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User: Betcour

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  1. Re:Only because govt. has something to sell. on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    Well it's fascist too. It's of course definitely worse than USA, but at least they don't pretend to teach the rest of the world what democracy and freedom is (unlike the USA).

    And BTW, people vote in China too. Still not a democracy.

  2. Re:People or companies... on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    I'm not that familliar with the US consitution (not being American), but if what you say is true, then it's time to ditch it in the trash and write a new one immediatly. Slavery should be illegal - plain and simple (and while you are at it, maybe the 2nd amendment could also be rewritten with something at least more clear).

  3. Re:People or companies... on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    I'll agree with you - but strictly speaking this is still not forced labor. Forced labor also includes not being paid for your work (or getting not paid enough compared to what the same "free" worker would earn for the same job in the same place).

  4. Re:IPS on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    It changes a lot. Why should my country be punished because people in France and most of other countries in Europe enjoy paying large tax ?

    First, unless you live in Gernesey, Bahamas, Monaco or another of those fiscal haven, I doubt your country is going to be "punished". Those tiny countries makes business solely because they don't tax any money and don't ask where it comes from and tell anyone about it. It's the place money laundering is being done in - and there's no reason not to punish those states for helping organised criminality in such a big way.

    Second, it's not about punishement. It's about being fair. The idea here is "If you want to do business with Europe, you have to use the same tax structure and banking laws as we do. If you don't like it, fine, but then do business with someone else.". It's not a punition, it's establishing basic rules with countries Europe does business with. Commerce between two people/companies/countries is always based on the acceptance of basic rules.

    Economical sanctions directed at nations with low tax.

    No - again it's nations with NO tax and heavy banking secret.

    Frankly, why should elected officials in Europe be even concerned about tax rates beyond their own borders?

    Because it disturbs the economy within their borders ? The US tries to get hormone-beef allowed in Europe despite strong suspicions that it's a big threat for health - and it shoudln't be any of US business either. If you dislike paying more taxes because of another country, try thinking how pleased you'd be to be poisened by another country because this country thinks it's "almost safe enough to eat".

  5. Re:Only because govt. has something to sell. on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    ...except HK has not been under embargo for decades by a nearby fascist country. This little fact kinda skew the comparison.

  6. Re:Hmmm on x86 vs PPC Linux benchmarks · · Score: 1

    . Does x86 hardware run MacOSX?

    Nope - but then it runs Windows (all flavors), BSD (all flavors), Solaris, BeOS, OS/2, Athos and bunch of others... and even MacOS X as it seems Apple has an in-house x86 version running :)

    Or do fast vector processing?

    Yep - that's what MMX, SSE 1 & 2 and 3DNow! really are. Altivec is just the Motorola equivalent of those (it's nice, but then so is SSE 2).

  7. Re:Shareholder Value NOT The Law on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 2

    If there was a shareholder vote, and they voted to give 20% of the profits to charity, the board would comply.

    That's a nice idea - but you forget companies are owned in a big majority by other companies... who also seek the highest profit because they are owned by other companies (etc.). I've yet to see Nike shareholders stand up and say "stop exploiting those people, let's pay them a fair amount of money, and you can cut my profits by 10% to do that".

  8. Re:Small pointer . . . on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    Not much different from the other peoples who go around saying "free market will save us all". They can't get by without thinking the magical market will solve all problems, despite the fact that said market is made of corporations who don't give a shit about solving any problem at all (except for one : how to make MORE money).

  9. Re:Small pointer . . . on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    Not in the US. In the US everything & everyone is either black XOR white. Heck, even the census bureau had to wait till the 21st century to allow peoples to check more than one box on the race question. Look at justice, it's the same - you are either a nice law abidding citizen, or an evil criminal. There's no in-between.

  10. Re:IPS on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    You didn't understood the text did you ? They say corporation earn more money (sales) than countries (GDP). Nowhere does it says corporations have more money than the governement. You are just rewriting the text so you can say "look the bad leftish commies !!! they want more governement"

  11. Re:IPS on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    Great, we are getting better productivity than ever.

    Not really - if you know how to read, you've probably read the setences below that explain that the reason for such low employment is because most of the stuff - especially the "dirty" stuff, is subcontracted.

    This is why France and EU want to punish countries with significantly lower tax rates. For obvious reasons they cannot get at US so for now they are after smaller countries.

    Yes. So ? What does this change ? Don't see any opposition between this and the original document. The day fiscal havens will be squashed will be a great day for all of us (and a bad day for money launderers, drug cartels & the CIA).

    ...and replace it with what ?

    How about democracy ? We don't need GM to tell us what to do.

  12. Re:People or companies... on The Rise of Corporate Global Power · · Score: 1

    There's something called "forced labor". Forced labor is wrong - nobody should be able to force you to work and you should be free to decide to work or not (and if so, face the consequences).

    Forced labor is illegal in every decent western country - as well as death penalty btw. Of course the US, being 100 year backward socially, still has a long way to go to realize this (well we have to be patient, they waited till the 60s to stop appartheid, so death-penalty shouldn't be stopped before the years 2100s at best).

  13. Re:Woohoo on XFree 4.1.0 Out · · Score: 2

    "kick ass" as opposed to what ? What other alternatives do exists ? that's about the only complete & standard graphic API on Unix. There's 0 competition, except maybe for Windows which push the XFree group to add some features sometimes (like DRI).

  14. Re:Consistency makes for bad advertising on An Experiment in Micro-Advertising · · Score: 2

    Imagine a world where television programmers religiously ran their advertising between shows, leaving the content of the shows uninterrupted. Would you ever see ads in such a world?

    Yes !! In France for example, public television isn't allowed to cut shows with commercials, and private television is only allowed one cut/show. Both still make ton of money with commercials...

  15. Re:Bummer on An Experiment in Micro-Advertising · · Score: 1

    goto.com went under ? Humm... their site seems to be still up and running - and giving paid links back when doing searches. Or has it been bought out by someone ?

  16. 8086 ? on Obsolete Hardware Piling Up · · Score: 1

    My old 8086 used to be a fantastic Ultima machine - it will let you play from Ultima I to V perfectly. And trust me, Ultima V is a lot more fun than many FPS (actually I think it's way more interesting than Quake 3... :)

  17. Re:Does it matter? on Mozilla 1.0 Delayed Again · · Score: 1

    If we just settled with what there was, we would all be using horribly out-dated software that all came from the same company

    Don't want to sound like a MS zealot (if such thing ever existed), but Windows 2000 or Windows XP has nothing outdated in it. The days of the crashy-sucky Windows 95/98/ME are (almost) gone. Linux is not the only OS that get's better... the competition is also moving forward.

  18. Re:Actually, diesel is on the wane.... on Diesel Cars - High-Tech Low Tech · · Score: 1

    Don't forget one thing : over a third of americans are overweighted (that's what US statistics say anyway), and some are VERY overweighted, hence when you sell car as small as an MCC Smart or a Austin (now BMW) Mini, you already have to forget about a third of the market made of people who won't even be able to go thru the car's door.

  19. Re:Toyota Prius on Diesel Cars - High-Tech Low Tech · · Score: 1

    Actually the Prius isn't very good - a diesel Peugot 206 with common rail uses about as much gas, and still has 90 hp under the hood (unlike the Prius which is a bit weak -to say the least- on power). I'm all in favor of more efficient cars but I think Toyota used the fact the US cars are highly gas-ineficient to market its Prius as a marvel of efficiency.

  20. Re:Actually, diesel is on the wane.... on Diesel Cars - High-Tech Low Tech · · Score: 1

    Catalytic converters are indeed basically useless (and even counter-productive) for very short distances

    Actually those like the Peugot particule's filter has a system arround this problem - at low temperatures the filter stocks particules, and once it's warm enough it burns them. It's standard on the high-end model (607) and being installed on all newer lower priced models now.

  21. Re:Around here.. on Diesel Cars - High-Tech Low Tech · · Score: 1

    That's because those V8 are old-style diesel engines. Modern diesels, such as those made by VW, BMW or Peugot are very clean and efficients (thru the use of common-rail, particule filters, etc...).

  22. Re:the same stuff I always say ... on The EU Report on the Echelon System · · Score: 1

    You got the beginning right... but the real end is :

    "Oh, wait, the NSA knows how big was the bribe and USian company managed to offer more and win the market"

    But of course that wasn't public. Do you really think only other countries bribe to win public contracts ? Do you truly believes Being never gave dollars-filled black-wallets here and there ?

  23. Re:Economic & political consequences on The EU Report on the Echelon System · · Score: 1
    If we were after world domination we would have invaded iraq and installed a puppet government

    Well there's a puppet governement already. Saddam is the US puppet :
    1. He is usefull when the US needs a straw-man (ie "we need the star-wars system, or else bad guy like Saddam could nuke the world"). Saddam is also necessay to scare neighbour countries, like Saudi Arabia, and have them agree that the US build military base on their territory and so give US control of all the middle-east and it's abundant petrol production.
    2. Iraq oil production is under control, as they need it for food with the ambargo the US impose. Not only Saddam has to sell his oil, but the cash goes into controlled bank accounts.

    Frankly a 'real' puppet governement would have achieved the second point right, but the first point wouldn't be possible, hence loosing the diplomatic possibilities that the existence of Saddam offers .

    And if you don't trust me, ask yourself this question : why, if Iraq lost the war and NATO invaded it, did we let Saddam in place and start an ambargo while we could have just put him in prison ? When Nazi germany lost WWII, we didn't let the Nazis in place and ambargo Germany... why do this with Saddam then ?
  24. and it sucks on Iomega Plans 20GB Portable Drives · · Score: 2

    I mean, for the price of just one of their 20 GB cart, you can buy a full blown 40 GB hard-drive (5400 rpm) and a rack to go with it. It's twice more capacity, way more reliable (we all know removable magnetic storage sucks) and you don't need to buy and carry around a 250 $ reader, as any PC (and even Mac) has IDE. Best of all : an HD needs no drivers at all and the warranty is 3 years (while I'm pretty sure Iomega won't offer more than 1 year considering how crappy their past preducts have been)

    Frankly either the media is too small, or it's really too expensive, but either way it's already dead considering HD prices.

  25. Re:OT: Oracle's advantages over mySQL on Benchmark Madness · · Score: 1

    Yep - but then Oracle is the most expensive RDBMS around and also has the worst licence ("pay per Mhz"). I'd take DB2, Sybase or even (gasp) SQL Server (even if that means running on NT) anyday against Oracle.