Microsoft And Israel's Technion Plan Computer Research Center

[JStone]

Microsoft: Israel Collaboration Takes Shape

Given the great strides taken in e-commerce over the past decade, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that such transactions are still in their infancy.

Hence the need for the Academic Research Center for E-Commerce Technologies, announced Oct. 9 by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Microsoft Research. Those entities signaled their intention of co-establishing a facility that will promote and fund basic research in computer science, artificial intelligence, game theory, economics, and psychology, with a focus on the connections between these subjects when considered from an e-commerce perspective.

The center, a five-year joint research and education partnership, is the first academic research program involving Microsoft Research in Israel. The effort is designed to explore scientific and technological insights in e-commerce, such as online advertising and the use of social networks for commerce. Over the next five years, Microsoft will invest $1.5 million in the center, which will be located at The Technion campus in Haifa, Israel.

“Microsoft understands that academia is at the heart of technological innovation and seeks to catalyze innovation in research and curricula in leading academic institutions worldwide,” said Yoram Yaacovi, general manager of the Microsoft Israel Research and Development Center. “Today’s announcement reflects Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to partnering with academia in developing new and advanced technologies.”

Moshe Tennenholtz, a professor in the William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion, will serve as the head of the center. Tennenholtz has collaborated with Microsoft Research for years and is a world-leading expert in e-commerce.

Research at the center will be conducted by scientists and research students from several Technion departments, in collaboration with Microsoft Research personnel.

“Microsoft’s decision to establish the research center at the Technion is a very strong statement by one of the giants of global technology,” said Boaz Golany, a Technion professor and dean of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, “regarding the position of the state of Israel at the forefront of information and communication technologies and the strength of the Technion in the areas of science and technology.”
Israel Collaboration Takes Shape - Inside Microsoft Research - Site Home - TechNet Blogs

 

[JStone]

Microsoft: Israel Collaboration Takes Shape

Given the great strides taken in e-commerce over the past decade, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that such transactions are still in their infancy.

Hence the need for the Academic Research Center for E-Commerce Technologies, announced Oct. 9 by the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Microsoft Research. Those entities signaled their intention of co-establishing a facility that will promote and fund basic research in computer science, artificial intelligence, game theory, economics, and psychology, with a focus on the connections between these subjects when considered from an e-commerce perspective.

The center, a five-year joint research and education partnership, is the first academic research program involving Microsoft Research in Israel. The effort is designed to explore scientific and technological insights in e-commerce, such as online advertising and the use of social networks for commerce. Over the next five years, Microsoft will invest $1.5 million in the center, which will be located at The Technion campus in Haifa, Israel.

“Microsoft understands that academia is at the heart of technological innovation and seeks to catalyze innovation in research and curricula in leading academic institutions worldwide,” said Yoram Yaacovi, general manager of the Microsoft Israel Research and Development Center. “Today’s announcement reflects Microsoft’s ongoing commitment to partnering with academia in developing new and advanced technologies.”

Moshe Tennenholtz, a professor in the William Davidson Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Technion, will serve as the head of the center. Tennenholtz has collaborated with Microsoft Research for years and is a world-leading expert in e-commerce.

Research at the center will be conducted by scientists and research students from several Technion departments, in collaboration with Microsoft Research personnel.

“Microsoft’s decision to establish the research center at the Technion is a very strong statement by one of the giants of global technology,” said Boaz Golany, a Technion professor and dean of the Faculty of Industrial Engineering and Management, “regarding the position of the state of Israel at the forefront of information and communication technologies and the strength of the Technion in the areas of science and technology.”
TechNet Blogs

 

[xotoxi]

I agree.

 

[xotoxi]

I disagree.

 

[Jos]

I disagree.

Agreed

 

[Jos]

I agree.

No?

 

[JStone]

Bill Gates...
Israel is by many measures the country, relative to its population, that's done the most to contribute to the technology revolution

Warren Buffett...
If you go to the Middle East looking for oil, you don't even stop at Israel. But, if you go looking for brains, for energy and for integrity, Israel is the only stop you make.

CNBC...
When you look at the NASDAQ, companies are listed from around the world. There's one country, though, that truly stands out and that is Israel
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHStBGk_D8Y]Israel Innovation - YouTube[/ame]

 

[Meister]

merged

 

[JStone]

Microsoft Israel, Develops All Anti-Virus Software

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYQmsfw2v5I]Microsoft CEO Arrives In Israel To Inaugurate New Research A - YouTube[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3FqQHk000Y]Steve Ballmer at Microsoft's new R&D center in Israel - YouTube[/ame]

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RmCCyRa0l6A]Microsoft Israel plans to take market by storm - YouTube[/ame]

 

[JStone]

The Economist Magazine: Arab World Self-Doomed To Failure

WHAT went wrong with the Arab world? Why is it so stuck behind the times? It is not an obviously unlucky region. Fatly endowed with oil, and with its people sharing a rich cultural, religious and linguistic heritage, it is faced neither with endemic poverty nor with ethnic conflict. But, with barely an exception, its autocratic rulers, whether presidents or kings, give up their authority only when they die; its elections are a sick joke; half its people are treated as lesser legal and economic beings, and more than half its young, burdened by joblessness and stifled by conservative religious tradition, are said to want to get out of the place as soon as they can.

One in five Arabs still live on less than $2 a day. And, over the past 20 years, growth in income per head, at an annual rate of 0.5%, was lower than anywhere else in the world except sub-Saharan Africa. At this rate, it will take the average Arab 140 years to double his income, a target that some regions are set to reach in less than ten years. Stagnant growth, together with a fast-rising population, means vanishing jobs. Around 12m people, or 15% of the labour force, are already unemployed, and on present trends the number could rise to 25m by 2010.

Freedom. This deficit explains many of the fundamental things that are wrong with the Arab world: the survival of absolute autocracies; the holding of bogus elections; confusion between the executive and the judiciary (the report points out the close linguistic link between the two in Arabic); constraints on the media and on civil society; and a patriarchal, intolerant, sometimes suffocating social environment. The great wave of democratisation that has opened up so much of the world over the past 15 years seems to have left the Arabs untouched. Democracy is occasionally offered, but as a concession, not as a right. Freedom of expression and freedom of association are both sharply limited. Freedom House, an American-based monitor of political and civil rights, records that no Arab country has genuinely free media, and only three have “partly free”. The rest are not free

Knowledge. “If God were to humiliate a human being,” wrote Imam Ali bin abi Taleb in the sixth century, “He would deny him knowledge.” Although the Arabs spend a higher percentage of GDP on education than any other developing region, it is not, it seems, well spent. The quality of education has deteriorated pitifully, and there is a severe mismatch between the labour market and the education system. Adult illiteracy rates have declined but are still very high: 65m adults are illiterate, almost two-thirds of them women. Some 10m children still have no schooling at all. One of the gravest results of their poor education is that the Arabs, who once led the world in science, are dropping ever further behind in scientific research and in information technology. Investment in research and development is less than one-seventh of the world average. Only 0.6% of the population uses the Internet, and 1.2% have personal computers.

Women's status. The one thing that every outsider knows about the Arab world is that it does not treat its women as full citizens. How can a society prosper when it stifles half its productive potential? After all, even though women's literacy rates have trebled in the past 30 years, one in every two Arab women still can neither read nor write. Their participation in their countries' political and economic life is the lowest in the world.

Arab development: Self-doomed to failure | The Economist

 

[High_Gravity]