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Feynman talks about this model in his book "six easy pieces" and says that this would not work because Galilean motion would be slowed down by this wind, which is not what we are observing.

if you select products imported from countries who recently switched from Imperial, naturally it wouldn't be in metric.

Now look at imports from metric countries

Uh, no?

Britain also seems to use English measurement drive sockets...

Same in France...

Five editions? Of course, it's an ebook, they can claim it's a new edition every time they make an edit and press the save button.

Huh? Are we talking about the same book? As is clear from the very Amazon page you linked to, the French editions were old-fashioned dead-tree books.

Considering that they call their book a bestseller (during a tiny little period of time on amazon.fr)...

As I understand it, their characterization of the book as a "best-seller right from the start" wass mainly based on the fact that the first edition sold out in four months. As for being the top seller on Amazon.fr, the Ulule page says "It was even the most sold book on Amazon.fr for an entire morning." So they're entirely upfront that the top ranking was only for a short time. (Still, though. For one morning it was selling better than Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, or whatever. Not bad for a book about Debian.)

And who is their publisher anyway?

The French publisher was Eyrolles, again easily ascertained from the very Amazon page you linked to. According to Wikipedia, Eyrolles was founded in 1925 and has over 200 employees and annual revenues exceeding 50 million euro, so I'm fairly sure they're not just a front for two dodgy authors and a double-sided laser printer. You can find the latest edition on the publisher's website here.

[Blah blah lots of stuff about Lulu]

I don't really see what relevance this has to the French editions which you were criticising in your initial post. I thought we were debating whether the French editions had sold well, rather than discussing the publishing model for the new English edition.

Five editions? Of course, it's an ebook, they can claim it's a new edition every time they make an edit and press the save button.

Huh? Are we talking about the same book? As is clear from the very Amazon page you linked to, the French editions were old-fashioned dead-tree books.

Considering that they call their book a bestseller (during a tiny little period of time on amazon.fr)...

As I understand it, their characterization of the book as a "best-seller right from the start" wass mainly based on the fact that the first edition sold out in four months. As for being the top seller on Amazon.fr, the Ulule page says "It was even the most sold book on Amazon.fr for an entire morning." So they're entirely upfront that the top ranking was only for a short time. (Still, though. For one morning it was selling better than Harry Potter, Da Vinci Code, or whatever. Not bad for a book about Debian.)

And who is their publisher anyway?

The French publisher was Eyrolles, again easily ascertained from the very Amazon page you linked to. According to Wikipedia, Eyrolles was founded in 1925 and has over 200 employees and annual revenues exceeding 50 million euro, so I'm fairly sure they're not just a front for two dodgy authors and a double-sided laser printer. You can find the latest edition on the publisher's website here.

[Blah blah lots of stuff about Lulu]

I don't really see what relevance this has to the French editions which you were criticising in your initial post. I thought we were debating whether the French editions had sold well, rather than discussing the publishing model for the new English edition.

Don't be so quick to spend your money, there are most likely better books on this topic. The book was never a "bestseller" even in French (except for a very brief window of time on Amazon.com when the author had his entire family and all his friends buy the same book at the same time). And the stellar reviews found on the author's web site certainly didn't come from the one less than luke-warm review that can be found on amazon.fr

Indeed, the article is surprising, or more accurately, void of new information
But there is another, worrying implication that the Telegraph can disclose for the first time: that the errors committed by the pilot doing the flying were not corrected by his more experienced colleagues because they did not know he was behaving in a manner bound to induce a stall. And the reason for that fatal lack of awareness lies partly in the design of the control stick – the “side stick” – used in all Airbus cockpits.
For the first time ? As you said, this has been beaten to death in various reports. There has already been an almost full transcript of the cockpit voice recorder leaked in a book months before. The last and final report from the investigators is scheduled to come out in June. They have put in place a special panel composed of pilots to try to understand the reactions of the crew (including seemingly ignoring the stall warnings, the apparent lack of confidence in the instruments, etc), and have dug into the history of flights during which pitots tube froze at high altitude. I think their conclusions might be slightly more revealing than the Telegraph copying-and-pasting other websites.

...and this is an original book in French. It's not a translation of a German book. I don't know where you found this misinformation.

I read it in one of one the comments here. Is that not the same book? Aren't you Raphaël Hertzog?

No, it's not the same book. The one that will be translated is here (former edition here). Or you might want the official web page I maintain for the French version.

Concerning the book you linked to, yes I am the Raphael Hertzog who contributed to the translation, but the original book was not in German but in English (even though the author—Martin Krafft—speaks German as his mother tongue).

I think repeatedly calling your book a "bestseller" because it happened to be a "bestseller" on amazon.fr for a single morning (or perhaps even less time than that) is misleading.

Thanks for the clarification, I had not understood your point. I call it a bestseller because it is a bestseller for my editor, we sold over 16000 copies of this book and for a technical book on the French market, this is really good. Most technical books barely achieve 1000-1500 copies (the point where the editor usually starts making some money). The fact that we were on Amazon's listing is just a little anecdote to introduce the story...

...and this is an original book in French. It's not a translation of a German book. I don't know where you found this misinformation.

I read it in one of one the comments here. Is that not the same book? Aren't you Raphaël Hertzog?

No, it's not the same book. The one that will be translated is here (former edition here). Or you might want the official web page I maintain for the French version.

Concerning the book you linked to, yes I am the Raphael Hertzog who contributed to the translation, but the original book was not in German but in English (even though the author—Martin Krafft—speaks German as his mother tongue).

I think repeatedly calling your book a "bestseller" because it happened to be a "bestseller" on amazon.fr for a single morning (or perhaps even less time than that) is misleading.

Thanks for the clarification, I had not understood your point. I call it a bestseller because it is a bestseller for my editor, we sold over 16000 copies of this book and for a technical book on the French market, this is really good. Most technical books barely achieve 1000-1500 copies (the point where the editor usually starts making some money). The fact that we were on Amazon's listing is just a little anecdote to introduce the story...

...and this is an original book in French. It's not a translation of a German book. I don't know where you found this misinformation.

I read it in one of one the comments here. Is that not the same book? Aren't you Raphaël Hertzog?

No, it's not the same book. The one that will be translated is here (former edition here). Or you might want the official web page I maintain for the French version.

Concerning the book you linked to, yes I am the Raphael Hertzog who contributed to the translation, but the original book was not in German but in English (even though the author—Martin Krafft—speaks German as his mother tongue).

I think repeatedly calling your book a "bestseller" because it happened to be a "bestseller" on amazon.fr for a single morning (or perhaps even less time than that) is misleading.

Thanks for the clarification, I had not understood your point. I call it a bestseller because it is a bestseller for my editor, we sold over 16000 copies of this book and for a technical book on the French market, this is really good. Most technical books barely achieve 1000-1500 copies (the point where the editor usually starts making some money). The fact that we were on Amazon's listing is just a little anecdote to introduce the story...

I do not smoke...

Way to go for killing the joke...

...and this is an original book in French. It's not a translation of a German book. I don't know where you found this misinformation.

I read it in one of one the comments here. Is that not the same book? Aren't you Raphaël Hertzog?

I did not hire anyone...

That's not what I was alluding to. If you want me to spell it out for you, then I shall.

I think repeatedly calling your book a "bestseller" because it happened to be a "bestseller" on amazon.fr for a single morning (or perhaps even less time than that) is misleading. Please consider your (slashdot) audience before making claims like that. Many of us know how such temporary rankings can be gamed. After all, most of us have dealt with web sites, apis, and analytics, in the past, and/or in our day-to-day jobs.

There was a real good short story with that theme, and the glass broke on impact... It was 'designed' to prevent interference from outside, and every star had one, thus we could travel away from our star, but not close to any other. The reason why was interesting...
Also remind me of a really cute comic book (in french).

For the french speakers, I advise Bernard Werber book: http://www.amazon.fr/papillon-%C3%A9toiles-Bernard-Werber/dp/2226173498
Not very serious, but a very nice reading.

You could try here

This is just flamebait. Have you ever been in France ?

We have Mc Donald's here. Starbucks. Pizza Hut. People go to the movies to watch the latest blockbusters from Hollywood. We use english words every day in conversation. We are just as americanized as the rest of the western world.

As for your story about HIV testing kits, link please ? Even if there has been a delay, I don't think it was due to the kits "not being French enough". I think that medecine made in France has to be approved by the FDA before it's sold in the States, am I right ? Well I guess the reverse is true, we have something called the AFSSAPS to do this (Agence Française de Sécurité Sanitaire des Produits de Santé, French Agency for Sanitary Safety of Health Products).

I invite you to read this book : Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong : Why We Love France But Not The French, it's written by a couple of Canadians who have spent almost two years here in France trying to understand us. It will enlighten you.

That isn't true.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/
http://www.amazon.de/
http://www.amazon.fr/
http://www.amazon.co.jp/
http://www.amazon.ca/

I only checked the first few, but they all have music stores.

I stumbled across a little French cartoon on the web called Minuscule. It is a bunch of 5 minute shorts of silly anthropomorphic 3D rendered insects, blended with real backgrounds. Superb job very entertaining. Despite being done in France, there's no speech so no translation is necessary. I figured this is the sort of thing that would just delight my mother. Thus I set about buying it. [...] Then the first time anything in English comes up, it's a notice that says "Sorry, we aren't allowed to sell to that country."

You could try amazon.fr:

http://www.amazon.fr/Minuscule-collector-DVD-Thomas-Szabo/dp/B000UX663W/

I can buy stuff at amazon.com, .ca and even .co.jp with a european amazon account.
I don't know if it works the other way around as well, but it would seriously surpise me if not.

(And yes, that DVD box is well worth if :-)

Douglas Hofstadter has spent a lifetime thinking about the way we think. He's written about it perhaps more than anyone else in the past century. Even if someone out there has beaten him in sheer quantity of words on the subject, nobody has come close to rivaling his style or his impact on programmers everywhere.

All of his books are wonderfully imaginative and are loads of fun to read, but if you're a programmer and you haven't yet read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (usually known as "GEB"), then I envy you: you're in for a real treat. Get yourself a copy and settle in for one of the most interesting, maddening, awe-inspiring and just plain fun books ever written. The Pulitzer Prize it won doesn't nearly do it justice. It's one of the greatest and most unique works of imagination of all time.

You can find his original post, and you can obviously find the book on amazon.

yes, it is a shame to see such database in mordern country. 1984 from Orwell is so in phase with what happened around the world: impossible to travel without fingerprint scanned in US, medical data monitored in smart card (Carte Vitale, France), and now this database.

you definitively have to read this book (sorry, just in french for now, but maybe there will be english translation):
Le Maitre des Noms (the master of the names) of Josef LADIK.
the name is a pseudo (as stated in the back of the book) and the writer is a prosecutor who definitively seems to know about what it talks! http://www.amazon.fr/ma%C3%AEtre-noms-Josef-Ladik/dp/2754006907/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220614013&sr=8-1

have fun and keep flying under the radar :)

There is a French Journalist Marie Monique ROBIN who wrote a book on Monsanto and its GMO Products. There was a TV documentary done by the same person. I watched it.

I must say that if I am rather favorable to controlled GMO use, the way monsanto designs their product and their method are frightening. Even if the documentary has a strong anti-GMO bias, the objection (on food safety law and on incomplete studies) are more than troubling.

This is much worse than Microsoft. It may be necessary to investagate deeply in Monsanto's practices and sanction the abuse in order to save the very GMO technology. These guys are defnitly bad.

As was pointed in many posts, it's funny that anyone would even try to enforce IP on the AK-47.

What makes it even funnier is that Russia created the situation in the first place: during the Cold War, the USSR actively, and intensively, distributed the plans for it (along with plans for the RPG7 and other types of weapons) at a cheap rate or for free, to kickstart arm industries in many of its satellite countries. The strategy was successful as it is estimated that over 90 million AK-47s have been produced worldwide since its invention, and dozens of countries had licencing agreements for it.

Fast-forward to today: when the USSR collapsed, all licences for production of the AK-47 were revoked. Of course, many producers have just conveniently ignored this fact(because their own armies rely on the AK-47 or, more likely, because the demand for AKs on the international market, both legal and illegal, has never been higher than since the end of the Cold War). Izhmash, the state-owned Russian company that retains the exclusive rights to the AK, recently complained that "out of the million AKs that are produced every year, only 10 to 12% are authentic", all the others being knock-offs.

Of course, they know they can't really do a thing about it. Copying designs of other countries' weapons is an established practice (just look up "Norinco CQ rifle" or "Khaybar M16" on google for unlicensed copies of the M16) that no-one ever really tried to suppress. What's more, the AK's simple design means it's not much of a challenge to produce them.

Izmash might go against one or two large, established producers that have been stupid enough to call their guns AK-47 (not sure they'll find one though) and press trademark charges against them. But the scores of small-to-medium-scale AK producers located around the world will probably simply continue to produce it regardless. It's not like most of their trade is legal anyways.

For more on the international trade in light weapons and its implications, read (in French) Armes légères, syndrome d'un monde en crise (disclaimer: I'm one of the co-authors of this book).

French version is sold under the name "Brain Training - Programme d'Entraînement Cérébral du Dr Kawashima : Quel âge a votre cerveau ?" (english name "Brain Age: Train Your Brain in Minutes a Day!", original name "Tôhoku Daigaku Mirai Kagaku Gijutsu Kyôdô Kenkyû Center Kawashima Ryûta Kyûju Kanshu - Nô o kitaeru Otona no DS Training").

I strongly suspect that the US game would work as well (most DS games are multilingual), but i'm not sure. Anyway, if you want the european/french version you can get it for 30 off Amazon.fr

and you can already buy the dvd

The French DVD will have English subtitles.

Here a group called "Kool Shem" had their latest album released on a disk that has one side pressed as an audio CD and the other as a video DVD, a format they call "DVD [plus]".

I've only heard of this because of the technical first and have no idea what kind of music they do, apparently it's some kind of rap thing.

Sample link to an online store (Fnac.com)

Georges Blanc
Paul Bocuse
Alain Chapel
Fredy Girardet
Michel Guerard
Joel Robuchon
Pierre Troisgros
Roger Verge

Many others. Yes, they had restaurants first (that made them famous enough to sell books), but they sure opened more thereafter. Sounds like you're living in a nightmare world, eh?

Georges Blanc
Paul Bocuse
Alain Chapel
Fredy Girardet
Michel Guerard
Joel Robuchon
Pierre Troisgros
Roger Verge

Many others. Yes, they had restaurants first (that made them famous enough to sell books), but they sure opened more thereafter. Sounds like you're living in a nightmare world, eh?

Georges Blanc
Paul Bocuse
Alain Chapel
Fredy Girardet
Michel Guerard
Joel Robuchon
Pierre Troisgros
Roger Verge

Many others. Yes, they had restaurants first (that made them famous enough to sell books), but they sure opened more thereafter. Sounds like you're living in a nightmare world, eh?

Georges Blanc
Paul Bocuse
Alain Chapel
Fredy Girardet
Michel Guerard
Joel Robuchon
Pierre Troisgros
Roger Verge

Many others. Yes, they had restaurants first (that made them famous enough to sell books), but they sure opened more thereafter. Sounds like you're living in a nightmare world, eh?

Georges Blanc
Paul Bocuse
Alain Chapel
Fredy Girardet
Michel Guerard
Joel Robuchon
Pierre Troisgros
Roger Verge

Many others. Yes, they had restaurants first (that made them famous enough to sell books), but they sure opened more thereafter. Sounds like you're living in a nightmare world, eh?

Georges Blanc
Paul Bocuse
Alain Chapel
Fredy Girardet
Michel Guerard
Joel Robuchon
Pierre Troisgros
Roger Verge

Many others. Yes, they had restaurants first (that made them famous enough to sell books), but they sure opened more thereafter. Sounds like you're living in a nightmare world, eh?

Georges Blanc
Paul Bocuse
Alain Chapel
Fredy Girardet
Michel Guerard
Joel Robuchon
Pierre Troisgros
Roger Verge

Many others. Yes, they had restaurants first (that made them famous enough to sell books), but they sure opened more thereafter. Sounds like you're living in a nightmare world, eh?

Georges Blanc
Paul Bocuse
Alain Chapel
Fredy Girardet
Michel Guerard
Joel Robuchon
Pierre Troisgros
Roger Verge

Many others. Yes, they had restaurants first (that made them famous enough to sell books), but they sure opened more thereafter. Sounds like you're living in a nightmare world, eh?

The circumstances have nothing to do the woman death in 1982. That affair was treated as an ordinary crime. It's only one year later that Vetrov is outed as Western spy and quickly executed. For reference, you should look at a book by Serguei Kostine Bonjour Farewell.

It seems that the leak was a stupid mistake by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs (equivalent to the US Dept of States). A less charitable explanation is that the US tried to go around the French, get directly in touch with Vetrov and blew it. Dunno what the truth is but his death had every thing to do with him spying.

2 things to note about the Farewell affair:
- Vetrov was not involved with the DGSE, the French equivalent of the the CIA, but with the DST, the French counter-intelligence agency. Very unusual. Vetrov, who was in good position to know, probably considered that the DGSE was too rotten with Soviet agents.
- Vetrov was not just involved in outing illegal technology imports by the Soviet and enabling cool hacks. He more importantly outed more than a 100 Soviet agents on the West side. His defection was a complete utter disaster for the KGB and that probably made the most important Western asset in the whole history of the Cold War (in the early 80s, it was really damn cold).

As a US dweller....what's out there that would be good to watch

Well there is plenty of stuff, though you need to be open minded about the cultral content and language. Without knowing what you like its hard to make a case, though I'll see what I can do. For example, there are many anime fans that prefer the orginal Japanese version and don't have the patience to wait for the translated version, so this is one case. Another would be films that are featured at the Cannes Film Festival. Also, there are plenty of films available in other countries, that just aren't available here. You can browse Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, Amazon France, Amazon Japan, FNAC and many others.

As I said, you need to be ready to go beyond what you are familiar with culturaly and linguistically and experiment.

Lots of airlines had options on Concordes, and at one point there was talk of building over 200 of them. That would have probably brought the cost right down.

(source of this information)

My apologies, you are right - one too many accents on my original posts! :-)

The collectors French DVD edition is linked here. Note the different name.

Must stop following the traditional slash dot spelling and grammar style guide!

Most, if not all have been released on DVD in France; i.e. amazon.fr

Plus, they come with English and Spanish audio tracks and subtitles! The only "problem" is their region (if you don't live in Europe, Japan, South Africa, or the Middle East).

The only people to call it Hackers 2 are the kids on Kazaa and gnutella "sharing" it. It's called Takedown, and is based on the Shimomura book with the same name. Depending on which side of the story you choose to believe, it's largely fictional. If you're looking for it, it was released on DVD in France as Cyber Traque. It can be found here.

35% of US high school seniors couldn't find THE USA on an unmarked map of the world. About 50% couldn't find Europe. THERE HAS GOT TO BE A REASON. I dare say most EU year 12s could draw an unmarked map of the world with major rivers and mountain ranges.

From the Americans I've met, I'd say it's a safe bet you couldn't. (BUT you could name your states and explain why the Mississipi is REALLY the biggest river in the world.)

He has several books out that I'd recommand to any french-speaking cooking geek: Casseroles et éprouvettes, Traité élémentaire de cuisine, Les Secrets de la casserole...

Some of his recipes are online; at least try the chocolate mayonnaise.

And for those of you who want a big classic list of recipes, I have 10000 of them in a big Windows Help file (5Mb), still all in french. He, at least that's one thing this language is good for!

He has several books out that I'd recommand to any french-speaking cooking geek: Casseroles et éprouvettes, Traité élémentaire de cuisine, Les Secrets de la casserole...

Some of his recipes are online; at least try the chocolate mayonnaise.

And for those of you who want a big classic list of recipes, I have 10000 of them in a big Windows Help file (5Mb), still all in french. He, at least that's one thing this language is good for!

He has several books out that I'd recommand to any french-speaking cooking geek: Casseroles et éprouvettes, Traité élémentaire de cuisine, Les Secrets de la casserole...

Some of his recipes are online; at least try the chocolate mayonnaise.

And for those of you who want a big classic list of recipes, I have 10000 of them in a big Windows Help file (5Mb), still all in french. He, at least that's one thing this language is good for!

It was adapted by Hadelman himself and inked by Marvano. It was published in French as a trilogy in 1988. Unfortunately there doensn't seem to be an english translation.
Amazon.fr
Unfortunately, the graphic art is very ordinary -- it would've been a masterpiece had it been drawn by, say, Moebius or Bilal.

• They were **THE** pionneers in instituting an online society.
  More than 20 years ago, they decided to implement the fabled Minitel in order to eliminate paper telephone directories.
• They're not anglo-saxons.
  So the french don't have that innate distrust of the State. Thus, they not only do not continually question what the State does, but they don't view working for the State as something demeaning, so the best minds are naturally attracted to work for the State so everyone benefits.
• De Gaulle did not like using a phone.
  He himself took maybe three phone calls a year, and made perhaps only one (on a good year) phone call on the same year (he didn't have a phone on his desk). Therefore, telephone infrastructure lagged sorely behind most countries (and was the butt of cruel jokes, like Fernand Raynaud's fabled: "Hello New-York, gimme the 22 at Asnières", which is said to have humiliated french telephone network engineers more than anything else. So, upon De Gaulle's resignation, the authorities embarked into a record-breaking research program to enhance the french phone network.
  The retarded phone network was a blessing in disguise, because in most cases, switches simply bypassed mechanical switching and they went from manual operators straight to digital packet-switching.
  This gave France a head-start in digital communications, which enabled them to quickly implement the Minitel network.
• They're catholics
  The french didn't have much choice but either to listen to the priests or to dump them, which is what they've been doing en masse for the last 200 years or so. (By contrast, a protestant can either find a sect that tells him what he likes, or simply make-up one of his own)
  Republican ideals naturally spurns religion as something which enslaves humanity, so the State is quite rigorously insulated from the church. Official education is strictly non-religious (law forbids teaching religion in public schools), so therefore, the french put much virtue in Science (and the fabled cartesian spirit also helps). So it is quite normal that the french will rigorously embrace new technology without having any philosophical qualms about it.
• French culture values intellectual achievement
  And it does so far more than financial success (you just can't get rid of the the old scatholic foundations...), so plenty of people are drawn into scientific studies. Scientists enjoy recognition and are respected. So, naturally, luddites do not really get listened to...
  This enables a great penetration of advanced technological ideas throughout society.
• The education system does not make specialists, but generalists.
  French scientists have a shallower knowledge that spans far more areas of interests, so they are more able to connect seemingly disconnected technologies together.
  A most successful and innovative american company has fully understood this idea. Researchers working for the Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing company are forced NOT to spend 10 to 15% of their research budget on their primary research area. But they are quite free to spend it investigating side-effects discovered through their research. That's why they have so much innovative products.
• France values education and culture.
  Since then, it is only natural that education is freely available to anyone. The cream of the crop is also enrolled in the grandes écoles where they are given the best education for free, for which they then serve the State as the fabled highly-competent senior bureaucrates.

Not to mention the newly opened French subsidiary, amazon.fr. In France, the law on personal data stored on computers is extremely strict (borderline paranoid, in fact).

Now if such a customer file is shared by amazon between several countries, it must be kept in compliance with the law of every country in question.

So if you're not happy with amazon keeping personal info on your subject, go to amazon.fr, check that the info is indeed shared with amazon.com, and write them ("them" being amazon.fr) a letter (in formal French, of course) stating that you wish to exercise the rights vested upon you by article 36 of the aforementioned law 78-16 of january 6, 1978, and that in compliance with that law they must strike the information concerning you from the record (you can claim, e.g., that it is obsolete). Somehow I doubt they'll make a special effort to remove the info in amazon.fr and not in amazon.com, so they'll have to remove it completely.

(I only mention French law because I know that particular one. But maybe German or English law (for amazon.de or amazon.co.uk) could let you achieve the same results.)

Somehow I feel that we'll have to stand the "socialist Europe" cliché again...