Chirac flees summit in a fury over use of English

[Pekka]

I disagree. Some non-French smell bad too. But ALL French smell bad is a fact.

[Wraith]

--"surely you are joking about paperless voting machines. I wouldn't think a poly person would be anti-technology. I'm sure those are less prone to fraud than regular voting machines."

You're not particularly familiar with computer security, right?

A good starter for you is Black Box Voting, but to summarize, the current paperless electronic voting machines are trivially easy to compromise. By design, in some cases (although it could still be open to question whether the design choices leading to this were based on stupidity or on malice). They also offer no meaningfull audit capability. At least one county here in Texas recently cancelled a recount because the paperless electronic voting machines were spitting out different numbers than they were in the original count.

The sad thing is, it'd be trivial to add an audit trail. Use the EVMs to do what they do well, which is provide for multiple language interfaces including disability (ie. blindness) support, and then have them print out a ballot. Which is then checked by the voter, and put in a ballot box, and handled like has been done for ages. That all three major EVM companies flat out refuse to do this is... odd, shall we say? Especially when looking at their other actions, like hiring people convincted of computer fraud to work on their systems and refusing to let investigators have any information on their file formats when they attempt to audit the machines.

But maybe it's just me.

Wraith
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."
-- H. L. Mencken

[CerberusIV]

Here in Ireland they are paying thousands of euros each year to store electronic voting machines that they aren't using because it wasn't clear that they were not proof against voting fraud.

On the original topic Irish has been adopted as an official european language. If Chirac insists on speaking french to everyone it would be good for all the other european leaders to insist on speaking their languages when talking to him. Five minutes of Bertie Ahern speaking irish and Chirac will be begging for english as the only EU language (and that's before he meets the Finns ).

[DRoseDARs]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
Here in Ireland they are paying thousands of euros each year to store electronic voting machines that they aren't using because it wasn't clear that they were not proof against voting fraud.

One thing that, at least in my state (Nevada), they've been trying to hit home on this is putting voting machines through the same paces the gaming commission does for slot and poker machines. They way we do things here to ensure fair gaming practices is a perfect model to base a testing regimen for electronic voting machines...

...wait for it...

...but the companies making these things ain't having none of that. "PROPRIETARY TECHNOLOGY AND SOFTWARE!!" they scream. Funny, the various gaming (gambling) software/manufacturing companies that do business in the state of Nevada haven't had much trouble...

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by SpencerH
One has to wonder when the French will finally realize just how pathetic Chirac is?

30 years ago

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Sandman
France needs term limits. As does Britain.

We do need it (one of the few things about which I agree with Sarkozy). However, even with a 2-term limit, Chirac would still be president right now. It's been only 11 years of presidency, and 2 terms would be 12 years (length of terms changed mid-way, from 7 to 5)

[Lawrence of Arabia]

this french woman got into an accident today on the Pt du Mont Blanc because she was talking on her cell phone and smoking a cig

sale frouze there was mad traffic on that bridge.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

désolé spiff, mais ici on n'aime pas les savoyards qui conduisent tous comme des barjo, qui coupent les queues, et qui refusent de s'arreter, même quand ils ont pas la priorité.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by CerberusIV
On the original topic Irish has been adopted as an official european language. If Chirac insists on speaking french to everyone it would be good for all the other european leaders to insist on speaking their languages when talking to him. Five minutes of Bertie Ahern speaking irish and Chirac will be begging for english as the only EU language (and that's before he meets the Finns ).

There is a distinction in the EU between official languages, and working languages.
Official languages are all the languages recognized by the EU as being a language in which the EU has to communicate with its own citizenry. For example, the EU does translate its entire legislation in Finnish, so that every Finn can understand it, in French so that every Frenchman can understnd it, etc. Many kinds of official EU texts are translated that way.

The working languages are in use within EU institutions, when the decision-makers are bargaining. There are three of them: English, French and German (the latter used to not be a working language, but it became one not so long ago). As a result, within the EU institutions (bar the Prliament), you have only three possible translations: English-French, Fench-German, and German-English. That's much less of a hassle than in other circumstances, where you can have really plenty of combinations.

As the article mentions, the current trend in the EU is for a clearer dominance of English among the working languages. This displeases many French people, who consider that French should remain an essential language in world affairs. Chirac does represent this part of the French population. However, things are changing, and most people I know (they're from different social strata, but nearly all of them are young, because I'm a filthy ageist) don't care about the languages used in the EU.

[Spiffor]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
désolé spiff, mais ici on n'aime pas les savoyards qui conduisent tous comme des barjo, qui coupent les queues, et qui refusent de s'arreter, même quand ils ont pas la priorité.

It is a well-documented fact that the Swiss are racist toward us

As much as we are racist toward the Arabs

[CerberusIV]

Originally posted by Spiffor

There is a distinction in the EU between official languages, and working languages.

The working languages are in use within EU institutions, when the decision-makers are bargaining. There are three of them: English, French and German.

I know. I wouldn't mind if they adopted Esperanto or whatever just to have one working language. I remember talking to an MEP a few years ago who explained how EVERYTHING is printed in three languages and a guy spent all his time driving loads of documents between the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European Court (each located in a different city).

The punchline is that they spent a fortune specially converting a Citroen car for him and it would not go up hills because of the weight of documents. He would have been quite happy with an ordinary van. That sums it all up somehow.

[alva]

I wouldn't mind if they adopted Esperanto or whatever just to have one working language.

Are you mad?!

I'm not gonna learn some stupid, ugly language, just because ze big ones can't agree on which one to use ( mainly an ego thing I assume).
Just use english will ya.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

It is a well-documented fact that the Swiss are racist toward us

noooooooooooooooo, we're neutral!


Pourquoi les autoroutes françaises sont-elles si mal éclairées?

parceque les français se prennent pour des lumières

[germanos]

I don't see why Europe should use a single language. The EU thrives on trade, so all documets availalble in English, French, German and Spanish is basically a good thing. Throw in Italian and we got five official languages for daily use in the EU's burocracy.

Let the EU fund all the translations for the smaller languages to use domestically only.

Use the money saved to translate all in Chinese

[laurentius]

Whats with this idea about one language? Do you really believe humans arent capable to master more than one language? Especially in Europe where the languages are not that different with some exeptions. Theres the latin-based, slavic and germamic language groups. Thats only 3 languages plus your mothers tongue/asian/arabic one.