With so many years in development, especially the language specification, it seems like Perl6 must have the most sophisticated design of all programming languages. Unfortunately it has no killer application (yet), and Perl6 code doesn't look as beautiful as Ruby code. What is being done to make Perl6 more attractive?

So what now? And please don't tell me to just vote for the "right" party. That doesn't work. Most people will have forgotten Mr. Snowden when it comes to the next votes. Or their priorities have changed by then (jobs, terrorism, whatever might give an appropriate fear factor). How can I make my government stop bringing 1984 to reality?

Don't send him bug reports and feature requests. If he's in charge of something you care about, ask him if he would give it to you (completely!). Then you can fix whatever you want. You will see that there'll be a new guy soon who thinks that your work is sloppy, sending bug reports and feature requests to YOU!

Ruby is not a good replacement for Perl in means of one-liner or shredding text files. Its clean OO implementation forces you to write a lot more code. But Ruby is a good alternative for Python. It's for - like you say - doing serious stuff.

From 100% to 200% more data - so what? That's not a big step compared to the steps we had in the past like going from 1.44MB 3,5" floppies to 650MB/700MB CDs. Or from those CDs to 4.4GB DVDs.

Is it only the electronic edition of amazon or are the tables in this book really that ugly? That's pretty disappointing when you've got a "style" guide in your hands.

99.8% might not notice DRM, but at least some of them have no clue of computers anyway and ask their "computer guy" what this DRM thingy is. I bet there are quite a few "computer guys" out there who don't recommend buying DRM.