. so you got another generation of young palestinians growing up with the arab version of the blood libel.
israel is simply in defense mode. they have no other option. but apparently we who sit safely far away can pass judgement upon them while they fight for there very existence.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
When I was in Israel earlier this year the Linux penetration I saw among friends was almost nil. Hopefully this action is more than a barganing move. But we must remember that even in the US most people are afraid of anything without the familiar start button. Microsoft still rides on the distinction of having the first comercial OS written in Hebrew.
so who likes occuping militaristic powers? its exactly like hating the usa. its also scary. why should the hatred be so similiar...
its sounds more like your head is exploding monsure
what is isreal really worried about here? native languaqge support, or the nsa backdoor that exists in ms software?
It gets better. Type the first letters of "Muslim Al-Queda" (MAQ) into word, and change the font to Wingdings.
If anything, if you study history you will find war follows the Jew wherever he goes. The Pax Romana, the hundred years of peace in the Roman Empire, began with the destruction of Jerusalem. Great Britain began its modern era of tolerance and enlightment in 1290 with the expelling of the Jews. This was only 75 years after the Magna Carta was signed, and things only got better. The Age of Discovery began in 1492, the same year the Jews were expelled from Spain. Yes, it can be said that whenever Jews are forced from a country, prosperity is the result.
Look at the last century. There is ample evidence of Jewish complicity in the starting of World War I. Most of the Bolshevists were Jews. Do you really think World War II was to be fought over Poland??? Or that Germany, a country the size of Texas, was going to steal the world which was already controlled by Great Britain??? (The British Empire in 1939 was roughly 2/3 of the world). The Jews could not prevent their deportation themselves, so they enlisted some foreign powers. No, I think if the Jews had been expelled from Europe 200 years ago, the Twentieth Century would have been our Pax Romana.
We have over 2000 years of historical evidence that Jews are trouble, and that peaceful coexistence is impossible for them. Why do we tolerate there presence still? Are we to believe that it was our predecessors who were flawed? All the way back to Caesar Augustus?
The Jew uses confusion, war, and fear as a tool of control. It is NOT the normal state of the world.
Why use OroborOSX and XonX? Why not just use Apple's wonderful, Quartz Extreme capable version of X11?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
This is not defensive, it is offensive. The fact that the settlements still exists and in fact are growing, makes it an offensive campaign. If the Israelis were truly sincere about defence, they would have pulled back to their legitimate borders instead of routinely flouting the UN resolutions and building WMDS(mmmm seems a familiar scenario).
Can you dig up a link to the poster you're talking about? I would really like to see it.
That's cuz Israel is resembling the US a little to much for their heads right now.
Mac users are an insignifcant percentage of pc users. Israel is a small percentage of word users relative of the whole. That makes mac hebrew users a tiny spec. And that's assuming all mac users use word. It's not worth it to support them.
Hebrew is the National Language of Israel.
There are religious nuts, and secular schoolchildren who use this product. Stop being such an ass.
You are giving the Arab people a bad name. Not all Arabs believe such trash. I bet you're probably some white American trying to make the Arab people look bad.
Imagine a scenario where a couple of foreign countries could take the state of Florida, disposessing most of the people who have lived there for generations, and give it back to the Seminole Indians. That these Seminoles create a policy which gives the right of almost any Indian, no matter how tenuously defined and distantly connected to the Seminole peoples, the right to settle in Florida disposessing even more people. Imagine that these Seminole Indians get caught trying to sink a warship belonging to one of their sponsoring nations and get caught stealing through spying some important weapons technology of that same sponsoring nation and passing it onto that sponsoring nations most powerful enemy. Imagine that the Seminoles come under attack by people in Georgia and Alabama that question the legitimacy of the Seminole nation and that the sponsoring nation that made the Seminole nation possible at all its manipulated into attacking Georgia and Alabama. Of course that would be crazy, I mean, something like that could *never* happen!
Man, you speak facts here and get shot down...SlashDot likes Israel it appears. Not really sure why....
Can we get an offtopic mod for this? The issue isn't Israeli-Rest of the Region relations, its Israeli-Big American Software Monopoly relations. I don't see how discussing the merits of sucide bombings and Israel's response to said bombings has anything to do with Israel ditching Microsoft (unless you think Steve Ballmer, as religious leader of the Church of Gates, will declare a holy war in response to this) because Microsloth refused support for the official language of the Jewish state.
For one, I think this move is commendable. Whatever your stance on politics in the region, there isn't much question about Melkorsoft's idiocy in this issue. Languages should be preserved, as a record of the human story. Refusing to provide support of any language is a blatant move to selectively propogate certain tongues over others. True, in the 'internet culture' the default speech between peoples is English, and that fact is seen as a threat in and of itself to the survival of languages, esp. such as Hebrew, which is not spoken much outside of Israel other than in ceremony or in homes (correct me if I'm wrong -- I'm admittedly ignorant of things which I'd like to know more about...I just know from my personal experience that spoken Hebrew is not a common conversational mode in the US). But what about those that aren't part of the 'internet culture', that group of people who use the internet everynow and again to find useful information for school, work, or just for the hell of it? I swear I have a point in here somewhere...something about protecting languages...Ah hell, I just thought all the bickering over who's more wrong detracted from valuable bickering over Morgosofth's idiocy.
PS Any other good creative euphamisms for the Dark Enemy of the Internet?
#define CLUE 0
Should it retaliate against governments? You bet.
You gotta be nuts to not try and avoid fights with governments. Governments can:
a) have very long memories
b) be able to fight at a loss
c) escalate beyond a business's ability to respond
Mahatma Ghandi
You need to read the post again. We aren't talking about what happened in the 1900's, we're talking about ~2,000 years in the past. Furthermore, the Jews never left (a handful remained, thankfully), and the Arabs took the land. It was finally parceled back. This isn't propaganda, it's fact.
The only thing Israel is guilty of today is making promises it doesn't intend to keep. Thank the Clinton legacy for basically forcing members of the Israeli cabinet into trying to pander to people like yourself in the name of peace. Kinda ironic: WHAT DO YOU EXPECT WHEN YOU BUILD A MOSQUE ON A SACRED PLACE? Read up on it, please.
Gross body counts are MEANINGLESS.
What really matters is what the intent of those that give the orders and carry them out. The IDF intention is not specifically to increase civilian casualties. However, that is primary strategic goal of the Palestinian factions involved.
War is hell. Don't start what you don't have the stomach to finish.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
>>That would be a reasonable analogy, if it weren't for
,and Jordan hated them and still does. Even tried to kill them. Of course, you knew that. "Palestinians" are also murdering liars who cheered 9/11 and cheered todasy when three American were slaughtered by a homicide bomb.
1. the fact that you were the aggressor in this conflict, <<
Wrong on number one. Aggressors NEVER give back land taken, as Israel does-until more innocent bodies are ripped apart by bombs looaded with nails, like the Sinai they took from Egypt and gave back. Such things never happen with aggressors..........on to number two.
>>2. continually stealing their land, <<
Yep, as expected, wrong on number two also. Historically speaking, it is Israel's land and there is no such thing as a Palistinian. there is also, BTW no such thing as a Jordanian either, according to your line of reasoning. Jordan was made by the U.N. "Palestinians" are Jordanians,
>>3. destroying their homes, <<
Three strikes........glad this is not baseball.
They are merciful enough to only destroy the homes of terrorists and their activities. Of course, the Israeli-hating-terrorist murtderous liars also destroy Jewish restaurants, hotels, cars, public places........ad nauseum. You forgot to mention that, and who has to rebuild them.
You also neglected to mention how Israel pumps more money into "Palestine" than all of her Muslim neighbors do.
>> 4. killing their people. <<
No ya went and done it. Four strikes. Whoa.
Israelis attack military targets and go out of the way (which they should not) to avoid civilian targets. Your friends the lying murderers nearly always target the innocents.
That is why they are called "terrorists".
Yasser Arafat invented the hijacking of planes, remember?
Ignorance is bliss..........you are having a bliss-ard.
Why does Israel even put up with these animals?
Regards,
Bob Zuvich
"Christ killers don't deserve support from our beloved Christian nation".
Basically, people also ignore the fact that about 1/4 of the 'killed palestinians' were killed by other palestinians.... Peace-wanting Palestinians whom the fascist terrorist authority there kills and hangs from the windows. Ever been there? It's a nightmare, they're killing their own children, in body and soul.
War? Last time I check the Israel-Palestinian conflict isn't war but suicidal attempts by the Palestinians (no pun intended) to regain back their land autonomy. There is no war here only those with power and weapons and those without.
With the way things are going I see a disaster occurring. I just hope some pissed off Palestinian doesn't some day create/release a virus that wipes a large number world population.
Going with three themes:
- rejected Microsoft software
- Israel
- Evil
I propose we name the Dark Enemy of the Internet BeezelBob .--
Given enough personal experience, all stereotypes are shallow.
Who the hell modded this as 'Flamebait'?
This post is spot on you dumb-ass.
Kinda ironic: WHAT DO YOU EXPECT WHEN YOU BUILD A MOSQUE ON A SACRED PLACE?
Were I the type to build a mosque, church, temple, etc.,
Then where else would I build the freaking thing?!?
See some charts below showing comparisons of liberties in various countries.
Human Rights in the Middle East (PDF, 31.5 KB)
Political and Civil Rights in the Middle East (PDF, 31.6 KB)
Religious Intolerance in the Middle East (PDF, 1.15 MB)
Freedom of Religion in the Middle East (PDF, 346 KB)
IN DEPTH:
Israel & Human Rights: Myths and Facts
In other news the homicidal criminals and their families is three times higher than among non-criminals. Yes, innocents will suffer too until their own leaders promote the insane suicide culture.
Do you realy think that the reason is that microsoft wont support hebrew?
From what I've understood from the israeli goverment publications on this matter, it's because Microsoft products are not very secured, as you all know, and right now there big consideration to implemt open source software in goverment facilities.
Read this for starters. If it was utter lies, even the Jerusalem Post wouldn't let it be posted there.
Then read this one . Specifically Item #3, but alot of the info there will challenge the (Israel is all bad, Israel is only bad) mantra most of the "liberals" repeat. To quote it
The first quote is a column by Alan Dershowitz, if you hate pro-Israel folks then skip to the 2nd link, but I don't know who wrote it. But if either of these was pure propoganda or lies, then surely they would have been challenged by now.
Anyway, regarding the conflict, I'm not saying Israel is innocent. But to treat the situation like Israel is doing these things in a vacuum, instead of in reaction to decades of similar violence and hatred against it, is foolish and misleading.
make world, not war
Of course there have been more Palestinian casualties. When they keep BLOWING THEMSELVES UP, what do you expect??
I expect that I'd take out more than one on the way out.
I imagine the body count for suicide bombers is lower than that for suicide bomber victims.
This skews the odds the other way than that which you wanted to go.
Besides the fact that Sharon accepted the road map, try looking back to the July 2000 Camp David summit between Clinton, Barak, and Arafat. When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat 96% of what Palestinias claim they want, including a Palestinian capital in parts of Jerusalem, rather than accept or even come up with a counter-offer, Arafat refused the offer and left the peace talks.
Oh and by the way, the Palestinian Liberation Orgranization PLO, was founded pre-1967 and their charter calls for the destruction of Israel so don't go thinking this is about borders.
Ever looked inside a Palestinian elementary school textbook? Think there is one mention of a state of Israel in there? How bout the Palestinian kids' shows in arabic that look like the typical Sessame St. type show until you see 8 year olds dressing up as suicide bombers and you translate the songs they are singing and realize they are gloryfying martyrdom.
I would read a little more history before you jump to the conclusing that Arafat, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, Tanzim, or any other terrorist is interested in a two state solution. Just look at the success Arafat and the Palestinians made out of Oslo- when Israel fulfilled every one of its obligations and the Palestinians fulfilled NONE.
...does Israel have difficulty with confrontations?
Granted it sounds unfair for Hebrew not to be supported on Office/Mac. But Israelis never seem to just take a small breath, look at what is in the long-term best interest of everybody involved and work calmly towards that goal.
It's all the more natural to lash out and attack. I'm sorry if I'm making generalizations here but you can't help but see the parallels in Israeli diplomacy (an oxymoron of the highest order) and this political/cultural issue.
I would say the sins of your grandparents.
Mine still remembered, particularly my grandfather who, with Patch's First Army in France and Germany, liberated Lyon and discovered some of the more odious locations in the Pan-European Reich. What he was willing to say was enough.
It could happen again. Don't think things have gotten any better, really. You're fooling yourself.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Try typing in REDMOND then put it to wingdings, it says bomb the place if the sun doesn't shine. Near as I can figure.
OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
"Israel!" There I said it. *poof* all the assholes instantly appear. Why don't you use your real name and have your asshole natures on record, at least?
Linux is the long-awaited savior!
The Palestinians are guilty of a lot of bad things and the Israelis aren't innocent either. But building a wall to keep out a wave of suicide bombers hardly seems racist or radical. I'd do exactly the same thing.
A lot of it is true. We are based in the U.S. and do business all over the world. Not too long ago we received a purchase order from the United Arab Emirates. At the bottom of the P.O. was the standard stuff about terms of shipment, payment, etc. But what struck me was the first term was "No product may be built, partially or entirely, in Israel." I've lived in the U.S., I've lived in Mexico and I've worked with more races and nationalities than I can remember--but that took the cake for blatant discrimination and, if you will, racism. I was tempted to reject their purchase order and not do business with them--but I went ahead and took the order since I figured it would be wrong to just discriminate againt them in retaliation.
Those that piss and moan about Israel haven't got a clue. I'm not Jewish, I don't even know anyone who is a Jew. But all you have to do is look at the history of the area since 1945 to know that Israel is defending itself against a real threat--or at least they were in 1967 and 1973. They took some land (that happens in many wars!) mostly to buffer themselves against future aggression and now the aggressors are complaining to the U.N. and sending in waves of suicide bombers against civilian targets?
Sorry, I have no sympathy for the Palestinians and every suicide bomber that blows themself up and takes civilians with them just gets me itching to have the U.S. go in there and clean things up--politically correct or not.
If Mexicans had been walking into our country and blowing themselves up on busses in New York City for the last couple of decades do you think we'd be acting as restrained as Israel?? No, we'd be building the Great Wall of the Rio Grande with armed guards patrolling it 24/7. And we'd have every right to do so.
newsflash!
slashdotter finnally figures out that theregister conviently lies (similarly to cnn with greater magnificient indifference to the truth)
He kept on like that for several years, but all the girls gave him the same answer. Finally he found a pretty little waitress with yellow hair that worked in a hotel. Kathleen Fent was her name. They went riding on his moped, and when he pulled out his cock she just kind of giggled. "Why that's a tee-hee!" says Kathleen. Right then and there Rob Malda know she was just what he wanted. So he and she got married and they were both mighty happy.
About six months after the wedding, they got to talking about old times. "Honey," says Rob, "how did you come to call my tool a tee-hee, that first time we went riding?" Kathleen replied, "tee-hee is the right word for it and any other girl would tell you the same."
Rob shot back, "Oh no, out where I was raised they call it a pecker." Kathleen just laughed. "Shucks Rob Malda," she said, "them corn-fed Michigan floozies ain't been around much. Why everyone knows that a pecker is a whole lot bigger than that!"
Really stretching to use your "theme account," aren't you?
I've always wondered why we spend tons of tax money and incur a whole lot of international ill will by supplying Israel with military hardware and backing them in many unpopular moves.
I think it has to come down to one of two possibilities.
The first is the one that the Arabic countries around Israel like pushing -- that wealthy, influential Jews in the United States are able to put pressure and affect enough US leadership that Israel gets backing. While I'm sure this plays a role, I doubt that it's the primary cause.
What *does* seem a bit more plausible is that the only way the US can control the Middle East is if it's divided and fragmented, unable to use the oil supply as a weapon, and always providing us with at least one ally in the area for military staging purposes. US Middle Eastern foreign policy has seemed to focus on keeping the Middle East divided for *decades*. Israel is a wonderful divider, particularly because they're *dependent* upon US backing for their continued existance, so is certain to help out the US in the Middle East.
The first possibility is disturbing, as it means that US citizens are not properly being served by their government. The second shows the US being uncomfortably mercenary...but I suppose that somebody has to produce the economic imbalances that keep me living the good life, so I'm much less inclined to complain about politicians playing hardball on my behalf.
May we never see th
"An eye for an eye and the world is blind."... is a powerful statement against the petty, moronic "500 years ago, they assassinated our king in revenge for our massacring a border village, now they all must pay" bullshit.
The great soul was smart enough to understand deterrence, punishments, rewards, behavioural psychology, etc.. If India had been occupied by a less-humane and reasonable people, his reasonable, humane approach would have been met with absolute destruction... and, he wouldn't have wasted his people's lives on it.
I still remember Woody Morgan. I met him as he attacked me outside the choir room, at the start of 10th grade. I tried to find out what the conflict was, but was met with silence when we were supervised, and more violence when we weren't. I adjusted my schedule to avoid him, and he followed. I had to fight back three times (and be punished for turning it into a fight, the first two times) before he was finally sent away. It was nice to have a higher authority to take over and administer justice. I feel so badly for the poor people who are forced to perform the violence themselves in order to defend themselves. Can't we just "evict" the evil people from our planet? I don't mean "evil" as it is often used, in the form of "anyone who does not obey the commandments of our leader", but rather as the inverse of that... those who seek to force others to "obey the commandments of our leader". Mightn't we all just leave each other the fuck alone?
"See the sun, it's bad. Blow it up. A flag, with skull and crossbones is bad too."
Here they say that Sun Microsystems is bad and software piracy is bad!
I've done it again!
Apple's APIs are such that, if you do things the right way, new supported languages will just work.
I know this may come as a shock to some of you, but it's true.
Intersting site and here is the interesting poster.
Bullshit. The Israelis who are dying are infants, children, women, and other NON-COMBATANTS.
The Pals who die are invariably militants also known in the civilized world as terrorists, and those immediately around them.
The Israeli's are not filling backpacks full of explosives, rusty nails, and rat poison, walking into refugee camps, surrounding themselves with soft targets, and blowing themselves to kingdom come. The Israeli's purpose is not to take as many non-combatants as possible with them.
The Pal's are filling backpacks full of explosives, rusty nails, and rat poison, walking into bus stops, cafes, and schools, surrounding themselves with soft targets, and blowing themselves to kingdom come. The Pal's purpose is to take as many non-combatants as possible with them.
While this discussion was at one point about word processors, it seems to have denigrated into the typical cycle of violence horseshit you get on all the mideast discussion boards. Reading and writing Hebrew is hard enough electronically.
Folks like Microsoft are often afraid of the retribution that the good Arab countries will impose upon them for doing any sort of business with Israel. You wouldn't believe the complete unadulterated bullshit that these twits have done in the past. See http://www.buyandhold.com/bh/en/education/history/ 2002/arab.html
http://www.arabicnews.com/ansub/Daily/Day/020710/2 002071005.html
http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2003/07/30/fCanada 180.raw.html
Its amazing, that these folks have the world by the economic nuts, and cannot seem to accept a 54 year old state in its midst. The amazing and sad thing is that most people have been convienently fed and believe the fiction of this being about the Pals and their trampled rights. Yet, when you read the history of the land, and see what really happened, a very very different picture emerges.
What has this to do with word processing? Not a hell of a lot. Though, modern hebrew was derived from the biblical hebrew, and adopted by the folks who formed Israel as their language. Israel itself was willing in 1948 to live along side a Palestinian state (a second one, Jordan being the first state, which sits on 80% of the land originally promised to form Israel). The response from the same folks who batter the worlds economy with oil, was a war. It wound up being a disasterous war for all, but in the end Israel grew. And Hebrew flourished. The Arabs responded by exiling/kicking out/persecuting all of the Jews in their lands. And starting a few more wars to drive Israel into the sea.
And Hebrew still flourished.
So I guess I can understand why, when someone asks for something as trivial as support for their native tongue, as at least a gesture of cultural understanding and commitment, that they would become incensed if some asshole from Redmond decided well golly gee, their ain't a big enough market... duh huh
Simple bullshit. The jews aren't taking out the soft targets. They aren't purposefully targetting women, children, non-combatants.
The Palestinians are.
The jews have been remarkably restrained. We here in the US are imposing a serious double standard on them. We need to get out of their way, and let them kick the fucking terrorists out. Our job should be to explain to the rest of the civilized world why terrorism is bad and why what they are doing is good.
When was the last time you saw a Palestinian make a wrong turn in a car, and get torn limb from limb? Didn't happen? Happened to some jews there. Several times.
Learn about what really has been going on there before you write. The shit in the news these days is cooked for consumption by those with weak minds, by folks with agendas and axes to grind. Israel is not winning the media war, it is the "victims". You know, those "victims" who are so disenfranchised that they have to take out women and children to protect themselves?
As far as I can tell, the suspention of the contract happened without relation to that.
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me"
no wonder MS has to go.
What a twit.... three wars were fought... BEFORE THERE WERE ANY SETTLEMENTS.
...
It was NEVER about the settlements. Israel took the land that it captured in wars of self defense and built outposts as early warning stations. These were miltary posts as much as they were land development for families. This was to extend the defensive perimeter so that 1973 would NEVER happen again.
And now, all through out the world, we have complete boneheads telling us that "ok, just remove the settlements and go back to the pre-war 67 borders". So you want us to go back to the old indefensible positions, which invited our "friendly" arabic neighbors to attack en-masse? You want more war that is? Are you insane?
This was never a land grab. It never will be a land grab.
When Sadat finally finally cried uncle, it was Arik (Ariel Sharon) who forcibly dismantled the settlements and returned to the pre-war borders. The reason the arabs hate Sharon has nothing to do with the Lebanon affair, no, they hated him long before. Because he was so fucking good at his job (defense).
All the Arabs have to do, all of them, is to say
a) you can be there
b) we are not going to go to war with you
c) lets work with you to make this place a better place to live.
This is called normal relationship between neighbors.
They have with the sole exceptions of Egypt and Jordan, refused to do this. In Jordan it is illegal for an arab to sell land to a jew. Not to an israeli, but to a jew. Same is true in Saudi Arabia. Then again, you can't even get in there if you are jewish. Egypt seems to spontaneously jail israelis. Lebanon jails you if you visited israel and attempt to visit them.
So explain this to me (and the world then). Why the fuck should we not be paranoid? In 50+ years of existance as a state, our neighbors have done everything they can to destroy us, stopping at almost nothing. Saudi Arabia effectively tanked the world economy through OPEC http://www.2facts.com/Ancillaries/index/h02400.asp because it was pissed off at the war results and the support of the US and the Netherlands.
To this day, you hear Kofi Annan criticize us whenever we respond in a very measured manner against the twits who so desperately deserve to go to Allah for taking out our children on busses, while he and the rest of his hoard are deathly silent when one of the aforementioned twits does infact take out a bus load of kids.
You see resolutions get introduced into that most "unbiased" of all bodies, the UN, which uniformly criticize us for building a defensive shield against attack, yet are (again) deathly mute on the attackers.
And to this day, we have to listen politely to assholes who frankly don't know any better make some of the most silly accusations about land grabs, offensive actions
Get a freakin clue. Paranoids have enemies, and ours surround us. They show up and kill our children, introduce resolutions, and get otherwise reasonable people to think that we (the folks on the recieving end of the sharp point for 50+ years) are the aggressors.
As for WMD. Would Hamas, IJ, or any of the other crazies stop for a second to carry out a super massive "operation" against us using one of them? Hell no, they would be fighting each other for the "honor". We can NEVER let them, or their sponsors get to that point.
Guess what. The world is a dangerous place. We live in a dangerous area. We have neighbors who wish us only death and destruction, and help those who criminally perpatrate that stuff. We have a world council innured to the reality, a UNRWA which aids and abets the murderers. No where in there do we have any credible offers of peace. So when someone says "settlements are offensive", well, what the fuck can you do? Obviously that someone does not have the slightest clue about the history, the conflict, or what the real issues are. They just like the "underdog" and root for them.
Would you build your Mosque on the historical and archeological site of another religious institution? Well if you were civilized, you would not. You would respect the other folks rights.
d ly .asp?ARTICLE_ID=31203
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/printer-frien
http://www.har-habayt.org/
Such is life. The victim goes on being blamed....
http://www.cronaca.com/archives/001504.html
This is like a soap opera. You cannot believe this crap. It is amazing.
o you want us to go back to the old indefensible positions, which invited our "friendly" arabic neighbors to attack en-masse?
Israel actually stroke preemptively.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Yup. Would be crazy.
Nothing like that did happen. This is a complete distortion of reality.
The whole of the middle east was "owned" by the Ottoman empire. The Brits carved it up in the late 1800s and early 1900s after WWI. The Zionist movement has been always an inclusive movement, never a racist movement. Zionism is simply about gathering Jews back to their historical homelands, from which they have been in Diaspora for thousands of years. It was agreed post WW-I that this would happen, and partitions in the middle east were made specifically to accomodate this, without excluding anyone else from living there. Same with the other partitions.
Along comes WW-II, and a massive resurgance in antisemitism. 6 million of my co-religionists were killed, for no reason than they were my co-religionists. 6 millions Gypsies, gays, and other "undesireables" were killed by the same regime. Nationalism is dangerous when it finds scapegoats. Nazis had jews. Curiously enough, so do the Pan-Arabists (Ba'ath party folks).
Ok. Shoah is over. Lots of my folks are sitting in camps in various locations. Antisemitism is still rampant. The Palestinian mufti collaborated with the Nazis and the folks who drew up the partitions prevented many of my co-religionists from escaping Hitler. Fine. They died. Can't undo that. What to do with the rest? Well, we still have that large mass for Israel.... well no. You see, during this time, some thief of Amman rode in and demanded 80% of that partition.
Oh shit, we only have 20% left, since we caved on the other 80%. So who did that 80% go to? The Palestinians? Really? And what did they create? Transjordan? Oh.
Ok, so we have 20% left for the jews... right? Well no, as the local arab population are doing all they can to drive the jews out. Lets see... jews were in Hebron (it was a jewish city) for 2000 years. That is until the massacre in the 20s, when the Pals slaughtered men women and children. Made all the papers. They fought the boats bringing us in. Claimed we would take "their" land. Most of the land was unclaimed and undeveloped.
You keep hearing about the green line, right? Well that was the line dividing the jewish property from the arab property. The jews worked the land very hard, and made it produce. Their side of the fence was green.
Ok, so here we are, in 1948. Finally, the UN votes to allow the mandate to form along the boundaries that the jews agreed to from the UN (they didn't like them, but they agreed to them). The arabs rejected it. The day Israel was declared, this tiny nation was invaded. On all fronts. The purpose was to kill the jews and drive them into the sea.
Needless to say, this war was very costly, and it did not succeed for the aggressors (the arabs). As a result of the war the arabs had told the palestinian arabs to leave their homes to get out of the way so the soldiers could kill more freely.
Well, it didnt work out. So all these folks who fled are in camps. Bummer. They left voluntarily, in order to help an enemy. They gave up their rights. Anything else is fiction.
The armistice was supposed to end hostilities.
Didnt work.
They invaded again. And again.
And again.
Notice the pattern?
Oh,... forgot to mention the 600-800 thousands jews living in arabic lands forced to leave from 48-mid 50s. They were forcibly ejected, without due process, without compensation. No one asked them to step aside and return owning everything as the Pals were asked.
After the last invasion, caught with their pants down, the jews decided to build some defensive border positions called settlements. They are military forward observer and occasionaly real defensive positions.
During all this time, the arabs have refused to allow the pals to integrate, leave their camps, become citizens.
There is precisely one country in the mid east where pals have any sort of political voice, rights, etc. Any c
This is one of the reasons why I read at -1 (the other reason is because I like it!). In flame wars like this, the most unpopular opinions get modded -1, Flamebait (aka -1, Unpopular), whilst popular (and usually also incredibly illinformed) posts get modded +1, Insightful. Such as this post - from a person unable to even spell Palestine correctly. (We'll forget the fact that this entire thread should really be modded -1, Offtopic!)
This statement came out only after the Israeli government effort to help organise and partly finanace a Sun, IBM & Israeli Open Source activists project to drive Hebrew and Arabic support to Open Office became a success with the results showing in version 1.1 - the first stable penOffice version that supports Bidi languages (Hebrew & Aarabic) in a close to decent way.
Forget what they say about the reasons for this move and look at the facts - this is a premeditated move and a damn smart one.
I just wish other givernment would be as smart.
Gilad.
I suppose Hitler was too...
That's because you'd think Israel has all that's needed for human rights where as Sudan doesn't.
But someone could make KDE support Hindi by either doing it themselves or paying someone to do it themselves. It's Open Source.
In the case of Israel, MS was offered money to add the support. Since it's proprietary SW, there is no way for anyone to do it his or herself. MS turned down the bespoke project. AFAIK, they never said, "Sorry, we'd need more money." They basically said fsck off, we're busy.
It's not offtopic, dumbass. It's orthogonal.
I'm an Israeli, and as such am more intimate with the details of the annoucement. What the Israeli government drives at here is neither a stab at Microsoft for lower prices, Hebrew for Macs, or anything of that sorts.
:)
What it drives for is open standards. Unfortunately, our economy is not too strong right now, and a when a poor fellow buys a computer, she cannot afford to pay another $129 on Windows, $200 on Word, or $300 on Office, which accumulates to (almost) more money than the hardware itself. She can install Linux, and will be able to use OpenOffice, of course. But what about opening Hebrew word files? No luck there.
As part of a cross-government effort for open standards (see some government sites for documents), they also drive for open standards. If pushing MS to do so by not buying their software anymore will accomplish that, then I salute 'em...
As for Linux penetration here in Israel, I can say it is no lesser than the situation in the US or Europe. No Munich yet, but we're getting there...
Those who can, do. Those who can't, consult.
Yeah, you should get all your products made in Cuba, since the US is not a racist country, and if they didn't like Fidel Castro's policies they would never do a racist thing like impose an embargo on another country...
When will people learn, a country is not a race!
And if you were a real businessman you would know about the US denials list, which is a long list of individuals (and some countries) with whom the US doesn't allow technology companies (like IBM) to deal. Or has that system been changed recently?
Since USians probably think Saddam started Bush Gulf War 2 by sucking those bombs into his country from the US airforce, no doubt you think Egypt started the 1967 war by sucking Israeli bombs onto their airfields.
That depends on your philosophy. Enlightenment philosophy might include Utilitarianism, i.e. that ethics is based on the greater good for the greater number of people; that is based on ends rather than motives.
Previous (e.g. Greek) philosophies might be that your place in the hierarchy is important, and that what a King says gets written down, but what a peasant does is not important. Hollywood is very keen on this philosophy - that whoever is arbitrarily defined as the good guys will win and that the bad guys get killed without trial.
I appriciate your points, but they extreemly nitpicky.
remembering the question I was unswering (regarding the hebrew language as a secular language) - your points are, at best, irrelevant.
Sorry for posting anonyously. Lost my
My name is Shachar Shemesh, and I'm involved in the Hebrew OpenOffice effort, as well as having some intimate knowledge about the events described above.
First - a correction. Adhering to the US settelment with MS was not something forced on MS by Strum. It was an agreement entered between Strum and MS some five years ago or so. In exchange for this agreement, Strum agreed NOT to declare them a monopoly.
The thing that brought this business forward was a legal action taken by a forum called "Freedom to choose" against Strum and the Israeli MoF, trying to force Strum to declare MS a monopoly. As a result, the agreement was suddenly published (it was kept a secret!). As an indirect result, MoF suspended it's agreement with MS.
Strum claim, by the way, is that MS is not a monopoly, as MS Israel is not selling to the Israeli market. MS products are sold by vendors (HP, IBM, etc.), who buy it directly from MS US. I can't even begin to describe how flawed I personally think this argument is, but that's a matter for a different article.
In an unrelated issue, the MoF is also financing an effort to add Hebrew support to OpenOffice. Participating in this are Sun Israel, TkOs (Tak Open Systems), Netmask, and myself as a representative of an NPO called "Hamakor" (I'm vulenteering, most of the rest are paid by MoF). As a result of this (as well as Sun Hamburg work on the matter), OpenOffice 1.1 will have pretty good Hebrew and Arabic support (not perfect, though). The Hebrew export and import from Word are not as good, unfortunetly. I'm hoping they will get better over time (the plans are laid out, they just need to be carried out).
Regarding the fonts and spell checker - Sun has bought about 5 fonts with Hebrew support, for use with OpenOffice (no mistake here - that's OpenOffice, not Star Office). They are not free (as in freedom), but they are free (as in falafel). There is also work to integrate a free software project called "hspell", which is a Hebrew spell checker, into OO. That, too, will take a little while longer.
Background:
Who ever heard of an anonymous coward signing?
Shachar Shemesh
Open Source Integration and Consulting
Hamakor board member
P.S.
Does anyone know how to recover a lost
Sh.
Well, my heritage chose not to be mean to the jews so I'll have my two cents here as a member of one of the few European peoples that were nice to the jews through history. No glass houses here.
This sentence applies to both the palestinians and the israeli: What the hell are you doing?!? This moronic spiral of violence is instigated by your leaders and fanatics. Not you.
That was the mandatory voice of reason. Now for the solution: Israel; get the hell out of the UN-defined borders and while you're at it, stop executing people with apaches. Palestine, get your police off their fat asses and arrest the key instigators before you collapse in civil war.
Israel's politics are responsible for 9/11, according to Bin Laden.
At least we know on whose side you are.
I'm sorry, but there's just no way this makes sense. Blaming an individual for the acts of their ancestors is nothing short of lunacy.
Noting that a culture was once twisted into something evil and could possibly be again is moderately acceptable.
But there is a difference between saying "The cultural and political climate in Europe is showing signs of the insular racism that led to Nazism in the past." and saying "Your grandparent was a Nazi, and you could turn into one ANY SECOND."
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
Israeli soliders in tank takes out Hamas terrorist camp - Palestinian casualties guaranteed; Israeli casualties not guaranteed.
Palestinian terrorist takes out bus full of schoolkids - Palestinian casualty guaranteed, Israeli casualties guaranteed.
Therefore, the use of *themselves* to blow up Israelis leads to a factor that increases their casualty numbers which is not present in the Israeli figures.
--is not to be confused with user #672982 - Bame Flait
If I had mod points, I would mod you up. That is the single clearest and most complete summary of Israeli history I've ever read, and every point you made is truth.
I'd friend you, too, if you weren't AC.
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
But there is a difference between saying "The cultural and political climate in Europe is showing signs of the insular racism that led to Nazism in the past." and saying "Your grandparent was a Nazi, and you could turn into one ANY SECOND."
OK. I'll accept it's a little unfair. I agree with the previous statement regarding the political climate in Europe incidentally. However, I will say that the unctious sanctimony of the Europeans regarding the affairs of Israel reminds me of the behavior of ex-smokers who decry smoking in their presence.
I'll also admit that I just don't like Europeans in general. I have a bias. I used to like them too. The last 10 years have been very destructive to my opinion of same, and the hypocrisy on the Israel issue is just the tip of the iceberg.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Excellent post, thank you!
Sigged!
Mac is is still strong in Israeli academic world, and absence of Hebrew is a pain.
I wonder if this is in part a response to the U.S. Government's policy to not use some Israeli software products. In particular, I am aware that they refuse to use Checkpoint for security concerns.
with X11 it depends on your XKB setup. You should be able to type nikkud with ctrl+numbers in any application, but I had little success with KDE apps. Will try more...
> Feature management is a very, very simple concept. You look at what percent of your customers are demanding this or that feature, and what bugs are affecting X percentage of your customers, and make your decisions about how to allocate development resources from there.
You are correct, only when applied to poorly designed systems and/or poorly managed operations.
In the admittedly uncommon world of truely considered software practices it works more like this...
You look at the potential profit a feature will bring. If positive profit, you promptly FIND the resources.
About TIME my hard-earned hard-paid-for taxes are spent more wisely in Israel.
I can only imagine how the Microsoft dependency feels for an Israeli taxpayer.
(Go ahead, mark me down as Troll... I know were not "supposed" to complain that more US tax dollars go to Israel than all of sub-Saharan Africa -- plus Afghanistan, combined. Sorry, I'm all out of Soma...).
Pay for the privelage. Have those users absorb the additional cost required to add and support their demand for Hebrew in mac word. If Israel balks, then raise the price of word for all of Israel to cover the expense. If Israel balks again, then what they're doing is demanding preferential treatment as then they'd be insisting the rest of the non Hebrew world help shoulder the burden.
In short, if I want the output to say:
"Hear O' Isreal, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one"
(in Hebrew, of course) would I have to type
"eno si droL eht ,doG ruo si droL eht ,laersI 'O raeH"
instead? Hmmm?
~Ya'akov
P.S.: For the two or three people reading this page who don't already know, the sentence above is called "the Shema" or simply "Shma", and is basically a univeral Jewish prayer... in phoenetic Hebrew, it's "Shema Y'isroiel, A'donai Elohaynu, A'donai E'chad!" (with the e and ch in E'chad pronounced like "eh" and the ch in "Bach", respectively. Have you prayed to your God today? :-)
Actually, they do. Not just Appleworks, but all the iTunes stuff too.
It's not wasting time, I'm educating myself.
any US based linux company may be contracted bt the israeli gebernment and tell the US they are still doing good things with their money ;)
Wrong on number one. Aggressors NEVER give back land taken
,and Jordan hated them and still does. Even tried to kill them.
Please, get you facts straight since June of 1967 Israel has OCCUPIED the original Borders of the Palestine state.
Today not only does Israel OCCUPY Palestinian land, but encourages settlement of jewish Israeli's on these lands
While in Occupation of this so called democratic country, Palestinians suffer without having any political say in the Israeli government, suffer from lack of clean water, livable conditions in the Gaza Strip are horrendous, despite the support of many human rights organizations their efforts however, have been continuously blocked by the State of Israel.
Historically speaking, it is Israel's land and there is no such thing as a Palestinian. there is also, BTW no such thing as a Jordanian either, according to your line of reasoning. Jordan was made by the U.N. "Palestinians" are Jordanians,
Wow!?!? You really are confused aren't you? Those little Israeli tourism pamphlets you've been reading aren't very historically accurate. Saying that Palestinians don't exist is like saying Native Americans don't exist either. True, as with Native Americans in the pre-Colonial days, The Palestinians did not have a "Nationalized" Identity in the European since. Present day arab Nationalism was a European concept introduced in the Middle east from colonialism which of course is no different than present day Israeli colonialism.
However a majority of the Inhabitants (who call themselves Palestinian) of this land converted to Islam 1400 years ago, Thereby adopting a "Muslim" Identity and implementing Arabic culture and language. This however does not justify taking someone's home and prompting a forceful relocation of 8 million Palestinian Refugees in other Arabic nations, when in fact they have lived on the land what is now known as Israel for Thousands of years, and have always had a localized "Palestinian" Culture.
They are merciful enough to only destroy the homes of terrorists and their activities. Of course, the Israeli-hating-terrorist murtderous liars also destroy... blah, blah, blahblah blahblah, blah.
Ahem, Spoken like a true sincere human being.
all those homes that are bulldozed are all terrorist? Hmm the BBC and most internationally focused news agencies reports differently, just one example
Israelis attack military targets and go out of the way (which they should not) to avoid civilian targets. Your friends the lying murderers nearly always target the innocents.
Dead wrong. Everyday Israel just can't avoid civilian targets
Thus the continuous occupation, oppression, and destruction of Palestinian children and THEIR land and now you have Israeli citizens that wonder why their homes and way of life isn't safe anymore? hmmmmm.
Why does Israel even put up with these animals?
They're u go bro...you Represent your israeli folk well why your safe and sound in your american home, what's the matter dude? why don't you go to Israel and live there? Scared?
However, more and more average working americans themselves are becoming aware that Israel has become a liability to our country, with 3 billion (soon to go up) a year "official" Tax support for the Israeli occupation, in the face human rights, 30 UN sanctions, growing worldwide (not just middle east) anti-american sentiment because of it's relations with Israel. Israel does nothing for the United States, Economically, Politically, and diplomatically except lobby for more money. I say stop the support and use that money on more important things like our children's future education and healthcare.
In the end who
"Although Apple has provided operating system-level support for Arabic, Hebrew, Urdu and other right to left languages since the release of Mac OS X 10.2 last year" It doesn't say much about Apple if they only started Hebrew one year ago. I do remember reading about right to left support available in Windows a long time before this. Was it even in Windows NT? I don't remeber.
He accepted it with 16 "reservations". He flat out refused to follow certain parts, saying the Palestinians had to do their end first, and they had been already. So the Palestinians had to put away all their guns, and maybe the Israelis would pull their tanks out if they were lucky.
"Try looking back to the July 2000 Camp David summit between Clinton, Barak, and Arafat. When Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered Arafat 96% of what Palestinias claim they want, including a Palestinian capital in parts of Jerusalem, rather than accept or even come up with a counter-offer, Arafat refused the offer and left the peace talks."
That's a huge load of propaganda. Look at the reality of Barak's 'generous' offer
Oh and by the way, the Palestinian Liberation Orgranization PLO, was founded pre-1967 and their charter calls for the destruction of Israel so don't go thinking this is about borders.
So what, in 2000 Arafat accepted and officially recognized Israel. At the same time as the PLO made those former statements, Prime ministers said the following:
I don't believe the textbook thing anymore. It's been propaganda for sooo long. After the Oslo accords, they're supposed to recognize Israel. Show me proof.
I never implied that Hamas or Islamic Jihad were interested in a two-state solution. They're not running Palestine. Part of Hamas wants a two state plan, but the other part rejects it, however.
Give me the rundown on the Oslo accords then. Israel destroyed and shut down the Palestinian police force. Did the accords say something about stopping settlements or right of return?
Uh huh, homicidal children. Yup. What weapons do they have again? Rocks? How did they die? Bullets? Hmmmm...
I'm quite sick of how when a Palestinian gunman kills 3 Israeli soldiers, it's Terror (which it is), but when an Israeli tank kills 6 civillians, it's an Error, an accident, a mistake. Remember when the Palestinian firemen died putting out a fire because Isreali troops opened fire on them? There was even a video of it.
My point is that both sides feuding are practicing terrorism. Neither can claim higher moral ground on this.
TS: Hierakonopolis Software, may I help you?
User: I'm having problems with In-the-beginning-was-the-Word 5.0
TS: What is your problem?
User: I type for a little while then the screen locks up.
TS: Did you try to hit ctrl-alt-eye-of-horus?
User: Yes, I keep getting the lapis-lazuli screen of passing-to-eternal-reward.
TS: Maybe you're short on RAMses.
User: I'm not a newbian! I think there's a main system chariot interrupt conflict.
TS: Reinstall and pray.
Yeah, it's a nit, but I just had to picket.
Forget diamonds, copyright is forever.
Windows metrically equivalent fonts
Cigar time. That is the one key most signifant practical barrier to widespread adoption of Open Office.
If metric equivalent fonts, especially non Latin fonts, were widely available, there would be a tidal wave of OOo adoption.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
For starters, the agreed upon language of the coming New World Order WILL be English. Any other language will be useless, and superfluous. Even God uses English now.
Switch, or perish. It's as simple as that.
Dude, there WAS no Islam 1400 years ago. Check out a Muslim calendar.
-raph
You are invited for a week to israel.
I wonder if you will think that way after you leave...
Chinese and Japanese are left to right, and I beleive that the Mac version of MS Word does not support Arabic either.
Israel is not nearly as bad as other places out there, why is it dominating UN discussions?
:o)
Maybe because they keep ignoring the UN resolutions?
Damn you must be getting the paid, ad-free version of Slashdot. Better broken ads than any ads at all.
Is j00r keyboard sticky from w4term3llon j00ce niggerboy....? What nonsense j00 type
|*l33z kOm3nT in m4h j00rnehl