I've been involved in the organisation of a number of scientific conferences over the past few years. For example 4m/ICOMM 2009 (submissions), I*PROMS 2009 (submissions). The conference sites are usually powered by drupal, the submissions using OpenConf. Managing the submission and peer review of papers is a chore, unfortunately, as is often the case, software gets in your way. So here I try to skim over some of the experiences I had with OpenConf - the good and the bad.

I've tested indico, which looks like a very good system, but it is heavy and over-engineered, especially if you want to run a couple of events, and not hundreds or thousands. It might be good for organisations managing a big number of events, but not for us.

After going through a number of trials I've settled on openconf. It was simple. It fitted the current web infrastructure - LAMP. I reckoned, I could eventually integrate it, or simply transfer some of the data into drupal, and maybe even benefit from code reuse. Surprisingly, I ended being both pleasantly surprised and not so.

"11 Space Hijackers were arrested under section 19 of the Police Act (impersonating police)
and taken to West End Central police station."

Well... I'm not wearing blue overalls again.

HAI
IM IN UR BUCKETS MAKING UP FORMATS
GIMME FEEDS
   I CAN HAS FEED DRUPAL PLANET
      ITZ AT http://drupal.org/planet/rss.xml
      INVISIBLE METADATA
      LOL
   I CAN HAS FEED DRUPAL GROUP POOL
      ITZ AT http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?group=35237091376@N01&lang=en-us&format=lol
      INVISIBLE METADATA
      LOL
   I CAN HAS FEED VERTICE'S PHOTOSTREAM
      ITZ AT http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?photostream=44124348472@N01&lang=en-us&format=lol
      INVISIBLE METADATA
      LOL
I IS BORED
KTHXBYE.

There is a discussion going on in php land about introducing closures and lambda functions, there was even a discussion on haskell-cafe about it (chx strikes again ;). About time, I would say. Having this functionality is a bonus. Having it implemented badly or half-arsed is going to do more damage than help. This is a short summary of what do I understand from the rfc and what do I think about it.

thanks slashdot, reddit, youtube for starting me this morning

from TedTalks

Law professor Yochai Benkler explains how collaborative projects like Wikipedia and Linux represent the next stage of human organization. By disrupting traditional economic production, copyright law and established competition, they're paving the way for a new set of economic laws, where empowered individuals are put on a level playing field with industry giants.

#! /bin/bash
#member_match
LISTS=`list_lists | cut -f1 -d- | xargs echo`
for list in $LISTS ; do
  echo $list
  list_members $list | grep $1
done

cow:~# ./member_match "at$"

He Sells Shell Scripts to Intersect Sets is a good read. Set and multiset operations from the command line or in .sh. Rather clean, straightforward shell magic.

On The Constitutional Reasons Behind Copyright And Patents
Patents, Copyrights And Trademarks, Oh My!
If Intellectual Property Is Neither Intellectual, Nor Property, What Is It?

Against Intellectual Monopoly

I liked Levine and Bolrin's Intellectual Monopoly substitute term for IP. It better reflect what "intellectual property" is about - a monopoly to exploit a "product" of someone's intellect, granted by a government explicitly , for example patents, or implicitly (copyright).

from qdb

<piercings> A programmer started to cuss
<piercings> Because getting to sleep was a fuss
<piercings> As he lay there in bed
<piercings> Looping 'round in his head
<piercings> was: while(!asleep()) sheep++;