<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
- <title>Hvordan vurderer regjeringen H.264-patentutfordringen?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvordan_vurderer_regjeringen_H_264_patentutfordringen_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvordan_vurderer_regjeringen_H_264_patentutfordringen_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 16 Nov 2014 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>For en stund tilbake spurte jeg Fornyingsdepartementet om hvilke
-juridiske vurderinger rundt patentproblemstillingen som var gjort da
-H.264 ble tatt inn i <a href="http://standard.difi.no/">statens
-referansekatalog over standarder</a>. Stig Hornnes i FAD tipset meg
-om følgende som står i oppsumeringen til høringen om
-referansekatalogen versjon 2.0, som jeg siden ved hjelp av en
-innsynsforespørsel fikk tak i
-<a href="http://wiki.nuug.no/uttalelser/200901-standardkatalog-v2?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=kongelig-resolusjon.pdf">PDF-utgaven</a>
-datert 2009-06-03 (saksnummer 200803291, saksbehandler Henrik
-Linnestad).</p>
-
-<p>Der står det følgende om problemstillingen:</p>
+ <title>Graphing the Norwegian company ownership structure</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Graphing_the_Norwegian_company_ownership_structure.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 15 Jun 2015 14:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>It is a bit work to figure out the ownership structure of companies
+in Norway. The information is publicly available, but one need to
+recursively look up ownership for all owners to figure out the complete
+ownership graph of a given set of companies. To save me the work in
+the future, I wrote a script to do this automatically, outputting the
+ownership structure using the Graphviz/dotty format. The data source
+is web scraping from <a href="http://www.proff.no/">Proff</a>, because
+I failed to find a useful source directly from the official keepers of
+the ownership data, <a href="http://www.brreg.no/">Brønnøysundsregistrene</a>.</p>
+
+<p>To get an owner ship graph for a set of companies, fetch
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/brreg-norway-ownership-graph">the code from git</a> and run it using the organisation number. I'm
+using the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet as an example here, as its
+ownership structure is very simple:</p>
+
+<pre>
+% time ./bin/eierskap-dotty 958033540 > dagbladet.dot
+
+real 0m2.841s
+user 0m0.184s
+sys 0m0.036s
+%
+</pre>
+
+<p>The script accept several organisation numbers on the command line,
+allowing a cluster of companies to be graphed in the same image. The
+resulting dot file for the example above look like this. The edges
+are labeled with the ownership percentage, and the nodes uses the
+organisation number as their name and the name as the label:</p>
+
+<pre>
+digraph ownership {
+rankdir = LR;
+"Aller Holding A/s" -> "910119877" [label="100%"]
+"910119877" -> "998689015" [label="100%"]
+"998689015" -> "958033540" [label="99%"]
+"974530600" -> "958033540" [label="1%"]
+"958033540" [label="AS DAGBLADET"]
+"998689015" [label="Berner Media Holding AS"]
+"974530600" [label="Dagbladets Stiftelse"]
+"910119877" [label="Aller Media AS"]
+}
+</pre>
+
+<p>To view the ownership graph, run "<tt>dotty dagbladet.dot</tt>" or
+convert it to a PNG using "<tt>dot -T png dagbladet.dot >
+dagbladet.png</tt>". This is the result can be seen below:</p>
+
+<img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2015-06-15-ownership-graphs-norway-dagbladet.png" width="80%">
+
+<p>Note that I suspect the "Aller Holding A/S" entry to be incorrect
+data in the official ownership register, as that name is not
+registered in the official company register for Norway. The ownership
+register is sensitive to typos and there seem to be no strict checking
+of the ownership links.</p>
+
+<p>Let me know if you improve the script or find better data sources.
+The code is licensed according to GPL 2 or newer.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Measuring and adjusting the loudness of a TV channel using bs1770gain</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Measuring_and_adjusting_the_loudness_of_a_TV_channel_using_bs1770gain.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 11 Jun 2015 13:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Television loudness is the source of frustration for viewers
+everywhere. Some channels are very load, others are less loud, and
+ads tend to shout very high to get the attention of the viewers, and
+the viewers do not like this. This fact is well known to the TV
+channels. See for example the BBC white paper
+"<a href="http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/whp/whp-pdf-files/WHP202.pdf">Terminology
+for loudness and level dBTP, LU, and all that</a>" from 2011 for a
+summary of the problem domain. To better address the need for even
+loadness, the TV channels got together several years ago to agree on a
+new way to measure loudness in digital files as one step in
+standardizing loudness. From this came the ITU-R standard BS.1770,
+"<a href="http://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.1770/en">Algorithms to
+measure audio programme loudness and true-peak audio level</a>".</p>
+
+<p>The ITU-R BS.1770 specification describe an algorithm to measure
+loadness in LUFS (Loudness Units, referenced to Full Scale). But
+having a way to measure is not enough. To get the same loudness
+across TV channels, one also need to decide which value to standardize
+on. For European TV channels, this was done in the EBU Recommondaton
+R128, "<a href="https://tech.ebu.ch/docs/r/r128.pdf">Loudness
+normalisation and permitted maximum level of audio signals</a>", which
+specifies a recommended level of -23 LUFS. In Norway, I have been
+told that NRK, TV2, MTG and SBS have decided among themselves to
+follow the R128 recommondation for playout from 2016-03-01.</p>
+
+<p>There are free software available to measure and adjust the loudness
+level using the LUFS. In Debian, I am aware of a library named
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/libebur128">libebur128</a>
+able to measure the loudness and since yesterday morning a new binary
+named <a href="http://bs1770gain.sourceforge.net">bs1770gain</a>
+capable of both measuring and adjusting was uploaded and is waiting
+for NEW processing. I plan to maintain the latter in Debian under the
+<a href="https://qa.debian.org/developer.php?email=pkg-multimedia-maintainers%40lists.alioth.debian.org">Debian
+multimedia</a> umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>The free software based TV channel I am involved in,
+<a href="http://www.frikanalen.no/">Frikanalen</a>, plan to follow the
+R128 recommondation ourself as soon as we can adjust the software to
+do so, and the bs1770gain tool seem like a good fit for that part of
+the puzzle to measure loudness on new video uploaded to Frikanalen.
+Personally, I plan to use bs1770gain to adjust the loudness of videos
+I upload to Frikanalen on behalf of <a href="http://www.nuug.no/">the
+NUUG member organisation</a>. The program seem to be able to measure
+the LUFS value of any media file handled by ffmpeg, but I've only
+successfully adjusted the LUFS value of WAV files. I suspect it
+should be able to adjust it for all the formats handled by ffmpeg.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Hva gjør at NRK kan distribuere H.264-video uten patentavtale med MPEG LA?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_gj_r_at_NRK_kan_distribuere_H_264_video_uten_patentavtale_med_MPEG_LA_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 10 Jun 2015 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Helt siden jeg i 2012 fikk beskjed fra MPEG LA om at
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/MPEG_LA_mener_NRK_m__ha_avtale_med_dem_for___kringkaste_og_publisere_H_264_video.html">NRK
+trengte patentavtale med dem</a> hvis de distribuerte H.264-video til
+sluttbrukere, har jeg lurt på hva som gjør at NRK ikke har slik
+avtale. For noen dager siden fikk jeg endelig gjort noe med min
+undring, og sendte 2015-05-28 følgende epost til info (at) nrk.no med
+tittel "Hva gjør at NRK kan distribuere H.264-video uten patentavtale
+med MPEG LA?":</p>
<p><blockquote>
-<strong>4.4 Patentproblematikk</strong>
-
-<p>NUUG og Opera ser det som særlig viktig at forslagene knyttet til
-lyd og video baserer seg på de royalty-frie standardene Vorbis, Theora
-og FLAC.</p>
-
-<p>Kommentarene relaterer seg til at enkelte standarder er åpne, men
-inneholder tekniske prosedyrer som det i USA (og noen andre land som
-Japan) er gitt patentrettigheter til. I vårt tilfelle berører dette
-spesielt standardene Mp3 og H.264, selv om Politidirektoratet peker på
-at det muligens kan være tilsvarende problematikk også for Theora og
-Vorbis. Dette medfører at det i USA kan kreves royalties for bruk av
-tekniske løsninger knyttet til standardene, et krav som også
-håndheves. Patenter kan imidlertid bare hevdes i de landene hvor
-patentet er gitt, så amerikanske patenter gjelder ikke andre steder
-enn USA.</p>
-
-<p>Spesielt for utvikling av fri programvare er patenter
-problematisk. GPL, en "grunnleggende" lisens for distribusjon av fri
-programvare, avviser at programvare kan distribueres under denne
-lisensen hvis det inneholder referanser til patenterte rutiner som
-utløser krav om royalties. Det er imidlertid uproblematisk å
-distribuere fri programvareløsninger under GPL som benytter de
-aktuelle standardene innen eller mellom land som ikke anerkjenner
-patentene. Derfor finner vi også flere implementeringer av Mp3 og
-H.264 som er fri programvare, lisensiert under GPL.</p>
-
-<p>I Norge og EU er patentlovgivningen langt mer restriktiv enn i USA,
-men det er også her mulig å få patentert metoder for løsning av et
-problem som relaterer seg til databehandling. Det er AIF bekjent ikke
-relevante patenter i EU eller Norge hva gjelder H.264 og Mp3, men
-muligheten for at det finnes patenter uten at det er gjort krav om
-royalties eller at det senere vil gis slike patenter kan ikke helt
-avvises.</p>
-
-<p>AIF mener det er et behov for å gi offentlige virksomheter mulighet
-til å benytte antatt royaltyfrie åpne standarder som et likeverdig
-alternativ eller i tillegg til de markedsledende åpne standardene.</p>
+<p>Jeg lurer på en ting rundt NRKs bruk av H.264-video på sine
+websider samt distribusjon via RiksTV og kabel-TV. Har NRK vurdert om
+det er behov for en patentavtale med
+<a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG LA</a> slik det står i
+programvarelisensene til blant annet Apple Final Cut Studio, Adobe
+Premiere Pro, Avid og Apples Final Cut Pro X?</p>
+
+<p>Hvis dere har vurdert dette, hva var utfallet av en slik vurdering?</p>
+
+<p>Hvis dere ikke har vurdert dette, har NRK planer om å vurdere behovet
+for patentavtale?</p>
+
+<p>I følge en artikkel på
+<a href="https://nrkbeta.no/2012/02/01/siste-kutt-for-final-cut/">NRK
+Beta i 2012</a> har NRK brukt eller testet både Apple Final Cut
+Studio, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid og Apples Final Cut Pro X til bruk
+for å redigere video før sending. Alle disse har bruksvilkår
+understøttet av opphavsretten som sier at de kun kan brukes til å lage
+filmer til personlig og ikke-kommersiell bruk - med mindre en har en
+lisensavtale med MPEG LA om bruk av patenter utstedt i USA for H.264.
+Se f.eks. <a href="http://www.avid.com/static/resources/common/documents/corporate/LICENSE.pdf">bruksvilkårene for Avid</a>, <a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000101-264.html">Adobe Premiere</a> og <a href="http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/finalcutstudio2.pdf">Apple Final
+Cut Studio</a> og søk etter "MPEG LA".</p>
+
+<p>Dette får meg til å lure på om det er brudd på opphavsretten å bruke
+disse verktøyene i strid med bruksvilkårene uten patentavtale med MPEG
+LA. Men NRK bruker jo tilsynelatende disse verktøyene uten patentavtale
+med MPEG LA.</p>
+
+<p>I følge forfatteren av Open Broadcast Encoder finnes det to typer
+H.264-relaterte avtaler en kan få med MPEG LA. Det er én for å lage
+programvare og utstyr som produserer H.264-video, og en annen for å
+kringkaste video som bruker H.264. Dette forteller meg at selv om
+produsentene av utstyr og programvare som NRK bruker har en slik avtale
+med MPEG LA, så trenges det en egen avtale for å kringkaste video på det
+formatet.</p>
+
+<p>I følge Ryan Rodriguez hos MPEG LA, da jeg spurte ham på epost i
+juni 2012, har NRK ikke en slik avtale med MPEG LA. Han sa videre at
+NRK trenger en slik avtale hvis NRK tilbyr H.264-kodet video til
+sluttbrukere. Jeg sjekket listen med
+<a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Licensees.aspx">organisasjoner
+med avtale med MPEG LA</a> og NRK står fortsatt ikke der.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg lurer dermed på hva som gjør at NRK kan bruke de overnevnte
+videoredigeringsverktøyene, som tilsynelatende har krav om avtale med
+MPEG LA for å kunne brukes slik NRK bruker dem, til å lage videofiler
+for distribusjon uten å ha en avtale med MPEG LA om distribusjon av
+H.264-video? Dette er spesielt interessant å vite for oss andre som
+også vurderer å spre H.264-video etter å ha redigert dem med disse mye
+brukte videoredigeringsverktøyene.</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Samme dag fikk jeg automatisk svar om at min henvendelse hadde fått
+saksid 1294699. Jeg fikk deretter følgende respons fra NRK
+2015-06-09:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Hei, beklager lang svartid, men det tok litt tid å finne ut hvem som kunne
+svare på dette.</p>
+
+<p>For selskaper som leverer h.264 til sluttbrukere på nett (f.eks
+NRKs nett- tv utgaver som bruker h.264) - og som leverer slike
+tjenester uten betaling fra forbrukere – er det heller ikke påkrevd
+noen patentavtale.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en/MPEG-LA%E2%80%99s-AVC-License-Charge-Royalties-Internet#.VWb2ws_774Y">http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en/MPEG-LA%E2%80%99s-AVC-License-Charge-Royalties-Internet#.VWb2ws_774Y</a></p>
+
+<p>Med vennlig hilsen
+<br>Gunn Helen Berg
+<br>Informasjonskonsulent, Publikumsservice</p>
+
+<p>NRK
+<br>Strategidivisjonen
+<Br>Sentralbord: +47 23 04 70 00
+<br>Post: NRK Publikumsservice, 8608 Mo i Rana
+<br>nrk.no / info (at) nrk.no</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+Da dette ikke helt var svar på det jeg lurte på, sendte jeg samme dag
+oppfølgerepost tilbake:
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>[Gunn Helen Berg]
+<br>> Hei, beklager lang svartid, men det tok litt tid å finne ut hvem som
+<br>> kunne svare på dette.</p>
+
+<p>Takk for svar. Men det besvarte ikke helt det jeg spurte om.</p>
+
+<p>> For selskaper som leverer h.264 til sluttbrukere på nett (f.eks NRKs
+<br>> nett- tv utgaver som bruker h.264) - og som leverer slike tjenester
+<br>> uten betaling fra forbrukere – er det heller ikke påkrevd noen
+<br>> patentavtale.
+<br>>
+<br>> http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en/MPEG-LA%E2%80%99s-AVC-License-Charge-Royalties-Internet#.VWb2ws_774Y</p>
+
+<p>Spørsmålet er ikke kun om MPEG LA krever patentavtale eller ikke
+(hvilket ikke helt besvares av pressemeldingen omtalt over, gitt at
+pressemeldingen kom i 2010, to år før MPEG LA ansvarlige for
+internasjonal lisensiering egen Ryan Rodriguez fortalte meg på epost
+at NRK trenger en lisens.</p>
+
+<p>Det er uklart fra pressemeldingen hva "Internet Broadcast AVC
+Video" konkret betyr, men i følge en
+<a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">presentasjon
+fra MPEG LA med tema "AVC PAtent Portfoli License Briefing" datert
+2015-05-15</a> gjelder "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" kun kringkasting
+på Internet som ikke tilbyr valg av enkeltinnslag ("not
+title-by-title"), hvilket jo NRK gjør på sine nettsider. I tillegg
+kringkaster jo NRK H.264-video også utenom Internet (RiksTV, kabel,
+satelitt), hvilket helt klart ikke er dekket av vilkårene omtalt i
+pressemeldingen.</p>
+
+<p>Spørsmålet mitt er hvordan NRK kan bruke verktøy med bruksvilkår
+som krever avtale med MPEG LA for det NRK bruker dem til, når NRK ikke
+har avtale med MPEG LA. Hvis jeg forsto spørsmålet riktig, så mener
+NRK at dere ikke trenger avtale med MPEG LA, men uten slik avtale kan
+dere vel ikke bruke hverken Apple Final Cut Studio, Adobe Premiere
+Pro, Avid eller Apples Final Cut Pro X for å redigere video før
+sending?</p>
+
+<p>Mine konkrete spørsmål var altså:</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>Hvis NRK har vurdert om det er behov for en patentavtale med MPEG LA
+ slik det er krav om i programvarelisensene til blant annet Apple
+ Final Cut Studio, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid og Apples Final Cut Pro X,
+ hva var utfallet av en slik vurdering? Kan jeg få kopi av vurderingen
+ hvis den er gjort skriftlig?</li>
+
+<li>Hvis NRK ikke har vurdert dette, har NRK planer om å vurdere behovet
+ for patentavtale?</li>
+
+<li>Hva slags saksnummer fikk min henvendelse i NRKs offentlige
+ postjournal? Jeg ser at postjournalen ikke er publisert for den
+ aktuelle perioden ennå, så jeg fikk ikke sjekket selv.</li>
+
+</ul>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Det hjelper å ha funnet rette vedkommende i NRK, for denne gangen
+fikk jeg svar tilbake dagen etter (2015-06-10), fra Geir Børdalen i
+NRK:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Hei Petter Reinholdtsen</p>
+
+<p>Jeg har sjekket saken med distribusjonssjef for tv, Arild Hellgren
+(som var teknologidirektør da bakkenettet ble satt opp). NRK v/
+Hellgren hadde møte med MPEG LA sammen med den europeiske
+kringkastingsunionen EBU før bakkenettet for TV ble satt opp
+(igangsatt høsten 2007). I dette møtet ble det avklart at NRK/EBU ikke
+trengte noen patentavtale for h.264 i forbindelse med oppsett av
+bakkenettet eller bruk av MPEG4 h.264 som kompresjonsalgoritme fordi
+tjenesten «in full»(nor: helt) var betalt av utsendelseselskapene og
+ikke av forbrukerne.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.nrk.no/oppdrag/digitalt-bakkenett-1.3214555">http://www.nrk.no/oppdrag/digitalt-bakkenett-1.3214555</a></p>
+
+<p>Det er også klart slått fast at selskaper som leverer video basert
+på MPEG4 h.264 til sluttbrukere på nett, heller ikke påkrevd noen
+patentavtale – så lenge de leverer slike tjenester uten betaling fra
+sluttbrukere.</p>
+
+<a href="http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en/MPEG-LA%E2%80%99s-AVC-License-Charge-Royalties-Internet#.VWb2ws_774Y">http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100825006629/en/MPEG-LA%E2%80%99s-AVC-License-Charge-Royalties-Internet#.VWb2ws_774Y</a>
+
+<p>“MPEG LA announced today that its AVC Patent Portfolio License will
+continue not to charge royalties for Internet Video that is free to
+end users (known as “Internet Broadcast AVC Video”) during the entire
+life of this License. MPEG LA previously announced it would not charge
+royalties for such video through December 31, 2015 (see
+<a href="http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf">http://www.mpegla.com/Lists/MPEG%20LA%20News%20List/Attachments/226/n-10-02-02.pdf</a>),
+and today’s announcement makes clear that royalties will continue not
+to be charged for such video beyond that time. Products and services
+other than Internet Broadcast AVC Video continue to be
+royalty-bearing.”</p>
+
+<p>Vi har derfor ikke noe behov for å vurdere noen patentavtale med
+MPEG LA.</p>
+
+<p>Understreker for øvrig at NRK ikke er låst til MPEG4 – h.264 som
+utsendelsesformat – og at vi har brukt og bruker flere andre
+alternativer i våre tjenester. Ulike «devicer» har ofte behov for
+forskjellige løsninger – og NRK har forsøkt å levere med best mulig
+kvalitet /økonomi /stabilitet avhengig av
+plattform. Produksjonsformater i NRK spenner for øvrig over en rekke
+forskjellige formater – hvor MPEG4 bare er en av disse. Når NRK kjøper
+teknisk utstyr er betaling for kodekstøtte ofte en del av
+anskaffelsesprisen for denne maskinvaren (enten dette er spesialiserte
+enkodere eller forskjellige typer produksjonsutstyr).</p>
+
+<p>Vennlig hilsen
+<br>Geir Børdalen</p>
+
+<p>________________________________________
+<br>Geir Børdalen
+<br>Investeringsansvarlig NRK / Hovedprosjektleder - Origo
+<br>Avdeling for utvikling, innovasjon, investering og eiendom
+<br>NRK medietjenester
+<br>Sentralbord: +47 23 04 70 00
+<br>Post: NRK, AUTV (RBM5), Pb. 8500 Majorstuen, 0340 Oslo
+<br>nrk.no
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Et godt og grundig svar, som var informativt om hvordan NRK tenker
+rundt patentavtale med MPEG LA, men heller ikke helt besvarte det jeg
+lurte på, så jeg sendte epostoppfølging samme dag.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>[Geir Børdalen]
+<br>> Hei Petter Reinholdtsen</p>
+
+<p>Hei, og takk for raskt svar. Er min henvendelse journalført slik
+at den dukker opp i NRKs postjournal?</p>
+
+<p>Svaret ditt var meget nyttig, og jeg forstår ut fra det du skriver
+at avklaringen med MPEG LA rundt H.264-distribusjon via bakkenettet
+gjelder alle TV-kanaler i Norge. Hvilke saksnummer fikk dokumenter
+som ble opprettet i forbindelse med det omtalte møtet NRK v/Hellgren
+og EBU hadde med MPEG LA (dvs. referater, avtaler, etc),
+f.eks. dokumentet der formuleringen "in full" som du omtaler
+finnes?<p>
+
+<p>Men det er et par ting jeg fortsatt ikke forstår. Det ene er
+hvorfor NRKs forståelse av hva "Internet Broadcast AVC Video" dekker
+ser ut til å avvike fra det som presenteres i
+<a href="http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/avc/Documents/avcweb.pdf">lysark
+fra MPEG LA</a> i mai, der MPEG LA på lysark med overskriften
+"AVC/H.264 License Terms Participation Fees" og undertittel "Where
+remuneration is from other sources" skriver "Internet Broadcast AVC
+Video (not title-by-title, not subscription) – no royalty for life of
+the AVC Patent Portfolio License".</p>
+
+<p>Her leser jeg MPEG LA dithen at det kun er kringkasting uten
+abonnement via Internet som er dekket at vilkårne omtalt i
+pressemeldingen, mens jeg forstår deg dithen at NRK mener NRKs
+nettsider som også har enkeltfilmer og innslag (som jeg forstår dekket
+av formuleringen "title-by-title") dekkes av "Internet Broadcast AVC
+Video" fra MPEG LA. Hva baserer dere denne tolkningen på? Jeg har
+ikke sett noe skriftlig fra MPEG LA som støtter NRKs tolkning, og
+lurer på om dere har andre kilder enn den pressemeldingen fra 5 år
+tilbake, der NRKS forståelse av hva "Internet Broadcast AVC Video"
+dekker er beskrevet?</p>
+
+<p>Det andre er at eposten din ikke nevnte spørsmålet mitt om
+bruksvilkårene til videoredigeringsverktøyene som NRK bruker. Disse
+har som tidligere nevnt krav om at de kun skal brukes til private og
+ikke-kommersielle formål med mindre en har avtale med MPEG LA, og uten
+avtale med MPEG LA kan det jo virke som om NRK bruker verktøyene i
+strid med bruksvilkårene. Hva gjør at disse bruksvilkårene ikke
+gjelder for NRK?</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Noen minutter senere får jeg foreløpig siste svar i
+føljetongen:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Hei igjen</p>
+
+<p>Vårt dokumentarkiv har fått en kopi (journalføringsnr kan jeg
+dessverre ikke gi deg).<p>
+
+<p>> Svaret ditt var meget nyttig, og jeg forstår ut fra det du
+<br>> skriver at avklaringen med MPEG LA rundt H.264-distribusjon via
+<br>> bakkenettet gjelder alle TV-kanaler i Norge.</p>
+
+<p>Svar: Kan ikke svare for andre enn for NRK/EBU - og for bakkenettet
+i Norge er det kun NRK som er et lisensbasert selskap. Kan ikke gi noe
+svar på saksnr på dokumenter eller ytterligere informasjon da jeg selv
+ikke var del i dette.</p>
+
+<p>> Men det er et par ting jeg fortsatt ikke forstår. ...</p>
+
+<p>Svar: Kan ikke gå ytterligere inn i dette fra min side og mitt
+fagfelt som er produksjon/publisering og systemstrukturene bak
+disse. For øvrig ligger det etter vår formening ingen begrensninger
+for NRK i mulighetene til publisering mht til kodek i
+produksjonssystemer. Som tidligere skrevet mener vi at NRK ikke
+trenger noen avtale med MPEG LA og støtter oss til det vi allerede har
+kommunisert i forrige epost.</p>
+
+<p>Mvh
+<br>Geir Børdalen</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Det syntes vanskelig å komme videre når NRK ikke ønsker å gå inn i
+problemstillingen rundt bruksvilkårene til videoredigeringsverktøyene
+NRK bruker, så jeg sendte takk for svarene og avsluttet utvekslingen
+så langt:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Tusen takk for rask respons, og oppklarende forklaring om hvordan
+NRK tenker rundt MPEG LA.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg vil høre med NRK-arkivet for å se om de kan spore opp de
+omtalte dokumentene. Jeg setter pris på om du kan dele titler, dato
+eller annen informasjon som kan gjøre det enklere for arkivet å finne
+dem.</p>
+
+<p>Når det gjelder hvordan bruksvilkårene til
+videoredigeringsverktøyene skal tolkes, så skal jeg høre med MPEG LA
+og produsentene av verktøyene for å forsøke å få klarhet i hva de
+mener er rikgig rettstilstand.</p>
</blockquote></p>
-<p>Det ser dermed ikke ut til at de har vurdert patentspørsmålet i
-sammenheng med opphavsrettsvilkår slik de er formulert for f.eks.
-Apple Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid og Sorenson-verktøyene,
-der det kreves brukstillatelse for patenter som ikke er gyldige i
-Norge for å bruke disse verktøyene til annet en personlig og ikke
-kommersiell aktivitet når det gjelder H.264-video. Jeg må nok lete
-videre etter svar på det spørsmålet.</p>
+<p>Jeg ble litt klokere, men fortsatt er det uklart for meg hva som er
+grunnlaget til NRK for å se bort fra bruksvilkår i
+videoredigeringsprogramvare som krever MPEG LA-avtale til alt annet
+enn privat og ikke-kommersiell bruk.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>A Debian package for SMTP via Tor (aka SMTorP) using exim4</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_Debian_package_for_SMTP_via_Tor__aka_SMTorP__using_exim4.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 10 Nov 2014 13:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>The right to communicate with your friends and family in private,
-without anyone snooping, is a right every citicen have in a liberal
-democracy. But this right is under serious attack these days.</p>
-
-<p>A while back it occurred to me that one way to make the dragnet
-surveillance conducted by NSA, GCHQ, FRA and others (and confirmed by
-the whisleblower Snowden) more expensive for Internet email,
-is to deliver all email using SMTP via Tor. Such SMTP option would be
-a nice addition to the FreedomBox project if we could send email
-between FreedomBox machines without leaking metadata about the emails
-to the people peeking on the wire. I
-<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/freedombox-discuss/2014-October/006493.html">proposed
-this on the FreedomBox project mailing list in October</a> and got a
-lot of useful feedback and suggestions. It also became obvious to me
-that this was not a novel idea, as the same idea was tested and
-documented by Johannes Berg as early as 2006, and both
-<a href="https://github.com/pagekite/Mailpile/wiki/SMTorP">the
-Mailpile</a> and <a href="http://dee.su/cables">the Cables</a> systems
-propose a similar method / protocol to pass emails between users.</p>
-
-<p>To implement such system one need to set up a Tor hidden service
-providing the SMTP protocol on port 25, and use email addresses
-looking like username@hidden-service-name.onion. With such addresses
-the connections to port 25 on hidden-service-name.onion using Tor will
-go to the correct SMTP server. To do this, one need to configure the
-Tor daemon to provide the hidden service and the mail server to accept
-emails for this .onion domain. To learn more about Exim configuration
-in Debian and test the design provided by Johannes Berg in his FAQ, I
-set out yesterday to create a Debian package for making it trivial to
-set up such SMTP over Tor service based on Debian. Getting it to work
-were fairly easy, and
-<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/exim4-smtorp">the
-source code for the Debian package</a> is available from github. I
-plan to move it into Debian if further testing prove this to be a
-useful approach.</p>
-
-<p>If you want to test this, set up a blank Debian machine without any
-mail system installed (or run <tt>apt-get purge exim4-config</tt> to
-get rid of exim4). Install tor, clone the git repository mentioned
-above, build the deb and install it on the machine. Next, run
-<tt>/usr/lib/exim4-smtorp/setup-exim-hidden-service</tt> and follow
-the instructions to get the service up and running. Restart tor and
-exim when it is done, and test mail delivery using swaks like
-this:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-torsocks swaks --server dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion \
- --to fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>This will test the SMTP delivery using tor. Replace the email
-address with your own address to test your server. :)</p>
-
-<p>The setup procedure is still to complex, and I hope it can be made
-easier and more automatic. Especially the tor setup need more work.
-Also, the package include a tor-smtp tool written in C, but its task
-should probably be rewritten in some script language to make the deb
-architecture independent. It would probably also make the code easier
-to review. The tor-smtp tool currently need to listen on a socket for
-exim to talk to it and is started using xinetd. It would be better if
-no daemon and no socket is needed. I suspect it is possible to get
-exim to run a command line tool for delivery instead of talking to a
-socket, and hope to figure out how in a future version of this
-system.</p>
-
-<p>Until I wipe my test machine, I can be reached using the
-<tt>fbx@dutlqrrmjhtfa3vp.onion</tt> mail address, deliverable over
-SMTorP. :)</p>
+ <title>Blir det virkelig krav om fingeravtrykk i nasjonale ID-kort?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2015 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Noen finner det vanskelig å tro at Stortinget faktisk har vedtatt å
+kreve at alle norske borgerne må avgi fingeravtrykk til politiet for å
+fungere i samfunnet. Jeg er blitt spurt hva som er grunnlaget for
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html">min
+påstand i forrige bloggpost</a> om at det nå blir krav om å avgi
+fingeravtrykk til politiet for å fungere som borger i Norge. De som
+spør klarer ikke lese det ut fra det som er vedtatt. Her er en liten
+oppsummering om hva jeg baserer det på. Det sies ikke direkte i
+hverken proposisjon, innstilling eller vedtak, men fremgår når en ser
+på indirekte formuleringer.</p>
+
+<p>I
+<a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dokumenter/prop.-66-l-2014-2015/id2399703/">stortingsproposisjon
+66</a>, avsnitt 6.3.5 (Avgivelse av biometriske personopplysninger)
+står det<p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+
+ <p>Departementet foreslår at både ansiktsfoto og fingeravtrykk skal
+ kunne opptas og lagres som identifikasjonsdata i de nasjonale
+ ID-kortene, på samme måte som i passene. Lovforslaget er derfor
+ utformet i tråd med passloven § 6 annet ledd, som fastslår at det
+ til bruk for senere verifisering eller kontroll av passinnehaverens
+ identitet kan innhentes og lagres i passet biometrisk
+ personinformasjon i form av ansiktsfoto og fingeravtrykk (to
+ fingre). Dagens ordning med lagring av ansiktsfoto og fingeravtrykk
+ i et kontaktløst smartkort i passet er basert på internasjonale
+ standarder. Fingeravtrykkene i nasjonalt ID-kort vil bli beskyttet
+ på samme måte som fingeravtrykkene i passene.</p>
+
+ <p>[...]</p>
+
+ <p>For norske forhold understreker departementet at innføring av
+ nasjonale ID-kort sammen med innføring av nye systemer for sikrere
+ utstedelse og kontroll av pass og relaterte dokumenter gir mulighet
+ til å utforme ordningen slik at den best mulig møter utfordringene
+ forbundet med identitetskriminalitet. Det tilsier at fingeravtrykk
+ opptas og lagres i alle nasjonale ID-kort.</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Departementet sier altså at sin anbefaling er at fingeravtrykk skal
+opptas og lagres i alle nasjonale ID-kort. Det skrives som om det
+blir valgfritt, på samme måten som det skrives passloven, der det i
+loven sier at det kan
+«<a href="https://lovdata.no/dokument/NL/lov/1997-06-19-82#§6">innhentes
+og lagres i passet biometrisk personinformasjon i form av ansiktsfoto
+og fingeravtrykk (to fingre)</a>». Men på tross av bruken av «kan» i
+passloven er det innført krav om å avgi fingeravtrykk for å få et pass
+i Norge. Proposisjonen sier i tillegg i del 1 (Proposisjonens
+hovedinnhold) at ID-kortene skal være like pålitelig som pass og ha
+samme sikkerhetsnivå som pass. Departementet foreslår altså at
+ID-kortene skal gis etter samme regler som for pass.</p>
+
+<p>Formuleringene fra hovedinnholdet i proposisjonen er videreført i
+<a href="https://www.stortinget.no/no/Saker-og-publikasjoner/Publikasjoner/Innstillinger/Stortinget/2014-2015/inns-201415-243/?lvl=0">innstillingen
+fra stortingskomiteen</a>, der det konkret står «De foreslåtte reglene
+vil gi befolkningen tilbud om et offentlig utstedt identitetsbevis som
+vil være like pålitelig som passet, og mer praktisk å bruke som
+legitimasjon» og «Det nasjonale ID-kortet skal også holde samme
+sikkerhetsnivå som passet». Komiteen har altså ingen kommentarer
+eller innsigelser til dette forslaget, og gjorde i debatten da saken
+ble vedtatt det klart at dette var en god sak og at en enstemmig
+komité var glad for resultatet. Stortinget har dermed stilt seg helt
+og fullt bak departementets forslag.</p>
+
+<p>For meg er det åpenbart når en leser proposisjonen at «like
+pålitelig» og «samme sikkerhetsnivå» vil bli tolket av departementet
+som «med samme biometrisk informasjon som i passene», og departementet
+forklarer i tillegg i proposisjonen at de har tenkt at
+fingeravtrykkene «vil bli beskyttet på samme måte som fingeravtrykkene
+i passene». Jeg ser det dermed som åpenbart at den samme
+tvangsinnhentingen av fingeravtrykk som gjelder for pass vil bli
+viderført til de nasjonale ID-kortene.</p>
+
+<p>Det eneste som kan endre dette er massive protester fra
+befolkningen på at folk som ikke er mistenkt for noe kriminelt skal
+tvinges til å gi fingeravtrykket til politiet for å f.eks. kunne få
+bankkonto eller stemme ved valg. Det kunne få departementet til å
+snu. Det tror jeg ikke vil skje.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>First Jessie based Debian Edu released (alpha0)</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_released__alpha0_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2014 20:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>I am happy to report that I on behalf of the Debian Edu team just
-sent out
-<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2014/10/msg00000.html">this
-announcement</a>:</p>
+ <title>Norwegian citizens now required by law to give their fingerprint to the police</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Norwegian_citizens_now_required_by_law_to_give_their_fingerprint_to_the_police.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 10 May 2015 16:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>5 days ago, the Norwegian Parliament decided, unanimously, that all
+citizens of Norway, no matter if they are suspected of something
+criminal or not, are
+<a href="https://www.holderdeord.no/votes/1430838871e">required to
+give fingerprints to the police</a> (vote details from Holder de
+ord). The law make it sound like it will be optional, but in a few
+years there will be no option any more. The ID will be required to
+vote, to get a bank account, a bank card, to change address on the
+post office, to receive an electronic ID or to get a drivers license
+and many other tasks required to function in Norway. The banks plan
+to stop providing their own ID on the bank cards when this new
+national ID is introduced, and the national road authorities plan to
+change the drivers license to no longer be usable as identity cards.
+In effect, to function as a citizen in Norway a national ID card will
+be required, and to get it one need to provide the fingerprints to
+the police.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to handing the fingerprint to the police (which
+promised to not make a copy of the fingerprint image at that point in
+time, but say nothing about doing it later), a picture of the
+fingerprint will be stored on the RFID chip, along with a picture of
+the face and other information about the person. Some of the
+information will be encrypted, but the encryption will be the same
+system as currently used in the passports. The codes to decrypt will
+be available to a lot of government offices and their suppliers around
+the globe, but for those that do not know anyone in those circles it
+is good to know that
+<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2006/nov/17/news.homeaffairs">the
+encryption is already broken</a>. And they
+<a href="http://www.networkworld.com/article/2215057/wireless/bad-guys-could-read-rfid-passports-at-217-feet--maybe-a-lot-more.html">can
+be read from 70 meters away</a>. This can be mitigated a bit by
+keeping it in a Faraday cage (metal box or metal wire container), but
+one will be required to take it out of there often enough to expose
+ones private and personal information to a lot of people that have no
+business getting access to that information.</p>
+
+<p>The new Norwegian national IDs are a vehicle for identity theft,
+and I feel sorry for us all having politicians accepting such invasion
+of privacy without any objections. So are the Norwegian passports,
+but it has been possible to function in Norway without those so far.
+That option is going away with the passing of the new law. In this, I
+envy the Germans, because for them it is optional how much biometric
+information is stored in their national ID.</p>
+
+<p>And if forced collection of fingerprints was not bad enough, the
+information collected in the national ID card register can be handed
+over to foreign intelligence services and police authorities, "when
+extradition is not considered disproportionate".</p>
+
+<p>Update 2015-05-12: For those unable to believe that the Parliament
+really could make such decision, I wrote
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Blir_det_virkelig_krav_om_fingeravtrykk_i_nasjonale_ID_kort_.html">a
+summary of the sources I have</a> for concluding the way I do
+(Norwegian Only, as the sources are all in Norwegian).</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>What would it cost to store all phone calls in Norway?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 1 May 2015 19:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Many years ago, a friend of mine calculated how much it would cost
+to store the sound of all phone calls in Norway, and came up with the
+cost of around 20 million NOK (2.4 mill EUR) for all the calls in a
+year. I got curious and wondered what the same calculation would look
+like today. To do so one need an idea of how much data storage is
+needed for each minute of sound, how many minutes all the calls in
+Norway sums up to, and the cost of data storage.</p>
+
+<p>The 2005 numbers are from
+<a href="http://www.digi.no/analyser/2005/10/04/vi-prater-stadig-mindre-i-roret">digi.no</a>,
+the 2012 numbers are from
+<a href="http://www.nkom.no/aktuelt/nyheter/fortsatt-vekst-i-det-norske-ekommarkedet">a
+NKOM report</a>, and I got the 2013 numbers after asking NKOM via
+email. I was told the numbers for 2014 will be presented May 20th,
+and decided not to wait for those, as I doubt they will be very
+different from the numbers from 2013.</p>
+
+<p>The amount of data storage per minute sound depend on the wanted
+quality, and for phone calls it is generally believed that 8 Kbit/s is
+enough. See for example a
+<a href="http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/support/docs/voice/voice-quality/7934-bwidth-consume.html#topic1">summary
+on voice quality from Cisco</a> for some alternatives. 8 Kbit/s is 60
+Kbytes/min, and this can be multiplied with the number of call minutes
+to get the storage requirements.</p>
+
+<p>Storage prices varies a lot, depending on speed, backup strategies,
+availability requirements etc. But a simple way to calculate can be
+to use the price of a TiB-disk (around 1000 NOK / 120 EUR) and double
+it to take space, power and redundancy into account. It could be much
+higher with high speed and good redundancy requirements.</p>
+
+<p>But back to the question, What would it cost to store all phone
+calls in Norway? Not much. Here is a small table showing the
+estimated cost, which is within the budget constraint of most medium
+and large organisations:</p>
+
+<table border="1">
+<tr><th>Year</th><th>Call minutes</th><th>Size</th><th>Price in NOK / EUR</th></tr>
+<tr><td>2005</td><td align="right">24 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.3 PiB</td><td align="right">3 mill / 358 000</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">2.2 mill / 262 000</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">2.1 mill / 250 000</td></tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>This is the cost of buying the storage. Maintenance need to be
+taken into account too, but calculating that is left as an exercise
+for the reader. But it is obvious to me from those numbers that
+recording the sound of all phone calls in Norway is not going to be
+stopped because it is too expensive. I wonder if someone already is
+collecting the data?</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>First Jessie based Debian Edu beta release</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/First_Jessie_based_Debian_Edu_beta_release.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 26 Apr 2015 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I am happy to report that the Debian Edu team sent out
+<a href="https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu-announce/2015/04/msg00000.html">this
+announcement today</a>:</p>
<pre>
-The Debian Edu Team is pleased to announce the release of Debian Edu
-Jessie 8.0+edu0~alpha0
-
-Debian Edu is a complete operating system for schools. Through its
-various installation profiles you can install servers, workstations
-and laptops which will work together on the school network. With
-Debian Edu, the teachers themselves or their technical support can
-roll out a complete multi-user multi-machine study environment within
-hours or a few days. Debian Edu comes with hundreds of applications
-pre-installed, but you can always add more packages from Debian.
+the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project is pleased to announce the first
+*beta* release of Debian Edu "Jessie" 8.0+edu0~b1, which for the first
+time is composed entirely of packages from the current Debian stable
+release, Debian 8 "Jessie".
+
+(As most reading this will know, Debian "Jessie" hasn't actually been
+released by now. The release is still in progress but should finish
+later today ;)
+
+We expect to make a final release of Debian Edu "Jessie" in the coming
+weeks, timed with the first point release of Debian Jessie. Upgrades
+from this beta release of Debian Edu Jessie to the final release will
+be possible and encouraged!
+
+Please report feedback to debian-edu@lists.debian.org and/or submit
+bugs: http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs
+
+Debian Edu - sometimes also known as "Skolelinux" - is a complete
+operating system for schools, universities and other
+organisations. Through its pre- prepared installation profiles
+administrators can install servers, workstations and laptops which
+will work in harmony on the school network. With Debian Edu, the
+teachers themselves or their technical support staff can roll out a
+complete multi-user, multi-machine study environment within hours or
+days.
+
+Debian Edu is already in use at several hundred schools all over the
+world, particularly in Germany, Spain and Norway. Installations come
+with hundreds of applications pre-installed, plus the whole Debian
+archive of thousands of compatible packages within easy reach.
For those who want to give Debian Edu Jessie a try, download and
installation instructions are available, including detailed
-instructions in the manual[1] explaining the first steps, such as
-setting up a network or adding users. Please note that the password
-for the user your prompted for during installation must have a length
-of at least 5 characters!
+instructions in the manual explaining the first steps, such as setting
+up a network or adding users. Please note that the password for the
+user your prompted for during installation must have a length of at
+least 5 characters!
- [1] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie</a> &gt;
+== Where to download ==
-Would you like to give your school's computer a longer life? Are you
-tired of sneaker administration, running from computer to computer
-reinstalling the operating system? Would you like to administrate all
-the computers in your school using only a couple of hours every week?
-Check out Debian Edu Jessie!
+A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
+can be downloaded at the following locations:
-Skolelinux is used by at least two hundred schools all over the world,
-mostly in Germany and Norway.
+ http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso
+ rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-CD.iso .
-About Debian Edu and Skolelinux
-===============================
+The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
-Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux[2], is a Linux distribution based
-on Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
-configured school network. Immediately after installation a school
-server running all services needed for a school network is set up just
-waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
-Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
-initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
-machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
-provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
-centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
-services. The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
-packages[3] and more are available from the Debian archive, and
-schools can choose between KDE, Gnome, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
-environment.
+Alternatively an extended DVD / usbstick image (4.9 GiB) is also
+available, with more software included (saving additional download
+time):
+
+ http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
+ rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~b1-USB.iso
+
+The SHA1SUM of this image is: fb1f1504a490c077a48653898f9d6a461cb3c636
- [2] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">http://www.skolelinux.org/</a> &gt;
- [3] &lt;URL: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Educational_applications_included_in_Debian_Edu___Skolelinux__the_screenshot_collection____.html</a> &gt;
+Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
+http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
+options.
-Full release notes and manual
-=============================
+== Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
-Below the download URLs there is a list of some of the new features
-and bugfixes of Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie. The full
-list is part of the manual. (See the feature list in the manual[4] for
-the English version.) For some languages manual translations are
-available, see the manual translation overview[5].
+Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
+the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
- [4] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/Features</a> &gt;
- [5] &lt;URL: <a href="http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/">http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/</a> &gt;
+This manual has been fully translated to German, French, Italian,
+Danish, Dutch and Norwegian Bokmål. A partly translated version exists
+for Spanish. See http://maintainer.skolelinux.org/debian-edu-doc/ for
+online version of the translated manual.
-Where to get it
----------------
+More information about Debian 8 "Jessie" itself is provided in the
+release notes and the installation manual:
+- http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes
+- http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual
-To download the multiarch netinstall CD release (624 MiB) you can use
- * <a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">ftp://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
- * <a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso">http://ftp.skolelinux.org/skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso</a>
- * rsync -avzP ftp.skolelinux.org::skolelinux-cd/debian-edu-8.0+edu0~alpha0-CD.iso .
+== Errata / known problems ==
-The SHA1SUM of this image is: 361188818e036ce67280a572f757de82ebfeb095
+ It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
+ DHCP (#780461).
-New features for Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~alpha0 Codename Jessie released 2014-10-27
-===============================================================================
+ The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
+Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
+hostname immediately.
-Installation changes
---------------------
+Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
+more current and complete list.
- * PXE installation now installs firmware automatically for the hardware present.
+== Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
-Software updates
-----------------
+=== Software updates ===
-Everything which is new in Debian Jessie 8.0, eg:
+Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
- * Linux kernel 3.16.x
- * Desktop environments KDE "Plasma" 4.11.12, GNOME 3.14, Xfce 4.10,
- LXDE 0.5.6 and MATE 1.8 (KDE "Plasma" is installed by default; to
- choose one of the others see manual.)
- * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 38
- * !LibreOffice 4.3.3
+ * Linux kernel 3.16.7-ctk9; for the i386 architecture, support for
+ i486 processors has been dropped; oldest supported ones: i586 (like
+ Intel Pentium and AMD K5).
+
+ * Desktop environments KDE Plasma Workspaces 4.11.13, GNOME 3.14,
+ Xfce 4.12, LXDE 0.5.6
+ * new optional desktop environment: MATE 1.8
+ * KDE Plasma Workspaces is installed by default; to choose one of
+ the others see the manual.
+ * the browsers Iceweasel 31 ESR and Chromium 41
+ * LibreOffice 4.3.3
* GOsa 2.7.4
* LTSP 5.5.4
* CUPS print system 1.7.5
* new boot framework: systemd
- * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.07
+ * Educational toolbox GCompris 14.12
* Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
* Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
- * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.0
+ * Virtual stargazer Stellarium 0.13.1
* golearn 0.9
* tuxpaint 0.9.22
* New version of debian-installer from Debian Jessie.
- * Debian Jessie includes about 42000 packages available for
- installation.
- * More information about Debian Jessie 8.0 is provided in the release
- notes[6] and the installation manual[7].
-
- [6] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/releasenotes</a> &gt;
- [7] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual">http://www.debian.org/releases/jessie/installmanual</a> &gt;
+ * Debian Jessie includes about 43000 packages available for installation.
+ * More information about Debian 8 Jessie is provided in its release
+ notes and the installation manual, see the link above.
-Fixed bugs
-----------
+=== Installation changes ===
- * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
- DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
- information is corrected (Debian bug #710362)
- * and many others.
+ Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
+ for the hardware present.
-Documentation and translation updates
--------------------------------------
+=== Fixed bugs ===
- * The Debian Edu Jessie Manual is fully translated to German, French,
- Italian, Danish and Dutch. Partly translated versions exist for
- Norwegian Bokmal and Spanish.
+A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
+from a user perspective:
-Other changes
--------------
-
- * Due to new Squid settings, powering off or rebooting the main
- server takes more time.
- * To manage printers localhost:631 has to be used, currently www:631
- doesn't work.
+ * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
+ DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
+ information is corrected (710362)
-Regressions / known problems
-----------------------------
+ * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
- * Installing LTSP chroot fails with a bug related to eatmydata about
- exim4-config failing to run its postinst (see Debian bug #765694
- and Debian bug #762103).
- * Munin collection is not properly configured on clients (Debian bug
- #764594). The fix is available in a newer version of munin-node.
- * PXE setup for Main Server and Thin Client Server setup does not
- work when installing on a machine without direct Internet access.
- Will be fixed when Debian bug #766960 is fixed in Jessie.
+=== Sugar desktop removed ===
-See the status page[8] for the complete list.
+As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
+available in Debian Edu jessie.
- [8] &lt;URL: <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie</a> &gt;
-How to report bugs
-------------------
+== About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
-&lt;URL: <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs">http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/HowTo/ReportBugs</a> &gt;
+Debian Edu, also known as Skolelinux, is a Linux distribution based on
+Debian providing an out-of-the box environment of a completely
+configured school network. Directly after installation a school server
+running all services needed for a school network is set up just
+waiting for users and machines being added via GOsa², a comfortable
+Web-UI. A netbooting environment is prepared using PXE, so after
+initial installation of the main server from CD or USB stick all other
+machines can be installed via the network. The provided school server
+provides LDAP database and Kerberos authentication service,
+centralized home directories, DHCP server, web proxy and many other
+services. The desktop contains more than 60 educational software
+packages and more are available from the Debian archive, and schools
+can choose between KDE, GNOME, LXDE, Xfce and MATE desktop
+environment.
-About Debian
-============
+== About Debian ==
The Debian Project was founded in 1993 by Ian Murdock to be a truly
free community project. Since then the project has grown to be one of
huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
operating system.
-Contact Information
-For further information, please visit the Debian web pages[9] or send
-mail to press@debian.org.
+== Thanks ==
- [9] &lt;URL: <a href="http://www.debian.org/">http://www.debian.org/</a> &gt;
+Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
+You rock.
</pre>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>I spent last weekend recording MakerCon Nordic</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_spent_last_weekend_recording_MakerCon_Nordic.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 23 Oct 2014 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>I spent last weekend at <a href="http://www.makercon.no/">Makercon
-Nordic</a>, a great conference and workshop for makers in Norway and
-the surrounding countries. I had volunteered on behalf of the
-Norwegian Unix Users Group (NUUG) to video record the talks, and we
-had a great and exhausting time recording the entire day, two days in
-a row. There were only two of us, Hans-Petter and me, and we used the
-regular video equipment for NUUG, with a
-<a href="http://dvswitch.alioth.debian.org/wiki/">dvswitch</a>, a
-camera and a VGA to DV convert box, and mixed video and slides
-live.</p>
-
-<p>Hans-Petter did the post-processing, consisting of uploading the
-around 180 GiB of raw video to Youtube, and the result is
-<a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/MakerConNordic/">now becoming
-public</a> on the MakerConNordic account. The videos have the license
-NUUG always use on our recordings, which is
-<a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/no/">Creative
-Commons Navngivelse-Del på samme vilkår 3.0 Norge</a>. Many great
-talks available. Check it out! :)</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>listadmin, the quick way to moderate mailman lists - nice free software</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/listadmin__the_quick_way_to_moderate_mailman_lists___nice_free_software.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 22 Oct 2014 20:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>If you ever had to moderate a mailman list, like the ones on
-alioth.debian.org, you know the web interface is fairly slow to
-operate. First you visit one web page, enter the moderation password
-and get a new page shown with a list of all the messages to moderate
-and various options for each email address. This take a while for
-every list you moderate, and you need to do it regularly to do a good
-job as a list moderator. But there is a quick alternative,
-<a href="http://heim.ifi.uio.no/kjetilho/hacks/#listadmin">the
-listadmin program</a>. It allow you to check lists for new messages
-to moderate in a fraction of a second. Here is a test run on two
-lists I recently took over:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-% time listadmin xiph
-fetching data for pkg-xiph-commits@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
-fetching data for pkg-xiph-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org ... nothing in queue
-
-real 0m1.709s
-user 0m0.232s
-sys 0m0.012s
-%
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>In 1.7 seconds I had checked two mailing lists and confirmed that
-there are no message in the moderation queue. Every morning I
-currently moderate 68 mailman lists, and it normally take around two
-minutes. When I took over the two pkg-xiph lists above a few days
-ago, there were 400 emails waiting in the moderator queue. It took me
-less than 15 minutes to process them all using the listadmin
-program.</p>
-
-<p>If you install
-<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/listadmin">the listadmin
-package</a> from Debian and create a file <tt>~/.listadmin.ini</tt>
-with content like this, the moderation task is a breeze:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-username username@example.org
-spamlevel 23
-default discard
-discard_if_reason "Posting restricted to members only. Remove us from your mail list."
-
-password secret
-adminurl https://{domain}/mailman/admindb/{list}
-mailman-list@lists.example.com
-
-password hidden
-other-list@otherserver.example.org
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>There are other options to set as well. Check the manual page to
-learn the details.</p>
-
-<p>If you are forced to moderate lists on a mailman installation where
-the SSL certificate is self signed or not properly signed by a
-generally accepted signing authority, you can set a environment
-variable when calling listadmin to disable SSL verification:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 listadmin
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>If you want to moderate a subset of the lists you take care of, you
-can provide an argument to the listadmin script like I do in the
-initial screen dump (the xiph argument). Using an argument, only
-lists matching the argument string will be processed. This make it
-quick to accept messages if you notice the moderation request in your
-email.</p>
-
-<p>Without the listadmin program, I would never be the moderator of 68
-mailing lists, as I simply do not have time to spend on that if the
-process was any slower. The listadmin program have saved me hours of
-time I could spend elsewhere over the years. It truly is nice free
-software.</p>
-
-<p>As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
-
-<p>Update 2014-10-27: Added missing 'username' statement in
-configuration example. Also, I've been told that the
-PERL_LWP_SSL_VERIFY_HOSTNAME=0 setting do not work for everyone. Not
-sure why.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Debian Jessie, PXE and automatic firmware installation</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Jessie__PXE_and_automatic_firmware_installation.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 17 Oct 2014 14:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>When PXE installing laptops with Debian, I often run into the
-problem that the WiFi card require some firmware to work properly.
-And it has been a pain to fix this using preseeding in Debian.
-Normally something more is needed. But thanks to
-<a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/i/isenkram.html">my isenkram
-package</a> and its recent tasksel extension, it has now become easy
-to do this using simple preseeding.</p>
-
-<p>The isenkram-cli package provide tasksel tasks which will install
-firmware for the hardware found in the machine (actually, requested by
-the kernel modules for the hardware). (It can also install user space
-programs supporting the hardware detected, but that is not the focus
-of this story.)</p>
-
-<p>To get this working in the default installation, two preeseding
-values are needed. First, the isenkram-cli package must be installed
-into the target chroot (aka the hard drive) before tasksel is executed
-in the pkgsel step of the debian-installer system. This is done by
-preseeding the base-installer/includes debconf value to include the
-isenkram-cli package. The package name is next passed to debootstrap
-for installation. With the isenkram-cli package in place, tasksel
-will automatically use the isenkram tasks to detect hardware specific
-packages for the machine being installed and install them, because
-isenkram-cli contain tasksel tasks.</p>
-
-<p>Second, one need to enable the non-free APT repository, because
-most firmware unfortunately is non-free. This is done by preseeding
-the apt-mirror-setup step. This is unfortunate, but for a lot of
-hardware it is the only option in Debian.</p>
-
-<p>The end result is two lines needed in your preseeding file to get
-firmware installed automatically by the installer:</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-base-installer base-installer/includes string isenkram-cli
-apt-mirror-setup apt-setup/non-free boolean true
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>The current version of isenkram-cli in testing/jessie will install
-both firmware and user space packages when using this method. It also
-do not work well, so use version 0.15 or later. Installing both
-firmware and user space packages might give you a bit more than you
-want, so I decided to split the tasksel task in two, one for firmware
-and one for user space programs. The firmware task is enabled by
-default, while the one for user space programs is not. This split is
-implemented in the package currently in unstable.</p>
-
-<p>If you decide to give this a go, please let me know (via email) how
-this recipe work for you. :)</p>
-
-<p>So, I bet you are wondering, how can this work. First and
-foremost, it work because tasksel is modular, and driven by whatever
-files it find in /usr/lib/tasksel/ and /usr/share/tasksel/. So the
-isenkram-cli package place two files for tasksel to find. First there
-is the task description file (/usr/share/tasksel/descs/isenkram.desc):</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-Task: isenkram-packages
-Section: hardware
-Description: Hardware specific packages (autodetected by isenkram)
- Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific packages are
- proposed.
-Test-new-install: show show
-Relevance: 8
-Packages: for-current-hardware
-
-Task: isenkram-firmware
-Section: hardware
-Description: Hardware specific firmware packages (autodetected by isenkram)
- Based on the detected hardware various hardware specific firmware
- packages are proposed.
-Test-new-install: mark show
-Relevance: 8
-Packages: for-current-hardware-firmware
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>The key parts are Test-new-install which indicate how the task
-should be handled and the Packages line referencing to a script in
-/usr/lib/tasksel/packages/. The scripts use other scripts to get a
-list of packages to install. The for-current-hardware-firmware script
-look like this to list relevant firmware for the machine:
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-#!/bin/sh
-#
-PATH=/usr/sbin:$PATH
-export PATH
-isenkram-autoinstall-firmware -l
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>With those two pieces in place, the firmware is installed by
-tasksel during the normal d-i run. :)</p>
-
-<p>If you want to test what tasksel will install when isenkram-cli is
-installed, run <tt>DEBIAN_PRIORITY=critical tasksel --test
---new-install</tt> to get the list of packages that tasksel would
-install.</p>
-
-<p><a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/">Debian Edu</a> will be
-pilots in testing this feature, as isenkram is used there now to
-install firmware, replacing the earlier scripts.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Ubuntu used to show the bread prizes at ICA Storo</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ubuntu_used_to_show_the_bread_prizes_at_ICA_Storo.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Today I came across an unexpected Ubuntu boot screen. Above the
-bread shelf on the ICA shop at Storo in Oslo, the grub menu of Ubuntu
-with Linux kernel 3.2.0-23 (ie probably version 12.04 LTS) was stuck
-on a screen normally showing the bread types and prizes:</p>
-
-<p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2014-10-04-ubuntu-ica-storo-crop.jpeg"></p>
-
-<p>If it had booted as it was supposed to, I would never had known
-about this hidden Linux installation. It is interesting what
-<a href="http://revealingerrors.com/">errors can reveal</a>.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>New lsdvd release version 0.17 is ready</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/New_lsdvd_release_version_0_17_is_ready.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sat, 4 Oct 2014 08:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd project</a>
-got a new set of developers a few weeks ago, after the original
-developer decided to step down and pass the project to fresh blood.
-This project is now maintained by Petter Reinholdtsen and Steve
-Dibb.</p>
-
-<p>I just wrapped up
-<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/message/32896061/">a
-new lsdvd release</a>, available in git or from
-<a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/lsdvd/files/lsdvd/">the
-download page</a>. This is the changelog dated 2014-10-03 for version
-0.17.</p>
-
-<ul>
-
- <li>Ignore 'phantom' audio, subtitle tracks</li>
- <li>Check for garbage in the program chains, which indicate that a track is
- non-existant, to work around additional copy protection</li>
- <li>Fix displaying content type for audio tracks, subtitles</li>
- <li>Fix pallete display of first entry</li>
- <li>Fix include orders</li>
- <li>Ignore read errors in titles that would not be displayed anyway</li>
- <li>Fix the chapter count</li>
- <li>Make sure the array size and the array limit used when initialising
- the palette size is the same.</li>
- <li>Fix array printing.</li>
- <li>Correct subsecond calculations.</li>
- <li>Add sector information to the output format.</li>
- <li>Clean up code to be closer to ANSI C and compile without warnings
- with more GCC compiler warnings.</li>
-
-</ul>
-
-<p>This change bring together patches for lsdvd in use in various
-Linux and Unix distributions, as well as patches submitted to the
-project the last nine years. Please check it out. :)</p>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 15 Apr 2015 09:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
+computer system for schools I've involved in,
+<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
+being used in India. But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
+interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
+Agarwal.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
+historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
+My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
+installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
+fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
+few software start-ups as well.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
+years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
+anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
+educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
+nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
+it was known then. Since then I have started using the various
+education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
+software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
+figuratively). Even if I take the simplest software which is
+gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
+the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
+pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
+
+<p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
+as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
+possibility of a larger life span. Of course with both it's more a
+question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
+for the developer per-se.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
+think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
+help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
+
+<p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
+that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
+However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
+pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
+but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
+Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
+still) I have had for a long time :</p>
+
+<p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
+each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
+far would each travel and similar questions like these.
+
+<p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
+be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
+interactive manner. While sites such as the
+<a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
+Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
+inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done. I dunno
+if there is a free software which does something like this. The idea
+being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
+this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
+colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
+or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
+This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
+the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
+psychics and everything in-between.</p>
+
+<p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
+one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
+meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
+also be used.</p>
+
+<p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
+enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary. I don't think it
+should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
+sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
+from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
+the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
+the user's input.</p>
+
+<p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
+palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
+needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
+copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
+nature, history etc. and let it loose. This could turn to be really
+huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
+commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
+stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
+both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
+lot. This is more so in educational software as these applications
+need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
+immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
+maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
+of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
+maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
+aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
+quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
+between kpat and Aiselriot. In desktops it's a tie between
+gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
+whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
+Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
+school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
+people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
+various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
+
+<p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
+passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
+then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
+well.</p>
+
+<p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
+instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
+there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
+Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
+
+<p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
+and upgrades. People have this myth that each update and upgrade
+means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
+innumerable times. That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
+like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
+it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
+changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
+the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
+releases.</p>
+
+<p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
+is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
+is aimed at.
+
+<p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
+around 2 years, and
+<a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
+some experience</a> there. Some of the things we learnt/discovered
+there was :</p>
+
+<ol>
+
+ <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
+ and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
+ portion/syllabus given.</li>
+
+ <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
+ is in the syllabus.</li>
+
+ <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
+ times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
+ you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
+ say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
+ as recognizable as say a
+ <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
+ Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
+ possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
+ which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
+ parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
+ something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
+
+</ol>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>How to test Debian Edu Jessie despite some fatal problems with the installer</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_Debian_Edu_Jessie_despite_some_fatal_problems_with_the_installer.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 26 Sep 2014 12:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux
-project</a> provide a Linux solution for schools, including a
-powerful desktop with education software, a central server providing
-web pages, user database, user home directories, central login and PXE
-boot of both clients without disk and the installation to install Debian
-Edu on machines with disk (and a few other services perhaps to small
-to mention here). We in the Debian Edu team are currently working on
-the Jessie based version, trying to get everything in shape before the
-freeze, to avoid having to maintain our own package repository in the
-future. The
-<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie">current
-status</a> can be seen on the Debian wiki, and there is still heaps of
-work left. Some fatal problems block testing, breaking the installer,
-but it is possible to work around these to get anyway. Here is a
-recipe on how to get the installation limping along.</p>
-
-<p>First, download the test ISO via
-<a href="ftp://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">ftp</a>,
-<a href="http://ftp.skolelinux.no/cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso">http</a>
-or rsync (use
-ftp.skolelinux.org::cd-edu-testing-nolocal-netinst/debian-edu-amd64-i386-NETINST-1.iso).
-The ISO build was broken on Tuesday, so we do not get a new ISO every
-12 hours or so, but thankfully the ISO we already got we are able to
-install with some tweaking.</p>
-
-<p>When you get to the Debian Edu profile question, go to tty2
-(use Alt-Ctrl-F2), run</p>
-
-<p><blockquote><pre>
-nano /usr/bin/edu-eatmydata-install
-</pre></blockquote></p>
-
-<p>and add 'exit 0' as the second line, disabling the eatmydata
-optimization. Return to the installation, select the profile you want
-and continue. Without this change, exim4-config will fail to install
-due to a known bug in eatmydata.</p>
-
-<p>When you get the grub question at the end, answer /dev/sda (or if
-this do not work, figure out what your correct value would be. All my
-test machines need /dev/sda, so I have no advice if it do not fit
-your need.</p>
-
-<p>If you installed a profile including a graphical desktop, log in as
-root after the initial boot from hard drive, and install the
-education-desktop-XXX metapackage. XXX can be kde, gnome, lxde, xfce
-or mate. If you want several desktop options, install more than one
-metapackage. Once this is done, reboot and you should have a working
-graphical login screen. This workaround should no longer be needed
-once the education-tasks package version 1.801 enter testing in two
-days.</p>
-
-<p>I believe the ISO build will start working on two days when the new
-tasksel package enter testing and Steve McIntyre get a chance to
-update the debian-cd git repository. The eatmydata, grub and desktop
-issues are already fixed in unstable and testing, and should show up
-on the ISO as soon as the ISO build start working again. Well the
-eatmydata optimization is really just disabled. The proper fix
-require an upload by the eatmydata maintainer applying the patch
-provided in bug <a href="https://bugs.debian.org/702711">#702711</a>.
-The rest have proper fixes in unstable.</p>
-
-<p>I hope this get you going with the installation testing, as we are
-quickly running out of time trying to get our Jessie based
-installation ready before the distribution freeze in a month.</p>
+ <title>I'm going to the Open Source Developers' Conference Nordic 2015!</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/I_m_going_to_the_Open_Source_Developers__Conference_Nordic_2015_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 7 Apr 2015 10:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I am happy to let you all know that I'm going to the <a
+href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/">Open Source Developers'
+Conference Nordic 2015</a>!</p>
+
+<p>It take place Friday 8th to Sunday 10th of May in Oslo next to
+where I work, and I finally got around to submitting
+<a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talk/6192">a talk proposal for
+it</a> (dead link for most people until the talk is accepted). As
+part of my involvement with the
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Norwegian Unix User Group member
+association</a> I have been slightly involved in the planning of this
+conference for a while now, with a focus on organising a Civic Hacking
+Hackathon with our friends
+over at <a href="http://www.mysociety.org/">mySociety</a> and
+<a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>. This part is
+named the 'My Society' track in the program. There is still space for
+more talks and participants. I hope to see you there.</p>
+
+<p>Check out <a href="http://act.osdc.no/osdc2015no/talks">the talks
+submitted and accepted so far</a>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Suddenly I am the new upstream of the lsdvd command line tool</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Suddenly_I_am_the_new_upstream_of_the_lsdvd_command_line_tool.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 25 Sep 2014 11:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>I use the <a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/">lsdvd tool</a>
-to handle my fairly large DVD collection. It is a nice command line
-tool to get details about a DVD, like title, tracks, track length,
-etc, in XML, Perl or human readable format. But lsdvd have not seen
-any new development since 2006 and had a few irritating bugs affecting
-its use with some DVDs. Upstream seemed to be dead, and in January I
-sent a small probe asking for a version control repository for the
-project, without any reply. But I use it regularly and would like to
-get <a href="https://packages.qa.debian.org/lsdvd">an updated version
-into Debian</a>. So two weeks ago I tried harder to get in touch with
-the project admin, and after getting a reply from him explaining that
-he was no longer interested in the project, I asked if I could take
-over. And yesterday, I became project admin.</p>
-
-<p>I've been in touch with a Gentoo developer and the Debian
-maintainer interested in joining forces to maintain the upstream
-project, and I hope we can get a new release out fairly quickly,
-collecting the patches spread around on the internet into on place.
-I've added the relevant Debian patches to the freshly created git
-repository, and expect the Gentoo patches to make it too. If you got
-a DVD collection and care about command line tools, check out
-<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/git/ci/master/tree/">the git source</a> and join
-<a href="https://sourceforge.net/p/lsdvd/mailman/">the project mailing
-list</a>. :)</p>
+ <title>Proof reading the Norwegian translation of Free Culture by Lessig</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Proof_reading_the_Norwegian_translation_of_Free_Culture_by_Lessig.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 4 Apr 2015 09:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>During eastern I had some time to continue working on the Norwegian
+<a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> version of the 2004 book
+<a href="http://free-culture.cc/">Free Culture</a> by Lawrence Lessig.
+At the moment I am proof reading the finished text, looking for typos,
+inconsistent wordings and sentences that do not flow as they should.
+I'm more than two thirds done with the text, and welcome others to
+check the text up to chapter 13. The current status is available on the
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig">github</a>
+project pages. You can also check out the
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf?raw=true">PDF</a>,
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/blob/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub?raw=true">EPUB</a>
+and HTML version available in the
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/tree/master/archive">archive
+directory</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Please report typos, bugs and improvements to the github project if
+you find any.</p>
</description>
</item>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff