And also the socialist minded society that lives there. An excerpt from a new story recently:

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PARIS - The head of US tyremaker Titan has mocked French workers for putting in only "three hours" a day and said his company would be "stupid" to take over a troubled French factory.

The letter from Titan CEO Maurice Taylor to French Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg was in response to a request for Titan to consider investing in a loss-making Goodyear plant in Amiens, northern France.

"I have visited that factory a couple of times. The French workforce gets paid high wages but only works three hours," Taylor said in the letter, dated February 8 and obtained by French business daily Les Echos.

"They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!"

Goodyear said last month it was set to close the plant, which employs 1,173 workers, following five years of failed talks with unions.

Valve hires incredibly self-motivated and talented people. Most people are *NOT* incredibly self-motivated so taking Valve as a role model for the rest of workplace environments is utter foolishness. As the late and famous physicist Einstein once eluded to, the only thing larger than the universe is human stupidity, that's what you're drawing from if you try to think "big picture". So um, no.

Or said plugins don't even exist (I mean, same code, same author) and the problem never has a chance to manifest itself in Chrome. In my experience plugin management, or lack thereof, by ignorant users is one big problem compounded by a-hole companies installing plugins that have major performance ramifications (not of the positive kind) without even asking -- "Skype anyone?". Then again, some people don't know any better so it goes back to the ignorant part.

Yes, Firefox did fall behind the curve but that was with the 3.6.x branch. I don't find arguments of "Chrome is faster" to hold up to scrutiny, just do a search on the topic and be objective about what's being divulged.

And if you ever find yourself tethering, Firefox for many years has been the only major browser that supported HTTP pipelining, something that's been part of the HTTP/1.1 specification since 1999... yet Chrome just got or is just getting around to it (I knew it was recently added in the Chromium channel). While I applaud Google with the SPDY extensions, the HTTP servers you speak to with Chrome have to explicitly support the SPDY extensions, i.e. there's still a LOT of web servers out there that do not do SPDY. HTTP/Pipelining on the other hand has been in place for forever and it is not a question of web server operators have to update their existing web servers for end users to benefit. If you are on a higher latency connection, HTTP/Pipelining can make a *BIG* difference.

Finally, if you use Akamai (Content Distribution Network) to delivery of web content to your customers, Akamai funnels traffic to your web servers via HTTP/Pipelining for performance gains which cannot be classified as "minor". Our TCP connection count dropped to 1/10th of what it used to be. I've been using HTTP/Pipelining in Firefox since 2004.

I concur.

Annoying that is. Your average person will likely welcome it.

aka Mediocrity-R-Us

If you don't like what Sony is charging... don't buy it. While it does seem like Sony is being a "prick", you aren't entitled to Whitney Houston music at some price. Worst case, just wait, it will go back down. However, it does seem a bit tasteless for Sony. But no one is forcing anyone to buy anything.

Even the only version of *NIX successful with consumers en masse, i.e., Mac OS X, is mediocre at gaming. (typing this up on my Mac).

And the other reason - Windows Media Center. Using the XBox360 as a media extender to watch things I've recorded with Windows 7 is very nice. Sorry, not interested in screwing around with MythTV et al.

I saw Skype character (executive) singing the praises of MS acquiring them and extolling the synergies because both Skype and MS innovated, blah, blah, blah. It was at that point I stopped the video, he had nothing meaningful to say. It was just rhetoric. MS hasn't innovated in 20 years. Windows 7 is good (whatever Mac OS X/LINUX people, it's great for gaming) but MS has drawn its revenues from product lines that are now decades old. That is not innovation.

Arguably one could give MS a point for the XBox360. However a gaming console isn't innovating. On a tangent they can be awarded points for XBox Live which is more robust for multi-player gaming and has engendered strong communities. Sony's PSN isn't as strong, something you'll consistently hear from many people, including those who cover the video game industry, e.g., Machinima.com.

There tends to be a lot of fanboy hatred against MS but the reasons people cite are generally crap. I live in Seattle and many tech people I've talked agree that MS' biggest problem is the person at the top - Steve Ballmer. He has no vision whatsoever and at best is a chief operating officer.

Ballmer can't even hire someone to find new locations for retail fronts... so what does he do, he opens stores by Apple's . Microsoft erected a big(ger) store just a few doors down from Apple's in one of the malls in the Seattle area (Bellevue Square). MS couldn't even pick some other part of the mall, it had to be close to Apple's. Wow, just wow.

We all know who the omega is here.

-M

>"True Communism" absolutely does NOT require an elite ruling class. Hell, it expressly forbids an elite ruling class
"true communism" implicitly demands a ruling class to arbitrate the "equality" of everyone

I think you do have one thing right:

>Tell me, seriously, which system would you prefer? One where everone wins, or one where 1% of the population wins?

the 1% solution every time. I want a society where everyone strives to be best they can be, not where everyone only works as well as the lowest common denominator so everyone can be equal. I look forward to the day when we can seek to better ourselves rather than work for a living. The only way I see that happening is to keep floating that 1% to the top

However you can (IMHO) make a very good argument that the "excessive rewards for doing damage to the economy" are directly a result of goverment enacting socialist regulations on the markets. As an example the subprie mortage crisis is a direct result of the goverment not allowing banks to lend in their own self interest (as well as removing the distinction between commercial and investment banks) . To "fix" that problem the market created mortgage backed securities, which meant that the quality of loans wasn't nearly as important as the quantity. Of course it's not that cut and dried, and there were more contributors but you see where this is heading.

One can certainly take the position that capitlism sucks, however the alternatives all suck a whole lot more.

So what you're saying is "we need to stop using screws, because I've got a really good wrench, and once you learn to work my way you'll love it too"