The rants and raves of a technogeek
politics
A recent post on the Asterisk-Biz list
Jan 7th
This morning, I was greeted with the following message from the Asterisk-BIZ mailing list:
I have seen there are so many Palestine children have been killed in the Irasel-Palestine collide from the news, I am so sad about this, how do you think of this war created by Irasel army, I hate war, hate butcher, why UN discard this war, why Arabia countries do not union to oppose Irasel invasion. Who has been making the mistake in this war, Irasel? or Palestine?
But children have no any mistake.
Could you please kindly your comments? -- andy andyspr@gmail.com
In general, this kind of message that is not related to the mailing would have simply been discarded by the participants, however, some of the people decided to comment. While most people commented with: “SPAM!” or “This is an Asterisk list, not a political list” – some commented with some interesting remarks.
Before I go into these, I must say the following: While I’m considered a left winged man who truly believes in the need and possibility of peace and harmony between Israelis and Arabs – I also have family living in Sderot, Ashkelon and other locations – currently being targeted by the Hamas.
Mr. Savinovich (amazing proximity to my last name – isn’t it) commented:
1) Israelites don't know what Obama's doctrine will be, but their best bet is that he is really muslim friendly, so they are better off clearing up as much as possible before Jan 20. The rocket's thing, is an excuse.
2) Having said that, the Palestinians really do throw lots and lots of rockets to innocent civilians in Israel, and they really got to be stopped for good. Then again, I am not the one living in poverty in gaza with 2 million people in 150 square km."
Well, in regards to 1, the rockets can be deemed an excuse – I admit to that. However, imagine that the US or the UK would have had a portion of their border, constantly being targeted day and night. 250,000 people are under constant threat (in US numbers that would be around 5 million people). In the terror attack of 9/11, the US basically sent thousands of soldiers to Afghanistan, and later on, send thousands of soldiers to Iraq – all the name of “Protecting the world from terror”. True, the attacks from the Gaza strip pose a threat to the southarn parts of Israel (currently expanding to the center of Israel) – however, it is still a threat. I totally disagree with both sides in terms of the way they approach the problems, however, I can’t say that I don’t understand both parts of the equation.
Mr. Argov of Tikal Networks, and Israeli Asterisk integration company commented:
"Because Hamas terrorist are firing rockets on Israeli children from schools and civilian houses."
Well, the tactic of using civilians as human shields is a well know tactic in Guerrilla warfare. The difference here is this, Hamas is firing rockets directly into civiliant oriented areas, in the hope to hit something and show themselves as heroes. Hamas stores their weapons and ammunition within the civilian population of the Gaza strip, knowing for fact that they are putting their people in harms way.
One of the people on the list I truly admire is Rehan Allah Wala, who commented:
hi Andy
I am sorry that people are making fun of you on this mailing list,
The reason being that it is not happening in their own back yard
However the problem is caused due to many reasons i guess, and to Isreali's it is war and they are taking the killing of childrens as part of the war.
Do remember that war is when 2 parties can fight, where as in this case it is one sided
Remember that Isreal says that Hamas sends rockets to Isreal, however do remember that all water, electricity, grain, food, comes from Isreal to Gaza, and it is probabbly like a Future war movie from Hollywood how they are attacking on Isreal out of desperation, when for weeks power is cut on them.
I am very sure both sides are to blame, and it however should be solved by the Big Boys asap , including US and China, I hope Mr Obama will take this issue very very seriously and try to finally bring peace and harmony to the human kind, as if it can not be done in this hugely connected world, it probabbly can never be done.
Some Facts on Gaza on gaza SHOULD be read by all, as I think in today's connected world we all are responsible to end this conflict between the 2 parties.
I totally agree with the fact that both parties carry the blame, however, claiming that the fighting is one sided is untrue. It is true that Israel has a tactical advantage, after all, it does have a modern army. However, in the ground, when troops are going into the strip, Hamas has the upper hand – knowing the terrain and knowing the weak spots and strong spots of each location. The Israeli army is doing what it was trained to do, fight the battle, trying to suffer as low as possible casualties as possible on all sides.
It is true that Israel provides most (if not all) of the Palestinian authority’s infrastructure, be it power, water, telephony and more. The desperation is on both sides of the conflict, Israel is tired, fed up, angry and disappointed that almost any type of action it takes to bring peace to the area fails each time – every time due to the other side’s inability to live up to their part of the agreement. On the other side, the people from the Gaza strip are equally desperate. I don’t know exactly what is the nature of desperation, but I can only imagine. At the end of the day, what does a man want? to wake up in the morning, go to work, earn a decent salary, come back home and enjoy life with his family. Currently, neither sides is able to do so.
I honestly believe that peace in the ME is a possibility, more than a possiblity, it’s a MUST! We are all paying the costs here, Israeli families who had lost their sons and fathers over the year, Palestinian families who had lost the same, families who were teared to shreads by differences in political views and god know what.
I hope this conflict will end soon, it’s not serving any value to any side at this point.
Today is a historic day
Dec 1st
Today is a historic day – and I’m not referring to the fact that my birthday is today!
Israel had finally adopted the anti-spam act, where companies are no longer allowed to send you spam email, unless you had specifically granted them the permission to do so. While the act in itself isn’t a new one in the world, it is surely a turning point in the Israeli market.
Over the course of the Internet’s existence in Israel, spam was more or less a given evil that all of us were required to endure. While initially is was more or less non-targeted, brute-force enabled spam, as the years progressed – it became more and more sophisticated and targeted. Unlike the US, where most ISP’s proud themselves by not allowing SPAM providers work with them – Israel went the exact way around.
I can easily recall a period of time I was working at one of Israel’s ISP’s, which was using a SUN Solaris based mail system. One of the customers wanted to utilize that system to send hundreds of thousands of emails to people, however, the system wasn’t able to carry the load. I was recruited to the task under the false pretence that the company (the ISP) needed additional mail-relays. I remember building one of the biggest mail relays I’ve even seen (well, at least in 1999) – a cluster of 6 Linux servers running Qmail. I later on learned that my highly evolved MX relay environment was actually re-configured to allow open relaying from specific IP numbers, thus, allowing spammers to spam from that specific ISP at ease. In addition, later on, the same ISP went on selling its email lists to spam databases as “verified email lists”, charging almost a dollar per email (over 50,000 subscribers in the list).
Over the course of the past 3 weeks, I’ve been getting emails from various emails I’ve been trying to get off from, asking me to confirm my membership with the list. I hadn’t confirmed these, simply waiting and lurking for the first spam message that comes in from one of these lists – and immediately following with a complaint to receive my 1000 Shekels for receiving their unsolicited spam.
So, in my book, December 1st 2008 is a day to remember and honor – and I will surely do so for the years to come (at least until some government ass-hole comes along and negates the act that is).
Israel now officially speaks Arabic
Oct 18th
Apparently, according to the BBC, the most spoken language in Israel is most probably Arabic. Well, at least judging from their website. I was browsing the web for some information about the “Doctor Who” TV series (if you have no idea what I’m talking about – shame on you!). As it is a BBC series, I pointed my browser to the BBC website, to be greeted with the following:
While I’m not offended at all (really I’m not), I do pitty the people at the BBC that can’t seem to get their GeoIP working properly, and mistake Israel for another Middle Eastern country. It is true that there are many Arabic speaking residents and citizens in Israel, but still, the major language here is Hebrew.
Clicking the banner actually brought me to an HP page, fully in English, fully targeted to this region.
In the words of a great man: “Not bad – but not perfect”.
Zip up, Slim down, let the heads roll…
Oct 12th
Like most of the world, I’ve been following the recent market turmoil with a great burden on my shoulder. When you think about it, I’m not a stock broker, nor am I a multi-billionaire that has his funds invested in various stocks and bonds, that a single 0.1% shift in the NASDAQ translates to millions of dollars. I’m a software developer, a freelance one, dealing in the Open Source – and like anybody else, I’m worried about how this crisis immediately affects me.
Today, I came across two items, post on www.themarker.com – Israel’s topmost Internet based financial/business daily. The two items dealt with how three of the better known VC’s in Israel had started instructing their investees to start cutting down costs – mainly, firing people. The three VC’s that I’m talking about are: Carmel Ventures, Benchmark Israel and Sequoia Capital. You are probably wondering why is this interesting? the VC’s in the item had directly instructed their investees to cut down people, costs, operational costs, loose dead weight – in other words, find ways to reduce your costs. Sequoia even out did Carmel and Benchmark, by inviting the investees to a meeting called: “RIP: Good Times”!
Shortly after I finished reading the two items, I got a phone call from a friend working at one of Sequoia’s companies (a well known one in Israel) asking me if he can come work for me. I was surprised, this is the first time I’ve ever read something in the news, and was directly affected by it. As far as I gathered, his company basically took a team of 8 people and reduced it to 2. Now, I completely understand tightening up, but running an operation on a 25% man power is stupid! Running at 50% is manageable, but 25% is down right crazy. For 2 people to do the work of 8, they would need to eat, drink, sleep, live, do everything within the office – I know, I’ve been there. During the year 2003, m-Wise was more or less in the shit. In the year 2002 I had a team that consisted of another SysAdmin and 3 more support techs. In 2003 I was left alone, and I basically did everything myself! – how crazy is that. But again, I decided that I’m not going to have a life for a certain period of time – that is all, not everybody is willing to make that sacrifice.
Now, this case goes hand in hand with my previous post – the migration to Open Source technologies is no longer a myth or a “nice-to-have” issue, it is a matter of business continuity and good expense management. Think about it, the company that fired 75% of their team, could have easily replaced part of their server infrastructure from Windows to Linux, migrate their Oracle database to PostgreSQL and save thousands and thousands of dollars a year, and maybe even save a job or two in the process.
Now, here’s what I think (and I know for fact I’m gonna get slammed here): Hey, VC’s, stop telling the companies to let go people. Sure, get rid of dead weight – no one needs those M$ based shitty, money grabbing, time consuming, hardware intensive environment. Wouldn’t it be better to not pay M$ a few ten’s of thousands of dollars a year, and maybe save a man’s job, or maybe even 2? M$ has enough money of their own, all you are doing is making sure they keep on making money, while the rest are fighting for their lives. Why don’t the VC’s hire Open Source consultants, to help them examine their investees and maybe, just maybe, they will find ways to invest their funds in a wiser way and help these companies to survive the current financial turmoil.
Taking a mickey at Osama-Bin Laden
Mar 2nd
I guess that I always was a sucker for political comedy, and I think this one is really funny. I had this one sent to me on Facebook by and old college friend, Shadi Abu-Ahmed. Shadi and I studied together at the Technion and we were both Open Source evangelists and promoters.
The following video is somewhat of a cross between Osama Bin-Laden and the Swedish Chef from the Muppet show, and I find it highly amusing. The music in the background is a Romanian song that was highly popular about 2 years ago. The funny thing is that I speak Romanian, and I understand the song – which is very amusing to me to see Osama Bin-Laden singing a modern day love song in Romanian, about sending SMS messages to his girlfriend.
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