I resigned in 2006 and was forced to stay 3 months in a boring job (coding ABAP on SAP R/3) while my new boss was waiting for me. My future ex-employer did not really try to find my replacement before the end of the second month. It's difficult to "negociate" a shorter préavis while being professionnal (it's a small world). Just going away without reason could cost you 3 months salary IIRC.

On the other side, a French firm cannot fire you at will, it's much much more complicated (Americans never understand it, and I partly agree).

That's a pain in the neck while searching for a job or an employee, because nowadays most jobs are to be filled NOW, not 3 months later, and in the current job market nobody would resign without the next job signed.

You won't be able to see the Eiffel Tower or any bit of Paris through the floor. Flying above Paris is forbidden, seeing the Eiffel Tower this way means the plane might be shot down very soon.

Here is France, tax fillings are pre-filled for at least two years.

Each administration, bank or firm sends you a paper each year telling you how much you earn from them and how much you must declare to our IRS. I've seen tiny errors in complicated situations, nothing to complain about. Having a centralized state has some good sides.

I must only add things that the administration cannot know (charities, deductible professional expenses, tax credit for energy savings...). Of course it's all online for years (and it works rather well).

It helps that we do not need software to compute all this for us, I don't know anyone on salary who uses one. It seems to be a hot topic in Germany though but they always over-engineer everything.

(Warning: braod and probably abusive generalization below.)

It's always funny to see such photos on American products or ads in my part of Europe.

I remember the photo on the packaging of a computer mouse for children (from MS?): a boy with blue eyes and fair hair (in the center), a Chinese-looking girl, a black boy. This is an American mix, not a European one.

To be PC in the West-European market, you have to add an Arab- or Turkish-looking child. In France the typical hair is darker than in the States and blue eyes not very common, so the fair hair boy looks like one of our Dutch tourists. Our proportion of Asian people is low outside of Paris, and they are more Vietnamese than Chinese.

It depends heavily on the country (I suppose that you could say between the states inside the US.)
You cannot be PC and have the same photo for all countries. Unless that you want to appear like a soul-less company with American-style management.

BTW, the white person in many of such photos is always in the best position: on the mouse packaging, the boy was in the middle; in a recent ad for Visual Studio, the white young man is on the front and a Chinese-looking girl in the background; and in the photo from the article, the white woman is the only one active (she seems to be the boss). Neither do I see fat or disabled persons.

Punitive damages do not exist in France.

In the PDF (page 7): ASUS has to pay to the plaintif 100 for Windows, 30 for the other software and 150 to reimburse Mr Hordoir some expenses he had to do for going to court. Hordoir asked for 1000 of dommages et intérêts, (damages) to cover the time lost in this case, but that was refused by the court. Dommages & intérêts is intended to cover physical and moral damages, and not to be directly punitive.

(In my opinion, our dommages & intérêts are usually far too small to annoy big corporations in such cases, while US-style punitive damages gives some money to the plaintif totally unrelated to real damages. Something in-between should exist like punitive fines increasing geometrically with each new case.)

More: ASUS had to pay les dépens , ie paying the legal expenses of BOTH sides. In French system, the user usually pays... (Don't ask me the difference between les dépens and the 150 euros above related to our article 700 ...)

IAF, but IANAL.