DRM: 0, Pirates: 2(00,000,000...)
Looks like the pirates win again:
DRM Definitvely Cracked @ Ars Technica
Kinda sad that it's come to this yet again. To put this into perspective, those who pirate via BitTorrent and the likes will have access to beautiful 1080p rips of Blu-Ray discs. Consumers who try and remain lawful, however, will be left to deal with the DRM.
Will they ever learn?
Needing Inspiration
As probably everybody who reads this already knows, I graduated last December. Frankly, since then, I've been bored. I've even done stuff for my day job at home, sometimes out of need (deadlines), other times out of good ol' fashioned boredom. I even built a gaming PC to pass the time, which is almost too addicting, and while it's a fun pastime, I don't feel like I accomplished anything when I quit back to the desktop.
So I've been looking for a development project of some sort. I've already re-written about 90% of my senior project in Python, an application called StudentCodr, but I've lost interest. It's basically just glue between Subversion, LDAP, and Apache - if you have an LDAP account, like you would at a college, you could create a code repository, add other users to it, and collaborate on a development project. Eventually, though, I gave it up. Frankly, I don't see it going anywhere, despite one of my most respected professors asking to use it at CSUCI for future students. Maybe if there's a demand for it, I'll pick it up again.
Since then, I've been trying to come up with an idea. Not necessarily one to make the next YouTube or Facebook, but something which others on the internet may actually find useful (myself especially), and may even be coerced into pitching a couple bucks my way.
I've had a couple ideas thus far, but either it's my pessimisim shining through, or some other reason that considers them dead ends. The first one I had in the back of my mind as a future direction for StudentCodr - basically creating a front-end to the versioning system so anybody could have versioned collaboration. So, guess what came out a week or two ago: Dropbox. Hell, they even call it the same name as the network share I created at the office for collaboration years ago. Figures.
Another idea would be a really killer app, if it were to be available quickly. However, it's a huge project, which I'm not sure I'd be able to do in even a few months. As a Mac user, I'd absolutely LOVE a CalDAV <-> Exchange proxy. This means iCal + Exchange integration, a holy grail for many Mac users in corporate environments. Snerdware had a different solution with the same end goal working on the client side in OS X 10.4 with GroupCal, but that broke when 10.5 Leopard arrived, and they've yet to release an update in the 5 months since. I've basically nixed the idea, as even though I'd be entering a pretty empty market, it could be useless any day if Apple decided to announce better iCal + Exchange integration. This is becoming more likely now that the iPhone will have native Exchange synchronization, including calendar, contacts, and mail.
Yet another idea would be to remake a product which my company used to use, but was discontinued - MailSift.com. MailSift was a simple concept - put their server in your MX record (primary mail server for your website, for you common folk), and they'd filter the mail using open source tools, forwarding only the good stuff on to your server. Basically, outsourced spam filtering. You could train the filter using a simple yet effective web UI, and it worked. When they went out of business, we had to switch over to a similar system written in PHP, and I'm not thrilled with it. I think I could do much better. But, it's not like the mail filtering business is an empty market, and there's a lot of integration to be done. Again, who'd really use this in the days of free GMail for your domain?*
So, what should I do? Does anybody have any neat ideas they'd like to bounce off me? What about encouragement for one of the previous ideas? I dunno, but I need some inspiration.
*Yes, I realize that Gmail isn't entirely the same, but my point is that spam filters are like opinions; everybody's got them, none of them are perfect, and nowadays, you get one whether you want it or not.
Right and Wrong
Last night, I started writing a second blog entry about my disgust with the current US political system. This entry was started at around 1:30 AM or so, which means the writing isn't my best. I do have it, and could easily complete and edit it if I so chose.
However, I don't choose to take that route. I still believe that almost everybody who is staunchly on one side of the line in our two-party system hasn't really looked at the other side's point of view, but that doesn't really matter. Today's XKCD pretty much put it into perspective for me:
It made me chuckle out loud at first, and then I thought more seriously about what I had just written hours before. I came to the realization that there's nothing you can do to change people's minds. In their mind, they're fighting the same battle you are, believing they're right and you are wrong. It's just a fact of life; everyone's got their battles that they pick because they're right. It's what makes this country as great as it is. And though I disagree with the viewpoints of some, the principles of freedom which the USA were founded on allow them to have their opinions, no matter how bone-headed they may seem.
Packing Up and Moving Once Again
If you're reading this, hello and welcome to my new home on the web! I decided that I was tired of putting up with a bunch of RapidVPS's shortcomings and having to run 2 servers to handle my basic web needs, so I've migrated elsewhere.
I'm now hosted on SliceHost. The reviews I've read for them are spectactular, and everything I've read on their site, from how there's a maximum of 24 people per server, to how I can actually see what the load on the host machine is (around 0.20 when I last checked), to the heightened sense of community I get from their site, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. I'm also happy for a host that's geographically closer to me (MO vs FL) and has better transfer rates.
I also used this opportunity to test out a new configuration. Since I am running Django-powered sites exclusively, I decided that Apache + mod_python was a bit overkill. I'm now running lighttpd with Django in FastCGI mode. From what I've read, it's plenty for basic sites such as this. If my blog ever "takes off" (doubtful, considering its nature), I can always move back later with little effort.
So, here we go again. Website's up, and I'll be migrating my personal email services later this week. Let me know if the site seems faster/slower/same to you in the comments, will ya?