Remember, it was an interview. Figaro might have dissenting opinions, but I don't see them making up interviews of ministers in place. In the case they did, she could sue them... hmm... I did'nt recall hearing her complaining about Figaro...
The prime minister and minister of finances called her proposal 'stupid'. She got bitchslapped big time. There's some hope.
My guess is that she's on a hotseat now. Some lobbying should get her out... soon. Now we have to get that tax off CDRs, and that's what happening at Vache à Lait ('Milk the Cow')
Yeah, and it's a fucking good idea. I fucking lost 4h today to get a fucking cross fucking over cable to link a fucking cisco router into my fucking OpenBSD firewall. That fucking sucked.
Hear, hear. Yesterday morning in an interview, the fucked up bitch who happened to be the minister in charge of all this crap managed to shoot herself in the foot.
She announced taxes on hard drives, computers, memories, next generation telephones, bicycles... well not bicycles but just ANYTHING digital.
Guess what? Majors elections soon... and elections don't go well with the word 'tax', as you may have noticed ('read my lips'...).
Lo and behold, she just got publically disavowed by both the prime minister and minister of finance, who have called her suggestion 'stupid', I quote litterally.
La résistance is setting itself up, people from major medias are calling for enquiry, the cause is getting major exposure. Just by this little mistake the minister might be going to eject soon, and her taxes alike.
Pretty good fuel? Well you're sadly mistaken. First, the breeder reactors can barely take a tiny fraction of the produced waste. Then they cost A LOT. And the reason why they cost so much is because they're very dangerous and tricky to build. Overall, you're much better off burying the whole stuff. As I said, the project here has been scrapped after something like 30 billions Francs have been spent in it -- that's about $4 billions.
How much would that cost? Then what's the failure rate on rockets? Do you really want to take the chance of a rocket full of nuclear waste to explode in the atmosphere?... Do you?
Recycle? Into what? France has tried to use it in what's called 'surgenerators'. *Extremely* costly, dangerous, it's being dismantled after having cost billions of $$$.
There's no easy way to get rid of nuclear waste; the doable thing is to put them in a place far far away. Expensive, and you have to keep in mind that those wastes are still going to be dangeous in thousands of years. Who knows what's going to happen in the mean time? (Think, earthquake).
The problem with nuke plants is not the immediate danger; the problem is with the wastes.
Nobody knows what to do with it.
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Re:Online intellectual property piracy is a fallac
on
Free Books Online
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· Score: 2
But they usually don't have the tons of cash it takes to buy the CDs anyway,
This comment illustrate what's the biggest fallacy on 'piracy'. Fact: most people have a limited budget to buy CD / software. Therefore, counting every 'pirated' product as a lost income for 'IP producers' is wrong; since if there was'nt any 'pirating' means available, most people would not have bought more. Therefore the theoretical loss is zero, nil, nada, zilch.
Which CEO went out to pour poison in the water supply? (None.)
Which CEO ordered people to "go out and poison the town's water
supply"? (None.)
You must be fucking kidding. Typical example of libertarian ostrichism.
Tell me, are you reall sure NO CEO (or manager or whatever) of, say, a chemical
company (Union Carbide) has never poisoned people accidentally (Bhopal), where
accidentally means 'safety measures are expensive, 3rd world workers are
dispensable'?
Sure, the final verdict on resisting Nazism isn't in yet, but I bet 50 more years of the same approaches will leave neo-Nazis in
the U.S. a forgotten bunch of reactionaries (like all those nuts who think The South Will Rise Again) and neo-Nazis in France
an underground known-subversive group that's essentially a new kind of gang for all the young hoodlums to join. I know
where I'd rather live...
That's an interesting pronostic. Let's look at the facts. The most prominent figure of the far right in France is Jean-Marie Le Pen. He is a Pétain nostalgist, was friend with former Waffen SS, and actually had some known collaborationists / SS in his party.
And his party's electoral results are booming... NOT. His party has dislocated, and is now below 3% of the votes in the last elections.
Also let's look at this right wing nut's political agenda:
He's for death penalty -- just like Bush.
He's against abortion -- just like Bush
He's for massive tax reduction -- juste like Bush
He's for non intervention in foreign affairs -- just like Bush
He's against any kind of supra national organisation (EU, UN) -- sounds a lot like the GOP's position who doesn't want to pay the UN bill.
Hell, overall, compared to Bush he's a fucking liberal. And you fucking dare tell me that neonazis are booming in France? Fact is, by European standards, Bush is a right wing extremist.
Send them from Germany to avoid France's censorship laws.
Ah shut up. You can only call this 'censorship' by a very, very big stretch. Well I'll tell you what: it's much MUCH worse in Germany.
Whether Germany would try to do as France has done, is another question.
It's not 'France' that has done this. It's a bunch of losers who have sued, and managed to convince a judge that a certain law applied. This law, btw, it not about censorship. It forbids publicizing the sale of nazi stuff. You're still allowed to sell it, you just can't publicize it. Well they convinced the judge that putting that on a website is publicity.
See above. It's not a matter of whether those countries have those laws, it's whether they'd enforce French laws, or whether they'd try to push
their own laws onto a site hosted outside their country, as France has.
Err. They have the same kind of law, the hypothetical website who would move its operations there would face the same kind of problem. Plus under the European Union, they might not be very much covered anyway.
Again, I'll agree that there are limitations and that volume of business is an issue, but why would "the kind of business Yahoo is in" be
particularly unsuited? I would expect that selling something intangible like advertising would be less hindered by not having an office in the
country in question.
Hmm. It's quite simple. If you have someone willing to buy advertising, you can really do that from anywhere. That's beyond obvious.
The problem is not about sending invoices... The problem is getting the people to agree to buy such advertising in the first place. For that you need a sales force. And no, you can't do that with just the web and a phone. Or poorly so.
What are they going to do when every country starts following France's example and insisting that the things they don't like have
to be removed from Yahoo?
I agree with that. Again, I think the court decision was stupid, and that the lawsuit was stupid. And useless. And dangerous. It is dangerous. Granted. No discussion, it's obvious.
Now Yahoo would lose a lot by not complying in this case, and gain very, very little. Which is the point of this thread, here.
Since when is it only possible to transact with someone if they have an office in your country? I've done business with companies in
Japan, Australia, Canada, and the UK, all of those companies being regular stores with online presences, and way too small to have
offices in the US. Yet I was able to deal with them just fine.
Well you still miss the point. For 2 reasons that I will have to spell out since you don't seem to get it:
1. Yahoo, INC. has set up a subsidiary in France. They have likely spent a few dozen million dollars to do this. If they've done it they certainly have a good reason. Which is...
2. Doing a transaction with someone is not the same as doing business. Yes, I have bought stuff from Amazon.com, it's not the same as generating millions of income from the USA.
Yahoo is a service company. They sell, mostly, advertising. To sell advertising you need... sales person. You need people to call, handle calls, visit customers, do accounting, that kind of things. Even if you move as much as you can outside the country... you still NEED an office there, because you can't really do THAT KIND of business from abroad.
Funny, my company was able to send sales people to sell software to folks in France (and various companies in Europe) long before we
were big enough to afford offices there.
Send them from Belgium, or Luxembourg, or Germany, or wherever.
Send them from Germany to avoid anti hate speech laws... now that's a sound advice. Duh. And I believe Belgium and Luxembourg to have the same kind of laws.
Look, you don't make sense. Yes, you *can* sell stuff from abroad. You can. Is it the best? Certainly, undoubtedly NOT. Specifically in the kind of business Yahoo is in.
I did. But you miss the point. It's not just about a fucking URL, dude. There's more than DOTCOM out there.
It doesn't sound like it.
I said:
"Re-host their French-language site as fr.yahoo.com or yahoo.fr.com or something like that with the servers in the US, leaving no legal entity
within French jurisdiction."
And they're going to do business with French advertisers, how exactly? They're going to send their sales persons... how exactly? Yahoo earns money on advertising mostly in case you didn't know.
All those 60 million consumers can still get to Yahoo's site just fine. All that changes is the URL. Yahoo still owns its servers and whatever
other equipment it can transport out of France. What percent of their couple dozen million dollar investment would they have to forfeit?
Their offices, their staff, their equipment, etc... There's more to doing business on the web than just a website. I case you did'nt know...
What I don't understand it, why didn't Yahoo just eliminate their French branch and pull up stakes?
What a bunch of silly fucks out there.
There's 60 million consumers in France... Now how many nazi memorabilia aficionados are they gonna piss off with this decision? A couple hundreds. So you want them to ditch a couple dozen million dollars (if not more) investment just to please a few right wing nuts?
Anyway. I don't agree with the stupid lawsuit, I don't agree with the court decision, I thikn the guys who sued them are idiots, however I believe that Yahoo is right to remove Nazi stuff from their site... because it stinks.
It would also up Yahoo!'s visibility as a promoter of Internet freedoms. The controversy would be great for them. Oh well.
It's one thing to defend freedom of speech; but defending such freedom through that of nazi sympathizers (because that's how people see this auction thing) is not going to be the most popular way.
I strongly disagree with the lawsuit and court decision, that being said this is NOT a great cause.
Just like, even though I strongly oppose the death penalty, I would'nt use the case of a confessed serial killer or child molester to attack it -- there's plenty of causes that deserve it better (Mumia Abuh Jahmal)
It's not the French government, it's a jewish student association suing. They're sue-happy. They sue anyone, anytime, for any reason. They just happen to have found a judge to listen to them.
Slashdot Mirror
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I should add, at the parliament she even denied ever proposing such a tax, calling her opponents 'liars'.
That's strange, I bought a newspaper (Figaro) yesterday which had an interview of her, and she proposed it very clearly.
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The prime minister and minister of finances called her proposal 'stupid'. She got bitchslapped big time. There's some hope.
My guess is that she's on a hotseat now. Some lobbying should get her out ... soon. Now we have to get that tax off CDRs, and that's what happening at Vache à Lait ('Milk the Cow')
--
--
Hear, hear. Yesterday morning in an interview, the fucked up bitch who happened to be the minister in charge of all this crap managed to shoot herself in the foot.
She announced taxes on hard drives, computers, memories, next generation telephones, bicycles ... well not bicycles but just ANYTHING digital.
Guess what? Majors elections soon ... and elections don't go well with the word 'tax', as you may have noticed ('read my lips' ...).
Lo and behold, she just got publically disavowed by both the prime minister and minister of finance, who have called her suggestion 'stupid', I quote litterally.
La résistance is setting itself up, people from major medias are calling for enquiry, the cause is getting major exposure. Just by this little mistake the minister might be going to eject soon, and her taxes alike.
Stay tuned ...
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Strange is it not, that a British citizen has to cite this to you?
There is no such thing as a British citizen; you may be referring to her Majesty's subjects?
Strange, is it not, that a French citizen has to correct you on this?
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Actually, not. Most things electrical are standardised in EU, AFAIK.
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Recycle? Into what? France has tried to use it in what's called 'surgenerators'. *Extremely* costly, dangerous, it's being dismantled after having cost billions of $$$.
There's no easy way to get rid of nuclear waste; the doable thing is to put them in a place far far away. Expensive, and you have to keep in mind that those wastes are still going to be dangeous in thousands of years. Who knows what's going to happen in the mean time? (Think, earthquake).
--
The problem with nuke plants is not the immediate danger; the problem is with the wastes.
Nobody knows what to do with it.
--
But they usually don't have the tons of cash it takes to buy the CDs anyway,
This comment illustrate what's the biggest fallacy on 'piracy'. Fact: most people have a limited budget to buy CD / software. Therefore, counting every 'pirated' product as a lost income for 'IP producers' is wrong; since if there was'nt any 'pirating' means available, most people would not have bought more. Therefore the theoretical loss is zero, nil, nada, zilch.
--
--
Is it "bad stuff happens sometimes"? Is it "if you second-guess people enough, nothing bad will ever happen
What I mean here is clear enough: it costs money, lots of it, not to pollute or to guarantee good security in (for example) the chemical industry.
Therefore it makes money to not give a shit about it.
It also makes money to kill people to rob them.
It's not the same thing, it just happens to be very similar ... That's my point.
--
Which CEO went out to pour poison in the water supply? (None.)
Which CEO ordered people to "go out and poison the town's water supply"? (None.)
You must be fucking kidding. Typical example of libertarian ostrichism. Tell me, are you reall sure NO CEO (or manager or whatever) of, say, a chemical company (Union Carbide) has never poisoned people accidentally (Bhopal), where accidentally means 'safety measures are expensive, 3rd world workers are dispensable'?
--
Sure, the final verdict on resisting Nazism isn't in yet, but I bet 50 more years of the same approaches will leave neo-Nazis in the U.S. a forgotten bunch of reactionaries (like all those nuts who think The South Will Rise Again) and neo-Nazis in France an underground known-subversive group that's essentially a new kind of gang for all the young hoodlums to join. I know where I'd rather live...
That's an interesting pronostic. Let's look at the facts. The most prominent figure of the far right in France is Jean-Marie Le Pen. He is a Pétain nostalgist, was friend with former Waffen SS, and actually had some known collaborationists / SS in his party.
And his party's electoral results are booming ... NOT. His party has dislocated, and is now below 3% of the votes in the last elections.
Also let's look at this right wing nut's political agenda:
He's for death penalty -- just like Bush.
He's against abortion -- just like Bush
He's for massive tax reduction -- juste like Bush
He's for non intervention in foreign affairs -- just like Bush
He's against any kind of supra national organisation (EU, UN) -- sounds a lot like the GOP's position who doesn't want to pay the UN bill.
Hell, overall, compared to Bush he's a fucking liberal. And you fucking dare tell me that neonazis are booming in France? Fact is, by European standards, Bush is a right wing extremist.
--
--
Send them from Germany to avoid France's censorship laws.
Ah shut up. You can only call this 'censorship' by a very, very big stretch. Well I'll tell you what: it's much MUCH worse in Germany.
Whether Germany would try to do as France has done, is another question.
It's not 'France' that has done this. It's a bunch of losers who have sued, and managed to convince a judge that a certain law applied. This law, btw, it not about censorship. It forbids publicizing the sale of nazi stuff. You're still allowed to sell it, you just can't publicize it. Well they convinced the judge that putting that on a website is publicity.
See above. It's not a matter of whether those countries have those laws, it's whether they'd enforce French laws, or whether they'd try to push their own laws onto a site hosted outside their country, as France has.
Err. They have the same kind of law, the hypothetical website who would move its operations there would face the same kind of problem. Plus under the European Union, they might not be very much covered anyway.
Again, I'll agree that there are limitations and that volume of business is an issue, but why would "the kind of business Yahoo is in" be particularly unsuited? I would expect that selling something intangible like advertising would be less hindered by not having an office in the country in question.
Hmm. It's quite simple. If you have someone willing to buy advertising, you can really do that from anywhere. That's beyond obvious.
The problem is not about sending invoices ... The problem is getting the people to agree to buy such advertising in the first place. For that you need a sales force. And no, you can't do that with just the web and a phone. Or poorly so.
What are they going to do when every country starts following France's example and insisting that the things they don't like have to be removed from Yahoo?
I agree with that. Again, I think the court decision was stupid, and that the lawsuit was stupid. And useless. And dangerous. It is dangerous. Granted. No discussion, it's obvious.
Now Yahoo would lose a lot by not complying in this case, and gain very, very little. Which is the point of this thread, here.
--
Since when is it only possible to transact with someone if they have an office in your country? I've done business with companies in Japan, Australia, Canada, and the UK, all of those companies being regular stores with online presences, and way too small to have offices in the US. Yet I was able to deal with them just fine.
Well you still miss the point. For 2 reasons that I will have to spell out since you don't seem to get it:
1. Yahoo, INC. has set up a subsidiary in France. They have likely spent a few dozen million dollars to do this. If they've done it they certainly have a good reason. Which is ...
2. Doing a transaction with someone is not the same as doing business. Yes, I have bought stuff from Amazon.com, it's not the same as generating millions of income from the USA.
Yahoo is a service company. They sell, mostly, advertising. To sell advertising you need ... sales person. You need people to call, handle calls, visit customers, do accounting, that kind of things. Even if you move as much as you can outside the country ... you still NEED an office there, because you can't really do THAT KIND of business from abroad.
Funny, my company was able to send sales people to sell software to folks in France (and various companies in Europe) long before we were big enough to afford offices there.
Send them from Belgium, or Luxembourg, or Germany, or wherever.
Send them from Germany to avoid anti hate speech laws ... now that's a sound advice. Duh. And I believe Belgium and Luxembourg to have the same kind of laws.
Look, you don't make sense. Yes, you *can* sell stuff from abroad. You can. Is it the best? Certainly, undoubtedly NOT. Specifically in the kind of business Yahoo is in.
--
Did you read my entire post?
I did. But you miss the point. It's not just about a fucking URL, dude. There's more than DOTCOM out there.
It doesn't sound like it.
I said:
"Re-host their French-language site as fr.yahoo.com or yahoo.fr.com or something like that with the servers in the US, leaving no legal entity within French jurisdiction."
And they're going to do business with French advertisers, how exactly? They're going to send their sales persons ... how exactly? Yahoo earns money on advertising mostly in case you didn't know.
All those 60 million consumers can still get to Yahoo's site just fine. All that changes is the URL. Yahoo still owns its servers and whatever other equipment it can transport out of France. What percent of their couple dozen million dollar investment would they have to forfeit?
Their offices, their staff, their equipment, etc ... There's more to doing business on the web than just a website. I case you did'nt know ...
--
What I don't understand it, why didn't Yahoo just eliminate their French branch and pull up stakes?
What a bunch of silly fucks out there.
There's 60 million consumers in France ... Now how many nazi memorabilia aficionados are they gonna piss off with this decision? A couple hundreds. So you want them to ditch a couple dozen million dollars (if not more) investment just to please a few right wing nuts?
Anyway. I don't agree with the stupid lawsuit, I don't agree with the court decision, I thikn the guys who sued them are idiots, however I believe that Yahoo is right to remove Nazi stuff from their site ... because it stinks.
--
It would also up Yahoo!'s visibility as a promoter of Internet freedoms. The controversy would be great for them. Oh well.
It's one thing to defend freedom of speech; but defending such freedom through that of nazi sympathizers (because that's how people see this auction thing) is not going to be the most popular way.
I strongly disagree with the lawsuit and court decision, that being said this is NOT a great cause.
Just like, even though I strongly oppose the death penalty, I would'nt use the case of a confessed serial killer or child molester to attack it -- there's plenty of causes that deserve it better (Mumia Abuh Jahmal)
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