<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>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>It has been a while since I wrote about
+<a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">bitcoin</a>, the decentralised
+peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
+have been busy elsewhere. But two days ago, I started looking at the
+state of <a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin">bitcoin in
+Debian</a> again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet. The package
+is now maintained by a
+<a href="https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/">team of
+people</a>, and the grunt work had already been done by this team. We
+own a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
+But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
+Wheezy. It is only available in Sid (and a outdated client from
+backports). The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
+it from entering testing. To try to help the team and improve the
+situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
+reports. I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
+Corallo in a
+<a href="https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin">PPA for
+Ubuntu</a>, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
+Debian package. </p>
+
+<p>After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
+IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
+improve the package. It now contain fixes for the RC issues (not from
+me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
+package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
+setup. As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
+<a href="http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html">a
+patch to backport</a> the latest version. Jonas is going to look at
+it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
+new version to unstable.
+
+<p>I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
+centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system. I
+find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
+transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
+that the major credit card companies can block legal money
+transactions to Wikileaks. But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
+need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
+they sell products and services. Improving the bitcoin support in
+Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
+Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
+pay with bitcoin is still not very good. The bitcoin: URI is a step
+in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
+use. Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire it up to do a
+quick transaction. I believe there are other clients available, but
+have not tested them.</p>
+
+<p>My
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html">experiment
+with bitcoins</a> showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
+I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
+years ago, as can be
+<a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">seen
+on the blockexploer service</a>. Thank you everyone for your
+donation. The blockexploer service demonstrate quite well that
+bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
+number of users have gone up since then. If you use bitcoin and want
+to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
+the same address as last time,
+<b><a href="bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a></b>.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Piratpartiet på opphavs-retrett?</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Piratpartiet_p__opphavs_retrett_.html</link>
</description>
</item>
- <item>
- <title>Debian Edu interview: Angela Fuß</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Angela_Fu_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Wed, 14 Nov 2012 21:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
- <description><p>Here is another interview with one of the people in the <a
-href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
-community. I am running short on people willing to be interviewed, so
-if you know about someone I should interview, Please send me an email.
-After asking for many months, I finally managed to lure another one of
-the people behind the German
-"<a href="http://wiki.it-zukunft-schule.de/">IT-Zukunft Schule</a>"
-project out from maternity leave to conduct an interview. Give a warm
-welcome to Angela Fuß. :)</p>
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I am a 39-year-old woman living in the very north of Germany near
-Denmark. I live in a patchwork family with "my man" Mike Gabriel, my
-two daughters, Mikes daughter and Mikes and my rather newborn son.
-
-<p>At the moment - because of our little baby - I am spending most of
-the day by being a caring and organising mom for all the kids.
-Besides that I am really involved into and occupied with several inner
-growth processes: New born souls always bring the whole familiar
-system into movement and that needs time and focus ;-). We are also
-in the middle of buying a house and moving to it.</p>
-
-<p>In 2013 I will work again in my job in a German foundation for
-nature conservation. I am doing public relation work there. Besides
-that - and that is the connection to Skolelinux / Debian Edu - I am
-working in our own school project "IT-Zukunft Schule" in North
-Germany. I am responsible for the quality assurance, the customer
-relationship management and the communication processes in the
-project.</p>
-
-<p>Since 2001 I constantly have been training myself in communication
-and leadership. Besides that I am a forester, a landscaping gardener
-and a yoga teacher.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I fell in love with Mike ;-).</p>
-
-<p>Very soon after getting to know him I was completely enrolled into
-Free Software. At this time Mike did IT-services for one newly
-founded school in Kiel. Other schools in Kiel needed concepts for
-their IT environment. Often when Mike came home from working at the
-newly founded school I found myself listening to his complaints about
-several points where the communication with the schools head or the
-teachers did not work. So we were clear that he would not work for
-one more school if we did not set up a structure for communication
-between him, the schools head, the teachers, the students and the
-parents.</p>
-
-<p>Together with our friend and hardware supplier Andreas Buchholz we
-started to get an overview of free software solutions suitable for
-schools. One day before Christmas 2010 Mike and I had a date with Kurt
-Gramlich in Gütersloh. As Kurt and I are really interested in building
-networks of people and in being in communication we dived into
-Skolelinux and brought it to the first grammar schools in Northern
-Germany.</p>
-
-<p>For information about our school project you can read
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html">the
-interview with Mike Gabriel</a>.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>First I have to say: I cannot answer this question technically. My
-answer comes rather from a social point of view.</p>
-
-<p>The biggest advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu I see is the large
-and strong international community of Debian Developers in the
-background which is very alive and connected over mailinglists, blogs
-and meetings. My constant feeling for the Debian Community is: If
-something does not work they will somehow fix it. All is well
-;-). This is of course a user experience. What I also get as a big
-advantage of Skolelinux / Debian Edu is that everybody who uses it and
-works with it can also contribute to it - that includes students,
-teachers, parents...</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I will answer this question relating to the internal structure of
-Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
-
-<p>What I see as a major disadvantage is that there is a gap between
-the group of developers for Debian Edu and the people who make the
-marketing, that means the people that bring Skolelinux to the
-schools. There is a lack of communication between these two groups and
-I think that does not really work for Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
-
-<p>Further I appreciate that Skolelinux / Debian Edu is known as a
-do-ocracy. Nevertheless I keep asking myself if at some points a
-democracy or some kind of hierarchical project structure would be good
-and helpful. I am also missing some kind of contact between the
-Skolelinux / Debian Edu communities in Europe or on an international
-level. I think it would be good if there was more sharing between the
-different countries using Skolelinux / Debian Edu.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>On my laptop I am still using an Ubuntu 10.04 with a Gnome Desktop
-on. As applications I use Openoffice.org, Gedit, Firefox, Pidgin,
-LaTeX and GnuCash. For mails I am using Horde. And I am really fond of
-my N900 running with Maemo.</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 am really convinced that in our school project "IT-Zukunft
-Schule" we have developed (and keep developing) a great way to get
-schools to use Free Software. We have written a detailed concept for
-that so I cannot explain the whole thing here. But in a nutshell the
-strategy has three crucial pillars:</p>
-
-<ul>
-
-<li>We really take time to get what sort of stories, questions and
-concerns the schools head and the teachers have about using different
-kinds of IT and we take time to enrol them into Free Software.</li>
-
-<li>Our solution for schools is never just technical. In the centre
-are always the people who are going to use the software. From the very
-beginning of the planning for a school, we tell the schools head that
-they are paying us not only for a technical solution for their school,
-they also pay us for leading all the communication processes
-needed. If they do not want that, we are not working with them because
-we cannot give a guarantee for the quality of our work then.</li>
-
-<li>Another focus lies in the training of teachers and students in
-co-administrating the IT-System at their school. They start getting in
-contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu community and they get the
-offer to become more and more independent from us.</li>
-
-</ul>
-</description>
- </item>
-
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