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Israel Suspends MS Office Purchases For Now
case_igl writes "The Seattle Times is reporting 'that in an apparent showdown over price, Israel's government has suspended purchases of Microsoft Office software and is encouraging the development of an open-source alternative.' The Finance Ministry has cooperated with Sun Microsystems and IBM in designing the Hebrew-language version of OpenOffice software, a freely distributed open-source alternative to Microsoft Office. The spokeswoman said the government was unhappy with Microsoft's refusal to sell individual programs from its standard Office package, which includes e-mail, spreadsheet and word-processing applications. Microsoft representatives in Israel did not immediately return phone calls seeking comment." The Associated Press article is carried on many other sites as well.
Hebrew isnt the easiest language to work with on computers seeing it is read from right to left, which would make for interesting programming.
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
What if 1 out of 100 /.ers got invovled with their local school/ school system technology group... I don't know what our school system (town of ~ 90,000 people, dont know fraction in school) pays for software, but we must have close to a thousand seats, even at academic prices, thats a lot..not to mention the educational value of having High school students forced to learn something about software
What version of OpenOffice are you using? In my version (1.1), you can insert a hyperlink by clicking Insert, Hyperlink on the menubar. Transistions and effects are handled by the Slideshow menu.
I think it can help quite a lot. The Israeli government has a lot of interaction with other governments and businesses. They have huge military contracts locally and abroad. They also contribute much government money to scientific research, so it may spread there as well. Since their government has so much interaction with so many different organizations I think it will help spread the word.
Developers: We can use your help.
Use the free powerpoint viewer for employees that aren't writing the presentations. Buying office is a waste, especially if you're only using it to view ppt files.
Better, stop using powerpoint (or open office) and start presenting in HTML instead...no worries about compatibility issues, hyperlink as much as you want, easy bulleted and numbered lists, etc.
FIVAs an Israeli computer technician, I see what everyone uses here. 95% (maybe more) windows. almost 100% office. now Israel's government is in a major budget crunch, and is cutting corners everywhere. Other corners cut: Handicapped support (not enough to live on now), public health benefits and so on.
as for the claims that MS office doesn't support hebrew, it depends which version. Every copy you can find in Israel will be "Hebrew Enabled" which provides FULL Hebrew support, including great help files and even the interface.
Recently I did some freelance translation work for Microsoft. Actually some brochures highlighting the benefits of using licenced software versus pirated sw. The files I was sent were in rtf format and I did the job successfully using Open Office 1.1 in Linux.
If the documents from Microsoft (although I don't really know if they were from Microsoft because my direct client was not Microsoft) can be used on Open Office then why not in the Israel government, provided that the language support is there. My experience is that government clerks are not the brightest users anyway and they tend to use a limited range of features they have been tought. With some planning Open Office can be more than adequate for all real tasks in the government.
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Not to mention that OOffice comes out of the "box" with full language support. Last I checked MSOffice need seperate copies to handle each language. Not even taking Hebrew as a special issue, you have to consider that Israel is very diverse linguisticly. In addition to Hebrew you have English (the official language of business in Israel), Russian (20% of the population), Arabic (another 20%), Tai, Farsi (Irainian Jews), Bedoiun (not kidding), Ethiopian, Hindi, and more.
Your typical Israeli office has native speakers of at least 5-6 languages.
The ability to nativize a desktop/office suite on the fly is tremendously important here.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
"Iran has made it clear that aid from everywhere would be accepted, except from its sworn enemy, Israel" right at the bottom of the article.
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
Here's some links, sorry about the lack of formatting:a ges/376370.ht ml
n .h tml
s J: www.cbsnews.com/track/sumhtml2003122821/stories/20 03/12/26/world/main590242.shtml%3Fcmp%3DEM8707+%2B iran+%2Bearthquake+%2Bisrael&hl=en&start=7&ie=UTF- 8
http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/sp
http://www.ajc.com/news/content/news/1203/31ira
http://216.239.39.104/search?q=cache:Oxley--2BJ
And the quote in question.
Jahanbakhsh Khanjani, a spokesman for Iran's Interior Ministry, said Saturday that Iran would accept aid from all countries of the world, aside from Israel. The announcement followed statements by foreign correspondents in Jerusalem, who reported that the Foreign Ministry had said that unofficial Israeli sources were considering sending aid to Iran. "The Islamic Republic of Iran accepts all kinds of humanitarian aid from all countries and international organizations with the exception of the Zionist regime [Israel]," Khanjani said.
In 1929, in Hebron, the jewish settelers were very well known and respected by their arab neighbours, which massacered them one day w/o any warning.
h tml (actually not a source I'd consider impartial):
Without any warning? From http://www.us-isael.org/jsource/History/hebron29.
Hebron had, until this time, been outwardly peaceful, although tension hid below the surface. The Sephardi Jewish community in Hebron had lived quietly with its Arab neighbors for centuries. The Sephardi Jews (Jews who were originally from Spain, North Africa and Arab countries) spoke Arabic and had a cultural connection to their Arab neighbors. In the mid-1800s, Ashkenazi (native European) Jews started moving to Hebron and, in 1925, the Slobodka Yeshiva, officially the Yeshiva of Hevron, Knesset Yisrael-Slobodka, was opened. Yeshiva students lived separately from the Sephardi community, and from the Arab population. Due to this isolation, the Arabs viewed them with suspicion and hatred, and identified them as Zionist immigrants.
Stargoat you are either very misinformed or unbelievably biased, most likely both.
The treaty of Westphalia (may want to check your spelling next time) ended the 30 years war in Europe and has nothing to do with anything that has been mentioned here. If you think the Treaty of Westphalia is some kind of uber-law that is applicable to the entire world in modern time then I hope you are Christian since under that treaty non-Christians (and their dominions) have essentially no rights. Kind of ironic to try to apply that to the Israel-Egypt conflict.
The "casus belli" (again with the spelling) was not only the closing of the canal to Israeli shipping which is clearly an act of war under international law. This was tolerated by Israel for some time because of its outlet at the port of Elat. The more flagrant violations of international law were the blockade at the Bab el-Mandab Straits and the constant harassment to Israeli shipping from Sharm el-Sheikh, effectively denying Israel the use of Elat, its only east-bound outlet for imports/exports.
Not to mention the expulsion by Egypt of UN peacekeepers from Sinai which had been put in place as a condition for the armistice following the 1956 war. I guess the amassment of hundreds of thousands of troops, tanks and artillery at the border of Israel by a megalomaniac (Nasser) who had been rallying the entire Arab world for most of a decade to "throw the Jews into the sea" and who was still at a state of declared war with Israel is not a good reason for a pre-emptive strike. Perhaps Israel should have waited for a joint Egyptian-Syrian strike to respond (like they did in 1973 and almost were annihilated but for the buffer provided by the lands gained in 1967) so that you could have your sensibilities covered? Right on!
The USS Liberty case has been one of the most investigated and written upon military incidents in history. Every serious investigation has concluded it was a case of mistaken identity. Please tell me ONE reason why Israel would have been motivated to kill U.S. sailors and destroy a USS toward the end of a very short, and otherwise very successful, war?
Perhaps you could benefit from reading some history, it does not have to be Michael Oren, anyone else with his reputation for veracity will suffice.
When I hear an argument like this, I see why Microsoft isn't too worried about Open Source competition (even though they consider it the biggest threat around). Microsoft is simply keeping its eyes open in the back of its head to see how closely it's being followed.
Have you ever actually used the Hebrew version of Office? I have. The right-to-left support is very impressive. It is much more elegant and complete than anything Open Office has to offer. It is also well-tested, which is something that can't be said for OO's right-to-left support at the moment. I ran into bugs left and right (pardon the pun) in Open Office on Linux, primarily because Windows has support for right-to-left languages throughout the OS now and it therefore feels much more integrated and "natural". It is much more difficult to find that level of end-to-end support for these languages in free software. This may change, but I'm simply pointing out the current state of things.
In fact, this whole episode seems to be nothing more than an effort to attain some bargaining power. Which is their right to do, absolutely. In fact, Israel would be stupid not to shop around.
But in the end, if Israel is seriously interested in obtaining the best software with the most support for its localized culture, it will probably stick with MS Office. In fact, I'm sure they would LOVE to stick with Microsoft Office right now because they LIKE it, but are facing a bit of a budget shortfall and want to see what they can squeeze out of Microsoft's profit margins.
Apple makes money selling its hardware, period. In order to buy the $130 version of OSX (which by the way should be called an upgrade, since it is impossible to buy a Mac without an Apple OS installed), you have already forked over a premium for the Apple hardware. When you look at total cost, Apple loses every time, and always will as long as its market share stays at 5%.