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Microsoft To Be Fined E500M By European Union?
An anonymous reader writes "According to a Reuters story, the European Commission is in the process of fining Microsoft 497 million Euros ($613 million). The most important reason for the fine was the refusal by Microsoft to share more information about its products with competitors. Mario Monti, the EU competition commissioner, decided to impose the fine after talks with Microsoft broke down last week." The last estimate was a mere 100 million Euros, and it's noted: "If the full European Commission backs the fine as expected on Wednesday it would exceed the 462 million euro penalty imposed on Hoffman-La Roche AG in 2001 for being ringleader of a vitamin cartel."
Clinton claimed that at the time he left office, Iraq had WMD. Didn't take much fooling there, I suppose.
And if France had done something during the Sitzkrieg instead of sitting around and waiting to be attacked then they wouldn't have needed our intervention in the first place. Don't blame the United States for the fall of France -- blame the French. If they actually had decent leadership and a little balls they could have marched to Berlin and stopped WW2 before it had barely started when the Germans had all of their forces in Poland. Hell go back further then that -- if they had balls they wouldn't have backstabbed Czechoslovakia with the Munich Agreement.
I'll grant you the fact that they were conquered is going to make them want nuclear weapons. But withdrawing from NATO had nothing to do with depending on the US for defense. That's just another example of unilateralism on the part of the French. We may take the heat for it these days -- but they invented it in the first place.
Incidentally, France is the only large country that has never been at war with the US. It sure isn't going to start now.
We've never actually been at war with the Russians I'd point out. And if France qualifies as a "Large Country" (what's your basis for that? Population? Security council vote?) then I'd also point out that we've never been at war with Australia, Poland, Brazil, or Argentina. And those are just the countries that I would qualify as being "large" that I can think of off the top of my head.
Nice slam directed at the US though. Makes us seem like a warlike state to anyone who can't be bothered to crack open a history book.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Personally, I'd be surprised if the US could "win" a war with the EU.
Assuming such a war didn't go nuclear, such a war would consist almost entirely of air and cruise-missile exchanges. Neither side has the naval capability to launch an invasion in strength without a friendly nearby base country to assemble in. The US carrier strength would be very quickly wiped out if they tried to use that as a strike platform, and the EU wouldn't have any reason to go out and engage them on the ocean.
What would happen, however, is that the rather pathetic US air defense network would be easily broken apart allowing EU cruise missiles to penetrate and smash major infrastructure at will. By contrast, the extremely good air defense in Europe (a legacy of the cold war) would put up a good job at stopping air raids, and even deter the stealth aircraft.
Remember: Iraq, in the second Gulf War, had better air defences than the US. The US has never needed air defences, and only has them around point locations.
"Software is too expensive to build cheaply"
There are certainly quite a few wars that the US has lost as well. Several incursions against Mexico (rather slaughter-happy ones) turned out badly, an attack on the USSR which managed to piss them off quite thoroughly, several attacks on Canada (which was at the time a British property), North Korea, and so on and so forth. This is (of course) not counting the minor covert operations, though many of them did not fare well either.
Of course, military history is not my area of specialty, but I thought I might as well point out that there are certainly two sides to this argument.
On that note, I'm frankly amazed by the anti-French military jokes. The French have won some amazing victories, and been enormously powerful militarily. Remember Napolean (who was technically Corsican, but no matter)?
Lea