The situation is a bit peculiar : - both the Police Nationale and the Gendarmerie report to the Ministère de l'Interieur. But Gendarmes retain a military status while Policiers are civilians: some differences in duties and in pay, but a strong difference on rights: les gendarmes are not allowed to go on strike or to publicly profess political preferences (as all soldiers here) while les policiers can do both. - both forces have elite counter-terrorism teams, altough the most renowed one belongs to the Gendarmerie (GIGN). And both forces are requested to work together if need be, and regularly train together. As for the police : Windows on the desktop, 80% Linux in the datacenters, with some AIX and windows.

I mostly agree.

Some believed or hoped that they would be less discriminated because they would have acquired this "right". But the fact is that anybody still distinguishes between "mariage" and "gay mariage", the former being related to the cult of fertility, and the later to "two consenting adults living together until divorce or death".

The atheists have just robbed the word in France too, and they have gained no respect for it, just the contrary. How sad.

P.S. : in France one has to "mary" by the mayor before being allowed to be maried in Church if one chooses so, and since the late 18th century.

Currently running under Zentyal over Ubuntu 10.04.

Each family member has an account, parents have RW access everywhere, kids are generally RO or have no access at all depending on the folder.

... for paid DVDs?

I cannot help but feeling pissed of each time I buy one film and am forced to endure minutes of ads against pirating (But I even paid the bloody thing!) or for films I will not see or for violent films when the DVD contains a cartoon for the kids.

And have you noticed all those films on the walls for things you do not want nor ear about? They have been flourishing in Paris lately. They catch your eyes, because your eyes will look at moving things, however hard you try to ignore them. The ad industry has become a sheer nuisance.

Meanwhile, as a Free.fr subscriber, I am not so sure the move is smart, especially since it would be activated by default (one has to reboot the box to upgrade the firmware, and I do it twice a year or so, haven't done it yet).
I do accept some dose of advertisement on sites, but no flash by default, Flashblock is my friend. That suffices me up to now. Manwhile, I would appreciate Porn blocking, by default. All ads? Perhaps too bold a move.

Well, it is Hydroptère, and have a look at images from 2009 when they broke the 100 km/h barrier over 500m. Here is the "records" page of the official site. They plan to dash through the Pacific Ocean with that boat...

Not just the far right.

He strangely but really generates fanacism among his supporters, suppress their brain and have them vote for him. Very strange to witness first handedly. And quite frightening.

The heavy use of so called "sondages qualitatifs" (quality-driven polls ?) has surely something to do with it. Never has a president so much relied on them: he just chooses a somewhat homegeneous audience and delivers a targetted message to them, one that will suit them very well. After that, he can nearly say what he wants on other matters, they will vote for him.

#1 target group: old people, do not really know anything about the Internet, feel frightened, think the young guys of their time were better. They vote for him much more than the average Frenchman. To put it another way: it just work.

Not all French politic personnel is equal. Mitterand, or Jospin, of even Chirac, independently of what you think of them, have not spent all their time in power to create or amend a law each time someting nasty occured. And many current opponents to Sarkozy would not do that either. I bet even tightwing députés are fed up with so many laws. Most of Sarkozy's laws have never been enacted, by the way: neither French administration nor even Sarko's own governement can cope with such an amount of baddly written (and badly thought) laws.

Do not put all politicians in the same bag please.

... and I really get accustomed to it.

It is the firt time I find the multi-virtual-desktop thing usable : it becomes very practical to setup multiple virtual desktops for so many different tasks, and it is nice.

I had to customise it a little though, with the folowing extensions, right out from the https://extensions.gnome.org/ website :
- Coverflow Alt-Tab : Replacement of Alt-Tab, iterates through windows in a cover-flow manner.
- Dash Click Fix : Fix the dash's behavior when you click on an already running icon. The default behaviour is to switch to it, this extension changes that to lanch a new instance instead
- Places Status Indicator : Add a systems status menu for quickly navigating places in the system
- Power Options : Show Suspend, Hibernate (if available) and Power Off options in user menu.
- Remove Accesibility : Remove the accesibility button from the top panel.
- System Monitor : Add a system monitor to the left side of the message tray.

Hardware / software base : Debian "Wheezy" (testing) on a high end full HD laptop with an external monitor attached to it sometimes.
Usage : web / email / some games / office work / platform prototyping with virtual machines, modelling.

The external display behaves like a charm (with really minor glitches : le login screen will somtimes not appear properly if the monitor gets plugged off before one unlocks the screen, but it still work).
I miss the cube. I miss a screensaver, I miss the capacity to change windows themes and colours and the "control pannel" lacks several usefull features, but overall, it is very usable and properly translated in French.

And they are especially put at use when winter bites, so the net CO2 emission scheme may not be as brilliant as die Grünen would like to put it. Meanwhile, France can only blame herself: EDF (Electricité de France) has promoted electric heating so much that peak demand cannot be provided by EDF... Similarly, we have seen a huge push for electric cooling systems in the last years (you will not feel warm nor cold with the Electricity Fairy !) wich also induces high peak demand when the Nuclear Plants are providing less electricity (many are closed for maintenance, and the rivers are warm and low, so the plants must tread light on water supply). Strange to see how brilliant polytechnicians can make stupid blunders.

The Monge is an big scientific vessel from the French navy, conceived to track ICBM missiles during their re-entry phase and provide precise telemetry for validation purposes. Have a look there (in French) : http://www.meretmarine.com/article.cfm?id=117220

Omnipotent means that God can do what He wants, but that does not mean that He always wants to control everything.

I bet He does not want it, for a simple reason: that would be no fun at all, not interresting at all, pointless.

One could even argue that free will is the Gift of God to mankind, you know, like in Tolkien's world...

Well it depends: Alcatel spent the money to acquire Lucent but the whole management is now American, and the jobs too are shored away from France at an accelerated pace (directly to Asia, no need to hire in the US either). So seen from the interior it seems the US company has bought the French one and proceeds as usual.

We French are apparently accustomed to be f***ed up hard by the US and we love it ! See the brilliant adventures of Renault, EDF with Constellation, and Executive life with the Credit Lyonnais, compensations 10 times lower for French citizens compared to US citizens blasted in the same plane, etc, etc, etc, the list is endless.

We love you !

A human is 80% water anyway. So it produces only 80% of the nominal foam quantity.