Them’s the (Data Line) Breaks

December 10, 2008 - 1:15 AM by · Leave a Comment
Filed under: Business, General, Politics, Technology 

Israel, being the high-tech powerhouse that it is, should be able to handle something as simple as a computerized primary election. But for two weeks in a row, in two different primary contests, the computers seemingly caused more problems than they solved.

All three major parties – Labor, Likud and Kadima – had decided to dispense with traditional paper balloting in their primaries this year. A paper ballot election run by party insiders almost guarantees allegations of corruption – and past scandals have proven that where there’s smoke, there’s fire. In order to remove from party functionaries the temptation to, say, “lose” some ballot boxes (as has happened several times in the past) and to head off accusations of corruption, even if they were untrue, the parties decided to computerize the process.

Last week, the computer system crashed on Labor primary day, forcing the party to cancel the whole thing and reschedule for two days later. In Monday’s Likud primary, the system more or less worked, but it was slow – so slow that voting hours had to be extended for three hours, while party members spent hours waiting on line for their chance to choose. As a result of their rivals’ experiences, Kadima, which has its primary next week, has begged off using computers, and will instead go back to paper ballots, despite the problems.

Network experts still haven’t figured out what caused the Labor system crash, but in the case of the Likud slowdown, at least part of the problem was attributed to – a tractor. While digging the foundation for a structure outside Jerusalem, a tractor apparently damaged a fiber-optic communications cable, shutting down communications in the Jerusalem area (and beyond) for several hours, a delay from which the Jerusalem area Likud polls apparently never recovered.

Could a similar communications line cut have been responsible for Labor’s computer problems too? It’s very possible – because it happens far more often than people realize. Erez Ronen in Yediot Achronot tells the story of his trip to the mall to buy a computer – and how he couldn’t check how well it surfed the internet, because a tractor doing construction in the area had broken the data line. Clearly, it happens more often than we realize. It’s the digital age’s equivalent of a water main break (those still happen a lot, too).

It’s not just tractors that can break data cables – ships at sea do their share of damage. Earlier this year, in fact, most of the Middle East – except Israel – was off the net for several days, and in some cases for weeks, because a ship’s anchor had spliced through one of the main underwater communication cables running from Egypt to Europe. Most of the Arab countries, Iran, and India, used the line for their internet and e-mail connections to the rest of the world. Israel, which uses a separate cable (the MedNautilus cable, pictured), wasn’t affected – leading to accusations that somehow Israel had engineered the shutdown of the internet, in preparation for a war against Iran! Eventually the break was discovered, but countries affected, including Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and India said they lost billions of dollars. Losing our net connection is annoying, whether you’re running an election or just surfing. But for communication companies – like the ones that ran the Labor and Likud primaries – there’s a bright spot: You can always find someone to blame for the fashla!

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Disgruntled at Duty-Free

July 30, 2008 - 5:18 PM by · 3 Comments
Filed under: Business, General, Immigrant Moments, Israeliness 

My husband had just gotten off the plane from a two-week work trip in the States, and before I could bundle him into the car at the airport and whisk him back home — I was waiting outside while he was gathering his baggage and duty-free treats — he suddenly stopped answering his cellphone — horrors! — and all I could think of was, ‘Has he been stopped by Customs?’

Duty_Free_shop_-_Ben_Gurion_Airport.jpg

Of course, he had. After some 20 years of living in Israel, and making the Israel-U.S. trip many a time, with more than a few electronic treats in his bags, Daniel made the cardinal error of buying a new microwave in duty-free and bringing back a few birthday presents — all electronic — in his bags. But it was the big DeLonghi box sitting on his cart that alerted the bored customs crew, who immediately set their sights on him and demanded that he open all bags. There, to their delight, were three unopened boxes, including two cameras and an iHome, all birthday presents for family members back here.

After paying 850 shekels in fines and VAT, Daniel was set free, albeit disgruntled, and made his way over to our car. Now, of course, we also had to pay NIS 20 for parking, since we’d overstayed our 20-minute free parking. On the way home, we engaged in a step-by-step dismantling of the scenario, from the decision to buy a microwave in duty-free (where you don’t have to pay the 15.5% VAT that is paid on most consumer items in Israel), to not doing a better job of hiding the cameras in the suitcase.

It’s a funny thing, though; it’s not that duty-free shopping is such a bargain. It’s simply very easy to spend the time before boarding buying some things that you’ve needed to get, and then leaving it at the airport to bring home at the end of a trip. An Israeli innovation, you could say. But there are the downsides; whether it’s when the appliance arrives broken and you have to deal with the company’s less than satisfying customer service, or when you buy several bottles of whisky duty-free, only to find out that you’re only allowed to bring in one liter of liquor or two liters of wine. (That happened to friends of ours who were stocking up on whisky before their daughter’s wedding.)

So, did it pay to buy the electronics in the States, smuggle them home and then pay a fine? Well, yes. It’s still cheaper over there, and the range of choices are much wider. It would have been much more frustrating if they’d succeeded in making Daniel pay a fine on his two-year-old laptop that was also in his bag, and which, they pointed out, doesn’t have a Hebrew keyboard, which could mean that it was also bought in the States. But they let him slide on that one, and in fact, after a whispered consultation, decided to lower his total bill from NIS 1150 to NIS 850. And so, in the end, another bargain at the airport.

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