lybrary wrote: When you quote from "The New Modern Coin Magic" I have no way of knowing if it is also in "Modern Coin Magic". It is no different with printed books. You guys simply try to be difficult.
Sure you can. If it is after p. 354, it is from
New Modern Coin Magic. If it is from before that, it is from
Modern Coin Magic and
New Modern Coin Magic as well. The later book reprints the earlier one in its entirety (except for the preface), and adds new material at the end. It is very easy to tell what has been changed.
You probably could not have picked a worse example of an updated magic book to make the point.
Suppose I'm trying to talk with Denis about
Hunt for Erdnase. To establish that we have the same book, we both have to check creation dates and exchange that information. If it turns out that the dates are different, we know that we don't have the same book, but we don't know how they are different. The only way to tell in accordance with what I believe your licensing states is for both of us to download a 3rd party software package, and for each of us to download the "current" copy of
HfE, compare the current copy with the copy we originally purchased and downloaded, create an errata list, and compare the lists. I can't directly compare my copy with his, and he can't directly compare his copy with mine. (Obviously, a casual reader won't go to this trouble, and if he runs into a discrepancy, he'll just say "screw it" and move on with his life. Me, I'm too anal retentive to live so recklessly.)
On the other hand, if we are discussing
New Modern Coin Magic, we just talk about the book, because it is fixed and doesn't change.
You've mentioned your publication of papers in IEEE journals, so I know that matters of scholarship are important to you. I'm surprised that you don't see an evolving book without open records of that evolution as problematic.