One piece of advice is to say who you are. For all I know I'm giving my email, and the right to email me daily, to some hobo on the street. How do I know who you are? How can I trust you?
Another "hack" us Jews use very often is a timer. We have a timer hooked up to an outlet, and plug things into the timer, so you can set certain times to allow the electricity through, and other times not to.
It seems to me that "hacks" like these are just missing the point - though I'm an atheist, so maybe I'm just missing the point.
If the logic is that God didn't want a fire lit, surely that is because he didn't want the fire, not that he didn't want someone lighting it.
Isn't it all a little bit like a scaled down, less immoral, version of saying "No, I didn't kill him, I just pushed him into the ocean - blame the water"?
It seems to me a timer is fine; the point isn't to be in total darkness, the point is to not do the proscribed things. You are free to sit in front of a fire, so long as you didn't light it.
Things like the switch in this article seems really silly though. Of course having a gentile to push elevator buttons for you seems silly to me as well.
I'm not a Jew, but I've read the Old Testament, and God depicted there cares about intentions a lot more, than about effects. For example - God wanted Abraham to kill his son not because he wanted Jakub death, but he wanted blind obedience from Abraham. Which is still illogical - because first - God knew beforehand what Abraham will do, second - it's strange that God prefers people to be obedient, than ethical (one can argue that killing son because of God order is not unethical, when we assume God is always right).
Anyway - omnipotent and omniscient God is logical contradiction already, either logic don't work on God, or it's all bullshit. So religion doesn't have to be logical.
Well there are scores of books on these issues, and some great Rabbis hold exactly what you are saying. But some say that since there is no action on the Sabbath, and the act is before the Sabbath, and before the Sabbath it wasn't an issue. So then even though the result is on the Sabbath, it's not actually an issue.
So I can tell you that you are 100% right. I don't think this is really going to catch on for that very reason. Sabbath is a day set aside for family, religion, and not working.
I think what the main use is going to be is people will install it for emergencies. So I'm sure in Israel a lot of people will put it in their bomb shelters so if they need to spend Sabbath in the shelter and need to use the light, it won't be directly going against Sabbath.
That is true. If any ones life is in danger, your supposed to "forget" the Sabbath right away and do what's necessary. But, for example, if your wife is very very pregnant and can give birth over Sabbath, if she goes into labour on Sabbath, 100% you HAVE to driver her to the hospital. But it's better if before Sabbath you order a taxi.
"I also disagree that relying on advertising revenue is such a bad risk for Facebook: so does Television and their business model has been succesful for a loong time. "
It's not a problem to rely on advertisements as a main source of revenue, but Televisions have commercial breaks. What Facebook is afraid of is that most of their users won't even use the website at all, and only the mobile app. Or to continue the Television metaphor, it's like having all the TV watchers switch from TV, to TVs without commercial breaks. poof goes the revenue.
This makes a lot of sense to me now. I have been scratching my head at some obvious and simple things Facebook left out of their otherwise fantastic mobile applications on the platforms I use. Windows Phone has a great built-in Facebook client, but when I'm viewing my status, all I can see is how many people "Like"d it. To see who it was, I have to go to their website. Likewise, I can't add new friends from it. On WebOS (IMO the best Facebook client I've used, but I've never used the iPad app), it's fantastic but there's absolutely no Facebook Chat support anywhere in the entire OS. On Android, Facebook and Facebook Chat are two different apps. Both need to be running to get the "full" experience, and I'm sure there are still things missing.
It seems every platform is missing something, and it makes sense that they would deliberately give you basic functionality to use but require you hit their website for the full experience (and full ads). In a world of "apps just launch the website", Facebook is taking the opposite approach. Apps are the gateway drug to the full version.
The reason that Israeli schools and American schools differ, stem from the fact that originally, Israel needed fast results.
in 1948, Israel started getting boat loads of Jewish immigrants (a lot of them just out of the holocaust and uneducated). Additionally they were at war and trying to build a country fast. So instead of going for liberal arts and such, the college education is much more direct and to the point. So after 3-4 years, these people can go out and help the new county.
This is also seen in the fact that majors are picked in High School also, to further pinpoint what you are going to do for the society, and then get it done.
