Startup, Wars, Spam and Cats.

First, no cats will be involved in this post.

At first - I wanted to post regarding a new spam law that was passed in Israel recently and have finally made Israel join a list of countries which actually take active part at fighting the war against spam. I even thought about including my own mail server statistics regarding spam (which were dramatically reduced) and giving an honorable mention to the first lawsuit that was already filed based on the law (in Hebrew - here) .

However - as important as this subject is, I noticed the terminology I used - (war, fight, against) and actually a real war is brewing just outside, in Israel's southern border. Which is probably a little bit more important and I thought that I'll share my point of view (which is why startup is included in the title).

Wars are normally bad for business, investors get even more reluctant to invest. People get drafted and much worse than that. The general mood, which was not too high considering the recent economic crisis drops even lower.

However, I will contribute my share by explaining how things look from here. Not so long ago - Israel left gaza strip completely and fully. This action had my total support as I believe the Palestinians are entitled to their own land to do as they please with. Actually - almost as they please, creating a rocket base to shoot civilians at Israel isn't what a normal country would do, which can't be tolerated, period. This rocketry isn't being done by some unsupported eccentric organizations of weirdos in Gaza, but rather by their elected goverment and their militray forces.
One such rocket has hit Kiryat Gat, a small city in the south of Israel in which I personally almost started my previous company. I hate to think what would have happened if the company was really started there and I have had to face this recent turn of events.

After receiving over 60 rockets Thursday Israel has finally retaliated and although the death toll may seem high to an outside observer or out of proportion, I will say that first - there is no proportion, and second - if you decided to join or support a terror activity - be prepared to pay a price and Last is that if you don't value human life on your enemy side (that would be us) nor human life on your own side (by placing rocket repositories at normal neighbourhoods) no number means anything.

I dream of peace, I wish for peace and I hope my children will not have mandatory army service, I guess that sometimes the tricky road to peace leads to war with evil regims. I hope we are on that road.

Readers, where are you?

Writing a blog is an interesting affair. Sometimes you get that eerie feeling that you are completely alone, no one is reading your blog and nobody bothers.

On that time you usually get a comment from a reader regarding something you have blogged about and you feel lost. Where did he get that? how does he know that I'm involved in this or that? When at one time I asked about that, I got the answer that it was me, I blogged about it and it was read, and I was a bit surprised and a bit proud. Maybe there is a point to this and we are not alone.

On other news, I had an interesting bubble discussion today, about the hi-tech industry bubble which I am probably a part of, yet very aware of it unlike many others. Some theological questions popped up after that discussion like will there always be a bubble? is our bubble special? what actually defines a bubble? and I lack the answers.

When bathing the kids, I make extremely large soap bubbles for them which they enjoy popping, which always leads me to think of the industry bubble and what is actually more fun, the creation of the bubble or its popping? who knows...