Re: Entelligence: Have we demonized DRM?

In response to:
Entelligence: Have we demonized DRM?

New business models that couldn't exist otherwise? If a business model has to assume that every customer is a potential criminal that cannot be trusted in order to get the executives to sign off on it, maybe that business model has no business existing, or maybe those people in suits need to move on and understand that business models that strive to redefine reality always fail in the long term.

My problem with DRM is not so much the restrictions on content that demand that I pay for it. I understand people want to be compensated for their work, and I do so whenever possible but it is simply the right thing to do and often (but not always) the easiest thing to do. However all these restrictions come with bad side effects, like invasion of privacy, elimination of choice, and eventual forced obsolescence.

Engadget sits at an interesting crossroads. A blog that promotes technology that is owned by a content company (Time Warner) that is trying to figure out how it will exist in this new networked world.

My advice is don't treat customers like criminals, make your content easy to get to in as many ways and places as possible, realise the new opportunities technology can provide, and don't whine about the bonanzas of the old way which the new reality just can no longer support. Yes, for people with MBAs this can be damn scary, but business is about risk and reward, so start thinking harder and take some chances.

Health care letter to Lieberman, Dodd, and Murphy

I am writing because I feel a public option is an essential part of the current effort to draft health care reform legislation, and as my representative, I ask that you work to be sure a bill that includes this becomes law.

Some background. I am a self-employed computer programmer. When I was looking for an individual health policy, my applications to several companies were all rejected due to "build", or a nice way of saying I weigh too much for them to want to do business with me. I then found that Connecticut has a health reinsurance risk pool I could join to get coverage. Its expensive coverage with a large deductible. I hope it will be there for me should there be a large emergency, but in terms of preventative care, it doesn't do much. My biggest issue though is that in my situation I have no other choices.

The plan is operated by United Healthcare, and in many ways resembles the sort of "alternatives" that are being floated to a public option. If I want any health insurance, I have no choice but to pay high premiums for low service to a company that uses some of my money to work against my own best interest. I hate that in order to be protected in case of an emergency, I am funding lobbyists, lawyers, and executives that manipulate government to be sure I cannot get anything better. To add insult to injury, the state sponsors this privatized plan, directing money to a company that is working against the interests of the state’s citizens. I worry some of the proposed alternatives for the federal health care bill will do just that, but on an even larger scale, being essentially a "gift" to those that continue to manipulate the system, making any chance for real change that much harder.

I want a way I can opt-out of the current system and get health insurance without paying for lobbyists or executives that work against me getting the best care I can. I understand a public option isn't free. I make good money, so I wouldn't be surprised to pay more than others that cannot afford as much. What I want is a choice that gives me a voice as an individual. With government I have a voice and I have a vote. That I am writing this letter exemplifies that.

Lets start to turn back the sham of privatization that forces people to be invested against their own best interests and is leading this country on a race to the bottom. Health care is just one area where this needs to happen, and its a big first step to realigning power back to individuals. This country is greatest when individuals can shape the system according to their own best interests, and the so called conservative forces that purport to do that have sold us a false bill of goods in unethical, established corporate systems we cannot escape or effect. It is up to our representatives to give choice and power back to the individuals of this nation when the systems that have propped themselves up artificially have failed us.

Please vote for and support a health care reform bill that includes a public option.

Which laptop?

My iMac at home is over 3 years old now. The Applecare is up and most importantly, it is maxed out at 2gb of RAM. While I don't do anything too processor intensive, I do keep lots of apps open to do my work, and this quickly eats up all the memory. If I want to run Vmware to test something in Windows, then everything comes to a crawl, or I have to quit several apps. Plus, I would like to get a laptop so I have some flexibility about where I do my work.

I do have an Acer Aspire One netbook, and its great, I am using it right now, but with its 1gb of memory and small screen its not great for working on for long periods, or on anything too complicated.

Apple's MacBook Pros are beautiful. I could easily transition all my stuff from my current Mac over to one of those and be up and running smoothly. However they are very pricey. The reality is, if you consider inflation, the cost of Mac laptops is about half what it was 6-7 years ago, but the cost of laptops in general is about a quarter of what is was. Although pricey, I know I'll get at least 3 good years out of a Mac. With a PC, for less money, I can get a lot more power and features, but the battery life, size, weight, and build quality won't be there. From all I have looked around, the price difference between eqivalent or better PC laptops (save the above issues) is $500 to over $1000 over a similar Mac. This is especially apparent with Sony's new FW series which seriously beats out the 17" MacBook Pro for around $1500 compared to $2300 or more.

So my Mac still would work great for non-work stuff, where it has what is still reasonably good graphics and processor. For work, what I need most is memory, to keep a lot of stuff running at once, and to get PC with 4GB is a pretty easy to find. So I'm also looking at the Acer Timeline laptops. They go for around $600-$700 and are about the same dimensions as the MacBook Air, but with less of a processor, and up to 8 hours battery life. One of those would be great for portability, and on the wallet, but I probably would want to upgrade it sooner, but at that price I could buy one a year for 3 years and end up spending about the same as I would on a Mac. Running Linux, it could handle all I need for work quite nicely.

So I keep putting off getting anything while I think this over. If only Apple would lower their prices in some serious way. I love Macs, but they have become more fashion than technology, and the pricing proves it.

Social CPAN : Finding the best and most popular modules

CPAN should be a popularity contest. Why? There is tons of great stuff on CPAN, but knowing what is considered the best, most used, most stable, most loved, can be hard. Lots of people use search.cpan.org, but there needs to be better easier ways to capture their knowledge for the benefit of others.

There is a rating and reviews system, but most stuff has no rating or reviews, and you can't sort the results by ratings (as far as I can tell). Also the ratings interface isn't available from the pod doc pages of modules, only from the main page for the distribution, which is looked at less often. The review information for the distribution should be accessible in the right hand bar of all modules in the distribution.

But to get good data on usage and quality quickly, there should be more than that. What if you could create a user account on a cpan frontend website. You could use it to:

• Star distributions as favorites
• Get a homepage listing your starred modules and any news relating to them
• Quickly give a star rating and/or review to a distribution
• Get popularity ratings on distribution based on other user's stars and ranks
• See popularity based on the number of other distributions that depend on a particular distribution
• Include any of the above in searches
• Use a command line tool to submit information about what modules you're using in a given project
• Usual social network stuff, like linking to friends and professional contacts.
• Relate your account to accounts on other perl sites, like this one, so people can find you in all the different corners of the perl universe.

The distro level tools should always be available on module pages, in some mini form in the right hand nav, since those are the pages people are really looking at when they come to CPAN.

There has been a lot of talk about getting some "buzz" going about Perl, and this sort of thing just might help. CPAN is a great resource, but it can be a bit hard to deal with its breadth. I think a lot of great things have been done around annotating things on CPAN so far, and something like the above would just make it better, and help bring it all together, and maybe get some of those tools used a little more.

Posted to: PerlMonks