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Thread ID: 33190 2003-05-10 01:29:00 A $2.2 trillion fine E.ric (351) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
142797 2003-05-10 17:15:00 > The only misleading thing is "$2.2 trillion" without looking it up could be worth our $4.4 Billion.

How do you work that one out? They're using the US Trillion, not the British Trillion...

Besides, it'd probably not be that much - firstly it'd probably only be related to US based accounts, which would probably halve the stakes... then only active ones, which would take it down by quite a lot... and besides, MS would never pay it - they'd threaten to take their business offshore and pay TAXES to another government. The US government isn't that stupid.

Mike.
Mike (15)
142798 2003-05-10 19:19:00 You mustn't let this worry you E.ric,get some sleep lad. Thomas (1820)
142799 2003-05-10 21:20:00 > Besides, it'd probably not be that much - firstly
> it'd probably only be related to US based accounts,
> which would probably halve the stakes... then only
> active ones, which would take it down by quite a
> lot... and besides, MS would never pay it - they'd
> threaten to take their business offshore and pay
> TAXES to another government. The US government isn't
> that stupid.

Well call me crazy, but I'm sure they don't pay any tax at all. There was an interesting article on the internet in about 1999 about it. Their accounting is done (legally) so that they end up paying no tax, but somehow it looks like they made a huge profit.
segfault (655)
142800 2003-05-10 21:29:00 Maybe the US Government will finance another war once the fine has been paid? :O


cheers Steve
Steve Askew (119)
142801 2003-05-10 22:23:00 > Maybe the US Government will finance another war once
> the fine has been paid? :O

I know it doesn't quite work this way, but a couple of years ago the US international debt was $3t - this would almost wipe it out :)

Mike.
Mike (15)
142802 2003-05-10 22:35:00 > How do you work that one out?

The people US land are strange, they can not even work out the metric system the easiest system ever worked out and went back to imperial

I took the US 2 . 2 trillion as 2200000000

If US took to metric like duck to water I might of put a bit more logic in my calculation and worked out the correct answer .
E.ric (351)
142803 2003-05-10 23:13:00 Any word like billion etc signifying large numbers over a million are virtually meaningless anyway, especially when we already have prefixes like Mega, Giga, etc. But much better and would be to be quite precise use of powers 10^8 etc.
After all they introduced so called New Maths many years ago now, like 40 years plus, and we still get this imprecise laymans talk in this scientific age.
Terry Porritt (14)
142804 2003-05-10 23:17:00 ROFL, look who is precise :) move the 'and' along to 'and use....' :) Terry Porritt (14)
142805 2003-05-11 08:01:00 I fully agree with you Terry they should use to the power of instead of billion and trillion and the like. -=JM=- (16)
142806 2003-05-11 12:15:00 So how exactly are you proposing to read the number 1,234,567,890 without using the words trillion, million or billion?

Does this mean thousand and hundred are as useless?

Iain
Iain Walmsley (3372)
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