Israeli naval forces attack relief boat bound for Gaza from Cyprus

The Free Gaza group has made five deliveries of aid by boat to Gaza since August, defying a naval blockade imposed by Israel.

Former Georgia congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Green Party candidate for the US presidency in 2004 is on a boat, the 66-foot yacht, “SS Dignity,” which is trying to defy an Israeli blockade of Gaza and ferry 16 activists and 3 tons of Cypriot-donated supplies.

They were ready to set sail yesterday on Monday 29th, spokeswoman Caoimhe Butterly said their 66-foot (20-meter) yacht Dignity will leave Larnaca port around 5 p.m. (1400GMT) Monday with 3 tons of cargo including medical supplies.

Al Haddad a blogger (A mother from Gaza) now reports ..
http://a-mother-from-gaza.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Israeli Navy Attacking Civilian Mercy Ship! TAKE ACTION IMMEDIATELY!

The Dignity, a Free Gaza boat on a mission of mercy to besieged Gaza, is being attacked by the Israeli Navy in international waters. The Dignity has been surrounded by at least half-a-dozen Israeli warships. They are firing live ammunition around the Dignity, and one of the warships has rammed the civilian craft causing an unknown amount of damage. Contrary to international maritime law, the Israelis are actively preventing the Dignity from approaching Gaza or finding safe haven in either Egypt or Lebanon. Instead, the Israeli navy is demanding that the Dignity return to Cyprus - despite the fact that the ship does not carry enough fuel to do so. Fortunately, no one aboard the ship has yet been seriously injured.

There are 15 civilian passengers representing 11 different countries (see below for a complete list). At approximately 5am (UST), well out in international waters, Israeli warships began surrounding the Dignity, threatening the ship. At 6:45am (UST) we were able to establish brief contact with the crew and were told that the ship had been rammed by the Israeli Navy in international waters, and that the Israelis were preventing the ship from finding safe harbor. We heard heavy gunfire in the background before all contact was lost with the Dignity.

She provides these numbers and e -mail addresses to direct protests about this action which constitites piracy ...

CALL Mark Regev in the Prime Minister's office at:
+972 2670 5354 or +972 5062 3264
mark.regev@it.pmo.gov.il

CALL Shlomo Dror in the Ministry of Defence at:
+972 33697 5339 or +972 50629 8148
mediasar@mod.gov.il

Please distribute this information urgently.

Microsoft comes down hard on XP Pirates even though they don't sell it any more - Move up to Vista ?

Microsoft has stopped selling Win XP. Micrososft employ a lot of people on very high salaries. Microsoft want you to buy and use Windows Vista.

In some markets - for example Malaysia - there are about 8.6 million users of Win XP Pro on the internet. Microsoft consider there must be 3 million that are ...er.. unlicensed.

Starting in the morning, users with pirated (unlicensed, borrowed, stolen) copies of Microsoft Corp's Windows XP Professional operating system (OS) on machines that are Internet-capable could will find their computer displays going black and with no screen icons visible.

Easy peasy - reset the machine’s desktop background. Everything will return to normal. Easy peasy except it only last an hour - until the user buys a license ... or decides to move up (?) to Vista. (Exactly what happens when you load the Task Manager under Vista and you get that horrible empty feeling in your stomach)

This blackout will keep happening on the hour, every hour until the user licenses the copy of Win XP Pro on the machine by going to a Microsoft reseller or getting a licence online at the www.microsoft.com/malaysia/genuine. Each licence costs RM580 = US$170.

This initiative Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA), is apparently to "educate" users on the benefits of using genuine software, says K.T. Ng, Microsoft Malaysia’s director of client business group.

Win XP Professional was chosen for the antipiracy blitz because it is the most pirated version of Microsoft’s Win XP operating system , next to Windows XP Home.

Two years ago, it sprang its WGA initiative on local users of Win XP Pro and Win XP Home.

That time, a pop-up message said “This copy of Windows is not genuine.”

It was quite successful. At that time, there were about 5.1 million pirated copies of Windows XP Pro and after the exercise, about two million of the copies were ..er ... validated, said Microsoft Malaysia. Fran Foo @ C Net in April 2001 reported that copies of Office XP were selling for about RM 10 = US$3 on open air markets in KL. Microsoft said at the time that Office XP would cost about US$526 in Malaysia

In September that year ZDNet reported that Imbi Plaza and Low Yat Plaza -- in downtown Kuala Lumpur was a hive of stolen software sales .

On 20 August 2001 Microsoft managed to obtain a court order against Imbi Plaza, forbidding any store or operator in the premises from selling unlicensed Microsoft products.

“Microsoft has stopped selling Win XP in the market, so you have to wonder why it is spending time and money to take down users of pirated copies of this OS,” said a PC user, who asked for anonymity. “Why isn’t it also targeting users who have pirated copies of Windows Vista?”

“So if I’m using a pirated copy of Vista at this time, I won’t be hassled? Got to wonder about that.”

Ng says XP Pro, is widely pirated. “Vista isn’t pirated as much. WGA is continuous and should there be a Vista piracy problem, we will address it down the road.”

Perhaps the lawyers out there might have views on Microsoft's activities and the rest of us wonder why these tactics aren't used in other countries.