You are proving my point. Your entire view of Israel is through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You are not able to see anything which is Israeli which is unrelated to it. Even if you were right that Israel's actions are bad (a point which, as I said elsewhere in this thread, is far from being uncontested), this is not ALL that Israel is doing. Israel is not only its foreign policy or its military. Just like France or the USA are more complicated than a single agenda which might bother us about it. A singer appearing in Israel is nothing more than that - a singer on an international tour, unless they decide to make it more by making some statement in some way.
In essence, what you are advocating here is collective punishment. In your eyes, Israel is doing something bad, and therefor all Israelis must suffer the consequences.
Most artists canceling shows in Israel quote "not wanting to make a political statement" as the reason. Those artists that make statement about boycotting Israel don't schedule appearances there to begin with.
Which means exactly what I said before - artists are told that appearing in Israel is making a political statement (which it isn't), and are thus suckered into canceling their appearance (which, ironically, is making exactly the sort of political statement they were trying to avoid making).
Israel is a nation state. Much like England, Italy, Romania and almost all the rest of the world. In fact, it is easier to count the countries that are not nation states. France is one. Most claim the USA is another, but I've seen others claim that the USA used to be one, but since developed a nation called "American". There are also bi-national countries and multi-national countries. They are, generally, in trouble keeping their coherency. It can be mild cultural clashes, such as Canada, or violent civilian wars, like Lebanon.
In a nation state, that nation is recognized in some way. If done properly, the only place you will find this recognition are the symbols (such as the flag - a cross on Switzerland's, Arabic and a sword on Saudia Arabia's, and the David star on Israel's, the hymn, and the declarations), and the immigration laws (if you know French, it is easier for you to become a citizen in Canada, and so on).
Israel is a Jewish state. Its charter, as is being implemented in its immigration laws, is to provide a safe haven for every Jew in the world that needs it. Many claim that this is proof that it is racist, but that does not live up to scrutiny once compared with all the other nation states in the world. Once a citizen, the law does not, generally, distinguish between which nation and what religion you are. Where distinctions do happen, they are there to adapt to reality, and are almost exclusively favoring the minorities. For example, Arabs (as well as some other minority groups) are exempt from mandatory army service.
To summarize - Israel is a Jewish state. This does not mean it oppresses in the name of religion, but does mean that some of the criticism it receives is due to antisemitism.
It comes far closer to the truth than listening to one side or the other, and it throws partisans for a loop
Yeah, well, not so much.
I try to do my share whenever I see such discussions. At least initially, most of my time was spent researching claims made by the pro-Palestinian side. I decided that while I will defend Israel wherever I can, I will not lie and will not try to put a pretty face on things that are not pretty.
As such, I can tell you that automatically believing everything that pro-Palestinian side says is a bad policy. They are not hesitating to blow out of proportion, misrepresent, lie, and in some cases downright stage, anti-Israeli propoganda.
I'm not saying everything the Palestinian supporters is a lie, or even wrong. Some of the things they claim Israel has done are true. Some of them I disagree with, while others I think were a sad necessity of the time. These, however, tend to drown in a sea of irrelevant, backward, circular logic babble.
The Israeli side, and I will restrict myself to the official one (hot headed "advocates" that do more damage than good are not an exclusive Palestinian phenomena, unfortunately) tries, for the most part, to speak the truth. There are exceptions, but they are that - exception.
This is not always easy. When Mohammed a-Dura was shot, the entire scene was staged during an actual shootout between Palestinians and the IDF. A bot caught in the cross-fire and shot dead is not implausible under such circumstances. So the IDF did the decent thing and said that it did happen. Later, investigation showed that it was impossible for this boy to be shot the way he supposedly was under these circumstances. So the IDF offered a retraction. Of course, it is too late by then.
There were also mistakes in the other direction. A few years ago the IDF showed aerial photos allegedly showing Palestinian loading rockets into a UNRA vehicle. UNRA responded that these were stretchers. The IDF did another analysis of the photos, and came out with a statement that it could not rule out that these were, indeed, stretchers.
On the Palestinian side, such things never happen. EVERYTHING is Israel's fault. Hammas had a misfire during a military parade. Israel was blamed, despite no IDF aircraft being seen in the vicinity. They got to the point where an AlJaseera interviewer practically laughed at the face of a Hammas spokesman. Hammas reaction - they were disappointed that AlJaseera was promoting anti-Hammas news. They got so used to the Arab stations reissuing whatever junk the dump there, that any scent of actual journalism was considered treason.
So, no, your supposedly fair policy isn't fair, and wouldn't throw off, at least me, personally, for a second. My usual answer to discussions of Israeli war crimes is "if it's allowed by the Geneva convention, and actively done by any country at war in even remotely similar conditions, how is it a crime?"
And when i see Arab president in Israel, then i will start to get the facts right, maybe.
I'm glad we at least agree your facts are not right.
So you have one commissioned report, one claimed law which does not sit well with the fact that the only party ever to be disqualified from running for parliament was an extreme right wing party that advocated expelling Arabs (disqualified for promoting racism), another law about army service that the reason you cannot find in Google is because you also cannot find it in the Israeli law book.
Oh, and the Arab Israeli President's name was Majallie Whbee. He was not directly elected. He was a second replacement (merely a minister), but the actual president (Kazav) had to take a coerced voluntary leave pending decision whether to charge him with rape (he was, since then, charged and convicted, now waiting his appeal that, if rejected, will mean service a sentence of 5 years in prison), and the first replacement, head of parliament, was off abroad or similarly unavailable.
Of course, I can understand your confidence in this criteria not being met. After all, minority religion head of states are so common all over the world, that obviously this should be the criteria for non-discriminating state.
Let's see if I got this straight. You cannot disprove my arguments based on merit, so you are making the (unsubstantiated) claim that the majority agrees with you, implying the majority is always right.
If the majority thinks something which is contradicted by objective study of the claims, it just means that the majority is either misinformed or prejudiced. If your point was that Israel is being unfairly judged, you made it well.
Only Palestinians who are not Israeli citizens. Palestinians who are Israeli citizens may go wherever any citizen may go. In fact, there are quite a few places I cannot go that Israeli Arabs go all the time. People (Palestinian or otherwise) who are not Israeli citizens are restricted from entering Israel. You may not like it (heck, I may not like it), but this clearly shows that any discrimination, if existing, is not racial, thus completely negating the "apartheid" claim.
In any case, that is not what the wall is for. The wall is to prevent suicide bombers from skipping the blocks and going in. It has been most effective, dropping the number of suicide attacks to near zero as soon as it was constructed, forcing some (mostly in Gaza) to switch to ballistic missiles, and others (mostly in the west bank) to actually improve their own lives.
I wasn't aware of this definition. So Israel fails it for two reasons. I always though that the very fact that "racial" is not the criteria was enough to point out that this isn't apartheid, but now you also put in made up crimes against humanity...
Do list them, by all means. I'll give you a fair warning, however. So far, anyone that tried answering that question for me made one (or more) of three fallacies:
1. Listing acts that are deemed regular and accepted acts of warfare, regularly performed by anyone in similar circumstances (NATO, the US, etc.). Examples - bombing near a school during cast led, or the Gaza "freedom" flotilla.
2. Listing acts that were merely alleged by the Palestinians, but never actually happened. Examples - the Jenin "massacre" and Muhammed a-Dura.
3. Listing acts that were sporadic acts of individuals (i.e. - fishing an example that did not reflect on any general activity of policy), who were subsequently tried and punished by the Israeli courts (jail time actually served).
I think you can see why any example that falls under the above three is irrelevant.
The reason he forgot that is because it isn't true. Not even remotely.
There are Arabs in the Knesset, and have been since Israel's inception, both as sectorial, single agenda, parties and as part of the larger, more generic ones (which, obviously, have a majority of Jews).
It's not that clear a distinction. The black regions of South Africa during apartheid were nominally independent states too, just with nothing resembling an independant economy or political system - much like Palestine.
So I suppose that the elections where Hammas won were orchestrated by Israel? <sarcasm>Now everything makes so much sense!</sarcasm>
What's more, there was a very definite campaign of ethnic cleansing used to drive out the non-Jewish residents of what became Israel proper.
"Very definite" ignores the complexities of the debate over what actually happened there.
Either way, you fail to satisfy an important prerequisite for apartheid - racial discrimination. If some Palestinians are denied rights while others, of the same race, religion and ethnicity, are not, then this is a geographical discrimination, not a racial one. "Geographical discrimination" is sometimes referred to as "separate states".
In South African apartheid, was there any black who had the right to vote?
Nominally equal. In practice they don't really have much in the way of political representation, the major parties have to be restrained from outlawing any political party that tries to represent them by the courts,
I honestly don't think I understood the last part of that statement. Arab parties are subject to the same rules regarding how many votes they require in order to be represented, and the Arab citizen's votes are counted the same way as everyone else's. When trying to count representation, please remember that a non-insignificant percentage of the Arab population is voting for non-sectorial parties, and those parties also tend to have Arab representation. I won't tell you the numbers even themselves out, but I also don't think that that is the purpose of a democracy.
there's fairly impressive racism in employment and housing and provision of services to majority-Arab cities, etc... (To be fair, a lot of this isn't unique to Israel - the US at least has similar race problems.)
And is not called an apartheid for it, for the very simple reason that no form of government is perfect. Israel is, however, over criticized, with flaws (some real, some not) magnified without any proportion, until statements like "apartheid" seem to make sense to otherwise smart well informed people such as yourself.
If you are not buying the racial criteria (despite it appearing in as a central requirement in every single definition of the word "apartheid" I've seen), then lets play a little game. I'll post a series of questions which, to me, define what a racist state is. Feel free to add to them. Let's throw those at a few countries and see what happens. For the sake of this discussion, I think we can agree that apartheid SA and Nazi Germany (I claim Goodwin's legitimate use exception here) were, indeed, racist. I'd also like a list of a few commonly agreed non-racist countries from you.
Let A be the ruling race (Arie for the Nazies, white for SA, Jews for Israel) and B be the "other" race (Jews for the Nazies, black for SA and Arabs for Israel), here are a few criteria:
Can a B judge preside over a case involving an A?
Can a B citizen vote (assuming an A citizen can)?
Can a B citizen be voted (same assumption)?
Can a random B citizen go everywhere a random A citizen can?
Actually, there is a great difference between apartheid (discrimination of citizens based on race), occupation (governing by military force over population) and siege (preventing/filtering produce as part of an ongoing war effort).
The Palestinians in the west bank are under occupation (with quite extensive autonomy in most internal affairs). The Palestinians in Gaza are under a military siege. They are not occupied, at all. The Palestinians living inside Israel are equal rights citizens. No apartheid at all. If you want to contradict these statements, please bring forward the facts on which you rely.
All of this does not matter to the question of artists canceling appearances. If an artist does not want to appear in Israel, that's fine. An artists who cancels is being suckered into making a political statement under the guise/threat of avoiding making one. A singer performing in Paris does not mean the singer supports France's laws against traditional Muslim wear. A singer performing in New York does not mean the singer supports the USA's aggressive intellectual property foreign policy. Yet, for some reason, a singer appearing in Tel-Aviv is told that this will be interpreted as supporting the occupation.
Not appearing in Israel does not make a political statement. Appearing in Israel does not make a political statement. A statement is only made when an artist schedules an appearance, and then cancels. The statement can be interpreted as "I live under a rock and only now found out what Israel is doing", or as "I don't have a spine and am too afraid of outside pressure to tell people whom my performance schedule is none of their business to go to hell".
You've never had a controller repeatedly request an acknowledgement when you've had your hands, feet, and brain totally engaged in flying a very sick or barely controlled airplane?
Sorry. My experience is on the other end of the microphone. It's not that you don't sometimes "lock up" with existing things to handle and need to mask out additional inputs, but I will acknowledge that it's different. Then again, not knowing whether you can count on a plane to carry out an instruction you gave it is one of the greatest sources of such situations, which might explain the repeated requests to acknowledge you are describing. At least for me, our training ran simulations to beat the freezing out of us. If a controller is not communicating, he's not doing his job.
Even had they pushed the com button, no doubt it would have been "mayday, mayday, mayday!"
The articles describing the preliminary information we have seem to suggest that they were not fully aware of the trouble they were in. That's why neither the "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate" nor the "mayday" answers make any sense to me.
It seems to me that the pilots knew something was wrong, and had over 3 minutes in which they (he?) tried to handle the situation. I'm surprised that they did not issue at least a panpan to air traffic control. It wouldn't have changed the outcome, but might have helped with the search operation.
I don't think that's the biggest problem with software patents.
I just love how discussions on/. veer off topic so quickly. I never said it was the biggest problem. I just said it was a problem, and in the context of the poster to which I was replying, the most relevant one.
Just for the record, I am not against all patents. I am against areas where patents don't make sense and don't work. I believe the principle behind patents (which you have, correctly, outlined) is sound in certain fields.
Software patents have practical implementation problems (such as people succeeding in securing patents on 20+ years old text book snippets), but most of its problems stem from the core idea, and not from the particulars of the implementation. Even some of the problems that appear to be implementation problems are actually due to design problems, such as the hugeness of the software field (which, today, encompasses just about any other field of business even remotely technological), making sound implementation impossibly expensive.
Someone should let Sergei Brin, Bill Gates, Gil Schwed and not so few others that. They all started with miniscule software companies paying their initial employees mostly with equity, while these companies are, today, worth billions.
But how many real - marketable - patentable - software products come straight out of Mom's basement?
That is the wrong question for this thread. The right question is how many real, marketable software products that come from Mom's basement (or equivalent funding strain on the individual) are in danger of never making it due to inability to protect themselves from junk patents held by trolls. This thread isn't about the chances of the "mom's basement" business model producing products (which is indisputably low). This is about the ratio between the amount of equity required to form a software company and the amount needed to defend against patent trolls.
This case is about hardware patents, not software ones. The economics controlling those are difference.
For one thing, the costs of producing chips is so high, that if you can afford those, you can afford to go to court over patents. The main problem with software patents is that it costs your own time for so many months in your mom's basement (which amounts to about $70K if you count lost wages, less if you just count the food and lodging you consume) to produce a decent, market worthy software product. Compare that with the ~$5 million it costs to defend against a patent suite, and you see how that is a problem. It costs $1 million just to create a tape-out for ASIC production, which is just one part of the production chain, and does not include the development and testing costs.
This particular case is not about "dummy" patents. It is about a party signing RAND and participating in a committee that develops new technology, while at the same time discreetly patenting that very same technology. This is a simple case of misdirection and theft. The patents in this case are just the tool with which this misdirection took place.
A while back it was not possible to buy non-free (beer) applications from the Android Market from my country. Only when I put in a SIM that belongs to another country was I able to even see for-pay applications.
Market regularly uses the SIM card to identify which network you belong to and adjust the applications you can see accordingly.
For the sake of the test, though, I've tried just that. I removed the SIM card and searched for tethering in the market (with the SIM card it resulted in both free and for-pay results).
Without the SIM card the results seem to be exactly the same. Have not downloaded any of them (no need, as my carrier charges by the MB, and is happy for me to use as much traffic as I possibly can, and my phone has tethering built-in), but the results list seems to include all of them.
So, yes, at least preliminarily, it seems like you can bypass the restriction by simply removing the SIM card.
My only issue with your answer is that the logic is circular. You claim that very few aircrafts go down due to the manufacturer fault, but then go on with a set of criteria that would be unintuitive at best to a layman (which I fully admit that I am) regarding when it would be the manufacturer's fault.
Don't get me wrong. I don't like playing the blame game either, and I completely agree that economical considerations are important, even when flight safety is concerned, but I wouldn't call that "it's not the manufacturer's fault". I'd rather call it "sometimes you mess up even if you follow the rules".
At the end of the day the people risking the most in case something goes wrong, i.e., the passengers, are also the people who have the least amount of control over whether something goes wrong or not. Again, I accept that flight is one of the safest forms of travel, I just don't accept that it's never the manufacturer's fault, as you are trying to imply.
Okay, I'm not intimately familiar with the case (not from that industry), but my memory tells me that inspection period for the fuse were shortened as a result of the accident.
Regardless of whether that is the case, would you say that if an airliner strictly follows the manufacturer maintenance instructions, and a mechanical problem still happens, that that is the manufacturer's fault?
Very, VERY few airlines go down because of engineering or manufacturing defects, most go down because of operational problems at the airline, poor or improper maintenance
Out of curiosity, how would you rate the crash of LY1862 in Amsterdam? Recap - the fuse pin that connects the engine to the wing failed, and failed improperly. Inspection and earlier replacement could have prevented the accident, but those were not in Boeing's manuals at the time.
That is a misleading characterization of both the article and the law. It is illegal to commemorate the Nakba using state funds. Read the article again. It says so explicitly (though not prominently).
It is also illegal to support the worldwide BDS movement that attempts to call attention to Israels occupation.
No, it isn't. Some random member of Knesset (not the brightest of that bunch, at that) proposed a law. The anti-Nakba law started off the same way, as broad prohibition. I realize that in the US that is, sometimes, all it takes. In Israel there is public scrutiny and refinement stages that actually change the way the law looks (most times, for the better), and I promise you that if and when this proposal turns into law, it will be much much much saner. Until then, calling this anything binding is deliberately misleading.
Slashdot Mirror
You are proving my point. Your entire view of Israel is through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You are not able to see anything which is Israeli which is unrelated to it. Even if you were right that Israel's actions are bad (a point which, as I said elsewhere in this thread, is far from being uncontested), this is not ALL that Israel is doing. Israel is not only its foreign policy or its military. Just like France or the USA are more complicated than a single agenda which might bother us about it. A singer appearing in Israel is nothing more than that - a singer on an international tour, unless they decide to make it more by making some statement in some way.
In essence, what you are advocating here is collective punishment. In your eyes, Israel is doing something bad, and therefor all Israelis must suffer the consequences.
Shachar
Spoken like a true advocate of collective punishment.
Shachar
Most artists canceling shows in Israel quote "not wanting to make a political statement" as the reason. Those artists that make statement about boycotting Israel don't schedule appearances there to begin with.
Which means exactly what I said before - artists are told that appearing in Israel is making a political statement (which it isn't), and are thus suckered into canceling their appearance (which, ironically, is making exactly the sort of political statement they were trying to avoid making).
Shachar
Israel is a nation state. Much like England, Italy, Romania and almost all the rest of the world. In fact, it is easier to count the countries that are not nation states. France is one. Most claim the USA is another, but I've seen others claim that the USA used to be one, but since developed a nation called "American". There are also bi-national countries and multi-national countries. They are, generally, in trouble keeping their coherency. It can be mild cultural clashes, such as Canada, or violent civilian wars, like Lebanon.
In a nation state, that nation is recognized in some way. If done properly, the only place you will find this recognition are the symbols (such as the flag - a cross on Switzerland's, Arabic and a sword on Saudia Arabia's, and the David star on Israel's, the hymn, and the declarations), and the immigration laws (if you know French, it is easier for you to become a citizen in Canada, and so on).
Israel is a Jewish state. Its charter, as is being implemented in its immigration laws, is to provide a safe haven for every Jew in the world that needs it. Many claim that this is proof that it is racist, but that does not live up to scrutiny once compared with all the other nation states in the world. Once a citizen, the law does not, generally, distinguish between which nation and what religion you are. Where distinctions do happen, they are there to adapt to reality, and are almost exclusively favoring the minorities. For example, Arabs (as well as some other minority groups) are exempt from mandatory army service.
To summarize - Israel is a Jewish state. This does not mean it oppresses in the name of religion, but does mean that some of the criticism it receives is due to antisemitism.
Shachar
It comes far closer to the truth than listening to one side or the other, and it throws partisans for a loop
Yeah, well, not so much.
I try to do my share whenever I see such discussions. At least initially, most of my time was spent researching claims made by the pro-Palestinian side. I decided that while I will defend Israel wherever I can, I will not lie and will not try to put a pretty face on things that are not pretty.
As such, I can tell you that automatically believing everything that pro-Palestinian side says is a bad policy. They are not hesitating to blow out of proportion, misrepresent, lie, and in some cases downright stage, anti-Israeli propoganda.
I'm not saying everything the Palestinian supporters is a lie, or even wrong. Some of the things they claim Israel has done are true. Some of them I disagree with, while others I think were a sad necessity of the time. These, however, tend to drown in a sea of irrelevant, backward, circular logic babble.
The Israeli side, and I will restrict myself to the official one (hot headed "advocates" that do more damage than good are not an exclusive Palestinian phenomena, unfortunately) tries, for the most part, to speak the truth. There are exceptions, but they are that - exception.
This is not always easy. When Mohammed a-Dura was shot, the entire scene was staged during an actual shootout between Palestinians and the IDF. A bot caught in the cross-fire and shot dead is not implausible under such circumstances. So the IDF did the decent thing and said that it did happen. Later, investigation showed that it was impossible for this boy to be shot the way he supposedly was under these circumstances. So the IDF offered a retraction. Of course, it is too late by then.
There were also mistakes in the other direction. A few years ago the IDF showed aerial photos allegedly showing Palestinian loading rockets into a UNRA vehicle. UNRA responded that these were stretchers. The IDF did another analysis of the photos, and came out with a statement that it could not rule out that these were, indeed, stretchers.
On the Palestinian side, such things never happen. EVERYTHING is Israel's fault. Hammas had a misfire during a military parade. Israel was blamed, despite no IDF aircraft being seen in the vicinity. They got to the point where an AlJaseera interviewer practically laughed at the face of a Hammas spokesman. Hammas reaction - they were disappointed that AlJaseera was promoting anti-Hammas news. They got so used to the Arab stations reissuing whatever junk the dump there, that any scent of actual journalism was considered treason.
So, no, your supposedly fair policy isn't fair, and wouldn't throw off, at least me, personally, for a second. My usual answer to discussions of Israeli war crimes is "if it's allowed by the Geneva convention, and actively done by any country at war in even remotely similar conditions, how is it a crime?"
Shachar
And when i see Arab president in Israel, then i will start to get the facts right, maybe.
I'm glad we at least agree your facts are not right.
So you have one commissioned report, one claimed law which does not sit well with the fact that the only party ever to be disqualified from running for parliament was an extreme right wing party that advocated expelling Arabs (disqualified for promoting racism), another law about army service that the reason you cannot find in Google is because you also cannot find it in the Israeli law book.
Oh, and the Arab Israeli President's name was Majallie Whbee. He was not directly elected. He was a second replacement (merely a minister), but the actual president (Kazav) had to take a coerced voluntary leave pending decision whether to charge him with rape (he was, since then, charged and convicted, now waiting his appeal that, if rejected, will mean service a sentence of 5 years in prison), and the first replacement, head of parliament, was off abroad or similarly unavailable.
Of course, I can understand your confidence in this criteria not being met. After all, minority religion head of states are so common all over the world, that obviously this should be the criteria for non-discriminating state.
Shachar
Let's see if I got this straight. You cannot disprove my arguments based on merit, so you are making the (unsubstantiated) claim that the majority agrees with you, implying the majority is always right.
If the majority thinks something which is contradicted by objective study of the claims, it just means that the majority is either misinformed or prejudiced. If your point was that Israel is being unfairly judged, you made it well.
Shachar
Only Palestinians who are not Israeli citizens. Palestinians who are Israeli citizens may go wherever any citizen may go. In fact, there are quite a few places I cannot go that Israeli Arabs go all the time. People (Palestinian or otherwise) who are not Israeli citizens are restricted from entering Israel. You may not like it (heck, I may not like it), but this clearly shows that any discrimination, if existing, is not racial, thus completely negating the "apartheid" claim.
In any case, that is not what the wall is for. The wall is to prevent suicide bombers from skipping the blocks and going in. It has been most effective, dropping the number of suicide attacks to near zero as soon as it was constructed, forcing some (mostly in Gaza) to switch to ballistic missiles, and others (mostly in the west bank) to actually improve their own lives.
Shachar
I wasn't aware of this definition. So Israel fails it for two reasons. I always though that the very fact that "racial" is not the criteria was enough to point out that this isn't apartheid, but now you also put in made up crimes against humanity...
Do list them, by all means. I'll give you a fair warning, however. So far, anyone that tried answering that question for me made one (or more) of three fallacies:
1. Listing acts that are deemed regular and accepted acts of warfare, regularly performed by anyone in similar circumstances (NATO, the US, etc.). Examples - bombing near a school during cast led, or the Gaza "freedom" flotilla.
2. Listing acts that were merely alleged by the Palestinians, but never actually happened. Examples - the Jenin "massacre" and Muhammed a-Dura.
3. Listing acts that were sporadic acts of individuals (i.e. - fishing an example that did not reflect on any general activity of policy), who were subsequently tried and punished by the Israeli courts (jail time actually served).
I think you can see why any example that falls under the above three is irrelevant.
Shachar
The reason he forgot that is because it isn't true. Not even remotely.
There are Arabs in the Knesset, and have been since Israel's inception, both as sectorial, single agenda, parties and as part of the larger, more generic ones (which, obviously, have a majority of Jews).
Get your facts right.
Shachar
It's not that clear a distinction. The black regions of South Africa during apartheid were nominally independent states too, just with nothing resembling an independant economy or political system - much like Palestine.
So I suppose that the elections where Hammas won were orchestrated by Israel? <sarcasm>Now everything makes so much sense!</sarcasm>
What's more, there was a very definite campaign of ethnic cleansing used to drive out the non-Jewish residents of what became Israel proper.
"Very definite" ignores the complexities of the debate over what actually happened there.
Either way, you fail to satisfy an important prerequisite for apartheid - racial discrimination. If some Palestinians are denied rights while others, of the same race, religion and ethnicity, are not, then this is a geographical discrimination, not a racial one. "Geographical discrimination" is sometimes referred to as "separate states".
In South African apartheid, was there any black who had the right to vote?
Nominally equal. In practice they don't really have much in the way of political representation, the major parties have to be restrained from outlawing any political party that tries to represent them by the courts,
I honestly don't think I understood the last part of that statement. Arab parties are subject to the same rules regarding how many votes they require in order to be represented, and the Arab citizen's votes are counted the same way as everyone else's. When trying to count representation, please remember that a non-insignificant percentage of the Arab population is voting for non-sectorial parties, and those parties also tend to have Arab representation. I won't tell you the numbers even themselves out, but I also don't think that that is the purpose of a democracy.
there's fairly impressive racism in employment and housing and provision of services to majority-Arab cities, etc... (To be fair, a lot of this isn't unique to Israel - the US at least has similar race problems.)
And is not called an apartheid for it, for the very simple reason that no form of government is perfect. Israel is, however, over criticized, with flaws (some real, some not) magnified without any proportion, until statements like "apartheid" seem to make sense to otherwise smart well informed people such as yourself.
If you are not buying the racial criteria (despite it appearing in as a central requirement in every single definition of the word "apartheid" I've seen), then lets play a little game. I'll post a series of questions which, to me, define what a racist state is. Feel free to add to them. Let's throw those at a few countries and see what happens. For the sake of this discussion, I think we can agree that apartheid SA and Nazi Germany (I claim Goodwin's legitimate use exception here) were, indeed, racist. I'd also like a list of a few commonly agreed non-racist countries from you.
Let A be the ruling race (Arie for the Nazies, white for SA, Jews for Israel) and B be the "other" race (Jews for the Nazies, black for SA and Arabs for Israel), here are a few criteria:
Like I said, feel free to add to those.
Shachar
Palestine Authority is not a country but a part of Israel, however its citizens are denied the right to move freely within the borders of Israel.
Care to give any reference to support this claim?
Shachar
No. "Controlling the borders" is what "siege" means.
Occupation means to control the actual area. No soldiers on territory pretty much equals no occupation.
Shachar
Actually, there is a great difference between apartheid (discrimination of citizens based on race), occupation (governing by military force over population) and siege (preventing/filtering produce as part of an ongoing war effort).
The Palestinians in the west bank are under occupation (with quite extensive autonomy in most internal affairs). The Palestinians in Gaza are under a military siege. They are not occupied, at all. The Palestinians living inside Israel are equal rights citizens. No apartheid at all. If you want to contradict these statements, please bring forward the facts on which you rely.
All of this does not matter to the question of artists canceling appearances. If an artist does not want to appear in Israel, that's fine. An artists who cancels is being suckered into making a political statement under the guise/threat of avoiding making one. A singer performing in Paris does not mean the singer supports France's laws against traditional Muslim wear. A singer performing in New York does not mean the singer supports the USA's aggressive intellectual property foreign policy. Yet, for some reason, a singer appearing in Tel-Aviv is told that this will be interpreted as supporting the occupation.
Not appearing in Israel does not make a political statement. Appearing in Israel does not make a political statement. A statement is only made when an artist schedules an appearance, and then cancels. The statement can be interpreted as "I live under a rock and only now found out what Israel is doing", or as "I don't have a spine and am too afraid of outside pressure to tell people whom my performance schedule is none of their business to go to hell".
Shachar
You've never had a controller repeatedly request an acknowledgement when you've had your hands, feet, and brain totally engaged in flying a very sick or barely controlled airplane?
Sorry. My experience is on the other end of the microphone. It's not that you don't sometimes "lock up" with existing things to handle and need to mask out additional inputs, but I will acknowledge that it's different. Then again, not knowing whether you can count on a plane to carry out an instruction you gave it is one of the greatest sources of such situations, which might explain the repeated requests to acknowledge you are describing. At least for me, our training ran simulations to beat the freezing out of us. If a controller is not communicating, he's not doing his job.
Even had they pushed the com button, no doubt it would have been "mayday, mayday, mayday!"
The articles describing the preliminary information we have seem to suggest that they were not fully aware of the trouble they were in. That's why neither the "Aviate, Navigate, Communicate" nor the "mayday" answers make any sense to me.
Shachar
It seems to me that the pilots knew something was wrong, and had over 3 minutes in which they (he?) tried to handle the situation. I'm surprised that they did not issue at least a panpan to air traffic control. It wouldn't have changed the outcome, but might have helped with the search operation.
Shachar
I don't think that's the biggest problem with software patents.
I just love how discussions on /. veer off topic so quickly. I never said it was the biggest problem. I just said it was a problem, and in the context of the poster to which I was replying, the most relevant one.
Just for the record, I am not against all patents. I am against areas where patents don't make sense and don't work. I believe the principle behind patents (which you have, correctly, outlined) is sound in certain fields.
Software patents have practical implementation problems (such as people succeeding in securing patents on 20+ years old text book snippets), but most of its problems stem from the core idea, and not from the particulars of the implementation. Even some of the problems that appear to be implementation problems are actually due to design problems, such as the hugeness of the software field (which, today, encompasses just about any other field of business even remotely technological), making sound implementation impossibly expensive.
Shachar
This is the fantasy, of course.
Someone should let Sergei Brin, Bill Gates, Gil Schwed and not so few others that. They all started with miniscule software companies paying their initial employees mostly with equity, while these companies are, today, worth billions.
But how many real - marketable - patentable - software products come straight out of Mom's basement?
That is the wrong question for this thread. The right question is how many real, marketable software products that come from Mom's basement (or equivalent funding strain on the individual) are in danger of never making it due to inability to protect themselves from junk patents held by trolls. This thread isn't about the chances of the "mom's basement" business model producing products (which is indisputably low). This is about the ratio between the amount of equity required to form a software company and the amount needed to defend against patent trolls.
Shachar
This case is about hardware patents, not software ones. The economics controlling those are difference.
For one thing, the costs of producing chips is so high, that if you can afford those, you can afford to go to court over patents. The main problem with software patents is that it costs your own time for so many months in your mom's basement (which amounts to about $70K if you count lost wages, less if you just count the food and lodging you consume) to produce a decent, market worthy software product. Compare that with the ~$5 million it costs to defend against a patent suite, and you see how that is a problem. It costs $1 million just to create a tape-out for ASIC production, which is just one part of the production chain, and does not include the development and testing costs.
This particular case is not about "dummy" patents. It is about a party signing RAND and participating in a committee that develops new technology, while at the same time discreetly patenting that very same technology. This is a simple case of misdirection and theft. The patents in this case are just the tool with which this misdirection took place.
Shachar
A while back it was not possible to buy non-free (beer) applications from the Android Market from my country. Only when I put in a SIM that belongs to another country was I able to even see for-pay applications.
Market regularly uses the SIM card to identify which network you belong to and adjust the applications you can see accordingly.
For the sake of the test, though, I've tried just that. I removed the SIM card and searched for tethering in the market (with the SIM card it resulted in both free and for-pay results).
Without the SIM card the results seem to be exactly the same. Have not downloaded any of them (no need, as my carrier charges by the MB, and is happy for me to use as much traffic as I possibly can, and my phone has tethering built-in), but the results list seems to include all of them.
So, yes, at least preliminarily, it seems like you can bypass the restriction by simply removing the SIM card.
Shachar
Depends on the encryption method you use
<shameless_plug>rsyncrypto</shameless_plug>
Shachar
My only issue with your answer is that the logic is circular. You claim that very few aircrafts go down due to the manufacturer fault, but then go on with a set of criteria that would be unintuitive at best to a layman (which I fully admit that I am) regarding when it would be the manufacturer's fault.
Don't get me wrong. I don't like playing the blame game either, and I completely agree that economical considerations are important, even when flight safety is concerned, but I wouldn't call that "it's not the manufacturer's fault". I'd rather call it "sometimes you mess up even if you follow the rules".
At the end of the day the people risking the most in case something goes wrong, i.e., the passengers, are also the people who have the least amount of control over whether something goes wrong or not. Again, I accept that flight is one of the safest forms of travel, I just don't accept that it's never the manufacturer's fault, as you are trying to imply.
Shachar
Okay, I'm not intimately familiar with the case (not from that industry), but my memory tells me that inspection period for the fuse were shortened as a result of the accident.
Regardless of whether that is the case, would you say that if an airliner strictly follows the manufacturer maintenance instructions, and a mechanical problem still happens, that that is the manufacturer's fault?
Shachar
Very, VERY few airlines go down because of engineering or manufacturing defects, most go down because of operational problems at the airline, poor or improper maintenance
Out of curiosity, how would you rate the crash of LY1862 in Amsterdam? Recap - the fuse pin that connects the engine to the wing failed, and failed improperly. Inspection and earlier replacement could have prevented the accident, but those were not in Boeing's manuals at the time.
Shachar
In Israel it is now illegal to commerate the Nakba...that is the day when Palestenians remember the villlages destoryed, etc.
http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/03/23/3086536/knesset-passes-nakba-law
That is a misleading characterization of both the article and the law. It is illegal to commemorate the Nakba using state funds. Read the article again. It says so explicitly (though not prominently).
It is also illegal to support the worldwide BDS movement that attempts to call attention to Israels occupation.
No, it isn't. Some random member of Knesset (not the brightest of that bunch, at that) proposed a law. The anti-Nakba law started off the same way, as broad prohibition. I realize that in the US that is, sometimes, all it takes. In Israel there is public scrutiny and refinement stages that actually change the way the law looks (most times, for the better), and I promise you that if and when this proposal turns into law, it will be much much much saner. Until then, calling this anything binding is deliberately misleading.
Shachar