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Politech is the oldest Internet resource devoted to politics and technology. Launched in 1994 by Declan McCullagh, the mailing list has chronicled the growing intersection of culture, technology, politics, and law. Since 2000, so has the Politech web site.
I'm back from five weeks of what seemed like non-stop travel and I'll start going through the backlog of Politech submissions soon. Keep reading if you're interested in some significant changes I'm planning for the list over the next few weeks. First, I'm moving the list and the web site from Rackspace to Rackshack -- the company has a similar name but will give me a faster server for a better price than Rackspace offers. What that means is Politech messages should be delivered more quickly. If you'd like to donate to support the hosting, I'd encourage you to do so here (http://www.politechbot.com/donate/). If you have donated and I haven't listed you as a contributor, please let me know and I'll fix my error. Second, I'm thinking of merging Politech with a blog utility such as Movable Type, primarily to take advantage of RSS. One option would be to keep the Politech home page the way it is but install Movable Type at a second URL. That would let me auto-insert new list messages into Movable Type's MySQL database and take advantage of its RSS capabilities. It would also let me add additional posts to the web site that would not appear on the mailing list, and enable comments from readers -- which would be a serious change from the way Politech has worked to date. Alternatively, I could use the RSSify utility or use Movable Type for a redesigned Politech home page. Newsisfree.com currently makes a Politech RSS feed available here (http://www.newsisfree.com/sources/rss/591/) but the terms are annoying. Suggestions? Third, I'm thinking of shifting Politech from majordomo (the software I've used to run Politech since 1995 or 1996) to mailman. Both are open-source utilities used for mailing lists, but mailman has the advantages of more active development, a digest mode, and modern upgrades like being able to set a vacation option. The downside is that it introduces another level of complexity because it sets a password for each list subscriber. Also, majordomo may be old but it is fast enough and it works just fine. Any thoughts? Fourth, I'd like to include a better search engine for the Politech archives. It's been three years since I looked at the state of the art of search utilities, so I'm open to recommendations for a fast utility that can build a date- and relevance-sorted index. When I last looked and did some performance tests, the leaders were glimpse for date and Isearch for relevance. Suggestions? The list archives are around 60 MB, not counting the /docs directory. Fifth, I have to figure out how to spam-proof the archives. Thanks to those folks who responded a month or two ago (including Earl Hood, the estimable author of mhonarc, which is the utility that builds the Politech web site). A newer version of mhonarc includes email address obfuscation, and I can write a Perl script to obfuscate the rest. Sixth, because of the deadly combination of spam and viral spam, I'm not sure how long I'll be able to keep the declan@well.com address. I estimate I've received over 10,000 spam/viral spam messages in the last month. I dislike challenge-response utilities for the reasons we've discussed here before, but without them my inbox may become unusable. For now I've resorted to quadruply-filtering incoming mail using SpamAssassin, Eudora 6.0 paid mode's spamfiltering, Norton Antivirus, and a fat collection of filters. One alternative would be to use a disposable email address each month for Politech, such as disposable-sep03@politechbot.com and gradually retire declan@well.com, or move to a web form for list submissions -- but those are last resorts. For now, do not send submissions to politech@politechbot.com; the address is not spam-filtered, so I likely won't see them. What I'm hoping to do is to make Politech a more useful and timely resource. I'd appreciate hearing any suggestions or preferences you have. Thanks, Declan ------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/ Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/ Like Politech? Make a donation here: http://www.politechbot.com/donate/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------