Indeed, the i-pod store where I puchased my i-pod told me that such FM trsnmitters where illegal in Europe for a number of reasons. So I simply asked my sister to send me one from Australia. The one I have plugs into the i-opd's cable port. The device lets you select an FM frequency and if you have a stereo set to that frequency in the close vecinity it will play what your i-pod is broadcasting. Here's what I think of the device:
As I mentionned in another post, the i-pod's volume is of no incidence to the broadcast (i.e. that's good for batteries).
The thing is pretty useless in a car for long trips as you need to synchronise with a frequency that has static (i.e. nothing is currently being aired on that frequeency) and these frequencies change a lot when you're driving long distances.
The device will not transmit far at all. Maybe one metre at most.
This thing is VERY useful for stereos that don't have a line-in.
How I use this the most: when I'm outside and want some music (for sports for example): all I need is a small stereo cpable of picking up FM and my i-pod. No big battery-guzzling stereo with line in / DC / Cassette support, just radio.
Well actually you're both wrong. The i-pod's volume has absolutely no incidence in the type of signal your stereo will be receiving. You can test this quite easily by simply puting the volume on 0 and still getting the signal. This is actually a good thing re: i-pod battery. What's more, the transmitter that I own is plugged into the i-pod's cable port and the transmitter itself has the same port available so that you may charge the i-pod (via the transmitter).
Finally the reason you'll get crap reception on a car stereo is that you need to sync. on a frequency that has abs. no signal there already and when you're travelling hundreds of miles you won't find a frequency that is ALWAYS full of static (and hence useful) over any stretch of time / space.
It seems obvious to me that you can make accurate political comments using humour. Sometimes (as parent points out) it is a lot [i]easier[/i] to use humour. Can't really remember what it's like in the US (I was a young at the time) but I know that satirical political shows abound on EU television channels. I'm guessing that TDS is in the same vein?
Where do you play roulette that they allow bets after the wheel is spinning? I want to play there.
IIRC this trick has been used to gain a lot of money in a casino. The casino in question was in London, sorry I can't find references to this story although it was in the news and even mentioned on/. at the time I beleive. How the betters operated was to use a cell-phone's camera to record the spinning of the wheel and the "throw" of the roulette ball. The data was sent to a nearby computer-equiped van where it would be analyse by software and the most probable "quadrant" the ball would finish in was sent back to the betters (near-instantly). It was then a matter of betting on those 8 or so numbers before the ball stopped rolling.
All this to say that the bets were made before the "les jeux sont faits" was announced.
No it's not called malnutrition, it's called having some narrower passage ways and doors in Europe than you do in the US. It's cultural, you'll notice that in a lot of Asian countries the ceilings are slightly lower than in European / US / Aus / Other countries. And wouldn't you know it? The average height of the citizens of said Asian countries is accordingly lower too...
No I'm not saying all americans are obese or even fat for that matter, just that a proportionately higher amount of the population are. Hence: larger doors. Another thing you might like to compare are the average size of cinema / theatre seats.
I've done a half dozen or so return journies between Australia and Europe. For one way count about 25 hours *in the plane*. The service and comfort is uasually quite good for these long haul trips, coach offers booze, decent food, a half dozen or so inflight movies, a couple of games (very crap ones but it's a start).
Despite this, 25h in a plane is utterly boring. Especially for people like me who can sleep on planes but just lightly and for very short spans. When you're air-travelling for that long you try and kill time by little two-hour periods for example. Having a very good "can't put it down" book helps, but even then you can only read for so long in one sitting.
Frankly I applaud any kind of entertainment on these types of flights. Internet access would definitely help me kill a couple of hours. So would a descent previous-gen console with a good library of games for exmaple would help me kill a couple of hours, but that's a different topic.
Back in the day the only things the coaches had to communicate with their cuclists were the "ardoisiers", guys on the side of track with little blackboards giving information on times / distances etc, and having a crew go up to their cycler in a bike.
Nowadays each cycler has an earpiece and can get real-time information via radiowaves (I imagine) from his coach. I can't remember who it was but one such coach even pushed this a bit farther by having scramblers in his van in order to scramble the competition's communications!
Although from what I've been told the cyclists themselves are only half / half when it comes to this new communication technology. The purists say it takes a lot of the personnal strategy out of the race.
If there are two Americans somewhere, and one is a fat, obnoxious, non-local-language speaking lout with a Hawaiian shirt and a camcorder and the other is a quiet, sensible, local-language speaker, the locals may not even notice that the second is an American
yes this is precisely my point! That said I've met obnoxious non-local-language speaking louts from all over the world, and I myself have been one at times, but my personnal experience has shown that north americans are usually louder than other nationalities. (with the other side of the spectrum being the quiet Japansese for exmaple)
the Americans that they are likely to meet are not the ones who voted for Bush.
Yes I too have noticed that a crushing majority of american tourists or students studying abroad are not very proud of the current US president.
I've lived in 6 countries (in 3 continents) including the US. I'm now currently in Europe where I'd say that there is a general disdain (not hatred) of Americans. I'd venture that this is due mainly to political issues.
From what I can tell, american tourists are not always well regarded by the locals because they are loud-mouthed and arrongant. Now yes, I will agree that there are some VERY loud american tourists, but for everyone one of them how many are there that go un-noticed?
Personnaly although I'm not very fond of your politics, your president and some of your louder country-men I go by the mantra that if an american has taken the steps to actually leave his country, if only brielfy, to see what else there is in the world then I should treat them with a minimum of respect and try and give a good impression of Europeans.
For those fo you that enjoy that kind of thing: I'm French, feel free to flame on:)
I know that where I work (in Brussels with the European Commission as our main client) we use what appears to be fairly standard naming for work documents. It's something along the lines of:
The date is optional and only really has relevance for meeting minutes or meeting agendas. This gives document names such as:
EX-PORTAL_PQP_v110.doc
EX-PROJ_MOM_29012006_v000.doc
I am guessing that similar naming conventions are very widely used in the corporate world. It can be a bit cryptic at first but once you're used to it you can look at a folder with numerous files and quickly locate the one that you're looking for even if you're not familiar with the given project.
In your depopulated Europe example, Paris, Lyon and Marseille would each build their own Metro at the same time (as I believe they have).
Precisely. You also make a good point about TGVs (high speed trains). These are a God-send. People often think that the Paris marseilles one-hour flight takes a third the time of the 3h train ride. Yes, except the Parisian Orly airport is 45 minutes outside of Paris (if you're lucky with traffic). The Marseilles airport is a bit farther out than that also, again if you're lucky with traffic. The Train stations though are smack in the middle of both cities and connected by each cities public transport systems: metro / bus / regional train.
As for the depopulated Europe example: There currently is a train doing Paris > Marseilles leaving every hour. I think that this train is direct. If it does stop on the way, there's only one stop in the middle (Valenciennes / Aix? it's not fixed). It's about 100 return. Same thing for Paris > Lyon, that one is direct.
Your sir are correct. I've lived in France for 9 years, and have family ties in the south of France. Foie gras can be very affordable at local markets in any of the myriad of tiny villages in foie-gras producing regions. But yes, it is still considered a delicacy (and rightly so).
Snails, which I also love, are a bit over-rated. As some posters have pointed out, they only taste like what you've cooked them in. This is usually garlic butter. Other-than that, a plain snail is a mall chewy tastless piece of meet (think calamari).
Yes, but can't you see the big picture here? Why do terrorists attack the US? Well because they're jealous of the FREEDOM that US citizens enjoy. Therefore by eroding these freedoms little by little, what the NSA is actually doing is removing the reason why terrorists strike in the first place. Once you have taken all those freedoms away: no more terrorism.
This is sheer brilliance!
(yes I *am* kidding)
Why yes of course, here in Belgium as in France, Slovakia, Switzerland and all other Nation-ID-card-toting countries, we have a special police force going through everyone's trash at 4am just in case someone cut up their ID and threw it away... in which case you're thrown straight into jail! No questions asked! Yes-siree
... Yes, you were joking, but passports / ID cards can get mistakingly thrown away / lost / destroyed. In France when that happens, you just go to a local police station, tell them you lost your wallet (or whatever) and they make you fill in a form saying "I [insert ANY NAME YOU WANT] have lost my ID. I declare that I live [INSERT ANY ADDRESS]" it's officialy stamped and you get to keep a copy, it's valid 3 months or so but isn't considered official in any way of course. It just means that you declared you lost your stuff and that's why you don't have ID on you. For example I used this when I signed up late for university. I didn't have an excuse so quickly went and got one of these forms and managed to enroll.
Still, it's best to go and get another ID card done if you have lot it because they are handy to have for a lot of reasons stated above in this thread
I've worked 5+ years in France and I'm now currently residing in Brussels, Belgium. I work in the private sector but most of my company's clients are (and were, also when working in France) from the public sector. Now, the French law states that people work 35h a week in France. If you think that this applies to everyone you are out of your mind. Only the public sector digilently works 35 hours / week. In the private sector when you're not doing a very low-level job your are quietly required to work more than 35 hours a week. It's a given and everyone does it. I don't personnaly know anyone in the private sector who works 35 hours a week. Everyone does (unpaid) overtime. This could explain why French productivity / hour is high: simply because the numbers are skewed.
I have to agree with SynapseLapse on this one. First off I think that saying that "video games will only make you dumb" is a bit hasty. You can certainly learn things from some video-games and lumping them all in the same group is wrong.
Concerning Sudoku: I got hooked on this around last April. I immediately loved it (I, like most slashdotters I imagine, enjoy number games). Then pretty quickly you notice that Sudoku actually has nothing at all to do with numbers. I rarely do any more traditional Sudokus these days but I must say that I've been doing quite a bit of Killer Sudoku: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18209-2098 336,00.html check the third puzzle for an exmaple
This adds some arithmetics to the puzzle solving but these are extremely basic (such as in Kakuro).
And God forbid anyone should see one of those! It astounds me when watching nip-tuck for example (which I enjoy very much btw) you can see some gruesome zoomed in surgery, people doing all sorts of drugs, but during a scene depicting sex you won't see a female nipple... it really does strike me as strange.
I'm not from the US but someone may be able to answer me: was nip-tuck aired at the same time-slot as the show in this slashdot article?
Slashdot Mirror
Well actually you're both wrong. The i-pod's volume has absolutely no incidence in the type of signal your stereo will be receiving. You can test this quite easily by simply puting the volume on 0 and still getting the signal. This is actually a good thing re: i-pod battery. What's more, the transmitter that I own is plugged into the i-pod's cable port and the transmitter itself has the same port available so that you may charge the i-pod (via the transmitter). Finally the reason you'll get crap reception on a car stereo is that you need to sync. on a frequency that has abs. no signal there already and when you're travelling hundreds of miles you won't find a frequency that is ALWAYS full of static (and hence useful) over any stretch of time / space.
You've obviously never witnessed a game of cricket.
It seems obvious to me that you can make accurate political comments using humour. Sometimes (as parent points out) it is a lot [i]easier[/i] to use humour. Can't really remember what it's like in the US (I was a young at the time) but I know that satirical political shows abound on EU television channels. I'm guessing that TDS is in the same vein?
Oh and if one hour isn't enough, just set the system clock back one year, that should allow you to have an extra 9000 or so hours more to find one ;)
IIRC this trick has been used to gain a lot of money in a casino. The casino in question was in London, sorry I can't find references to this story although it was in the news and even mentioned on /. at the time I beleive. How the betters operated was to use a cell-phone's camera to record the spinning of the wheel and the "throw" of the roulette ball. The data was sent to a nearby computer-equiped van where it would be analyse by software and the most probable "quadrant" the ball would finish in was sent back to the betters (near-instantly). It was then a matter of betting on those 8 or so numbers before the ball stopped rolling.
All this to say that the bets were made before the "les jeux sont faits" was announced.
No I'm not saying all americans are obese or even fat for that matter, just that a proportionately higher amount of the population are. Hence: larger doors. Another thing you might like to compare are the average size of cinema / theatre seats.
Despite this, 25h in a plane is utterly boring. Especially for people like me who can sleep on planes but just lightly and for very short spans. When you're air-travelling for that long you try and kill time by little two-hour periods for example. Having a very good "can't put it down" book helps, but even then you can only read for so long in one sitting.
Frankly I applaud any kind of entertainment on these types of flights. Internet access would definitely help me kill a couple of hours. So would a descent previous-gen console with a good library of games for exmaple would help me kill a couple of hours, but that's a different topic.
Ok so it's a security tool with 3 different "modules". Fantastic, probably a first in the software industry.
fíñë é
Nowadays each cycler has an earpiece and can get real-time information via radiowaves (I imagine) from his coach. I can't remember who it was but one such coach even pushed this a bit farther by having scramblers in his van in order to scramble the competition's communications!
Although from what I've been told the cyclists themselves are only half / half when it comes to this new communication technology. The purists say it takes a lot of the personnal strategy out of the race.
Is it that there these are robots? It is because they run linux? Or is because they're made in France?
From what I can tell, american tourists are not always well regarded by the locals because they are loud-mouthed and arrongant. Now yes, I will agree that there are some VERY loud american tourists, but for everyone one of them how many are there that go un-noticed?
Personnaly although I'm not very fond of your politics, your president and some of your louder country-men I go by the mantra that if an american has taken the steps to actually leave his country, if only brielfy, to see what else there is in the world then I should treat them with a minimum of respect and try and give a good impression of Europeans. For those fo you that enjoy that kind of thing: I'm French, feel free to flame on :)
[Short Project Name]_[Document Abbreviation]_[date]_v[version]
The date is optional and only really has relevance for meeting minutes or meeting agendas. This gives document names such as:
EX-PORTAL_PQP_v110.doc
EX-PROJ_MOM_29012006_v000.doc
I am guessing that similar naming conventions are very widely used in the corporate world. It can be a bit cryptic at first but once you're used to it you can look at a folder with numerous files and quickly locate the one that you're looking for even if you're not familiar with the given project.
In your depopulated Europe example, Paris, Lyon and Marseille would each build their own Metro at the same time (as I believe they have).
Precisely. You also make a good point about TGVs (high speed trains). These are a God-send. People often think that the Paris marseilles one-hour flight takes a third the time of the 3h train ride. Yes, except the Parisian Orly airport is 45 minutes outside of Paris (if you're lucky with traffic). The Marseilles airport is a bit farther out than that also, again if you're lucky with traffic. The Train stations though are smack in the middle of both cities and connected by each cities public transport systems: metro / bus / regional train.
As for the depopulated Europe example: There currently is a train doing Paris > Marseilles leaving every hour. I think that this train is direct. If it does stop on the way, there's only one stop in the middle (Valenciennes / Aix? it's not fixed). It's about 100 return. Same thing for Paris > Lyon, that one is direct.
Your sir are correct. I've lived in France for 9 years, and have family ties in the south of France. Foie gras can be very affordable at local markets in any of the myriad of tiny villages in foie-gras producing regions. But yes, it is still considered a delicacy (and rightly so).
Snails, which I also love, are a bit over-rated. As some posters have pointed out, they only taste like what you've cooked them in. This is usually garlic butter. Other-than that, a plain snail is a mall chewy tastless piece of meet (think calamari).
Yes, but can't you see the big picture here? Why do terrorists attack the US? Well because they're jealous of the FREEDOM that US citizens enjoy. Therefore by eroding these freedoms little by little, what the NSA is actually doing is removing the reason why terrorists strike in the first place. Once you have taken all those freedoms away: no more terrorism. This is sheer brilliance! (yes I *am* kidding)
... Yes, you were joking, but passports / ID cards can get mistakingly thrown away / lost / destroyed. In France when that happens, you just go to a local police station, tell them you lost your wallet (or whatever) and they make you fill in a form saying "I [insert ANY NAME YOU WANT] have lost my ID. I declare that I live [INSERT ANY ADDRESS]" it's officialy stamped and you get to keep a copy, it's valid 3 months or so but isn't considered official in any way of course. It just means that you declared you lost your stuff and that's why you don't have ID on you. For example I used this when I signed up late for university. I didn't have an excuse so quickly went and got one of these forms and managed to enroll.
Still, it's best to go and get another ID card done if you have lot it because they are handy to have for a lot of reasons stated above in this thread
I've worked 5+ years in France and I'm now currently residing in Brussels, Belgium. I work in the private sector but most of my company's clients are (and were, also when working in France) from the public sector. Now, the French law states that people work 35h a week in France. If you think that this applies to everyone you are out of your mind. Only the public sector digilently works 35 hours / week. In the private sector when you're not doing a very low-level job your are quietly required to work more than 35 hours a week. It's a given and everyone does it. I don't personnaly know anyone in the private sector who works 35 hours a week. Everyone does (unpaid) overtime. This could explain why French productivity / hour is high: simply because the numbers are skewed.
What? You can't bring your own food inside a movie-theatre? Why not? (seriously, this has never occured to me before)
Concerning Sudoku: I got hooked on this around last April. I immediately loved it (I, like most slashdotters I imagine, enjoy number games). Then pretty quickly you notice that Sudoku actually has nothing at all to do with numbers. I rarely do any more traditional Sudokus these days but I must say that I've been doing quite a bit of Killer Sudoku: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,18209-2098 336,00.html check the third puzzle for an exmaple
This adds some arithmetics to the puzzle solving but these are extremely basic (such as in Kakuro).
I would swear I saw some nipples at one point
And God forbid anyone should see one of those! It astounds me when watching nip-tuck for example (which I enjoy very much btw) you can see some gruesome zoomed in surgery, people doing all sorts of drugs, but during a scene depicting sex you won't see a female nipple... it really does strike me as strange.
I'm not from the US but someone may be able to answer me: was nip-tuck aired at the same time-slot as the show in this slashdot article?