Word: frenched
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Dates: during 2000-2000
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...products are manufactured in Stuttgart or Shanghai; and it is as likely to find an executive or a new idea in Buenos Aires as in Brussels. "The economic imperatives behind such consolidation bring about a mixing and altering of business cultures that no one can impose or ignore," says French economist Jean-Marie Chevalier. "It requires larger, global-thinking vision and management. What nationality is a DaimlerChrysler or a Hoechst-Rhone-Poulenc? The markets certainly don't care, and neither, at the end of the day, does the consumer, if product quality and price are roughly the same...
...European wallet now includes one or more cards embedded with a memory chip, which may hold anything from a cash balance to be spent on small purchases to personal information that reduces the possibility of credit-card fraud--or even, as in France, a complete medical history. Three French companies produce more than two-thirds of the world's smart cards, a $12 billion business set to explode as companies discover the limits of the familiar magnetic-strip card, which can hold relatively little information and is not nearly as secure for e-commerce. Jean-Marc Giry, vice president...
...smart card was invented by a former French journalist and technological autodidact, Roland Moreno, in the 1970s. Initial applications centered on ID cards, but by the 1980s--in another example of state-led adoption of new technology--France Telecom introduced prepaid telecartes that rendered coins in phone booths obsolete. Applications quickly blossomed as the association of Carte Bleue debit cards ordered their banks to fight fraud by issuing only chip-embedded cards, and as France Telecom issued the Minitel with smart-card readers to enable online purchase of everything from opera tickets to train reservations--well before anyone had heard...
...issue smart cards to their clients, as well as readers for their PCs at reduced prices. Noting Motorola's decision last year to pull out of an already tight global smart-card market, Giry expresses confidence that new players will not be able to take on the three French companies that have more than 70% of the global-production market: Gemplus, Schlumberger and Bull...
...DIVA Celine Dion sued the National Enquirer for $20 million last week after it falsely reported the singer was pregnant with twins. She's won before against French and Canadian papers, but taking on U.S. tabloids can be dicey...