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"cgipython" or equivalent for Python 2.1.1, NT (IIS4)?

Alex Martelli aleax at aleax.it
Mon Oct 15 02:15:29 EDT 2001 
On Monday 15 October 2001 05:58, David Ascher wrote:
> Alex Martelli wrote:
> > I've purchased an unlimited-space, unlimited-traffic, just-about-no-
> > visible-support ISP account (came cheap in a bundle with ADSL to my
> > home and a .it domain).  They "support" (...well... let's say, they
> > *have installed*:-) ASP (meaning, I'm sure, VBScript and JScript), PHP,
> > and CGI via Perl -- period.  No chance to get them to install anything
> > else for me, of course -- when one buys a year's worth of unlimited
> > web serving for less than the price of a decent dinner, one can't
> > expect to get even a few minutes' worth of individualized support:-).
> > They seem to be running Microsoft IIS 4.0 on SMP NT4 boxes, with the
> > latest SP's and security hotfixes (no codered vulnerability, wow:-).
>
> You might be able to get them to run python as an ASP active scripting
> host...

Technically, that would no doubt be the best-case for me.  But maybe I 
haven't made the situation clear...:

These guys are selling me a domain name, unlimited space and traffic, 5 
mailboxes, ASP, PHP4, CGI, &c, all for 40,000 Italian liras PER YEAR -- 20 
Euros, less than US$20 (last time I posted I got a flurry of questions in 
email, so, to forestall a repetition: they're www.aruba.it).

They sell a lot of other connectivity services, so maybe the dirt-cheap, 
no-service thingy is meant as a "loss leader", but they've sold tens of 
thousands of those so they'd better not lose too much per account:-).  

Their stated policy is therefore (quite reasonably given the scenario) to 
spend _zero_ time on any support task except fixing security issues on system 
software.  In particular, they don't install any extra software (customers 
are welcome to install it themselves in private accounts, though).

They hosts "forums" (sort of newsgroups) where customers can help each other, 
and the PHP'ists are forever bemoaning the lack of MySQL (the Jet engine, aka 
"Access DB", is all the SQL they support -- PHP &c can get at it via COM+ADO, 
but it's not what PHP people normally do) -- I wouldn't be surprised if they 
had a thousand customers pining for MySQL, versus maybe a couple of hundreds 
pining for Python.  Yet they aren't installing MySQL -- not for the accounts 
that cost less than US$20 per year -- nor Python nor anything else.  Even to 
get _statistics_ for your site is an extra US$10 per year...


Alex
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