Not the Same

Ceasefire. At first i didn’t buy it, but now i see photos of the official Lebanese army entering villages in the South, so it’s probably good. I still think that it must be some trick, but i hope that i’m wrong.

Refugees from Galilee are returning back to their homes (my parents never left). Hotels in the North are reporting that the tourists are coming back. So what, is it like … Peace?

Still, it’s not the same country. Nasrallah is still alive, and as long as he is, he’ll say that he won and a lot of people will believe him; Ironically, Israelis are the first to believe him – i don’t think that any of us actually has a feeling of victory. And as long there’s no victory, the war is not really over and can come back any minute.

Moreover, well over one hundred Israelis and much more Lebanese were killed in this pointless bloodshed. Questions are being asked. Was the army ready to this war? Why did the chief of staff reassigned senior commanding officers in the middle of fighting? Did we have to kill so much civilians to reach almost nothing?

Most importantly – i hear the Israeli journalists, “the keepers of the etrog”, carefully asking the greatest questions of them all: Those people that we supported so strongly before the elections – Prime Minister Olmert and Defence Minister Peretz – are they capable of doing another war? Didn’t they lie to us about the Disengagement? Why did we mock Effie Eitam when he said that after the Disengagement Kassam rockets will fall on Ashkelon? Why didn’t we even try to listen to him? (They know the answer – because he has a beard and wears a kipa, but they are still afraid to admit it.)

No, it’s not the same country as it was a year ago. And it’s for the good. It’s always for the good.

People Speaking – Tired

— “Why aren’t you going to sleep?”

— “Because I’m tired.”

Booze

“I decided to visit it and was reading all the nasty stuff he said about Jews and Booze. Then I found out I was on Mel Gibson’s blog by mistake.”

(A comment on a Slashdot post about Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s new blog. Thanks to L. Roz Hubbard for the link.)

Testing

This is the “Contact us” page of the website of the Israeli Testing Certification Board (ITCB is the Israeli branch of ISTQB; see here).

Can you see any problem with it? Hint: You don’t need to know Hebrew to find it. Remember that this is no less than the Testing Certification Board.

Although it is unlikely that they will ever fix it, i made a screenshot – just in case. Click to enlarge.

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Oh (edit): 2007-05-22, it’s still there …

Fob

I studied a new English word! Ya mama!

The word is “fob”. Definition in Merriam-Webster:

1 : WATCH POCKET
2 : a short strap, ribbon, or chain attached especially to a pocket watch
3 : an ornament attached to a fob chain

I learnt it from UK’s new airport security measures. It allows “keys (but no electrical key fobs)”. Among other things it means that you can’t take you disk-on-key a.k.a USB flash drive and probably any other USB gadget into the plane cabin.

Several strange things:

1. In that sense, fob should have meant “key holder“, but it doesn’t – see above.
2. The first two native English speakers that i asked about this whole thing didn’t know what am i talking about. They heard the word “fob” from me for the first time. (They are both Americans, however.)
3. The 1947 edition of the Oxford Pocket Dictionary marks this word as “historical”, but the latest Merriam-Webster does not.
4. Blogger’s spelling checker recognizes “fob”, but not “fobs”.
5. Most importantly: Are these security regulations written for Average Joe Tourist? Or are they intentionally obscure?

Sense

This is not for computer people only, although it might look like that in the beginning.

You try to install a program on a Windows PC. This application depends on functioning IIS – Microsoft HTTP server software.

When you try to start IIS, you get an error – “Unexpected error 0x8ffe2740″. This is not very helpful (talk about Microsoft’s user-friendliness…), so you search the web with this weird error message and you find that it means that some other application is occupying port 80. Port 80 is the standard HTTP port. But what is it?

Of course you can use cool command-line network monitoring tools and find the offending process. But for me a quick look on the PC screen was just enough: In the tray there was the familiar icon for Apache. I am saying “familiar”, because Apache is the main competitor of Microsoft’s IIS – it is the famous open-source HTTP server, on which most of the World Wide Web runs. So of course Apache was occupying port 80. The icon, appropriately for Apache is a feather:

Now why do i say “appropriately”? Because Apache is one of the Native American nations and Native Americans are known for putting feathers in their head. It makes sense to me and it makes it easy for me to remember that Apache’s icon is a feather.

Apparently, despite the fact that Apache is a very popular web server software and despite the fact that it’s quite easy to remember its icon, many people with whom i work didn’t see it immediately. I swear that i am not bragging – but i am quite surprised.

That’s how my mind works. I am not a genius, but i do try not to strain my head remembering things that make sense – if something makes sense, it just pops up by itself.

Jule

Serbian	Јун	Јул
Hebrew	יוני	יולי
Russian	Июнь	Июль
English	June	July

In all languages there’s a difference of one letter. So why doesn’t English have June and Jule or Juny and July?

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Oh (edit): I totally forgot the original, which is very important:

Latin

Iūnius

Iūlius

Bear

Why the world hates the Jews by Michael Medved

It’s long, indulgent, apologetical and somewhat one-sided, but largely right.

Calli

Look: Arabic-Chinese calligraphy and more Arabic-Chinese calligraphy.

Arabic calligraphy is so much more interesting than Hebrew, or any other for that matter. To my taste, Japanese comes second and Chinese third.

There hardly is such a thing as Hebrew calligraphy – the script for hand-written Torah scrolls is the same all the time and all the other books are just printed and we are not really concerned with handwritten calligraphy, which is a pity.

Em B D->D9 A

Em B D->D9 A

Am Em->Em2 F# Am

Em