Actually, with interfaces, everyone doing it the same way is better than a few of them doing it differently, even if those few are actually doing it in a way that is otherwise easier to use, because the point of an interface is for people to understand how to use it.

Much as I love to support freedom, whether on the Internet or elsewhere, I have to disagree; people could really get hurt by this; if sensible precautions are taken they probably won't be, but then again, if Sony had taken sensible precautions they probably wouldn't have had this problem in the first place.

But ... we can see Mars at night sometimes, so we sorta know where it is...

"Why didn't you involve me in your porn production?"

There is a difference between information for use by others, e.g.:
* Music
* Movies
* Software
and information not for use by others, e.g.:
* Financial information
* Calendar
* Passwords

Actually, before I came across this, I had such a perception, Now I don't.

In this case, your conclusion is flawed; here is why:

Premises:
1 Entity A is a bookseller
2 Entity B is a bookseller
3 Entity A would charge no more than $X for the book
4 Entity B would charge $X for the book
5 The method by which entity B gets the book in these examples is considered wrong.
(X can be 0)

Your example, physical book:
State 0:
* You have $X that you intend to spend to purchase the book
* Entity A has the book
* Entity B exists
State 1:
* You have $X that you intend to spend to purchase the book
* Entity B has the book
* Entity A no longer has the book
State 2:
* You have the book
* Entity B has $X
* Entity A does not have the book

What actually happened:
State 0:
* You have $X that you intend to spend to purchase the book
* Entity A has the book
* Entity B exists
State 1:
* You have $X that you intend to spend to purchase the book
* Entity A has the book
* Entity B has the book
State 2:
* You have the book
* Entity A has the book
* Entity B has the book and $X

In either case, I believe that the correct response is to move the $X from B to A, not to move the $X back from B to you and remove the book from you.
Entity A is upset because it didn't get the money/recognition from selling the book to you; moving the $X from B to A and letting you know addresses those things.

Obviously, if any of the premises are wrong, the conclusion changes.
If 1 is false, then the correct response in your case is to do exactly what Amazon did, and reverse the transaction. This may be true in the second case too, although I personally disagree.
If 2 is false, then the situation doesn't happen because entity B doesn't sell you the book.
If 3 is false, then the correct response is to give you the choice of paying the difference or reversing the transaction.
If 4 is false, then the situation is a bit more complicated, and is not related to what actually happened, so I'm not going to talk about it.
If 5 is false, then the correct response is to do nothing.

I'm confident that this is true for any thing, not just books, but I'm not certain.

They should never have deleted them; they should have cut out the intermediary step and sent the money to the new publisher; I don't see why this is anything less than obvious.

Then you scratch the cat's head and the person on the other end notices the tail twitching.

It looks like the big thing going for the model M is durability.

Yacht

It's a boat for noncommercial activities, such as cruising or racing. It's sort of like a fancy car for the water.

In the western world, corporations that "sell" software typically do so for far, far more than the marginal cost of $0.

Actually, the GPL absolutely does not prevent the accepter from making money by selling software that uses the code. This is intentional.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html

Windows, or at least windows 7, does not have 'one of the better' ipv6 implementations. In fact, I would say it has one of the worst, given that it can be crashed just by telling it there are a bunch of routers nearby