Slashdot Mirror

It's the fourth day the alternate traffic circulation rule is applied (and the first in Lyon [where the public tranportation company is on strike ...] and Villeurbanne). Since I've right now a nice view on La Defense from my desk, I can say that the fog is lighter than previous days, but still here.

I're red some wrong statments, and here's some clarifications :
- the monthly transportation fee is 73€ for everyone, with no travel limit adn all transportation medium in "Ile de France" (quite a large area, take a look in Google :))
- the bus network (RATP inside Paris, other companies, like Transdev, outside) is pretty dense : look on Google map on Paris, and zoom enough to see the little blue buses, you'll see :) There's actually 353 buses lines in Paris and the nearest suburbs.
- there's a metro each 2 or 3 minutes, if all works well (but because of the terrorist threat, every abandonned luggage tend to cause delays)
- the RER, who permit me to go to work (I live near Fontainebleau and work near La Defense, and out of the holyday season, I can't even imagine to go to work by car [count about 2-3 hours x2]), is ... let's say, almost reliable. At rush hour, we have 1 train every 15 minutes, and after that, one each 1/2 hour or each hour (depend of the station and the RER line).

Mmmm ... that's it, I think I haven't forgot anything ... all the other things is true (the smell, especiallly during summer, the crowd, the way the disease could be catch in the metro ...) ... Ah, one more thing : the chimney using is tolerated for supplementary heating or for your own pleasure (see https://www.service-public.fr/... [french page]), and the studies who says that this wood bunring polution represent 23% of the pollution are very controversed.

The problem, if I understood it correctly (not a given as I know only the german taxi situation well), is that french taxi have some hoop and loop to go thru (http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/professionnels-entreprises/F21907.xhtml roughly translated says you need a licence, you need to not have been guilty of certain crime, there is some lessons you ened to follow). All costs.

What the page you cite doesn't tell is that the number of licences is limited, like taxi medallions in some US cities; you can get one free after a couple of decades on the waiting list, or you can buy one from another taxi driver who retires. In Paris, the market value of such a license is over 200,000 euros; in some other cities, it's even higher. However, the arrival of Uber and similar services are making these values drop.

So, when they speak of "families" left out to dry, they actually mean that they won't be able to sell the license they invested in, as they expected to. A bit like a housing price crash, except that license prices used to be kept high by a state-mandated scarcity. I guess taxi drivers are lashing at the government for not enforcing this scarcity anymore.

I don't really have an opinion on this subject. I think the government is at fault for letting people depend on a business model and then not being consistent. On the other hand, it happens all the time with any change in subsidies and policies. And blocking roads is definitely a step too far, but it's not the first time: the French administration has never been a good negotiator in that kind of situations; violent strikes have kind of become the default solution...

Chemical ethylotests cost around 1 € and can be found in every drugstore. You just need to have one in the car. http://vosdroits.service-public.fr/F2881.xhtml

In which country can you buy guns in a supermarket?

Perhaps some countries in the Europe allow it , but i know for a fact that a great many have strict gun control and not a relaxed attitude to them .

For information here is the law in France. Some detail:

• Armes en vente libre sans déclaration: (Arms free for sale without even a declaration:)

  Armes de 5e catégorie (armes de chasse):
  fusils, carabines et canardières à canon lisse, tirant un coup par canon (non repeating shotguns, single or multiple barrel)

• Armes soumises à déclaration (arms that have to be declared to the police, but you don't need to ask for a license):

  Hunting rifles, repeating shotguns, target pistols &c

• Arms that need a license:

  1st category: military pistols & rifles.

  4th category: pistols for personal defence &c, short barrelled shotguns, rifles with more than 10 rounds in the magazine.

Lors d'un contrôle, vous avez l'obligation de justifier de votre identité.

La carte d'identité n'est pas obligatoire, vous pouvez justifier de votre identité par tout autre moyen:

• passeport ou permis de conduire,
• livret de famille, livret militaire, extrait d'acte de naissance avec filiation complète, carte d'électeur ou de sécurité sociale..,
• appel à témoignage.

Si vous vous trouvez dans l'impossibilité de justifier de votre identité, ou si les documents produits ne paraissent pas suffisants pour établir votre identité (document sans photo), vous pouvez faire l'objet d'une vérification d'identité.

Vérification d'identité

La police ou la gendarmerie peuvent vous retenir sur place ou dans leurs locaux pour établir votre identité.

Vous pouvez être présenté à un officier de police judiciaire.

Vous pouvez présenter de nouveaux papiers, faire appel à des témoignages.

La vérification doit durer au maximum quatre heures entre le début du contrôle d'identité et la fin de la vérification d'identité.

Vous pouvez faire prévenir le procureur de la République, votre famille ou toute personne de votre choix.

Pour un mineur:

• le représentant légal (père, mère ou tuteur) doit être averti avant toute vérification, et doit, sauf impossibilité, l'assister,
• le procureur de la République doit être averti.

If you're a minor your parents must be informed.

They can't hold you for more than 4 hours.

Ok, so it can be rather annoying, but in practice they just ask you to come to the commisariat the next day. Unless you're a young north african man of course.

You are misleading.
There is a national identity card and there has been one since 1955, it juste isnt obligatory. It is obligatory to establish (?) your identity to a police officer or military police doing a legal identity control at all time, but it can be done by:
-National ID card, passport or driving license.
-election card, birth papers, military papers, social security papers etc
-a testimony of identity (yes, just someone saying he knows you is ok if that person seems ok to the cop)

For foreigners, you have to show your presence in France is valid, which means passport and visa if necessary.

National ID card The Law 1955-1999

Btw, it is now since 1999 a national SECURISED identity card, meaning they already take fingerprints and it can be used to access a police database
And I still don't have it, having no urge to spend money to have my fingerprints taken and getting into administrative troubles if I lose it, and I live without any problem.

For somebody supposidely living in France you're quite uninformed.

RTFA - you are not supposed to carry ID at all times and the police certainly can't check your identity at their discretion.

See this for more.

Let me introduce myself : my name is Godefroy Beauvallet and I am advisor for IT to Michel Sapin, who is the minister in charge of public service and eGovernment in France. More about him and the ministry here.

The BBC article is based on Governmental decisions taken on November, 15th here in France. I actually am one of the guys who briefed the BBC journalist on that one.

Branded "eGovernment : Second Stage", these decisions aim at generalising online services in the public sector before 2005.

To know more about the second stage, you can go here. To know more about the first stage, there is a page in English here.

It's of course difficult (and is it really interesting, anyway) to try and find out which government is the most advanced as far as eGov is concerned : what we all know (and we discuss that at EU level and with US, Canada and many others) is we all are still at the begining of the journey.

A few French highlights : the equivalent of FistGov is Service-public.fr. We believe it is a good informative portal, with about 100 online services, 1100 online static forms, access (index and search engine) to 6500 public websites, a "user manual" of 2500 pages and 1600 Q&A on about anything you want to do with the government (both local and national). Another site publishes everyday (and someone who said the opposite on the list is wrong) all laws and decrees taken by the Governement. Among services provided online are tax filings and payments (individual and firms), scholarships to students, access to public service jobs (through competitive examps) and many others.

We also try and do a lot of things to enhance interoperability among our information systems. We believe this is crucial, as we do not want to be mono-supplier of IT (for legal as well as strategic reasons). That lead us to rising interest in open-source software, and the Government Agency in charge of IT publish a lot of information on them here. Michel SAPIN also publicly endorsed the open-source movement in several occasions.

And to end this rather long post, I want to stress out that French citizens are very hot on privacy and personal data handling. Since 1978, there is an independant public body in charge of these questions here : the CNIL. Any database a ministry creates needs to be approved by the CNIL before it is put online, and there are many an example where a project was stopped by the CNIL on privacy concerns. We want to think carefully about these issues before we go on with a technical widget or another : the PM decided on November, 15th that three "wise guys" are to think about it : the former president of the Cour de Cassation (more or less the equivalent to the Supreme court), a high-ranking civil servant and a well-known sociologist. First report due on January 2002.

I could not explain a whole policy in this post. I would be pleased to try and answer more specific questions in the thread of by email.

Best regards !