Yeah, imagine an alternate reality wherein all our computers would be built in a communist country!
LOL, that would be sooo weird! Soo completely different from this one, where everything's labelled "MADE IN THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA".

Reality ... it's very often stranger than fiction.

I'm a member of April, the French association for software freedom, and we are in close contacts with the administration around this.
First of all: they have no idea how they're going to implement this crap. They are genuinely clueless. The project bill is constantly changing, it's clearly unworkable both technically and legally.
They have to jump through legal hoops to make this crap not a legal sanction: because otherwise it would infringes on rights to a fair trial and so on. So in effect if you are to be a victim of this system, it will be for "failing to secure a computer system", not for copyright infringement! Even so, it is unlikely to stand up to any legal challenge at the Constitutional Court, or at the European level.
Technically, obviously, this thing is not going anywhere. They obviously believe the antivirus software vendore BS, that you can actually secure a Windows PC. This thing is going to be false positive galore. I can imagine the PR disaster once the first granny is accused of downloading copyrighted hiphop. You know how we handle these things here? In the street. Heads will roll.
In the mean time, what you have is typical of what you'd expect from Bush-wannabe Sarkozy: his administration is choke full of incompetent, technologically inept buddies of his, hired for their connections, not their skills.

1. The $300 million is BULLSHIT
2. The US refuses to extradite KNOWN terrorist José Posada Carilles to Venezuela (of course, he's a CIA operative and did his misdeeds for them)

"It's not so much that you are paying for exotic materials or high tolerances; the gas and filament are fundamentally the same as any other bulb."

You most certainly don't pay for the filament, for there isn't any. Projector bulbs are discharge lamps, i.e. a lightning is continuously passing through a special mixture of gases. They are *not* incandescent light bulbs, for fuxake.
They are expensive because they are made of material resistant to high pressure, high temperature, the electrodes have to be very durable and so on. They look superficially like common light bulbs, but the fabrication processes are completely different.
They might be overpriced, but not by an order of magnitude like ink cartridges.

For some reason, Google Books doesn't let me read this 103 year old book, implying it's still copyrighted. WTF?

Stop the tinfoil hats, removable batteries take more space than non-user serviceable ones, that's a fact. You can shave a mm here and there when you don't have to take into account wear & tear, and a millimeter is what makes or break a gizmo such as the iPod.

Like Dawn of the Dead hasn't stolen everything from previous movies ... riiiight.

Just like Disney is all for extending copyrights NOW, but if they were that long when it started in the 30s, it wouldn't have been able to steal all that shit from Anderssen and others.

Scum-sucking copyright hoarders ...

Those assholes didn't put the French language version online.
It's only available from their craptacular Windows DRM-encumbered Piece of Shit VOD site. Which, on top of being technically repugnant, is extremely expensive: I was checking out one specific episode of "Le Dessous des Cartes", a 10 min long show, and it was priced at 3.99€. Plus DRM.

/ one pissed-off French taxpayer

To paraphrase Feynman, I'll believe in teleportation, metempsychosis or time travel before I believe in perpetual motion.
Postion this kind of crap is a waste of time.

My lebanese friends whose houses and workplaces got bombed to pieces in the summer of 2006 kind of feel the same way, you know.
And speaking of terrorists, I had a (distant) relative who once was officially a terrorist. A young man in occupied France, he took to the maquis to avoid being conscripted to work in german weapon factories. He was on the "wanted" list, as a "terrorist." All résistants were labelled "terrorists" by the occupier.
I'm not saying the situation was anywhere near the same as occupied Palestine. But to those pro-israel people out there, I just want to ask you one question:

What would you do if you were in their stead? What would you do if you were born in occupied Palestine, had to submit to daily harassment and humiliation by the occupying forces, couldn't travel to see your family, couldn't get a job as most Palestinians?

I puzzled over this one, until I remembered that what you USians call "coffee" is not actual coffee. Coffee-flavored hot water is more like it.

"...Lessee, she's at home safe with the kids in Englandland. It's not like NYC's excuse for CPS has any jurisdiction over there, so they can probably go take a flying fuck."

There's a treaty between the two countries whereby a US judge can request that a UK subject be extradited to the US. The converse being not true.

From the article: [Lt. Mark Peterson of the State Patrol] said no one in Minneapolis has died directly from a Taser. The Hennepin County medical examiner found a Minneapolis man shot with a Taser died from cocaine abuse, heart disease and emphysema in 2003. The next year, another Minneapolis man with heart disease and hypertension died from a heart attack after he was shot with a Taser.
No one has died directly from a gunshot wound. The medical examiner found that most of the victims died of hemorraging. Could have been due to a paper cut, or a rasor wound to the face. Nothing to see here. Move along.

We will probably have the usual authoritarians defending the police ... and again, we will have to point out that tasers were supposed to be used *instead* of guns, and that it couldn't possibly have been appropriate here.

Lyon is also famed for its sausage (saucisson), I doubt they'll clone it.

"In a nutshell, they were selling their trademark, which they must enforce or lose it."

Copyrights and trademarks are related, but different concepts. You appear to be mixing them up; you are therefore most likely wrong.

What's the point of packing an optical drive in an ultra-portable? (Why not a floppy drive? Or a parallel port? An analog joystick port? An external SCSI port?)
I use my DVD burner once a month (if at all) on my laptop, it could just as well be external.

"I'm ashamed, horribly ashamed. (That said, the socialist opposition was even more ridiculous)"

Oh really? For weeks before the election we heard the media imply, or explicitly claim that Royal had no program, while her program was extremely detailed and available for all to see on her website.

Yes, we've been fucked over, by the corporate media.

Keep one thing in mind: 53% of voters aged 18-65 voted for Ségolène. 65% of voters 65 and up voted for Sarkozy. That's right, those who won't work anymore elected the "work more" guy.

I'm not sure a laptop's case is the prime candidate for biodegradability. First of all it's meant for long term-use (a few years), as opposed to a few weeks for most plastic items. And then there's probably a bunch of stuff inside that's either not biodegradable (hard drive!), or that you DON'T want to biodegrade, such as mercury in the screen's fluorescent lighting.
It's a bit like Arnold's hybrid Hummer. I'm sure it's got some use and that it might save some dino juice, but it's probably not the first place where I'd try to go green.

Bruce seems to surprised to discover that what is now called Al Qaeda would terrorize other sunnis.
This was already explained and analyzed in the awesome documentary "The Power of Nightmares."

The US democracy is not working, that much is clear: only those politicians currently in the spotlight, the democratic candidates, are actually doing something about this. And then, that's mostly just one of them, Chris Dodd, with the other candidates forced to follow ... forced by whom? BY THE PEOPLE.

What about all the other democratic senators? They don't care, because they don't work for the people, they only pretend to once every 6 years. Republican senators? They're quasi-fascists; domestic spying is not a bug to them, it's a FEATURE.

Go read http://theauthoritarians.com

I'm quite astonished that the gov't would give out the information that way. Among everything that's been about the legality of this situation, I believe this runs contrary to EU data privacy directives.

Mailing used products has got to be the most inefficient way to deal with waste. It's just mind-boggingly stupid.

Here's another awesome video of the same kind of madness:

http://www.dailymotion.com/Fredy_K/video/xfgxp_nuit-de-la-glisse-wingsuit

Although, I have to admit, it's not as awesome as having one of those nutbags fly by a few meters away from you as in the video posted in the article.

I find it amusing that "free market" advocates take their opinions as truth (gov't intervention drives prices up), even when reality proves them wrong (it actually keeps them down overall). It's true in this case, it's also true in the case of utilities privatization, which is driving prices up and quality down in Europe.
I just wanted to add that the motivation behind this regulation in France is that books are considered cultural object and not mere commodities; and that bookshops provide a (cultural) service to the community beyond just generating revenue.