<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
- <title>Alle Stortingets mobiltelefoner kontrolleres fra USA...</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Alle_Stortingets_mobiltelefoner_kontrolleres_fra_USA___.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Alle_Stortingets_mobiltelefoner_kontrolleres_fra_USA___.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 7 Oct 2015 09:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Jeg lot meg fascinere av
-<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/politikk/Stortinget-har-tilgang-til-a-fjernstyre-600-mobiler-8192692.html">en
-artikkel i Aftenposten</a> der det fortelles at «over 600 telefoner som
-benyttes av stortingsrepresentanter, rådgivere og ansatte på
-Stortinget, kan «fjernstyres» ved hjelp av
-<a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airwatch.androidagent">programvaren
-Airwatch</a>, et såkalte MDM-program (Mobile Device Managment)». Det
-hele bagatelliseres av Stortingets IT-stab, men det er i hovedsak på
-grunn av at journalisten ikke stiller de relevante spørsmålene. For
-meg er det relevante spørsmålet hvem som har lovlig tilgang (i henhold
-til lokal lovgiving, dvs. i hvert fall i Norge, Sverige, UK og USA)
-til informasjon om og på telefonene, og hvor enkelt det er å skaffe
-seg tilgang til hvor mobilene befinner seg og informasjon som befinner
-seg på telefonene ved hjelp av utro tjenere, trusler, innbrudd og
-andre ulovlige metoder.</p>
-
-<p>Bruken av AirWatch betyr i realiteten at USAs etteretning og
-politimyndigheter har full tilgang til stortingets mobiltelefoner,
-inkludert posisjon og innhold, takket være
-<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Intelligence_Surveillance_Act_of_1978_Amendments_Act_of_2008">FISAAA-loven</a>
-og
-"<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_security_letter">National
-Security Letters</a>" og det enkle faktum at AirWatch er kontrollert
-av et selskap i USA. I tillegg er det kjent at kan flere lands
-etterretningstjenester kan lytte på trafikken når den passerer
-landegrensene.</p>
-
-<p>Jeg har bedt om mer informasjon
-<a href="https://www.mimesbronn.no/request/saksnummer_for_saker_anganede_br">fra
-Stortinget om bruken av AirWatch</a> via Mimes brønn så får vi se hva
-de har å fortelle om saken. Fant ingenting om 'airwatch' i
-postjournalen til Stortinget, så jeg trenger hjelp før jeg kan be om
-innsyn i konkrete dokumenter.</p>
+ <title>First draft Norwegian Bokmål edition of The Debian Administrator's Handbook now public</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_draft_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook_now_public.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 30 Aug 2016 10:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>In April we
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lets_make_a_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_The_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html">started
+to work</a> on a Norwegian Bokmål edition of the "open access" book on
+how to set up and administrate a Debian system. Today I am happy to
+report that the first draft is now publicly available. You can find
+it on <a href="https://debian-handbook.info/get/">get the Debian
+Administrator's Handbook page</a> (under Other languages). The first
+eight chapters have a first draft translation, and we are working on
+proofreading the content. If you want to help out, please start
+contributing using
+<a href="https://hosted.weblate.org/projects/debian-handbook/">the
+hosted weblate project page</a>, and get in touch using
+<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/debian-handbook-translators">the
+translators mailing list</a>. Please also check out
+<a href="https://debian-handbook.info/contribute/">the instructions for
+contributors</a>. A good way to contribute is to proofread the text
+and update weblate if you find errors.</p>
+
+<p>Our goal is still to make the Norwegian book available on paper as well as
+electronic form.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>French Docbook/PDF/EPUB/MOBI edition of the Free Culture book</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/French_Docbook_PDF_EPUB_MOBI_edition_of_the_Free_Culture_book.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 1 Oct 2015 13:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>As I wrap up the Norwegian version of
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
-Culture</a> book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof
-reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great
-<a href="http://dblatex.sourceforge.net/">dblatex</a> helper and
-developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a
-to try to create a French version of the book. He started with the
-French translation available from the
-<a href="http://www.wikilivres.ca/wiki/Culture_libre">Wikilivres wiki
-pages</a>, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing
-the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use
-to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition. We meet
-on the <a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23dblatex">#dblatex IRC
-channel</a> to discuss the work. If you want to help create a French
-edition, check out
-<a href="https://github.com/marsgui/free-culture-lessig">his git
-repository</a> and join us on IRC. If the French edition look good,
-we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com. A French version of
-the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.</p>
+ <title>Coz can help you find bottlenecks in multi-threaded software - nice free software</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Coz_can_help_you_find_bottlenecks_in_multi_threaded_software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 11 Aug 2016 12:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>This summer, I read a great article
+"<a href="https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/summer2016/curtsinger">coz:
+This Is the Profiler You're Looking For</a>" in USENIX ;login: about
+how to profile multi-threaded programs. It presented a system for
+profiling software by running experiences in the running program,
+testing how run time performance is affected by "speeding up" parts of
+the code to various degrees compared to a normal run. It does this by
+slowing down parallel threads while the "faster up" code is running
+and measure how this affect processing time. The processing time is
+measured using probes inserted into the code, either using progress
+counters (COZ_PROGRESS) or as latency meters (COZ_BEGIN/COZ_END). It
+can also measure unmodified code by measuring complete the program
+runtime and running the program several times instead.</p>
+
+<p>The project and presentation was so inspiring that I would like to
+get the system into Debian. I
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=830708">created
+a WNPP request for it</a> and contacted upstream to try to make the
+system ready for Debian by sending patches. The build process need to
+be changed a bit to avoid running 'git clone' to get dependencies, and
+to include the JavaScript web page used to visualize the collected
+profiling information included in the source package.
+But I expect that should work out fairly soon.</p>
+
+<p>The way the system work is fairly simple. To run an coz experiment
+on a binary with debug symbols available, start the program like this:
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+coz run --- program-to-run
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>This will create a text file profile.coz with the instrumentation
+information. To show what part of the code affect the performance
+most, use a web browser and either point it to
+<a href="http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/">http://plasma-umass.github.io/coz/</a>
+or use the copy from git (in the gh-pages branch). Check out this web
+site to have a look at several example profiling runs and get an idea what the end result from the profile runs look like. To make the
+profiling more useful you include &lt;coz.h&gt; and insert the
+COZ_PROGRESS or COZ_BEGIN and COZ_END at appropriate places in the
+code, rebuild and run the profiler. This allow coz to do more
+targeted experiments.</p>
+
+<p>A video published by ACM
+<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jE0V-p1odPg">presenting the
+Coz profiler</a> is available from Youtube. There is also a paper
+from the 25th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles available
+titled
+<a href="https://www.usenix.org/conference/atc16/technical-sessions/presentation/curtsinger">Coz:
+finding code that counts with causal profiling</a>.</p>
+
+<p><a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz">The source code</a>
+for Coz is available from github. It will only build with clang
+because it uses a
+<a href="https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=55606">C++
+feature missing in GCC</a>, but I've submitted
+<a href="https://github.com/plasma-umass/coz/pull/67">a patch to solve
+it</a> and hope it will be included in the upstream source soon.</p>
+
+<p>Please get in touch if you, like me, would like to see this piece
+of software in Debian. I would very much like some help with the
+packaging effort, as I lack the in depth knowledge on how to package
+C++ libraries.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>The life and death of a laptop battery</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 24 Sep 2015 16:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK.
-But this do not last. The last few laptops gave me a feeling that
-within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be,
-and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected
-all the time. Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop
-about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have
-more hard facts when the battery started to fail.</p>
-
-<img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-24-laptop-battery-graph.png"/>
-
-<p>First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the
-battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled
-by someone else. I found
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>,
-which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely
-broken. I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to
-write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback
-from him. Via
-<a href="http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html">a
-blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air</a> I also
-discovered
-<a href="https://github.com/jradavenport/batlog.git">batlog</a>, not
-available in Debian.</p>
-
-<p>I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting
-battery stats ever since. Now my
-/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000
-measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now,
-when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity. My
-collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:</p>
-
-<pre>
-#!/bin/sh
-# Inspired by
-# http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
-# See also
-# http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
-logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log
-
-files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
- energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"
-
-if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
- (
- printf "timestamp,"
- for f in $files; do
- printf "%s," $f
- done
- echo
- ) > "$logfile"
-fi
-
-log_battery() {
- # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
- # when several log processes run in parallel.
- msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
- for f in $files; do \
- printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
- done)
- echo "$msg"
-}
-
-cd /sys/class/power_supply
-
-for bat in BAT*; do
- (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
-done
-</pre>
-
-<p>The script is called when the power management system detect a
-change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into
-and out of hibernation and suspend. In addition, it collect a value
-every 10 minutes. This make it possible for me know when the battery
-is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time.
-The code for the Debian package
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-status">is now
-available on github</a>.</p>
-
-<p>The collected log file look like this:</p>
-
-<pre>
-timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
-1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
-[...]
-1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
-1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
-</pre>
-
-<p>I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development
-over time. This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop
-battery.</p>
-
-<p>But why is this happening? Why are my laptop batteries always
-dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and
-satellites keep working year after year. If we are to believe
-<a href="http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries">Battery
-University</a>, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a
-chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100%
-all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time.
-I've been told that the Tesla electric cars
-<a href="http://my.teslamotors.com/de_CH/forum/forums/battery-charge-limit">limit
-the charge of their batteries to 80%</a>, with the option to charge to
-100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car
-like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another
-story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on
-Linux too.</p>
-
-<p>Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to
-stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in
-preparation for a longer trip? I found
-<a href="http://askubuntu.com/questions/34452/how-can-i-limit-battery-charging-to-80-capacity">one
-recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to
-80%</a>, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to
-load).</p>
-
-<p>I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100%
-at the start. I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some
-times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery
-back to design capacity. And I wonder if the discharge and charge
-speed change over time, or if this stay the same. I did not yet try
-to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery
-level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from
-those.</p>
-
-<p>Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages
-acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable)
-packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use
-initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start
-and stop. I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast
-and need to be replaced. The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad
-specific.</p>
+ <title>Sales number for the Free Culture translation, first half of 2016</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sales_number_for_the_Free_Culture_translation__first_half_of_2016.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Sales_number_for_the_Free_Culture_translation__first_half_of_2016.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 5 Aug 2016 22:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>As my regular readers probably remember, the last year I published
+a French and Norwegian translation of the classic
+<a href="http://www.free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book</a> by the
+founder of the Creative Commons movement, Lawrence Lessig. A bit less
+known is the fact that due to the way I created the translations,
+using docbook and po4a, I also recreated the English original. And
+because I already had created a new the PDF edition, I published it
+too. The revenue from the books are sent to the Creative Commons
+Corporation. In other words, I do not earn any money from this
+project, I just earn the warm fuzzy feeling that the text is available
+for a wider audience and more people can learn why the Creative
+Commons is needed.</p>
+
+<p>Today, just for fun, I had a look at the sales number over at
+Lulu.com, which take care of payment, printing and shipping. Much to
+my surprise, the English edition is selling better than both the
+French and Norwegian edition, despite the fact that it has been
+available in English since it was first published. In total, 24 paper
+books was sold for USD $19.99 between 2016-01-01 and 2016-07-31:</p>
+
+<table border="0">
+<tr><th>Title / language</th><th>Quantity</th></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/culture-libre/paperback/product-22645082.html">Culture Libre / French</a></td><td align="right">3</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">Fri kultur / Norwegian</a></td><td align="right">7</td></tr>
+<tr><td><a href="http://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/free-culture/paperback/product-22440520.html">Free Culture / English</a></td><td align="right">14</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The books are available both from Lulu.com and from large book
+stores like Amazon and Barnes&Noble. Most revenue, around $10 per
+book, is sent to the Creative Commons project when the book is sold
+directly by Lulu.com. The other channels give less revenue. The
+summary from Lulu tell me 10 books was sold via the Amazon channel, 10
+via Ingram (what is this?) and 4 directly by Lulu. And Lulu.com tells
+me that the revenue sent so far this year is USD $101.42. No idea
+what kind of sales numbers to expect, so I do not know if that is a
+good amount of sales for a 10 year old book or not. But it make me
+happy that the buyers find the book, and I hope they enjoy reading it
+as much as I did.</p>
+
+<p>The ebook edition is available for free from
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Github</a>.</p>
+
+<p>If you would like to translate and publish the book in your native
+language, I would be happy to help make it happen. Please get in
+touch.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Book cover for the Free Culture book finally done</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Book_cover_for_the_Free_Culture_book_finally_done.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 3 Sep 2015 21:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected.
-I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of
-the
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">Free
-Culture</a> book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in
-vector format for high resolution printing. But my inkscape knowledge
-were not nearly good enough to pull that off.
-
-<p>But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up
-the cover yesterday evening. I asked on the
-<a href="irc://irc.freenode.net/%23inkscape">#inkscape IRC channel</a>
-on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered
-to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML
-version. Not only did he create a
-<a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/copy1.svg ">SVG document with
-the original and his vector version side by side</a>, he even provided
-an <a href="https://marc.jeanmougin.fr/share/out-1.ogv">instruction
-video</a> explaining how he did it</a>. But the instruction video is
-not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a
-recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as
-the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did
-use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it
-give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the
-stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.</p>
-
-<p>I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit
-on the cover I was drawing. I am happy with the end result, and the
-current english version look like this:</p>
-
-<img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-09-03-free-culture-cover.png" width="70%" align="center"/>
-
-<p>I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will
-do. I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and
-hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers. The
-Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code
-replaced with the Norwegian version.</p>
-
-<p>The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect
-to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a
-final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should
-before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in
-English or Norwegian Bokmål. I'm waiting to give the the productive
-proof readers a chance to complete their work.</p>
+ <title>Vitenskapen tar som vanlig feil igjen - relativt feil</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vitenskapen_tar_som_vanlig_feil_igjen___relativt_feil.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Vitenskapen_tar_som_vanlig_feil_igjen___relativt_feil.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 1 Aug 2016 16:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>For mange år siden leste jeg en klassisk tekst som gjorde såpass
+inntrykk på meg at jeg husker den fortsatt, flere år senere, og bruker
+argumentene fra den stadig vekk. Teksten var «The Relativity of
+Wrong» som Isaac Asimov publiserte i Skeptical Inquirer i 1989. Den
+gir litt perspektiv rundt formidlingen av vitenskapelige resultater.
+Jeg har hatt lyst til å kunne dele den også med folk som ikke
+behersker engelsk så godt, som barn og noen av mine eldre slektninger,
+og har savnet å ha den tilgjengelig på norsk. For to uker siden tok
+jeg meg sammen og kontaktet Asbjørn Dyrendal i foreningen Skepsis om
+de var interessert i å publisere en norsk utgave på bloggen sin, og da
+han var positiv tok jeg kontakt med Skeptical Inquirer og spurte om
+det var greit for dem. I løpet av noen dager fikk vi tilbakemelding
+fra Barry Karr hos The Skeptical Inquirer som hadde sjekket og fått OK
+fra Robyn Asimov som representerte arvingene i Asmiov-familien og gikk
+igang med oversettingen.</p>
+
+<p>Resultatet, <a href="http://www.skepsis.no/?p=1617">«Relativt
+feil»</a>, ble publisert på skepsis-bloggen for noen minutter siden.
+Jeg anbefaler deg på det varmeste å lese denne teksten og dele den med
+dine venner.</p>
+
+<p>For å håndtere oversettelsen og sikre at original og oversettelse
+var i sync brukte vi git, po4a, GNU make og Transifex. Det hele
+fungerte utmerket og gjorde det enkelt å dele tekstene og jobbe sammen
+om finpuss på formuleringene. Hadde hosted.weblate.org latt meg
+opprette nye prosjekter selv i stedet for å måtte kontakte
+administratoren der, så hadde jeg brukt weblate i stedet.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>In my hand, a pocket book edition of the Norwegian Free Culture book!</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/In_my_hand__a_pocket_book_edition_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 19 Aug 2015 22:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian
-translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few
-years arrived in the mail. I had to fake a cover to get the interior
-printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is
-irrelevant at this point. I asked for a printed pocket book version
-to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how
-good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the
-pocket book version would look like. After receiving the 500 page
-pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too
-small for this book. I believe the book is too thick, and several
-tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that
-small page sizes. I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size
-instead. A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the
-URLs look in print. They are very hard to read in the colophon page.
-The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper. I need to
-change the color of links somehow to look better. But there is a
-printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)</p>
-
-<p>Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the
-store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof
-readers before the book is ready for proper printing. Cover artists
-willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector
-file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as
-a graphics designer are mostly missing.</p>
+ <title>Techno TV broadcasting live across Norway and the Internet (#debconf16, #nuug) on @frikanalen</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Techno_TV_broadcasting_live_across_Norway_and_the_Internet___debconf16___nuug__on__frikanalen.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Techno_TV_broadcasting_live_across_Norway_and_the_Internet___debconf16___nuug__on__frikanalen.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 1 Aug 2016 10:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Did you know there is a TV channel broadcasting talks from DebConf
+16 across an entire country? Or that there is a TV channel
+broadcasting talks by or about
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625529/">Linus Torvalds</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599/">Tor</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/624019/">OpenID</A>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625624/">Common Lisp</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625446/">Civic Tech</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625090/">EFF founder John Barlow</a>,
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625432/">how to make 3D
+printer electronics</a> and many more fascinating topics? It works
+using only free software (all of it
+<a href="http://github.com/Frikanalen">available from Github</a>), and
+is administrated using a web browser and a web API.</p>
+
+<p>The TV channel is the Norwegian open channel
+<a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, and I am involved
+via <a href="https://www.nuug.no/">the NUUG member association</a> in
+running and developing the software for the channel. The channel is
+organised as a member organisation where its members can upload and
+broadcast what they want (think of it as Youtube for national
+broadcasting television). Individuals can broadcast too. The time
+slots are handled on a first come, first serve basis. Because the
+channel have almost no viewers and very few active members, we can
+experiment with TV technology without too much flack when we make
+mistakes. And thanks to the few active members, most of the slots on
+the schedule are free. I see this as an opportunity to spread
+knowledge about technology and free software, and have a script I run
+regularly to fill up all the open slots the next few days with
+technology related video. The end result is a channel I like to
+describe as Techno TV - filled with interesting talks and
+presentations.</p>
+
+<p>It is available on channel 50 on the Norwegian national digital TV
+network (RiksTV). It is also available as a multicast stream on
+Uninett. And finally, it is available as
+<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/">a WebM unicast stream</a> from
+Frikanalen and NUUG. Check it out. :)</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>First paper version of the Norwegian Free Culture book heading my way</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_paper_version_of_the_Norwegian_Free_Culture_book_heading_my_way.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 9 Aug 2015 10:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Typesetting a book is harder than I hoped. As the translation is
-mostly done, and a volunteer proof reader was going to check the text
-on paper, it was time this summer to focus on formatting my translated
-<a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> based version of the
-<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> book by Lawrence
-Lessig. I've been trying to get both docboox-xsl+fop and dblatex to
-give me a good looking PDF, but in the end I went with dblatex, because
-its Debian maintainer and upstream developer were responsive and very
-helpful in solving my formatting challenges.</p>
-
-<p>Last night, I finally managed to create a PDF that no longer made
-<a href="http://www.lulu.com/">Lulu.com</a> complain after uploading,
-and I ordered a text version of the book on paper. It is lacking a
-proper book cover and is not tagged with the correct ISBN number, but
-should give me an idea what the finished book will look like.</p>
-
-<p>Instead of using Lulu, I did consider printing the book using
-<a href="http://www.createspace.com/">CreateSpace</a>, but ended up
-using Lulu because it had smaller book size options (CreateSpace seem
-to lack pocket book with extended distribution). I looked for a
-similar service in Norway, but have not seen anything so far. Please
-let me know if I am missing out on something here.</p>
-
-<p>But I still struggle to decide the book size. Should I go for
-pocket book (4.25x6.875 inches / 10.8x17.5 cm) with 556 pages, Digest
-(5.5x8.5 inches / 14x21.6 cm) with 323 pages or US Trade (6x8 inches /
-15.3x22.9 cm) with 280 pages? Fewer pager give a cheaper book, and a
-smaller book is easier to carry around. The test book I ordered was
-pocket book sized, to give me an idea how well that fit in my hand,
-but I suspect I will end up using a digest sized book in the end to
-bring the prize down further.</p>
-
-<p>My biggest challenge at the moment is making nice cover art. My
-inkscape skills are not yet up to the task of replicating the original
-cover in SVG format. I also need to figure out what to write about
-the book on the back (will most likely use the same text as the
-description on web based book stores). I would love help with this,
-if you are willing to license the art source and final version using
-the same CC license as the book. My artistic skills are not really up
-to the task.</p>
-
-<p>I plan to publish the book in both English and Norwegian and on
-paper, in PDF form as well as EPUB and MOBI format. The current
-status can as usual be found on
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
-in the archive/ directory. So far I have spent all time on making the
-PDF version look good. Someone should probably do the same with the
-dbtoepub generated e-book. Help is definitely needed here, as I
-expect to run out of steem before I find time to improve the epub
-formatting.</p>
-
-<p>Please let me know via github if you find typos in the book or
-discover translations that should be improved. The final proof
-reading is being done right now, and I expect to publish the finished
-result in a few months.</p>
+ <title>Unlocking HTC Desire HD on Linux using unruu and fastboot</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Unlocking_HTC_Desire_HD_on_Linux_using_unruu_and_fastboot.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 7 Jul 2016 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Yesterday, I tried to unlock a HTC Desire HD phone, and it proved
+to be a slight challenge. Here is the recipe if I ever need to do it
+again. It all started by me wanting to try the recipe to set up
+<a href="https://blog.torproject.org/blog/mission-impossible-hardening-android-security-and-privacy">an
+hardened Android installation</a> from the Tor project blog on a
+device I had access to. It is a old mobile phone with a broken
+microphone The initial idea had been to just
+<a href="http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Install_CM_for_ace">install
+CyanogenMod on it</a>, but did not quite find time to start on it
+until a few days ago.</p>
+
+<p>The unlock process is supposed to be simple: (1) Boot into the boot
+loader (press volume down and power at the same time), (2) select
+'fastboot' before (3) connecting the device via USB to a Linux
+machine, (4) request the device identifier token by running 'fastboot
+oem get_identifier_token', (5) request the device unlocking key using
+the <a href="http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader/">HTC developer web
+site</a> and unlock the phone using the key file emailed to you.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, this only work fi you have hboot version 2.00.0029
+or newer, and the device I was working on had 2.00.0027. This
+apparently can be easily fixed by downloading a Windows program and
+running it on your Windows machine, if you accept the terms Microsoft
+require you to accept to use Windows - which I do not. So I had to
+come up with a different approach. I got a lot of help from AndyCap
+on #nuug, and would not have been able to get this working without
+him.</p>
+
+<p>First I needed to extract the hboot firmware from
+<a href="http://www.htcdev.com/ruu/PD9810000_Ace_Sense30_S_hboot_2.00.0029.exe">the
+windows binary for HTC Desire HD</a> downloaded as 'the RUU' from HTC.
+For this there is is <a href="https://github.com/kmdm/unruu/">a github
+project named unruu</a> using libunshield. The unshield tool did not
+recognise the file format, but unruu worked and extracted rom.zip,
+containing the new hboot firmware and a text file describing which
+devices it would work for.</p>
+
+<p>Next, I needed to get the new firmware into the device. For this I
+followed some instructions
+<a href="http://www.htc1guru.com/2013/09/new-ruu-zips-posted/">available
+from HTC1Guru.com</a>, and ran these commands as root on a Linux
+machine with Debian testing:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+adb reboot-bootloader
+fastboot oem rebootRUU
+fastboot flash zip rom.zip
+fastboot flash zip rom.zip
+fastboot reboot
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>The flash command apparently need to be done twice to take effect,
+as the first is just preparations and the second one do the flashing.
+The adb command is just to get to the boot loader menu, so turning the
+device on while holding volume down and the power button should work
+too.</p>
+
+<p>With the new hboot version in place I could start following the
+instructions on the HTC developer web site. I got the device token
+like this:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+fastboot oem get_identifier_token 2>&1 | sed 's/(bootloader) //'
+</pre>
+
+<p>And once I got the unlock code via email, I could use it like
+this:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+fastboot flash unlocktoken Unlock_code.bin
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>And with that final step in place, the phone was unlocked and I
+could start stuffing the software of my own choosing into the device.
+So far I only inserted a replacement recovery image to wipe the phone
+before I start. We will see what happen next. Perhaps I should
+install <a href="https://www.debian.org/">Debian</a> on it. :)</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Typesetting DocBook footnotes as endnotes with dblatex</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Typesetting_DocBook_footnotes_as_endnotes_with_dblatex.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 16 Jul 2015 18:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>I'm still working on the Norwegian version of the
-<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture book by Lawrence
-Lessig</a>, and is now working on the final typesetting and layout.
-One of the features I want to get the structure similar to the
-original book is to typeset the footnotes as endnotes in the notes
-chapter. Based on the
-<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/685063">feedback from the Debian
-maintainer and the dblatex developer</a>, I came up with this recipe I
-would like to share with you. The proposal was to create a new LaTeX
-class file and add the LaTeX code there, but this is not always
-practical, when I want to be able to replace the class using a make
-file variable. So my proposal misuses the latex.begindocument XSL
-parameter value, to get a small fragment into the correct location in
-the generated LaTeX File.</p>
-
-<p>First, decide where in the DocBook document to place the endnotes,
-and add this text there:</p>
+ <title>How to use the Signal app if you only have a land line (ie no mobile phone)</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_use_the_Signal_app_if_you_only_have_a_land_line__ie_no_mobile_phone_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 3 Jul 2016 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>For a while now, I have wanted to test
+<a href="https://whispersystems.org/">the Signal app</a>, as it is
+said to provide end to end encrypted communication and several of my
+friends and family are already using it. As I by choice do not own a
+mobile phone, this proved to be harder than expected. And I wanted to
+have the source of the client and know that it was the code used on my
+machine. But yesterday I managed to get it working. I used the
+Github source, compared it to the source in
+<a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/signal-private-messenger/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk?hl=en-US">the
+Signal Chrome app</a> available from the Chrome web store, applied
+patches to use the production Signal servers, started the app and
+asked for the hidden "register without a smart phone" form. Here is
+the recipe how I did it.</p>
+
+<p>First, I fetched the Signal desktop source from Github, using
<pre>
-&lt;?latex \theendnotes ?&gt;
+git clone https://github.com/WhisperSystems/Signal-Desktop.git
</pre>
-<p>Next, create a xsl stylesheet file dblatex-endnotes.xsl to add the
-code needed to add the endnote instructions in the preamble of the
-generated LaTeX document, with content like this:</p>
+<p>Next, I patched the source to use the production servers, to be
+able to talk to other Signal users:</p>
<pre>
-&lt;?xml version='1.0'?&gt;
-&lt;xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version='1.0'&gt;
- &lt;xsl:param name="latex.begindocument"&gt;
- &lt;xsl:text&gt;
-\usepackage{endnotes}
-\let\footnote=\endnote
-\def\enoteheading{\mbox{}\par\vskip-\baselineskip }
-\begin{document}
- &lt;/xsl:text&gt;
- &lt;/xsl:param&gt;
-&lt;/xsl:stylesheet&gt;
+cat &lt;&lt;EOF | patch -p0
+diff -ur ./js/background.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js
+--- ./js/background.js 2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
++++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/background.js 2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
+@@ -47,8 +47,8 @@
+ });
+ });
+
+- var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-staging.whispersystems.org';
+- var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments-staging.s3.amazonaws.com';
++ var SERVER_URL = 'https://textsecure-service-ca.whispersystems.org:4433';
++ var ATTACHMENT_SERVER_URL = 'https://whispersystems-textsecure-attachments.s3.amazonaws.com';
+ var messageReceiver;
+ window.getSocketStatus = function() {
+ if (messageReceiver) {
+diff -ur ./js/expire.js userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js
+--- ./js/expire.js 2016-06-29 13:43:15.630344628 +0200
++++ userdata/Default/Extensions/bikioccmkafdpakkkcpdbppfkghcmihk/0.15.0_0/js/expire.js2016-06-29 14:06:29.530300934 +0200
+@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
+ ;(function() {
+ 'use strict';
+- var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 0;
++ var BUILD_EXPIRATION = 1474492690000;
+
+ window.extension = window.extension || {};
+
+EOF
</pre>
-<p>Finally, load this xsl file when running dblatex, for example like
-this:</p>
+<p>The first part is changing the servers, and the second is updating
+an expiration timestamp. This timestamp need to be updated regularly.
+It is set 90 days in the future by the build process (Gruntfile.js).
+The value is seconds since 1970 times 1000, as far as I can tell.</p>
+
+<p>Based on a tip and good help from the #nuug IRC channel, I wrote a
+script to launch Signal in Chromium.</p>
<pre>
-dblatex --xsl-user=dblatex-endnotes.xsl freeculture.nb.xml
+#!/bin/sh
+cd $(dirname $0)
+mkdir -p userdata
+exec chromium \
+ --proxy-server="socks://localhost:9050" \
+ --user-data-dir=`pwd`/userdata --load-and-launch-app=`pwd`
</pre>
-<p>The end result can be seen on github, where
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">my
-book project</a> is located.</p>
+<p> The script start the app and configure Chromium to use the Tor
+SOCKS5 proxy to make sure those controlling the Signal servers (today
+Amazon and Whisper Systems) as well as those listening on the lines
+will have a harder time location my laptop based on the Signal
+connections if they use source IP address.</p>
+
+<p>When the script starts, one need to follow the instructions under
+"Standalone Registration" in the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the git
+repository. I right clicked on the Signal window to get up the
+Chromium debugging tool, visited the 'Console' tab and wrote
+'extension.install("standalone")' on the console prompt to get the
+registration form. Then I entered by land line phone number and
+pressed 'Call'. 5 seconds later the phone rang and a robot voice
+repeated the verification code three times. After entering the number
+into the verification code field in the form, I could start using
+Signal from my laptop.
+
+<p>As far as I can tell, The Signal app will leak who is talking to
+whom and thus who know who to those controlling the central server,
+but such leakage is hard to avoid with a centrally controlled server
+setup. It is something to keep in mind when using Signal - the
+content of your chats are harder to intercept, but the meta data
+exposing your contact network is available to people you do not know.
+So better than many options, but not great. And sadly the usage is
+connected to my land line, thus allowing those controlling the server
+to associate it to my home and person. I would prefer it if only
+those I knew could tell who I was on Signal. There are options
+avoiding such information leakage, but most of my friends are not
+using them, so I am stuck with Signal for now.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Mimes brønn, norsk utgave av Alaveteli / WhatDoTheyKnow, endelig lansert</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Mimes_br_nn__norsk_utgave_av_Alaveteli___WhatDoTheyKnow__endelig_lansert.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Mimes_br_nn__norsk_utgave_av_Alaveteli___WhatDoTheyKnow__endelig_lansert.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 9 Jul 2015 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>I går fikk vi endelig lansert en norsk version av mySocietys
-<a href="https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/">WhatDoTheyKnow</a>.
-Tjenesten heter Mimes brønn, og ble
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/NUUG_lanserer_innsynstjenesten_Mimes_Br_nn.shtml">annonsert
-av NUUG</a> via blogg, epost og twitter til NUUG-assosierte personer.
-Det har tatt noen år, men de siste dagene fikk vi endelig tid til å få
-på plass de siste bitene. Vi er to, Gorm og meg selv, som har vært
-primus motor for det hele, men vi har fått hjelp med oversettelser og
-oppsett fra mange flere. Jeg vil si tusen takk til hver og en av dem,
-og er veldig fornøyd med at vi klarte å få tjenesten opp å kjøre før
-ferietiden slo inn for fullt.</p>
-
-<p>Vi er usikker på hvor mye belastning den virtuelle maskinen der
-tjenesten kjører klarer, så vi har lansert litt i det stille og ikke
-til for mange folk for å se hvordan maskinen klarer seg over sommeren,
-før vi går mer aktivt ut og annonserer til høsten. Ta en titt, og se
-om du kanskje har et spørsmål til det offentlige som er egnet å sende
-inn via Mimes brønn.</p>
-
-<p>Hvis du lurer på hva i alle dager en slik tjenestes kan brukes til,
-anbefaler jeg deg å se
-<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625321">TED-foredraget til
-Heather Brook</a> om hvordan hun brukte WhatDoTheyKnow til å lære
-hvordan offentlige midler ble misbrukt. Det er en inspirerende
-historie.</p>
+ <title>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_new__best__multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 6 Jun 2016 12:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>When I set out a few weeks ago to figure out
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_is_the_best_multimedia_player_in_Debian_.html">which
+multimedia player in Debian claimed to support most file formats /
+MIME types</a>, I was a bit surprised how varied the sets of MIME types
+the various players claimed support for. The range was from 55 to 130
+MIME types. I suspect most media formats are supported by all
+players, but this is not really reflected in the MimeTypes values in
+their desktop files. There are probably also some bogus MIME types
+listed, but it is hard to identify which one this is.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, in the mean time I got in touch with upstream for some of
+the players suggesting to add more MIME types to their desktop files,
+and decided to spend some time myself improving the situation for my
+favorite media player VLC. The fixes for VLC entered Debian unstable
+yesterday. The complete list of MIME types can be seen on the
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianMultimedia/PlayerSupport">Multimedia
+player MIME type support status</a> Debian wiki page.</p>
+
+<p>The new "best" multimedia player in Debian? It is VLC, followed by
+totem, parole, kplayer, gnome-mpv, mpv, smplayer, mplayer-gui and
+kmplayer. I am sure some of the other players desktop files support
+several of the formats currently listed as working only with vlc,
+toten and parole.</p>
+
+<p>A sad observation is that only 14 MIME types are listed as
+supported by all the tested multimedia players in Debian in their
+desktop files: audio/mpeg, audio/vnd.rn-realaudio, audio/x-mpegurl,
+audio/x-ms-wma, audio/x-scpls, audio/x-wav, video/mp4, video/mpeg,
+video/quicktime, video/vnd.rn-realvideo, video/x-matroska,
+video/x-ms-asf, video/x-ms-wmv and video/x-msvideo. Personally I find
+it sad that video/ogg and video/webm is not supported by all the media
+players in Debian. As far as I can tell, all of them can handle both
+formats.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>MPEG LA on "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" licensing and non-private use</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_on__Internet_Broadcast_AVC_Video__licensing_and_non_private_use.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Tue, 7 Jul 2015 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>After asking the Norwegian Broadcasting Company (NRK)
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html">why
-they can broadcast and stream H.264 video without an agreement with
-the MPEG LA</a>, I was wiser, but still confused. So I asked MPEG LA
-if their understanding matched that of NRK. As far as I can tell, it
-does not.</p>
-
-<p>I started by asking for more information about the various
-licensing classes and what exactly is covered by the "Internet
-Broadcast AVC Video" class that NRK pointed me at to explain why NRK
-did not need a license for streaming H.264 video:
-
-<p><blockquote>
-
-<p>According to
-<a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">a
-MPEG LA press release dated 2010-02-02</a>, there is no charge when
-using MPEG AVC/H.264 according to the terms of "Internet Broadcast AVC
-Video". I am trying to understand exactly what the terms of "Internet
-Broadcast AVC Video" is, and wondered if you could help me. What
-exactly is covered by these terms, and what is not?</p>
-
-<p>The only source of more information I have been able to find is a
-PDF named
-<a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">AVC
-Patent Portfolio License Briefing</a>, which states this about the
-fees:</p>
-
-<ul>
- <li>Where End User pays for AVC Video
- <ul>
- <li>Subscription (not limited by title) – 100,000 or fewer
- subscribers/yr = no royalty; &gt; 100,000 to 250,000 subscribers/yr =
- $25,000; &gt;250,000 to 500,000 subscribers/yr = $50,000; &gt;500,000 to
- 1M subscribers/yr = $75,000; &gt;1M subscribers/yr = $100,000</li>
-
- <li>Title-by-Title - 12 minutes or less = no royalty; &gt;12 minutes in
- length = lower of (a) 2% or (b) $0.02 per title</li>
- </ul></li>
-
- <li>Where remuneration is from other sources
- <ul>
- <li>Free Television - (a) one-time $2,500 per transmission encoder or
- (b) annual fee starting at $2,500 for &gt; 100,000 HH rising to
- maximum $10,000 for &gt;1,000,000 HH</li>
-
- <li>Internet Broadcast AVC Video (not title-by-title, not subscription)
- – no royalty for life of the AVC Patent Portfolio License</li>
- </ul></li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>Am I correct in assuming that the four categories listed is the
-categories used when selecting licensing terms, and that "Internet
-Broadcast AVC Video" is the category for things that do not fall into
-one of the other three categories? Can you point me to a good source
-explaining what is ment by "title-by-title" and "Free Television" in
-the license terms for AVC/H.264?</p>
-
-<p>Will a web service providing H.264 encoded video content in a
-"video on demand" fashing similar to Youtube and Vimeo, where no
-subscription is required and no payment is required from end users to
-get access to the videos, fall under the terms of the "Internet
-Broadcast AVC Video", ie no royalty for life of the AVC Patent
-Portfolio license? Does it matter if some users are subscribed to get
-access to personalized services?</p>
-
-<p>Note, this request and all answers will be published on the
-Internet.</p>
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>The answer came quickly from Benjamin J. Myers, Licensing Associate
-with the MPEG LA:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-<p>Thank you for your message and for your interest in MPEG LA. We
-appreciate hearing from you and I will be happy to assist you.</p>
-
-<p>As you are aware, MPEG LA offers our AVC Patent Portfolio License
-which provides coverage under patents that are essential for use of
-the AVC/H.264 Standard (MPEG-4 Part 10). Specifically, coverage is
-provided for end products and video content that make use of AVC/H.264
-technology. Accordingly, the party offering such end products and
-video to End Users concludes the AVC License and is responsible for
-paying the applicable royalties.</p>
-
-<p>Regarding Internet Broadcast AVC Video, the AVC License generally
-defines such content to be video that is distributed to End Users over
-the Internet free-of-charge. Therefore, if a party offers a service
-which allows users to upload AVC/H.264 video to its website, and such
-AVC Video is delivered to End Users for free, then such video would
-receive coverage under the sublicense for Internet Broadcast AVC
-Video, which is not subject to any royalties for the life of the AVC
-License. This would also apply in the scenario where a user creates a
-free online account in order to receive a customized offering of free
-AVC Video content. In other words, as long as the End User is given
-access to or views AVC Video content at no cost to the End User, then
-no royalties would be payable under our AVC License.</p>
-
-<p>On the other hand, if End Users pay for access to AVC Video for a
-specific period of time (e.g., one month, one year, etc.), then such
-video would constitute Subscription AVC Video. In cases where AVC
-Video is delivered to End Users on a pay-per-view basis, then such
-content would constitute Title-by-Title AVC Video. If a party offers
-Subscription or Title-by-Title AVC Video to End Users, then they would
-be responsible for paying the applicable royalties you noted below.</p>
-
-<p>Finally, in the case where AVC Video is distributed for free
-through an "over-the-air, satellite and/or cable transmission", then
-such content would constitute Free Television AVC Video and would be
-subject to the applicable royalties.</p>
-
-<p>For your reference, I have attached
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-07-07-mpegla.pdf">a
-.pdf copy of the AVC License</a>. You will find the relevant
-sublicense information regarding AVC Video in Sections 2.2 through
-2.5, and the corresponding royalties in Section 3.1.2 through 3.1.4.
-You will also find the definitions of Title-by-Title AVC Video,
-Subscription AVC Video, Free Television AVC Video, and Internet
-Broadcast AVC Video in Section 1 of the License. Please note that the
-electronic copy is provided for informational purposes only and cannot
-be used for execution.</p>
-
-<p>I hope the above information is helpful. If you have additional
-questions or need further assistance with the AVC License, please feel
-free to contact me directly.</p>
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>Having a fresh copy of the license text was useful, and knowing
-that the definition of Title-by-Title required payment per title made
-me aware that my earlier understanding of that phrase had been wrong.
-But I still had a few questions:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-<p>I have a small followup question. Would it be possible for me to get
-a license with MPEG LA even if there are no royalties to be paid? The
-reason I ask, is that some video related products have a copyright
-clause limiting their use without a license with MPEG LA. The clauses
-typically look similar to this:
-
-<p><blockquote>
- This product is licensed under the AVC patent portfolio license for
- the personal and non-commercial use of a consumer to (a) encode
- video in compliance with the AVC standard ("AVC video") and/or (b)
- decode AVC video that was encoded by a consumer engaged in a
- personal and non-commercial activity and/or AVC video that was
- obtained from a video provider licensed to provide AVC video. No
- license is granted or shall be implied for any other use. additional
- information may be obtained from MPEG LA L.L.C.
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>It is unclear to me if this clause mean that I need to enter into
-an agreement with MPEG LA to use the product in question, even if
-there are no royalties to be paid to MPEG LA. I suspect it will
-differ depending on the jurisdiction, and mine is Norway. What is
-MPEG LAs view on this?</p>
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>According to the answer, MPEG LA believe those using such tools for
-non-personal or commercial use need a license with them:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-
-<p>With regard to the Notice to Customers, I would like to begin by
-clarifying that the Notice from Section 7.1 of the AVC License
-reads:</p>
-
-<p>THIS PRODUCT IS LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR
-THE PERSONAL USE OF A CONSUMER OR OTHER USES IN WHICH IT DOES NOT
-RECEIVE REMUNERATION TO (i) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE AVC
-STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (ii) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT WAS ENCODED
-BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL ACTIVITY AND/OR WAS OBTAINED FROM
-A VIDEO PROVIDER LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED
-OR SHALL BE IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE
-OBTAINED FROM MPEG LA, L.L.C. SEE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM</p>
-
-<p>The Notice to Customers is intended to inform End Users of the
-personal usage rights (for example, to watch video content) included
-with the product they purchased, and to encourage any party using the
-product for commercial purposes to contact MPEG LA in order to become
-licensed for such use (for example, when they use an AVC Product to
-deliver Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free Television or Internet
-Broadcast AVC Video to End Users, or to re-Sell a third party's AVC
-Product as their own branded AVC Product).</p>
-
-<p>Therefore, if a party is to be licensed for its use of an AVC
-Product to Sell AVC Video on a Title-by-Title, Subscription, Free
-Television or Internet Broadcast basis, that party would need to
-conclude the AVC License, even in the case where no royalties were
-payable under the License. On the other hand, if that party (either a
-Consumer or business customer) simply uses an AVC Product for their
-own internal purposes and not for the commercial purposes referenced
-above, then such use would be included in the royalty paid for the AVC
-Products by the licensed supplier.</p>
-
-<p>Finally, I note that our AVC License provides worldwide coverage in
-countries that have AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, including
-Norway.</p>
-
-<p>I hope this clarification is helpful. If I may be of any further
-assistance, just let me know.</p>
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>The mentioning of Norwegian patents made me a bit confused, so I
-asked for more information:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-
-<p>But one minor question at the end. If I understand you correctly,
-you state in the quote above that there are patents in the AVC Patent
-Portfolio that are valid in Norway. This make me believe I read the
-list available from &lt;URL:
-<a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx">http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/PatentList.aspx</a>
-&gt; incorrectly, as I believed the "NO" prefix in front of patents
-were Norwegian patents, and the only one I could find under Mitsubishi
-Electric Corporation expired in 2012. Which patents are you referring
-to that are relevant for Norway?</p>
-
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>Again, the quick answer explained how to read the list of patents
-in that list:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote>
-
-<p>Your understanding is correct that the last AVC Patent Portfolio
-Patent in Norway expired on 21 October 2012. Therefore, where AVC
-Video is both made and Sold in Norway after that date, then no
-royalties would be payable for such AVC Video under the AVC License.
-With that said, our AVC License provides historic coverage for AVC
-Products and AVC Video that may have been manufactured or Sold before
-the last Norwegian AVC patent expired. I would also like to clarify
-that coverage is provided for the country of manufacture and the
-country of Sale that has active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents.</p>
-
-<p>Therefore, if a party offers AVC Products or AVC Video for Sale in
-a country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents (for example,
-Sweden, Denmark, Finland, etc.), then that party would still need
-coverage under the AVC License even if such products or video are
-initially made in a country without active AVC Patent Portfolio
-Patents (for example, Norway). Similarly, a party would need to
-conclude the AVC License if they make AVC Products or AVC Video in a
-country with active AVC Patent Portfolio Patents, but eventually Sell
-such AVC Products or AVC Video in a country without active AVC Patent
-Portfolio Patents.</p>
-</blockquote></p>
-
-<p>As far as I understand it, MPEG LA believe anyone using Adobe
-Premiere and other video related software with a H.264 distribution
-license need a license agreement with MPEG LA to use such tools for
-anything non-private or commercial, while it is OK to set up a
-Youtube-like service as long as no-one pays to get access to the
-content. I still have no clear idea how this applies to Norway, where
-none of the patents MPEG LA is licensing are valid. Will the
-copyright terms take precedence or can those terms be ignored because
-the patents are not valid in Norway?</p>
+ <title>A program should be able to open its own files on Linux</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_program_should_be_able_to_open_its_own_files_on_Linux.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 5 Jun 2016 08:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Many years ago, when koffice was fresh and with few users, I
+decided to test its presentation tool when making the slides for a
+talk I was giving for NUUG on Japhar, a free Java virtual machine. I
+wrote the first draft of the slides, saved the result and went to bed
+the day before I would give the talk. The next day I took a plane to
+the location where the meeting should take place, and on the plane I
+started up koffice again to polish the talk a bit, only to discover
+that kpresenter refused to load its own data file. I cursed a bit and
+started making the slides again from memory, to have something to
+present when I arrived. I tested that the saved files could be
+loaded, and the day seemed to be rescued. I continued to polish the
+slides until I suddenly discovered that the saved file could no longer
+be loaded into kpresenter. In the end I had to rewrite the slides
+three times, condensing the content until the talk became shorter and
+shorter. After the talk I was able to pinpoint the problem &ndash;
+kpresenter wrote inline images in a way itself could not understand.
+Eventually that bug was fixed and kpresenter ended up being a great
+program to make slides. The point I'm trying to make is that we
+expect a program to be able to load its own data files, and it is
+embarrassing to its developers if it can't.</p>
+
+<p>Did you ever experience a program failing to load its own data
+files from the desktop file browser? It is not a uncommon problem. A
+while back I discovered that the screencast recorder
+gtk-recordmydesktop would save an Ogg Theora video file the KDE file
+browser would refuse to open. No video player claimed to understand
+such file. I tracked down the cause being <tt>file --mime-type</tt>
+returning the application/ogg MIME type, which no video player I had
+installed listed as a MIME type they would understand. I asked for
+<a href="http://bugs.gw.com/view.php?id=382">file to change its
+behavour</a> and use the MIME type video/ogg instead. I also asked
+several video players to add video/ogg to their desktop files, to give
+the file browser an idea what to do about Ogg Theora files. After a
+while, the desktop file browsers in Debian started to handle the
+output from gtk-recordmydesktop properly.</p>
+
+<p>But history repeats itself. A few days ago I tested the music
+system Rosegarden again, and I discovered that the KDE and xfce file
+browsers did not know what to do with the Rosegarden project files
+(*.rg). I've reported <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/825993">the
+rosegarden problem to BTS</a> and a fix is commited to git and will be
+included in the next upload. To increase the chance of me remembering
+how to fix the problem next time some program fail to load its files
+from the file browser, here are some notes on how to fix it.</p>
+
+<p>The file browsers in Debian in general operates on MIME types.
+There are two sources for the MIME type of a given file. The output from
+<tt>file --mime-type</tt> mentioned above, and the content of the
+shared MIME type registry (under /usr/share/mime/). The file MIME
+type is mapped to programs supporting the MIME type, and this
+information is collected from
+<a href="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/desktop-entry-spec/">the
+desktop files</a> available in /usr/share/applications/. If there is
+one desktop file claiming support for the MIME type of the file, it is
+activated when asking to open a given file. If there are more, one
+can normally select which one to use by right-clicking on the file and
+selecting the wanted one using 'Open with' or similar. In general
+this work well. But it depend on each program picking a good MIME
+type (preferably
+<a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml">a
+MIME type registered with IANA</a>), file and/or the shared MIME
+registry recognizing the file and the desktop file to list the MIME
+type in its list of supported MIME types.</p>
+
+<p>The <tt>/usr/share/mime/packages/rosegarden.xml</tt> entry for
+<a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Specifications/shared-mime-info-spec">the
+Shared MIME database</a> look like this:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
+&lt;mime-info xmlns="http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/shared-mime-info"&gt;
+ &lt;mime-type type="audio/x-rosegarden"&gt;
+ &lt;sub-class-of type="application/x-gzip"/&gt;
+ &lt;comment&gt;Rosegarden project file&lt;/comment&gt;
+ &lt;glob pattern="*.rg"/&gt;
+ &lt;/mime-type&gt;
+&lt;/mime-info&gt;
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>This states that audio/x-rosegarden is a kind of application/x-gzip
+(it is a gzipped XML file). Note, it is much better to use an
+official MIME type registered with IANA than it is to make up ones own
+unofficial ones like the x-rosegarden type used by rosegarden.</p>
+
+<p>The desktop file of the rosegarden program failed to list
+audio/x-rosegarden in its list of supported MIME types, causing the
+file browsers to have no idea what to do with *.rg files:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+% grep Mime /usr/share/applications/rosegarden.desktop
+MimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition;audio/x-rosegarden-device;audio/x-rosegarden-project;audio/x-rosegarden-template;audio/midi;
+X-KDE-NativeMimeType=audio/x-rosegarden-composition
+%
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The fix was to add "audio/x-rosegarden;" at the end of the
+MimeType= line.</p>
+
+<p>If you run into a file which fail to open the correct program when
+selected from the file browser, please check out the output from
+<tt>file --mime-type</tt> for the file, ensure the file ending and
+MIME type is registered somewhere under /usr/share/mime/ and check
+that some desktop file under /usr/share/applications/ is claiming
+support for this MIME type. If not, please report a bug to have it
+fixed. :)</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>New laptop - some more clues and ideas based on feedback</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_laptop___some_more_clues_and_ideas_based_on_feedback.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 5 Jul 2015 21:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Several people contacted me after my previous blog post about my
-need for a new laptop, and provided very useful feedback. I wish to
-thank every one of these. Several pointed me to the possibility of
-fixing my X230, and I am already in the process of getting Lenovo to
-do so thanks to the on site, next day support contract covering the
-machine. But the battery is almost useless (I expect to replace it
-with a non-official battery) and I do not expect the machine to live
-for many more years, so it is time to plan its replacement. If I did
-not have a support contract, it was suggested to find replacement parts
-using <a href="http://www.francecrans.com/">FrancEcrans</a>, but it
-might present a language barrier as I do not understand French.</p>
-
-<p>One tip I got was to use the
-<a href="https://skinflint.co.uk/?cat=nb">Skinflint</a> web service to
-compare laptop models. It seem to have more models available than
-prisjakt.no. Another tip I got from someone I know have similar
-keyboard preferences was that the HP EliteBook 840 keyboard is not
-very good, and this matches my experience with earlier EliteBook
-keyboards I tested. Because of this, I will not consider it any further.
-
-<p>When I wrote my blog post, I was not aware of Thinkpad X250, the
-newest Thinkpad X model. The keyboard reintroduces mouse buttons
-(which is missing from the X240), and is working fairly well with
-Debian Sid/Unstable according to
-<a href="http://www.corsac.net/X250/">Corsac.net</a>. The reports I
-got on the keyboard quality are not consistent. Some say the keyboard
-is good, others say it is ok, while others say it is not very good.
-Those with experience from X41 and and X60 agree that the X250
-keyboard is not as good as those trusty old laptops, and suggest I
-keep and fix my X230 instead of upgrading, or get a used X230 to
-replace it. I'm also told that the X250 lack leds for caps lock, disk
-activity and battery status, which is very convenient on my X230. I'm
-also told that the CPU fan is running very often, making it a bit
-noisy. In any case, the X250 do not work out of the box with Debian
-Stable/Jessie, one of my requirements.</p>
-
-<p>I have also gotten a few vendor proposals, one was
-<a href="http://pro-star.com">Pro-Star</a>, another was
-<a href="http://shop.gluglug.org.uk/product/libreboot-x200/">Libreboot</a>.
-The latter look very attractive to me.</p>
-
-<p>Again, thank you all for the very useful feedback. It help a lot
-as I keep looking for a replacement.</p>
-
-<p>Update 2015-07-06: I was recommended to check out the
-<a href="">lapstore.de</a> web shop for used laptops. They got several
-different
-<a href="http://www.lapstore.de/f.php/shop/lapstore/f/411/lang/x/kw/Lenovo_ThinkPad_X_Serie/">old
-thinkpad X models</a>, and provide one year warranty.</p>
+ <title>Tor - from its creators mouth 11 years ago</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Tor___from_its_creators_mouth_11_years_ago.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 28 May 2016 14:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A little more than 11 years ago, one of the creators of Tor, and
+the current President of <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">the Tor
+project</a>, Roger Dingledine, gave a talk for the members of the
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User group</a> (NUUG). A
+video of the talk was recorded, and today, thanks to the great help
+from David Noble, I finally was able to publish the video of the talk
+on Frikanalen, the Norwegian open channel TV station where NUUG
+currently publishes its talks. You can
+<a href="http://frikanalen.no/se">watch the live stream using a web
+browser</a> with WebM support, or check out the recording on the video
+on demand page for the talk
+"<a href="http://beta.frikanalen.no/video/625599">Tor: Anonymous
+communication for the US Department of Defence...and you.</a>".</p>
+
+<p>Here is the video included for those of you using browsers with
+HTML video and Ogg Theora support:</p>
+
+<p><video width="70%" poster="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/large_thumb/20050421-tor-frikanalen.jpg" controls>
+ <source src="http://simula.gunkies.org/media/625599/theora/20050421-tor-frikanalen.ogv" type="video/ogg"/>
+</video></p>
+
+<p>I guess the gist of the talk can be summarised quite simply: If you
+want to help the military in USA (and everyone else), use Tor. :)</p>
</description>
</item>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff