<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
+ <item>
+ <title>GnuCOBOL, a free platform to learn and use COBOL - nice free software</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The curiosity got the better of me when
+<a href="https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/04/06/1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers">Slashdot
+reported</a> that New Jersey was desperately looking for
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL">COBOL</a> programmers,
+and a few days later it was reported that
+<a href="https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce">IBM
+tried to locate COBOL programmers</a>.</p>
+
+<p>I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
+learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
+<a href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/">GnuCOBOL</a> was
+already <a href="https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol">in
+Debian</a>. It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a "compiler"
+transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
+Studio to build binaries.</p>
+
+<p>I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
+quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
+taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced. A
+new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.</p>
+
+<p>Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
+introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs. It was fun to
+learn a new programming language. If you want to test for yourself,
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL">the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
+page</a> have a few simple examples to get you startet.</p>
+
+<p>As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
+standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
+test suite, which sound good to me. It is nice to know it is possible
+to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
+very happy such nice free software project as this is available. If
+you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.</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>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Totalovervåkning av innbyggernes bevegelser - nei takk!</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Totaloverv_kning_av_innbyggernes_bevegelser___nei_takk_.html</link>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>What would it cost to store all 2018 phone calls in Norway?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_2018_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_2018_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Mon, 25 Nov 2019 20:15:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Four years ago, I did a back of the envelope calculation on
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/What_would_it_cost_to_store_all_phone_calls_in_Norway_.html">how
-much it would cost to store audio recordings of all the phone calls in
-Norway</a>, and came up with NOK 2.1 million / EUR 250 000 for the
-year 2013. It is time to repeat the calculation using updated
-numbers. The calculation is based on how much data storage is needed
-for each minute of audio, how many minutes all the calls in Norway
-sums up to, multiplied by the cost of data storage.</p>
-
-<p>The number of phone call minutes for 2018 was fetched from
-<a href="https://ekomstatistikken.nkom.no/">the NKOM statistics
-site</a>, and for 2018, land line calls are listed as 434 238 000
-minutes, while mobile phone calls are listed with 7 542 006 000
-minutes. The total number of minutes is thus 7 976 244 000. For
-simplicity, I decided to ignore any advantages in audio compression the
-last four years, and continue to assume 60 Kbytes/min as the last
-time.</p>
-
-<p>Storage prices still varies a lot, but as last time, I decide to
-take a reasonable big and cheap hard drive, and double its price to
-include the surrounding costs into account. A 10 TB disk cost less
-than 4500 NOK / 450 EUR these days, and doubling it give 9000 NOK per
-10 TB.</p>
-
-<p>So, with the parameters in place, lets update the old table
-estimating cost for calls in a given year:</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">1 170 000 / 117 000</td></tr>
-
-<tr><td>2012</td><td align="right">18 000 000 000</td><td align="right">1.0 PiB</td><td align="right">900 000 / 90 000</td></tr>
-
-<tr><td>2013</td><td align="right">17 000 000 000</td><td align="right">950 TiB</td><td align="right">855 000 / 85 500</td></tr>
-
-<tr><td>2018</td><td align="right">7 976 244 000</td><td align="right">445 TiB</td><td align="right">401 100 / 40 110</td></tr>
-</table>
-
-<p>Both the cost of storage and the number of phone call minutes have
-dropped since the last time, bringing the cost down to a level where I
-guess even small organizations can afford to store the audio recording
-from every phone call taken in a year in Norway. Of course, this is
-just the cost of buying the storage equipment. Maintenance, need to
-be included as well, but the volume of a single year is about a single
-rack of hard drives, so it is not much more than I could fit in my own
-home. Wonder how much the electricity bill would raise if I had that
-kind of storage? I doubt it would be more than a few tens of thousand
-NOK per year.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
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