Happy Passover from the Robots of the R&D Institute for Intelligent Robotic Systems, Computer Science Department, College of Management, Academic Studies, Rishon Lezion (thanks Marc!)

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If you’ve been looking for a hi-tech job in Israel, there’s good news: New statistics indicate that the long drought in hi-tech jobs is over. A poll released last week by Israeli placement company Jobinfo says that demand for hi-tech workers is up 40% this year – while the numbers of those seeking jobs in the field has fallen dramatically, as companies retain their current workers and hire new ones.

Jobs in hardware development rose significantly – by over 30% – in the first quarter of 2010, compared to a year before. There was also a 12% increase in jobs for internet programmers – especially for developers with skills in PHP, Java, and C.

Along with the new demand, salaries have risen, the poll says. Engineers with 2 to 5 years experience are making 8% more this year than last, while salaries for web engineers have gone up as much as 20%. Jobinfo says that “The positive statistics are a positive sign that indicates that the time is ripe for hi-tech workers who lost jobs in the past to look for new ones now, and it is also an excellent time, in our opinion, for those who already have jobs to examine the opportunities in the marketplace.”

Well, of course they would say that – they’re a placement company! But still, the numbers don’t lie – and neither do the anecdotes, as a number of people I know who have been looking for quite awhile have begun new jobs in the past month or so. Yeah! Party like it’s 1999!

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Over the past few days, Intel has been showing its new Xeon (Westmere) processor, which the company says has 40 percent better performance and 30 percent better energy efficiency. The processor features a chip that supports six cores each. Meant for use in servers, the Xeon is also the first processor to use Intel’s 32 nanometer manufacturing process, which results in processors with features as little as 32 nanometers wide. All of which means the Xeon – built on Intel’s familiar x86 architecture – can get much more done with less power, and is likely to find its way into new hardware. Already, IBM has announced a new line of servers that are faster and cooler running, all running on the Xeon.

Given Intel’s history in Israel, you always have to suspect that much of the work done on any new piece of hardware the company comes out with was largely developed in Israel. Alas, that is not the case for the Xeon (a derivative of the Nehalem processor). So I have been told by “informed sources” in Intel. Note, however, that the Next Big Thing from Intel – processors that use the Sandy Bridge (aka Gesher) architecture, with many improvements to the Nehalem series of processors. Sandy Bridge processor technology was largely developed in Israel – the project will be remembered for having its name changed from Gesher, the Hebrew word for “bridge,” after a political party (now defunct) emerged in Israel with the same name. Sandy Bridge-based processors will only be released in 2011, after the “life cycle” of the Westmere/Nehalem line peters out.

Although Israel can’t take direct credit for the speed and efficiency of the Xeon, it can take credit for an important security feature built into the processor: Included in all new Intel processors is the Intel Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Instructions Set. Tests showed that encryption/decryption of files was 400% faster with AES, and whole disks can be encrypted with barely any impact on performance (anyone who has ever tried to encrypt even a single file with a “regular” processor will understand the benefit).

The AES instruction set, from what I can tell, was largely developed in Intel’s Haifa research facility; the white paper cited above was authored by Shay Gueron, a researcher for Intel and a Professor of Applied Mathematics at Haifa University. He, along with a colleague from Intel in the U.S., is the patent holder for “A method for speeding up the computations for characteristics 2 elliptic curve cryptographic systems,” which looks pretty cryptographical, and is clearly part of the AES.

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It’s amazing how even the most innocent tech story turns political in the Middle East. Take Gmail SMS chat – brand new in Israel.

In Israel, Gmail users can send free SMS messages to any Orange or Pelephone number for free (the recipient gets “charged” an SMS unit. There is now a “Send SMS” box at the left side of the Gmail page. You type in a phone number and a pop-up box where you can type your message, and choose the destination (Gmail SMS is currently available in four locations – the U.S., “Palestinian Territories” (see below), Israel or Ghana (!). The message gets sent (it went through pretty quick when I tried it with my phone) and when the receiver responds, you get a pop-up in Gmail, enabling you to chat with them. It’s great if you have a plan with lots of SMS messages – otherwise you might want to switch to Gmail if you’re going to be having a long chat (there are mobile versions of Gmail at http://www.google.com/mobile/).

You start out with 50 free messages, and every time someone sends you one back, you get five more free messages for a maximum of 50 (messages to/from North America don’t have a quota). And, according to the help page, “if your quota goes down to zero at any point, it will increase back up to one 24 hours later. So, you won’t ever be locked out of the system.”

So, everything’s cool, and make get even cooler: According to some entries I’ve seen in official Google blogs, the introduction of messaging services by Google in a market heralds a communication expansion – so we could (hopefully) get Google Voice here in Israel in the near future.

Attempting to figure out what the criteria were for Google’s choosing of these four locations for the introduction of this service, I came up with this: The U.S. because it’s the U.S.; Israel, because it was probably developed here; PA areas, because they’re more or less on the same network as Israeli cellphone companies.

And Ghana? That’s part of a Google commitment to spread technology in the third world. Ghana is about as third world as you can get: it’s got a 65% literacy rate, and a GDP of $1500 per capita. According to this article about a Google SMS service in Uganda, Google is promoting cellphone services in third world countries because many more people in such countries use cellphones than computers. Ghana would certainly seem to fit that model as well: According to this site, Ghana is 93rd of 117 countries in the world in broadband usage.

According to the Google Africa Blog,

“In Africa, we’ve learned that mobile phones are easier to get to than internet connections and PCs, and that working towards our mission means working through mobile phones. At the beginning of 2008, there were over a quarter of a billion mobile subscribers on the continent. Mobile penetration has risen from just one in 50 people at the beginning of this century to almost one third of the population today.”

When it comes to Israel, though, someone always has to throw politics into the works. One of the few blog posts I found was here, where the author referred to “Israel” as being one of the places where Gmail SMS is being implemented. Explaining why, the “author” (whoops!) writes that

“I just would like to say ArabCrunch has no political views and we do our best to stay away from politics. As for me I only put “Israel” between ” ” to note that this is a area of conflict nothing more, i am not against anyone.”

I, too, will keep my opinions to myself, and will just cite facts: Israel was created in 1947 as a result of a United Nations vote that authorized the creation of a Jewish and Arab state in the former British mandate of Palestine. The Jews accepted that deal, the Arabs didn’t, and seven Arab armies attacked the newly formed state of Israel. The Arabs lost, and Jordan occupied Judea and Samaria (“the West Bank”). Only two countries recognized Jordanian sovereignty over those areas – Britain and Pakistan. In 1967, the Arabs again began a war against Israel (the blockade of the Straits of Tiran was a classic casus belli), again losing.

Unlike Jordan, Israel is administering Judea and Samaria, and has been for the past 43 years, because there is no entity currently legally responsible for those areas. As such, the term “occupied territories” is improperly used in this context, since there was no legally recognized sovereign in those areas after 1947. In 1994, the United Nations voted to recognize the Palestinian Authority (the inception of which was an Israeli idea) and that entity has observer status in the UN. The PA is considered a candidate as a possible sovereign in Judea and Samaria. These are all objectively verifiable facts, and use of the term “Palestine” as a national entity is inaccurate from an international legal point of view – as is the use of quotation marks around “Israel.”

Finally got around to seeing Avatar. I don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade, but count me among the (apparently) very few naysayers. If you hadn’t seen it already (which you probably have), I’d say don’t bother; you’ll have a much better time with a DVD of Disney’s Pocahontas, EXACTLY the same story as Avatar, but with nice music!

Nearly all the reviews I’ve seen said that story was no big deal, but the effects were… and they were, for the first hour. Maybe it’s because we were sitting in the first row of the theater, but I found myself getting a headache watching after awhile (I’m usually pretty good with not getting headaches). Or maybe it was the glasses, which I found rather clunky.

Yeah the effects were nice, but I thought the preview for Alice in Wonderland was a much better use of 3D than Avatar; the 3D didn’t really contribute much to most of the film (although there were scenes where it was indispensable). And who says that carefully handcrafted Pocahontas-style animation isn’t as good a medium as 3D? The similarities between the two movies are well documented and just too numerous to list, but the first hour and a half of Avatar – where the human Avatar learns the ways of the Na’avi – can be summed up much more efficiently and elegantly in the three minutes of “Colors of the Wind!”

Regarding articles like this one, in which the author bends over backwards to find connections between Judaism/Israel and Avatar (the “Na’vi,” etc.); Judaism is relevant even if it does not keep up to date with the latest Hollywood blockbuster, and trying to squeeze Jewish content from a pagan/eastern/new-age stone just makes us look desperate (interestingly, the author of the article makes a case for Titanic, another James Cameron blockbuster, as also being “Jewish”!)

Avatar’s “we are all part of the divine” philosophy is diametrically opposed to Judaism’s approach to kedusha, holiness – a word the commentators have defined as “separation.” The little “bracha” the Na’avi make over animals they kill for food (something like “thank you for giving up your life for me to eat – now you are part of me and I am part of you”) is a Chassidic/Kabbalistic concept via new age Madonna-style “Kabbala” (the Jewish concept has to do with the ascension of a creature’s soul to a higher level of existence, not the Na’avi’s pan-nature Zen-style “being-ness”). If you’re looking for religious similes to Avatar, look at Christianity, not Judaism, where a “divine being” comes down to the world to save it, (almost) dying to salvage a world damned by “the Law.”

In addition, saying that Avatar is somehow a “Jewish” movie based on James Cameron’s throwing some Hebrew/Biblical sounding terms (Na’avi means prophet in Hebrew, and the Aish article says that the Na’avi’s deity “aiwa” is related to the Hebrew term for the ineffable name of G-d) is the same as calling the Chumash Indians one of the lost tribes of Israel (“chumash” is the Hebrew term for the five books of Moses). And speaking of deities, Avatar’s plot was such a ripoff of Pocahontas that the “aiwa” deity was located in a tree – just like the prophetic oracle in Pocahontas, and another concept diametrically opposed to Judaism (a tree-deity is called an “ashera,” and worship of it is punishable by death). Avatar? Two and half stars, max (all for the effects).

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