Not really, unless I was born before the Civil War. I was searching what readers of my blog read and found this which I didn’t know.

The good news is it was a Confederate Ship, since the South won anyway.

Happy 60th Birthday Israel. The irony in this is the reality that the right number is about 5060 years old, as that’s how long they have really occupied the land, but nevertheless, Happy Birthday 60th.

It’s tough to be surrounded by people that hate you and survive all these years, but it appears that they had help,so there is a good reason that they have been there. The Israeli’s are survivors. What I really like is their tenacity at defending their country and their rights. One small strip of land surrounded by hundreds of thousands of miles of land occupied by enemies…whom they defeat or out-think every time.

It is amazing that some of the things that have happened in that region over these years. Technologically speaking, things like WiFi for example, and IBM is invested heavily in the technology there and is taking them to market around the world.

I’ve worked for and with some Israeli companies. And I’ve worked with those who survived the holocost.

Of course, there are some that don’t appreciate Israel quite as much calling it a stinking corpse, and I’m thinking why does one of our presidential candidates want to talk to this guy Mahmoud am-a-dinner jacket, am-a-terrorist? How about aggressive negotiations?

THE BIG QUESTION

Why is an area that doesn’t have a lot of natural resources, not a lot of space, not a lot of people so coveted, reviled and desired by so many? I’m guessing that this has a lot to do with it.

So there will be those who relish this date and those that don’t. Here are others who have covered it:

Infidel bloggers alliance - Did a great job.

Atlas Shrugs who defends Israel and Jewish people on a regular basis.

Gates of Vienna, another defender.

Dr. Sanity, who is as smart and articulate as they come and comments on Women’s issues as well as Scientific achievements:

Israel on the other hand, should be very proud of its remarkable accomplishments in only 60 years. As SC&A note:
Israel, a nation the size of New Jersey, can only lay claim to the following achievements:
-Israel has more museums per capita than any other country in the world.

-Israel has the second highest output of books published per citizen in the world.

-Israelis hold more patents per person than do citizens of any other nation.

-More than 85% of all solid waste in Israel is treated in an environmentally sound manner.

-Israeli companies, Amdocs, Comverse and Nice pioneered voicemail, SMS and other cellular phone services.

-Israel has the highest concentration of high tech companies industries in the world, relative to it’s population.

-ICQ, the technology that powers AOL Instant Messenger, was developed in 1996 by a team of 4 young Israelis.

-Israeli start-up company TransChip developed the first high resolution camera that fits on a single electronic chip, for use in cellular phones.

-Israel is one of only eight countries in the world capable of launching their own satellites into space.

-Israelis developed the world’s first cellphone at the Motorola research lab in Haifa, that companies largest research center in the world.

-Israel ranks third, after the US and Canada, in the number of publicly traded companies on Wall Street.

-Israel has more scientists and engineers per capita than any other nation in the world.

-American industry giants such as GM, Ford and Lockheed Martin manage their manufacturing facilities using software written by Tecnomatix, an Israeli company.

-Israeli company Given Imaging developed a video camera small enough to fit inside of a pill. The camera helps doctors diagnose digestive tract diseases.

-Israeli scientists developed the first computerized radiation free diagnostic scanning device for detecting breast cancer.

-Israel produces more scientific papers per capita than any other nation in the world.

And a boatload of other coverage.

HOW IT HAPPENED

Here is a background on how it happened on May 14, 1948
and an excerpt from the story

On the face of it, Ben-Gurion’s hope rested on reasonable grounds. An inflow of Jewish immigrants and capital after World War I had revived Palestine’s hitherto static condition and raised the standard of living of its Arab inhabitants well above that in the neighboring Arab states. The expansion of Arab industry and agriculture, especially in the field of citrus growing, was largely financed by the capital thus obtained, and Jewish know-how did much to improve Arab cultivation. In the two decades between the world wars, Arab-owned citrus plantations grew sixfold, as did vegetable-growing lands, while the number of olive groves quadrupled.
No less remarkable were the advances in social welfare. Perhaps most significantly, mortality rates in the Muslim population dropped sharply and life expectancy rose from 37.5 years in 1926-27 to 50 in 1942-44 (compared with 33 in Egypt). The rate of natural increase leapt upward by a third.
That nothing remotely akin to this was taking place in the neighboring British-ruled Arab countries, not to mention India, can be explained only by the decisive Jewish contribution to Mandate Palestine’s socioeconomic well-being. The British authorities acknowledged as much in a 1937 report by a commission of inquiry headed by Lord Peel:
The general beneficent effect of Jewish immigration on Arab welfare is illustrated by the fact that the increase in the Arab population is most marked in urban areas affected by Jewish development. A comparison of the census returns in 1922 and 1931 shows that, six years ago, the increase percent in Haifa was 86, in Jaffa 62, in Jerusalem 37, while in purely Arab towns such as Nablus and Hebron it was only 7, and at Gaza there was a decrease of 2 percent.

I’ve always though Mark Hurd was a good executive.  He righted an ship that was as far off course as an executive (Carly) could take it.  He made it though the Board of Directors scandal unscathed for the most part…hard to do.

Over the past few years, he has been building the company through acquisitions to closely resemble the IBM model, Software and Services.  It’s hard to argue with a model of success.  Let’s discuss the pro’s and con’s.

Dennis Howlett doesn’t think it is as qood of a services arm as IBM Services, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.  He argues that PWC which IBM got for a song compared to what HP couldn’t close it on was a better buy.  I agree here.  Also on the semi-con side is that it was pointed out to me that HP would keep it as a separate arm of the company.  I’ve seen this not work time and time again as it allows the company to hold onto it’s culture rather than to integrate, which will happen sooner or later.  It’s better to take your medicine and get it over with.

On the pro side, Tom Foremski thinks it is a good fit.

NOTE: this supports my IBM emulation theory.

Foremski’s Take:

• - HP CEO Mark Hurd is seeking to capitalize on HP’s renewed momentum and take on rival IBM by beefing up IT services.
• - EDS has a solid IT services business with a lot of government contracts that could help balance out a possible recession in other industry sectors.
• - There might seem to be a large cultural difference between the two companies but Compaq, which HP acquired in 2002, was headquartered in Texas.
• - HP would still need to gain a high-end IT consultancy business in order to compete with IBM.
• - Another area that HP still needs to address is in its middleware software business.
• - The timing is quite good. It is best to try and complete such a large acquisition and integration during times of economic slowdown so that the combined entity is firing on all cylinders when boom times come around again.

On the neither Pro or Con side, Judith Hurwitz pointed out to me that EDS has a significant mainframe business, something that HP has steadfastly kept out of until now being committed to the x86 architecture. She also told me of the ties to CA which EDS brings to the table.  This is either an addition or a distraction, time will tell.

Nevertheless, as the old saying goes, no one ever got fired for buying IBM.  It seems like emulating it is also a pretty good strategy.

Because their customer service is the worst of any industry and in the cellular industry, bar none.

Despite the spin that they put out, their performance technically and on a human level could not be worse.

I live in the sticks, and have such poor reception that the call dropped from Sprint when they were trying to say I was covered. They had to call me on my land line to tell me that I had full coverage and no they wouldn’t help me. And they were rude at every level, every person to a person.

Sprint sponsor’s NASCAR, the highest attended event series of almost any sport and growing faster than all the majors, with over 400,000 attending the Brickyard 400 alone. Instead of being on their best behavior, what is happening is people are voting with their pocketbooks and leaving, which is what I’m doing as soon as I can.

And here it is, the proof of poor customer service and unhappy customers besides me.

“We didn’t have a compelling offering to keep them,” said Hesse, who also said the unlimited service offering would likely reduce the number of calls to Sprint customer services, which has been blamed to a large extent for subscriber frustration.

The last time I hear of a stiff penalty, it was $100 million to McLaren for spying on Ferrari in F1.  Now Microsoft scores a new record fine of 1.4 billion.  OK, it’s a record that I know of….save it if you know a bigger one, there is always a bigger fish.

I’m not sticking up for Microsoft here, I can’t wait to get rid of them on my desktop, but that isn’t the point.  We are approaching the over regulation Mendoza line here.  Should they be penalized for monopolistic behavior?  Yes, but by the marketplace of competition.  We need to remember the words of Ronald Regan, “We are a country that has a government, not the other way around”.  This should apply to the EU, with country being plural.

Didn’t the city of Munich declare that they were a Linux user?  Isn’t that a good way of regulating it? Do I expect everyone to go Linux or Open?  No, but offer a competitive solution both feature and function with a lower price and Microsoft will buckle.  Symphony…..Open Office….Ubuntu….Mac OS….anyone home?

I’ve noticed a direct correlation between the increase in Twitter and the decrease in blogging.  Not that I still don’t get thousands of blogs a day in my RSS reader, but I noticed it in the high volume analyst bloggers and the top analyst Twitterer’s, thanks Jonny.

To confirm this, I asked James Governor if my hypothesis was correct and he confirmed it is true, but that there is more to this than just the blogging effect.  Underlying twitter is another discussion that carries on in answering or discussing issues.  Full investigation into that is worth looking at and that is the value.  Naturally, I asked him to present this to the A/R crowd, and he agreed to blog about it as a starter.  Look for that discussion at the above link to his blog.

But What About Blogging?

James did say that there is an upside.  A lot can be handled by Twitter, but his defense of blogging is that it’s relevancy has increased.  Now when something is blogged, it either can’t be addressed in the 140 count, or it needs to be dealt with in depth, and a blog is the place to do it.  So the blog discussion gets bumped up and issues are also solved on Twitter.

Liveblogging, according to The Disruptology Blog, which quoted me as a Live Blogger when I captured Sam Palmisano’s Keynote at the Business Partner Leadership Council, formerly known as Partnerworld.

Ok, I think that the Prias is not a good car idea to begin with.  Depsite it’s fuel mileage, it’s basically testosterone free and the batteries they use cause more ecological problems in creation and disposition than it’s benefits.

But to make it a police car?  Look, if I was a bad guy, I’d have a bad car that could out run a souped up police charger hemi.  But would I be worried about out running a Prias?  Pulleeeze

Since our country was founded by by pilgrims seeking a new life and the desire to worship (see the bill of rights), today we celebrate the National Day of Prayer.

I believe this is the root of the feelings that that a lot of America haters have (also those with Bush derangement syndrome).  Guess what, they’ll get prayed for also.

So ironic that also today is the Holocost Memorial, and Hamas issued a video blaming it on Israel, how unfortunate, and so untrue.

Being on East coast time, I of course woke up early, to be greeted by the European analysts who had been up since 2 AM…already having done a full day’s work before the conference.

After having an nice discussion on everything from Microsoft to terrorists with Steve White, we were able to scheudule a rare 1:1 with Steve Mills for later in the day.

So as it goes, we will be doing the usual conference dance with the Press/Analysts/Executives and partners.

Here is a picture of the Press team scheming all things press for the day.