- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Notes_on_language_codes_for_Norwegian_docbook_processing___.html">Notes on language codes for Norwegian docbook processing...</a></div>
- <div class="date">10th August 2012</div>
- <div class="body"><p>In <a href="http://www.docbook.org/">docbook</a> one can specify
-the language used at the top, and the processing pipeline will use
-this information to pick the correct translations for 'chapter', 'see
-also', 'index' etc. And for most languages used with docbook, I guess
-this work just fine. For example a German user can start the document
-with <book lang="de">, and the document will show up with the
-correct content with any of the docbook processors. This is not the
-case for the language
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Culture_in_Norwegian___5_chapters_done__74_percent_left_to_do.html">I
-am working with at the moment</a>, Norwegian Bokmål.</p>
-
-<p>For a while, I was confused about which language code to use,
-because I was unable to find any language code that would work across
-all tools. I am currently testing dblatex, xmlto, docbook-xsl, and
-dbtoepub, and they do not handle Norwegian Bokmål the same way. Some
-of them do not handle it at all.</p>
-
-<p>A bit of background information is probably needed to understand
-this mess. Norwegian is not one, but two written variants. The
-variants are Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål. There are three
-two letter language codes associated with these languages, Norwegian
-is 'no', Norwegian Nynorsk is 'nn' and Norwegian Bokmål is 'nb'.
-Historically the 'no' language code was used for Norwegian Bokmål, but
-many years ago this was found to be å bad idea, and the recommendation
-is to use the most specific language code instead, to avoid confusion.
-In the transition period it is a good idea to make sure 'no' was an
-alias for 'nb'.</p>
-
-<p>Back to docbook processing tools in Debian. The dblatex tool only
-understand 'nn'. There are translations for 'no', but not 'nb' (BTS
-<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/684391">#684391</a>), but due to a bug
-(BTS <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/682936">#682936</a>) the 'no'
-language code is not recognised. The docbook-xsl tool chain only
-recognise 'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The xmlto tool only recognise
-'nn' and 'nb', but not 'no'. The end result that there is no language
-code I can use to get the docbook file working with all of these tools
-at the same time. :(</p>
-
-<p>The correct solution is to use <book lang="nb">, but it will
-take time before that will work with all the free software docbook
-processors. :(</p>
-
-<p>Oh, the joy of well integrated tools. :/</p>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html">A word on bitcoin support in Debian</a></div>
+ <div class="date">21st December 2012</div>
+ <div class="body"><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
+owe 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 an 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 contains 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 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 blockexplorer service</a>. Thank you everyone for your
+donation. The blockexplorer service demonstrates 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>