Off topic, but I was under the impression that, in many European countries, tipping is a practice reserved for exceptional service, and it's been like that for a long time. I thought it was mainly the U.S. where tipping less than 15% is basically an insult.
In France yes, but tipping is still important in Britain, Ireland, Germany at least, probably other countries.
Another French here.
I don't think the higher prices that we paid before Free appeared were so good for investments. On the contrary: since Free appeared, Orange and the 2 other providers pushed and marketed heavily the "4G" (LTE), that Free does not offer. They had to compete on quality because they could not cope with the price. In 2005 (Free was not a mobile provider yet) they were together sentenced to 535 million euros due to an unlawful agreement. The market forces did not apply anymore, a big problem on the long term. We did not destroy the France Telecom monopoly in order to have a private oligopoly.
Private firms will not invest on hardware if they can avoid it. Either they do it to provide better product or service (and the price will be higher), or they are forced by law.
The expectation is that the advertised price is the price that you will pay, right, and that's usually the case. But "advertised" means sometimes that the subscrition is N euros, and it is not clear (or in very small letters) that the compulsory routeur is M euros, and other options are X eurs, or that the price will double after 6 months, and so on. Our main provider (Orange, formerly France Telecom) and the others are very fond of this game. But Free does not, the 20 euros is really all included, no surprise.
As for tipping, it still exists in France, on a smaller scale. I often let 1 euro on the table if I'm pleased by the service.
I don't understand why most people should pay for a software for income tax, or any income at all by the way. Richest people with many sources of income or independent workers who are a firm as well as a person may need some consulting, but this is service, not software.
As a French, I'll do this in the next weeks:
Go to the website of government where I can pay all my taxes.
Enter my credentials (I got them my snail mail years ago).
Answer a few basic questions about marital status, address, spouse, age and number of children (very quick, the Fisc (our IRS) know everything and it has not changed).
All incomes from the family (employers, stocks...) are already known and pre-filled. I just have to check that it is in sync with all the summary papers that my employer or my banks have sent me these last weeks ("you must declare XX € in field XY, and YY € in field YZ"). If I want to check, I'll have to make some additions (hard!). I don't remember many mistakes since all this is already filled.
Tax deductions have their own fields. I must sum the numbers from the papers sent from by charities. The nanny for my daughter is already subsidized, so they know how much I've paid and can deduct.
The biggest challenge was tax deduction for the heating system and some insulation in the house. The problem is knowing if and how I'm allowed to deduct these expenses, not computing them. If I think that the 10% default for professional expenses is not enough, I can count all kilometers to work and a few other things. You need Excel to track all this, not more.
At the end the website tells me how much I'll have to pay, or how much I'll get back. If I want to calculate myself, the rules are simple enough that Excel should suffice. My grand father, whose situation was much more complicated, did all of this himself without computer.
So, French administration is on this rather simple and effective. Well, 500 years ago, foreign ambassadors were stunned by the efficiency of our tax system:-) Paid amounts, other taxes, and the way they are spent are other topics...
I see comments from Switzerland or Finland telling this is not more complicated there. I read German newspapers and every year the tax sofware is a hot topic - but these people never knew how to make things simple (not a surprise that SAP was born there but I digress) (said as Germand-friendly Frenchie).
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.
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...)
French trains between big cities (TGV and Corail) are rather nice. But it is not always so great. Suburb trains (between Paris and the surrounding crowded area) are often late, somtimes a bit old. Some lines in rural areas get only the old cars from big cities.
Price is another matter, it depends on the people, I don't complain.
One problem is that the rail company (SNCF) focuses on big lines (TGV especially) and investment in suburb lines is lacking. Thanks to the decentralization, the situation is improving in some areas: the "régions" (like small regional states with a few million people each) are now paying and want results.
A bigger problem is the lack of investment to move all the freight on trains. The number of trucks on our roads is scary.
If weight is unlimited, then doesn't it make sense for trains to be used *primarily* for freight and for airplanes to be used for passenger travel? It depends of the distance. Nobody is talking about a TGV between NY and LA. But it makes sense for areas the size of a bug European or American state.
For example: I live in Strasbourg (500 km from Paris, ~300 miles), and going to Paris involves a noisy 1 hour flight in a small chair, with 40 minutes waiting and checking and security and waiting before flying, and at least 40 minutes in a crowded train or in a traffic jam to go from the airport to the heart of Paris. In June, the TGV will be available between the two cities, although not at full speed on the whole distance. It'll take 2h20 from town center to town center. Not a big gain in time, but a nice one in comfort and tiredness (sp?).
BTW: One advantage of the TGV is the possibility to use the "old" tracks (with no speed gain of course). Contrary to a maglev, you don't need to upgrade the full network. You need to upgrade only the areas where it makes sense to launch the train at 300 km/h (~200 mph), and you can plan the upgrade on many years.
Many thanks for your comment!
Terms like "million" ("thousand", "hundred", etc.) are only pluralised when there is an indefinite number of millions; they're not pluralised when used in a cardinal number. It may be very logical... for an English mind:-)
Though a native speaker, I do not pretend to have a complete understanding of the reasons behind all the rules concerning articles in English, so don't ask me why, it'd probably take me hours to work it out.:-) That's the same in any language. Only teachers and foreigners try to understand the rules - and must accept that they sometimes do not exist (especially in French or English).
Commas are not usually required before relative clauses in UK English. US English, however, does have a strict rule: comma before "which", no comma before "that", and the two alternatives have different meanings (which you can look up). But if you're wanting to use US English, "that" with no comma would be more appropriate here. Commas are difficulties in many languages. As a French, I put them where I'd put a silence in the sentence. My German part of the brain tells me to put them before every relative clause (compulsory in German). As a European, I prefer the British English, that is the prefered version in French schools. As a French, I tend to choose the version that [and not 'which', right?] annoys the British the most. Then I remember I'm supposed to disklike Americans too, and choose not to care about grammar, as Globish is a bastardized child of American imperialism and globalization, and English like Americans need to suffer the same way as us who need to learn another language to communicate with the outside:o) Seriously, let's say that a comment on Slashdot should be in US English, and one on a British blog in UK English - if a foreigner even knows these subtile differences (I didn't; thanks for pointing them).
Similarly, I went to France right after that and it took me about a week to begin constructing my own proper sentences, even though my accent must have been grating to french ears, but the effort was appreciated We French people like to be a bit flattered sometimes:-)
Anyway, I took it as basic courtesy to learn the basic words of the local language when visiting another country. When in Rome...
I had just spoken an english sentence but used german construction so it came out all wrong and practically incomprehensible. Same problem here with some German constructions contaminating my English, and, to my own astonishment, my French (mother language).
I think this has economic roots. Dubbing has about the same cost in every language, but the cost for the final customer is very different according to the size of population/market.
France (like Germany) is a big market (60/80 millions people) to make dubbing economically feasible. Danemark for example (5 millions people) only dubs movies for children ; subtitles are enough for the rest. It is not a wonder to have very good English-speaking Danes when most of their TV speaks English. (It goes as far as endangering the Danish book industry: succesfull English or American books are read in English before the translated Danish version is available.)
In some Eastern Europe countries exit a cheap version of dubbing, with one or two actors reading translated text without synching the lips. They're used to it... Many Swiss people are probably accustomed to switching between their 3 or 4 official languages.
I can assure you that ALL foreign movies are dubbed in France, in the cinemas or on TV. Subtitles are not mainstream (this is laziness). But it's true that a rather big "cultural" alternative market exists for many people like me who prefer the original voices (with subtitles) and see it as a way to improve their English or German. It you want original content, you can have it (French-German TV broadcast TV channel, many free foreign TV channels through ADSL, cinemas in big cities). On the other side, our educational system needs to seriously improve the way foreign languages are teached (even if the default is that most children between 10 and 14 must begin to learn 2 languages (mainly English+Spanish, sometimes German or Italian).
As for clinging to our language with zeal, it is resistance of a once-powerful country in face of the power of English - and the American influence in many ways and areas, which goes with it. In my mind, the real problem has more to do with the lack of bi/trilinguism than with protecting French (which won't disappear). And we won't make ourselves understood by speaking so badly foreign languages. I'm astonished that so many countries accept so easily to throw all their own identity and use English (and only English) in so many areas: Scandinavian pop music, European Union internal communication, business relationships... I understand the practical reasons, but still...
in Western Europe it is de rigueur to speak at least three languages. Well, Western Europe is a big place with many different nations. You can expect people from small countries, like Swiss or Belgians, to be fluent in one or two foreign languages, and people from Sweden or Danemark to speak very good English and often German. But the average French barely speaks enough English for international business (with many exceptions), and English people don't even have to learn another language. Situation seems better in Germany, at least for English. IMHO, that has more to do with the educational system and motivation than anything else. Exposure to foreign content (most films in original version with subtitles on TV for example, as in Danemark) is another key.
(Spoken as a French which speaks three languages).
"Historical data" is of course the limited sample of the hard drives I've bought with typical desktop computers:-) from 200 Mb in 1994 to 300 Gb this year.
Convert into logarithmic scale, make a linear regression, and you see that a 1.2 Pb drive is only slightly above the curve, hence believable if you suppose that progress in this industry will continue at the same rate. I have no idea if the technology of the article makes sense though.
Caveat: Of course, blindly extrapolating current trends into the far future is the best way to make big mistakes...
>It's actually never legally allowed to >require a social security number; "they" >can request it, but not demand it
In some countries (France, Germany...) it is never asked (even forbidden ?). AFAIK, the only persons having access to my SSN in France are the one who need it (employer, doctors...). I lived 16 months in Germany, I was never asked mine (and I had none in this country).
And a SSN would be of little use here. We only had fraud cases with illegal immigrants without social security using the ID of a parent - at the expense of the State Social Security and insurance companies.
Not to say that identity stealing is impossible here, far from that, but not having this unique key seems to make it a bit more difficult... until now, at least.
>I don't have an Evian bottle to hand right now, >but I'm pretty sure it says something on the >side like "This bottle is not intended for use >with anything but Evian water."
I've got it too (in France).
There are two reasons:
- brand (they don't want anyone filling empty bottles with tap water and selling them as Evian)
- security : you should not fill an empty water bottle with chemicals for example. (The number of persons doing that is amazing; some people were severely wounded this way in a restaurant a few weeks a go).
So if you fill it with contaminated water, it's your problem, don't complain to Evian/Danone.
This is probably an idea of IT service companies, whos market has collapsed after the Y2K bug.
How many computers and softwares will have to be fixed to NOT display 2012? Is it allowed to take it into mortgage calculations? Is this year supposed NOT to exist before the end of the not-to-be-named-event?
This will lead in the UK to as much IT spendings as year 2000. Brilliant!
To sustain the IT activities, I propose we 'forbid' a random year about every 10 years (a different one per country to make it funnier), and we change currencies in Europe every 20 years (the Euro was another huge change that the UK has not yet done).
Slashdot Mirror
Off topic, but I was under the impression that, in many European countries, tipping is a practice reserved for exceptional service, and it's been like that for a long time. I thought it was mainly the U.S. where tipping less than 15% is basically an insult.
In France yes, but tipping is still important in Britain, Ireland, Germany at least, probably other countries.
Another French here. I don't think the higher prices that we paid before Free appeared were so good for investments. On the contrary: since Free appeared, Orange and the 2 other providers pushed and marketed heavily the "4G" (LTE), that Free does not offer. They had to compete on quality because they could not cope with the price. In 2005 (Free was not a mobile provider yet) they were together sentenced to 535 million euros due to an unlawful agreement. The market forces did not apply anymore, a big problem on the long term. We did not destroy the France Telecom monopoly in order to have a private oligopoly. Private firms will not invest on hardware if they can avoid it. Either they do it to provide better product or service (and the price will be higher), or they are forced by law.
French Free customer here.
The expectation is that the advertised price is the price that you will pay, right, and that's usually the case. But "advertised" means sometimes that the subscrition is N euros, and it is not clear (or in very small letters) that the compulsory routeur is M euros, and other options are X eurs, or that the price will double after 6 months, and so on. Our main provider (Orange, formerly France Telecom) and the others are very fond of this game. But Free does not, the 20 euros is really all included, no surprise.
As for tipping, it still exists in France, on a smaller scale. I often let 1 euro on the table if I'm pleased by the service.
I don't understand why most people should pay for a software for income tax, or any income at all by the way. Richest people with many sources of income or independent workers who are a firm as well as a person may need some consulting, but this is service, not software.
:-) Paid amounts, other taxes, and the way they are spent are other topics...
As a French, I'll do this in the next weeks:
Go to the website of government where I can pay all my taxes.
Enter my credentials (I got them my snail mail years ago).
Answer a few basic questions about marital status, address, spouse, age and number of children (very quick, the Fisc (our IRS) know everything and it has not changed).
All incomes from the family (employers, stocks...) are already known and pre-filled. I just have to check that it is in sync with all the summary papers that my employer or my banks have sent me these last weeks ("you must declare XX € in field XY, and YY € in field YZ"). If I want to check, I'll have to make some additions (hard!). I don't remember many mistakes since all this is already filled.
Tax deductions have their own fields. I must sum the numbers from the papers sent from by charities. The nanny for my daughter is already subsidized, so they know how much I've paid and can deduct.
The biggest challenge was tax deduction for the heating system and some insulation in the house. The problem is knowing if and how I'm allowed to deduct these expenses, not computing them. If I think that the 10% default for professional expenses is not enough, I can count all kilometers to work and a few other things. You need Excel to track all this, not more.
At the end the website tells me how much I'll have to pay, or how much I'll get back. If I want to calculate myself, the rules are simple enough that Excel should suffice. My grand father, whose situation was much more complicated, did all of this himself without computer.
So, French administration is on this rather simple and effective. Well, 500 years ago, foreign ambassadors were stunned by the efficiency of our tax system
I see comments from Switzerland or Finland telling this is not more complicated there. I read German newspapers and every year the tax sofware is a hot topic - but these people never knew how to make things simple (not a surprise that SAP was born there but I digress) (said as Germand-friendly Frenchie).
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.
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.
The French court system follows precedent rulings (jurisprudence ) but it is weaker as in the US system.
Earthquakes? In France?
I see the point in California, but it didn't stop Japan to build many trains.
French trains between big cities (TGV and Corail) are rather nice. But it is not always so great. Suburb trains (between Paris and the surrounding crowded area) are often late, somtimes a bit old. Some lines in rural areas get only the old cars from big cities.
Price is another matter, it depends on the people, I don't complain.
One problem is that the rail company (SNCF) focuses on big lines (TGV especially) and investment in suburb lines is lacking. Thanks to the decentralization, the situation is improving in some areas: the "régions" (like small regional states with a few million people each) are now paying and want results.
A bigger problem is the lack of investment to move all the freight on trains. The number of trucks on our roads is scary.
In June, the TGV will be available between the two cities, although not at full speed on the whole distance. It'll take 2h20 from town center to town center. Not a big gain in time, but a nice one in comfort and tiredness (sp?).
BTW: One advantage of the TGV is the possibility to use the "old" tracks (with no speed gain of course). Contrary to a maglev, you don't need to upgrade the full network. You need to upgrade only the areas where it makes sense to launch the train at 300 km/h (~200 mph), and you can plan the upgrade on many years.
Seriously, let's say that a comment on Slashdot should be in US English, and one on a British blog in UK English - if a foreigner even knows these subtile differences (I didn't; thanks for pointing them).
I think this has economic roots. Dubbing has about the same cost in every language, but the cost for the final customer is very different according to the size of population/market.
France (like Germany) is a big market (60/80 millions people) to make dubbing economically feasible. Danemark for example (5 millions people) only dubs movies for children ; subtitles are enough for the rest. It is not a wonder to have very good English-speaking Danes when most of their TV speaks English. (It goes as far as endangering the Danish book industry: succesfull English or American books are read in English before the translated Danish version is available.)
In some Eastern Europe countries exit a cheap version of dubbing, with one or two actors reading translated text without synching the lips. They're used to it... Many Swiss people are probably accustomed to switching between their 3 or 4 official languages.
I can assure you that ALL foreign movies are dubbed in France, in the cinemas or on TV. Subtitles are not mainstream (this is laziness). But it's true that a rather big "cultural" alternative market exists for many people like me who prefer the original voices (with subtitles) and see it as a way to improve their English or German. It you want original content, you can have it (French-German TV broadcast TV channel, many free foreign TV channels through ADSL, cinemas in big cities).
On the other side, our educational system needs to seriously improve the way foreign languages are teached (even if the default is that most children between 10 and 14 must begin to learn 2 languages (mainly English+Spanish, sometimes German or Italian).
As for clinging to our language with zeal, it is resistance of a once-powerful country in face of the power of English - and the American influence in many ways and areas, which goes with it. In my mind, the real problem has more to do with the lack of bi/trilinguism than with protecting French (which won't disappear). And we won't make ourselves understood by speaking so badly foreign languages.
I'm astonished that so many countries accept so easily to throw all their own identity and use English (and only English) in so many areas: Scandinavian pop music, European Union internal communication, business relationships... I understand the practical reasons, but still...
(Spoken as a French which speaks three languages).
"Historical data" is of course the limited sample of the hard drives I've bought with typical desktop computers :-) from 200 Mb in 1994 to 300 Gb this year.
Convert into logarithmic scale, make a linear regression, and you see that a 1.2 Pb drive is only slightly above the curve, hence believable if you suppose that progress in this industry will continue at the same rate. I have no idea if the technology of the article makes sense though.
Caveat: Of course, blindly extrapolating current trends into the far future is the best way to make big mistakes...
>It's actually never legally allowed to
>require a social security number; "they"
>can request it, but not demand it
In some countries (France, Germany...) it is never asked (even forbidden ?). AFAIK, the only persons having access to my SSN in France are the one who need it (employer, doctors...). I lived 16 months in Germany, I was never asked mine (and I had none in this country).
And a SSN would be of little use here. We only had fraud cases with illegal immigrants without social security using the ID of a parent - at the expense of the State Social Security and insurance companies.
Not to say that identity stealing is impossible here, far from that, but not having this unique key seems to make it a bit more difficult... until now, at least.
>I don't have an Evian bottle to hand right now,
>but I'm pretty sure it says something on the
>side like "This bottle is not intended for use
>with anything but Evian water."
I've got it too (in France).
There are two reasons:
- brand (they don't want anyone filling empty bottles with tap water and selling them as Evian)
- security : you should not fill an empty water bottle with chemicals for example. (The number of persons doing that is amazing; some people were severely wounded this way in a restaurant a few weeks a go).
So if you fill it with contaminated water, it's your problem, don't complain to Evian/Danone.
> they can take a page from Japan's book and call
> the year "Elizabeth 61".
Like any idea, it is not new: it was the common custom almost everywhere ni many countries until a few hundred years ago.
> Anno Hegirae 1433
:-\
In London, you would probably and immediately get shot in the head for telling that
But the idea is good. "2973 ab urbe condita" would be more European. Or "55 after Rome treaty".
This is probably an idea of IT service companies, whos market has collapsed after the Y2K bug.
How many computers and softwares will have to be fixed to NOT display 2012? Is it allowed to take it into mortgage calculations? Is this year supposed NOT to exist before the end of the not-to-be-named-event?
This will lead in the UK to as much IT spendings as year 2000. Brilliant!
To sustain the IT activities, I propose we 'forbid' a random year about every 10 years (a different one per country to make it funnier), and we change currencies in Europe every 20 years (the Euro was another huge change that the UK has not yet done).
This is South of France. We in Paris, Bretagne or Alsace could live without them :-)
Seriously: a major meltdown would mean a problem for the whole Western Europe. If the n1 or n2 economic power has problems, it isn't good for anybody.