<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
- <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 ownership 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>
-
-<p>Update 2015-06-15: Since the initial post I've been told that
-"<a href="http://www.proff.dk/firma/carl-allers-etablissement-aktieselskab/københavn-v/hovedkontorer/13624518-3/">Aller
-Holding A/S</a>" is a Danish company, which explain why it did not
-have a Norwegian organisation number. I've also been told that there
-is a <a href="http://www.brreg.no/automatiske/webservices/">web
-services API available</a> from Brønnøysundsregistrene, for those
-willing to accept the terms or pay the price.</p>
+ <title>Making battery measurements a little easier in Debian</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Making_battery_measurements_a_little_easier_in_Debian.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 15 Mar 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Back in September, I blogged about
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_life_and_death_of_a_laptop_battery.html">the
+system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery</a>, and
+how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced). I
+created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
+but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">a battery-stats
+package in Debian</a> that should do the same thing, and I did not see
+a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
+fixed instead. I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
+hoped someone would step in and fix it. But no-one did.</p>
+
+<p>I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
+hands. The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
+battery stats (<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">available from github</a>) and part of the team maintaining
+battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
+able to collect battery status using the <tt>/sys/class/power_supply/</tt>
+information provided by the Linux kernel. If you install the
+battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
+graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
+status of the battery. The source package build and work just fine in
+Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
+tested). The default graph you get for that system look like this:</p>
+
+<p align="center"><img src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-03-15-battery-stats-graph-example.png" width="70%" align="center"></p>
+
+<p>My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
+battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
+about the battery. The scripts are merged into the upstream
+battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
+yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way. Will have to test a
+bit more before I make a new release.</p>
+
+<p>I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
+suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
+impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
+and graphing.</p>
+
+<p>If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
+battery, check out the battery-stats package in
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/battery-stats">Debian</a> and
+on
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/battery-stats">github</a>.
+I would love some help to improve the system further.</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>
+ <title>Creating, updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creating__updating_and_checking_debian_copyright_semi_automatically.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 19 Feb 2016 15:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
+details. And one of the details is the content of the
+debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
+the code in the package in question, preferably in
+<a href="https://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/copyright-format/1.0/">machine
+readable DEP5 format</a>.</p>
+
+<p>For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
+and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
+package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters. So getting it right
+the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
+both you and the ftpmasters some work.. Today, while trying to figure
+out what was wrong with
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=686447">the
+zfsonlinux copyright file</a>, I decided to spend some time on
+figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
+semi-automatically.</p>
+
+<p>Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
+file based on the code in the source package,
+<tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/debmake">debmake</a></tt>
+and <tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/cme">cme</a></tt>. I'm
+not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
+create a sensible draft file. As far as I can tell, none of them can
+be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
+polished a bit before the file is OK to upload. I found the debmake
+option in
+<a href="http://goofying-with-debian.blogspot.com/2014/07/debmake-checking-source-against-dep-5.html">a
+blog posts from 2014</a>.
+
+<p>To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
+
+<p><pre>
+debmake -cc > debian/copyright
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
+this might not be the best option.</p>
+
+<p>The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
+this approach in
+<a href="https://ddumont.wordpress.com/2015/04/05/improving-creation-of-debian-copyright-file/">a
+blog post from 2015</a>. To generate using cme, use the 'update
+dpkg-copyright' option:
+
+<p><pre>
+cme update dpkg-copyright
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to
+handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.</p>
+
+<p>When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
+check if the file is correct. For this I found two good options,
+<tt>debmake -k</tt> and <tt>license-reconcile</tt>. The former seem
+to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
+ineffective blocks in the copyright file. The latter reports missing
+copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
+names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0). I suspect it is good to use both and
+fix all issues reported by them before uploading. But I do not know
+if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
+copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.</p>
+
+<p>The devscripts tool <tt>licensecheck</tt> deserve mentioning. It
+will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
+It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
+can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.</p>
+
+<p>Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
+debian/copyright file. Please let me know, or blog about it on
+planet.debian.org.</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">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2016-02-20</strong>: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
+on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
+
+<p><pre>
+licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
+ /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
+version control system to make it easier to discover license and
+copyright changes in the upstream source. I will try to do the same
+with my packages in the future.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Update 2016-02-21</strong>: The cme author recommended
+against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
+command line.</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>
-<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>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>
+ <title>Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 4 Feb 2016 16:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">appstream system</a>
+is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
+convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
+firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it. This can
+be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
+about. :)</p>
+
+<p>Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
+file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
+picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
+unstable. In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
+by the kernel during kernel module loading. To find the package
+providing the example file, do like this:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+% apt install appstream
+[...]
+% apt update
+[...]
+% appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
+ awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
+firmware-qlogic
+%
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>See <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines">the
+appstream wiki</a> page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
+a way appstream can use.</p>
+
+<p>This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
+given MIME type. This is very useful when you get a file you do not
+know how to handle. First find the mime type using <tt>file
+--mime-type</tt>, and next look up the package providing support for
+it. Lets say you got an SVG file. Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
+and you can find all packages handling this type like this:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+% apt install appstream
+[...]
+% apt update
+[...]
+% appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
+ awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
+bkchem
+phototonic
+inkscape
+shutter
+tetzle
+geeqie
+xia
+pinta
+gthumb
+karbon
+comix
+mirage
+viewnior
+postr
+ristretto
+kolourpaint4
+eog
+eom
+gimagereader
+midori
+%
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
+packages providing appstream metadata.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <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>
+ <title>Creepy, visualise geotagged social media information - nice free software</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Creepy__visualise_geotagged_social_media_information___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 24 Jan 2016 10:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
+with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
+position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
+time (like every time a SMS is received or sent). And if their
+computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
+mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
+also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
+during installation). And when these programs send out information to
+central collection points, the location is often included, unless
+extra care is taken to not send the location. The provided
+information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
+good and bad, depend on your point of view). What is certain, is that
+the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
+perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
+when they share their whereabouts with private and public
+entities.</p>
+
+<p align="center"><img width="70%" src="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/images/2016-01-24-nice-creepy-desktop-window.png"></p>
+
+<p>The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
+when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing. It is
+unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
+officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
+unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information. But the
+public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
+tool to do so is called
+<a href="http://www.geocreepy.com/">Creepy or Cree.py</a>. I
+discovered it when I read
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Slik-kan-du-bli-overvaket-pa-Twitter-og-Instagram-uten-a-ane-det-7787884.html">an
+article about Creepy</a> in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
+November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
+The python program was in Debian, but
+<a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/creepy">the version in
+Debian</a> was completely broken and practically unmaintained. I
+uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
+have time to fix it then. This Christmas I decided to finally try to
+get Creepy operational in Debian. Now a fixed version is available in
+Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
+are now included
+<a href="https://github.com/jkakavas/creepy">upstream</a>.</p>
+
+<p>The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
+Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
+complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
+given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
+these services. Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
+least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
+days it is impossible. This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
+configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
+information to them about your search interests. This should be taken
+into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
+about yourself with the services.</p>
+
+<p>The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
+geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
+of Norway. One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
+information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
+information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
+I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
+twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
+Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
+making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
+things. A similar technique have been
+<a href="http://www.buzzfeed.com/maxseddon/does-this-soldiers-instagram-account-prove-russia-is-covertl">used
+to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine</a>, and it is both a powerful
+tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
+understand the value of the private information they provide to the
+public.</p>
+
+<p>The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
+it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
+least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
+python-requests-toolbelt).</p>
+
+<p>(I have uploaded
+<a href="https://screenshots.debian.net/package/creepy">the image to
+screenshots.debian.net</a> and licensed it under the same terms as the
+Creepy program in Debian.)</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <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>
+ <title>Always download Debian packages using Tor - the simple recipe</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Always_download_Debian_packages_using_Tor___the_simple_recipe.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jan 2016 00:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
+<a href="https://summit.debconf.org/debconf15/meeting/331/what-is-to-be-done/">observed
+that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
+believe a computer have a given security hole</a> if it download a
+security fix from a Debian mirror. This is a good reason to always
+use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
+listening do not know which IP address to attack. In August, Richard
+Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
+to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
+download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
+<a href="http://richardhartmann.de/blog/posts/2015/08/24-Tor-enabled_Debian_mirror/">proposed
+to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror</a>. He
+was not the first to propose this, as the
+<tt><a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/apt-transport-tor">apt-transport-tor</a></tt>
+package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
+to use <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">Tor</a>, but I was not
+aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.</p>
+
+<p>Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
+sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
+Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
+it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
+making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.</p>
+
+<p>Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
+installing <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> and replacing http and https
+urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
+of the official Debian mirror site. I recommend installing
+<tt>etckeeper</tt> before you start to have a history of the changes
+done in /etc/.</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+apt install apt-transport-tor
+sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
+sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
+the sed commands for these too. The sed command is assuming your are
+using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror. Adjust the command (or just
+edit the file manually) to match your mirror.</p>
+
+<p>This work in Debian Jessie and later. Note that tools like
+<tt>apt-file</tt> only recently started using the apt transport
+system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs. For
+<tt>apt-file</tt> you need the version currently in experimental,
+which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable. So if you
+need a working <tt>apt-file</tt>, this is not for you.</p>
+
+<p>Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
+using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
+update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
+masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine. Using Tor will
+become normal for the machine in question.</p>
+
+<p>On <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">Freedombox</a>, APT
+is set up by default to use <tt>apt-transport-tor</tt> when Tor is
+enabled. It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
+system.</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>
+ <title>Nedlasting fra NRK, som Matroska med undertekster</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nedlasting_fra_NRK__som_Matroska_med_undertekster.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nedlasting_fra_NRK__som_Matroska_med_undertekster.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 2 Jan 2016 13:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Det kommer stadig nye løsninger for å ta lagre unna innslag fra NRK
+for å se på det senere. For en stund tilbake kom jeg over et script
+nrkopptak laget av Ingvar Hagelund. Han fjernet riktignok sitt script
+etter forespørsel fra Erik Bolstad i NRK, men noen tok heldigvis og
+gjorde det <a href="https://github.com/liangqi/nrkopptak">tilgjengelig
+via github</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Scriptet kan lagre som MPEG4 eller Matroska, og bake inn
+undertekster i fila på et vis som blant annet VLC forstår. For å
+bruke scriptet, kopier ned git-arkivet og kjør</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+nrkopptak/bin/nrk-opptak k <ahref="https://tv.nrk.no/serie/bmi-turne/MUHH45000115/sesong-1/episode-1">https://tv.nrk.no/serie/bmi-turne/MUHH45000115/sesong-1/episode-1</a>
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>URL-eksemplet er dagens toppsak på tv.nrk.no. Argument 'k' ber
+scriptet laste ned og lagre som Matroska. Det finnes en rekke andre
+muligheter for valg av kvalitet og format.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg foretrekker dette scriptet fremfor youtube-dl, som
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hvordan_enkelt_laste_ned_filmer_fra_NRK_med_den__nye__l_sningen.html">
+nevnt i 2014 støtter NRK</a> og en rekke andre videokilder, på grunn
+av at nrkopptak samler undertekster og video i en enkelt fil, hvilket
+gjør håndtering enklere på disk.</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 / 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 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!
-
-== Where to download ==
-
-A multi-architecture CD / usbstick image (649 MiB) for network booting
-can be downloaded at the following locations:
-
- 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 .
-
-The SHA1SUM of this image is: 54a524d16246cddd8d2cfd6ea52f2dd78c47ee0a
-
-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
-
-Sources are available from the Debian archive, see
-http://ftp.debian.org/debian-cd/8.0.0/source/ for some download
-options.
-
-== Debian Edu Jessie manual in seven languages ==
-
-Please see https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Jessie/ for
-the English version of the Debian Edu jessie manual.
-
-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.
-
-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
-
-
-== Errata / known problems ==
-
- It takes up to 15 minutes for a changed hostname to be updated via
- DHCP (#780461).
-
- The hostname script fails to update LTSP server hostname (#783087).
-
-Workaround: run update-hostname-from-ip on the client to update the
-hostname immediately.
-
-Check https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Status/Jessie for a possibly
-more current and complete list.
-
-== Some more details about Debian Edu 8.0+edu0~b1 Codename Jessie released 2015-04-25 ==
-
-=== Software updates ===
-
-Everything which is new in Debian 8 Jessie, e.g.:
-
- * 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 14.12
- * Music creator Rosegarden 14.02
- * Image editor Gimp 2.8.14
- * 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 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.
-
-=== Installation changes ===
-
- Installations done via PXE now also install firmware automatically
- for the hardware present.
-
-=== Fixed bugs ===
-
-A number of bugs have been fixed in this release; the most noticeable
-from a user perspective:
-
- * Inserting incorrect DNS information in Gosa will no longer break
- DNS completely, but instead stop DNS updates until the incorrect
- information is corrected (710362)
-
- * shutdown-at-night now shuts the system down if gdm3 is used (775608).
-
-=== Sugar desktop removed ===
-
-As the Sugar desktop was removed from Debian Jessie, it is also not
-available in Debian Edu jessie.
-
-
-== About Debian Edu / Skolelinux ==
-
-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 ==
-
-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
-the largest and most influential open source projects. Thousands of
-volunteers from all over the world work together to create and
-maintain Debian software. Available in 70 languages, and supporting a
-huge range of computer types, Debian calls itself the universal
-operating system.
-
-== Thanks ==
-
-Thanks to everyone making Debian and Debian Edu / Skolelinux happen!
-You rock.
-</pre>
+ <title>OpenALPR, find car license plates in video streams - nice free software</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/OpenALPR__find_car_license_plates_in_video_streams___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 23 Dec 2015 01:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>When I was a kid, we used to collect "car numbers", as we used to
+call the car license plate numbers in those days. I would write the
+numbers down in my little book and compare notes with the other kids
+to see how many region codes we had seen and if we had seen some
+exotic or special region codes and numbers. It was a fun game to pass
+time, as we kids have plenty of it.</p>
+
+<p>A few days I came across
+<a href="https://github.com/openalpr/openalpr">the OpenALPR
+project</a>, a free software project to automatically discover and
+report license plates in images and video streams, and provide the
+"car numbers" in a machine readable format. I've been looking for
+such system for a while now, because I believe it is a bad idea that the
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_number_plate_recognition">automatic
+number plate recognition</a> tool only is available in the hands of
+the powerful, and want it to be available also for the powerless to
+even the score when it comes to surveillance and sousveillance. I
+discovered the developer
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/747509">wanted to get the tool into
+Debian</a>, and as I too wanted it to be in Debian, I volunteered to
+help him get it into shape to get the package uploaded into the Debian
+archive.</p>
+
+<p>Today we finally managed to get the package into shape and uploaded
+it into Debian, where it currently
+<a href="https://ftp-master.debian.org//new/openalpr_2.2.1-1.html">waits
+in the NEW queue</a> for review by the Debian ftpmasters.</p>
+
+<p>I guess you are wondering why on earth such tool would be useful
+for the common folks, ie those not running a large government
+surveillance system? Well, I plan to put it in a computer on my bike
+and in my car, tracking the cars nearby and allowing me to be notified
+when number plates on my watch list are discovered. Another use case
+was suggested by a friend of mine, who wanted to set it up at his home
+to open the car port automatically when it discovered the plate on his
+car. When I mentioned it perhaps was a bit foolhardy to allow anyone
+capable of placing his license plate number of a piece of cardboard to
+open his car port, men replied that it was always unlocked anyway. I
+guess for such use case it make sense. I am sure there are other use
+cases too, for those with imagination and a vision.</p>
+
+<p>If you want to build your own version of the Debian package, check
+out the upstream git source and symlink ./distros/debian to ./debian/
+before running "debuild" to build the source. Or wait a bit until the
+package show up in unstable.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <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>
+ <title>Using appstream with isenkram to install hardware related packages in Debian</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_with_isenkram_to_install_hardware_related_packages_in_Debian.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 20 Dec 2015 12:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Around three years ago, I created
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/isenkram">the isenkram
+system</a> to get a more practical solution in Debian for handing
+hardware related packages. A GUI system in the isenkram package will
+present a pop-up dialog when some hardware dongle supported by
+relevant packages in Debian is inserted into the machine. The same
+lookup mechanism to detect packages is available as command line
+tools in the isenkram-cli package. In addition to mapping hardware,
+it will also map kernel firmware files to packages and make it easy to
+install needed firmware packages automatically. The key for this
+system to work is a good way to map hardware to packages, in other
+words, allow packages to announce what hardware they will work
+with.</p>
+
+<p>I started by providing data files in the isenkram source, and
+adding code to download the latest version of these data files at run
+time, to ensure every user had the most up to date mapping available.
+I also added support for storing the mapping in the Packages file in
+the apt repositories, but did not push this approach because while I
+was trying to figure out how to best store hardware/package mappings,
+<a href="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/appstream/docs/">the
+appstream system</a> was announced. I got in touch and suggested to
+add the hardware mapping into that data set to be able to use
+appstream as a data source, and this was accepted at least for the
+Debian version of appstream.</p>
+
+<p>A few days ago using appstream in Debian for this became possible,
+and today I uploaded a new version 0.20 of isenkram adding support for
+appstream as a data source for mapping hardware to packages. The only
+package so far using appstream to announce its hardware support is my
+pymissile package. I got help from Matthias Klumpp with figuring out
+how do add the required
+<a href="https://appstream.debian.org/html/sid/main/metainfo/pymissile.html">metadata
+in pymissile</a>. I added a file debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml with
+this content:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt;
+&lt;component&gt;
+ &lt;id&gt;pymissile&lt;/id&gt;
+ &lt;metadata_license&gt;MIT&lt;/metadata_license&gt;
+ &lt;name&gt;pymissile&lt;/name&gt;
+ &lt;summary&gt;Control original Striker USB Missile Launcher&lt;/summary&gt;
+ &lt;description&gt;
+ &lt;p&gt;
+ Pymissile provides a curses interface to control an original
+ Marks and Spencer / Striker USB Missile Launcher, as well as a
+ motion control script to allow a webcamera to control the
+ launcher.
+ &lt;/p&gt;
+ &lt;/description&gt;
+ &lt;provides&gt;
+ &lt;modalias&gt;usb:v1130p0202d*&lt;/modalias&gt;
+ &lt;/provides&gt;
+&lt;/component&gt;
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>The key for isenkram is the component/provides/modalias value,
+which is a glob style match rule for hardware specific strings
+(modalias strings) provided by the Linux kernel. In this case, it
+will map to all USB devices with vendor code 1130 and product code
+0202.</p>
+
+<p>Note, it is important that the license of all the metadata files
+are compatible to have permissions to aggregate them into archive wide
+appstream files. Matthias suggested to use MIT or BSD licenses for
+these files. A challenge is figuring out a good id for the data, as
+it is supposed to be globally unique and shared across distributions
+(in other words, best to coordinate with upstream what to use). But
+it can be changed later or, so we went with the package name as
+upstream for this project is dormant.</p>
+
+<p>To get the metadata file installed in the correct location for the
+mirror update scripts to pick it up and include its content the
+appstream data source, the file must be installed in the binary
+package under /usr/share/appdata/. I did this by adding the following
+line to debian/pymissile.install:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+debian/pymissile.metainfo.xml usr/share/appdata
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>With that in place, the command line tool isenkram-lookup will list
+all packages useful on the current computer automatically, and the GUI
+pop-up handler will propose to install the package not already
+installed if a hardware dongle is inserted into the machine in
+question.</p>
+
+<p>Details of the modalias field in appstream is available from the
+<a href="https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11">DEP-11</a> proposal.</p>
+
+<p>To locate the modalias values of all hardware present in a machine,
+try running this command on the command line:</p>
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+cat $(find /sys/devices/|grep modalias)
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>To learn more about the isenkram system, please check out
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/isenkram/">my
+blog posts tagged isenkram</a>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <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>
+ <title>Bokhandeldistribusjon av boken Fri kultur av Lawrence Lessig</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bokhandeldistribusjon_av_boken_Fri_kultur_av_Lawrence_Lessig.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bokhandeldistribusjon_av_boken_Fri_kultur_av_Lawrence_Lessig.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 14 Dec 2015 12:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p><strong>Besøk
+<a href="https://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">lulu.com</a>
+eller
+<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fri-kultur-Norwegian-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/8269018236/">Amazon</a>
+for å kjøpe boken på papir, eller last ned ebook som
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.pdf">PDF</a>,
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.epub">ePub</a>
+eller
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/raw/master/archive/freeculture.nb.mobi">MOBI</a>
+fra
+<a href="https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig/">github</a>.</strong></p>
+
+<p>Jeg ble gledelig overrasket i dag da jeg oppdaget at boken jeg har
+gitt ut
+<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fri-kultur-Norwegian-Lawrence-Lessig/dp/8269018236/">hadde
+dukket opp i Amazon</a>. Jeg hadde trodd det skulle ta lenger tid, da
+jeg fikk beskjed om at det skulle ta seks til åtte uker.
+Amazonoppføringen er et resultat av at jeg for noen uker siden
+diskuterte prissetting og håndtering av profitt med forfatteren. Det
+måtte avklares da bruksvilkårene til boken har krav om
+ikke-kommersiell bruk. Vi ble enige om at overskuddet fra salg av
+boken skal sendes til
+<a href="https://creativecommons.org/">Creative Commons-stiftelsen</a>.
+Med det på plass kunne jeg be
+<a href="https://www.lulu.com/shop/lawrence-lessig/fri-kultur/paperback/product-22441576.html">lulu.com</a>
+om å gi boken «utvidet» distribusjon. Årsaken til at
+bokhandeldistribusjon var litt utfordrende er at bokhandlere krever
+mulighet for profitt på bøkene de selger (selvfølgelig), og dermed
+måtte de få lov til å selge til høyere pris enn lulu.com. I tillegg
+er det krav om samme pris på lulu.com og i bokhandlene, dermed blir
+prisen økt også hos lulu.com. Hva skulle jeg gjøre med den profitten
+uten å bryte med klausulen om ikkekommersiell? Løsningen var å gi
+bort profitten til CC-stiftelsen. Prisen på boken ble nesten
+tredoblet, til $19.99 (ca. 160,-) pluss frakt, men synligheten øker
+betraktelig når den kan finnes i katalogene til store nettbokhandlere.
+Det betyr at hvis du allerede har kjøpt boken har du fått den veldig
+billig, og kjøper du den nå, får du den fortsatt billig samt donerer i
+tillegg noen tiere til fremme av Creative Commons.</p>
+
+<p>Mens jeg var i gang med å titte etter informasjon om boken
+oppdaget jeg at den også var dukket opp på
+<a href="https://books.google.no/books?id=uKUGCwAAQBAJ">Google
+Books</a>, der en kan lese den på web. PDF-utgaven har ennå ikke
+dukket opp hos <a href="https://www.nb.no/">Nasjonalbiblioteket</a>,
+men det regner jeg med kommer på plass i løpet av noen uker. Boken er
+heller ikke dukket opp hos
+<a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/">Barnes & Noble</a> ennå, men
+jeg antar det bare er et tidsspørsmål før dette er på plass.</p>
+
+<p>Boken er dessverre ikke tilgjengelig fra norske bokhandlere, og
+kommer neppe til å bli det med det første. Årsaken er at for å få det
+til måtte jeg personlig håndtere bestilling av bøker, hvilket jeg ikke
+er interessert i å bruke tid på. Jeg kunne betalt ca 2000,- til
+<a href="http://www.bokbasen.no/">den norske bokbasen</a>, en felles
+database over bøker tilgjengelig for norske bokhandlere, for å få en
+oppføring der, men da måtte jeg tatt imot bestillinger på epost og
+sendt ut bøker selv. Det ville krevd at jeg var klar til å
+sende ut bøker på kort varsel, dvs. holdt meg med ekstra bøker,
+konvolutter og frimerker. Bokbasen har visst ikke opplegg for å be
+bokhandlene bestille direkte via web, så jeg droppet oppføring der.
+Jeg har spurt Haugen bok og Tronsmo direkte på epost om de er
+interessert i å ta inn boken i sin bestillingskatalog, men ikke fått
+svar, så jeg antar de ikke er interessert. Derimot har jeg fått en
+hyggelig henvendelse fra Biblioteksentralen som fortalte at de har
+lagt den inn i sin database slik at deres bibliotekskunder enkelt kan
+bestille den via dem.</p>
+
+<p>Boken er i følge
+<a href="http://bibsys-almaprimo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo_library/libweb/action/display.do?tabs=detailsTab&ct=display&fn=search&doc=BIBSYS_ILS71518423420002201&indx=1&recIds=BIBSYS_ILS71518423420002201&recIdxs=0&elementId=0&renderMode=poppedOut&displayMode=full&frbrVersion=&dscnt=0&tab=library_catalogue&dstmp=1448543801124&vl(freeText0)=fri%20kultur&vid=UBO&mode=Basic">Bibsys/Oria</a>
+og bokdatabasen til
+<a href="https://www.deich.folkebibl.no/cgi-bin/websok?tnr=1819617">Deichmanske</a>
+tilgjengelig fra flere biblioteker allerede, og alle eksemplarer er
+visst allerede utlånt med ventetid. Det synes jeg er veldig gledelig
+å se. Jeg håper mange kommer til å lese boken. Jeg tror den er
+spesielt egnet for foreldre og bekjente av oss nerder for å forklare
+hva slags problemer vi ser med dagens opphavsrettsregime.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <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>
+ <title>The GNU General Public License is not magic pixie dust</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_GNU_General_Public_License_is_not_magic_pixie_dust.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 30 Nov 2015 09:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A blog post from my fellow Debian developer Paul Wise titled
+"<a href="http://bonedaddy.net/pabs3/log/2015/11/27/sfc-supporter/">The
+GPL is not magic pixie dust</a>" explain the importance of making sure
+the <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> is enforced.
+I quote the blog post from Paul in full here with his permission:<p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p><a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/"><img src="https://sfconservancy.org/img/supporter-badge.png" width="194" height="90" alt="Become a Software Freedom Conservancy Supporter!" align="right" border="0" /></a></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+The GPL is not magic pixie dust. It does not work by itself.<br/>
+
+The first step is to choose a
+<a href="https://copyleft.org/">copyleft</a> license for your
+code.<br/>
+
+The next step is, when someone fails to follow that copyleft license,
+<b>it must be enforced</b><br/>
+
+and its a simple fact of our modern society that such type of
+work<br/>
+
+is incredibly expensive to do and incredibly difficult to do.
+</blockquote>
+
+<p><small>-- <a href="http://ebb.org/bkuhn/">Bradley Kuhn</a>, in
+<a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in Freedom">FaiF</a>
+<a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode
+0x57</a></small></p>
+
+<p>As the Debian Website
+<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/794116">used</a>
+<a href="https://anonscm.debian.org/viewvc/webwml/webwml/english/intro/free.wml?r1=1.24&amp;r2=1.25">to</a>
+imply, public domain and permissively licensed software can lead to
+the production of more proprietary software as people discover useful
+software, extend it and or incorporate it into their hardware or
+software products. Copyleft licenses such as the GNU GPL were created
+to close off this avenue to the production of proprietary software but
+such licenses are not enough. With the ongoing adoption of Free
+Software by individuals and groups, inevitably the community's
+expectations of license compliance are violated, usually out of
+ignorance of the way Free Software works, but not always. As Karen
+and Bradley explained in <a href="http://faif.us/" title="Free as in
+Freedom">FaiF</a>
+<a href="http://faif.us/cast/2015/nov/24/0x57/">episode 0x57</a>,
+copyleft is nothing if no-one is willing and able to stand up in court
+to protect it. The reality of today's world is that legal
+representation is expensive, difficult and time consuming. With
+<a href="http://gpl-violations.org/">gpl-violations.org</a> in hiatus
+<a href="http://gpl-violations.org/news/20151027-homepage-recovers/">until</a>
+some time in 2016, the <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/">Software
+Freedom Conservancy</a> (a tax-exempt charity) is the major defender
+of the Linux project, Debian and other groups against GPL violations.
+In March the SFC supported a
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/mar/05/vmware-lawsuit/">lawsuit
+by Christoph Hellwig</a> against VMware for refusing to
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/vmware-lawsuit-faq.html">comply
+with the GPL</a> in relation to their use of parts of the Linux
+kernel. Since then two of their sponsors pulled corporate funding and
+conferences
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">blocked
+or cancelled their talks</a>. As a result they have decided to rely
+less on corporate funding and more on the broad community of
+individuals who support Free Software and copyleft. So the SFC has
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/23/2015fundraiser/">launched</a>
+a <a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">campaign</a> to create
+a community of folks who stand up for copyleft and the GPL by
+supporting their work on promoting and supporting copyleft and Free
+Software.</p>
+
+<p>If you support Free Software,
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/26/like-what-I-do/">like</a>
+what the SFC do, agree with their
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/linux-compliance/principles.html">compliance
+principles</a>, are happy about their
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">successes</a> in 2015,
+work on a project that is an SFC
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/members/current/">member</a> and or
+just want to stand up for copyleft, please join
+<a href="https://identi.ca/cwebber/image/JQGPA4qbTyyp3-MY8QpvuA">Christopher
+Allan Webber</a>,
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2015/nov/24/faif-carols-fundraiser/">Carol
+Smith</a>,
+<a href="http://www.jonobacon.org/2015/11/25/supporting-software-freedom-conservancy/">Jono
+Bacon</a>, myself and
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/sponsors/#supporters">others</a> in
+becoming a
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/supporter/">supporter</a>. For the
+next week your donation will be
+<a href="https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/nov/27/black-friday/">matched</a>
+by an anonymous donor. Please also consider asking your employer to
+match your donation or become a sponsor of SFC. Don't forget to
+spread the word about your support for SFC via email, your blog and or
+social media accounts.</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>I agree with Paul on this topic and just signed up as a Supporter
+of Software Freedom Conservancy myself. Perhaps you should be a
+supporter too?</p>
</description>
</item>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff