I'm French, and I'm baffled. How can this kind of comment make it to Insightful ? In case you're not aware, the French have no cyclists to be proud of. None. Why we would kill an American's career to facilitate the win of a Spanish, Netherlander, another American, a British, another Netherlander, a German, an Italian... shall I go on ?
Oh... right, because we're proud.
The "subtitle" is spot on:
> But seriously, there's loads of intelligent life. It's just not screaming constantly in all directions on the handful of frequencies we search.
They got a refund too. That is more material than a free apology. Agreed, it's the least they could do, but still, it's a pretty big piece of the story that's missing from TFS and TFA.
Funny, during my H1b days, I always thought I was paid at least as much as my colleagues. I went through my company closing, and had support of everybody around me. I worked for 3 different companies in 5 years (a couple of big ones), and never once was felt pressured as an H1B.
What do I know, maybe I am the exception?
Having been in this situation a while back, no, there is officially no grace period. As far as I know, it just happens that the administration lets people transfer anyways. I have heard 10 days, 2 months, nothing... I personally had my H1b transfer initiated in the couple of days after my company closed. Technically, you can apply for transfer, start at your new job, and have your transfer denied (or so they say, I never actually heard about a denied transfer). fun stuff!
We translate acronyms (how arrogant!)
AIDS = SIDA
kB = kO
OPEC = OPEP
And the list goes on. We do that less than the French speaking Canadians though... KFC = PFK is my favorite.
and it came crumbling down because Lando Calrissian blew up the second Death Star after Han Solo destroyed the shield generator, while the only remaining Jedi was too busy dealing with personal issues to actually help. huh ?
The rebellion blew up the first one too. It did not doom the Empire. It crumbles in VI because the Emperor dies... And that is not Han's or Lando's doings.
- this is not a proposal by FNAC. Olivennes, the guy who wrote the proposal, is the FNAC CEO, but he was appointed by Sarkozy to try and find solutions to piracy in France. - this is not a law. It is a proposal, and the actual law will not come until 1st quarter next year. - the idea is to give warnings before the internet connection is shut off (2 I believe). To those saying just pick random wifi hotspots, I can assure them that if people were to receive one of those warnings, they would start thinking about securing their access point. Internet cafés are in trouble though. - the challenge to figure out what is infringing is left unspecified. The copyright holders are supposed to complain to the ISP, which is supposed to refer to a new judiciary body. That body deals with the alleged offender. - there are significant outcries against it (notably by consumer protection organizations) - the change in video timeline is just to bring VOD in line with DVD (from 7.5 months to 6). Nothing more...
Gah, my eyes are bleeding from the pain to go through the article...
free AOL discs
Windows Me
incompatible digital rights management (DRM) schemes
Norton and McAfee are constantly prompting us to check our security settings, update our subscriptions, and/or buy more products
RealPlayer, pushiness
Bonzi Buddy
MySpace
Microsoft Windows Vista overzealous "Cancel or Continue?" confirmation windows
Microsoft Windows Update (wrt WGA deployment)
Apple QuickTime for Windows invasiveness
Also ran
Microsoft Office 97 (1997) non-backwards compat
flash running, jumping, spinning, swirling, flashing, dancing, popping, peeling, and just generally irritating rich-media Web ads
AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Windows Messenger, Yahoo Messenger
ps3
ebay random approach to policy enforcement
Apple Pro Mouse
plaxo automatic spamming
Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
Apple Power Mac G4 Cube
Harmonium (polyphonic ringtones.)
Intuit Quicken 2005 -- take features away if they don't upgrade
Logitech Harmony 550
Ah, and at the end, a list of anoying things not to do
Force us to reboot our systems any time we install or uninstall your product.
Automatically install into the Windows system tray and launch at startup.
Force us to read the manual just to figure out how to turn on the damned thing.
Pop up little reminders for things we don't want to do.
Make tech-support contact information nearly impossible to find--or, better yet, don't include any.
Install a bunch of extra software nobody asked for or wants.
Automatically sign us up for e-mail newsletters and other announcements.
Charge us $35 per call to speak to "Bob" in Bangalore when we have problems.
Force us to upgrade products to get the same functionality we already had in the old version.
Make us enter the same information (like e-mail addresses) multiple times.
Require us to retype squiggly letters that are virtually impossible for humans to decipher when signing up for new accounts. (Note to Microsoft: This means you.)
Force us to register products and/or nag us until we capitulate.
Promise to remember our log-ins and password, yet still make us enter them every time.
Insist on updating the product when all we want to do is quit it and go home.
you put it in a bank and then access it when you need some of it
That is the thing though. We currently do not have a bank.
A bank is reliable, and liable. I do not know about you, but I will store my own data on the net when I have some insurance that it will be guaranteed to stay there and stay private. Yes, google can store the data, but it does not give any insurance it will stay there. Reminds me of the guy who lost his google email.
That would be forgetting that the french state is a recognized monopoly in a lot of areas (in France), and that few French have an issue with it.
As for buying viewpoints in influencial circles, the french politics are far from the US lobbying model. Don't assume what works in the US works everywhere. Is it going to spread throughout Europe ? I would hope so, but it is unlikely to be made a requirement.
From the netflix rules: "To protect customer privacy, all personal information identifying individual customers has been removed and all customer ids have been replaced by randomly-assigned ids. The date of each rating and the title and year of release for each movie are provided. No other customer or movie information is provided." Sounds familiar...
And later: "To prevent certain inferences being drawn about the Netflix customer base, some of the rating data for some customers in the training and qualifying sets have been deliberately perturbed in one or more of the following ways: deleting ratings; inserting alternative ratings and dates; and modifying rating dates. However, the Cinematch RMSE measured on the final, perturbed dataset does not differ significantly from the RMSE measured on the unperturbed dataset for the purposes of Grand or Progress Prize qualification described below. The RMSE values reported below represent the RMSE measured on both the perturbed and unperturbed datasets to the precision specified above."
Not sure how much that actually protects end users, but they tried a bit more than AOL.
Slashdot Mirror
It's more than that, It's the people _becoming_ the Thought Police.
I'm French, and I'm baffled. How can this kind of comment make it to Insightful ? In case you're not aware, the French have no cyclists to be proud of. None. Why we would kill an American's career to facilitate the win of a Spanish, Netherlander, another American, a British, another Netherlander, a German, an Italian... shall I go on ? Oh... right, because we're proud.
The "subtitle" is spot on: > But seriously, there's loads of intelligent life. It's just not screaming constantly in all directions on the handful of frequencies we search.
He's been commenting on the case itself a little bit here:
http://peterfleischer.blogspot.com/2009/11/ciao-italia.html
http://peterfleischer.blogspot.com/2009/11/today-in-milan.html
http://peterfleischer.blogspot.com/2009/11/european-law-on-hosting-platforms.html
This last one actually has law information in it.
how many bites in a terabyte.
That one is easy: a mouthful.
They got a refund too. That is more material than a free apology. Agreed, it's the least they could do, but still, it's a pretty big piece of the story that's missing from TFS and TFA.
Funny, during my H1b days, I always thought I was paid at least as much as my colleagues. I went through my company closing, and had support of everybody around me. I worked for 3 different companies in 5 years (a couple of big ones), and never once was felt pressured as an H1B. What do I know, maybe I am the exception?
Having been in this situation a while back, no, there is officially no grace period. As far as I know, it just happens that the administration lets people transfer anyways. I have heard 10 days, 2 months, nothing... I personally had my H1b transfer initiated in the couple of days after my company closed. Technically, you can apply for transfer, start at your new job, and have your transfer denied (or so they say, I never actually heard about a denied transfer). fun stuff!
Inflation has to be shown on a log scale... This linear scale is just bogus.
We translate acronyms (how arrogant!)
AIDS = SIDA
kB = kO
OPEC = OPEP
And the list goes on. We do that less than the French speaking Canadians though... KFC = PFK is my favorite.
- this is not a proposal by FNAC.
Olivennes, the guy who wrote the proposal, is the FNAC CEO, but he was appointed by Sarkozy to try and find solutions to piracy in France.
- this is not a law. It is a proposal, and the actual law will not come until 1st quarter next year.
- the idea is to give warnings before the internet connection is shut off (2 I believe).
To those saying just pick random wifi hotspots, I can assure them that if people were to receive one of those warnings, they would start thinking about securing their access point. Internet cafés are in trouble though.
- the challenge to figure out what is infringing is left unspecified. The copyright holders are supposed to complain to the ISP, which is supposed to refer to a new judiciary body. That body deals with the alleged offender.
- there are significant outcries against it (notably by consumer protection organizations)
- the change in video timeline is just to bring VOD in line with DVD (from 7.5 months to 6). Nothing more...
- free AOL discs
- Windows Me
- incompatible digital rights management (DRM) schemes
- Norton and McAfee are constantly prompting us to check our security settings, update our subscriptions, and/or buy more products
- RealPlayer, pushiness
- Bonzi Buddy
- MySpace
- Microsoft Windows Vista overzealous "Cancel or Continue?" confirmation windows
- Microsoft Windows Update (wrt WGA deployment)
- Apple QuickTime for Windows invasiveness
Also ran- Microsoft Office 97 (1997) non-backwards compat
- flash running, jumping, spinning, swirling, flashing, dancing, popping, peeling, and just generally irritating rich-media Web ads
- AOL Instant Messenger, Microsoft Windows Messenger, Yahoo Messenger
- ps3
- ebay random approach to policy enforcement
- Apple Pro Mouse
- plaxo automatic spamming
- Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
- Apple Power Mac G4 Cube
- Harmonium (polyphonic ringtones.)
- Intuit Quicken 2005 -- take features away if they don't upgrade
- Logitech Harmony 550
Ah, and at the end, a list of anoying things not to doThat is the thing though. We currently do not have a bank.
A bank is reliable, and liable.
I do not know about you, but I will store my own data on the net when I have some insurance that it will be guaranteed to stay there and stay private. Yes, google can store the data, but it does not give any insurance it will stay there. Reminds me of the guy who lost his google email.
That would be forgetting that the french state is a recognized monopoly in a lot of areas (in France), and that few French have an issue with it.
As for buying viewpoints in influencial circles, the french politics are far from the US lobbying model. Don't assume what works in the US works everywhere.
Is it going to spread throughout Europe ? I would hope so, but it is unlikely to be made a requirement.
From the netflix rules:
"To protect customer privacy, all personal information identifying individual customers has been removed and all customer ids have been replaced by randomly-assigned ids. The date of each rating and the title and year of release for each movie are provided. No other customer or movie information is provided."
Sounds familiar...
And later:
"To prevent certain inferences being drawn about the Netflix customer base, some of the rating data for some customers in the training and qualifying sets have been deliberately perturbed in one or more of the following ways: deleting ratings; inserting alternative ratings and dates; and modifying rating dates. However, the Cinematch RMSE measured on the final, perturbed dataset does not differ significantly from the RMSE measured on the unperturbed dataset for the purposes of Grand or Progress Prize qualification described below. The RMSE values reported below represent the RMSE measured on both the perturbed and unperturbed datasets to the precision specified above."
Not sure how much that actually protects end users, but they tried a bit more than AOL.