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Israeli Ministry of Commerce Picks OO.org Over MS
CaptainT writes "According to this article in The Register Microsoft office was replaced by Open Office in the Israeli employment agency.
MS scorns the defection...
This follows current Israeli antitrust legislation and the recent release by IBM and Sun of Hebrew support in OpenOffice.org. Is the Israeli Defence Force going to follow?"
In my opinion, Open Office still has many issues which need to be fixed in future releases to compete with MS Office. I don't know whether that was taken into consideration in this move, but certainly a step in the right direction for open source.
A blog like any other.
I'm a staunch anti-occupation, anti-IDF individual because of Israel's brutal regime in the West Bank. But then I'm also an OOo supporter.
I'm torn.
Us Americans don't send them billions of dollars in aid every year just so they can go squander it on anti-American, pro-terrorist software. How can they claim to be our "allies" in the war against terror when they start using software based on principles of theft that Osama himself would agree to? This must stop. If Israel decides to go down the path of "Old Europe" and Red China we need to make sure that they don't do it with American tax dollars, which should only be used for building illegal settlements and killing Arabs.
The best line is where Microsoft criticizes OpenOffice as having "the features of Office 97 at best". What, Office 97 wasn't good enough? Now they admit it!
Some of the best thinkers and code writers come from Israel. Given this fact, it is no wonder they resent outside monopoly control over software, albeit from the friendly US of A.
OTOH, Israel should be latching on to stuff like AbiWord, Gnumeric etc. rather than OOo. The latter neither provides full feature compatibility with MS Office, nor has any specific advantages to be adopted as a standard.
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If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Palestinians also announced migration to both Open Office and KOffice.
When asked for comment Mr Arafat said "the Israeli and Palestinian people can't agree on much but one thing we see eye to eye on is that Microsoft is an evil behemoth and needs to be stopped."
Many are optimistic that the new Open Source philsophy in the Middle East could one day help bridge the gap between two peoples and lead to peace.
The first thing I had to do was code up a linker/wrapper between the apt-get and dselect text interface libraries to the Hebrew libraries present on Debian. This took a few weeks, but with by judicious use of the LISP hooks I'd placed in my own private source tree for apt-get a year or two previously, it was no real problem. The next thing to do was to convert the apt-get and dselect command syntax to reading right to left as is done in Hebrew, rather than the normal Western left to right. One of the jokers in my software team suggested setting up a mirror in front of the screen...and then adding it to the apt.sources file (gettit...a mirror!!), but we were able to get the department to extend our contract by a month (they were pretty tight for cash), and within the 30 days we'd re-written all the low-level display routines in dselect so that they outputted text in the correct orientation.
Needless to say, the system is still operational even now, and they don't have any problems at all managing their software rollouts on Debian. It wouls not surprise me at all if the Israeli Governemt tried to adopt another similar, final solution. As they say, apt-get shalom!
I'm reminded of when a large australian company changed to an OSS desktop solution, and MS decried this as "a blow for choice in the market". No explanation of how this could be possible, but everything is sound bites, a mere snippet of text that cannot possibly convey any real meaning of a situation.
... agency has selected an immature and unproven software package" could well be applied to anyone looking towards Longhorn.
"The
Few will make that leap of judgment to understand the hypocrisy.
RST
Because Office XP was so awful, we've stuck with Office 2000. We've just started receiving .doc files that Office 2000 can't open, but the latest release of Open Office can. Now, if anyone receives one of these latest Office files from outside, I just install OO. Everyone gets to keep their preferred version of MS Office while being exposed to Open Office in small doses.
"There is absolutley NO Open Source in Baghdad!"
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
when the little pebbles start to hit microsofts bank accounts then ill agree, untill then microsoft will do the same old thing. You have to understand, to most people windows is what a computer is, they have no intrest in changing.
Selling software wont make you money, selling a service will.
The specific office moving to OO do not maintain their own computers. They are on contract from IBM, and IBM preferred OO to Word.
The contract is global, and the ministry does not pay more (or less) because of it. MS received quite some scorn over that, as their initial press release was claiming this is going to cost 50$/station. When the correction came in that OO was used rather than star office, their corrected response was seeked. They declined to comment.
Another twist is that the Mac angle was not raised, not even once. I believe The Register put it in because they were the first to flag that.
Doing Bi-directional text well has lots of pitfalls. E.g. the software has to recognize when you start typing in a number and switch directions (The number five hundred thirty one still appears as 531 in hebrew, not 135).
Mixing left-to-right with right-to-left is even worse. E.g. when you are on the boundary between the two texts and hit the backspace key, which piece of text gets erased?
Lots of other subtle problems to getting it perfect. I hope they did a good job.
Why don't you label the OOo CD as Office XP Service Pack CD and charge $10 for it? You could rake in a bit in your locality!
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
From the announcement:
According to the guidelines set by our legal department, we cannot release the full product, so we have built a set of diff source files and associated documentation.
I'm kinda confused by this one... Why couldn't they release the full source code? Is there anything stopping somebody from distributing the source after applying the diffs?
-mo
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apparently thats wrong
or ford wouldnt switch 10,000 desktops
xyz wouldnt switch 200 desktops.
people are jumping ship.
it willl reach the critical point soon enough
hell, even using windows, and going with OO hurts microsoft.
people have no interest in computers. they switch when they get used to things at work.
individuals dont make the choice, industry does.
For the sake of OO and any other OS project out there lets try not to associate them with the IDF in any way. I think it's just better that way.
From my experience, clerks of Israeli governmnet agencies use MSOffice mostly to exchange supposed-to-be-funny powerpoint presentations.
And you must be American, filled with myths about the Europeans being this way or the other.
I have some news for you. Europe has a huge population, violently pro-US (UK et al), neutral, slightly anti-US (France). Same thing with the feelings towards the Israeli/Palestine conflict, with a tendency to be critical of brutality, which can be found on both sides, but sanctioned among the Israeli and frowned upon by the Joe Palestinian.
Since you don't read newspapers, even Bush and Blair condemn Israel's violence and humiliation tactics. What does your comment make you? Both uneducated AND unaware of your favourite president's view on the issue.
I must say it warms my heart - but I'm a bit pessimistic, you see ... Israel has got some of the best politicians money can buy; And, judging from the enthusiastic appearance of two of our ministers in Microsoft's latest "microsoft in the government expo" in Italy, I think Microsoft Israel is well aware of the commodity status of Israeli politicians.
Well, that's pretty much it, except I would use the word "rational" instead of (sic) "genious".
science can answer all problems to include the meaning of life
Wrong. I'm a scientist and science tells me only about the nature - nothing more, nothing less.
I choose to believe that there is no meaning of life, there is no fundamental right or wrong, love is only a biochemical reaction in the brain and that consciousness does not survive beyond death. Nothing I see or hear tells me anything else, so it would be irrational to think otherwise.
The owls are not what they seem
or you could see it as another domino falling against that evil monopoly. Next there will be another domino and another.... China Japan and Korea are all moving away from Windows to their own OS based on unix. Since MSOffice is only available on Windows and Mac thats quite a sizeale portion of the worlds population moving away from microsoft.
If you know the origin of the Zealots, then your comment isn't quite as dumb. The Zealots ( led by Barabbas) were fighting Roman tyranny, and Israel is currently fighting the Microsoft monopoly.
Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. - Mark Twain
I have to say, my experience with OpenOffice.org has not been stellar. While I use it on occasion, it's always struck me as so horribly slow. It seems to me that we *dont* want to be imitating all the feature bloat and general crap that seems to hang on to MS Office like cheap wallpaper. Honestly, who really needs all the features in Word anyway? Reminds me of a caller on The Screensavers I saw once. He told Leo and Pat that he needed Word, and they (insightfully) asked: Do you need Word, or do you need a word processor? I think that's a question more people need to ask themselves.
... mighty oaks do grow.
:-)
It's a big step forward for OS when large agencies (goverments , companies, even departments) collectively switch - it focuses the attention. Microsoft's attitude speaks volumes here as well - lets hope they continue their PR nightmare
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
"The employment agency has selected an immature and unproven software package and its functionality is at the best close to Office 97", said Microsoft representatives. What exactly does this mean for Office97? It had no feature like PDF-Export or XML-Support - but was far more immature than OO?
I've heard piracy is pretty darn rampant there. You can buy ANY software product on the street for 2-3 bucks. Sure enough no one wants to pay $250 for a version of Office they can't reliably "replicate" to all machines in the department (and to home PCs of employees as well). There's a lot more to Office than just word processing and spreadsheets. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on which side in this battle is yours) there's not enough education about all the stuff MS Office can do. MS has to realize that customers don't give a flying fuck about the features if they don't know they're in there.
This is what most people do not get. The fact that you can eventually explain a human experience in the terms of natural science does not devaluate the experience itself.
The owls are not what they seem
being a scientist, what evidence have you considered that supports/denies the following:
1. life has no meaning
2. there does not exist fundamental right/wrong
3. consciousness does not survive beyond death
If there is no evidence (or can be no evidence) that can either strengthen or weaken the above claims, would a scientific mind simply conclude that more research (or more grants, if you're a professional) needs to be done?
OpenOfice works great with all my files, in fact if it had exchange/templates it would be on par with MS Office 2003. Exchange in 2003 is faster, and has much more features. Syncing email is smooth as silk now over dialup/dsl. Visio has a great selection of icons, thats almost worth the price for the whole suite.
.ppt and MS Office had no problem opening that. Very impressive.
The other day, I recieved a PowerPoint that MSOffice couldnt open, OpenOffice opened it, exported back to
But thats for work, at home I save money and use OpenOffice/Mozilla.
To me science tells about how nature works. Natural science limits itself to questions which can be falsified, ie. proven wrong. Beyond those, my personal beliefs are not limited to or by the natural science.
For instance, those three points are not falsifiable by the natural science and are therefore out of science's jurisdiction. Therefore I cannot "know" them and that's why in my original post I used to the word "believe".
But yes, I also believe that religions are inherently dangerous, should not have any place in the infrastructure (government, military, schools,...) of a modern society and should be weeded out by time.
The owls are not what they seem
ahh, excellent. Then I agree with you completely then.
New support? The document is dated 2002.
30% off web hosting. Coupon code "SLASHDOT".
Yours is as good as any
* German town selects GNU/Linux - I hear no outcry.
* China builds Red Flag Linux - Where are the protests?
* Massachusets decides to look into open source - I don't hear any Witches screaming.
Why is it that when I saw the headline, I cringed? I knew that it would bring out the comments from people like you. As much as people try to mask their racism with comments about how awful the Israeli government is, it is comments like yours that are most revealing about the latent racism that exists. I may dissagree with repression (whether Israeli or my own government's (US)), but that isn't your point. I'm a "Filthy Kyke scum" as you so elegantly stated.
Here's to hoping you're a Microsoft Troll.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
European Union: 380+ million
India: 1.05 billion
China: 1.27 billion (American billion = 10^9)
Yes, the problem though from Microsoft's perspective is a lot of the countries that are switching are where their future growth was meant to come from. It's not necessarily enough for them to keep what they've got.
It looks like you're trying to migrate away from Microsoft Office. What would you like me to do?
Hit the big red switch and give you a few minutes to reconsider?
Remind you that Bill 0wnz j00?
Send an MS FUD press release to The Register.
Commit harikari?
That last one is one I have been waiting a long time for Clippy to offer to do.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
You need to perform voodoo and raise the dead to be able to add page numbers to your documents in OpenOffice. In MS Office it's just one click away.
You call that a flame war? ;)
Yea, adopting a simple black and white mentality sure makes this an easy issue to deal with. The way you worded the above paragraph gives the impression that you think acts of agression seem to originate solely from the Palestinian side and the Israeli government (and extremists, yes there are Israeli terrorists as well you know) is left high and dry trying to defend its citizens. Blowing up a Starbucks is definetly not a counter attack but why don't you point your finger at Israel as well? Are you telling me that they haven't inticed violence at all or overreacted in any way by killing innocent Palestinians?
My point isn't that the Palestinians are being treated unfairly (eventhough I feel they are). It is that people like you need to adopt a more balanced view regarding this situation. Both sides are equally guilty for committing atrocious crimes and that the blame should be shared equally.
I'm as much an Open Source lover as the next FreeBSD religious geek, but the way I see the train going right now, here's where it'll get:
.. yes. Office suites that attempt to open MS Office formats.
.doc/.xls/.ppt/whatever files, it becomes _illegal_ [in the US] for OpenOffice to attempt to open them under the DMCA. Unless this can somehow be steered away, OO is going to be beheaded swiftly and cruelly, and nobody will use anything besides MS Office, because nothing else will open MS Office formats.
DMCA is already in action. TCPA and DRM are coming on us in the next couple of years, we already know Microsoft's Paladium will be present in longhorn. Fritz chips are already being sold, and sooner than we might like, DRM-enforcement will migrate from our motherboard into our CPU. Microsoft, Disney, the RIAA and MPAA etc. have been lobbying Intel and AMD over this for a while now.
This actually gets on-topic when the DMCA is used to trash competition, as in cases of 3rd-party-made garage-door remotes, printer cartridges and
Once Microsoft uses the DRM-enforcing Fritz chip (which, according to the DMCA legislation, must be present in your computer) to encode their
Many questions are asked about how this will affect non-US countries without silly DMCA legislation, and the legal answer is "It won't". The economic one however says "If there is no US market for products like OO, quite a few them may simply cease to exist". Add to that the unwillingness of many OS developers to contribute their time to an open source project that is used in other countries but makes them criminals in the US where they live, and where they cannot use their own project where they work.
OO may simply not bother breaking the DRM on Office files for non-US clients. And that would indeed hurt Israeli clients.
This conclusion makes me question the wisdom of moving an entire government agency to OO. It actually hurt me to say that.
Cheers.
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The statement can be read both ways.
The day will come when people buy software for reasons other than utility: fashion, conspicuous consumption, political affiliation... but today it's simply a matter of price and functionality.
Microsoft can say what they like, but very few people will try OOo and then MSOffice and then choose to pay for MSOffice with their own money simply because of a sound bite.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
How about MS adopting to OO.org? None of the new legislations/techniques prevents them from supporting an open standard. And eventually they will, if people keep resisting DRM and governments and large enterprises are forced to support these open standards, mainly by their own anti-trust laws.
Microsoft has shown on several occasions it's able to retreat from a failing assault; even when strong lobby groups tell them to do otherwise.
If Palladium isn't dead yet, I'm sure it will reincarnate in a much lighter form.
You make some excellent points. Those of us who are fortunate enough to not live in the middle east can look around a bit and safely conclude that both sides must be at fault. For evidence of Israeli complicity, look at what those wacky Jewish extremists do around the rest of the world -- suicide bombings and airplane hijackings, kidnapping and murder in the U.S. of A., the U.K, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Kashmir, Turkey, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan -- you name the place, those Jewish extremists are there, killing and maiming innocent people as often as they can. And as anybody knows by listening to its clerics, Islam is a religion of peace -- and if they say so, it must be true. AFAIK, the Jews make no such claims. Hell -- look at their suicidal behavior against the Nazis during WWII. Any group that would kill 6,000,000 of their own to inflict a few casualties on their enemies must be zealots of the highest order.
The best diplomat I know is a fully activated phaser bank.
-- Scotty.
If it was a troll it's actually quite a poor troll, since nobody got it.
Personally I and most other people have no idea whether dselect uses lisp or not. I know emacs does, so it's not an unreasonable idea. The rest seems vaguely plausible if a bit contorted (changing the application rather than hacking a hebrew console driver seems a long way to go about it).
What's wrong with lisp hooks anyway?
The next thing the Israeli govement thinking about is to adopt Mozilla instead of Internet Explorer for use with internal web applications and messaging. In the Hebrew press we got few messages about it in the past week, but I can't approve yet how much seriously they are.
The problem is that the Hebrew localization project for Mozilla still missing few features, because of [mostly] UI bugs in the browser.
Most of the major bugs in Mozilla for Hebrew users can be found in this list (Tsahi is the person who did most of the l10n progress). Any help would be welcome!
Hopefully, one day, we will get our whole goverment to use Linux on each desktop...
In USA, monkeys are running the country.
USA is great!
Here in Norway Office XP was just released with support for 'nynorsk' which is a quite widely used official dialect of regular norwegian. There was quite a lot of pressure on MS from the departement of education to provide this.
OpenOffice has had support for nynorsk since 1.0.2 I believe.
Some people believe that consciousness is only a biochemical reaction.
Word from the wise; "clearly not" is a giveaway that an opinion is about to follow.
Sure it is. Religion is a series of strongly held beliefs based on faith (i.e. no or little scientific proof) usualy (but not always) centered arround a belief in a higher authority.
Atheism is the belief that said higher authority does not exist. Atheism in and of itself however is a leap of faith, because there is no evidence that a higher authority doesn't exist.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
In mid-September, a rumor was reported that Ford was "considering" a switch for servers. Somehow that turned into a rumor of a massive desktop migration.
A few weeks later, Ford announced they were NOT going to switch desktops to linux (google cache, original article off-line now). Ford specifically mentioned just signing a 3 year contract with Microsoft. Perhaps the rumor was used as legerage to get a better deal from MS, or perhaps it was just the case of wishful thinking and sloppy reporting.
Here's slashdot's coverage with more links. Notice the update, posted several hours later (probably long after most slashdot readers had long since stopped seeing it)... with the link to a newsforge story, aptly titled Ford move to Linux not true (yet). It was all a rumor that got blown out of proportion.
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
Many are optimistic that the new Open Source philsophy in the Middle East could one day help bridge the gap between two peoples and lead to peace.
Unless palestinian coders are using emacs, and israeli coders are using vi, that is.
In that case there will never be peace...
"First lesson," Jon said. "Stick them with the pointy end."
Word from the wise; "clearly not" is a giveaway that an opinion is about to follow.
Word from the wise; all statements are opinion.
Some people believe that consciousness is only a biochemical reaction.
You're leading into word games now. You need to define "biochemical reaction" before any discussion can proceed without the risk that you assign it an arbitrary meainng at some later stage.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
United States stopped military/financial support for Israel. They will continue providing moral support though.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
It has little impact on the big picture however and puts no "taint" on open source as all are free to use it or not as they wish.
Europe is noted for it's centuries old habit of anti-semitism.
I am an anti-zionist. I am not an anti semite which is what most EUasins are. I wish the Jews no ill will. I do wish my government would do more to stop the violence and have called my Congress person and Senators but they are going to do nothing. I want Isreal to treat the Palestinians as humans and stop this fratricidal confilict they have with their brothers and sister in Palestine.
Most of the people in the EU use the Isreali occupation of lands that are not theirs and oppression of the Palestinians as a convient cover for their Jew hating.
Germany is the only country were this is not so.
As far as you representation of how people in the UK feel about Bush and the war in Iraq. The Guardian did a survey "Protests begin but majority backs Bush visit as support for war surges." It appears you are wrong according to the quite liberal UK Guardian
More inforamtion on Zionism and "greater Isreal" Alfred Lilienthal
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
Atheism is a misnomer; it really should be called 'anti-theism'. Linguistical the 'a' does not denote a negative. Consider 'moral', 'immoral', and 'amoral'. 'Amoral' is not acting against morality, but with lack of concern towards morality. 'Immoral' is acting against morality.
'Anti-theism' ('imtheism' doesn't sound right...) would be stating that god does not exist. 'Atheism' should be the lack of concern as to whether or not a god exists. Note that this is different from 'agnosticism' which simply states that knowing whether or not god exists is impossible (at least at this time).
One of my personal pet peeves.
--etrnl--
Actually Office 2K debugged most of the features of Office 97. By the same token, Office 2k3 should debug all of them and some of the new features introduced with Office 2K.
I agree with your mother. I updated much earlier but that was because O97 wasn't stable with larger documents or embedded objects. However, I now stick with O2K on my remaining Windows system.
See my journal, I write things there
I wouldn't worry about it at all, we wont let the rest of the world march full steam ahead with their own tech. And making it illegal to do conversions in the US would lead to even more spending in other industrialized nations. Brazil is an excellent example of this. Tech IP, pharma IP, and military research are some of the U.S. main subsidies, and we want the rest of the world to continue to buy the results/export capital to the US (Otherwise we stagnate). If U.S. companies are too obnoxious in pricing (_or_ dont have political or economic lock in through global DRM initiatives), countries will fund their own development--because it's cheaper in the mid and long term than running microsoft. This could easily lead to more open source software being produced outside the US (and probably already is, if all the 'we're going open source' statements are backed with action).
All your preview button are belong to Hello Kitty.
I think you're a bit off in saying that the Mac is out of the picture for MS.
Microsoft's Mac software
I belief the burden of proof is upon those who propose the existence of some unmeasurable things. You might as well take the leap of faith to NOT believe it when I tell you that I talk to angels.
OpenOffice can run as a "web service" that can be queried. It has a great API called UNO that I suggest you check out.
This allows you to write all sorts of cool apps that can use the backend of OpenOffice as part of a web services architecture. I use it to convert all documents sent and received via email into pdf so that viruses are not propagated internally or externally and so that everyone can read the document. If there is some reason why someone *MUST* see the original attachment that was sent, it can be retrieved from a webpage.
Ahh, but it's not a standard is it? It's a trade secret.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
OpenOffice is totally missing VB macro virus support. Microsoft really have been the pioneers in bringing the virus to places its never been before.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I've been using OO.o for a few months now and have yet to find any big issues with it when compared to O2k. .docs which are some bastardized... thing.)
Tables are easy to use, page numbering may take a bit to find, but until O2k it was a bitch to find there, too.
I like the integrated PDF export, something that if you want to do in MSO, you gotta get acrobat for a few hundred $'s... haven't had a problem yet.
I just sold my friend on OO.o a few months back and he's used it more than I, just made up somthing in calc and exported it to Excel 2k/XP without a hitch (his machine is Windows 2000).
I've also lightly used Linux as a desktop OS (i don't largly due to lack of good 3D support for my geforce4), and find the cross platform compatibility an outright godsend. I used MSO 98 for that mac and found i had to save as an office 97 doc and then open it, converting up automagically to o2k, breaking the reverse compatibility until i resaved as o97. with OO.o, the headache isn't there (though OO.o doesn't do mac classic and an OSX port is still on the way, i rarely use macs anyhow.)
MSO stinks, OO.o is better, any flaws in compatibility is due to the stupidity of the closed source format used by M$. at least with the oo.o files you can open them with your favorite zip utility and see what makes them tick. (Oo.o files are just zip archives containing xml files with the actual formatting and content therein, unlike
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
What does the regime of Israel has to do with adoption of OSS in it's goverment and army?
That would be like someone will say they don't want to use Microsoft Windows (or Red Hat Linux for that matter), because they are US companies, and it has a certain regime in Iraq or somewhere else. (Actually, what you saying to even less logical, since you don't have to support someone to support their move to OO, if you support OO).
If you have a problem with an article about the IDF being posted of \. because of what they do, you have a serious problem, and it's no surprise the comment is posted anonymously. But what's the actual problem with a government moving to OO?, being one of many governments planning to do similar steps, which is what the story is about.
It is with documents the same as with old media/tapes: when you buy into a new technology, you convert all of your media to the new format.
The advantages are:
* you have confirmation that you could still read your old data.
* you have the data in a format for which you have the equipment.
This has been best practice in mainframe land for ages.
When you move your data to a new application (including a new version of the same application) it is best practice to convert all data to the new format.
The advantages are:
* you have confirmation that you can read all your data.
* you have converted all documents while you were really aware of the pitfalls of the current conversion.
* you do not compound the complexity by converting from several data formats.
The disadvatage is:
* it takes discipline and effort.
NB as to "de facto standard", it is your customer, your supplier who decides what standards are acceptable. When you live in Brasil, Open Office may be the standard and you DO NOT argue with your government. You expect your application to read/write the appropriate formats acceptable to your government.
150 staff to remain on MS Office? Can you say "manager"?
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
And people won't even be surprised that it looks and works quite differently, just like after installing real M$ SPs... :)
Considering the fact that you are concerned about the Israelis treating the Palestinians unfairly and go so far as to state that both sides are equally guilty. What are your opinions concerning what the Jordanians are doing (and did) to the Palestinians? Do you think that suicide bombings would be understandable in Jordan as well?
If you outlaw the law, only criminals will have laws
But the most important thing with OO is that if something with RTL support is wrong (though it's pretty good, as far as I've seen), IBM (who are responsible for the office suite there) can prepare the patch themselves (as they did before), and update it quickly (whether they fixed something, or just a new and better version came out), which is totally unlike waiting for a new bloated version of M$'s office to deal with those issues.
Except you forget (or are unaware) that many thinkers of that era (including Galileo and Newton, among others) studied the world around them in a scientific manner because they believe God was rational and would create things in a logical way. The advancement of science was because of their religious faith. The bible says to "love the Lord your God with all your mind" as well as heart, soul, and strength. God has never asked for mindless unthinking devotion.
Constitutionally Correct
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh, and it's almost never a wizard you can kill anyway.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html
I did what was suggested in the parent comment. It was very interesting. I learned something. This is the first sentence of one of the Google links to '1929 hebron slaughter': "Under Ottoman Rule 1882 - 1917 -- From the beginning Jewish settlement met with opposition from the local Arabs." The article is by a Jewish organization in Israel.
So the Jews realized in 1882 that they were not wanted, but decided to settle in Palestine anyway.
Later, the article says that the Jews decided to engage in violence to promote their ability to stay in Palestine. There are only about 14 million Jews in the entire world. There are 330 million Arabs, I understand, and 1.1 billion Muslims.
Here's a question: Why do Jews think they can get into gun battles with Arabs and "win"?
Another of the Google links you took me to said this (I'm not inventing this; see for yourself; it's at the end.): "Not all the Arab missiles, bombs and daggers constitute the main danger to our existence, but our suicidal Jewish genetics. This is the cause of all the destruction that ever befell us." This is from another Jewish organization in Israel.
These are quotes from links you suggested I see.
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In nearly every other human endeavor, the triumph over demands to prove negatives has been overcome. For instance, few people would accept the assertion that there is a giant, invisible, intangible monkey on my head which tells me the secrets of life, even though they can't prove there isn't one. Why is it that you (and many others) wish to demand one here?
I forget what 8 was for.
"OOo was designed to compare and compete with MS Office and is hence bloated by design and default"
I tried out the wordprocessor from OOo reciently and found that it is trying to copy MSWord 97 feature for feature. I wouldn't use "bloated" to describe either of these products. However, just blindly copying what MS does is not a good idea in my opinion. For instance, I think auto-spell check, auto-format, auto complete, etc. should be switched of by default, or at the minimum be easy
to switch off (e.g. one easy to find setting "crap off"). Other features that MSWord does nicely are missing, for instance MSWord gives you a default filename based on the first few words in the document when you save a new file.
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I have been looking at OO to replace Office 2000 at my workplace and I just gotta wonder what the hell you have been smoking...
1. Speed: There's no point in being 100% compatible with MS Office, if it's 200% slower
In my tests, there were in most cases no speed penalty. It seems to take longer to load ONLY when MS's utility to load most of the components for Office at boot (located in the Startup folder)is loaded. We have to disable this because it causes other applications we use to crash and uses far too many resources (which may be part of the reason for crashes). When this is disabled, load times are virtually identical.
When up and running, I see no speed difference on the 733/128M test machine I have been using.
2. Bloated: Same as MS Office.
Huh? the download file for OO 1.1 is 73Mbytes. The service pack SR1a for Office 2000 is 50 Mbytes.
3. No option to install a dumbed-down version.
The only reason I install limited versions of Office 2000 is because of the insane disk requirements for the entire package and the fact that we don't use Outlook for security reasons or Clippy for sanity reasons. As mentioned above, when the entire download is only 73 Mbytes, I don't feel so limited with OO. I can download and install OO in less time than Office takes to install from CD.
Now, all that being said, we still have some issues with OO. Our existing product manuals are all written in Word. They don't all translate cleanly; mostly formatting issues in the headers and footers. However, I gotta mention that these were similar to the issues we had when we moved from Office 97 to Office 2000.
Have you actually installed and run Office and OO on the same machine and compared them head-to-head? The first 3 items in your list would seem to indicate that you have not.
Sorry.
Towards the Singularity.
Microsoft reacted scornfully to the decision, the Hebrew-only Daily Mail reports, accusing the Israelis of being tight-fisted.
I find it interesting that Microsoft called the Israeli (read: Jewish) government fiscally 'tight-fisted.' Does this not fit into the Jewish stereotype?
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
just why you assume he is european?
i would say except americans themselves, and a few american fanatics, no one else likes them all around the world!
"um pais infeliz
o mais hipocrita da terra
malucos suicidas
imbecis que adoram guerra"
Gabriel o Pensador
YES!!!! Someone who understands this distinction!!!!
Thank you. There are so few pro-science people willing to admit that science cannot answer all questions. I appreciate your honesty.
Engineering and the Ultimate
why does this thread turn political? I don't see when another country's government turn off the M$ machine, do /.'ers start the political commentary. Why Israel? Its best to keep this forum A-Political.
One of the main issues Israel had was that MS did not support right to left languages like Hebrew. Doesn't the right to left language issue also affect Arabic speaking people. Just counting populations of Arabic nations, doesn't that equate to some 200 million people? Now if you count those who speak the language worldwide, one estimate is 1 billion people. I don't think that's a small amount of people not to support.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I think MSOffice is way better than OO. It's more consistent, has well thought out features and looks good.
:-)
In a perfect world, Israel would ditch Windows and keep MSOffice.
Glad to have brought a bit of controversy. And congrats for this very good news to the OS community.
I think, therefore I am...I think.
The proof for these people is life itself. Even scienttists agree that the chances of the environment, and the position from the sun and the lighting hitting the right pile of goo at the right time in the right place and all the other factors that would go into a sudden creation of life is highly improbable.
T Money
World Domination with a plastic spoon since 1984
"MSWord gives you a default filename based on the first few words in the document when you save a new file."
you call that a feature? i always give it a different filename, usually b/c the auto-names suck--the first line of what i write genereally isn't the most intuitive or memerable thing about my file.
I saw it on Slashdot, it must be true!
It does for me. Especially when I create a document just to make notes. Anyways you don't have to use the suggested default if you don't want to
these "to most people" kind of arguments are lame. they use quantitative reasoning (which is fine in limited context), but based on the wrong quantities. reality is: "most people" are either not yet born, have no connection to the internet, or have no computers, period.
thus, if you want to use quantitive reasoning based on "most people", your argument needs to take into account trends in the future to be self-consistent and complete, in this case touching upon the mechanisms of change (education, disenfranchisement, catharsis, inspiration) as well as simply underscoring the tired old mechnaisms of equilibrium (inertia basically).
you can gain self-consistency and completeness another way of course: drop the "most people" basis. your argument then would be along the lines of: "from the people i've seen (i.e. bounded by my experience, i.e. anecdotally)...", which would be enjoyable for raving critics to read about in its own respect, w/o their having to filter out the "most people" pseudo-authoritative b.s.
best wishes on your evolution of style whether you choose to pander to critics or not.
umm - this at least one point of an open source community product. The ability to request those options - or code them yourself(as options). If its not customizable in that way - then someone can MAKE it so. Not so with Office - even if you have the skills - only MS can make those kinda changes.
OrionRobots.co.uk - Robots From sol
Can you copy and paste from one to the other? I know that's a pretty hard thing to do with linux...
<ducks>
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
Man, that's amazing. I can think of a a few employees where I work that I'd like to replace with OO as well. I'm sure a couple could even be replaced with a very small shell script.
Perhaps the sun is not shining.
Perhaps you are actually a disembodied brain hooked up to virtual reality hardware.
Perhaps you are dreaming. Perhaps your eyes deceive you.
In the presence of the possibility that a statement is false, the statement must be an opinion - excepting this one, which is verifiably true.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Atheism is not a misnomer. Linguistically, the 'a' means "without". An amoral person acts without morals, not simply lacking concern for them. Similarly, an "atheist" is without gods. The lack of concern about gods is sometimes refered to as "apatheism", but this seems to be a recently coined word so you aren't likely to run across it in a dictionary.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
"Europe is noted for it's centuries old habit of anti-semitism."
Its WHAT...One country (Germany) at one period of history (1930ish-1945) was anti sematic.
The guardian pool was after the war. Before the war started 2 million people, the largest march ever seen in th UK marched against the war. After it had begun feeling was less strong as most people supported our troups, not the goverment that had sent them.
And to the f**CKER who modded me offtopic..screw you!!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The IDF has been using Linux in various projects for many years already. I know that they have sponsered contributions some Linux projects which included contributions to the kernel. They don't tend to leave their name on things that they did... it is usually considered classified as to what exactly they weere working on... even though the code get released.
Cogito ergo sum.
Of course, if we were really serious about getting some sleazy politics from low-cost areas, we'd start getting complaints that we're oppressing those poor pols by letting them steal only a million a day.
Atheism is not a misnomer.
You're using the "constructivist language" definition of "atheism"- based on building up the word from individual parts. Unfortunately, popular usage has ignored that simple logic, and the common definition of atheism (as repeated in many dictionaries) is equal to what you call anti-theism. Other dictionaries give 2 definitions for atheism, permitting it to mean either explicit denial or merely refusal to affirm.
The most popularly used meanings have theism, agnosticism, and atheism meaning belief, uncertainty, and disbelief respectively. The equivalent words, based on meanings of component parts, would be theism, atheism/nontheism, and antitheism.
Another excellent example of a word whose usage is at odds with it's constructive meaning is "homophobia". Logically, that means "fear of the same", an antonym for xenophobia.
The Jews who settled in Palestine under the Ottomans bought their land with cash and improved it with their own labor. Read the history.
Secondly, the violence between Jews and Arabs in Israel/Palestine falls into three categories, in chronological order:
1. Jewish patrols defending bought-and-paid-for land from bandits
2. Israel defending the borders it was given by the current occupying power from wars of aggression by adjacent states given their borders by the same occupying power.
3. Israeli soldiers and police trying to find some effective way of dealing with suicide attacks.
QUOTE: "Here's a question: Why do Jews think they can get into gun battles with Arabs and "win"?"
Answer: Because every time the Arabs start a war with the Jews, the Jews somehow manage to win, with (now) or without (1948 etc) external support.
As for your entire thesis, "jews knew they weren't wanted"...suppose you bought a vacant lot in my town. Then you built a house and farm, and you were very profitable. And then everyone in the town attacked you with pitchforks because they didn't want you there, AFTER you paid for the land and worked on it. Would you leave because you "weren't wanted" or would you call the police/defend yourself?
"America has done some terrible things. But I know that Americans don't cheer when innocents die." -Dave Barry
Who is afraid of whom?
-Mark
i dont like writing long rants, so i'll be short. :
first of all, regarding your 1st statement, i only wish it were true.
anti-semitism in europe has reached an alarming peak, and many jews (especially in france) are simply fleeing from there.
and second, regarding the american aid to israel
this aid comes in the form of money israel can only spend on _american_ military products, so actually most of this money is used to keep a part of the american economy alive, and not to be used by Israel as it wants.
"this aid comes in the form of money israel can only spend on _american_ military products, so actually most of this money is used to keep a part of the american economy alive, and not to be used by Israel as it wants."
The "aid" is used to buy U.S.-made weapons, which are solely used to kill Israel's Arab neighbors.
$5 billion per year does not "keep a part of the american economy alive". It helps make the owners of U.S. arms manufacturers rich.
When I speak against Jewish self-destructiveness, I am anti-Jewish? Jews should be allowed to destroy themselves without comment from anyone who is non-Jewish? Particularly when they are corrupting the U.S. government for their self-destructive purposes? It would be irresponsible not to comment.
Both Jews and Arabs are Semitic, so being anti-Semitic would not be anti-Jewish.
Try a Google search on "Israel Peace Now" - lots of Israelis want to get out of the West Bank.
In the US, the pro-Israel lobby is incredibly strong. The first president Bush was (perhaps) not re-elected because he publically criticized the settlements on the West Bank. His son is not making the same mistake.
The fact that the Palestinian leadership (if you can call it that) is bad seems self evient.
Just my opinion: don't blaim the people, blaim the leadership.
-Mark
From the parent post: As for your entire thesis, "jews knew they weren't wanted"...suppose you bought a vacant lot in my town.
Suppose a white person bought a vacant lot in Harlem, in the center of the black community in New York. Suppose many blacks warned him that he was not wanted there. Yes, it would be unfair, but the white person would be the target of violence.
Here's good advice to anyone with an anger problem: Stay out of harm's way. On any particular day, there are many people crazier than you.
Please notice that I said in my original post that Jews are wanted in New York. I think everyone, or almost everyone, agrees that they make fine contributions to U.S. society. (And stupid contributions, too, as do every sub-culture.)
According to dictionary.com: an anti-Semite is "One who discriminates against or who is hostile toward or prejudiced against Jews."
When I speak against Jewish self-destructiveness, I am anti-Jewish?
When you make the same argument as Hitler with the same bogus evidence? When you blatetly ignore modern history? When you distort the facts to the disadvantage of Jews everywhere? When you unfairly single them out for critisism? Pardon me for assuming that you are just being anti-semitic.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
First, you say there is no fundamental right or wrong..."
But then you say, I also believe that religions are inherently dangerous, should not have any place in the infrastructure (government, military, schools,...) of a modern society and should be weeded out by time.
How can you have a should -- a behavior imperitive -- a moral imperitive -- when you say that there is no fundamental right or wrong?
Since, we are talking about Isreal -- was the holocaust fundamentally right or wrong?
Since religions are inherently dangerous, would you support the use of force to weed them out? If not, why not?
If so, how is that any different than the crusades that you condemn?
I'm noticing that the Register article doesn't quote the Microsoft source that it claims characterizes the Israeli government as ``tight-fisted.''
A little more searching and I can't find web sites for the Daily Mail or the Israeli Ministry of Commerce (if they're not on the internet, they must not exist <G>), and I can't find a MS press release.
Can anyone help?
Militant agnostics are funny. "I DON'T KNOW AND YOU DON'T EITHER!"
This isn't militant anything. It's the simplest statement of the only completely honest attitude possible regarding the whole issue.
Nobody knows that there is a god.
Some people have chosen to *believe* (or been brainwashed into *believing* ) that it is true.
Were they honest, they would say I believe this is true, but know?!? There is no way to know.
Similarly, for the other side. If someone doesn't believe in god, then that is just the natural state.
If they tell you they know there isn't one, then they are dishonest.
If a person tells you have to believe either way, or that you're wrong for believing the way you do, then they are militant and a fuckwad.
A)Guy meant that you are discriminating based on the fact that people are "Jewish". The is racism.
B)"Anti-Semiticism" is widely considered as "racism against Jews". It may not be a correct term, but that is what it came to mean.
C)If anything, U.S. taxpayer's dollars are financing _ISRAELI_ violence towards Arabs.
D)I would argue that the money goes to protect Israelis rather then kill Arabs. The fact of the matter is, that the IDF believes defending Israelis involves killing Arabs. Particulary people involved in terrorism, but they are never given a fair trial, so it's hard to say. This killing of Arabs you speak of is a means to an end. Not the best means I could think of, but then again, I don't run the government or the IDF.
"
Also, Israeli soldiers (well, Israeli soldiers obeying legitimate orders, ie. most of them) never just "kill Arabs". When they kill innocent men, women and children, it's when they are shooting at people believed to be terrorists.
"
BTW, unlike, Hamas et. al., Israel does not purposefuly target innocent Arab civilians.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
A friend here in school, who agreed to try OO out for a few weeks, before I helped him install a bootlegged MSOffice, told me today that the only thing he didn't like about it was the slow startup time.
... andi it did, startup is quicker by far. Is this a bug?
So I googled and found this on OOoforum.org:
Go into tools / options / internet / and select "none" under proxy. It will help Ooo fire up quicker.
My other UID is 1337
"Proving a negative" idea you speak of pertains to the breadth or scope of an assertion. For simple existence statements, the breadth of the assertion is small. For example, suppose someone says that there is green penguin. All they need to do is to show one example, and the assertion is demonstrated.
But other assertions -- such as, All planets have gravity -- can not be demonstrated this way. These types of assertions have an expansive scope. They cannot be proved with certainty, but they can be falsified. Find a single planet with no gravity, then the assertion is falsified -- and in fact you have proved a negative.
An interesting pattern holds in all of this -- the negation of an assertion regarding phenomena has a scope that is inverse to the original assertion.
Now, when you deal with theistic claims, you are dealing with assertions that have an expansive scope. Because of this, empirical evidence is is only determinative if some certain implication of theism can be shown to be false, thus falsifying it. But empirical evidence can never verify absolutely verify theism any more than it can similarly expansive claim.
That is why the proving a negative complaint is not relevant to the most common forms of theism, and why you example is somewhat beside the point.
> Linguistical the 'a' does not denote a negative.
Sure it does. It's the Greek reflex of the Proto-Indo-European syllabic 'n', which appears in Latin as in and in English as un. The negative ('non', 'not', 'without') is precisely what it denotes:
The raw meaning of 'atheism' is precisely the same as 'godlessness', though of course both have come to have different conventional meanings in modern English. (As per your peeve that I did not quote.) Such are the habits of language.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If a person tells you have to believe either way, or that you're wrong for believing the way you do, then they are militant and a fuckwad.
If someone disagrees with what you say here, does that make you
militant and a fuckwad?Is that a bad thing?
If a person tells you have to believe either way, or that you're wrong for believing the way you do, then they are militant and a fuckwad.
If someone disagrees with what you say here, does that make you militant and a fuckwad?
Is that a bad thing?
"Old Europe" should have been a dead giveaway..
If anyone wanted to make an earnest comment along these lines, please take my previous post as a reply.
Trying to develop a sense of sarcasm
Strioa
Of course the presence/absence of a diety or three is non-provable.
What I was getting at was that it is exactly as non-provable as my invisible intangible monkey, and I wonder why people will accept on faith one, but not the other (culture and history, of course, which is why my monkey now tells me to write a big, thick book about him...)
I forget what 8 was for.
That's more like:
United States Population: 283 Million
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
Wow, since Office XP is pretty similar to Office 2000, which really wasn't much of an improvement over Office 97, plus the fact that I don't think I've ever used a feature in Office XP that wasn't in Office 97, I'd say MS just landed a ringing endorsement of Open Office!
"Consider the lillies of the goddamn field."
First, let me say to everyone who decided to give this discussion a political bent, "Go Fuck Off!"
Second, Microsoft Office supports Hebrew brilliantly well. Much of the development for left-to-right language support for Microsoft apps is done in Haifa.
I've followed OO Hebrew support for a number of years and it never could compete with Microsoft Office. Two years ago, after the IDF signed a $125 million deal with Microsoft, the Israeli Ministry of Finance finally got fed up. The government in general, with MOF backing, decided to take some of our many, many post bubble unemployed developers and pay them to improve Hebrew support for OO. Now it's ready. So this announcement is nothing to be surprised about. It's been in the works for a long time.
Congratulations to the Open Source Community.
PS Hebrew Mozilla on Windows is really great too.
Atheism is a misnomer; it really should be called 'anti-theism'. Linguistical the 'a' does not denote a negative. Consider 'moral', 'immoral', and 'amoral'. 'Amoral' is not acting against morality, but with lack of concern towards morality. 'Immoral' is acting against morality.
Interesting my ass.
Dead wrong, actually.
Linguistically, the 'a' does donote a negative. As a prefix it indicates the state of being without whatever the root is.
It also has nothing to do with concern or a lack thereof.
Amoral means without morals.
Atheism means without a belief in a god.
'Anti-theism' ('imtheism' doesn't sound right...) would be stating that god does not exist. 'Atheism' should be the lack of concern as to whether or not a god exists.
Anti-theism wouldn't be stating god does or does not exist. Anti-theism is being against beliefs in deities.
Atheism, again, has nothing to do with concerns. It is quite simply the lack of a belief in a god or gods.
I, personally am both Atheist and anti-theist.
I don't believe there is a god. I have yet to see a scrap of evidence, so I see no reason to accept it.
This makes me an atheist.
I think that religion by its very nature is a nearly universally bad thing. It holds society back and leads to horrible suffering and hatred.
I think that if we can do away with religion completely then the world will be a better place.
This makes me an anti-theist.
I personally don't care enough about it to go around to people's houses trying to get them to ditch their beliefs or anything like that though.
This makes me not a zealot, and somebody who isn't a (complete) ass to hang out with regardless of your religious beliefs.
Everybody is born an atheist.
It is only if they, at some point after their birth, decide to start believing in a god that they can become a theist.
One of my personal pet peeves.
Mine is people who have no idea what they're talking about who nonetheless talk about it.
You'll be really surprised what a person that blows up 29 people next to you on Passover, and almost kills you and your whole familiy can do to your opinion about "fairness". I say this from experience.
4Z5TX
That sounds like a slap in the face! What has Israel got against Microsoft? Have they supported past enemies of Ariel Sharon?
Someone tell Steve Jobs to make a computing device targeted at asians and middle-eastern average joes. Head the Wintel beast off at the pass. Pick up the market share on both sides of the 3rd world war.
What if ARMAGEDDON was the virtual battlefield for control of the home computer market? Mighty Microsoft and Intel and HP vs. Adroit Apple and Big Blue IBM? Where do the media companies fall? Sun with AMD cleaning up the low-cost server market?
--- Nothing clever here: move along now...
What is the correct way to say the name of the suite provided by openoffice.org? OOo? OO.o? The Open Source version of the suite formerly known as StarOffice? Help me out here, someone. Anyone!
SAILING MISHAP
Your personal anti-semitism got you all wound up because Isreal is using 0.0.? Well the French were rather helpful in putting people in boxcars during that time period too as I recall. The truth is Europe is anti-semite and always has been. The progroms and ghettos are historical facts.
It doesn't matter when the survey was taken to you? Well I does to me. It's not some stale fact. It the reality now. You apperently prefer a terror exporting Saddam and mass graves over the disorder of a non-socialist/bathist country that is putting it's self back together after 30 years of a violent and muderous dictatorship.
If you don't like what I write don't be a CS and mod it down. Refute it.
Yea I can't spell. So what is your point?
What's your logic? What does "chemically based" mean?
let me see.
Drugs are chemicals.
Drugs alter consciousness
Therefore...
Consciousness must be a chemical?
Consciousness must be a property of chemicals?
Consciousness is an energy emitted by chemicals?
Why not just:
Consciousness interacts with the chemicals of the brain.
Or even:
There are things about chemicals and animals which we don't understand properly and may never.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.
Each side believes that it is right. However, when Israelis shoot at Arabs on the ground with U.S.-made helicopter gunships, and everyone in the U.S., Europe, and Arab lands see that on TV, it plays badly, very badly. No matter who is right, it looks bad.
I'm definitely not blaming the Jews for Arab craziness. I'm not blaming whites for Black craziness. I'm not blaming Jews or Blacks for Caucasian craziness. But the craziness is there, nevertheless, and it cannot be ignored. No amount of talking about who is right changes the fact that the craziness exists. Stay clear of craziness; don't get involved with it, particularly when there are 14 million of you and 1.1 billion Muslims.
Not true. Israel has received far more aid from the U.S. government than any other country.
Also: I wasn't there in 1882, obviously. I was only taking the first sentence of a description from an Israeli, Jewish web page: "Under Ottoman Rule 1882 - 1917 -- From the beginning Jewish settlement met with opposition from the local Arabs."
It doesn't matter who is "right". Jews weren't wanted, and Jews didn't care enough that they weren't wanted. They didn't take enough care with their relationships with the people who already lived there. And now Jewish public relations are falling fast, as the perception grows that Jews are violent people. I did not say that they are violent people, only that the perception that they are violent is growing.
Anyhow, don't be upset with me. I don't have any control over any of this.
This is absolutely absurd!!! You blame the victims of persecution for the persecution itself!
That's like saying "Who wants black people in your neighborhood when it just promotes KKK violence"
When will the violence stop? When racism and intolerance stop.
Antisemitism is real and has killed millions and millions of people. It is not a response to some intolerable action on the part of jewish people. (What action could possibly justify the repeated murder of thousands of people year over year for a thousand years?)
Today the new effort to single out Israel for ""atrocities"" is the latest face of that same very real antisemitism.
Europe and the Middle East have a long history of intolerance and racial killing. It ain't a pretty history but its true.
And those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
You *DO* realize that Hitler made the same comment in the Third Reich when he spoke of the "outsiders" that had led the government astray?
You also realize that the typical pre-genocidal condition for jews throughout history has been a country which blames its political, social and economic ills on them.
So go ahead, blame the jews.
After all, its not the wasps like Ken Lay, Dick Cheney, and the Bushes... its some jews somewhere that we can't see!!!
Oh please!
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Aid from the US yes, but maybe you should remember that there are other countries in the world. If you total up all of the aid Israel recieves vs the aid Arab countries recieve you will see that the money that Israel gets is dwarfed.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
Want to know what happens to Palestinian aid money?
Would you believe that Yasser Arafat is listed in the TOP 5 of Forbes Magazines "Wealthiest Kings Queens and Despots".
And no
And no
Read fer yerself:
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2003/0317/
and while yer at it:
http://www.forbes.com/global/2003/0317/014.h
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
It's not what you say, and nothing in my previous post led to what you said.
It's interesting that you are attacking me for repeating quotes from a Jewish web site. Maybe the real issue is that Jews don't want non-Jews to comment about anything having to do with Jewish affairs. It there something it is necessary to hide?
Few people in the U.S. understand anything about Jewish history, or have any problem with Jews. Except the "Christian" extremists. They want all Jews to be killed or converted. Jewish leaders know that, and take the Christian money anyway. At least that what they say when they are interviewed on TV. I have no other information about this than watching the interviews.
Other than the Christian extremists, the other groups in the U.S. that want Israeli violence have no interest in or concern with religion. These other groups are: 1) Secret departments of the U.S. government, like the CIA operations department. They get more money and promotions when there is more trouble. 2) U.S. Weapons manufacturers. They want the profits, and don't care who kills who. 3) Those who have special interests in oil profits. They sell oil to the U.S. military. They also want violence as a way of arranging oil holdings that would otherwise be illegal or too expensive. 4) Those who like any violence, because they have problems with anger.
So, except for the large number of "Christian" extremists, there is absolutely no involvement of religion or ethnic issues.
My understanding of the U.S. culture is that most Americans are happy with the contribution of Jews to the American society. I've said this twice before in previous comments in this thread.
I think it is reasonable to suppose that, when most Americans learn about their government's support for Jewish violence, there will be a decrease in that support for Jews. But, I don't control this, obviously, or have all the facts.
If you agree with this view, then you may think that it was a public relations mistake for Jews to take money from the U.S. government. A famous Jewish leader, I forget who now, said that U.S. government money was like pouring gasoline on a fire. I'm only repeating the view of many Jews. If they hadn't said it first, it would have taken longer to develop my own understandings.
So, Jewish integration into U.S. society is an example of what works. Jewish integration into middle east society is an example of what doesn't work. Aren't there lessons to be learned from this? Why not stay with what works?
My source is Mark Twain. In an essay published in 1867 after a visit to Palistine he said that "There is not a solitary village throught its whole extent...one may ride ten miles hereabouts and not see ten human beings." I'll trust a well know American author, essayists, and journalist over some random website. Another good source is the historian Benny Morris
Muslims, Christians, and Jews -- who got along basically pretty well with each other until the Zionists came along
The "zionists" weren't part of the mix when the Palistinians sided with the Ottomans in World War I, when they tried to drive the Jews out durring the 30s, or when they sided with the Germans in World War II. The Arab leaders in the region have never accepted the Jewish presence and have repeatedly tried to anihilate them.
the Zionist violence, given what they'd just been through in Europe; but that wasn't the Arabs' fault..
Your talking about the terroist groups Etzel and Lechi? The Israeli army forcibly disarmed them as it's first official action. I've seen no such action from the PLO
Historically, treatment of Jews in Muslim lands had been FAR FAR better than their treatment in Christian lands. Islam normally took a sort of condescending benevolence towards Judaism....
The hostility of Arabs towards Jews began with Zionism and its violence. The Zionists were throwing non-Jews out of their villages in Palestine and murdering people; and you are suprised that this was and is resented?
Historically Jews were treated as second class citizens in both cultures. The fact that Jews were "less" second class in 1880 means nothing. In Arab countries, Jews had no legal recorse against violence, and were regularly sujected to pograms. Even today, Jews are not allowed to live in most Arab nations. When Israel became a state, millions of Jews, who had lived in arab countries for generations were driven out, and forced to leave everything they own behind. Were the decendants of those Jews targeting innocent arabs in those countries today, I would condem it.
Arabs are not granted "full legal rights" in Israel All persons in Israel are accorded full, and equal protection of the law. And Arab CITIZENS are granted equal rights. You would be correct to claim that the process for becoming a citizen heavily favors Jews. However even if Israel was the most racially segregated state in the world, that would not justify the targeting of innocent civilians for murder.
Investigate a little more deeply, my friend.
I would be currious to know how you plan to actually SOLVE the problem in the region. Standing around playing the blame game only lets more innocents die. I have a very solid understanding of the history and geo-political situation of the region.
The crux of the problem is that the Palistinian people are used as political pawns by Arab leaders who care nothing about them. That is why I am a staunch advocate for creating a Palistinian democracy that respects human rights, and has an independant judiciary. Unfortunately, useless propoganda from these same people gets quoted by others who have no knowledge of the situation, and then gets propogated as truth. Siding with Arafat and the other Jew-haters, only hurts the Palistinian people in the long run. Listen to the truth, and realize that what we need to be talking about is a process to move forward and get us where we want to go, not who did what when, and how to get revenge.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
You said, "... U.S. policy
Exactly right. This is a VERY BIG ISSUE. It is extremely dangerous for those, who want stability in the world for the Jewish cultures, to allow themselves to be influenced by U.S. policy. See my other comment about this: #7565331.
"U.S. policy" regarding the Jews is largely composed of ignorance and greed. It should not be considered friendly guidance, and it cannot be perverted or converted into friendly guidance.
You said, saying the opposite of what you believe, "Confronting hatred doesn't acomplish anything after all...." The situation of the Blacks in Boston may be a situation of "confronting hatred". If it can be done successfully, fine.
What's happening in Israel is not "confronting hatred". Whenever people see Israelis on TV firing on Palestinians in the street from U.S.-made helicopter gunships, that is not "confronting hatred". That is breeding hatred. It is breeding hatred even if a panel of a hundred judicial experts would decide that the helicopters were being used in defense.
SHOCK!!!!! Big media only tells you what it wants you to think!! Yeh, I've been critical of them too. Of course the BBC, showing only Israelis doing bad things breeds hatred. But you can't abdicate all responsibility. As a citizen of a democracy you are responsible for reaching your own conclusions.
The terrorists target innocent Israeli civilians then run and hide behind innocent Palistinian civilians, knowing that when the Israeli's come in after them, they can manage to get a few innocents killed and show up on the news. Unfortunately you can't force fair news coverage. You can try to educate people about the facts, and try to carry on an intelligent disscussion and reach a realistic solution however.
My opinion is that the first step to true peace is ending the UN discrimination against both sides. The second step is forcibly disarming terrorists groups, and setting up a free, democratic society in the Palistinian territories along with all the infrastructure that entials. Step 3, reach an agreeable peace deal will work itself out.
Why don't we do this you ask? Aside from the fact that it would only benefit the innocent civilians on both sides, it's going to take time, and cost of lot of money and political capital, that people just don't want to spend. The U.S. approach is the closest to this (the Europeans are so far in left field I don't think they are comming back), but by equating the IDF with terrorists, and treating Arafat as a democratically elected leader of a free society, the ultimate resolution of this road map is going to be another despotic regime, and state sponsor of terror.
The policy of the United States is worse than bad---it is insane. -- Ludwig von Mises, Economic Policy(1959)
I fully agree that there is a difference in meaning with regards to popular usage. I was just pointing out the problem with the great-grand-parent post that tries to use a constructivist approach to say that "amoral" and "atheist" indicate a lack of caring about a thing (here morals and gods, respectively), when the prefix 'a' actually indicates a simple lack of that thing.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
And if Sun doesn't want to add the feature... then switch vendors. That's the beauty of open source, zero vendor lock-in and you get the exact feature set you want. It's such a no brainer, especially for governments and other large organizations.
After just a few major countries switch over (China, Brazil, Isreal, etc...) then the amount of money spent on developing the Open Source projects will dwarf what any single organization can match, even microsoft. That's when we'll start seeing the network effect in affect, and the beggining of the end of proprietary software for all but the most specialized applications.
I could just be a dreaming but it seems feasible.
It's simply not true that MS Office's (and the OS ingeneral) Hebrew support is anything less than perfect. MS pratically wrote the book on bi-di localization and Hebrew and Arabic support. The entire OS supports these languages in every application, and Office has additional word processing support (spelling, graphics, forms, what have you). As a Hebrew Windows user I can tell you that I've been waiting for quite a log time for some company to actually be able to compete with MS's level of Hebrew support. The recent version of OO has got the bidi issue right for the first time, and that's a nice long-awaited change, but let's no confuse ourselve - they're way behind MS on localization. This is the kind of issue that huge companies with fat contracts can deal with much better than even the most highly motivated open source developers which just happen not to know Hebrew.
The power of Christ compiles you!
You think suicide bombers are Joe Palestinians?
I bet you did not know this when you wrote your comment:
s ra el.loan.guarantees/index.html
http://edition.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/11/25/i
A few hundreds of the workstations at the employment agency, are already equipped with MS Office. The rest of the work stations are used mainly to process employment and unemployed data, and need only an office suite to occationally write a memo or do some basic calculations or tables using a spreadsheet. For that purpose, OO is more than enough once it has full Hebrew support, and can import at least basic Word or Excell documents. In addition, that network is serviced by IBM, so the match and the matchmaker are obvious.. Therefore, it is not a real breakthrough albeit a significant first step. However, the Israely finance ministry has allocated a few hundred K $ to support Hebrew interface for open source software. Israel is currently under heavy financial strain, and budget cuts, and that may promote a faster shift towards much cheaper open source software, in the near future.
@ This is good news. Even if OO has a few issues, it can do all the important things just as well as MSO and for an infintesimal price (free). And most importantly it can be customized by the user if they get the SDK. @ In your interface, bill.
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
Let me put it this way. I appreciate all the evidence we have which some people interpret as pointing to a chemical basis for consciousness. You don't need to repeat it to me! Honestly, I have a reasonable understanding of science; I can appreciate that an intelligent entity can be completely physical in nature. I can imagine a being which reports emotional changes based on chemicals and where no immaterial "mind" is involved.
I acknowledge all that and the rest. But what the chemical-consciousness advocates fail to address - the unacknowledged thorn in their side; the nagging doubt which scuppers their plan - is: what perceives? What is this thing that knows the colour red? If it is a chemical side-effect, where does it reside? How can a chemical side-effect actually experience qualia.
You know about qualia, I suppose; it's all those things you can't describe without resort to analogy, like colours and smells and joy and depression and love and guilt and hardness and softness and the effects of psychotropic drugs.
None of these things can be experienced by a chemical side-effect. Because they are not within the realm of mathematical science, and all the tools we have for describing the world scientifically are mathematical.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.