Word: absurdities
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...judge the damage done by these restrictive practices: on the one hand, Apple is selling a lot of music, and Microsoft a lot of word processing software. But the thanks to the early open standardization of the web, the thought of its belonging to any one company now seems absurd to us—Facebook uses it, Google uses it, universities use it, and each in its own way. Only when we demand that Microsoft and Apple and others play nice with one another—only when they’ve made their specifications into open standards?...
...Chen, meanwhile, creates "independence" controversies even where none would seem to exist: witness his high profile dismantling last month of the National Unification Council, which was created to explore Taiwan's eventual reunification with the mainland. Chen called the body and its governing guidelines, established in 1990, "absurd products of an absurd era." But the truth is that it was a dormant outfit that a fair number of Taiwanese hadn't even heard of until Chen closed it as a way of thumbing his nose at Beijing. Then, as if for emphasis, Taiwan's Defense Ministry last week proposed removing...
...Could such a moment be upon us again? Are the walls around national economies being built once more? From the numbers, the argument seems absurd. World trade is growing healthily, by over 7% a year. The U.N. Commission on Trade and Development estimates that the value of global flows of foreign direct investment grew by a remarkable 29% in 2005. Yet a quick look around the planet might lead to the impression that globalization is in crisis. Ahead of Chinese President Hu Jintao's visit to Washington next month, U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez told China that it must shape...
...economic patriotism, putting in place a takeover law that gives the government a veto on deals in 11 sectors of the economy deemed to be strategic. They include biotechnology, arms manufacturing and casinos. But de Villepin's boss, President Jacques Chirac, blustered last week that it was "absolutely absurd" to think of France as protectionist, and he has a point. For much of the 1990s, France was the largest recipient of foreign investment in the European Union; by the end of 2003, one in seven French employees worked for a foreign company, compared with just...
...Unless you count counterfeit software as Microsoft products, that claim is absurd?nine out of 10 personal computers sold in China come with pirated versions of Windows, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. But Beijing may have been sending a deeper message to Washington. The signal (as one Western diplomat put it): "We've got our own antiglobalization, antitrade zealots to deal with, so how about you keep yours under control and we'll do the same, because otherwise we're both in trouble...