- <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>Lawrence Lessig interviewed Edward Snowden a year ago</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lawrence_Lessig_interviewed_Edward_Snowden_a_year_ago.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Lawrence_Lessig_interviewed_Edward_Snowden_a_year_ago.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 19 Oct 2015 11:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Last year, <a href="https://lessig2016.us/">US president candidate
+in the Democratic Party</a> Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden. The
+one hour interview was
+<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_Sr96TFQQE">published by
+Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube</a>, and the meeting took
+place 2014-10-20.</p>
+
+<p>The questions are very good, and there is lots of useful
+information to be learned and very interesting issues to think about
+being raised. Please check it out.</p>
+
+<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/o_Sr96TFQQE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>
+
+<p>I find it especially interesting to hear again that Snowden did try
+to bring up his reservations through the official channels without any
+luck. It is in sharp contrast to the answers made 2013-11-06 by the
+Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg to the Norwegian Parliament,
+<a href="https://tale.holderdeord.no/speeches/s131106/68">claiming
+Snowden is no Whistle-Blower</a> because he should have taken up his
+concerns internally and using official channels. It make me sad
+that this is the political leadership we have here in Norway.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>The Story of Aaron Swartz - Let us all weep!</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aaron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/The_Story_of_Aaron_Swartz___Let_us_all_weep_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 8 Oct 2015 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>The movie "<a href="http://www.takepart.com/internets-own-boy">The
+Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz</a>" is both inspiring
+and depressing at the same time. The work of Aaron Swartz has
+inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he
+was able to initiate or complete. I wish I am able to do as much good
+in my life as he did in his. Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is
+inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on
+improving the society and this world. And it is depressing in
+documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is
+corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for
+downloading too many scientific articles. Aaron is dead. Let us all
+weep.</p>
+
+<p>The movie is also available on
+<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXr-2hwTk58">Youtube</a>. I
+wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to
+my parents.</p>