Yuval Dror

The upcoming election has made social media the place to be, but social media statistics, especially those relating to politicians, are misleading.

Some people might say that it's not possible to produce telephones that are so thin without paying a price - and the price is saying goodbye to the possibility of changing a battery alone. What utter rubbish!

Even if we work on the assumption that the tablets, lead by Apple's iPad, are indeed threatening to step into the shoes of the PC, we cannot be sure that this is a good thing.

Social media companies do not lie when they report how many registered users they have, but they also do not tell the whole truth.

The education system is so impressed by the access to information that it has made it an aim to educate children to what it calls "literacy" - basic control of computer technologies as a tool for finding information. However, on the way to this goal it has shot itself in the foot - and the students in the head.

In an era of information overload, we are constantly exposed to innumerable channels delivering messages to us. Sometimes it is difficult to get free of the feeling that something is a little out of control. The reason for that is - wait a second, the phone is ringing.

The writing of e-mails, which is the most prevalent form of communication today, is so sloppy that often it is impossible to understand what the writers want.

The Gutenberg Project is an international enterprise whose goal is to post classic literary works on the Internet. Since works of literature are protected by copyright, the project is careful to post only works whose copyrights have expired and are now in the public domain.

The underlying rationale of the programs fulfills the sacrosanct principle of capitalism: "Time is money." Accordingly, every spare minute and every elusive resource must be utilized to locate the dollars that are slipping through the cracks and getting lost.

After they've overcome the fake ringtone, maybe a counter-technology will be developed that will require the caller to provide a DNA sample.

There are those who believe the light of science and technology will bring salvation and redemption. Sometimes that light can turn into a blinding klieg light.

It is possible to get addicted to anything - food, television. But none of those things have the advantage of the Internet, the demon that took over our lives and turned children into zombies that prefer to drool at their screens rather than play soccer.

Software piracy is a curse, not only because morally software should not be stolen, but also because of the damage it does to the global software industry. In 2003, the global software industry made $51 billion. That's no small number, but do you know how much was stolen from the software industry through the pirating of products? The answer is $29 billion.

It usually takes years for people to develop a nostalgia for some technology, but in the age of the computer and the Internet, everything takes less time.

The Internet church's administrators gave its officers a `smite' button to use against guests using vulgar language, sparking complaints that this violent act was an affront to Christian values.

While numerous firms, especially Oracle, take every possible chance to attack Microsoft, the firm has refused to speak about its competitors, prefering to concentrate on promoting its own activities.

Google's e-mail service is thought-provoking, and there is no reason to ignore the serious consequences it may bring, but there is also no reason to humanize it. Anyone who makes of Google a company whose employees are drooling as they read every word of your e-mail does so out of lack of understanding - or because of some sort of vested interest that's hidden in the folds of his coat.

Society at large, and youths in particular, have not become violent because of video games. In fact, it's precisely because teenagers are so well attuned to what reality is about that they get so much enjoyment from video games. It would be best if the video game puritans were to let the subject rest, attempt to identify the real causes of violence and let the children play.

In recent weeks, readers of the papers' business sections have been keeping tabs on a fierce battle between the Finance Ministry and Microsoft.

When users encounter software that is too human-like, they respond to it like they sometimes do to annoying people. No one wants to work alongside a paranoid or neurotic computer that asks, "Are you sure? Have you changed our mind?" about every step you take.

But in the last two years, computer users who like choice and competition have been thrown into a Catch-22. They want an easy-to-use operating system, but do not want Microsoft to be the only supplier of the technology.

Bill Gates is not just Microsoft's patriarch, but also the premier philosopher of the modern information processing industry.

Two weeks ago, on September 15, Verisign, a publicly traded U.S. company, hijacked the Internet. In seconds, the world discovered that the Internet had been expropriated by Verisign, the Domain Names Registrar, the very body that was given the keys to the Net to maintain order.

Three years after the content revolution hit the Israeli Internet, one can state that we have well-tended, serious and interesting Web sites. What a pity that when you look at them, what you see is the ugly face of Israel - aggressive and money-hungry.