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A comment on Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort? (2023). Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort? (2023) by dctoedt on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @12:53PM (#38448608)
> You should imagine that you are forced to sell it every day.

Semi-serious question: Which of the following do you mean:

A. Every day, you should imagine that you are forced to sell it; or

B. You should imagine that you will, every day, be forced to sell it.

(I teach law students to spot and fix ambiguities in draft contracts; this would be a nice practice example :-) )

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Re:Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort? (2023) by llimos on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @02:41PM (#38450205)
Since it's not possible to sell the same physical item more than once without some intervening event, it's not that ambiguous!
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Re:Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort? (2023) by dctoedt on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @02:44PM (#38450252)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prometheus ?
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Re:Ask HN: Is Knuth's TAOCP worth the time and effort? (2023) by dorfsmay on Tuesday November 28, 2023 @05:55PM (#38452687)
A.

OP imagines that there is a point in the future where they read the book without commiting to it. Selling/donating it would put an end to that possibility and force OP to imagine a future where they cannot read it, and hopefully helps them assessing one va the other, and prioritizing accordingly.

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