Microsoft is Much More Honest in Canadian French

[mbarrick]

I had to replace he old computer I was using (a PII-350 purchased in 1998) as a spam filter. It had become too slow to deal with the volume of crap I get. Not only do I get the usual barrage of spam that everyone gets, but for nearly a year now I have been getting a heinous amount of backsplatter from spam-zombies using spoofed @gothic.bc.ca return addresses. The latest crudtastic tactic of putting the advertising message in an image is what put the poor little box over the edge after nine years of valiant service. Adding OCR slowed the processing down enough that messages were coming in faster than they could be processed. Time for a new spam-pig.

Given that I was replacing a PII-350 even the most bottom of the line machine out there now would be orders of magnitude more powerful, so I went looking for just that - bargain-basement last-year's clearance models. The clearance model I went with was configured for Canadian French. Not needing the keyboard nor giving a rat's ass about whatever OS was preinstalled since I'd be wiping it off anyway, French was not a problem.

I couldn't resist firing it up as-is though, and I was greeted by this très amusant welcome:

Literally: "Welcome to this Microsoft System of Exploitation" (And yes, I do realise the meaning of "exploitation" is different than its current English usage and simply means, as it used to in English, "to use productively". But it is just like knowing the French word for "bread" has nothing do with with physical discomfort but not being able to help seeing the English "pain" before translating nonetheless... in the land of cereal-box French these kinds of cross-language puns part of the culture.)

And now that I have it and since I have an e-acute in my middle name, I'm now really tempted to use the French keyboard.

Comments

[gothiousrex.livejournal.com]

Chaque jour au travail, je dois parler aux clients qui utilisent Windows XP en français.

C'est possible à avoir des lettres avec des accents sur un klavier anglais aussi.

On tient le clef ALT et tappe quelques chiffres.

par exemple.

à = ALT + 0224
é = ALT + 0233
è = ALT + 0232
ç = ALT + 0231

et il y a plusiers d'autres.

également, les termes sont différents.

My Computer = Poste de Travail
My Network Places = Favorit Réseau
Edit = Edition
File = Fichier
Tools = Outils
Folder = Dossier (ou Repetoire)
View = Vue
keyboard = klavier
Start = Démarrer
Run = Exécuter
Programs = Tous les Programs
Printers = Imprimantes
Print = Imprimer
Control Panel = Panneau de Configuration
Settings = Paramètres
Search = Rechercher
Help = Aide
Update = Mise à Jour
Support = Support (ou Soutiens)
Open = Ouvrir
New = Nouveau
Close = Terminer (ou Fermer)
Next = Suivant
Back = Précédent
Up One Level = Dossier Parent
Web Site = Site Web ou Site Toile
Shared Folder = Dossier Partagé
Window = Fenètre

[mbarrick.livejournal.com]

I know about using alt-keypad to get at metacharacters, but having a single key or a simple two-key sequence using labelled keys is a bit more intuative.