Cooperatives-SW (which I m currently helping to direct) has been approved for Co-operative Enterprise Hub funding for 2009. Well done to Viv and the rest of the hard-working team who have been doing miracles for co-ops in this region with relatively little funding for so long now. (But if you ve got a pot of money to donate, let me know, please.) Industrial and Provident Societies are the traditional form for registering UK Co-operatives, but there are a number of things in its 1960s law which aren t reflected in general company law (which was mostly updated since the mid-1980s). For starters, IPSes are registered with the FSA, whose website isn t as good as Companies-House WebCHeck for Limited companies. Cooperatives-UK are pressing for the law to be modernised. C-UK sent us a status update (which I can t find on their website yet) this week. Amongst other things, they re seeking to introduce provisions to allow online registration and filing for IPSes. I ve asked them to take the opportunity to press for similar provisions for LLP Co-ops, or directing Companies House to act on any such existing provisions. At the moment, it seems unfair that LLPs are excluded from online filing, so paying double for routine administrative filings and relying on the increasingly dysfunctional Royal Mail. Finally, the next Cooperatives-SW print/PDF newsletter should be out next week. Hope to see lots of you at the AGM in Plymouth on 23 June!

The Open Video Conference is happening in NYC/NYU in June and registration now open. The line-up looks fantastic so if you are inclined and are in the area, do drop by.

The Open Video Conference is happening in NYC/NYU in June and registration now open. The line-up looks fantastic so if you are inclined and are in the area, do drop by.

My desktop machine blew up, so I got a lovely fresh install of Jaunty. And, X and Gnome still disagreed by default about my actual screeen size... it was unreadably small with the default fonts. I've posted the following instructions before - these are basically unchanged except that the location of the fonts dialog has moved. Tip for folk that would like X to show fonts (i.e. the GDM log in screen) in the correct size: Teach X about the dpi setting! Step 1: run xdpyinfo and look for the dimensions: line. There will be something like this: dimensions: 1280x768 pixels (266x161 millimeters) resolution: 122x121 dots per inch Grab a ruler and measure the screen you have. If it matches the millimeters reported by X, then skip step 2. Step 2: edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, and locate your Monitor section: Section "Monitor" Identifier "Generic Monitor" Option "DPMS" DisplaySize 265 160 EndSection Add in a DisplaySize like I have there. Now logout of your GUI and restart X - you can run /etc/init.d/ g,k dm restart from the console, or do what I do - just hit ctrl-alt-bkspace so it restarts. Your login screen should change appearance slightly - either the fonts and regions will get bigger if your dpi was set too low, or vice verca. Step 3: (For KDE users, someone please tell me what it should be, for GNOME read on)... Run xdpyinfo again and find the Resolution: line. Ignore the fact that it may not be square, grab one of the two numbers ( I suggest the higher).. Go to System, Preferences, Appearance, and the Font tab. Select 'Details'. There is a Resolution field there. Put in the single number you chose. Changes should take effect immediately. Applications I know of which benefit from having this set correctly: xpdf, gnome-* (panels are readable etc etc), firefox.

I have just uploaded Embedded GLIBC (EGLIBC) into the archive (it is currently waiting in the NEW queue), which will soon replace the GNU C Library (GLIBC). The EGLIBC is a variant of the GLIBC which stays source and binary compatible with the original GLIBC. While primarily targeted for embedded architectures, it has some really nice points:

• More friendly upstream (especially with regard to embedded architectures): Encourage cooperation, communication, civility, and respect among developers (as opposed to this).
• Stable branch with fixes for important bugs (a real one, not like the GLIBC one which is left unchanged).
• Better support for embedded architectures.
• Support for different shells (GLIBC only supports bash).
• Support for building with -Os.
• Configurable components (do we really need NIS or RPC support in debian-installer?).
• Better testsuite for optimized or biarch packages.

We do not use some of these features yet, but this upload is a first step. From the user point of view, the package names are unchanged (except the source package and the binary package containing the sources) so no transition is needed.

Providing city services only to users of specific proprietary software is bad public policy. I just discovered that New York City's 2009 Summer Youth Employment Program requires Internet Explorer in order to apply online. Even downloading the pdf version of the application to print out from the site is impossible under non-IE browsers because the actual pdf link is wrapped in some IE-only javascript. And even if you could download the PDF directly, any additional "online information to help you select a SYEP provider" is inaccessible for the same reason. I just called 311 and filed an official complaint against the NYC Dept. of Youth and Community Development (DYCD), who sponsor the program. I also called the number on the application page (1-800-246-4646), and spoke with "Karen" from the DYCD, who explained that the site was a New York City web site, and that it had been created by DoITT (the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications) at the request of the DYCD, but that the DYCD didn't program it directly. She seemed to misunderstand the tech behind the situation, saying "we can't bring it to a higher level (like Firefox) because then it wouldn't work for everyone". I was happy that she understood that Firefox was a concern here, but the point is not to build the site "higher" to Firefox, but to use standard technology that all browsers can access for a public site. Karen also seemed to think the situation was acceptable because the city youth "can always use IE on local public library computers" to access the site. Note that the applications involve submitting very detailed information (SSN, health insurance, family income, criminal record, selective service registration #, etc), which are things that i would personally be unwilling to submit over a shared public computer if i had any other choice. Furthermore, this crappy implementation decision encourages the NYPL to continue to spend limited resources on proprietary software to an out-of-state monopolist to run their computer labs, which is money that could be better spent locally (or even spent on books or something similarly quaint and library-like). I'm frustrated. This is 2009. The application process for public services here should not require any proprietary technology, but it uses it gratuitously. This excludes legitimate citizens, and encourages Microsoft in its ongoing pursuit of monopoly status. Both of these are bad things. I submitted feedback on the DYCD customer survey web site, and submitted two 150-word-limited(!) complaints to Commissioner Mulgrav of the DYCD and Commissioner Cosgrave of DoITT. I'm sure they'd be interested in hearing from other people about this. Is this kind of proprietary lock-in what we should expect from a Mayor who cuts budgets city-wide except for IT? Where is all that money going? What is the city getting out of it?Tags: policy

My Desktop

I use a number of computers in my daily life, but the machine I use the most often is my "desktop box". This is one of a pair of machines sat side by side on my desk. One machine is desktop (Sid) and one is the backup host (Lenny). The backup machine is used by random visitors to my flat, and otherwise just runs backups for my remote machines (www.steve.org.uk, www.debian-administration.org, etc) every 4/6/24 hours. I apply updates to both boxes regularly but my desktop machine tends to have lots of browsers open, and terminals. I rarely restart it, or logout. So the recent updates to X, hal, udev, mostly pass me by - I can go months without logging out and restarting the system. On Saturday the desktop machine died with a OOM condition when I wrote some bad recursive code for indexing a collection of mailboxes. Oops. When it came back I was greeted with a new login window, and all the fonts look great. Now in the past the fonts looked OK, but now? They look great. I cannot pin down what has changed precisely, but everything looks so smooth and sexy. So, a long entry, the summary is "I restarted my machine after a few months of being logged in, and now it looks better".

Distributed Monitoring?

Random conversation with Alex about monitoring yesterday made me curious to see if anybody has put together a useful distributed monitoring system? Assume you have a network with Nagios, or similar, monitoring it. If your link between the monitoring box and the hosts being checked is flaky, unreliable, or has blips you will see false positives. We've all been there and seen that. So, what is the solution? There are two "obvious" ones:

• Move the monitoring as close to the services as possible.
• Monitor from multiple points.

Moving the monitoring closer to the services does reduce the risk of false positives, but introduces its own problems. (i.e. You could be monitoring your cluster, and it could be saying "MySQL up", "Web up", but your ISP could have disconnected you - and you're not connected to the outside world. Oops. The solution there is to test external connectivity too, but that re-introduces the flakyness problem if your link is lossy.) Distributed monitoring brings up its own issues, but seems like a sane way to go. I wrote a simple prototype which has the ability to run as a standalone tester, or a CGI script under Apache. The intention is that you run it upon >3 nodes. If the monitoring detects a service is unavailable it queries the other monitoring nodes to see if they also report a failure - if they do it alerts, if not it assumes the failure is due to a "local" issue. There is a lot of scope for doing it properly, which seems to be Alex's plan, having the nodes run in a mesh and communicate amongst each other "Hey I'm node #1 - I cannot see service X on host Y - Is down for you too?" - but the simple version of having the script just do a wget on the CGI-version on the other nodes is probably "good enough". I really don't track the state of the art in this field, just struggle to battle nagios into submission. Do there exist systems like this already? (sample code is here, sample remote-status checks are here and here. Each node will alert if >=2 nodes see a failure. Otherwise silence is golden.)

ObFilm: X-Men Origins: Wolverine

All Horde packages (horde3, imp4, kronolith2 ) were in GNU Arch repository. After Lenny release, we decided to migrate to Git. Git has a lot cool features, and I was convinced by Pierre Habouzit talk about Packaging with Git. Technically, I used git-archimport to keep all history of packaging. Each package has a Git repository with some branches: upstream, upstream+patches, upstream+repack (if needed), pristine-tar, debian-sid (imported from GNU Arch) and debian-<release>. The hardest step was to set up a common ancestor for debian-sid and upstream branches: I found git-merge-unrelated-branch script to do it automagically. I write guidelines for packaging Horde with Git on Debian Wiki with some notes about migration from GNU Arch to Git. Comments welcome!

I ve just bught an NVidia video card from Computers and Parts Land (CPL) [1]. I asked for a PCIe*8 card but was assured that a PCIe*16 card would work. However when I got it home I discovered that it would not fit, the size difference was obvious enough that I didn t even need to unwrap the new card. According to the Wikipedia page for PCIe (PCI Express) [2] it is quite legal to have a motherboard implement a slower version of PCIe but have the full slot width, so a motherboard could have PCIe*1 implemented but have a socket that will fit a PCIe*16 card. The motherboard and the card will negotiate the capabilities that they both support. But there is no requirement to have a larger socket than required to use the capabilities of the motherboard. The CPL salesman assured me that any PCIe*16 card will fit into any PCIe*8 socket. I presume that he is used to white-box gear manufactured by companies that can save a few cents on the sockets if they make them all the same size. The Dell PowerEdge T105 that I own has PCIe*8 sockets that do not fit PCIe*16 cards. So now I have to return the card, and the CPL web site doesn t even give the hours that the store is open, so I have to call them. Sigh. Update: I returned the video card, first I had a debate with the CPL guy who had sold it to me regarding whether such PCIe sockets exist. He suggested that I had mistaken a PCI slot for a PCIe slot and was not convinced until I showed him a picture I had on my phone. He then claimed that Dell made sub-standard machines for not using a PCIe*16 socket for PCIe*8 connectors - so it was Dell s fault not his fault for delivering me a PCIe*16 board when I asked for a PCIe*8. He told me that no-one had ever made a PCIe*8 video card. Then he told me that I was lucky to not have a re-stocking fee (they sold me a device that was not what I asked for, I returned it in perfect condition on the same day and I was lucky to not pay them for the privilege). They gave me a credit note for the value of it (not a refund). I recommend never doing business with CPL if you can avoid it. I will make exactly one more purchase from them, that will be to use the credit note.

• [1] http://www.cpl.net.au/


• [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCIE

Just got home from a wonderful concert by Brad Mehldau at the CSO. This was long overdue as I kept reading about Mehldau. And even though he performs quite regularly around here, I had never seen him. Big mistake. The first set was performed as a (strictly acoustic) trio with Larry Grenadier on bass and Jeff Ballard on drums. After several compositions by Mehldau and a brazilian samba piece, the first set closed with a rendition of 'Holland' from Sufjan Stevens' album Michigan which was truly beautiful. The second set had Mehldau performing solo, again with several compositions of his own as well as one from Neil Young's classic 'The Needle and the Damage Done' leading two two pieces from the Sound of Music including an amazing, yet really different 'My favourite things' that just hushed a piece of the central melody along with a strond rhythmic element. Lovely. And then to cap it all off, four encores. Highly recommended.

Bruce Schneier has written about the foolish actions of Justice Antonin Scalia [1]. Antonin made some comments opposing the need for greater privacy protection, most people could get away with doing that, but when a Supreme Court Justice does so it gets some attention. In response to this Fordham University law professor Joel Reidenberg assigned his class a project to discover private information on Antonin using public sources. The class produced a dossier of such information which was then offered to Antonin [2], but which was not published. Now anyone who knows anything about how the world works would just accept this. Among other things Antonin now knows what is publicly available and can take steps to remove some public data according to his own desires. But being apparently unaware of the Streisand effect [3] Antonin went on to say the following: It is not a rare phenomenon that what is legal may also be quite irresponsible. That appears in the First Amendment context all the time. What can be said often should not be said. Prof. Reidenberg s exercise is an example of perfectly legal, abominably poor judgment. Since he was not teaching a course in judgment, I presume he felt no responsibility to display any. This is of course essentially issuing a challenge to the entire Internet to discover the information that the Fordham students discovered. Of course doing so would not be fun unless it was published. The meme of 2009 has yet to be defined, it might be discovering and widely publishing personal information about Antonin. Already one of the comments in Bruce Schneier s blog suggests that activists should do such research on all senior figures in the US government to encourage them to take privacy more seriously. I expect that the first reaction of the legislative branch to such practices would be to enact special laws to protect their own privacy while still allowing large corporations (the organisations that pay for the election campaigns) to do whatever they want to ordinary people. It s an interesting situation, I predict that Antonin will regard this as one of the biggest mistakes he s ever made. I m sure that there are many more LULZ to come from this.

• [1] http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/googling_justic.html


• [2] http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2009/04/justice_scalias_2.html

<:LI>[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Wednesday 1st

At the G20 protests, Londoner Ian Tomlinson collapses and is attended to by the emergency services; Metropolitan Police claim "during this time a number of missiles - believed to be bottles - were being thrown at them". Tomlinson dies that evening.

Thursday 2nd

The Evening Standard reports that "police were bombarded with bricks, bottles and planks of wood" as they helped Tomlinson.

Saturday 4th

Postmortem of Tomlinson finds he died of a heart attack.

Monday 6th

The EC Data Retention Regulations 2009 comes into force requiring internet service providers to retain details of emails, internet phone calls and other web traffic.

Tuesday 7th

The Guardian publishes a video of a police officer assualting Tomlinson on 1st April.

Wednesday 8th

Twelve Pakistani students are arrested on suspicion of planning terror attacks over the Easter holiday weekend.

Thursday 9th

The Guardian publishes a second video of Tomlinson's assualt, contributing that no missiles were thrown.

Monday 13th

Police arrest 114 climate protestors on conspiracy to cause criminal damage at Nottingham power plant. [ref]

Tuesday 14th

A video of a seperate assualt at the G20 protests is published.

Thursday 16th

Police claim tourist's photography of transport-related buildings is "strictly forbidden" and demand the photos are deleted. [ref]

Friday 17th

A second postmortem of Iam Tomlinson finds the cause of death to be an abdominal haemorrhage. A policeman is interviewed under caution on suspicion of manslaughter. [ref]

Saturday 18th

The Times reveals MP Damian Green private emails were searched by the police using the keywords "Shami Chakrabarti" (director of Liberty) after his arrest last year.

Monday 20th

The Guardian reveals police intelligence was given to E.On before the Nottingham climate demonstration, including movements of protesters and their meetings.

Tuesday 21st

Another video of the Tomlinson assault is revealed showing his head hitting the pavement. The Independent Police Complaints Commission fails to obtain an injunction to prevent broadcast.

Wednesday 22nd

Nine Pakistani students arrested during anti-terror raids are released after 13 days without charge and are passed to UK Border Agency custody for deportation. [ref]

Monday 27th

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith announces that ISPs and telecoms companies will be asked to record usage "to track murderers and paedophiles" without a warrant. [ref]

Tuesday 28th

Emails are revealed of the Home Office asking Phorm, the behavioural targeted advertising service, whether they are falling outside the law. Home Office claim Phorm would be legal if consent is obtained and that "providers of goods and services need only ensure they are compliant with relevant legislation". [ref]

Wednesday 29th

The Guardian documents the friends of the 7/7 bombers were denied bail on secret evidence - "the appellant asked the judge the question: why are you sending me to prison? To which the judge replied: 'I cannot tell you that.'"

Last Thursday, I went to the Social Enterprise summit regional workshop that I mentioned. Apparently, SEC are hoping that ministers Mandelson, Purnell, Byrne and Blears will be at the summit, along with people from various famous co-ops. I took along some email feedback I received on supporting new blood in social enterprise about needing help to bridge the gaps (financial, social, training) between taking on new members and them being productive enough to break even . Happily, that was echoed and reinforced by other delegates - I shared a table with people from Trinity Community Arts, AvonCDA, Sofa Project, Somerset Co-operative Services and Community Action. Emboldened by that, I ranted about the Business Support Simplification Programme (which seems to mean that only BusinessLinkSW has any gov.uk money in our region and they re being really poor at co-op support) and I threw a couple of ideological-explosives into the consultation, suggesting that franchising has failed as a way of spreading social enterprise and we need to start offering General Public Licensing of our business models, because we re not franchising businesses and most of us don t want to be. I wonder if that idea will detonate somewhere helpful. The Social Enterprise Coalition officers had some details of the support programmes that are already announced. One of them is a golden hello where the enterprise gets money when a new person joins. It s run by jobcentreplus. So yesterday, when I was at a Business Link Real help for business event, I asked the jobcentreplus officers there about it: apparently it s useless to TTLLP because all our workers are partners and not employees. I was expecting more support for co-ops from a Labour+Co-op government, but it shouldn t've been a surprise after the budget. After that, I don t think it s worth posting details of the other SE assistance programmes mentioned: they ll probably turn out to be equally useless for co-ops and I don t want to waste your time. I ll rant about that and the BusinessLinkSW event another day or in another place. Ask me if you want details and I ll put them in a comment or email them. And in that spirit, it s back to programming for me!

With everything that has been going on of late, I have yet to mention that Khanh Nguyen, a Ph.D. student in Computer Science at U Mass / Boston, will be working with me on RQuantLib as part of the Google Summer of Code program this year. We had twenty-two applications to review for the R project, including three for the RQuantLib topic I had proposed. Khanh's application was clearly among the best, and I look forward to helping him do cool stuff over the summer. He already posted two short emails on the r-sig-finance and the quantlib-user lists soliciting suggestions and comments. So if you have comments regarding R and QuantLib, please get in touch with him or me!

Call for papers: JITP-2010
The Politics of Open Source
May 6-7, 2010 - Amherst, Massachusetts Full Paper Submission Due Date: January 10, 2010 Approach
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) has made significant advances, both technically and organizationally, since its emergence in the mid-1980s. Over the last decade, it has moved from a software development approach involving mostly volunteers to a more complex ecology where firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies and volunteers may be involved. Moreover, the production paradigm continues to expand to other areas of digital content (e.g., Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Connexions, etc.). In this conference we use the phrase open source to capture this broader phenomenon. The Program Committee encourages disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of open source, broadly defined. Politics in the conference title, can have many interpretations. Political issues closely tied to the free and open source software movement(s) include: national government policies related to the adoption of open source technologies or questions related to interoperability and open standards, software patents, vendor lock-in, and copyright. These are central themes we expect may be discussed in this forum. In this context, we welcome international submissions since differences in the political perspective appear in international contexts. However, topics related to how the concept of openness has led to various interpretations, adaptations, and applications of open source in other domains, and political issues that surround these broader innovations, are also welcome. Specific topics might include, but are not limited to: General topics related to the politics of open source:
+ How open source software or its principles are changing politics
+ Emerging transparencies in software, systems and society
+ Open source in the developing world and other international contexts
+ The political economy of open source
+ Digital divides and open source Open source and the public sector:
+ Open source software and transparency in government
+ Government policies toward open source and open standards
+ Regulation and open source Open source and democracy:
+ Open source and democratic engagement
+ Open source voting systems
+ Activism, political mobilization and open source The expansion of open source into other domains:
+ Understanding how open source collaboration works and how it can be extended into other areas of collective action
+ Policy areas, such as the effects of free textbooks on education policy or the politics of One Laptop Per Child
+ The political implications of open source in other cultural domains Keynote Speakers
We are pleased to confirm Eric von Hippel (MIT) and Clay Johnson (Sunlight Labs) as the daily keynote speakers for JITP-2010. Paper Submissions
Authors are invited to prepare and submit to JITP a manuscript following one of the six submission formats by January 10, 2010. These formats include research papers, policy viewpoints, workbench notes, review essays, book reviews, and papers on teaching innovation. The goal is to produce a special issue, or double issue, of JITP with a wide variety of approaches to the broad theme of The Politics of Open Source.

How to Submit
Everything you need to know about how to prepare and submit a strong JITP paper is documented at http://www.jitp.net/. Papers will be put through an expedited blind peer review process by the Program Committee, and authors will be notified about a decision by March 10, 2010. A small number of papers will be accepted for presentation at the conference. Other paper authors will be invited to present a poster during the Friday evening reception. All posters must include a YouTube version of their research findings. Best Paper and Poster Cash Prizes
The author (or authors) of the best research paper will receive a single $1,000 prize. The creator (or creators) of the best poster/research presentation will also receive a single prize of $1,000. Program Committee
M.V. Lee Badgett, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Paul M.A. Baker, Georgia Institute of Technology
Deborah Bryant, Oregon State University Open Source Lab
Andrea Calderaro, European University Institute
Mark Cassell, Kent State University
Edward Cherlin, Earth Treasury
Gabriella Coleman, New York University
Doug Downham, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert English, Daystar Computing & University of Massachusetts Amherst
Joseph Feller, University College Cork
Jelena Karanovic, Rutgers University
Dave Karpf, University of Pennsylvania/Miller Center for Public Affairs
Jeremy Hunsinger, Virginia Tech
Andrea Kavanaugh, Virginia Tech
Jose Marichal, California Lutheran University
Jens Hardings Perl, Pontificia Universidad Cat lica de Chile
Charlie Schweik, University of Massachusetts Amherst, co-chair
Stuart Shulman, University of Massachusetts Amherst, co-chair
Megan Squire, Elon University
Krishna Ravi Srinivas, Research Information System For Developing Nations
Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun Microsystems, Inc. & OpenOffice.org
Anas Tawileh, Cardiff University & Meedan.net

Call for papers: JITP-2010
The Politics of Open Source
May 6-7, 2010 - Amherst, Massachusetts Full Paper Submission Due Date: January 10, 2010 Approach
Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FOSS) has made significant advances, both technically and organizationally, since its emergence in the mid-1980s. Over the last decade, it has moved from a software development approach involving mostly volunteers to a more complex ecology where firms, nonprofit organizations, government agencies and volunteers may be involved. Moreover, the production paradigm continues to expand to other areas of digital content (e.g., Creative Commons, Wikipedia, Connexions, etc.). In this conference we use the phrase open source to capture this broader phenomenon. The Program Committee encourages disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to the study of open source, broadly defined. Politics in the conference title, can have many interpretations. Political issues closely tied to the free and open source software movement(s) include: national government policies related to the adoption of open source technologies or questions related to interoperability and open standards, software patents, vendor lock-in, and copyright. These are central themes we expect may be discussed in this forum. In this context, we welcome international submissions since differences in the political perspective appear in international contexts. However, topics related to how the concept of openness has led to various interpretations, adaptations, and applications of open source in other domains, and political issues that surround these broader innovations, are also welcome. Specific topics might include, but are not limited to: General topics related to the politics of open source:
+ How open source software or its principles are changing politics
+ Emerging transparencies in software, systems and society
+ Open source in the developing world and other international contexts
+ The political economy of open source
+ Digital divides and open source Open source and the public sector:
+ Open source software and transparency in government
+ Government policies toward open source and open standards
+ Regulation and open source Open source and democracy:
+ Open source and democratic engagement
+ Open source voting systems
+ Activism, political mobilization and open source The expansion of open source into other domains:
+ Understanding how open source collaboration works and how it can be extended into other areas of collective action
+ Policy areas, such as the effects of free textbooks on education policy or the politics of One Laptop Per Child
+ The political implications of open source in other cultural domains Keynote Speakers
We are pleased to confirm Eric von Hippel (MIT) and Clay Johnson (Sunlight Labs) as the daily keynote speakers for JITP-2010. Paper Submissions
Authors are invited to prepare and submit to JITP a manuscript following one of the six submission formats by January 10, 2010. These formats include research papers, policy viewpoints, workbench notes, review essays, book reviews, and papers on teaching innovation. The goal is to produce a special issue, or double issue, of JITP with a wide variety of approaches to the broad theme of The Politics of Open Source.

How to Submit
Everything you need to know about how to prepare and submit a strong JITP paper is documented at http://www.jitp.net/. Papers will be put through an expedited blind peer review process by the Program Committee, and authors will be notified about a decision by March 10, 2010. A small number of papers will be accepted for presentation at the conference. Other paper authors will be invited to present a poster during the Friday evening reception. All posters must include a YouTube version of their research findings. Best Paper and Poster Cash Prizes
The author (or authors) of the best research paper will receive a single $1,000 prize. The creator (or creators) of the best poster/research presentation will also receive a single prize of $1,000. Program Committee
M.V. Lee Badgett, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Paul M.A. Baker, Georgia Institute of Technology
Deborah Bryant, Oregon State University Open Source Lab
Andrea Calderaro, European University Institute
Mark Cassell, Kent State University
Edward Cherlin, Earth Treasury
Gabriella Coleman, New York University
Doug Downham, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert English, Daystar Computing & University of Massachusetts Amherst
Joseph Feller, University College Cork
Jelena Karanovic, Rutgers University
Dave Karpf, University of Pennsylvania/Miller Center for Public Affairs
Jeremy Hunsinger, Virginia Tech
Andrea Kavanaugh, Virginia Tech
Jose Marichal, California Lutheran University
Jens Hardings Perl, Pontificia Universidad Cat lica de Chile
Charlie Schweik, University of Massachusetts Amherst, co-chair
Stuart Shulman, University of Massachusetts Amherst, co-chair
Megan Squire, Elon University
Krishna Ravi Srinivas, Research Information System For Developing Nations
Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun Microsystems, Inc. & OpenOffice.org
Anas Tawileh, Cardiff University & Meedan.net

I'd forgotten how sexy, useful, and great mod_perl is. I've recently been struggling with a friend's CGI-based site, and after a minor effort we made it run with Apache::PerlRun:

Apache::PerlRun gives you the benefit of preloaded Perl and its modules. This module's handler emulates the CGI environment, allowing programmers to write scripts that run under CGI or mod_perl without any change

Because the site code wasn't very clean we had to make a lot of changes to get it working under Apache::Registry.

Apache::Registry is the Apache module allowing you to run CGI scripts very fast under mod_perl, by compiling all scripts once and then caching them in memory.

But the payoff is very noticeable - the site is now blazingly fast! At some point I should write a guide to doing basic things with mod_perl. Mostly I guess the challenge is that you can write toy applications in moments, but to demonstrate how useful it is you need to apply it to something the reader is familiar with. Or demonstrate why the effort is worthwhile, given that it ties you to the Apache + mod_perl platform. Any links to existing guides, or suggestions on how to approach the guide-writing in a beginner-friendly but still useful fashion are welcome. (For what its worth I mostly write web applications using CGI::Application & jQuery these days.) ObFilm: Pretty In Pink

Via blaxter, I got to know autojump. It hooks into your shell, tracking the directories you visit, and provides a j command that allows you to cd to a directory by providing a string or regular expression that matches the directory you want to visit. To decide among various possibilities, the code has gotten to know the frequency with which you ve visited each directory, and how long you stayed on it (or, rather, how many commands you execute in it, it seems). I ve been using it for a week now, and it indeed improves The Shell Experience . By the way, if you d rather not execute a Python script with every prompt (!), there seems to be a small sister project/clone written in shell and awk here.