I think you lost context somewhere.
Yes, I doubt there exist 'small online shops for books' how would they operate, what would they sell?
Sure there are book stored, especially eBooks that are smaller than Apple or Amazon or B&N ... was that the topic of dicussion?

Sorry, book sellers group it like this since, how long? Since Harry Potter?
Because they believe a Nerd who likes Fantasy also likes SF or a Geek who likes SF also likes fantasy.
Fact is, most people only read one of the genres ... so no point to linger in a book store and browse the wall of books. For everyone 50% of the books are the wrong ones ...
What compels an author to sell permanent exclusive rights, whether through assignment or exclusive license, to a publisher?

I don't know, I assume the 'free market' prevents him from getting a deal with any publisher at all, if he does not agree to slavery terms?

Second, I was clarifying that unavailable translations are not the fault of book sellers, be they Amazon or brick and mortar, but instead business decisions made by authors.
no one said it was the 'book sellers'. tNevertheless your conclusion is nonsense. The author is the last one having anything to say, first comes the publisher in the original country, the 'guy' who has the copyright. THEN comes the publisher in the destination country. And those often decide 'oh, we translated the first and the second of the books of Mr. Author' but his third one did not get a Nebula or a Hugo ... so we don't translate it. The fourth we will do again because it was a best seller in the USA. Oooooops, those four books where a sequel and book number three is missing, sucks ...
Hence: read in the original language ... and as we are at it, learn more languages ...

I wonder how big images to be displayed on such a screen would be, or more important: what camera do you need to be able to support such resolutions?

No it is not easy.
10 people voting with their wallet for the book shop around the corner are not enough for it to survive. And it is usually not so that the others vote 'against' it but they don't 'vote' at all ... hence the book shop runs out of business.
So: people who realize that don't even vote in the first place (with their wallet) but order directly online ...

The easy answer:
ETs: technology, future
Elves: magic, middle ages

The other topic about translation, that is easy to answer: american copyright law is at fault. As it prohibits authors to sell their work as they please. Once sold to a publisher the publisher has 'the copyright' ... I fail to see what your two points add to the discussion :)

Perhaps you should read a bit in the other threads instead of claiming you know what france is doing.

France made clear that discounts may not exceed 25% ... and that shipping costs are included.

The rest of your post/rant is pure 'idiology'!

Like everybody else, you don't know how an 'ideal' market works. So it is a good thing that every nation strives for their own 'idea of an ideal market' so the world can compare them.

Bottom line you have no clue what a government is for. It is for governing, that means amoung other things that it should defines the rules at the market. Not the market defines the rules.

What has the future to do with your bullshit rant? France is one of the most developed countries of the worl, do not fear about their future.

Who said it is better?
And ... never heard about a 'small' online shop.

*sigh*

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

I guess your google fu allows you to find more 'evidence' with modern REMs you even can watch a single water molecule ... well trapped somehow so you stay focused, no idea what the rational behind that is ... but researchers do that kind of stuff.

Voting with the wallet is a pipe dream.
It never happened and never will.

It is far to easy to sit at a saturday night at your PC and order something which might be at monday morning in your post box than staying up early at monday and go to the shop.

In your country I can not even order a car from the manufactor. I have to go to a local shop to buy it there.

And you are concerned about a remote country in europe that prefers to buy books in a shop instead of mail ordering them from a multi national corporation?

Wow ...

Screw france and any other country that thinks they have a right to control how markets operate.
  Perhaps you should start reading the laws in your country that moderate how YOUR market operates.

Every country has the right, the privilege, to define by itself how the market there works.

You are a brain dead imperialist thinking that you can enforce your idea how a market works on other countries ... oh, actually that is exactly what the US is doing the last 50-70 years ... luckily they failed so far.

So screw yourself?

Most book shops can order any book over night, max in 2 days. Sometimes if you come early in the morning they even get it at the same day.

Everything that is rare and about to be extinct is worth to be protected.
I for my part don't want to live in a town where the pedestrian areas only consist of coffee shops and fashion shops. If that is emotional appealing for you, oO!

In my town, Karlsruhe, Germany, more than half of the book shops have closed.
Most of the other half got bought buy 'book shop chains' (like Thalia) ... from my mind I can perhaps count 5 still existing book shops. So going 'shopping' is no longer going to happen.
On top of that for some dumb reason they put SF and Fantasy into one category 'SF&Fantasy' however I'm not interested in the later ... and it takes 5 or more years till an interesting title is finally translated into german.
I guess the topic is complicated, as in germany we have something like central defined prices, by the publisher. Book shops may, by law, not sell the book cheaper. Unless the book is damaged somehow, like some bookseller accidentaly made a stroke with a pen over the side of the pages :)
The result is that amazon.de sells english books for more or less (often more) the same price than the german translation.
Obviously I mostly order english books from amazon.com or amazon.uk. The .com costs import tariffs, but only if the total value is above 100â. Unfortunately Amazon does no longer ship for free overseas, but still it saves me 30%-50% if I buy books from the US. Worst case if I make a mistake even with shipping costs and import tariffs a book bought in the US is still cheaper than the same one bought here ... sad, considering the CO2 etc. ....

I did not start this homeopathic thread, it was my parent :)

Unfortunately half of your claims or elaborations are either wrong or show quite some ignorance.

Alcohols (2), especially the longer ones, do form chains of molecules. The scientific term is: "hydrogen bridge binding", loosely translated from german. I guess you can figure the 'correct english term'. Likely you find it in the wikipedia article about alcohol, at the discussion about the boiling point e.g.

You ever heard about 'protein folding at home'? Your (4). Sorry, simply wrong. A huge amount of chemical effects in your body happen due to the form of the molecules involved. Yes, an amino acid is nothing but a relatively huge molecule. So picking H2S and H2O as a 'counter example' is a bit missleading, imho. Hm, btw, are there circumstances where CH2 can exist? Another thing to google ...

Regarding to (5) there are plenty experiments with plants and animals that show that certain classes of homeopathic treatments work quite fine. E.g. in Germany most medicals for animals are homeopathic based. On the other hand I'm not Steve Jobs ... if I get cancer I don't take some homeopathic 'remedy' :)

Oh, and btw, related to an answer to someone else, but fitting to your (1) and (4) claim: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...