About Me

PBX My name is Paul Bissex, and e-scribe.com is my consulting business. I build web applications using as much open source software as possible. From September to June I teach web design and other important non-photographic professional skills to photographers. In the '90s I wrote technology commentary and reviews for magazines, newspapers, and web publications, including Wired, Salon.com, FamilyPC, the late lamented Web Review, and the Chicago Tribune. Feel free to email me.

Book Project

I'm co-authoring a book, "Python Web Development with Django", with Jeff Forcier and Wesley Chun. It will be published by Prentice Hall in July 2008, but is available for pre-ordering on Amazon now.

Colophon

This site is built on a fresh trunk checkout of Django, running on Python 2.5.1, served by Apache and mod_python. The database is SQLite. The operating system is FreeBSD, on a VPS hosted at Johncompanies.com. Comment-spam protection by Akismet. Vintage topo imagery from the Maptech archive.

Pile o'Tags

Stuff I Use

Akismet, del.icio.us, Django, dpaste.com, Emacs, FreeBSD, Freenode, jQuery, LaunchBar, MacPorts, Markdown, Mercurial, OS X, Postfix, Python, SQLite, Subversion, TextMate, Trac, Ubuntu Linux, wmii

(Finally!)

Yahoo offers DRM-free music, sort of

A story on Slashdot notes that Yahoo is now selling one (yes, one) MP3 without digital rights management shackles. The best comment I saw:

This isn't a marketing ploy to pretend to be anti-DRM when they are

not, and this is not being done because they "want to work on other stuff". This is being done because DRM free music is the only way Yahoo and company can break into the monopoly iTunes has over the iPod, which itself has a near monopoly on MP3 players.

As for why I said "sort of," this comment explains:

If John Q. Moron decides to fileshare, he'll soon be indicted by a

thousand copies of "Jessica Loves John Q. Moron" floating around. You might add that they were being slightly clever by selling this crude copy protection measure as a value added feature.

Not entirely accurate, since only first names are used, but it's still a very clever "soft" way to limit sharing.

Friday, July 21st, 2006
apple + intellectual property + risks