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

First off this is a (late) response to Christer Edwards way of simplifying his public Dropbox URL's with .htaccess and mod_rewrite, it can be found here. While his solution works, it leaves the URL ugly e.g. a Picture of my son and his toy duck at would redirect to http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/461492/eric-n-duck.jpg . Below is my solution to the "problem". Simply setup apache2 as a reverse proxy for your public folder on Dropbox. Here is the sample config I use on http://storage.imbrandon.com/ , its just a couple of added lines to your vhost/httpd.conf ( change the number after the /u/ to your Dropbox user ID number ).

<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPass /dropbox http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/461492/
ProxyPassReverse /dropbox http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/461492/
So now when you visit http://storage.imbrandon.com/dropbox/eric-n-duck.jpg the URL never changes.

It s the last day of the most awesome linux.conf.au 2009 conference in Hobart, Tasmania. I ve just witnessed the a room full of 500 people sit with baited breath as Linus wielded a set of clippers to shave Bdale Garbee s beard, followed by Bdale (with a razor with 3 more blades than last time he shaved, a tiny bowl of water and a hand-mirror) trying to make it look neater. The LCA twitter feed was up on the projector, and someone rightly observed this whole event was actually pretty weird. There are already pictures on flickr too. However, well done to Bdale for being such a good sport, but it looks like his wife Karen will accompany him next year to make sure he doesn t agree to anything else like this, and supervise the waxing of Rusty s chest :) What s this all in aid of? After the incredible auction for this beautiful picture from Karen, and generous donations at the Penguin Dinner on Wednesday night, the conference has now raised between AU$ 35k and 40k towards the Save the Tasmanian Devil appeal. Around AU$ 1.3k of the nonsensical winning consortium s AU $10.6k bid came from the Collabora folks who were at the dinner, and AU$ 1.2k from Collabora and Collabora Multimedia directly. We were all set to place a winning AU$ 3k bid but then Matthew and Daniel came up with the Bdale shaving scheme, and then things really picked up. I m glad we took part - the lead scientist from the project was really grateful, and I hope the money can make a real difference to their great work. On more mundane matters, I also gave my talk this morning, and my slides (Telepathy slides v2.0 thanks to Marco) are online. I also made a few demos of new awesome stuff you can do with Telepathy (most of the patches are already merged upstream or well on the way):

• Geolocation support (XEP-0080) support in the XMPP backend and Empathy, using GeoClue to find your location and the libchamplain Clutter & Open Streetmap widget to display where your contacts are. Thanks to Pierre-Luc, Alban and Daf for their work here - more details on Pierre-Luc s blog.
• Support for launching file transfers over link-local XMPP from Nautilus using the Empathy plugin for nautilus-sendto. This is already merged upstream but needs a patch to work with trunk Empathy. Thanks to Marco, Jonny and Guillaume for their work on this.
• Alban also made a neat hack to Rhythmbox which allows exporting your DAAP music server to one of your contants over a Telepathy Stream Tube. Thanks also to recent work from Marco, these tubes now go over XMPP s SOCKS5 Bytestreams, giving much better throughput than the earlier in-band implementation, network permitting. The next step is unleashing the full might of our libnice NAT traversal library, signalling tubes with Jingle, and therefore making connections work peer to peer in up to 95% of the cases. However, this won t affect the APIs, stuff will just go faster! Isn t Telepathy wonderful?
• Olivier stepped up to show off the demo from his talk about Farsight, which shows his branch using the new telepathy-farsight library to allow recording Telepathy video calls directly into the PiTiVi video editor. His network was screwed up so it didn t work, but I did see it work in his talk yesterday! Awesome stuff, hopefully Edward and friends can pick it up and merge it in before too long.
• Unfortunately we ran out of time for Will to show off Guillaume s recent work on Telepathy-enabled Abiword on the desktop (rather than just Sugar s Write activity), but I expect he ll blog about it soon!

On that note, these were just the five that I picked to try and fit into my talk. There are a load more demos in the pipeline from the other guys in Collabora of doing stuff with Telepathy, so keep a close look on Planet Collabora for the next cool thing.

On Tuesday afternoon I gave a talk on behalf of KaiGai Kohei about SE Linux and the LAPP (Linux Apache, PostgreSQL, PHP/Perl) stack. KaiGai has blogged about this [1], unfortunately Google Translation does a poor job of Japanese and has particular problems with KaiGai s work (could anyone who knows Japanese and English well please submit some tips to Google). KaiGai s post is useful for links to his notes which are good background reading. My talks about SE-LAPP and SE-PostgreSQL have been getting some notice, Bob Edwards referenced SE-PostgreSQL in his talk about database security. It s good to see KaiGai s great work getting the notice that it deserves. I hope that it becomes a standard feature of the PostgreSQL code base in the near future! Also Casey Schaufler, James Morris, and I have bought KaiGai a present of some Tasmanian wine, in recognition of his great work.

Velisurmaaja was published in Elias L nnrot’s collection of traditional Finnish poems, the Kanteletar in 1840. It bears some similarity to the British ballad Edward. What follows is the original text, lifted from the tenth Gutenberg edition of Kanteletar juxtaposed with my English translation (which is more concerned with getting the message across than being good poetry). However, I am assured the translation is not beyond redemption, so here it is: (more…)

I was pleased to learn through Christer Edwards of the existence of a sister project in Ubuntu to our Debian Eee PC project. I followed up on his invitation to drop in on their irc channel and introduce myself. I’ve been looking over the bugs listed on their TODO to see if any are applicable to Debian. Already I have filed #479217 based on the corresponding bug in Ubuntu, and have encouraged them to check out ours as well. I look forward to sharing more with them in the future so we can benefit from each other’s work.

So today is the third anniversary of my first upload of the ISC DHCP v3 package to Debian. It all started back in the days of the linux.conf.au 2005 organising committee. Bob Edwards, who ran the ANU Department of Computer Science computer labs (which ran on Debian at the time), was constantly complaining about bugs like #286011, once he'd found out I was a Debian developer. So I figured I'd try and do something about it, so I think I emailed the maintainers, who had been fairly inactive (the last upload before mine was in July the year before), and asked if they'd like me to NMU the package. I think Matt Zimmerman emailed me back and told me to knock myself out, and add myself as an uploader while I was at it, and well, the rest is history... I've had fun fixing bugs, trying to clean things up, deal with a pretty archaic upstream build system and get the package up to current Debian standards compliance. One of the highlights was being able to finally get rid of Debian Installer's dependence on the v2 DHCP client package, so we could finally jettison the v2 packages for Lenny (which reminds me, I still have to figure out how to handle the transition from Etch with respect to that). I've been working hard to try and get as many of the patches in Debian's DHCP packages incorporated upstream. Unfortunately, they have a totally unpredictable release cycle, and they have feature releases and bug fix releases. The feature releases are very few and far between, and they won't introduce new features into a bugfix release. Speaking of patches, my personal philosophy is that distribution packages shouldn't differ radically in behaviour or functionality from their upstream source, so I've resisted incorporating some of the more deviant patches from Ubuntu, instead forwarding them directly upstream. There's still a bit of work to be done with the package. The ISC released version 3.1.0 a while ago, and that's the version I'm trying to standardise on for Lenny. It's got new support for a domain-search option, which means people can stop abusing the domain-name option to set a domain search list in their clients. The domain-search option is also honoured by Mac OS X (Leopard), and I dare say Windows Vista probably supports it as well, but I haven't checked. Unfortunately the client-side support for the domain-search option is a bit flaky in 3.1.0, so I'm hoping the ISC will release 3.1.1 real soon now, as I believe most of the flakiness issues are addressed in it. Of course, for Lenny to do the right thing consistently with this new option, #460609 and #465158 need to be resolved also. The last thing I'm trying to sort out for Lenny is the reasonably in-demand LDAP patch. It's been floating around out-of-tree for longer than I've been maintaining the package. Jos L. Redrejo Rodr guez has been kind enough to clean up the patch for me, so that rather than bastardising the standard DHCP package to build a dhcp3-server package that has LDAP support, it basically builds DHCP twice, once with the patch and once without, and the dhcp3-server-ldap package just diverts /usr/sbin/dhcpd3 out of the way and plonks in the LDAP-enabled binary in its place. I hope to upload a new revision of the package that builds this new binary package within the next week (hopefully this weekend). After that's done, and hopefully 3.1.1 has been released, and Lenny is out of the way, I'm going to focus on transitioning away from a versioned set of DHCP packages. The whole "3" in everything was to allow the v2 and v3 packages to coexist. I've sought advice from the release team about this, and they said not to bother, but it feels really gross to have the version 4 package (4.0.0 has been released by the ISC for a while now as well) be still called dhcp3, and to install into /etc/dhcp3 and other such versioned directories. The final thing I want to look into is collaborative maintenance. I've been wanting to do this for a while, but I wanted to get the package into a revision control system (shock horror, it's not currently) and I've been baulking at how to do it the "right" way. I'm pretty sold on using Git for the revision control system, I just haven't figured out the right approach yet. Martin Krafft's articles about it have been interesting, but feel a bit overly advanced, and don't quite suit my situation. I've been hesitant to start using Git, then discover I've done it all wrong, and have to start again. I need to just bite the bullet. My upstream also doesn't use Git, and doesn't make their revision control system publicly available, so I just get the tarballs when they're released. Speaking of upstream, I made the discovery last year that they're just down the road from me in Redwood City, so I've been trying to improve relations by getting the main folks who work on DHCP at ISC to pop up to Google for lunch every now and then, which so far has happened twice, and been good a opportunity to have a chat. In fact, they're keen for Debian to join the DHCP Forum (Debian is already a member of the BIND Forum) and I think they've started talking to the Debian folks responsible for our BIND Forum membership about extending that to cover the DHCP Forum as well. So that's about it. I think after three years of being the sole uploader, I'll formally put myself in as the maintainer and Eloy as an uploader until I get around to implementing collaborative maintenance.

It s been a long time since I ve written about our local unconferences, but a neat one coming up is DemoCamp CUSEC 2. It s attached to the Canadian Undergraduate Software Engineering Conference, which is being held in Montr al again. Last year, I did a demonstration on how to cook an omelette, with it being a metaphor for software engineering. This year, I m going to do something more prosaic and run a round of Powerpoint karaoke, under the guise of getting people to practise their presentation skills. Or it will be a convincing argument against its use. Show up if you can! Present something you ve been working on! (There are still some slots left.) It ll be exciting. DemoCamp CUSEC 2
Thursday, 17 January 2008
19:00 21:00
Centre Mont-Royal
2200 rue Mansfield
Free admission ( Sign up Google Maps )

Hello World While reading planet.ubuntu.com I notified especially the post from Christer Edwards, “Call for Ubuntu stats”. Especially the following two questions seem very interesting to me:

• Estimated number of users
• Estimated number of countries deployed

Does anyone have an idea? I don’t see a way how we can calculate that, the mirrors are decentral, Debian doesn’t force it’s user to register somewhere. Nevertheless, some numbers (no matter if really precise) would be very interesting. Please send comments or get in contact with me by E-Mail. Thanks and regards,

Here's what I wrote on other people's sites last week:

Drake.org.uk: Welcome back..

MartynD reboots his blog yet again. This time with added eyetests.

Two Questions for All Serious Free Software Contributors

I answered, as did many others.

ProBlogger Redesign - Bedding Down for the Night

Much easier-to-read, but I still had an enhancement suggestion.

Blowing bubbles niq's soapbox

Comment on house-building and house-owning in England today.

gravityboy: This Is My Good Free Software Experience

I think the GPL is useful for things other than programs and CC is confusing about DRM for everything.

Antti-Juhani Kaijanaho I am going to rank MJ Ray low from now on

Commented more on my blog, but also directly. The criticism might be fairer if the SPI ballot were secret, but it isn't.

WEBlog -- Wouter's Eclectic Blog - Voting tactics

Is this about SPI? How is IRV broken?

Constitutional amendment: reduce the length of DPL election process

Amending the amendment proposal - got enough seconds to reach the ballot, for a change.

Amendment to: reduce the length of DPL election process

This one doesn't look like it will get onto the ballot. Informative subthread on combination of amendments.

Here's some of what I read last week:

talks with Linus Torvalds

He's much ruder than I am, but can get away with it because he's done more.

The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Richard Stallman - Edward O'Connor

He's much ruder than I am, but doesn't get away with it because he's done more.

Mayor wants London to copy Paris bike rentals News This is London

I saw those bikes in Paris. Seemed like a good idea.

Parisian-style hire bicycles to beat London traffic jams - Independent Online Edition > Transport

Slightly inaccurate report.

Hacking gadflies: Open Document Format

It's almost September again.

dgh: Bike power

Interesting idea.

apenwarr's log

quite a funny letter to google

Bristol Climate Protesters En-Route to Camp

My legs hurt after cycling only 6 miles yesterday. Not sure what I did wrong.

The Weston Mercury - Call to 'have a say' on the future of Britain

Pensioners to save country. Or not.

BBC NEWS Technology UN's website breached by hackers

Can't be bothered to check netcraft.

Little's Log: North Norfolk Councillor defects to UKIP

Little's still raging against the media.

Christer Edwards over at Ubuntu Tutorials has written a short tutorial on Devil's Pie. Thanks Christer! Now if only people would stop using a hack I wrote several years ago and fix the real problems... NP: The Last Flowers from the Darkness, Mark Van Hoen

Busy weekend, and I haven't taken the time to blog over the last few days as I should have. On Thursday and then Friday, Maj, Amita June and Brian and I went down to the Montreal Jazz Festival, which took place last week. It was a great time -- we went and saw some free acts, including some Dixieland, some Latin jazz, and the awesome Klez Dispensers playing klesmer. We also went to the huge playground and crafts centre for children on-site. It had slides, a big moonwalk bouncy-room, tunnels, a sandbox, and a giant piano that kids can step on to play music. They also had cool drawing and crafts projects -- a neat, active addition. The Jazz Fest is a great place to bring little kids. Amita June loved dancing to the music and playing in the playground. tags: montrealjazzfest maj brian amitajune

Quebec City Yesterday and today we spent in Quebec City. Brian hadn't been before, and the old, walled city is on the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites, so we dragged him up there. It was also the Festival d' t de Quebec while we were there, which was pretty fun. We had no idea the festival was happening, so it was a pleasant surprise. Hell, I have a hard time keeping the festivals in our own city straight. We got rooms at the really nice Hotel Ch teau Laurier just outside the walls near the festival site. It was really nice -- modern, sleek, and pretty affordable (we got a big double-queen room for $150). Then we walked around the Upper Old Town in on-again-off-again rain, and watched some of the street performers. There was a troupe of stilt-walkers dressed like stone angels and gargoyles -- an awesome performance that scared the bejeesus out of Amita June. But as they left she said, "Bye bye, monsters," so I guess they weren't all bad. We had dinner at the cozy Moine chanson, a really nice restaurant just outside the walls of the Upper Old City. Quebec's restaurant scene in this are is, well, pretty dreadful -- lots of mass-production restaurants that serve tourists mechanical food from conveyor belts. The Moine was an accidental find, and it was really a godsend -- pleasant, interesting pan-Mediterranean food. I had grilled sardines (memories of Portugal); Brian had a thoughtful paella and Maj had a roasted vegetables with polenta plate. They also had a choice selection of organic wines. I have preconceptions about organics, I admit, but we had a very tasty and complex organic Douro from Portugal last night that set me back in my seat. We walked home through the music festival just as Nickelback was coming on the main stage. Brian wandered a bit, Amita June and Maj and I went to bed. Unfortunately, that wasn't the last time we were up: AJ woke up vomiting in the middle of the night. She only barfed once, and we're not sure what caused it: whether she overate at the restaurant (she packed away a lot of food), or if she got some sausage or chicken in the couple of cupfuls of Brian's paella she ate. Either way, she was a sad toddler and we were freaked-out parents. Having your child get sick while you're traveling is really scary. You start thinking about helicopter rescue. But she was fine after one big purge, and we all slept well until this morning. Maj got up to change Amita's diaper, and we realized we didn't have any. Not in the hotel room, not in the car. I went out from the hotel in increasingly wide spirals looking for a convenience store, but those that had diapers weren't open on a Sunday morning, and those that were open didn't carry diapers. After a couple of hours (!), I came back to the hotel in defeat. Fortunately, Maj managed to find a diaper in the emergency stash in the trunk of the car. We picked up Brian and drove to another part of town, where we got a tasty brunch on the terrasse and found some diapers at the Jean Coutu drugstore. Brian kept going from Quebec City -- he's heading all the way around the Gasp Peninsula to New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, and coming back to Montreal in about a week. Maj and I drove home on the South Shore -- Amita fell asleep as we hit the freeway and woke up when we pulled into the driveway -- and had a nice afternoon at home. tags: quebeccity summerfestival travel amitajune

Seafood windfall On Friday, our friend Sebastian called us with a problem: his sister, who lives in the les-de-la-Madeleine, had sent him too much fresh seafood. It had come out of the sea and been driven to Montreal, and there was too much for him and his family to eat. The fish was less than 24 hours out of the water -- could we help him out? So we ended up with two huge bags of succulent lobster meat and three more of scallops. Oh, man, were they good. On Saturday morning before we left for Quebec City I made up two giant lobster omelets for the four of us to share. They had just huge chunks of lobster in them, and it was the most decadent meal I've had in a while. It was so much, we all lay around on the couch moaning for about an hour. Tonight, I cooked up the scallops. They were gigantic, tender, and fresh, so I pan-seared them in butter and olive oil with salt & pepper and prepped garlic and oregano. I know, that seems too much for such a delicate meat, but it worked out great. I put them on a bed of whole-wheat linguine, arugula, and red peppers. They were really, really good. I don't think I'm going to have seafood this good again for a while. Mmmmm. Thanks, Sebastian! tags: scallops lobster seafood

News in brief from the land of the Free Two Freedom news items:

• Robin Millette has a great list of Sourceforge alternatives.
• openmoko.com is open for business. It's possible to buy the coolio new Neo 1973 developer preview through the Web site. I'm ordering one!

tags: freedom robinmillette openmoko

In a recent article I explained some of the mechanics behind putting together the schedule for XTech 2007. We've just added new visualization features to Expectnation that make proposal choice easier, and I thought I'd show some examples from the XTech 2007 review voting. Sparklines, devised by Edward Tufte, are thumbnail sketches of data that succinctly convey patterns. When Nat Torkington used sparklines to show reviewer voting patterns for OSCON program committee, it seemed a helpful addition to make to Expectnation. The profile of each reviewer is interesting — are they a harsh marker, or liberal with the top grades? — but sparklines really come into their own when drawn per proposal. Here are some small screenshots from this year's XTech voting, anonymized of course.
High flyers Reviewers are pretty unanimous about this proposal, as 4.0 is the top grade in our scoring system. The lack of variance suggests that I ought to ensure that all the assigned reviewers put in their scores — this could be just one person voting.  These next two are the pretty typical distribution for highly graded proposals: mostly top marks and a few average ones.  Middle rankingSome of the more interesting trends show up when the scoring isn't biased to either the top or bottom ends of the scale.  The reviewers are unanimous about this paper's soundness. It's not made anyone go "wow", but there's nothing to grumble about either.  This proposal clearly polarises opinion, and is such stands a better chance than the unanimous 3.0 above. Perhaps the subject matter or approach is controversial or timely.
Another proposal that divides the reviewers' opinions. It's also worth me checking here that I don't either have a pathologically strict reviewer, or at the other end, a reviewer with a wild passion for the cause this paper advocates.  Low scoring The quality of submissions is usually so good that I don't give low graded proposals much attention, but the sparklines could alert me to potential oversights. This proposal seems to polarise opinion between "rubbish" and "ok", so it's interesting to me to check out the subject matter and see if I'm missing something with potential.  These proposals were not received at all well.In summary, I'm delighted to find a solid practical application for sparklines. My thanks to Nat Torkington for the inspiration. 

In 2006, Edward A. Lee wrote The Problem With Threads (PDF), in which he observes that threads remove determinism and open the door to subtle yet deadly bugs. While the problems are maybe manageable on single core systems, threads on multicore systems are likely to magnify the problems out of control. According to Wikipedia, coroutines are “program components that generalize subroutines to allow multiple entry points and suspending and resuming of execution at certain locations”. Coroutines are well-suited for implementing more familiar program components such as cooperative tasks, iterators, infinite lists, and pipes. Coroutines are more generic than subroutines. The start of a coroutine is the first point of entry, and places within a coroutine following returns (yields) are subsequent points of entry. Coroutines are also a lot faster than processes or threads switch, since there is no OS kernel involvement for the operation. Even though coroutines are supported in some high-level languages, there doesn’t seem to be an standard implementation of them in C or C++. The first time I heard about coroutines were in Lua. Since then, I’ve been trying to find a good solution for using them in C. Simon Tatham proposes a way of implementing them with a combination of subroutines and macros, but I think that, even creative and clean, this is a dirty approach for real code. What about handling with errors in the code? I still have nightmares when I have some problem to debug in STL-based code. Cryptic, the least. Due to the limitations of standard C libraries, some authors have written their own libraries for coroutines:

• Libtask: a Coroutine Library for C and Unix. It uses the context functions if they are provided by the native C library; otherwise it provides its own implementations for ARM, PowerPC, Sparc, and x86.
• Portable Coroutine Library (PCL): Easily portable on almost every Unix system and on Windows. It can use either the ucontext.h functionalities ( getcontext()/makecontest()/swapcontext() ) or the standard longjmp()/setjmp().
• libCoroutine (a small, portable coroutine implementation): For FreeBSD, Linux, OS X PPC and x86, SunOS, Symbian and others.

I have Dreams I would be embarrassed to admit in public... that suddenly are not so embarrassing anymore!

I dream of winning 1 million Euros in the lottery, starting a Debian Foundation, buying a whole building in the best area of Madrid, making myself a nice home in the attic, with a huge terrace for Vi and Jazz, and having the Debian headquarters there. With that amount of money it would either be the Foundation or the building... So it really is wishful dreaming.

But sometimes I let this dreaming go on further, and I dream of winning more money, buying a whole island, starting a new country there, and calling it Debian Land, getting all DDs a Debian Passport, sponsoring their holidays with their families there, in the Debian Island, with great Internet connection, sun and wonderful beaches, so that they can gather, without waiting for Debconf, or just enjoy a break.

I learnt yesterday that The Micronation of Sealand is for sale and that the people behind The Pirate Bay want to buy it: With the help of all the kopimists on Internets, we want to buy Sealand. Donate money and you will become a citizien.

So I guess I am not the only one who dreams of starting a country where one can be really free. And Sealand is so close to the Debian Developer Centre of Mass... it s so tempting...

They even have a Plan B: If we do not get enough money required to buy The Micronation of Sealand, we will try to buy another small island somewhere and claim it as our own country (prices start from USD 50.000). That s exactly what I was dreaming of, and it doesn t sound so stupid anymore.

I just need to be more constant in my lottery playing, and have some faith.

A few months ago I finished Play Money by Julian Dibbel and like his My Tiny Life before it, the writing style is simple yet sumptuous, or I guess just simply sumptuous. Like the travel writings that pre-figured anthropological writing, Dibbel takes us to a far-away exotic land (but only a click or two away) that are populated by a motley crew of wizard (or is lizard)? slayers, gold-diggers, money-makers, and virtual-world-builders. For many, these MMOGsare no strange-lands but are becoming weaved firmly and intimately into the fabric of everyday life, whether as entertainment, sociality, and or for a cadre of folks, as a source of income generation. I think the book has gotten enough coverage that I don’t need to rehearse its content in any detail but the basic story is that Julian embarks on a real world quest in the virtual land of quests to try to make enough money (to be specific make a little more than his monthly salary as a freelance writer) from trading and selling a slew of virtual objects and gold. In taking us along, he gives a compelling entry into the imaginative and morally complex world of these games. And better is that whether you know nothing about them or are a seasoned player, the book has much to offer. One of the reasons I respect Julian Dibbel is because he takes his sweeeet time to churn out a book-length manuscript. In a day and age when there is so much pressure to release quick and often, especially when writing about anything in the so-called virtual plane of existence, he waited nearly 8 years from the publication of his last book on gaming, My Tiny Life before publishing on a considerably higher-tech phenomenon. Following him on his most recent adventure, you learn that he threw himself into a variety of gaming environments persistently and consistently and did at least 3 years of research and writing (at one point in the book he confesses how excruciating writing for him, which is hard to believe as the words slip so nicely off the paper but whatever the extent of his writing angst is, he clearly spends a lot of care in crafting his sentences). And I am starting to think that if more people followed this ethic of long-term immersion, coupled with slow-brewed productive sparsity, we would get higher quality products (Yes, kinda like the Debian release cyclce). Like any good ethnographer, he gives an intimate portrait of life in these worlds of copious play where various types of real world economies have mushroomed apace with new technological developments. That is, he gives us a taste of what it is like, as he cleverly puts it to own unreality. Couched within tales of gaming gone real world economic, are hearty reflections on the place of play in social and economic life, the close resemblance and conceptual affinity between computers and games (and not just computer games, and here he does a fantastic job at explaining the Turing Test), self-doubts about writing in general and in particular about this topic, commodity fetishism, and the changing nature of capitalism in a world of ever-greater abstractions. All of this makes for an enjoyable read that if used in the classroom (which like A Tiny Life, I am sure will become standard for courses on Virtual Worlds) allows you to bring in some good supplemental material whether Edward Castranova’s Synthetic Worlds, Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter’s The Laws of Virtual Worlds and or older heavy-hitters like Max Weber and Karl Marx. The only topic I think I would have liked to seen included is that of capitalist finance, because there are, I think, some real affinities, phenomenologically and conceptually, between finance capitalism and gaming the virtual game. Otherwise some of my favorite sections were on hackers and the object of the computer, but of course, I am biased that way. So here I leave you with a tasty morsel of something that was sumptuous to ingest: It is this endlessly repeatable collusion of freedom and determinism-the warp and woof of fixed rules and free play, of running code and variable input that sets both games and computers apart, together from the larger universe of information technologies they inhabit…. But only games share the universal machine’s game’s thoroughgoing commitment to the principle of recursion: the chained repetition of simple operations, each building on both the input of the moment and the outcomes of preceding steps. And only games, therefore, come close to capturing that precise mi of unpredictability and inevitability that makes the computer such a powerful simulator of our lived experience of the world. p. 104

One of my longstanding frustrations living in Boston is the lack of artisanale espresso sources. Starbucks is, of course, ubiquitous (I think there are four within a block of where I work), and at least espresso drinks there aren’t bad, but there is little-to-no artistry involved. They aren’t aiming for perfection, they’re aiming for absolute consistency, mass appeal, and caffeine. Ever since Starbucks started opening in strip malls and grocery stores like Safeway, I’ve doubted whether they even care about maintaining an image of serving an elite population. This article presents some good background on the art of espresso, but apparently the only place it’s happening in Greater Boston is on the other side of the Charles River, which might as well be Prince Edward Island. (See also this article about Murky Coffee, my and Steve’s favorite coffee place in DC). I’d love to support Emack and Bolio’s, my neighborhood coffee shop, but the coffee and espresso there are inconsistent at best. I don’t get the feeling that the baristas there get a lot of training. Or that they even consider themselves to be baristas (according to Wikipedia: “one who has acquired some level of expertise in the preparation of espresso-based coffee drinks,” or “a professional who is highly skilled in coffee preparation, with a comprehensive understanding of coffee, coffee blends, espresso, quality, coffee varieties, roast degree, espresso equipment, maintenance, latte art, etc.”). Hey, while I’m talking about Starbucks, I should mention that Google Maps is wrong. There is no Starbucks at 1510 Centre Street in Roslindale, Massachusetts. It’s nearly a mile away from the real Starbucks at 1810 Centre Street, that has the same phone number. Wouldn’t you think Google could have figured that out? Can someone tell them? Anyway, I recently discovered the Channel Cafe (deserving a PageRank boost), just a brisk 8 minute walk from my office down Summer Street across the Fort Point Channel, actually has quite respectable espresso and espresso drinks. I first went there for lunch several months ago and the place was mostly empty — more recently, there seems to be a line up the steps every day. (The cafe is in the basement of art gallery space and is owned by one of the Fort Point artists.) Aside from excellent espresso, they have a great menu, especially for vegetarians, with entrees such as baked tofu with pan steamed vegetables, peanut dipping sauce, jasmine rice, mandarin and oranges, and basil and ricotta ravioli with fresh tomatoes, zucchini, sweat pea and mint coulis, and parmesan cheese. All for under $10, which is a bargain in the greater financial district. I’m afraid the line up the stairs may soon be out the door… It’s a good sign for the burgeoning Seaport District, though.
(…more espresso art…)

I get asked this a lot about people. Most recently when visiting the Fat Cat with Simon and his work mates this week, but often about the other Simon (who's my business partner as well as a long time friend). The truth is a lot of the people I know I met first online, be it Fidonet (hello Pads, Peter, Simon and several others), Usenet (hello Ox.Net), mailing lists (hello ALUG) or IRC (hello, er, lots of people). I don't think I'm in any way unique here, but it can sometimes be awkward explaining this to people who preconceive internet friendships to be something seedy involving 40 year old fat man and 15 year old naive children. Or at least that's what they seem to be thinking when you say "Oh, we met online". Let's give some examples. I met Simon on Fidonet, back when we were both 17 or so. We were in a couple of echoes together and we did netmail a bit. When I came to England for university one of the echoes we were in had a meet up and so I decided to go. I ended up staying at Simon's (making his mother worry a bit; even back in 1997 people thought meeting online was freaky!) and that was the first time I met him. We've kept in good touch ever since and even gone into business together. Is this a lot odder than a chance meeting at a pub or through friends? I don't think so, but some people do. Or take when I moved to Norwich. I had some friends who could help me load up the van in Harpenden (where I was moving from), but didn't know anyone in Norwich to help unload. I'd already joined the ALUG list, so I thought I'd ask there if anyone was prepared to help in exchange for beer and food afterwards. Adam and Edward Betts both turned up to help, not knowing anything about me. And were very helpful and we got everything unloaded. I still see Adam reasonably often, both online and in person (last night, for example). I haven't really kept in touch with Edward since he left UEA though. :( There are many more examples like this of people who I see a reasonable amount in real life and yet if you asked me I'd have to admit I first knew online, sometimes for several years before actually physically meeting. And lots of people understand it these days, but please tell me I'm not alone in getting the funny looks sometimes. Please?