Now get of this silly balance beam and run the marathon, please ! Oh, and don't forget to wear your full armour and weapons : you would not dare to arrive naked before the gods, don't you ? :)

We have the same here in France, for years, with average success.

Every couple of years, the administration has to completely adjust those taxes because of the market evolution (new category of devices : think smartphone, tablet, NAS, digical video recorder, hard drive based TV recorder, internet-modem-with-nas-but-only-for-catchup-tv, etc) and the technological improvements (DVD, blueray, SSD, hybrid storage, cloud, etc). Basically, it is a mess and nobody is happy : the entertainment industry says it gets not enough money from it, the citizen are against it, ISP say that content is none of their business, companies pay for taxes that don't concern them, etc.

The final result is that the money doesn't go to the right persons, the average customers are taxed, and all the rest are buying their hardware in other European countries where the products are not burdened with those taxes.

Therefore, partly in French :

I am a customer of EDF (Électricité de France; a now private company owned and managed by the state. Yes, I know it make no senses, but that's a trick to counter European regulations), like more than 90% of the population.

• - puissance souscrite : 6 kVA (max power available in household)
• - abonnement mensuel : 7,84 € (monthly subscription)
• - prix du kWh :
  • * Heures Pleines : 0,1311 € (price per kWh during the day)
  • * Heures Creuses : 0,0893 € (price per kWh during the night : 23h00-07h00)

No restrictions, I broadcast my wifi access point to the complete city block. People are free to use it for accessing the net.

It is the same network that I am using for my personal use, I am only applying QoS for granting me the full bandwidth that I need and for preventing somebody for swamping the line so everybody can use it.

I am using a mix of secure (ssh for work and data exchange between my computers) and unsecure connections (browsing /. :). Other people can do whatever they prefer.

Here in France, more and more citizen and non-profit organisation are willing to explicit put into the law that access to the internet is a basic right, such as healthcare and pension. Actually, the law is confused about the fact that people can share their internet connection with other people, so we need a clarification.

No, this is just the "international Apple taxe" :/

Forcing single price when you don't have single monnaie is silly.

$150 in iTunes US, and 149€ in iTunes France for the CD Box Set?

Damn you Apple and your currency rate! $1 != 1€, and the music files are the same all around the planet.