Great research opportunity for PhD Students out there.

Peer to Patent Summer Research Fellowship
New York Law School
Summer 2009 Background
Peer to Patent is the groundbreaking program developed by New York Law School and run in cooperation with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office, along with the assistance of a number of private stakeholders. It harnesses the power of citizen-experts to assist patent examiners by searching for, identifying, and annotating prior art relevant to pending patent applications. A first Peer to Patent pilot was launched in June 2007. During the first year the project participants (peer reviewers) assisted in the prior art searches on 40 patent applications, generating 173 items of prior art. These items of prior art were the basis of rejection in over ten of the patent applications considered. In June 2008 the pilot was continued for a second year, and was recently extended to encompass a pilot program in the United Kingdom. Research Issue
Although Peer to Patent has attracted over 350 active peer reviewers, the project team has little or no idea as to the motivations that cause these individuals voluntarily to contribute their substantial time to the project. The average reviewer spent approximately six hours searching and annotating individual patent applications. The project team also does not fully understand the best means for attracting additional peer reviewers to the project. In order for the project to scale to larger volumes of applications, both of these points need to be understood and addressed. More generally and theoretically, the motivations of citizens in producing material for governmental use are not well-understood. This fellowship seeks to provide an account of this sort of activity, as well as generate a design for a controlled study of incentive mechanisms for these sorts of activities. Research Activity
The selected fellow will conduct interviews among a meaningful number of currently active peer reviewers to elicit their motivations for participating in the project and contributing their time. The fellow will review the non-profit motivation literature to provide a number of alternative methods of reward to determine whether any or all of them would induce the participants to continue their participation, increase their participation, encourage others to participate, or cease their participation altogether. Potential rewards may include: (a) basic recognition; (b) monetary interest; (c) cash awards; (d) prominent public recognition; (e) some other form of reward; or (f) no reward whatsoever. The fellow will develop a survey to be conducted among a wider segment of active and potential peer reviewers to test for validation of the data gathered in the initial sampling. From the results of the initial sampling, literature review, and survey, the fellow will develop findings on which to base an incentive program to attract and retain peer reviewers. The fellow will develop an experimental design to test the efficacy of each of these incentive possibilities. Term
The fellowship will commence on or about June 1, 2009 and will continue until on or about August 31, 2009. The fellowship is a full time position for the three months stipulated; but this is open to negotiation for an exceptional candidate.

Compensation The fellow will receive a monthly stipend of $3,000 (based on full time work status). Job Qualification
It is expected that the fellow will be pursuing (ABD) or have completed a PhD in psychology, economics, policy, or communications; or some other relevant field involving the motivation of content producers. Application Deadline April 30, 2009. Application Procedure
Applicants should send (1) a letter of application detailing their qualification for the position, (2) a resum , and (3) a list of three referees, to: Ms Naomi Allen Administrator, Institute for Information Law & Policy New York Law School 57 Worth Street New York NY 10013 Naomi.Allen@nyls.edu Questions relating to the scope and nature of the fellowship can be directed to: Prof. Mark Webbink,
Director, Center for Patent Innovations
New York Law School
mhwebbink@yahoo.com Prof. Dan Hunter
Director, Institute for Information Law & Policy
New York Law School
dhunter@nyls.edu New York Law School is an equal opportunity employer that encourages excellence through diversity. Women and minority candidates are encouraged to apply.

This morning started with a call from my mom. She was calling to let us know that my grandmother had apparently taken a turn for the worse, and we didn t know how much time was left. Terah, Jacob, and I got dressed and went to the hospital to visit. Grandma had been in a partial coma that left her able to hear, nod, and hold hands, but unable to speak. Apparently she came out of it overnight, and was talking and even singing with my mom and aunt some. She seemed happy, loved to hear the old German prayers she grew up with. She said some memorable things I ll have to write about later too. By the time we got there, she wasn t that active anymore, and was about like she was yesterday. She could see us, and give our hands a squeeze, maybe nod occasionally. She drifted asleep often. One time when I saw she was awake with her eyes open, I lifted up Jacob to where she could see him. Immediately her face brightened, and I saw the biggest smile on her face that I d seen in days! She smiled and waved to him, and with a small bit of coaxing, he waved back. Then she wiggled her foot, and when Jacob noticed, he wiggled his foot back at her. He s 92 years younger than her, and they still managed to communicate just fine. Grandma held my hand for awhile this morning; she loves to have a hand or two to hold. My cousin showed up for a visit, and I was going to get up to let her sit down, and when grandma felt my hand leaving, she grabbed on tighter. I went around to the other side of the bed and held the other hand. In the last couple of days, grandma s hearing has become much sharper than before, and I m pretty sure her memory has too. When it was time for us to leave and go to church, I was holding her hand, looking into her eyes, saying goodbye, and how much I loved her. I got a hand squeeze, and saw a few tears at her eyes the first I can remember seeing that. As I pulled my hand away to leave, she once again grabbed tighter and was still looking at me. I think she thought this was the last time she d see me, and didn t want the moment to pass too quickly. But that also guaranteed that I d be back in the afternoon. It was Palm Sunday in church today, and as every year, the Palm Sunday celebration ends with Bill singing I walked today where Jesus walked while Dale carries in a heavy cross. Right when Bill is singing I climbed the hill on Calvary, where on the cross He died! , Dale is climbing the steps to the stage and laying the cross there. Hardly a dry eye in the room at that. For lunch, my parents were still hosting their monthly college student get-together/home cooking event which we usually attend too. After that, I dropped off Terah and Jacob at home, and went back to the hospital. By the time I had left, grandma had 27 visitors just today. When I arrived, my great uncle (her brother) and aunt were there, along with her pastor and a deacon from her church, plus my mom and my aunt. More people came and went throughout the afternoon, and I enjoyed visiting and hearing stories about the family and grandma all afternoon. She was sometimes awake and able to look at people, and sometimes deeply asleep. I heard her say God bless you to several people. It was awhile before I had a chance to go be with her, and when I did, she was asleep, so I sat beside her bed and held her hand for quite awhile, maybe an hour, while visiting with family in the room. At one point, a nurse came in to give her some more morphine by IV. I got up to get our of her way, but the nurse said, Don t think of it; I can work around you, and what you re doing is more important than what I m doing anyway. Some of her old friends from church came by, and prayed with her in German, and recited the words to some German hymns and poems, which I think she really enjoyed. Her eyes were closed through most of it, but when they got to the end of each item, they opened, saying thank you, I believe. Eventually things calmed down, and it was time for me to head home. Grandma was awake by then, and I looked at her and said goodbye, and that I was glad I got to see her again. We gave each other a final hand squeeze, and then she let go of my hand this time. I m glad I came back for sure. They say sometimes that people that are dying feel like they need permission to die, before they will let themselves go. I wondered if grandma was feeling that way today. But then I hear that my uncle, who is driving in from 8 hours away through wintry weather, called and ask that she be given this message: Tell mom that I m coming, but if Jesus gets there first, she should go with him. That might not work on everybody, but for her, it s the best way I could think of to give her permission.

Here is the Australian Electoral Commission documentation on how to register a political party [1]. It includes the requirement for A Microsoft compatible electronic membership list (and paper copy) providing the following information . So a prerequisite for registering a political party appears to be the ownership of a PC running Windows. While it may be the case that I could create a plain text file on a Linux machine and append some CR characters to each line, or create a CSV format spread-sheet/database file the most common interpretation of this is likely to be that MS-Office is required. Such blatant promotion of a software vendor in a government document is unacceptable. Anyone who wishes to use other software for their political activities should be permitted to do so without restriction.

• [1] http://www.aec.gov.au/Parties_and_Representatives/Party_Registration/Handbook/application.htm

Here I am, utterly disgusted. Last Thursday, around 11pm, two dozens of members of Assembl e Nationale (one of the two parliament chambers in France) voted the infamous law nicknamed HADOPI. Great... For the record, this chamber in principle counts 577 members. This law is an awful blow to the Internet, the freedom of expression and the legal system in France. The official aim of this law is to put a stop to illegal file-sharing within France. With this law, specially appointed private companies will file accusations saying: this IP downloaded something illegal at this date to a central authority, and this authority will send two warnings before cutting the Internet connection of the alleged illegal downloader for up to a year. You will notice that there is no mention of what the incriminated person allegedly downloaded. There will be no possibility of appeal until the sanction is executed. This scares the hell out of me. This spits upon so many aspects of the French legal system that it is honestly impressive... What about the French principle that says that everyone is innocent until proven guilty ? Here, you are declared guilty based on a rather weak evidence (on IP address !), and you'll have to prove your innocence. What about the principle that there needs to be a fair trial before the execution of the sanction ? You'll have to prove you are innocent after the execution, with the additional fun that it will turn almost impossible to prove it. Not to mention the fact that the companies harvesting IP addresses of alleged offenders will have a great deal of access to data you're exchanging; what about privacy ? For the record, this privilege, violating the way justice works in France, had only ever be granted to anti-terrorist cells. The fun thing is that this law is useless, at least in terms of the its official goal: the day it comes into application, illegal file sharers will encrypt their exchanges or fake their IP addresses, or do whatever else they might want to do to guarantee their anonymity, and no company will ever be able to find out what it is they exchange. I won't even mention the number of false positive of these automatic accusations: many innocent French web surfers will have their connection cut without ever knowing why and without any possibility to fight back. So, what is the real goal ? Or what will be the use ? I can only speculate, of course, but it is tempting to think that this law could be used to regulate what is being expressed from France on the web. Someone is saying disturbing things ? Well, easy to shut him/her up: either fake downloads from his/her IP address or bribe a company into filing false accusations, and you'll effectively remove his/her connection while having the opportunity to further discredit the person by publicly disclosing that he/she is such a pirate that their connection was cut... Sounds neat, doesn't it ? In my childhood, teachers kept on saying that France is the country of human rights, but I can't help thinking this is less and less the case[1]. Well. That was a long rant. But I can't keep it inside: this is touching me too much. I'll add that I'm not downloading anything, and I don't have anything a priori against laws which would tend to regulate illegal file sharing. I just don't think that the (small) profits of a few justify spitting upon the freedom and the elementary rights of all people living in France. Further information, in French, can be found there. The full text of the project can be found on the website of Assembl e Nationale. [1] Please don't get me wrong. There are many countries where life is definitely more difficult than here, and where human rights are constantly scorned upon, which is fortunately not the case here yet.

Richard Glover has written a polemic about fads on the net [1]. His points are essentially good, but he does over-reach them a bit (which is part of the polemic style) and he also seems a little unimaginative about the future of technology. He starts by suggesting that Twitter [2] is a fad. Twitter has grown in popularity very rapidly, and I believe that the company is not guaranteed to last forever (the business model could fail or a better implementation of the concept could take the users). But the basic premise of Twitter (SMS length messages being published on the net in a similar manner to blog posts) is something that has been proven to work well. So even though I have not felt inclined to use Twitter (either as a reader or a writer) I don t think that the class of service will ever go away. He also cites an example of watching TV news on a mobile phone. While I believe he is right about that not being a viable business, it s because TV news itself isn t a great thing. Before the Internet was commonly used the only ways of getting news of something that happened in the last few hours was via TV or radio, if you want pictures with that then TV was the only option. If you wanted quality news (in-depth coverage, insightful analysis, and a depth of detail) then you were probably out of luck, but the best option available to you was the the newspaper. Watching a TV news segment on a mobile phone (or on a PC connected to the net) is not effective. What I want is a newspaper that is updated as soon as events happen and which contains full color pictures and video. There are a number of web sites which provide this service, The Sydney Morning Herald (which employs Richard Glover) [3] is one example. I think that the current fad for mobile phone TV is like the fad for WAP [4]. Many years ago I worked for an ISP that installed a WAP server, one of my duties was to keep the WAP server running. Everyone who knew anything about technology knew that the project was going to fail, WAP phones were horribly expensive (you could expect to spend an extra 200 guilders or more to buy such a phone) and the features of WAP were not particularly exciting. Also requiring that everything be re-written for WAP was just insanity. The problem with the WAP fad was managers who knew nothing about technology making technical decisions. I m sure that the TV on mobile phone fad is driven by managers in TV companies that are greedy for more revenue opportunities and don t stop to think about the implications. I might watch a news show on free TV, but I m certainly not going to pay by the minute to watch it on my mobile phone. Instead I can just go to a web site such as the SMH and read news items, see pictures, and even watch the occasional video (most TV news doesn t really require any video - they just re-enact scenes or use stock footage to have something on screen). Finally he makes a sarcastic reference to chocolate fondue. That reminds me, someone gave me a fondue set years ago that I haven t used yet. I ll have to make a chocolate fondue! For those of you who live in Melbourne, the restaurant of the Melbourne Swiss Club [5] offers cheese fondue for the main course and chocolate fondue for dessert. Fondue is still with us!

• [1] http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/you-could-bring-back-the-hula-hoop-if-you-found-a-way-of-connecting-it-to-the-net-20090320-94bi.html?page=-1


• [2] http://twitter.com/


• [3] http://www.smh.com.au/


• [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_Application_Protocol


• [5] http://www.swiss.org.au/page.php?ID=249

Following the ACCEPT on packages on NEW during my vacations and the ack from the release team, I've just uploaded all Xfce 4.6 packages to unstable. Packages for your architectures should arrive on your mirror along the weekend. the NEWS.Debian (which will be displayed if you use apt-listchanges (which is a good idea)) will warn you about some upgrade precautions to take. I'm reproducing it here:

xfce4 (4.6.0.1) unstable; urgency=low

Xfce 4.6 includes multiple changes which are not directly visible to the
user but might cause problems in rare cases.

Settings management have been moved from the old MCS Manager to the xfconf
system. User settings will be migrated automatically at first Xfce 4.6
startup using the /usr/lib/xfce4/xfconf-migration/xfconf-migration-4.6.pl
script contained in xfce4-utils. Once those settings have been migrated,
the automatic run will be disabled but the script will stay (for future
users).

Menus are now managed using a dedicated library, used by various Xfce
components (including xfdesktop4 and the menu panel plugin). This library
tries to support the freedesktop.org specifications, but is not totally
complete and thus lacks the support for some items, like .
This renders useless the menu editor previously shipped with Xfce 4.4.
Solutions for menu editing can be found at the following address:
http://wiki.xfce.org/howto/customize-menu

As the upgrade is pretty invasive, it is recommended to quit Xfce before
doing so, but it's not required and upgrades have been made from the
desktop environment without problems. In that case, be sure to quit Xfce
not long after the upgrade.

-- Yves-Alexis Perez <corsac@debian.org> Thu, 02 Apr 2009 21:19:53 +0200 The xfce4-goodies will be updated soon to match the new goodies present for Xfce 4.6, and the desktop task (the standard install when you choose desktop=xfce in the installer) will be updated too (there's an ongoing discussion on pkg-xfce mailing list to select which packages should be part of that install). Have a good upgrade!

In case you missed it: LWN article about the Debian Project Leader election.

Most of the book deals with things we already know yet never learn. Huston Smith

This is perhaps one of the most enlightening books I ve ever read, and yet I feel like I ve only grasped a small bit of its meaning. It is with that warning that I attempt this review. I should add at the outset that this is one of those books where no matter what you expect it to be, after reading it, you will find that it wasn t what you expected. I heartily recommend it to everyone, from the devoutly religious to the devoutly atheistic. Science and Scientism Smith begins with a discussion of science and scientism. He is a forceful defender of science and of the work of scientists in general. But he is careful to separate science from scientism. Paraphrased, he defines scientism as the belief that science is the only (or the best) route to truth about everything. He points out that, through no explicit fault of scientists, scientism has become so ingrained in our modern psyche that even theologians have started thinking in terms of it. Yet there are some pretty glaring flaws in scientism, particularly where it comes to matters of philosophy, conscience, meaning, and religion. Smith argues that the foundation of science is the controlled experiment and logical inferences derived from it. He then proceeds to make strong case that it is not possible for humans to set up a controlled experiment to either prove or disprove the existence of something more than our material world a transcendence, a metaphysical reality, a spirit, a God. We, with our existence trapped in this finite world, cannot possibly hope to capture and control something so much more than us in every way: intelligence, versatility, and finiteness . Thus science can t even address the question. That hasn t stopped people from claiming that religion is just a helpful delusion, for instance, despite not being able to prove whether it is in fact a delusion or reality. Worldviews Smith then asks us to indulge a moment in considering two different worldviews: one the science-only worldview so common these days, and the other a more traditional religious worldview with a rightful place for science. He defers supporting evidence for each for later chapters. The science-only worldview is pretty familiar to many, and I have even heard parts of it articulated in comments left on this blog. It goes roughly like this: The universe is x billions of years old. It is, so far as we presently know, a vast expanse with mostly dead matter. Earth is the only exception, which contains some living organisms and even sentient beings, though these make up a small fraction of even the earth. This life arrived by accident through physical and biological processes, some of which are well-understood and some aren t. In the end, the universe will again become entirely dead, as our planet will be incinerated when our sun goes nova. Or, in any case, the entire universe will eventually expire in one of various ways. This worldview suggests that it is an accident that we are here and that we have consciousness, and that our actions have no ultimate meaning because the earth will eventually be incinerated anyhow. The traditional worldview holds the opposite: that instead of having our origins in the tiniest and simplest of building blocks, and eventually improving over time, we should more properly think of ourselves as being derived from something greater than ourselves. That greater something is part of our world, but something much bigger than it too. It does not rule out science, but neither is it something that science can ever explain. It suggests that our lives have a purpose, that our work has meaning, and that there are ultimate ends to seek. Smith is a scholar of world religions, and draws on his considerable experience to point out that virtually all world religions, before the Enlightenment, drew essentially the same picture of our world and the more . He reminds us though perhaps less effectively than Marcus Borg that there are other ways of knowing truth besides science, and suggests that we pay attention to what the vast majority of humanity had to say about the nature of existence before a human invention started to squelch the story. The Stories The book is filled with personal stories (Smith spent at least a decade each researching and practicing at least four different religions), quotes, and insights. I consider it the most enlightening book on religion I have yet read. Smith has more than a passing familiarity with physics, and the physicists in the crowd will probably be delighted at his discussions of quantum mechanics and the claim that nonlocality provides us with the first level platform since modern science arose on which scientists and theologians can continue their discussions. One passage reads like this:

Again I will let Henry Stapp say it: Everything we [now] know about Nature is in accord with the idea that the fundamental process of Nature lies outside space-time, but generates events that can be located in space-time. Stapp does not mention matter, but his phrase space-time implies it, for physics locks the three together.

He says that quantum theory of course can t prove that there is a God, but that recent research seems to disprove the old notion that, given enough time, all questions will be answerable by science. Even if you disagree with every one of Smith s conclusions, you ll be along for a fascinating ride through physics, biology, philosophy, and innumerable religions. One of my favorite anecdotes concerns noted physicist David Bohm (who studied under Oppenheimer and worked with Einstein, among others). He gave a lecture at one point, apparently touching on his hidden variable theories to a great extent. At its conclusion, a senior physics professor asked derivisely, What does all this philosophy have to do with physics? Bohm replied, I do not make that distinction. How s that for something to ponder? The Writing The book is fun to read, and the stories make it all the moreso. However, it is not a light read. Houston Smith wrote this near the beginning, without any hint of irony:

The first of these differences is that Gass s is an aristocratic book, written for the literary elite, whereas mine is as plebeian as I can render its not always simple arguments.

I can think of a few simpler ways to express that thought. In any case, it isn t light reading, but it is accessible even if you, like me, have little formal training in philosophy, theology, or quantum physics. Conclusion I would do such a poor job trying to paraphrase Smith s main points that I haven t even really attempted to do so here. Get the book you ll be in for a treat. Incidentally, I had been thinking of buying the book for awhile. What finally made me do so was an NPR story about how he helped preserve the sound of the Gyuto Monks Tantric Choir back in 1964, when he (of course) was sleeping in a monastery in the Himalayas and awoke to investigate something transcendent the holiest sound I have ever heard. I pressed the Buy button for the Kindle edition a few minutes later.

I don't use Emacs myself, and I don't recall a single Emacs user complaining about accidentally triggering Ctrl-Alt-Backspace on their way to M-C-E-A-S paste-output-of-doctor-into-irc. Most of the grumbling came from actual users (i.e. people who don't know what an X server is, let alone how to configure it, let alone to email xorg-devel@ about it), rather than people who are perfectly capable of changing the default[0].

Regardless, Peter came up with a perfectly sane plan which makes it very easy indeed to optimise for clients with stuck grabs (being that termination requires you to be processing input events in the first place, in which case you're likely doing reasonably well anyway).

[0]: Yes, the text is woeful. Sorry.

It was 2 years ago when we started working in KDE 4 packages, and exactly 20 months ago when we started uploading KDE 4.0.0 beta 1 to experimental. Finally, we are working in packages that are targeted to unstable \o/. As announced in the users mailing list, we will be uploading KDE 4.2.2 to unstable in the next days, so look carefully at what you update :) We have worked very hard in providing a smooth upgrade, but given the change is so big, some new (little!) problems will be discovered. One of the most problematic points is we were using .kde4 to store user data and settings of KDE 4 and now it is time to switch back to the default .kde. There are several possible migration cases here and for allow users select the case they prefer, a migration wizard tool named Kaboom has been created inside the Debian KDE team. Be aware that there will be some inconsistencies in unstable the following days after KDE 4.2.2 reaches the archive. So please, be patient. We are still testing and we are not uploading until we think it is good to go, so next days could become 2 weeks. Again, be patient :) If you want to keep using KDE 3.5.10 for a few weeks more, just do not upgrade yet. But if you want to keep using KDE 3.5.10 for months, maybe you should consider become a Lenny user. If you have questions, doubts and/or suggestions, you can check our Debian KDE Team website where we try to add information and the archive of the Debian KDE users mailing list. Time for a personal note. KDE 4.2 is a huge change from KDE 3.5, and it is normal if you do not fully like it in the beginning. But I do think most of users of KDE 3 will feel very comfortable in KDE 4 after some days using it. You just need to discover the new ways of doing some tasks. Also, once KDE 4.2 is sitting in unstable, a lot of third party applications (specially plasma widgets) for KDE 4 will be finally uploaded to the Debian archive, making KDE 4 even better.

In the last few weeks, I spent quite some time wondering about how to arrange the hard disk layout of my productive systems in the future. This article outlines my thoughts and would like to ask the lazyweb for comments. I try to keep my Debian servers as identically as possible, making it possible to talk non-linux persons remotely through the system without having to worry about this particular box configuration. I have been especially worrying about:

• (h1) root FS location (/etc/fstab, grub/menu.lst)
• (h2) LVM volume naming (/etc/fstab)

On my current systems, I usually have the root file system on /dev/hda1, with /dev/hda2 being a PV which is the only PV of a VG vg0, which in turn has LVs named home, var and usr. This setup has a bunch of disadvantages.

• It is necessary to derive from the standard setup, when RAID or crypto is used. In these cases, the root fs needs to be in LVM as well, and hda1 is /boot.
• LVM setup breaks in recovery and/or migration scenarios, when the disks from one server are connected to another one due to two VGs named vg0 being present. These situations are solveable via lvrename per UUID though.
• Migration to libata is painful since the dreaded hda string lurks in half a dozen places, and Debian grub does not really cleanly support having different kernels that need different root= clauses on their command line.

Thankfully, there is a number of possible solutions:

• (l1) Mount the root fs with UUID
  • - UUID needs to be adapted in /etc/fstab and grub/menu.lst if file system is rebuilt.
  • - mount-per-UUID is a function of the Debian initrd, mechanism nonportable, initrd needed
  • + no conflicts when a server can access disks of another system, as UUID are unique.
• (l2) Mount root fs with label (all root fsses have the same label)
  • - Conflicts when disks are moved between servers, making it possible to boot the wrong system.
  li>
• (l3) Mount root fs with a host-specific label
  • - When the system (and the root fs) is renamed, etc/fstab and grub/menu.lst need to be adapted.
  • + no conflicts when disks of more than one server are plugged in.
• (l4) VG is named identically on all servers
  • - Manual intervention is necessary (see above) if another server s disks are placed into one server.
  • + Backup and other disk related scripts can be configured identically in all systems.
• (l5) VG is called like the server
  • - Attention needed when renaming a system (/etc/fstab needs to be adjusted).
  • - Backup and other disk related scripts need to be configured differently on each system, no standard config possible.
  • + no conflicts in the more than one set of disks in a server case.

I am pondering about a solution, but suspect that this is totally overengineered.

• (l1) Root fs is mounted via label, so that /boot/grub/menu.lst only needs to be edited once during syste installation. After migration to grub 2, a hook script (if grub2 s update-grub finally supports hooks), the root FS label can be automatically generated. molly-guard refuses to boot the system when the root FS label from the boot manager configuration is not identical to the currently mounted root fs label, thus forcing to boot with the current root fs or not to boot at all. Do I need to call blkid -g in that case?
• (l2) /etc/fstab is identical on all systems and has entries like
  • /dev/disk/localhost/usr /usr ext3 defaults
  The symlinks in /dev/disk/localhost are generated by a run level S (27) init script (or can this be accomplished by udev?) from /dev/mapper/$(uname -n)--usr, so that the VG is always named like the host. Renaming the VG needs a rescue system anyway, so that s not a real loss.

Did I miss something? Is this a realistic solution? How do you handle this issue? Comments to this article will be open for quite a while.

Guadalinex-EDU: New educational distribution based in Jaunty

Guadalinex Edu is a new GNU / Linux distribution developed by the Advanced Center for ICT Schools Management (CGA), initially created for use by the educational community of Andalucia, Spain which will be available for teachers and students within the domestic sphere. Guadalinex Edu distribution is equivalent to the future Guadalinex V6 citizen but oriented to the educational sector.

Looking for the highest possible level of stability in the distribution, the CGA will be releasing a beta version of the distribution, installable by anyone who wants it. The aim is to involve the educational community in the stabilization and development of Guadalinex Edu, before its deployment in local schools.

Guadalinex Edu Beta 1 is fully functional, but should not forget that this is a beta version which may contain errors from both: the applications included by the CGA in the distribution, and errors coming from the base distribution where it must be installed (Jaunty Jackalope Ubuntu 9.04), so it is not recommended for use in production computers and, in any case, it is recommend making a backup of important data before installation.

Within an ICT Center, Guadalinex Edu will take advantage of the network infrastructure and servers from the center to offer:

• a system that allows any member of the center to become remote user of its data in any computer regardless of the dependence location in the center.

• a system for transmitting multimedia content among computers in a classroom

• a system of interaction between students and teachers via the computer

For domestic users, Guadalinex Edu is offered as a meta package to be installed on Ubuntu Jaunty and offers tons of applications like:

• Celestia (space simulator)

• Kstars (Planetarium)

• Kgeography (Maps)

• Parley (Vocabulary)

• Squeak

• DRAE Spanish Search tool (Lemurae)

• GNU Octave

• Kbruch (fractions)

• Kig

• KmPlot

• KSeg (Geometry)

• Mathwar (Game of calculus)

• QtOctave (numerical calculus)

• Freemind

• Blender

• Audacity

• Festival GUI

• KTouch (Typing)

• Kompozer

• Umbrello

• K3b

• Kino

Plus all the benefits of Guadalinex:

• Spanish translation of many applications

• Support for electronic ID Card

And Ubuntu:

• A wide range of media devices support (kernel 2.6.28)

• Firefox 3

• OpenOffice 3

• XOrg 1.6 , etc

Installation instructions for home users are available here(In spanish)

If you have a Launchpad account, you can add comments and report bugs at the following addresses (if you do not have an account, you can register with Launchpad for one)

Comments:
https://launchpad.net/guadalinexedu/+addquestion

Bug reports:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/guadalinexedu

Original link in spanish here

My patch for initial kernel support for the QNAP TS-119 and TS-219 Turbo NAS got accepted and will be in 2.6.30. I can run Debian on a USB disk without any problems but there are some issues left (some severe, some cosmetic):

• SATA: there are long timeouts when initializing the disk. In most cases, the disk is eventually recognized but it can take quite some time. I've no idea why those timeouts happen.
• Flash: I can read from flash just fine but writing doesn't work.
• Parsing the MAC address: even though a MAC address is set in u-boot, the QNAP firmware stores the real MAC address in flash (similar to the TS-109 and TS-209). The TS-109/TS-209 code to read the MAC address doesn't work because the flash on the TS-219 is connected in a different way (SPI).
• SATA lights: the activity light doesn't work.

Unfortunately, I've no idea how to resolve these issues. However, the QNAP TS-119 and TS-219 have started shipping so hopefully someone else will investigate these issues.

Well, I normally despise of thinks like this link collection, but I thought I might add it anyway, since these are useful links for me and if I don t post them here, I m likely to forget where to find them in the near future:

1. Sean Finney has a nice post about storing the list of parameters a (shell) script got in a way that it can be restored later. Quite handy if your script walks through the arguments parsing them (and consuming them while doing so) but you want to be able to display them in a helpful way if the parsing fails at some point.
2. A while ago, Ingo J rgensmann had a post that helps retrieving files from lost+found after a filesystem check, provided that you run his helper script on a regular basis. The same approach can also be used if you have a backup of all files, but lost the sorting work you did after the backup was done. This is possible because running the script can be done more often then you would normally do backups.
3. He also has a small post about mtr oddities when IPv6 comes into play
4. Adeodato Sim wrote about databases and when timestamps that store the timezone information really are more useful then timestamps that don t.
5. Adeodato also has a short post on using ssh as a socks proxy, which can be quite handy if you are behind a firewall.

Update: Fixed link to Ingo s file retrieval from lost+found article. Thanks to Patrick Schoenfeld who pointed me at the wrong link.
Also thanks to the anonymous poster who found an alternative way to store and (in a way) restore commandline parameters. The solution doesn t work in an as general way as that by Sean Finney et al., but it is much shorter and therefore interesting for where it can be used (when you control how commandline parameters are processed). See comments on this post for details.

As my Institute's sysadmin, I was appointed as the responsible for my Institute's certificate handling for today's voting session for the Universitary Council (Consejo Universitario). UNAM, Mexico's largest University, is moving towards an e-voting platform. I talked about this with our (sole) candidate for the Council, and she told me this has been used a couple of times already - And, as expected, it has led to having to repeat voting sessions, due in part to e-voting's inherent lackings: It is impossible to act on any kind of impugnation. The only thing we have is an electronic vote trail, no way to recount or to make sure that all votes got in. Besides, we had a perfectly antinatural and inadequate identification system, which means voter's identity have no way to be trusted. Besides, we still have all the traditional Universitary bureaucratic paper flow, which completely obscures any positive points this e-voting system might have had. Before going any further, if you are interested: There is a so-called security audit certificate for this system. In Spanish, yes. Take a look at it if you understand the language and want to crack some laughs. I will not make a detailed review of (what I could gather about) the setup. But to make things short: I had to go to the central administrative offices to get a CD-ROM with the monitoring station's SSL certificate. This certificate is tied to an IP address, so only one computer was able to be set up as a monitoring station. So far, so good. But, what is the monitoring station's real role? You will probably laugh. The voting session (at my Institute - Each dependency can specify its own opening and closing times) was from 10:00 and until 18:00. We were instructed to place this computer at a public location, from where:

• Shortly before 10:00, we had to check the booth's status was set to closed and that zero votes were received.
• During the votation period, the computer would continuously display the number of received votes, refreshing the page twice a minute1
• During the day, anybody could go to the computer and check the number of total votes received. Its main function is, I think, to show that no votes are substracted precisely when a person is staring at it.
• Shortly before 18:00, we had to check the booth's status was still set to open, and wait until 18:00 to witness the booth is now closed.
• Get the needed data from the system and hand it over to the proper bodies. I'll get back to this point later on.

So, what is strange here? That there is a tremendous apparatus providing supposed security to... Information that is completely worthless. Just protecting a number that is, for all purposes, public. Oh, and the opening and closing of the booth - Of course, the system could have flaws during the process, or inject spurious votes along the way, or flip-flop the votes cast whichever way. But, did I mention votes? So far I have not mentioned how people are supposed to vote. Together with our last paycheck, we got a piece of paper with all of the needed information: A randomly generated, 10-character-long-with-mixed-case-and-symbols password, and the link to a web page2. This paper was folded, yes, but it was in no way secured - So, whoever wanted to have all of our passwords could just go through the bunch of papers and get them. Now, contrasting to the strong perception of physical security surrounding the oh-so-important monitoring stations, how can a person vote? Oh, sure, just fire up your favorite browser and go to https://www.jornadaelectoral.unam.mx/, produce your student number if you are a student or your full RFC3, select via checkboxes4, click on "submit", and voil , you have voted. From any location, from any machine. Yes, the University's population is largely itinerant, many people will be voting from abroad and all. It is good to give them a voice. But... At what price? Lets see... The security audit mentions the system is free from any malicious routine that can automatically alter the results and it has the minimum needed validations against spurious data injections from the most common Web browsers. However, if I am interested in modifying the results... I could put a trojan in a Faculty's laboratories, which modifies the votes sent by their users (students vote as well). Yes, I'd have to know how the system works, but lets accept security through obscurity does not work, and that this is a well-known system (as it has been used for over 3 years and is at version 3.5). PHP-based, for further points. Oh, and (if I recall correctly) a voter does not even get feedback as for which formula did he vote for, so no way of knowing if the computer really sent the information I requested. And given the low security for the password handling, I would not bet on it being worth much. Besides, this system was partly established to allow people voting from abroad - as long as they picked up their March 10 paycheck. That excludes anybody who has spent over three weeks away! Many other things can be said. Last detail: e-voting's main selling point is that the results are known instantaneously, and (if no paper trail exists) no tedious re-counting is ever done, right? Meet universitary bureaucracy. Technology changes, but processes don't. The Local Electoral Surveillance Commission has the responsability to enter once again the system after the vote has finished, and ask the server for the preliminary results. This consists of a tarball with the tally sheet (from the voters, who voted and who didn't), the total votes for each formula, and... one more file I don't remember. They also have to generate the signed legal documents where they testify to the received information. And then, ahem, they have to burn those files5 onto a CD-ROM, print them, and physically take them to the central administrative offices. Yes, take something from the server and get it to the server. For us it is not terrible (1.5Km can be readily done), but this same procedure must be done by people in other cities where there are University campii holding elections. How Nice! Anyway... Worst of both worlds. The inefficacies of a paper-based ellection, together with the unaccountability of an e-voting ellection, sprinkled with fake sense of security here and there. Bah.

1. 1. Except that it didn't. I guess they didn't stress-test the server, so every couple of minutes it returned a connection error. Of course, the page would no longer self-update. And after noticing that, I (and nobody else but me) had to go and give the password and certificate for the system to continue to operate.
2. 2. which is http://www.dgae-siae.unam.mx/ - The Schooling Administration General Direction (DGAE), an universitary body which has no relation with electoral issues. DGAE made available a poster detailing how to vote... But, again, lets ignore that fact for now
3. 3. A nationwide ID number, largely derived from name and birth date data - Both numbers are often widely known, they cannot be considered private in any way.
4. 4. Oh, for goodness sake... The "ballot" has 1..n options, and each has a checkbox, not a radio button. That means, you can select multiple options, which is of course invalid. Why? Because the electoral rules indicate that selecting more than one option in a ballot makes the ballot invalid, and thus, a way for making it invalid must be provided. Isn't logic beautiful?!
5. 5. Want some more insight on what needs to be done? Take a look at the instructions. Don't forget paying attention to the lexicon used - We are still asked to count the votes, an impossible feat given the vote is 100% system-based - Quote: Los miembros de la CLVE realizar n, con base en el reporte del sistema, el c mputo de los votos depositados en la urna a favor de cada una de las f rmulas, declarando nulos los votos que procedan.

It s now been almost a month since I got my Kindle 2 and wrote about my first impressions of it. In that amount of time, I figure I have read, on the Kindle, the equivalent of 1500 to 2000 printed pages. I ll start with my personal reactions to the device, and then move on into some less subjective observations about it. What I ve Used It For To give you a quick idea of what I m reading:

• David Copperfield (downloaded at feedbooks.com)
• Part of Houston Smith s Why Religion Matters, purchased at the Amazon Kindle Store (currently reading it)
• Cory Doctorow s Eastern Standard Tribe (from feedbooks)
• Most of Simon Travaglia s funny BOFH series through 2000 (built myself)
• Various other bits and pieces of things here and there.

The Gut Reaction I want everything to be available on the Kindle, and I want to read everything on it. Whether that s just some excitement at a new device (still possible after a month, I guess), or something more lasting, I m still a little unclear about but I suspect it s something more lasting. I have read far, far more since I have had the Kindle than I had for quite some time prior, excepting a certain Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy marathon one Christmas vacation. This leads me to think that the Kindle s main competitor isn t the Sony PRS-505, but rather the XBox, Wii, Netflix, and Hulu. Not that I watched that much TV to start with, but I haven t even been keeping up with the Daily Show since I got the Kindle. Not only that, but it prompted me to go to the local used bookstore (all proceeds go to charity) and buy a paper copy of David Copperfield for $10, so Terah could read it with me while I reread it on the Kindle. So it seems that Amazon s stats which show that people tend to read more once they get the Kindle, and don t cut down on paper book buying are about right in my case. Plus there s the fact that I ve loaded up the Kindle with over a hundred free books of all sorts of descriptions, some from Amazon s own free book catalog (extensive in itself), and others from Feedbooks, Gutenberg, or other places. That s taken up some time itself, and I now have achieved what I tend to achieve with all devices like this (iPod, MythTV, etc): more material than I can ever possibly get through. Why I Like It So, what exactly IS it about this thing that I like? Part of it has to be the size of the device. Granted, I wish the screen were larger, but even with the leather case, the device is a pretty nice size. I find that I keep two or three books that I m reading at the top of my list, and it s great to be able to carry around a single device and be able to select from a book as the mood strikes. Part of it is the built-in dictionary and search tools, which I ve already discussed. In the end, Amazon s execution of the concept is just done really, really well. It doesn t require some sort of proprietary Windows app like Sony s reader does. It doesn t even require a PC at all. It acts as reliable as a book, and that s something. The highlight/clippings feature is also pretty nice. You can highlight a section of text, which then causes it to be rendered with an underline on-screen just like you can underline something in a book. Better yet, when you re reading the book, you can call up a list of all such passages (as well as your bookmarks, etc), see them with an excerpt of text, and jump directly to them. No more need for millions of tiny pieces of paper marking a page that contains a marking. Even better than that, the Kindle creates a .txt (yes, plain text) file in the documents/ directory for you. Each time you bookmark or highlight a passage, it adds a little summary of the passage to that file, as well as information about the location of it. For highlights, the summary is the content of the highlight itself. So if you re going to go blog about the book later, there are a bunch of ready-made quotes you can cut-and-paste later. You can read that file both on the Kindle and on a PC. Sweet. So, I guess I would say that the Kindle makes it easier to read complex texts, and fun to read lighter ones. Availability of Content There are several ways you can get content onto the Kindle. The first, of course, is Amazon s own Kindle Store. Quite the clever bit of engineering there. You hit buy , and generally by the time you can walk over to the Kindle and pick it up, the book s on it, thanks to the integrated cell-network wireless modem. Subscriptions to newspapers and magazines work similarly each issue is automatically delivered in the middle of the night. However, it seems that the magazines such as New Yorker and Atlantic aren t exactly complete replicas of the print editions for some reason. The pricing of Kindle content is generally cheaper than paperback editions of books, but not by much. I think it should be more heavily discounted than it is, and part of that may be due to the large commission Amazon takes on things. Ironically, Amazon also has a tremendous array of free public domain and copyrighted books, and an equally staggering number of books available for under $1. For the classics, and other things out of copyright, my favorite place to turn is Feedbooks. They ve got ebooks available for download for just about any format, including Kindle, and generally do a good job of providing a real linked Table of Contents and the like. Kindle can read DRM-free content in .txt or .mobi format. I ve also built my own ebooks for the Kindle using Mobiperl. It takes an ePub source directory and makes a MobiPocket file out of it, which can be installed on the Kindle directly. For things I find on Project Gutenberg, GutenMark is a nice tool to create a good-looking HTML representation. I also use quote-fixer to help with my other pet peeve: straight quotes and lack of em-dashes on a device that can, and should, display both. Screen I m still of two minds about the screen. On the one hand, it doesn t give me eyestrain like reading on a PC, laptop, or cellphone screen does. Also, it looks remarkably book-like. A well-prepared Kindle etext feels so professional on the screen, so real, so lovingly-prepared, that it s fun to read. The Feedbooks David Copperfield is an excellent example of this, as is Houston Smith s Why Religion Matters. There are several things I don t like about the screen. One is that, while reading a book, it leaves a margin around the edge of the text. I can t figure out why it doesn t use all the available screen real-estate, especially since its built-in web browser does. Another is that, while not terribly reflective, it is still somewhat reflective, and glare from the sun or a light at a bad angle can make the screen unreadable unless you turn it a bit to a different angle. But my biggest gripe about the screen is that it s not as high-contrast as I d like. Still, I very much enjoy the Kindle, so I guess it s not as huge a problem as I think it could be sometimes. Pet Peeve I get really annoyed when I download content for the Kindle and discover that it doesn t have a linked Table of Contents (meaning I can click on a chapter and go directly to it). I m even more annoyed when it uses straight typewriter quotes instead of the angled typesetter s quotes or smart quotes . The Kindle is capable of beautifully rendering them, as well as things such as em dashes, and when I see what is obviously some cheap attempt at a conversion of some ancient ASCII document, rather than a proper attempt to make a good-looking book, I get annoyed. And so it was that I requested, and got, a $0.80 refund for my purchase of Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Collection and instead paid $3.60 for The Complete Sherlock Holmes. Yes, I could have spent a few hours converting all these from Gutenberg, but $3.60 is so cheap that it wasn t worth it. Customer Service Amazingly, Amazon s customer service for the Kindle is not their usual Asian form letter service. It s Americans, who seem to read, understand, and care about problems. I was pleasantly surprised. Too bad the rest of Amazon doesn t learn a thing or two from it. Conclusion I think the Kindle is worth it. It will pay for itself exceptionally quickly for people like me that don t live anywhere near a large library, and enjoy reading out-of-copyright material. Even if it doesn t pay for itself that quickly, the convenience of being able to carry several actively reading books with you on a single small device is pretty nice. No more pile of books in my suitcase for travel.

I decided to change a bit short term plans for Gammu releases and I'm now approaching to 1.24.0 which will be mostly bug fixing and documentation release without any major changes, because it turned out that there is lot of things to fix ;-). This time there are no really major changes since 1.23.90, only some small fixes in AT code, messages and translation cleanup and better logging from SMSD in some cases. Full list of changes follows:

• LUID reading requires IrMC profile.
• Locations for GlobeTrotter 3G+ start at 0 (bug #847).
• More verbose logging of delivery reports (bug #824).
• Increase default DeliveryReportDelay (bug #824).
• Fixed handling of SMS locations (bug #853).

You can download from usual place: http://cihar.com/gammu/, Debian users will find packages in experimental soon, SUSE, Fedora and Mandriva users can check experimental repository in OpenSuse Build Service.

FLOSS Manuals is proud to announce a three day book sprint for the Pure
Data FLOSS Manual. This sprint will take place simultaneously in New
York City and Berlin from Saturday 4 April to Monday 6 April. The Pure Data FLOSS Manual: http://en.flossmanuals.net/puredata There are possibilities to participate in person by coming to one of the
locations below, or remotely via the IRC interface built into the FLOSS
Manuals editing interface. Video conferencing may take place between the
venues as well. To participate, create a login at the PD FLOSS Manuals page: http://en.flossmanuals.net/bin/login/TWiki/WebHome?origurl=/bin/view/PureData/Introduction&skin=floss2 Discussion may also take place in the Pure Data mailing list: http://lists.puredata.info/listinfo/pd-list If you are in New York or Berlin, please join us at these locations! NEW YORK CITY * Contact: Hans-Christoph Steiner: hans@eds.org 718 360 4872 * Location (bring ID, you ll need to sign in): ITP/NYU Conference Room
721 Broadway, 4th Floor
NY, NY, USA
email me or call in case you can get past security: 718 360 4872 * Schedule:
Saturday: noon-midnight
Sunday: 10am-midnight
Monday: 9am-5:30pm (if we go later, we ll be in a different room) BERLIN * Contacts Derek Holzer: derek@umatic.nl +49 176 2812 5845
Adam Hyde: adam@flossmanuals.net +49 15 2230 54563 NK
ElsenStr. 52 (2.Hof)
Berlin, Germany
+49 176 20626386
http://www.myspace.com/enka52 * Schedule:
Saturday: noon-late
Sunday: noon-late
Monday: noon-late
SOME BASIC GUIDELINES: * This manual should address the widest possible user-base. Therefore,
objects which are cross-platform and in Pd Extended should have priority
over other solutions.
* Tone should be neutral and informative. Remember that humor doesn t
always translate well!
* Our readers are assumed to have little to no background in either
computer programming or digital signal processing, which much of the
existing documentation takes for granted. That s why this manual is
necessary! Please keep this in mind when explaining things.
* Please use existing the Audio Tutorials, Installing and Getting
Started chapters as a style guide.
* Keep the chapters small and self-contained. Ideally, chapters from
this manual could even be remixed into other FLOSS Manuals.
* Explain any jargon or technical terminology in-line the first time you
use it, and direct the reader to appropriate other chapters/manuals when
necessary.
* Please enter any new technical terms in the Glossary (we need to agree
on global format for glossary terms!).
* Screenshots:
Resolution? (Adam and I will work on this on Monday)
Please upload any complex patches, and make sure to label screenshot
with appropriate filename (see Audio Tutorials for examples)
Please keep explanatory text in the manual rather than only in the
screenshot, so that it can be text-searched by readers.
Please use anti-aliased fonts!
* All the chapters are moderated by Derek Holzer & Adam Hyde. Your
contributions will only be visible in the editing section until they
meet these guidelines, and after that they can be published to the main
page. Please let us know when your chapter(s) are ready for publishing
and we ll look them over. EXISTING CHAPTERS WHICH NEED HELP: # DataflowTutorials this section needs a lot of help in terms of style and content!!!!!
Tone is very informal, which doesn t help convey the information.
give titles to screenshots so that readers can tell which patches
match which images (some do this, some don t )
Math : examples/discussion of [expr]???
Order of connecting and [trigger] : explain the patches in-line,
rather than only in comments in screenshots (so that text is searchable,
copy/pasteable..)
Luka s screencaps are very aliased, to the point where you can t read
the ~ in the object names. Should they be redone at new resolution or
with antialiasing?
Possible janitors: Derek Holzer, Adam Hyde # PureGlossary format of object names = [italics in square brackets], must be
formatted correctly
format of glossary words in general text: we don t have one yet. Bold
on first use in chapter maybe? Needs formatting all through text. # ListofObjects incomplete, please add more libs
maybe more discussion of externals needed as well
formatting of object names? # PureLinks always welcome MORE CHAPTERS/SECTIONS TO DO (+ suggestions?): * GEM (in order of importance)(Derek can provide example patches for
much of this)
Basic VJ mixer (2 x
[gemhead]-[pix_film]-[alpha]-[colorRGB]-[pix_texture]-[rectangle] with
an alpha-crossfader)(+ platform specific codec info)
Live camera input (same as VJ mixer but with [pix_video], with
platform specific info on USB/firewire inputs what works & what doesn t)
VJ effects (using the various pix objects)
Basic 3D (that actually does something interesting, rather than just
show a sphere or a cube)
Basic movement tracking w/ [pix_blob]
GEM/video optimization/troubleshooting tips (see Troubleshooting
section of existing Pd FLOSS Manual) * MIDI tutorial
hardware:keyboards, sliders, etc,
objects: all MIDI objects
routing: input + output to/from devices or other programs * Patching strategies
Reusable abstractions ($0 etc)
GoP + other GUI creation strategies
Preset saving systems (Frank?) * Audiofile manipulation (Derek can provide examples, possibly also work
with www.pd-tutorial.com with permission?)
sfread, readsf, sfplay, etc
tables + tabplay, tabread, etc
oneshot playback without/with pitch shifting
looping without/with pitchshifting
granulation without/with pitchshifting
Extended objects ([xplay~], [xgroove~] are these stable? In my
experience, no ) * Realtime audio effects tutorial
delays: single tap, multitap, pitch-shifting, tuned comb filter, etc
filters: [hip~], [lop~], [bp~], [moog~], IEM lib filters
[vcf~]/[bp],[hp],[lp], difference between audio signal and message
controlled, building with ggee objects [bandpass],[llowpass],[highpass]
or [biquad~] (resources for coefficients?) * Sensor tutorial (HC?)
[hid]/[hidin]/[pduino]
simple circuit diagrams + photos (voltage divider examples:
potentiometer, photoresistor, etc)(hacked gamepads) * Networked data
netsend/netreceive
OSC
flash server
shell
python externals
others? * PDP/PiDiP
configuration info for OSX (+ poor performance disclaimer!)
basic VJ
networked streaming etc * Procedural Audio tutorial? (Andy?) * RJDJ tutorial? (Frank and the gang?)

At ICHEC one of our tasks is to help users build their software on our supercomputers. Mostly we have to change paths, etc. in code bases that are used by a handful of scientists, and we don't want to exacerbate the hard-coded path problem. We also have multiple versions of certain libraries and compilers installed, which we select using modules: to do this, you select your software environment with e.g.

$ module load intel-fc/11.0.082  netcdf/4.0-intel

This selects the compiler version, and library version. Then, this places appropriate paths in $PATH, $LD_LIBRARY_PATH. While this is useful for selecting, eg. compilers, its often not great for many build processes that expect library paths, etc. hard-coded. I also dislike adding random environmental variables: it loses the Single Point Of Truth that describes the configuration. So I've come up with the following pattern. First, record the modules used (eg. library version) in config.log if configure is used. To do this, add the following to the autoconf file or system headers:

# AC_MODULES_OUTPUT
# -----------------
# Check if the system runs 'modules', and if so, record the modules environment in the config.log
AC_DEFUN([AC_MODULES_LIST],
[AC_CACHE_CHECK[modules output if present],[ac_modules_output],
(ac_modules_output= module list 2>&1 )
if test $? eq 0; then
 AC_MSG_RESULT([Output from 'module list' was:\n $ac_modules_output])
fi
])

Secondly, For all packages, ensure that a pkgconfig package file exists. For example, we have multiple MPI implementations on our SGI system. For MVAPICH, we have a modules file:

stokes2:~$ module show mvapich2-intel
-------------------------------------------------------------------
/ichec/modulefiles/mvapich2-intel/1.2p1:
module-whatis    MVAPICH2 1.2p1 (Intel 11.0.074) 
conflict         mvapich2-gnu mvapich2-intel 
prepend-path     PATH /ichec/packages/mvapich/1.2p1-intel/bin 
prepend-path     LD_LIBRARY_PATH /ichec/packages/mvapich/1.2p1-intel/lib 
prepend-path     MANPATH /ichec/packages/mvapich/1.2p1-intel/share/man 
prepend-path     INCLUDE /ichec/packages/mvapich/1.2p1-intel/include 
prepend-path     CPATH /ichec/packages/mvapich/1.2p1-intel/include 
prepend-path     FPATH /ichec/packages/mvapich/1.2p1-intel/include 
prepend-path     PKG_CONFIG_PATH /ichec/packages/mvapich/1.2p1-intel/share/pkgconfig 
-------------------------------------------------------------------

We add a file mpi.pc to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH for each MPI implementation. So, mpi.pc looks like:

# MPI pkgconfig file for mvapich2-intel
# Normally only used to get variables $prefix, etc.
prefix=/ichec/packages/mvapich/1.2p1-intel
exec_prefix=$ prefix 
libdir=$ prefix /lib
includedir=$ prefix /include
Name: mpi
Description: netCDF libraries, include files and development tools
Version: 1.2p1
Libs: -L$ libdir   -lmpichf90 -lmpich -lpthread -lrdmacm -libverbs -libumad -lrt
Cflags: -I$ includedir 

This then means we can add the following small patch to our target software (in this case a climate code COSMOS):

 #########################################################################
 #
 #  MPI message passing root directory of the chosen compiler
 
+  # Get default MPI ROOT from the pkgconfig file if possible
+  pkg-config mpi --variable=prefix 2> /dev/null > /dev/null
+  if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
+    MPIROOT= pkg-config mpi --variable=prefix 
+  fi
+
   if   [ $compiler = ifort ]; then
     export cc=cc
     if [ $CHAN = MPI2 ]; then
-       export MPIROOT=/sw/sarge-ia32/mpich2-1.0.4p1-pgi
+       export MPIROOT=$ MPIROOT:-/sw/sarge-ia32/mpich2-1.0.4p1-pgi 
     elif [ $CHAN = MPI1 ]; then

Such a patch is generic enough to be useful outside our institution, and means the code can build out-of-the-box on many systems. Now to add mpi.pc to Debian ... Tags programming, autoconf, modules pkg-config, ichec, work