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!)

Bad news for Spamhaus?

The anti-spam operation Spamhaus, based in the UK, is being sued in an Illinois court by an individual named David Linhardt, who is listed in Spamhaus' Register of Known Spam Operations (ROKSO) database. Spamhaus has been responding like this:

... Spamhaus, which as a British organization not subject to Illinois court orders is continuing to list Linhardt's IP addresses on its SBL spam blocklist as usual ... the Illinois ruling shows that U.S. courts can be bamboozled by spammers with great ease. Additionally, as spamming is illegal in the United Kingdom, an Illinois court ordering a British organization to stop blocking incoming Illinois spam in Britain goes contrary to U.K. law which orders all spammers to cease sending spam in the first place.

Spamhaus' position is that Linhardt will need to file his suit in Britain. Sounds plausible to my non-lawyer ears. However, a PDF of a legal document dated October 6 features what seems to be a new gambit on the part of the plaintiff -- attempting to shut up Spamhaus via their US-based domain registrar:

Tucows, Inc., ICANNs accredited registrar for

www.spamhaus.org, is hereby ordered to suspend or place a client hold on www.Spamhaus.org until such time as they receive a further order from this Court that such suspension or client hold be lifted.

The document also says that "the additional relief requested by Plaintiff is denied," which I assume refers to that $11 million. Note that the document is labeled "PROPOSED ORDER", which I believe means that it hasn't yet been signed by a judge. Is this just more futile poking, or does it stand a chance of causing real trouble for Tucows? I welcome contributions and corrections from anybody with more information.