The problem with static media is that it gets out of date. People tend to see a "graven in stone" (or "etched in mylar," if you prefer) as being the last word. I don't think it is. What was idiomatic for Perl4 is not necessarily so for Perl 5.6. As I understand it, things are going to get a little weirder for Perl 6.

Setting aside the production issues, engraving the Monastery only gives you access to the good (and bad) knowledge posted to that point. Perl is evolving, as is our understanding of its use. Take, for example, a certain set of articles that (I hope) many some of us refer to on a regular basis. The code in the early columns is a different than the later ones--as they should be. Perl has evolved, CPAN has evolved, the author has evolved (I trust), and people's understanding of all involved has evolved. IOW, "idioms" are a moving target and CD's are nothing more than snapshots of the moment.

Net connections are more common than they used to be. I would rather see someone say, "Hey, is this still appropriate?" than run into the dweeb that says, "Well, according to the August 2001 edition of Perlmonks, you can't do that."

Remember, the Monastery is different than print media. Things change on a daily, perhaps even an hourly basis. While there may be a historical benefit to various snapshots, I believe that it's best to point folks to the latest and greatest...the best knowledge of the moment.

Don't get me wrong. If TPTB think this is great, I'll happily donate my burner and other assets to helping, however, I don't think this is as beneficial as you would hope.

--f

P.S. Have you ever worked with copy protection (CD Keys, as you put it)? It's difficult to do well. I've done it once (for pay); never again. If you're not honest enough to pay me, well, I hope you return as a fly on your next turn around the wheel.

P.P.S. Any, yes, all my shareware is registered. Why do you ask?

Also, the frequency is too high for what you think. Without knowing what is actually stored, I would suspect we are barely over 650megs total (you're looking at more than 6000bytes a node for that), and that's after 1.5 years of operation. Maybe a distribution of some sort every half year or the like, if such a project were to go on.

-----------------------------------------------------
Dr. Michael K. Neylon - mneylon-pm@masemware.com || "You've left the lens cap of your mind on again, Pinky" - The Brain

You have brought up some very insightful points, masem that I have seemed to overlook in this idea. I understand fully that we would have to have the assent of every person who has ever posted items to this site, and that makes sense, because of all of the legality, etc. In response to this point, my idea would be that we would have to narrow it down to a few sections of the site, such as simply the code archives, and maybe snippets, so that way it would drastically reduce who we would have to get permission from. If they didn't wish to give their permission, then they could perhaps simply take off their code and not use it on the cd.

Next in answer to your good points about it being an online print type of item, which it is definently, is that they could try to make only a select few of the cd's at first, to just test out the waters of who might even buy one, over the internet perhaps. Maybe it would be a good buy for those that would like to have the code all in one place on a cd that they wouldn't have to use the internet to view the items on it... such as people who may still have a slow internet connection, etc. Even better than doing that first, you could also conduct a voting poll, to see if anyone would even consider paying for this type of thing, if yes, go for it, if not, can the idea, and think of something else.

I think my first point will answer your third good point which was the size that the cd would be able to hold. If we only were to put one or two sections on each cd, that (if I am correct,) wouldn't take tons of space, provided it didn't include every single item ever posted in those specific sections. Perhaps if they started from two months or three months ago.

masem you made some very good reasons why not to try this type of distribution, but I hope I have answered some of your reasons not to with my reasons. You might not agree with all of them, but that's ok. Thanks for the input though!

Andy Summers

They aren't insightful points, they are the same ones that get raised every single time this come up.

Always, there are a bunch of people who stand around going "Nope. You can't do it." no matter what is suggested. You can just imagine what they would have said if they had been asked about setting up a website for Perl discussion:

"Nope. You can't do that. Nobody will post because their words might get used."

I'm quite glad that they weren't asked.

I rather like the idea, because a couple of times I have needed to look something up, and PerlMonks has been down. I can recall wishing that I had a local copy to refer to. I even considered mirroring it, but thought that would be a rude bandwidth hit on EDC. I'd sling Aus$20 to someone for a copy of the PM CDROM.

____________________
Jeremy
"Someone pass me a lawyer. I can't wait for the revolution!"

True that, Beatnik, however, they still wouldn't have the tasty morsel goodness of good Perl Monks insight. :) But yes, there is enough code from CPAN on cd that it could encircle the moon many times over, I just think that this cd would also be maybe I collectors item too?

Remember that items from the past, while hopelessly out of date, ring up a high price of what it is worth, and if someone ever brought an old 2001 Perl Monks collectors cd to an antiques road show, they might have a lot of extra spending money :).

Andy Summers

Personally I doubt pressing the PM nodes on CD each month will show the genuine, unreproduceable spirit of this very nice Perl community.

Besides the spirit, there are a fewer other things that will be missing (altho technically they'll be there).
• Up/Downvoting (good and bad sense)
• Anonymous Monk posts flaming & the NodeReaper on his tail
• Chatterbox (Don't surf without it!!)
• The everchanging process of Homenode Extravaganza
• Gaining new XPs and knowing where they're coming from
• Best Nodes & Worst Nodes
• Borg's Belly
• Updating/Cleaning up nodes
• XP Whoring newbies and the humour surrounding it
Pressing this all on CD is impossible. A picture can say a thousand words but the Monestary has more than thousands words. Selecting which words are pressed on CD and which are not will be a tough job. Also consider that The Monestary runs as a dynamic website, with a flexible back end engine. You'd need to install a webserver and the appropriate modules (Everything2 and probably some required ones too).

You might as well convince P5P to only discuss Perl topics using Microsoft proprietary formats.

Just my E0.02...

Greetz
Beatnik
... Quidquid perl dictum sit, altum viditur.

Or entirely new material could be built and edited ad hoc. But first let me ask for your time in advance, as this is a somewhat lengthy post.

Obviously besides legal entanglement there is also the problem of everyone posting links to cpan, i.e. you would need to be online to use it unless another subset of a cpan snapshot was included.

The real question is, what is the minimum exciting, useful, practical, and saleable content requirement for such a project? It is a real world publishing question based on trying to make something people want, by people who want to make it. Hopefully something very monklike, stunning, and easy to make.. although I think you'll find I've skipped the easy part and maybe one or two of the others in my product idea at the end of this post. It just doesn't have to be the sum total of all bytes in the PM http root.

And I think the corollary to this question is, it doesn't have to be a CD, that's just a very effective way to get a customer to part with cash. It could be some service run by a finite number of monks, for example mentoring is one with real potential. Maybe something like a relatively small set of articles and code.

Real world expertise and a fun, exploratory approach to programming/problem solving seem to be something which could be conveyed through such articles, and it would make sense to make installments. Perhaps PM could solicit articles from some key people, reimbursing them with a percentage of the proceeds after costs. I'm thinking of interesting discussions like the use DBIx/DBI is fine articles on perl.com earlier this year, or merlyn's work, or maybe something totally different.

One thing that might be quite interesting to do is a "Distillation" of the site which attempts to provide encyclopedic answers to all the questions that people always search for. It would be like manufacturing a good Cognac, which through proper exercise of critical analysis, passion, and humor, might give us a grand cru of immense proportions. Or maybe it's more like those Belgian monks who as part of their duties brew some pretty wild beer! (I'm talking about Chimay, Mort Subite, and any number of others here, each monastery has its own intense bouquet of flavor, texture, and aroma).

I mean you don't necessarily want to publish a new CD every couple of weeks, right? Drinking this up you drink our essence.. and maybe we'll get more would-be monk vintners from kids who get this for Christmas. It would be highly informative but could have related threads and/or chat in the margins (a pdf? a book? a Tk thing? Maybe it's a BDB file and we end up with a zillion clients?! Maybe we publish a chapter for free with O'Reilly??) and it could be lots of fun. Here's an initial stab at it.

I don't know how detailed the server logs are to date, but it is likely that we could build (or are already building) click paths per user session through the site. If I look something up in the supersearch I might get ten or a hundred results. But it is likely that so long as I stay inside PM, the last ones on which I click will be most useful. Also many good things get said in Chatterbox and disappear into the aether (maybe we should keep it that way but that's another story). We could save those nuggets. And maybe when a monk is struck by a divine inspiration and realizes something really pithy or scatalogical has been posted in the course of our normal threads, the monk could quickly jot a note down in a special Distillation node which would let the monk indicate node number, topic, why it's insanely great, and the section of the encyclopedia (selected from a popup) to which it might go.

A resource which gave the best possible answers (not as a discussion thread, but a paraphrased, well written encylopedia article, would be 1) legal, and 2) immensely useful. Perhaps if you buy a CD and install it on your computer, you can any time request a diff on the archive to update it. Building such a resource would not be a trivial task, although it could certainly be done in parallel with a limited number of editors. The software for this kind of thing already exists (maybe even in everything2?) as dmoz, faq-o-matic, wiki, and papa cpan will attest. I think this kind of a process could give its progenitors both immediate and lasting satisfaction, it could generate something really useful and saleable, the Distillation would promote Perl and related skills, and would be something genuinely in and of the PM community. I'm not stuck on what it's called, I just think that something uniquely monkish and fun is all that we can and must do for our vroom and our fellow Perl-lovers! Let us hasten to the fields! Amen.