Amazon did not have the legal right to license a copy of the book to constitute ownership to the end user. Therefore, the user has no right to the content.
But that doesn't imply that Amazon had the right to delete it.
So you're stating that Amazon may not be able to reserve the right to change the service they are providing?
I'm pretty sure you can not change it in an arbitrary way.
For example, if you provide the service of regularly washing cars, I subscribe to that service, and then one day you switch to the service of painting cars in pink, and you just paint my car pink instead of washing it, I don't think you can just say "the contract says I may change the service at any time" and dismiss my complaint.
Well, a reasonable settlement would have been: * The users who have bought their copies would keep them * Amazon pays the rights holder whatever win he would have made if he had sold those books * And of course, new sales by Amazon are immediatly stopped.
It's only theft if you accept the idea that selling the book to you was also theft (i.e. you accept the infringement of intellectual property rights = theft) and if you do, then you were, ispo facto, in possession of stolen property and have no claim over it.
Sorry, but those are two completely different acts: One is creating a copy and making it available to a third person without permission of the copyright holder, the other one is destroying the copy someone already had. While I wouldn't call the second one theft either (it's vandalism: they destroyed the copy), the question whether the first one can be considered theft is not related to the question if the second one can be considered theft.
With your argumentation, I would have to conclude that deleting the ebook would be a copyright violation, because selling the ebook without permission clearly was a copyright violation. But I'm pretty sure copyright law has nothing to say about destroying a copy.
Chapter 5, paragraph 22, sentence 3. The chapter and paragraph structure will not change between editions. He could also in addition write down e.g. the first five words, to be completely sure.
Well, it's not exactly the scheme I had in mind. Obviously you can initiate a flash sequence from the OS. What I had in mind would be like: Step 1: Reboot. Step 2: Type DEL (or whatever your BIOS expects) to get into the BIOS menu Step 3: In the BIOS menu, select "Update BIOS" Step 4: Select the BIOS image to update
So the program would have to * Initiate a reboot (that's the easy part) * Get the keyboard to generate a DEL keypress just at the right point in time (after the malicious code has lost control, because the computer already restarted!) * Get the keyboard to generate more keypresses to navigate the menu and select the malicious image
I doubt that this is possible, and even if it is, you can easily spoil that process by setting a BIOS password (the malicious process certainly cannot program the keyboard to enter a password which is only in your head, or written on a piece of paper close to your computer).
I'm pretty sure those combinations appear en masse in out-of-copyright texts. Also note that copyright works differently from patents in that I'm only infringing if I actually copy from you, not if I accidently write the same text. While it's very unlikely that I would e.g. write the exact wording of your complete post by myself (so if I wrote that text it would be strong evidence that I copied it from you), in general you'd be hard pressed to convince someone that a random use of those two-word phrases were copied from your copyrighted text, rather than either copied from elsewhere or created independently.
Or maybe there's a bug in the startup code generated by the compiler, but it triggers only in very unusual situations, so it wasn't yet detected. That bug would be in any program generated by the compiler, including the empty one.
Of course that only works if your computer is on a network, you have access to another computer on that network, and ssh access from that other computer to the frozen-X one is enabled.
And BTW, before doing the kill -9, it's a good idea to first try kill -15 (note: -15 is the default for the kill command), kill -2 and kill -1. Unlike kill -9, those give the misbehaving application a chance to clean up. Most applications still react to a regular kill, and an astonishing number of those who don't react on -15 do so on -2 or -1. It's a very rare case that you have to resort to the "nuclear option" -9.
Do you mean the tooltip? Slashdot adds a title attribute containing the domain. The title tag exists exactly for the purpose of showing something when you hover. I'd expect any current browser to show the target domain on Slashdot when hovering the link.
BTW, even if Safari normally shows the link target as tooltip, what does Safari show when you hover over a link with a title tag? The content of the title tag, or the actual linked domain? I can't give such a link, because Slashdot replaces the title tag with its own (and rightly so).
Or do you mean that Safari shows the link target in the status bar (like Mozilla-based browsers do)? But how many people do you think look there before following a link? And BTW, how many people wait for a tooltip to appear for a link before clicking it?
Slashdot Mirror
I doubt that robots, no matter how advanced, will have the slightest chance against nuclear missiles.
Cutting military expenses by only a few percent would be far more effective in saving money than completely stopping space exploration.
There should be lots of substances worth mining in space. Why not try to get some money out of that instead of just relying on taxpayer's money?
You mean, Men in Black was not just science fiction? :-)
That's good news, because Linux works quite well on my desktop computer, since 2001.
So I can expect fusion in 2010.
It is still watermarked so that if you distribute the mp3, it will be trivial to track you down.
And this is relevant to the topic at hand how?
Did Amazon change their EULA before deleting the books? Because if Amazon didn't, then the fact that they could have changed it is irrelevant.
But that doesn't imply that Amazon had the right to delete it.
I'm pretty sure you can not change it in an arbitrary way.
For example, if you provide the service of regularly washing cars, I subscribe to that service, and then one day you switch to the service of painting cars in pink, and you just paint my car pink instead of washing it, I don't think you can just say "the contract says I may change the service at any time" and dismiss my complaint.
Well, a reasonable settlement would have been:
* The users who have bought their copies would keep them
* Amazon pays the rights holder whatever win he would have made if he had sold those books
* And of course, new sales by Amazon are immediatly stopped.
Sorry, but those are two completely different acts: One is creating a copy and making it available to a third person without permission of the copyright holder, the other one is destroying the copy someone already had. While I wouldn't call the second one theft either (it's vandalism: they destroyed the copy), the question whether the first one can be considered theft is not related to the question if the second one can be considered theft.
With your argumentation, I would have to conclude that deleting the ebook would be a copyright violation, because selling the ebook without permission clearly was a copyright violation. But I'm pretty sure copyright law has nothing to say about destroying a copy.
Chapter 5, paragraph 22, sentence 3. The chapter and paragraph structure will not change between editions.
He could also in addition write down e.g. the first five words, to be completely sure.
Well, it's not exactly the scheme I had in mind. Obviously you can initiate a flash sequence from the OS. What I had in mind would be like:
Step 1: Reboot.
Step 2: Type DEL (or whatever your BIOS expects) to get into the BIOS menu
Step 3: In the BIOS menu, select "Update BIOS"
Step 4: Select the BIOS image to update
So the program would have to
* Initiate a reboot (that's the easy part)
* Get the keyboard to generate a DEL keypress just at the right point in time (after the malicious code has lost control, because the computer already restarted!)
* Get the keyboard to generate more keypresses to navigate the menu and select the malicious image
I doubt that this is possible, and even if it is, you can easily spoil that process by setting a BIOS password (the malicious process certainly cannot program the keyboard to enter a password which is only in your head, or written on a piece of paper close to your computer).
Well, actually the "non-word" might have enough originality to be copyrighted by itself ...
I'm pretty sure those combinations appear en masse in out-of-copyright texts. Also note that copyright works differently from patents in that I'm only infringing if I actually copy from you, not if I accidently write the same text. While it's very unlikely that I would e.g. write the exact wording of your complete post by myself (so if I wrote that text it would be strong evidence that I copied it from you), in general you'd be hard pressed to convince someone that a random use of those two-word phrases were copied from your copyrighted text, rather than either copied from elsewhere or created independently.
Or even simpler: Make the BIOS flashable only from within the BIOS. As soon as the OS gets control, no more flashing.
Or maybe there's a bug in the startup code generated by the compiler, but it triggers only in very unusual situations, so it wasn't yet detected. That bug would be in any program generated by the compiler, including the empty one.
In other words, they sell filesharing software? Quick, anyone tell the RIAA! :-)
Just wait until they send the ARMy. And make sure to have your ARMour ready.
Of course that only works if your computer is on a network, you have access to another computer on that network, and ssh access from that other computer to the frozen-X one is enabled.
And BTW, before doing the kill -9, it's a good idea to first try kill -15 (note: -15 is the default for the kill command), kill -2 and kill -1. Unlike kill -9, those give the misbehaving application a chance to clean up. Most applications still react to a regular kill, and an astonishing number of those who don't react on -15 do so on -2 or -1. It's a very rare case that you have to resort to the "nuclear option" -9.
Do you mean the tooltip? Slashdot adds a title attribute containing the domain. The title tag exists exactly for the purpose of showing something when you hover. I'd expect any current browser to show the target domain on Slashdot when hovering the link.
BTW, even if Safari normally shows the link target as tooltip, what does Safari show when you hover over a link with a title tag? The content of the title tag, or the actual linked domain? I can't give such a link, because Slashdot replaces the title tag with its own (and rightly so).
Or do you mean that Safari shows the link target in the status bar (like Mozilla-based browsers do)? But how many people do you think look there before following a link? And BTW, how many people wait for a tooltip to appear for a link before clicking it?
I think version 42 will introduce M-x enter-singularity
Totally serious answer: Yes.
If you are editing text, why move your hands away from the keyboard?
You never scratch your head?
No, real programmers use cat >executable