PragDave

DRM and The Pragmatic Bookshelf

David HH pointed out to me a Manning blog from November talking about DRM on their E-Books. They say:

The current technical ebook market consists of Manning with unencumbered PDF ebooks, and all the other publishers with no ebooks.(+) Several offer the online web service, Safari. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being tyrannical DRM and 10 being complete freedom, Manning PDFs are a 10, Safari is about a 3. Our competitors with no ebooks at all are about a zero.

David contacted them to point out that the Pragmatic Bookshelf e-books are 100% unencumbered. As a result, they added a wee footnote:

(+) I’ve recently been made aware that the Pragmatic Programmer does offer unencumbered PDF ebooks. The above statement is in error, but it remains that they are a rarity.

Back in the body, they go on to talk about their ideas for the future, and their switch to ThoutReader.

We’re seeking an alternative somewhere between those endpoints but still heavily favoring ebook freedom, maybe around an 8. Most realistic solutions in real life are in a gray zone between total black and total white.

Well, I guess we’re just naive old niche publishers, but we’d rather not live in the gray zone. Nor do we want our readers to have to compromise. Our PDFs are still unencumbered. I guess according to their logic, that makes us the only "10" in town.

Failure and Surgeons

Glenn Vanderburg pointed me at a wonderful article, The Physical Genius by Malcolm Gladwell, originally published in the New Yorker in 1999.

In the middle, Gladwell is reporting on Charles Bosk, a sociologist who interviewed doctors in an attempt to determine the factors that differentiate successful from unsuccessful surgeons. Bosk says:

"In my interviewing, I began to develop what I thought was an indicator of whether someone was going to be a good surgeon or not. It was a couple of simple questions: Have you ever made a mistake? And, if so, what was your worst mistake? The people who said, ‘Gee, I haven’t really had one,’ or, ‘I’ve had a couple of bad outcomes but they were due to things outside my control’—invariably those were the worst candidates. And the residents who said, ‘I make mistakes all the time. There was this horrible thing that happened just yesterday and here’s what it was.’ They were the best. They had the ability to rethink everything that they’d done and imagine how they might have done it differently."

Thinking about how we might have done things differently is vital if we’re to improve (or even survive, given the way the industry is trending). If you live in a rut, the next cart that comes along is likely to flatten you.

Quite a Week for Rails

It’s been quite a week for Rails.

• David Geary blogged a somewhat surprising article which seemed to dismiss rails on the basis of an article whose claims he disagreed with. DHH came back with a detailed rebuttal.
• Bruce Tate also blogged about Rails, but this is a nice, balanced suggestion that perhaps folks who doubt might actually find something to like about the framework.
• Dion Almaer also had something to say about David Geary’s post.
• Then DHH released Rails 0.10.0 with a boatload of new features (including Oracle support, components, web services, and the long-awaited Routing support).
• The New York Times wrote about Odeo, a startup using Rails to set up a podcasting portal.
• And last, I’ve actually finished enough of my new Rails book that I’ve released some chapters to a wonderful panel of reviewers (no more needed right now, thanks). I’m starting to get happy about the way this book is turning out—I’m looking forward to a late-summer release.

Subversion and 403 Errors

If you get 403 errors with Subversion, it might be because mod_dosevasive has decided you’re an attacker.

Now Taking Subversion Orders!

You can now order Mike Mason’s Subversion book from www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/svn/.