+The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
+distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
+integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
+administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
+based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
+well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
+when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
+showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
+mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
+same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
+setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
+workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
+thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
+convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
+projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
+small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
+have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
+clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
+old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
+nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
+comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
+such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
+quicker to update.
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
+we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
+year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
+sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
+to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
+a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
+
+<p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
+install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
+distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
+That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
+Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
+to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
+support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
+software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
+need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
+some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
+run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
+education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
+by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
+education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
+are done. This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
+
+<p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
+magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
+market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
+world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
+to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
+are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
+edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
+there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
+
+<p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
+the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
+Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
+Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
+tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
+program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
+studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
+want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
+things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
+have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
+fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
+one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
+because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
+sound file.</p>
+
+<p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
+will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
+they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
+look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
+programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
+as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
+program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
+learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
+the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
+only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
+to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
+)</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
+source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
+it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
+flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
+will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
+students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
+clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
+idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
+the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
+open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
+problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
+will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
+support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
+desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
+level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
+
+<p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
+useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
+article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
+management with Airtime</a>,
+<a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
+claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
+<a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
+be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
+useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Why do schools waste money on IT?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 8 Jul 2012 09:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>In the Debian Edu / Skolelinux project, we have realised that one
+of the major blockers for the project success is the purchasing skills
+in schools and municipalities. We provide what the happy users of
+Debian Edu / Skolelinux say they need and to a lower cost than the
+alternatives, and yet so few schools decide to use our solution. I
+was pleased to discover the same observation done by mySociety and Tom
+Steinberg in his blog post
+"<a href="http://www.mysociety.org/2012/06/19/can-you-recognize-the-million-pound-chair/">Can
+you recognize the million pound chair?</a>". Read it and weep for the
+spending of your tax money.</p>
+
+<p>Of course there are other factors involved as well, like our
+projects bad marketing skills and the Linux community fragmentation
+causing worry with the people on the outside, so we as a project need
+to keep working hard to gain users, but it is a up-hill battle when
+public decision makers are unable to understand computer system
+purchases.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 7 Jul 2012 09:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Included in <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
+Skolelinux</a> is a large collection of end user and school specific
+software. It is one of the packages not installed by default but
+provided in the Debian archive for schools to install if they want to,
+is a system to automatically plan the school time table using
+information about available teachers, classes and rooms, combined with
+the list of required courses and how many hours each topic should
+receive. The software is
+
+<a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/">named FET</a>, and it provide a
+graphical user interface to input the required information, save the
+result in a fairly simple XML format, and generate time tables for
+both teachers and students. It is available both for
+<a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/download.html">Linux, MacOSX and
+Windows</a>.</p>
+
+<p>This is <a href="http://lalescu.ro/liviu/fet/features.html">the
+feature list</a>, liftet from the project web site:</p>
+
+<p><ul>
+
+ <li>FET is free software, licensed under the GNU GPL v2 or later.
+ You can freely use, copy, modify and redistribute it </li>
+
+ <li>Localized to en_US (US English, default), ar (Arabic), ca
+ (Catalan), da (Danish), de (German), el (Greek), es (Spanish), fa
+ (Persian), fr (French), gl (Galician), he (Hebrew), hu
+ (Hungarian), id (Indonesian), it (Italian), lt (Lithuanian), mk
+ (Macedonian), ms (Malay), nl (Dutch), pl (Polish), pt_BR
+ (Brazilian Portuguese), ro (Romanian), ru (Russian), si (Sinhala),
+ sk (Slovak), sr (Serbian), tr (Turkish), uk (Ukrainian), uz
+ (Uzbek) and vi (Vietnamese) (incompletely for some languages)
+ </li>
+
+ <li>Fully automatic generation algorithm, allowing also
+ semi-automatic or manual allocation</li>
+
+ <li>Platform independent implementation, allowing running on
+ GNU/Linux, Windows, Mac and any system that Qt supports </li>
+
+ <li>Flexible modular XML format for the input file, allowing editing
+ with an XML editor or by hand (besides FET interface)</li>
+
+ <li>Import/export from CSV format</li>
+
+ <li>The resulted timetables are exported into HTML, XML and CSV
+ formats </li>
+
+ <li>Flexible students structure, organized into sets: years, groups
+ and subgroups. FET allows overlapping years and groups and
+ non-overlapping subgroups. You can even define individual students
+ (as separate sets)</li>
+
+ <li>Each constraint has a weight percentage, from 0.0% to 100.0%
+ (but some special constraints are allowed to have only 100% weight
+ percentage)</li>
+
+ <li>Limits for the algorithm (all these limits can be increased on
+ demand, as a custom version, because this would require a bit more
+ memory):
+ <ul>
+ <li>Maximum total number of hours (periods) per day: 60</li>
+ <li>Maximum number of working days per week: 35</li>
+ <li>Maximum total number of teachers: 6000</li>
+ <li>Maximum total number of sets of students: 30000</li>
+ <li>Maximum total number of subjects: 6000</li>
+ <li>Virtually unlimited number of activity tags</li>
+ <li>Maximum number of activities: 30000</li>
+ <li>Maximum number of rooms: 6000</li>
+ <li>Maximum number of buildings: 6000</li>
+ <li>Possibility of adding multiple teachers and
+ students sets for each activity. (it is possible
+ also to have no teachers or no students sets for an
+ activity)</li>
+ <li>Virtually unlimited number of time constraints</li>
+ <li>Virtually unlimited number of space constraints</li>
+ </ul></li>
+
+ <li>A large and flexible palette of time constraints:
+ <ul>
+ <li>Break periods</li>
+ <li>For teacher(s):
+ <ul>
+ <li>Not available periods</li>
+ <li>Max/min days per week</li>
+ <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
+ <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
+ <li>Min hours daily</li>
+ <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
+
+ <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
+ days per week</li>
+ </ul></li>
+ <li>For students (sets):
+ <ul>
+ <li>Not available periods</li>
+ <li>Begins early (specify max allowed beginnings at second hour)</li>
+ <li>Max gaps per day/week</li>
+ <li>Max hours daily/continuously</li>
+ <li>Min hours daily</li>
+ <li>Max hours daily/continuously with an activity tag</li>
+
+ <li>Respect working in an hourly interval a max number of
+ days per week</li>
+ </ul></li>
+ <li>For an activity or a set of activities/subactivities:
+ <ul>
+ <li>A single preferred starting time</li>
+ <li>A set of preferred starting times</li>
+ <li>A set of preferred time slots</li>
+ <li>Min/max days between them</li>
+ <li>End(s) students day</li>
+ <li>Same starting time/day/hour</li>
+ <li>Occupy max time slots from selection (a complex and
+ flexible constraint, useful in many situations)</li>
+ <li>Consecutive, ordered, grouped (for 2 or 3 (sub)activities)</li>
+ <li>Not overlapping</li>
+ <li>Max simultaneous in selected time slots</li>
+ <li>Min gaps between a set of (sub)activities</li>
+ </ul></li>
+ </ul></li>
+
+ <li>A large and flexible palette of space constraints:
+ <ul>
+ <li>Room not available periods</li>
+ <li>For teacher(s):
+ <ul>
+ <li>Home room(s)</li>
+ <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
+ <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+
+ <li>For students (sets):
+ <ul>
+ <li>Home room(s)</li>
+ <li>Max building changes per day/week</li>
+ <li>Min gaps between building changes</li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+ <li>Preferred room(s):
+ <ul>
+ <li>For a subject</li>
+ <li>For an activity tag</li>
+ <li>For a subject and an activity tag</li>
+ <li>Individually for a (sub)activity</li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+
+ <li>For a set of activities:
+ <ul>
+ <li>Occupy a maximum number of different rooms</li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+ </ul>
+ </li>
+</ul></p>
+
+<p>I have not used it myself, as I am not involved in time table
+planning at a school, but it seem to work fine when I test it. If you
+need to set up your schools time table, and is tired of doing it
+manually, check it out.
+
+A quick summary on how to use it can be found in
+<a href="http://marvelsoft.co.in/wp/2012/03/generate-timetable-for-state-cbse-icse-igcse-schools-free/">a
+blog post from MarvelSoft</a>. If you find FET useful, please provide
+a recipe for the Debian Edu project in the
+<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu#Howtos">Debian Edu HowTo
+section</a>.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Mer oppfølging fra MPEG-LA om avtale med dem for å kringkaste og publisere H.264-video</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Mer_oppf_lging_fra_MPEG_LA_om_avtale_med_dem_for___kringkaste_og_publisere_H_264_video.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Mer_oppf_lging_fra_MPEG_LA_om_avtale_med_dem_for___kringkaste_og_publisere_H_264_video.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 5 Jul 2012 23:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>I føljetongen om H.264
+<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">forlot
+jeg leserne i undring</a> om hvor pakken fra MPEG-LA tok veien, og om
+hvilke selskaper i Norge som har avtale med MPEG-LA. Da Ryan hos
+MPEG-LA dro på ferie sendte jeg min melding videre til hans kollega,
+og dagen etter fikk jeg følgende svar derfra:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Date: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 18:32:34 +0000
+<br>From: Sidney Wolf &lt;SWolf (at) mpegla.com&gt;
+<br>To: Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere (at) hungry.com&gt;
+<br>Cc: Ryan Rodriguez &lt;RRodriguez (at) mpegla.com&gt;
+<br>Subject: RE: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?</p>
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Reinholdtsen,</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for your message. As you know, Ryan is currently our of the
+office, so it will be my pleasure to assist you.</p>
+
+<p>Per your request, attached please find an electronic copy of the
+AVC Patent Portfolio License. Please note that the electronic copy of
+the License is provided as a convenience and for informational
+purposes only. When concluding the Licenses, only the hard copies
+provided by MPEG LA may be used.</p>
+
+<p>To your question, MPEG LA lists our Licensees on our website
+according to each program. The lists are in alphabetical order, so it
+is very easy to search.</p>
+
+<p>I hope that this was helpful. If we can be of additional
+assistance, please let me know.</p>
+
+<p>Kind regards,</p>
+
+<p>Sidney A. Wolf
+<br>Manager, Global Licensing
+<br>MPEG LA</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Selv om et epostvedlegg er nyttig for mottakeren, så håpet jeg å få
+et dokument jeg kunne dele med alle leserne av bloggen min, og ikke et
+som må deles på individuell basis. Opphavsretten krever godkjenning
+fra rettighetsinnehaver før en kan gjøre slikt, så dermed fulgte jeg
+opp med et spørsmål om dette var greit.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Date: Wed, 4 Jul 2012 20:25:06 +0200
+<br>From: Petter Reinholdtsen &lt;pere (at) hungry.com&gt;
+<br>To: Sidney Wolf &lt;SWolf (at) mpegla.com&gt;
+<br>Cc: Ryan Rodriguez &lt;RRodriguez (at) mpegla.com&gt;
+<br>Subject: Re: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for your reply.</p>
+
+<p>[Sidney Wolf]
+<br>&gt; Per your request, attached please find an electronic copy of the AVC
+<br>&gt; Patent Portfolio License. Please note that the electronic copy of
+<br>&gt; the License is provided as a convenience and for informational
+<br>&gt; purposes only. When concluding the Licenses, only the hard copies
+<br>&gt; provided by MPEG LA may be used.</p>
+
+<p>This is useful for me to learn, but the reason I asked for the
+Internet address of the licensing document was to ensure I could
+publish a link to it when I discuss the topic of H.264 licensing here
+in Norway, and allow others to verify my observations. I can not do
+the same with an email attachment. Thus I would like to ask you if it
+is OK with MPEG LA that I publish this document on the Internet for
+others to read?</p>
+
+<p>&gt; To your question, MPEG LA lists our Licensees on our website
+<br>&gt; according to each program. The lists are in alphabetical order, so
+<br>&gt; it is very easy to search.</p>
+
+<p>I am afraid this do not help me locate Norwegian companies in the
+list of Licensees. I do not know the name of all companies and
+organisations in Norway, and thus do not know how to locate the
+Norwegian ones on that list.</p>
+
+<p>&gt; I hope that this was helpful. If we can be of additional assistance,
+<br>&gt; please let me know.</p>
+
+<p>Absoutely helpful to learn more about how MPEG LA handle licensing.</p>
+
+<p>--
+<br>Happy hacking
+<br>Petter Reinholdtsen</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Jeg håpet også at det skulle være mulig å få vite hvilke av de
+mange hundre som har avtale med MPEG-LA om bruk av H.264 som holdt til
+i Norge. Begge mine håp falt i grus med svaret fra MPEG-LA.
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 17:42:39 +0000
+<br>From: Sidney Wolf &lt;SWolf (at) mpegla.com&gt;
+<br>To: 'Petter Reinholdtsen' &lt;pere (at) hungry.com&gt;
+<br>Cc: Ryan Rodriguez &lt;RRodriguez (at) mpegla.com&gt;
+<br>Subject: RE: Do NRK have a license agreement with MPEG-LA?</p>
+
+<p>Dear Mr. Reinholdtsen,</p>
+
+<p>Thank you for your reply.</p>
+
+<p>We appreciate the additional explanation you have provided and for
+asking our permission to publish the electronic copy of the License in
+advance of doing so. Typically, MPEG LA prefers to distribute the
+electronic copies of our Licenses to interested parties. Therefore,
+please feel free to send interested parties to the AVC portion of our
+website, http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Intro.aspx for
+their further reference.</p>
+
+<p>As previously mentioned, MPEG LA maintains a list of Licensees in good
+standing on our website according to each program. Due to the large
+volume of Licensees, it would be administratively impractical to
+provide this level of detail to interested parties. Therefore, I am
+afraid we are not in a position to assist you with your request.</p>
+
+<p>Kind regards,</p>
+
+<p>Sidney A. Wolf
+<br>Manager, Global Licensing
+<br>MPEG LA</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Men takket være epostvedlegget kunne jeg søke på Google etter
+setningen "WHEREAS, a video standard commonly referred to as AVC has
+been defined and is referred to in this Agreement as the “AVC
+Standard” (as more fully defined herein below)" som finnes i avtalen,
+og lokalisere en kopi fra 2007 av
+<a href="http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1342960/000119312509050004/dex1024.htm">lisensavtalen
+mellom MPEG-LA og DivX, Inc.</a>, slik at mine lesere kan se hvordan
+avtalen så ut da. Jeg har ikke sammenlignet tekstene for å se om noe
+har endret seg siden den tid, men satser på at teksten er representativ.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg aner fortsatt ikke hvor FedEx tok veien med pakken fra
+MPEG-LA.</p>
+
+<p>Update 2012-07-06: Jeg er visst ikke den første som forsøker å få
+klarhet i problemstillinger rundt H.264, og kom nettopp over en veldig
+interessant bloggpost fra 2010 hos LibreVideo med tittelen
+"<a href="http://www.librevideo.org/blog/2010/06/14/mpeg-la-answers-some-questions-about-avch-264-licensing/">MPEG-LA
+answers some questions about AVC/H.264 licensing</a>. Anbefales!</p>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff