Slashdot Mirror
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."
M$ GOT pWN3D
(see subject)
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
blowing themselves up on your doorstep, a monopoly, even as almight as MS, just doesn't seem that intimidating.
Sdelat' Ameriku velikoy Snova!
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?
I hate Muslims. They should be exterminated.
down with apartheid
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)
down with anti-zionists.
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 know.
mod me down.
I fucked your mother and she was a bit loose down there, but your son's ASS was nice and tight.
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
You're all a bunch of flaming gay-o faggots, and I want the $10 I spent on this piece-of-jizz website back. Speaking of jizz, I summon the WIPO Troll! Jizz-snot! Jizz-snot! Jizz-snot!!
-- The WIPO Avenger
Amen.
--Chag
Typically, customers revolting against your software is the first sign that things, as they say, "ain't right(tm)". Sometimes, these are the precursors to the death of a company. Unfortunately, MS is so large, the normal rules go right out the window.
But if they finally are dying ( which I doubt ), we're in for a hell of a nasty ride.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
If they're talking about evaluating OpenOffice as an alterntive, that means MS is not a monopoly. Man, people are stupid.
That (at least at a glance) Open Office seems to have really stepped up the multi-language support... including Hebrew. Next we'll barricade Microsoft's Israel headquarters and make Bill Gates spend a romantic evening with Yasser Arafat...
Could be an easy problem solver there if Star or Open Office has it. Does it?
anyone know if ching chong spaceman landed or died or something?
It is a messy subject. Localization decisions are made to open up new markets. For a company to make a decision to localize they have to justify the cost with the new market share. The problem with languages like Catalan (Spanish variant) Nynorsk (Norwegian variant) and Hebrew is that the populations that speak them are almost all fluent in another language that the products are already localized to. There are a few people that are monolingual to these languages but they are generally not the kind of people that use computers.
On the flip side these kinds of languages often carry some sort of cultural significance. The decision not to support looks like a snide towards the culture.
The Chosen ones have a DIVINE RIGHT to have all office apps support their backwards language!
!eef OCS 993,1$ ruof yap ro swodniw ot kcab oG !troppus si gnittirw tfel ot thgir rof troppus s'tI
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
Once China becomes the new supreme power in the world then Israel won't have America to protect it and the Arabs can finally push the fascist invaders into the sea.
Muslims have a LOOONG memory. So just wait.
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 jews are just mad that Microsoft is the last big American corporation not run by jews.
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_? :)
Arabs get real excited about Urdu word processors.
wtf?
So just buy a PC, you religious nuts. 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. What are they going to do, use Linux? Yeah right. I can just see productivity plummeting.
...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.
The sand niggers are definitely a different and inferior race compared to the Jews.
PALESTINIANS == SAND NIGGERS
Hi.
Do you wank a lot?
- Marco
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.
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...
I mean, really -- I don't see anything offensive about that.
Ok. That's one for the Palestinian Sand Niggers. Hurray for them. I've got an idea, why don't you blow yourself up in celebration of this momentous lack of accomplishment.
The Palestiinian Sand Niggers are rather similar to the Nazi's the only difference is that the Palestinian Sand Niggers are trying to whine the Jews to death.
and they wonder why people are willing to blow themselves up
who gives a shit what those stupid apes are doing they are simply cavemen who wear suits and carry yankee guns
USA veto's international condemnation of their wall and then the USA wants billions to pay for Iraq ? hahaha LMFAO
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
hahaha hitler was right at least palestine realises it
Do us all a favor. Step out from behind the little girl you're teaching to stone tanks so the IDF can blow your ass away.
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
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!
Let's see:
Egypt - got their ass kicked
Iraq - almost over with
Syria - you're next bitch
Iran - mhmm
Saudi Arabia - you'll be feeling frisky by then but, wrong move.
all others....
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.
In the news today, the heads of leftists all over the world blew to pieces, unable to decide whether to bash Israel or Microsoft. One anti-Semitic communist was heard to say "if MS sends H1Bs to blow themselves up in Tel Aviv, I might consider buying Windows XP to support the family, just like my hero Saddam sent money to the families of terrorists."
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.
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).
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
Now that they are the majority, the Palestinians
are going to demand citizenship in Israel and
win the next election.
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.
You do realize that Jordan has a law that forbids any Jew to become a citizen? Note - not Israeli. JEW.
Jews were ethnically cleansed out of Jordan into Israel after the War of Independence, but that doesn't matter. It's only apartheid when it's the whitey Jews doing anything bad, right?
And similarly Israel is the apartheid one in the conflict for giving Muslims thousands of more rights in the Jewish state than Jews have in any of the nearby Muslim states.
His shiny head would prolly absorb the explosion.
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.
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.
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.
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?
go suck some circumsized jewish cock
Well here's the real solution: Don't use a shitty mac.
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? ;)
Up here
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?
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".
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
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.
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.
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
Anybody know if OpenOffice.org supports Hebrew?
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).
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.
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.
Why use OroborOSX and XonX? Why not just use Apple's wonderful, Quartz Extreme capable version of X11?
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
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.
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.
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.
"Christ killers don't deserve support from our beloved Christian nation".
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
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.
...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.
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!
Linux is the long-awaited savior!
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!"
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
"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.
Please stop saying it is,English is germanic - it used to be called Western German. Now, Latin and German share an ancient root language,but latin is NOT a root of english.
"Comedy's a dead art form. Now tragedy, that's funny."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Israel's politics are responsible for 9/11, according to Bin Laden.
At least we know on whose side you are.
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 ;)
"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.
I'm NOT advocating Bin Laden, I'm just telling you why he said he did it. As a result, we gave $10 Billion MORE to Israel. I'm quite worried that we will have more terrorist attacks against the US now, now that we also invaded 2 more countries.
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.
Chinese and Japanese are left to right, and I beleive that the Mac version of MS Word does not support Arabic either.