+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Full_battery_stats_collector_is_now_available_in_Debian.html">Full battery stats collector is now available in Debian</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 23rd March 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
+extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
+later processing and graphing. The original collector store the
+battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
+collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
+full level, last full level and current battery level. This make it
+possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
+the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.</p>
+
+<p>The new tools are available in <tt>/usr/share/battery-stats/</tt>
+in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable. Get the new battery level graph
+and lifetime prediction by running:
+
+<p><pre>
+/usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.</p>
+
+<p>The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
+entry yet):</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+/usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
+when there are few data points. The graphs look a bit better with a
+few years of data.</p>
+
+<p>A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
+collector broke in Debian. The scripts in
+<tt>/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/</tt> were no longer executed. I
+suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
+know. The issue is reported as
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/818649">bug #818649</a> against
+pm-utils. I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
+the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
+disconnected. With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
+new release of the package, and get it into Debian.</p>
+
+<p>If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
+check out the
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">battery-stats</a>
+in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
+Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
+As always, patches are very welcome.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian">debian</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
+ <div class="entry">
+ <div class="title">
+ <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/UsingQR____Electronic__paper_invoices_using_JSON_and_QR_codes.html">UsingQR - "Electronic" paper invoices using JSON and QR codes</a>
+ </div>
+ <div class="date">
+ 19th March 2016
+ </div>
+ <div class="body">
+ <p>Back in 2013 I proposed
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/_Electronic__paper_invoices___using_vCard_in_a_QR_code.html">a
+way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by
+adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice</a>. I
+suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format
+for name and address, but any format would work. I did not do
+anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make
+something like it. It would make it possible to efficiently send
+machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.</p>
+
+<p>This was the background when I came across a proposal and
+specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier
+<a href="http://www.visma.com/">Visma</a> in Sweden called
+<a href="http://usingqr.com/">UsingQR</a>. Their PDF invoices contain
+a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format.
+This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR
+specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to
+get a more bogus entry). I've reformatted the JSON to make it easier
+to read. Normally this is all on one long line:</p>
+
+<p><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-19-qr-invoice.png" align="right"><pre>
+{
+ "vh":500.00,
+ "vm":0,
+ "vl":0,
+ "uqr":1,
+ "tp":1,
+ "nme":"Din Leverandør",
+ "cc":"NO",
+ "cid":"997912345 MVA",
+ "iref":"12300001",
+ "idt":"20151022",
+ "ddt":"20151105",
+ "due":2500.0000,
+ "cur":"NOK",
+ "pt":"BBAN",
+ "acc":"17202612345",
+ "bc":"BIENNOK1",
+ "adr":"0313 OSLO"
+}
+</pre></p>
+
+</p>The interpretation of the fields can be found in the
+<a href="http://usingqr.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/UsingQR_specification1.pdf">format
+specification</a> (revision 2 from june 2014). The format seem to
+have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment
+of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in
+Norway.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about
+the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the
+specification. Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in
+November to clarify. Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at)
+visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark
+protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based
+usage limitations for the format. I urged her to make sure this was
+explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but
+unfortunately this has not happened yet. So I guess if there is
+submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright
+infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at
+risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that
+the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so. At least
+with patents, there is always
+<a href="http://www.paperspecs.com/paper-news/beware-the-qr-code-patent-trap/">a
+chance of getting sued...</a></p>
+
+<p>I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an
+independent standard organization to give others more confidence that
+they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms
+with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this. Their plan was
+to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and
+evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular. I hope
+they conclude that using an open standard organisation like
+<a href="http://www.ietf.org/">IETF</a> is the correct place to
+maintain such specification.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2016-03-20</strong>: Via Twitter I became aware of
+<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11319492">some comments
+about this blog post</a> that had several useful links and references to
+similar systems. In the Czech republic, the Czech Banking Association
+standard #26, with short name SPAYD, uses QR codes with payment
+information. More information is available from the Wikipedia page on
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_Payment_Descriptor">Short
+Payment Descriptor</a>. And in Germany, there is a system named
+<a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/">BezahlCode</a>,
+(<a href="http://www.bezahlcode.de/wp-content/uploads/BezahlCode_TechDok.pdf">specification
+v1.8 2013-12-05 available as PDF</a>), which uses QR codes with
+URL-like formatting using "bank:" as the URI schema/protocol to
+provide the payment information. There is also the
+<a href="http://www.ferd-net.de/front_content.php?idcat=231">ZUGFeRD</a>
+file format that perhaps could be transfered using QR codes, but I am
+not sure if it is done already. Last, in Bolivia there are reports
+that tax information since november 2014 need to be printed in QR
+format on invoices. I have not been able to track down a
+specification for this format, because of my limited language skill
+sets.</p>
+
+ </div>
+ <div class="tags">
+
+
+ Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/standard">standard</a>.
+
+
+ </div>
+ </div>
+ <div class="padding"></div>
+
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