This is France, we're famous for protesting and going on strike for about everything under the sun.

That said, while I can't judge this specific case, the noise overall in Paris is bad. Of course you eventually get used to it and you phase it out, but I don't know how I'd live without double glazing. Nothing to do with datacenters, just cars and other motorized vehicules. So anything that add extra noise on top of it is not going to be welcomed by residents.

Because the "nuclear fears" part is mere speculation from slashdots editor.

I'm not a specialist about laws so I could be wrong, but we do have a bunch of privacy laws which states quite explicitely what you can and can't do with the data you collected. Each database containing private data must be declared to the CNIL, stating what kind of info you're gathering, for which purpose, etc. So you just can't acquire and merge a bunch of databases without any kind of justification because their combination would be a much greater threat to privacy than both databases separated.

<quote><p>So immigrants tend to embrace their new culture. Most people who fled Soviet Bloc countries turned into ardent haters of communism - why wouldn't people who fled Muslim theocracies turn out to be pretty ardent haters of Muslim theocracies? They may keep the religion, but in a more moderate, modern form instead of the controlling throwback currently dominant in the Arab region.</p><p>And those are first-generation immigrants. What about their children? They'll raise them Muslim, of course, but they'll raise them *French*. They'll be well-educated and (knowing children) liberal. They'll hear the stories about how bad the home country was, and unless their new country does something to disillusion them (like your racist shitspouting) they'll be patriotic for *that* country, not some country they've never been to and hear only bad things about.</p></quote>

Immigrants embrace the new culture when they have to, which isn't the case anymore, since they're more than enough to build their own communities. You can live in France without speaking french, without eating french food, without dressing like french people, without knowing french history or any part of french culture, and then wonder why you can't blend with french people. Muslims are also actively pushing for their religion into the public life, in a country where religion is becoming more and more a private thing. And for their children it's even worse, they won't have any chance to try to integrate because their parents already put them outside french society, and if their parents can't teach them proper french, they'll struggle in school, pushing them further away. And you end up with african flags used instead of french flags when celebrating, among other things, which isn't really patriotic (well it is, but not for France).

Without calling them a fifth column, you'd have to be deluded to believe the muslims are well integrated in France. It's not their fault though, problem lies with the immigration policy which allowed too many people in without caring about their insertion into french society which is very different from the one they came from.

It's nice that you're enjoying your 3D TV, but it seems the 3D glasses also blinds you from what's obvious to all of us who'd rather stay with our 2D screens: that 3D is being strongly pushed onto us no matter what we wants. It's already tough to find some movies in 2D in movie theaters here, oh sure if you really want to, you can find it in 2D, at some inconvenient time at a inconvenient theater. So yeah, you're pretty much forced to go for the 3D version if you really want to watch this movie.

The same is happening for home TV, in a insidious way. In shops, most TVs they put on display are the 3D ones. Sometimes they don't even bother to advertise their 3D features, because there's no 2D tv around anymore to compare to. So if you're going to buy a TV there, you're pretty much going to buy a 3D one. It wouldn't be such a big deal if the 3D capability didn't increase the price significantly to the same model without 3D. Even worse, when you get to the bigger screen size, there's even less and less normal models available. They're clearly phasing out 2D screens, because it makes more money.

The next phase will probably be with the content, as already said the 3D offer right now is pretty low, but it's rising. After few years where only 3D TV will be available, it's not impossible to imagine some movies/TV series will only be available in 3D. We're already close from that in movie theaters. Then we'll be screwed, and they didn't even need to put a gun on our head to makes us pay extra for 3D. Granted that's pretty much a worst case scenario and bitching on internet won't change a thing, but it doesn't take much to realize that current situation doesn't look bright for people enjoying their content in 2D.

I don't see "many" people citing Doom as the first FPS, merely as the game that made the FPS genre explode popularity wise which is true. Doom was just a much better game with innovations of its own, and that's why it was incredibly popular. It started a huge trend, with plenty of games copying the gameplay/engine and adding very little just to ride on the wave of Doom's success.

I'm pretty sure that by "connected to the site", it means people who had an active part in managing the website rather than some users. France also got a similar tax, but I never heard about it allowing non-profit piracy. Your country is awesome if it works like this, because from what I've seen around the world, those taxes are just about stealing money from people without granting them more rights (and most smaller content creators are pretty lucky if they get to see a single dime from this money).

Of course, such taxes contribute to a "it's ok to pirate, I already paid for it" mindset, but hey, why would they care about slowing piracy if they can just increase profits by putting more taxes on the innocent citizens?

I own all Guitar Hero from the 3rd installment to the 6th one (yes I'm a sucker for music games), and my favorite games are the 3rd and the 6th one. Mostly for the tracklist which is a matter of personal taste. But since each game doesn't add much beside new songs, it's harder to sell new games, especially since it's annoying to swap games to play your favorite songs. You can find some songs from older games as DLC, but what would have made the game much better would have been the possibility to copy songs from games you own on a SD card and be able to play them on any other game of the serie.

Actually, even in France, you need to get a certain score on TOEIC / TOEFL to be able to get a technical / engineering degree. You won't receive your degree no matter how good your grades are as long as you don't get said score. Doesn't make people eager to speak english, but at least they're garanteed to have some skills.

You seem to confuse "racism" with "xenophobia". Also seems like you're exagerating a lot, because living and having traveled in Europe, I didn't hear that many insults against other countries or stuff like that. I'm not saying you're a liar when restaurants refused to service you, but it's most likely a very, very rare occurence. Unless there was another reason than being american that you're not telling or not aware of.

I can't figure myself playing the new games with the same camera view as they use for the screenshot. But eh, their point was to show off sheer graphical capabilities, not to show how the game actually looks when you play it.