I hate to brag, but I called it – the massive escape from YES (and HOT, which we used in the past and was no better). Check out this story from Arutz 7:
Current customers of the HOT and YES cable and satellite TV services have been jamming the companies’ phone lines since Thursday morning, after a ruling by the Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Forum that customers have a right to cancel their service for the next three weeks without having to pay a substantial cancellation fee. The fee has been waived because of the closure of the Hallmark Channel, which has decided to stop broadcasting in Israel.
It should be noted that the number of those seeking to cancel the services substantially outnumbers the customers of both services who actually watched the channel.
Looking for alternatives? Look right here and here – at my blog post and Jpost article on Saying “No” to YES!
Could the recession really be over? According to Israeli placement company Etosia, 75% of managers in the hi-tech sector see hiring during 2010 set to grow by at least 20% – with half seeing hiring grow by as much as 30%, or even more. In addition, 46% see salaries in the hi-tech sector growing next year. The poll of 80 directors and top managers in Israeli hi-tech companies was conducted over the past several weeks, with companies of all sizes polled – from those with fewer than 10 employees, to companies with over 500.
Quoting Eyal Solomons, director of Etosia, Globes (in this Hebrew article) said that according to the poll, the hot areas in hi-tech next year – in order of “hotness” – will be software development, sales and marketing, hardware development, and product engineering and development. “Already now we can see a sharp rise in the number of open positions. Since the beginning of the year, demand for workers has gone up 40%.” Salaries, he said, are now more stable as well, since there is more demand.
Perhaps the best result coming out of the poll is that 81% of the bosses believe that the world economy will improve next year. Why is that “the best?” Because Israel’s hi-tech markets are overseas – in the U.S. and Europe, as well as the Far East. Companies wouldn’t be looking to hire if they didn’t think sales were going to rise as well – in the U.S. and Europe. While sales to China are already up, China is still far smaller a customer of Israel’s than the U.S. (first place) and Europe (second).
After being battered for the past couple of years, hi-tech companies have been very conservative in hiring – so the fact that they’re going out on a limb and proclaiming their desire to hire means that change really is in the air. Let’s hope that these guys are right!
It’s pretty ridiculous, when you think about it – that a population of maybe 13 and a half million “runs the world,” which is closing in on about 7 billion these days. While I could maybe understand how that could work when there were only three billion people in the world – and the Jews were maybe a half a percent of the total – now that we’re just a quarter of a percent, you’d think that canard would fall away.
And yet it persists – and strengthens! Of course there are prominent Jews in many fields – just as there are prominent Irish, Italians, Americans, and Chinese. But somehow, there seem to be “more” prominent Jews – ie, more than you would expect. At least that’s the impression people have (and not just anti-Semites, either). And thanks to an article in the New York Times this week, I think I may know why.
The article, by David Brooks, discusses the “protocol society”- a society that produces not “stuff,” but intellectual property. According to Brooks,
A software program is a protocol for organizing information. A new drug is a protocol for organizing chemicals. Wal-Mart produces protocols for moving and marketing consumer goods. Even when you are buying a car, you are mostly paying for the knowledge embedded in its design, not the metal and glass.
In other words, Western society is now primarily producing ideas, and not just any old ideas – ideas that revolve primarily around the spoken and written word.
In other words, America (and the advanced West) are today in the business of dealing with words – instructions, rules, regulations, all of them leading to ideas. Exactly what Jews excel in!
Don’t take my word for it; the famous genetic researcher, Charles Murray, asks in an article in Commentary magazine in 2007 why the Jews are so overrepresented in the sciences, arts and literature, when it comes to superior achievement:
What accounts for this remarkable record? A full answer must call on many characteristics of Jewish culture, but intelligence has to be at the center of the answer. Jews have been found to have an unusually high mean intelligence as measured by IQ tests since the first Jewish samples were tested.
Murray goes on to cite IQ scores, showing that Jews score higher than the general population. However, he says
Jews are only about average on the subtests measuring visuo-spatial skills, but extremely high on subtests that measure verbal and reasoning skills.
In other words, Jews have an IQ propensity for dealing successfully with ideas – or, in Brook’s words, “protocols!” Interestingly, Murray says that Jewish accomplishment in general society (as opposed to within Jewish academic society, where everyone was expected to be literate) dates only to the mid 1800s, when society began its slow turn from agriculture and manual labor to intellectual creativity.
Now that we’ve arrived at Brooks’ “protocol society” – where intellectual property, “ideas that revolve primarily around the spoken and written word,” is the main product – it seems that Jews are everywhere, even if they’re not, because in order to succeed, everyone has to “think Jewish,” at least to some extent! The better your verbal and written skills, the more successful you’ll be in navigating modern society.
Why this should be true for Jews in particular, says Murray (and also, at least partially, for other groups as well, such as Chinese and Indians), is the subject of his very interesting Commentary article (interestingly, Murray says this applies mostly to Ashkenazi Jews, who lived in more advanced societies, but the letters to the magazine afterwards cite the possibility that it could apply to Sephardim, as well). So, the next time someone rants on about how “the Jews” run everything, keep in mind that the ones running things might not actually be Jewish – they might have just come up with a way to “think Jewish” and succeed in the “protocol society!”
There’s no accounting for intelligence out there, particularly among the lower intellectual classes, such as the morons that run the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel web sites of the world. Why are they so humorless – and clueless? A sense of humor (and irony) is clearly a sign of intelligence, according to many studies. Meaning that if you don’t get the ironic aspect of many ridiculous situations in life, you’re just dumb.
That’s how it is with these people – and here’s the proof:
Over the past week, an article I wrote about anti-Israel and anti-Semitic web sites has become the darling of the very same people I trashed – because I apparently “outed” one of their ilk, with whom there seems to be a dispute. I’m not all that up on cockroach politics, but apparently one group of losers is accusing senior anti-Semite Alex Jones of being a “Mossad agent” or some such thing.
What do I have to do with this? Because in this article, I exposed Jones’ “Jewish connection.” Jones, a well-known peddler of dark conspiracy theories, apparently works at a Jewish-owned radio station, from where he broadcasts his theories on a syndicatedradio program. The big “revelation” is freely available on Wikipedia, which I quoted directly from: “According to Jones’ Wikipedia biography page, ‘the Alex Jones Show radio program is broadcast live from Emmis Communications’ KLBJ Radio in Austin, Texas.’”
A quick search of the Emmis corporate website indicates that the company’s CEO is Jeff Smulyan, whose biography page says that he has, among other things, been awarded with “the Jewish National Fund’s Tree of Life Award.” Further rutting around on racist websites (I won’t offend you by listing the links) indicates that Smulyan is indeed Jewish (as if with a company named “Emmis Communications” there could be any doubt!)
As Mr. Smulyan has not taken any steps to hide his Judaism and still employs Alex Jones as a radio host (4-6 PM Sundays on KLBJ-AM Talk Radio, according to the site’s schedule), I assume both he and Jones are aware of each others’ identities and background. That means that either Smulyan is an extremely liberal fellow, who so believes in freedom of speech that he’s even willing to give someone like Jones access to the airwaves (it CAN’T be because of the advertising money Jones is pulling in!), or Jones is hypocritical enough to overlook his association with the “Jew media,” satisfied to make a deal with his “devil” in order to find a home on a “legitimate” radio station (this assumes, of course, that Jones is an anti-Semite, which you have to conclude he is, judging by the company he keeps).
My entire point in the article which mentioned Jones (and a couple of other jerks, whom I’ll get to in a moment) was their hypocrisy; here Jones goes on about the (according to his ilk, clearly “Jew-run”) Trilateral Commission and the (ditto) “Jew Rockefellers” running the world – while making use of the “Jew media” to spread his poison. It’s not just hypocritical – it’s irony on the highest level!
But the brains who run the hate sites just can’t relate to irony – hence they have wrenched that paragraph out of context, using it to “prove” that Jones is actually an agent of the Jews! Idiots – that’s not what it means! It means that he is a fake, phony and fraud, just like the “Hawaiian Settler” – the guy who occupies a home in Hawaii, stealing land and resources from native Hawaiians, and from where he points fingers at “Israeli occupiers” (ironic!). And he is a fake etc. just like the “Peace in the Desert” Jew from Brooklyn, living in occupied Jerusalem posting about Israel’s “atrocities” in Gaza (super ironic!). As is, to add to the pile, the “street brother” who besides being a Jew-hating cretin, is clearly extremely stupid – the proof being that he was the one who “exposed” what I wrote about Jones, without paying attention to the context, humor or irony or of the article. No doubt he thinks “irony” is what happens when you get the wrinkles out of your clothes. Duh!
(Hint: Watch the first video for some “rational” talk from Jones, then watch the second one for some “context”).
So the iPhone finally came to Israel – overdue and overpriced. As I predicted, I might add (not that you had to be such a genius to figure it out!).
Don’t bother. The iPhone is so “this year” (maybe even “last year”). Save up your money so you can buy the real game changer – the First Else, made by Else (formerly Emblaze Mobile). I interviewed the CEO of Else for Israel21c.org (look for the full article there) and saw the First Else live and in person.
And it’s like no other phone you’ve ever seen! The video below doesn’t do it justice. This is an elegant – dare I say it? – work of art, that was ergonomically designed from the ground up to provide maximum usability and minimum (actually zero) futzing around.
I don’t want to give away too much because I want you to read the whole article (I’ll link it when it comes out), but I wanted to be sure to let you know what the future holds. Else CEO Amir Kuperveis and I discussed much about the philosophy behind the First Else (appropriate for a device that was designed from the bottom up), comparing it, of course, to the iPhone. Suffice to say that the one advantage the iPhone has – the thousands of apps you can install in order to improve functionality – comes off as a primitive band-aid solution to getting your device to work the way you want.
In the end, the cell device is about getting things done – and the ease of use in the First Else (here’s a tidbit: you can do everything – but everything – that you need to do on the phone with one finger, your thumb! It was designed that way) blows away any and every device on the market. If the First Else is a color high-def digitalTV, the iPhone is an ancient early color analog set – while my Nokia 5800 XpressMusic is like radio!
If you thought you weren’t getting the internet connection speed you’re paying for, you may be right. According to Knesset member Meir Sheetrit, the two companies in Israel that provide infrastructure and backbone services for internet connection – Bezeq (the phone company) and Hot (the cable company) – are not going to be able to provide the super-fast speeds they are promising to customers, except in maybe a few places.
Sheetrit suggests that the companies be required by law to tell customers the maximum speed they can expect in their areas, considering the potential for misleading customers. “Often, because of their naiveté, customers sign up for service at high speed and prices, only to find out that the company is unable to provide the service,” he wrote in a letter to the Knesset Technology Committee.
Sheetrit forgot to add what comes next – the near-impossibility of getting your money back after you’ve been ripped off by these vultures. It’s bad enough that they (by “they” I mean almost every large service company, not just ISPs) will try to sell you stuff you don’t need at almost every turn, but when the service or product they dump off on you doesn’t even work, trying to get your money back is out of the question – the best you can hope for, usually, is a credit towards a future purchase. In other words, once they’ve got your money, you’re not getting it back!
As I wrote in the Jerusalem Post, it’s a worldwide trend – service and quality you once expected as a matter of course is now “premium,” as companies, strapped for cash, nickel and dime us for everything they can squeeze out of us.
Why am I not surprised? This is just another manifestation of an attitude that you find in so many places, from the corner store to the bank to, of course, the government. They sweet talk you and act like you’re their best friend when they try to get you to sign up – but once they have your money, try getting the time of day out of them!
Here are a few good tests I’ve found which indicates how badly you are going to get ripped off:
Before ordering a service, call the company’s service line, and see how long they keep you waiting. While all companies are guilty of giving lousy service, some are less bad than others. As I do lots of research for my writing, I call companies like Orange, Bezeq, etc. to ask questions, even if I’m not a subscriber to the service. A good indication of what to expect is the “sales to service call” ratio – ie, the time difference between how fast the sales people answer the phone, and how slowly the service people talk to you. The bigger the gap, the worse the service, I’ve found.
Ditto for the sales pitches they give you, both recorded and live. Some companies will respond to nearly every question with a sales pitch, basically ignoring what you asked (but implying that your problem can be solved if you just ‘upgrade’). Often long times on hold are coordinated with repeated recorded sales pitches – it’s as if they keep you waiting just so they can get you to listen to their stupid ads! Avoid companies that do this, if possible.
Any service or sales person that does not implicitly understand that they work for you – and not the opposite – is a bad reflection on the company they work for. When I speak to sales or service reps, I’m very attuned to signs of cynicism or superciliousness. If the person on the other end of the phone sounds like s/he has his/her nose up in the air when they talk to you – like they’re somehow better than you (even though you’re paying their salary!) – it’s time to move on.
How do you resolve these issues? In Israel, a loud voice always helps. You have to be prepared “lahafoch shulchanot” (go crazy),as they say. Threaten to switch, cancel the service, or threatening to tell all your friends how bad the service/product is can help too, sometimes; most of the people you speak to on the phone don’t care one way or the other, but if you really do cancel or switch, you can be sure their manager will be listening to the recording of the conversation and probably call them on it, so if you can make them understand that it is they who are causing you to want to leave the company, they may think twice before acting nasty. Unfortunately, there’s no sure-fire single method that works every time; it’s a matter of experimentation, seeing which company reacts to what tactic.
But it’s worth the effort; when you confront the service providers and make them understand what they are doing wrong, you are contributing to an improvement of the consumer culture in this country – and maybe even helping the next person not to get ripped off!
What could you do with 45 million shekels (nearly $12 million at NIS 3.80/dollar)? Retire, probably. But what could you do with that kind of money if you were a government official who had to spend it on the public? Well, let’s see:
1) You could provide 45,000 poor families with 1,000 shekels a month for food and expenses
2) You could pay the rent for a year for 2,000 families (12 months @ $500/month)
3) You could provide a decent paying job for 450 people (annual salary of NIS 100,000 a year)
Or,
4) You could buy licenses for Windows and Microsoft Office for all the computers in Israel’s schools (about 200,000 altogether).
According to this article in Hebrew business daily Calcalist, it comes down to laziness – both on the part of teachers and the Education Ministry, which doesn’t want to “rock the boat” and make teachers learn “new technology,” or seek out technical support from people who know Linux, preferring to stick with what they’re used to. Not that that they get free support from Microsoft for either Windows or Office – for that, they have to hire technical people and pay them separately. That NIS 45,000,000 is just for licenses.
So the next time some politician wails about how poor the country is, just tell him/her you know how to save an easy 45 million shekels – all it takes is having teachers download a free copy of OO (which you really have to look at hard to realize that it’s not MS Office) and installing Linux on their PCs. May I suggest that instead of spending $39.90 on each Windows/Office license (the cost per machine which the NIS 45 million deal works out to), the Education Ministry invest in a few copies of Linux for Dummies for each school!
Note this sentence from the Calcalist article: “The Education Ministry, as far as it is concerned, sees the deal (NIS 45,000,000 for Windows and Office on all of its computers) as a very good one, since all other government ministries are paying $130 for each package.” (!)
Israel is a technology powerhouse – but how powerful a powerhouse? Very powerful, it turns out – and now we have the statistics to back up the claim. A study by the Taub Center for Social Policy Research shows that Israel runs circles around even the most advanced countries when it comes to patents, research, and even Nobel prizes!
For example, the study says, Israelis get more patents in the United States per capita (relative to population size) than any of the G7 countries, including the U.S. itself. By 2003, in fact, Israelis had 69% more patents per capita than any of the G7’s. In 1990, by contrast, Israelis got 6% fewer patents than inventors in G7 countries (which in itself is not too shabby, imho).
Nobel prizes? Israel is in sixth place overall in absolute numbers of Nobel Prize winners. Since 2000, Nobel Prizes have been awarded to at least one winner in 20 of 200 countries around the world – while Israelis during that period won 5 Nobels!
Research? Check this out: Israeli economists were cited in more publications (per capita, ie relative to the number of economists in each country) between 1970 and 2000 than economists in any other country in the world. The runner-up is Britain – but Israeli economists were cited seven times more than British economists in magazines, books, periodicals, journals, etc.!
The study has more to say – not so good -about standards of living, poverty, etc. I’ll get to that in the next an upcoming post, but let’s first enjoy this good news, at least for now!
On Saturday – Shabbat – Hareidim will be protesting the fact that Intel’s brand new Jerusalem fabrication plant will be operating on the holy day. And come Saturday night, Israel’s media is going to be all agog. I can already picture the headlines and the stories in papers like Ha’aretz, the Jerusalem Post, Yedi’ot, etc. – each paper has its own style, or if you prefer, slant. But they are all going to get the story wrong. You want to know what’s really going on? Keep reading!
Over the past several years, the intensity of “Shabbos protests” has increased, most recently with the ugly scenes in the center of Jerusalem over the opening of a parking lot by the city. But Intel is no local parking lot or supermarket, and the story, as it will be portrayed by all the mainstream media in Israel, will portray “fanatic Hareidim” pitted against the essence of modernity – the computer chip. Editors should have a field day with that one!
Then there will be the stories about how the Hareidim, who “don’t work,” aren’t just satisfied to sit around themselves, but have no problem jeopardizing the jobs of other Jerusalem residents, by trying to drive Intel out of town – and maybe out of Israel altogether! And, of course, there will be the take on how the Hareidim just want to throw their weight around, and are doing this just to get back at the city for electing a secular mayor – because after all, it’s located in Har Hotzvim, an industrial zone where no religious people (or people of any sort) actually live – so the plant is not going to directly damage anyone’s “Sabbath peace.”
It’s just too easy a story not to be stereotyped, but in this case, things may not be so simple. The anti-Intel protests are being organized by Knesset members from United Torah Judaism (UTJ) – the issue was pushed by UTJ Knesset member Uri Maklev. Although the epitome of what is called “ultra-Orthodox,” UTJ was very reticent when it came to the Karta mess (those protests were organized by a private group, and was steered by “ultra-Hareidi” Hassidic groups). UTJ represents Hareidi “yeshivish” circles, of course, but it also represents the average working Hareidi family, and engages with all the institutions of the state, and much of its Knesset activity involves getting tax breaks and benefits for large families, etc. They’re frequently accused of being “non-Zionist,” but they’re certainly no less (and probably a lot more) Zionist than groups like Peace Now. And while the secular media often disagrees with their positions, no one would consider them to be “fanatics.”
So if there’s any group you would think would not be leading this – who would understand that a fab plant needs to operate 24/7 – it would be these guys. Despite the stereotype, many Hareidim are “plugged in” to some extent, using the internet, e-mail, cellphones, etc. And they certainly understand what’s at stake in this battle. Even more: Considering that the old Intel plant in Jerusalem also operated on Shabbat and nobody seemed to care, and that other Intel plants around the country are open Saturday as well without anyone complaining – and that nightclubs and restaurants even in the center of town, much less in places like Talpiot, are open on Shabbat, without anyone protesting – you have to wonder exactly what is going on here.
Like I said, taking on Intel is not like taking on a parking lot, and the UTJ Knesset members who are leading this have to know that they are going to have a very hard time defending their position to the secular public. Ergo, we can take them at their word – that the reason they are doing this is, besides defending the “honor of the Sabbath,” they are worried that other businesses will take their cue from Intel and open on Shabbat as well (this is one of the top reasons mentioned by the organizers).
However, I believe something else is going on here; we’ve been handed a hot potato from the One Above, who wants to see how we are going to manage.
In this issue, we’re faced with a stark choice, it seems – the sanctity of the Sabbath versus the pull of modernity, the essence of modernity; the world’s biggest manufacturer of computer chips! But in this battle, the side that “wins” loses, too; if Intel packs up because of this, no one will be happy – including the Hareidim, because members of their community (mostly female) work at good jobs at Intel, supporting their husbands in Yeshiva. Without those jobs, the financial situation of dozens of Yeshiva families will be very precarious.
And if Intel “wins,” the Jewish people as a whole lose; the Sabbath is not an institution to be regarded lightly, as Jewish history tells us. Religious Jews believe they have an obligation to protest against desecration of the Sabbath, and there are plenty of sources in Jewish writings that mention this. As an observant individual, I take Shabbat seriously, and personally I believe that figuring out how to integrate the modern world with Shabbat – and vice versa – is one of the major challenges G-d has given our generation.
It’s been said that G-d often does things with an “ironic” twist – as in, “you wanted X to happen so badly, well let’s see how you handle it when it does.” Seen in that light, the Intel story is a challenge to both “sides”. While the Hareidi leadership has an obligation to lead battle to preserve the Sabbath (if they don’t, who will?), they’re also a part of the Jewish people, and the modern State of Israel. So, apparently, it’s been decided on High that the time has come to work out a balance between the two. The same goes for Intel; for years, it’s been profiting off the genius of Israel, the Holy Land – a place where the Sabbath means something. The time has come for it to figure out how to respect the moral Law of that land, even with a fab plant that has to operate 24.7.
So that’s our choice – coming together or oblivion, one way or another. The latter is too painful to picture, regardless of who “wins.” The fact that this showdown is being waged by those who are considered the “safekeepers” of Shabbat in Israel, and the epitome of modern computer technology, is so rife with symbolism and meaning that you have to be blind not to get it. But imagine if both sides manage to pull it off – if they do figure out a way to preserve the Sabbath, and keep the plant going! Imagine being able to meet that G-d given challenge successfully! Who could imagine the benefits – the “blessings” – that would emerge?
Chalk up another successful export industry Israel is a player in: Satellites. Earlier this year, Israel’s first communication satellite, Amos-1, was sold to Intelsat, one of the largest operators of communication satellites in the world. Amos 1 will now be known as Intelsat 24, and will be used for communications in East Asia – meaning that Iranians watching channels like India’s Star TV may be getting their shows from an Israeli-made satellite!
According Amitzur Rosenfeld, director of MicroSat Israel (a joint venture between IAI and Rafael to build micro-satellites), Intelsat is directing eastward Amos-1, which is still in orbit. Speaking recently at a scientific conference in Tel Aviv, Rosenfeld said the original plan had been to use whatever fuel was left on the old Amos-1 (launched in 1996) and fire it out of the earth’s orbit, to make room for new satellites. By doing so, Israel was being a good world citizen; according to NASA, there are over 9,000 (!) satellites and/or other “artificial objects” orbiting the earth, so things can get crowded up there!
Israel, it turns out, is one of the most advanced countries in satellite technology anywhere, because of the launching technology it has developed, along with breakthroughs in imaging. Most of the country’s communication satellites (like the Amoses) have been launched from outside the country (France, India, Russia, etc.), because of the need to fire satellites in an eastward direction, the direction of the earth’s rotation. That works fine in Florida or Texas, but in this part of the world, an eastbound launch might be construed as an attack by Jordan or further neighbors.
And, in addition, Israel’s new TecSAR satellite provides superior imaging capabilities, enabling sensors to pick up what is going on down below even during cloudy weather. Israel and France are developing a satellite that will enable farmers, fishermen and governments to better keep track of the land and sea environment, and according to “informed sources,” NASA is set to build a satellite in Israel using TecSAR technology to be used to map the usually very cloudy planet Venus. Nowadays, here in Israel, “space cadet” is a compliment, not an insult!
Israel is the world leader in hi-tech innovations. So many of the internet, cellphone, and gadget inventions that make our lives easier and more fun are born right here in Israel! Get the inside track on the newest ideas and innovations in our bi-weekly Digital Israel Newsletter. Sign up right here!
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