<atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
<item>
- <title>HTC One X - Your video? What do you mean?</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/HTC_One_X___Your_video___What_do_you_mean_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>In <a href="http://www.idg.no/computerworld/article243690.ece">an
-article today</a> published by Computerworld Norway, the photographer
-<a href="http://www.urke.com/eirik/">Eirik Helland Urke</a> reports
-that the video editor application included with
-<a href="http://www.htc.com/www/smartphones/htc-one-x/#specs">HTC One
-X</a> have some quite surprising terms of use. The article is mostly
-based on the twitter message from mister Urke, stating:
+ <title>Trenger en avtale med MPEG-LA for å publisere og kringkaste H.264-video?</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Trenger_en_avtale_med_MPEG_LA_for___publisere_og_kringkaste_H_264_video_.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Thu, 21 Jun 2012 13:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Trengs det avtale med MPEG-LA for å ha lovlig rett til å
+distribuere og kringkaste video i MPEG4 eller med videokodingen H.264?
+<a href="http://webmink.com/essays/h-264/">H.264 og MPEG4 er jo ikke en
+fri og åpen standard</a> i henhold til
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Fri_og__pen_standard__slik_Digistan_ser_det.html">definisjonen
+til Digistan</a>, så i enkelte land er det ingen tvil om at du må ha
+en slik avtale, men jeg må innrømme at jeg ikke vet om det også
+gjelder Norge. Det ser uansett ut til å være en juridisk interessant
+problemstilling. Men jeg tenkte her om dagen som så, at hvis det er
+nødvendig, så har store aktører som
+<a href="http://www.nrk.no/">NRK</a> og
+<a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/">regjeringen</a> skaffet seg en
+slik avtale. Jeg har derfor sendt forespørsel til begge (for
+regjeringen sin del er det Departementenes Servicesenter som gjør
+jobben), og bedt om kopi av eventuelle avtaler de har om bruk av MPEG
+og/eller H.264 med MPEG-LA eller andre aktører som opererer på vegne
+av MPEG-LA. Her er kopi av eposten jeg har sendt til
+<a href="http://www.dss.dep.no/">Departementenes Servicesenter</a>.
+Forespørselen til NRK er veldig lik.</p>
<p><blockquote>
-"<a href="http://twitter.com/urke/status/194062269724897280">Drøy
-brukeravtale: HTC kan bruke MINE redigerte videoer kommersielt. Selv
-kan jeg KUN bruke dem privat</a>"
+
+<p>Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2012 15:18:33 +0200
+<br>From: Petter Reinholdtsen
+<br>To: postmottak@dss.dep.no
+<br>Subject: Innsynsbegjæring om MPEG/H.264-relaterte avtaler
+
+<p>Hei. Jeg ber herved om innsyn og kopi av dokumenter i DSS relatert
+til avtaler rundt bruk av videoformatene MPEG og H.264. Jeg er
+spesielt interessert i å vite om DSS har lisensavtale med MPEG-LA
+eller noen som representerer MPEG-LA i Norge.</p>
+
+<p>MPEG og H.264 er videoformater som brukes både til kringkasting
+(f.eks. i bakkenett og kabel-TV) og videopublisering på web, deriblant
+via Adobe Flash. MPEG-LA, &lt;URL:
+<a href="http://www.mpeg-la.com/">http://www.mpeg-la.com/</a> &gt;, er
+en organisasjon som har fått oppgaven, av de kjente rettighetshavere
+av immaterielle rettigheter knyttet til MPEG og H.264, å selge
+bruksrett for MPEG og H.264.</p>
+
+<p>Via regjeringen.no kringkastes med MPEG og H.264-baserte
+videoformater, og dette ser ut til å være organisert av DSS. Jeg
+antar dermed at DSS har avtale med en eller annen aktør om dette.</p>
+
+<p>F.eks. har Adobe Premiere Pro har følgende klausul i følge &lt;URL:
+<a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000101-264.html">http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20000101-264.html</a>
+&gt;:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+
+ <p>6.17. AVC DISTRIBUTION. The following notice applies to software
+ containing AVC import and export functionality: THIS PRODUCT IS
+ LICENSED UNDER THE AVC PATENT PORTFOLIO LICENSE FOR THE PERSONAL AND
+ NON-COMMERCIAL USE OF A CONSUMER TO (a) ENCODE VIDEO IN COMPLIANCE
+ WITH THE AVC STANDARD ("AVC VIDEO") AND/OR (b) DECODE AVC VIDEO THAT
+ WAS ENCODED BY A CONSUMER ENGAGED IN A PERSONAL AND NON-COMMERCIAL
+ ACTIVITY AND/OR AVC VIDEO THAT WAS OBTAINED FROM A VIDEO PROVIDER
+ LICENSED TO PROVIDE AVC VIDEO. NO LICENSE IS GRANTED OR SHALL BE
+ IMPLIED FOR ANY OTHER USE. ADDITIONAL INFORMATION MAY BE OBTAINED
+ FROM MPEG LA L.L.C. SEE
+ <a href="http://www.mpegla.com">http://www.mpegla.com</a>.</p>
+
</blockquote></p>
-<p>I quickly translated it to this English message:</p>
+<p>Her er det kun "non-commercial" og "personal and non-commercial"
+aktivitet som er tillatt uten ekstra avtale med MPEG-LA.</p>
+
+<p>Et annet tilsvarende eksempel er Apple Final Cut Pro, som har
+følgende klausul i følge &lt;URL:
+<a href="http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/finalcutstudio2.pdf">http://images.apple.com/legal/sla/docs/finalcutstudio2.pdf</a>
+&gt;:</p>
<p><blockquote>
-"Arrogant user agreement: HTC can use MY edited videos
-commercially. Although I can ONLY use them privately."
+
+ <p>15. Merknad om H.264/AVC. Hvis Apple-programvaren inneholder
+ funksjonalitet for AVC-koding og/eller AVC-dekoding, krever
+ kommersiell bruk ekstra lisensiering og følgende gjelder:
+ AVC-FUNKSJONALITETEN I DETTE PRODUKTET KAN KUN ANVENDES AV
+ FORBRUKERE OG KUN FOR PERSONLIG OG IKKE- KOMMERSIELL BRUK TIL (i)
+ KODING AV VIDEO I OVERENSSTEMMELSE MED AVC-STANDARDEN ("AVC-VIDEO")
+ OG/ELLER (ii) DEKODING AV AVC-VIDEO SOM ER KODET AV EN FORBRUKER TIL
+ PERSONLIG OG IKKE-KOMMERSIELL BRUK OG/ELLER DEKODING AV AVC-VIDEO
+ FRA EN VIDEOLEVERANDØR SOM HAR LISENS TIL Å TILBY
+ AVC-VIDEO. INFORMASJON OM ANNEN BRUK OG LISENSIERING KAN INNHENTES
+ FRA MPEG LA L.L.C. SE HTTP://WWW.MPEGLA.COM.</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Tilsvarende gjelder for andre programvarepakker, kamera, etc som
+bruker MPEG og H.264, at en må ha en avtale med MPEG-LA for å ha lov
+til å bruke programmet/utstyret hvis en skal lage noe annet enn
+private filmer og i ikke-kommersiell virksomhet.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg er altså interessert i kopi av avtaler DSS har som gjør at en
+ikke er begrenset av de generelle bruksvilkårene som gjelder for
+utstyr som bruker MPEG og/eller H.264.</p>
</blockquote></p>
-<p>I've been unable to find the text of the license term myself, but
-suspect it is a variation of the MPEG-LA terms I
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Terms_of_use_for_video_produced_by_a_Canon_IXUS_130_digital_camera.html">discovered
-with my Canon IXUS 130</a>. The HTC One X specification specifies that
-the recording format of the phone is .amr for audio and .mp3 for
-video. AMR is
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adaptive_Multi-Rate_audio_codec#Licensing_and_patent_issues">Adaptive
-Multi-Rate audio codec</a> with patents which according to the
-Wikipedia article require an license agreement with
-<a href="http://www.voiceage.com/">VoiceAge</a>. MP4 is
-<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Patent_licensing">MPEG4 with
-H.264</a>, which according to Wikipedia require a licence agreement
-with <a href="http://www.mpegla.com/">MPEG-LA</a>.</p>
-
-<p>I know why I prefer
-<a href="http://www.digistan.org/open-standard:definition">free and open
-standards</a> also for video.</p>
-</description>
- </item>
-
- <item>
- <title>Holder de ord og NUUG lanserer testtjeneste med stortingsinformasjon</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Holder_de_ord_og_NUUG_lanserer_testtjeneste_med_stortingsinformasjon.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Holder_de_ord_og_NUUG_lanserer_testtjeneste_med_stortingsinformasjon.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 22 Apr 2012 15:45:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>I
-<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Hva_har_mine_representanter_stemt_i_Storinget_.html">januar
-i fjor</a> startet vi i NUUG arbeid med å gjøre informasjon om hvem
-som har stemt hva på <a href="http://www.stortinget.no/">Stortinget</a>
-enklere tilgjengelig. I løpet av få måneder fant vi sammen med
-organisasjonen <a href="http://www.holderdeord.no/">Holder de ord</a>
-som arbeidet mot et lignende mål.</p>
-
-<p>Siden den gang har vi fått tak i maskinelt lesbart informasjon om
-hvem som stemte hva mellom 1990 og våren 2010, og tilgang til
-stortingets nye datatjeneste som har informasjon fra høsten 2011 til i
-dag. Det gjenstår litt arbeid med det første datasettet, men
-datasettet fra høsten 2011 er klart til bruk. Begge datasettene er
-tilgjengelig <a href="https://gitorious.org/nuug/folketingparser">via
-git</a>.</p>
-
-<p>På
-<a href="http://www.goopen.no/holder-de-ord-datadrevet-oppfolging-av-politiske-lofter/">Go Open</a> i morgen lanserer
-NUUG sammen med Holder de ord <a href="http://beta.holderdeord.no/">en
-test-tjeneste</a> som viser hva som er og blir behandlet på Stortinget og
-hvem som har stemt hva siden oktober i fjor. Du får herved mulighet
-til å ta en sniktitt.</p>
+<p>Nå venter jeg spent på svaret. Jeg planlegger å blogge om svaret
+her.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>RAND terms - non-reasonable and discriminatory</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/RAND_terms___non_reasonable_and_discriminatory.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 19 Apr 2012 22:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Here in Norway, the
-<a href="http://www.regjeringen.no/nb/dep/fad.html?id=339"> Ministry of
-Government Administration, Reform and Church Affairs</a> is behind
-a <a href="http://standard.difi.no/forvaltningsstandarder">directory of
-standards</a> that are recommended or mandatory for use by the
-government. When the directory was created, the people behind it made
-an effort to ensure that everyone would be able to implement the
-standards and compete on equal terms to supply software and solutions
-to the government. Free software and non-free software could compete
-on the same level.</p>
-
-<p>But recently, some standards with RAND
-(<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reasonable_and_non-discriminatory_licensing">Reasonable
-And Non-Discriminatory</a>) terms have made their way into the
-directory. And while this might not sound too bad, the fact is that
-standard specifications with RAND terms often block free software from
-implementing them. The reasonable part of RAND mean that the cost per
-user/unit is low,and the non-discriminatory part mean that everyone
-willing to pay will get a license. Both sound great in theory. In
-practice, to get such license one need to be able to count users, and
-be able to pay a small amount of money per unit or user. By
-definition, users of free software do not need to register their use.
-So counting users or units is not possible for free software projects.
-And given that people will use the software without handing any money
-to the author, it is not really economically possible for a free
-software author to pay a small amount of money to license the rights
-to implement a standard when the income available is zero. The result
-in these situations is that free software are locked out from
-implementing standards with RAND terms.</p>
-
-<p>Because of this, when I see someone claiming the terms of a
-standard is reasonable and non-discriminatory, all I can think of is
-how this really is non-reasonable and discriminatory. Because free
-software developers are working in a global market, it does not really
-help to know that software patents are not supposed to be enforceable
-in Norway. The patent regimes in other countries affect us even here.
-I really hope the people behind the standard directory will pay more
-attention to these issues in the future.</p>
-
-<p>You can find more on the issues with RAND, FRAND and RAND-Z terms
-from Simon Phipps
-(<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/simon-says/2010/11/rand-not-so-reasonable/">RAND:
-Not So Reasonable?</a>).</p>
-
-<p>Update 2012-04-21: Just came across a
-<a href="http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/open-enterprise/2012/04/of-microsoft-netscape-patents-and-open-standards/index.htm">blog
-post from Glyn Moody</a> over at Computer World UK warning about the
-same issue, and urging people to speak out to the UK government. I
-can only urge Norwegian users to do the same for
-<a href="http://www.standard.difi.no/hoyring/hoyring-om-nye-anbefalte-it-standarder">the
-hearing taking place at the moment</a> (respond before 2012-04-27).
-It proposes to require video conferencing standards including
-specifications with RAND terms.</p>
+ <title>Gatemagasinet =Oslo får konkurrent fra Folk er Folk</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gatemagasinet__Oslo_f_r_konkurrent_fra_Folk_er_Folk.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Gatemagasinet__Oslo_f_r_konkurrent_fra_Folk_er_Folk.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 19 Jun 2012 10:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Aftenposten melder i dag at selgerne av
+<a href="http://www.erlikoslo.no/">gatemagasinet =Oslo</a> er
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Oslo-selgerne-irritert-pa-nytt-gatemagasin-6850970.html">irritert
+på at det er kommet en konkurrent på banen</a> fra organisasjonen
+<a href="http://oslo.folkerfolk.no/">Folk er Folk</a>,
+som støtter “rumenerne”, de mest uglesette av tiggerne i Norge. Min
+første tanke da jeg leste nyheten er at slik må =Oslo-selgerne tåle
+når de nekter "rumenerne" og andre utenlandske tiggere å selge
+gatemagasinet sitt. Det ble rapportert for noen år siden at
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Ikke-rom-i-herberget-6677803.html">utenlandske
+tiggere ikke var velkomne som selgere</a>, og å opprette en konkurrent
+virker da for meg som et rasjonelt alternativ. Og at "rumerene"
+utelukkes gjelder visst ikke bare i Oslo. I Adresseavisen fant jeg en
+artikkel om at selgerne av
+<a href="http://www.gatemagasinetsorgenfri.no/">gateavisen
+Sorgenfri</a> i Trondheim også
+<a href="http://www.adressa.no/nyheter/trondheim/article1122005.ece?index=20">utelukker
+utenlandske selgere</a>.</p>
+
+<p>Men situasjonen er visst ikke så rett frem som opprinnelige
+artikler kunne tyde på. Mens jeg søkte opp gamle artikler og
+referanser om temaet, fant jeg et
+<a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/2008/07/29/542041.html">leserbrev
+fra en av stifterne av =Oslo</a>, som protesterte på
+<a href="http://www.dagbladet.no/nyheter/2008/07/23/541530.html">påstander
+fra likestillingsombudet om diskriminering</a> og forteller at =Oslo
+krever at de som selger magasinet skal kunne kommunisere med kundene
+for å kunne representere magasinet utad, og at "rumererne" ikke
+ekskluderes for å være utlendinger men pga. at de ikke kan snakke
+norsk. Det er jo ikke urimelig å kreve at en selger skal kunne
+kommunisere med kundene, men som kjøper har jeg ikke snakket så mye
+med =Oslo-selgerne at det ville vært et problem for meg om selgeren
+ikke kunne snakke norsk. Jeg er dermed i tvil om hvorvidt
+argumentasjonen holder når effekten er at de mest uglesette tiggerne i
+Norge ekskluderes.</p>
+
+<p>Uansett tror jeg ikke markedet for gatemagasiner i Oslo er mettet.
+Personlig kunne jeg godt tenkte meg å kjøpe flere, men gidder ikke
+kjøpe den samme utgaven av =Oslo flere ganger. En konkurrent som Folk
+er Folk kan dermed ende opp med å gjøre markedet større i stedet for å
+spise av markedsandelene til =Oslo.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Forskning: "GPL gir lokal frihet og kontroll gjennom omfordeling av makt fra produsent til bruker"</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forskning___GPL_gir_lokal_frihet_og_kontroll_gjennom_omfordeling_av_makt_fra_produsent_til_bruker_.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Forskning___GPL_gir_lokal_frihet_og_kontroll_gjennom_omfordeling_av_makt_fra_produsent_til_bruker_.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Da jeg googlet etter noe annet kom jeg tilfeldigvis over
-<a href="http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/work.html?WORKID=58309">en
-hovedfagsoppgave</a> ved Universitetet i Oslo som diskuterer verdien
-av GPLs fire friheter for brukerne av IT-systemer. Jeg ble fascinert
-over det som presenteres der. Her er sammendraget:</p>
+ <title>SQL-database med anbud publisert på Doffin</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SQL_database_med_anbud_publisert_p__Doffin.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SQL_database_med_anbud_publisert_p__Doffin.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 15 Jun 2012 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.doffin.no/">Doffin</a> er det offentlige Norges
+portal for annonsering av anbudsutlysninger. Nettstedet er mye brukt,
+men rådataene er ikke enkelt tilgjengelig for almenheten. For å bøte
+på det har jeg som et <a href="htt://www.nuug.no/">NUUG-prosjekt</a>
+laget en <a href="http://scraperwiki.com/">Scraperwiki</a>-skraper som
+lager en
+<a href="https://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/norwegian-doffin/">SQL-database
+med nøkkelinformasjonen fra Doffin</a>, slik at det er mulig å søke og
+analysere Doffin-oppføringene. Det publiseres mellom 900-1500 anbud
+hver måned via Doffin. Jeg har ingen konkrete planer for analyse, men
+håper enklere tilgjengelighet gjør at flere griper sjansen. På sikt
+håper jeg å bruke denne databasen som grunnlag for å lage en database
+over anbudsdokumenter, som i dag ikke er tilgjengelig fra doffin, men
+må bestilles fra hver enkelt utlyser.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg var litt usikker på om det var rettighetsproblemer knyttet til
+skraping av informasjon fra Doffin, men ser i
+<a href="http://www.doffin.no/sitehelp/help_terms.aspx">vilkårene til
+Doffin</a> følgende:</p>
<p><blockquote>
-<p>Motivasjonen til å skrive denne oppgaven er en personlig undring
-over hvorfor det primært, og ofte eksklusivt, fokuseres på det
-økonomiske aspektet ved utredninger om fri programvare er et godt valg
-for det offentlige. Fri og produsenteid programvare bygger på
-fundamentalt forskjellige ideologier som kan ha implikasjoner utover
-økonomiske kostnader. Kunnskapskulturen som er med på å definere fri
-programvare er basert på åpenhet, og er en verdi i seg selv.</p>
-
-<p>Oppgavens tema er programvarelisensen GPL og frihet. GPL-lisensiert
-programvare gir visse friheter i forhold til produsenteid
-programvare. Mitt spørsmål er om, og eventuelt i hvilken utstrekning,
-disse frihetene blir benyttet av ulike brukere og hvordan de
-manifesterer seg for disse brukerne. Sentrale spørsmål i oppgaven
-er:</p>
+<p>Opphavsrett mv</p>
-<ul>
-<li>Hvordan fordeles handlekraft gjennom lisensieringen av programvaren?</li>
-<li>Hvilke konsekvenser har programvarelisensen for de ulike brukere? </li>
-</ul>
-
-<p>Fri programvare gir blant annet brukeren mulighet til å studere og
-modifisere kildekoden. Denne formen for frihet erverves gjennom
-kunnskap og krever at brukeren også er en ekspert. Hva skjer med
-frihetene til GPL når sluttbrukeren er en annen? Dette diskuteres i
-dialog med informantene.</p>
-
-<p>Jeg har i denne oppgaven samlet inn intervjudata fra IKT-ansvarlige
-ved grunnskolene i Nittedal kommune, driftsansvarlig og IKT-veilederen
-for skolene i kommunen, samt IKT-koordinator for utdanning i Akershus
-fylkeskommune og bokmåloversettere av OpenOffice.org. Den empiriske
-delen av oppgaven er delt inn i to seksjoner; den første omhandler
-operativsystemet Skolelinux, den andre kontorprogrampakken
-OpenOffice.org.</p>
-
-<p>Som vi vil se gir GPL lokal frihet og kontroll gjennom omfordeling
-av makt fra produsent til bruker. Brukerens makt analyseres gjennom
-begrepene brukermedvirkning og handlingsfrihet. Det blir også lagt
-vekt på strukturelle forhold rundt bruken av teknologi, og spesielt de
-økonomiske begrepene nettverkseksternaliteter, innlåsing og
-stiavhengighet. Dette er begreper av spesiell nytte når objektet som
-omsettes eller distribueres er et kommunikasjonsprodukt, fordi verdien
-til et slikt gode for en potensiell bruker avhenger av antall
-eksisterende brukere av godet. I tilknytning til denne problematikken
-inneholder oppgaven også en diskusjon rundt åpne standarder og
-formater.</p>
-
-<p>Oppgaven konkluderer med at de «fire frihetene» som GPL-lisensen er
-laget for å beskytte er av avgjørende betydning for bruken av
-OpenOffice.org og Skolelinux, i Akershus fylkeskommune såvel som i
-skolene i Nittedal. Distribusjonen av handlekraft er ikke helt
-symmetrisk. Det er først og fremst de profesjonelle utviklerne i
-Skolelinux som direkte kan nyttiggjøre seg friheten til å endre kode,
-mens en sluttbruker som Nittedal kommune nyttiggjør seg den økonomiske
-friheten til å kunne distribuere programmene. Det er imidlertid også
-slik at ingen aktør klarer seg uten alle disse «frihetene».</p>
-</blockquote></p>
+<p>Ved innleggig av kunngjøringer på Doffin aksepterer Oppdragsgiver
+at opphavsrett og andre rettigheter til materialet overføres til
+Fornyings- og administrasjonsdepartementet, eller den departementet
+utnevner. Oppdragsgiver har imidlertid bruksrett til materialet, og
+kan benytte det til de formål de måtte ønske.</p>
-<p>Jeg fant også en masteroppgave fra 2006, men der ligger ikke
-komplett oppgave tilgjengelig. På tide å holde et øye med
-<a href="http://www.duo.uio.no/sok/search.html?q=skolelinux">Skolelinux-søket</a>
-til DUO...</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+<p>Hvis informasjonen er vernet av opphavsrettsloven (hvilket jeg
+tviler på, gitt lovens begrensninger om informasjon fra det
+offentlige), så er det FAD som har de immaterielle rettighetene. FAD
+er en del av staten, som opererer på vegne av folket, og enhver borger
+skulle dermed ha rett til å videreformidle informasjonen. Ingen av
+offentlighetslovens unntak kommer til anvendelse, i og med at
+informasjonen allerede er publisert.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Debian Edu interview: Andreas Mundt</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Andreas_Mundt.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 15 Apr 2012 12:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Behind <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and
-Skolelinux</a> there are a lot of people doing the hard work of
-setting together all the pieces. This time I present to you Andreas
-Mundt, who have been part of the technical development team several
-years. He was also a key contributor in getting GOsa and Kerberos set
-up in the recently released
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
-Edu Squeeze</a> version.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>My name is Andreas Mundt, I grew up in south Germany. After
-studying Physics I spent several years at university doing research in
-Quantum Optics. After that I worked some years in an optics company.
-Finally I decided to turn over a new leaf in my life and started
-teaching 10 to 19 years old kids at school. I teach math, physics,
-information technology and science/technology.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Already before I switched to teaching, I followed the Debian Edu
-project because of my interest in education and Debian. Within the
-qualification/training period for the teaching, I started
-contributing.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>The advantages of Debian Edu are the well known name, the
-out-of-the-box philosophy and of course the great free software of the
-Debian Project!</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>As every coin has two sides, the out-of-the-box philosophy has its
-downside, too. In my opinion, it is hard to modify and tweak the
-setup, if you need or want that. Further more, it is not easily
-possible to upgrade the system to a new release. It takes much too
-long after a Debian release to prepare the -Edu release, perhaps
-because the number of developers working on the core of the code is
-rather small and often busy elsewhere.</p>
-
-<p>The <a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLAN">Debian LAN</a>
-project might fill the use case of a more flexible system.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I am only using non-free software if I am forced to and run Debian
-on all my machines. For documents I prefer LaTeX and PGF/TikZ, then
-mutt and iceweasel for email respectively web browsing. At school I
-have Arduino and Fritzing in use for a micro controller project.</p>
+ <title>Debian Edu - some ideas for the future versions</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu___some_ideas_for_the_future_versions.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Mon, 11 Jun 2012 14:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>During my work on
+<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.nb.html">Debian Edu
+based on Squeeze</a>, I came across some issues that should be
+addressed in the Wheezy release. I finally found time to wrap up my
+notes and provide quick summary of what I found, with a bit
+explanation.</p>
+
+<p><ul>
+
+<li>We need to rewrite our package installation framework, as tasksel
+changed from using tasksel tasks to using meta packages (aka packages
+with dependencies like our education-* packages), and our installation
+system depend on tasksel tasks in
+/usr/share/tasksel/debian-edu-tasks.desc for package
+installation.</li>
+
+<li>Enable Kerberos login for more services. Now with the Kerberos
+foundation in place, we should use it to get single sign on with more
+services, and avoiding unneeded password / login questions. We should
+at least try to enable it for these services:
+<ul>
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+ <li>CUPS for admins to add/configure printers and users when using
+ quotas.</li>
+ <li>Nagios for admins checking the system status.</li>
+ <li>GOsa for admins updating LDAP and users changing their passwords.</li>
+ <li>LDAP for admins updating LDAP.</li>
+ <li>Squid for users when exam mode / filtering is active.</li>
+ <li>ssh for admins and users to save a password prompt.</li>
+
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>When we move GOsa to use Kerberos instead of LDAP bind to
+authenticate users, we should try to block or at least limit access to
+use LDAP bind for authentication, to ensure Kerberos is used when it
+is intended, and nothing fall back to using the less safe LDAP bind</li>
+
+<li>Merge debian-edu-config and debian-edu-install. The split made
+sense when d-e-install did a lot more, but these days it is just an
+inconvenience when we update the debconf preseeding values.</li>
+
+<li>Fix partman-auto to allow us to abort the installation before
+touching the disk if the disk is too small. This is
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/653305">BTS report #653305</a> and the
+d-i developers are fine with the patch and someone just need to apply
+it and upload. After this is done we need to adjust
+debian-edu-install to use this new hook.</li>
+
+<li>Adjust to new LTSP framework (boot time config instead of install
+time config). LTSP changed its design, and our hooks to install
+packages and update the configuration is most likely not going to work
+in Wheezy.
+
+<li>Consider switching to NBD instead of NFS for LTSP root, to allow
+the Kernel to cache files in its normal file cache, possibly speeding
+up KDE login on slow networks.</li>
+
+<li>Make it possible to create expired user passwords that need to
+change on first login. This is useful when handing out password on
+paper, to make sure only the user know the password. This require
+fixes to the PAM handling of kdm and gdm.</li>
+
+<li>Make GUI for adding new machines automatically from sitesummary.
+The current command line script is not very friendly to people most
+familiar with GUIs. This should probably be integrated into GOsa to
+have it available where the admin will be looking for it..</li>
+
+<li>We should find way for Nagios to check that the DHCP service
+actually is working (as in handling out IP addresses). None of the
+Nagios checks I have found so far have been working for me.</li>
+
+<li>We should switch from libpam-nss-ldapd to sssd for all profiles
+using LDAP, and not only on for roaming workstations, to have less
+packages to configure and consistent setup across all profiles.</li>
+
+<li>We should configure Kerberos to update LDAP and Samba password
+when changing password using the Kerberos protocol. The hook was
+requested in <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/588968">BTS report
+#588968</a> and is now available in Wheezy. We might need to write a
+MIT Kerberos plugin in C to get this.</li>
+
+<li>We should clean up the set of applications installed by default.
+<ul>
-<p>One of the major problems is the vendor lock-in from top to bottom:
-Especially in combination with ignorant government employees and
-politicians, this works out great for the "market-leader". The school
-administration here in Baden-Wuerttemberg is occupied by that vendor.
-Documents have to be prepared in non-free, proprietary formats. Even
-free browsers do not work for the school administration. Publishers
-of school books provide software only for proprietary platforms.</p>
-
-<p>To change this, political work is very important. Parts of the
-political spectrum have become aware of the problem in the last years.
-However it takes quite some time and courageous politicians to 'free'
-the system. There is currently some discussion about "Open Data" and
-"Free/Open Standards". I am not sure if all the involved parties have
-a clue about the potential of these ideas, and probably only a
-fraction takes them seriously. However it might slowly make free
-software and the philosophy behind it more known and popular.</p>
+<li>reduce the number of chemistry visualisers</li>
+<li>consider dropping xpaint</li>
+<li>and probably more?</li>
+</ul></li>
+
+<li>Some hardware need external firmware to work properly. This is
+mostly the case for WiFi network cards, but there are some other
+examples too. For popular laptops to work out of the box, such
+firmware need to be installed from non-free, and we should provide
+some GUI to do this. Ubuntu already have this implemented, and we
+could consider using their packages. At the moment we have some
+command line script to do this (one for the running system, another
+for the LTSP chroot).</li>
+
+
+<li>In Squeeze, we provide KDE, Gnome and LXDE as desktop options. We
+should extend the list to Xfce and Sugar, and preferably find a way to
+install several and allow the admin or the user to select which one to
+use.</li>
+
+<li>The golearn tool from the goplay package make it easy to check out
+interesting educational packages. We should work on the package
+tagging in Debian to ensure it represent all the useful educational
+packages, and extend the tool to allow it to use packagekit to install
+new applications with a simple mouse click.</li>
+
+<li>The Squeeze version got half a exam solution already in place,
+with the introduction of iptable based network blocking, but for it to
+be a complete exam solution the Squid proxy need to enable
+filtering/blocking as well when the exam mode is enabled. We should
+implement a way to easily enable this for the schools that want it,
+instead of the "it is documented" method of today.</li>
+
+<li>A feature used in several schools is the ability for a teacher to
+"take over" the desktop of individual or all computers in the room.
+There are at least three implementations,
+<a href="italc.sourceforge.net/">italc</a>,
+<a href="http://www.itais.net/help/en/">controlaula</a> og
+<a href="http://www.epoptes.org/">epoptes</a> and we should pick one of
+them and make it trivial to set it up in a school. The challenges is
+how to distribute crypto keys and how to group computers in one room
+and how to set up which machine/user can control the machines in a
+given room.</li>
+
+<li>Tablets and surf boards are getting more and more popular, and we
+should look into providing a good solution for integrating these into
+the Debian Edu network. Not quite sure how. Perhaps we should
+provide a installation profile with better touch screen support for
+them, or add some sync services to allow them to exchange
+configuration and data with the central server. This should be
+investigated.</li>
+
+</ul></p>
+
+<p>I guess we will discover more as we continue to work on the Wheezy
+version.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Jeg skal på konferansen Go Open 2012</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jeg_skal_p__konferansen_Go_Open_2012.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jeg_skal_p__konferansen_Go_Open_2012.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Jeg har tenkt meg på konferansen <a href="http://www.goopen.no/">Go
-Open 2012</a> i Oslo 23. april.
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Medlemsforeningen NUUG</a> deler ut
-<a href="http://www.nuug.no/prisen/">prisen for fremme av fri
-programvare i Norge</a> der i år. Kommer du?</p>
+ <title>Litt statistikk fra Offentlig Elektronisk postjournal</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Litt_statistikk_fra_Offentlig_Elektronisk_postjournal.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Litt_statistikk_fra_Offentlig_Elektronisk_postjournal.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 10 Jun 2012 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>De siste månedene har jeg sammen med andre i NUUG jobbet med å
+gjøre det enklere å få innsyn i offentlige dokumenter, og dette
+inkluderer å gjøre postjournaler enklere tilgjengelig for maskinell
+analyse og søk. I den forbindelse tok jeg i dag å tittet litt på
+<a href="http://www.oep.no/">Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal
+(OEP)</a>, FAD/DIFIs fellesløsning for departementer og statlige
+etater.</p>
+
+<p>Her er antall oppføringer pr. måned det siste året,
+<a href="https://api.scraperwiki.com/api/1.0/datastore/sqlite?format=htmltable&name=postliste-oep&query=select%20strftime(%22%25Y-%25m%22%2C%20%60recordpublishdate%60)%20as%20oeppubmonth%2C%20count(*)%20from%20%60swdata%60%20group%20by%20oeppubmonth%20order%20by%20oeppubmonth">summert
+opp</a> ved hjelp av
+<a href="https://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/postliste-oep/">en
+Scraperwiki-database</a>. Merk at denne Scraperwikien har
+ytelsesproblemer pga. mengden data. </p>
+
+<p><table border="1">
+<tr><th>Måned</th><th>Antall</th></tr>
+<tr><td>2011-07</td><td>164355</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2011-08</td><td>153662</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2011-09</td><td>173134</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2011-10</td><td>170665</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2011-11</td><td>198409</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2011-12</td><td>175908</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2012-01</td><td>206875</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2012-02</td><td>202862</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2012-03</td><td>204225</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2012-04</td><td>207931</td></tr>
+<tr><td>2012-05</td><td>223754</td></tr>
+</table></p>
+
+<p>Det er også interessant å se hvor ofte ulike etater sender inn sine
+journaloppføringer til OEP. OEP inneholder en liste med sist
+innrapporteringsdato for alle som sender til OEP, og ved å se når og
+hvor ofte det blir sendt inn fra etatene kan
+<a href="https://api.scraperwiki.com/api/1.0/datastore/sqlite?format=htmltable&name=postliste-oep-deliverydates&query=select%20agency%2C%0A(julianday(datetime('now'))%20-%20%0A%20julianday(min(%60deliverydate%60)))%2Fcount(*)%20as%20dayfreq%2C%0A%20count(*)%0Afrom%20%60swdata%60%20group%20by%20agency%20order%20by%20dayfreq%20desc">frekvensen
+beregnes</a>. Her er bunnlista, dvs. de som leverer sjeldnere enn hver 10.
+dag beregnet fra
+<a href="https://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/postliste-oep-deliverydates/">en
+Scraperwiki-database</a>:</p>
+
+<p><table border="1">
+
+<tr> <th>Etat</th> <th>Frekvens</th> <th>Leveringer</th> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Norges geologiske undersøkelse</td> <td>83.7527546296</td> <td>1</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Medietilsynet</td> <td>33.7527546296</td> <td>1</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Departementenes servicesenter</td> <td>23.8763773148</td> <td>2</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Kunnskapsdepartementet</td> <td>15.8763773148</td> <td>2</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Kompetansesenter for distriktsutvikling</td> <td>15.3763773148</td> <td>2</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Toll- og avgiftsdirektoratet</td> <td>15.3763773148</td> <td>2</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Fredskorpset</td> <td>12.5842515432</td> <td>3</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Statens legemiddelverk</td> <td>12.1881886574</td> <td>4</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Utlendingsnemnda</td> <td>11.5842515432</td> <td>3</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Politidirektoratet</td> <td>10.9175848765</td> <td>3</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Skattedirektoratet</td> <td>10.9175848765</td> <td>3</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Statens innkrevingssentral</td> <td>10.5842515432</td> <td>3</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Barne-, ungdoms- og familiedirektoratet</td> <td>10.2509182099</td> <td>3</td> </tr>
+<tr> <td>Kunst i offentlige rom</td> <td>10.2509182099</td> <td>3</td> </tr>
+
+</table></p>
+
+<p>En kan beregne lignende frekvenser ved å sammenligne
+journalføringsdato med publiseringsdato for hver enkelt oppføring i
+OEP, men den lenken legger jeg ikke ved her for å unngå at
+søkemotorroboter begynner å overbelaste Scraperwiki-databasen.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg har spurt Norges geologiske undersøkelse om hvorfor de leverer
+så sjelden, og det kommer av at de har problemer etter oppgradering av
+arkivsystemet sitt og jobber med å fikse det slik at de kan gå tilbake
+til å levere hver uke. Har ikke undersøkt noen av de andre.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Debian Edu interview: Justin B. Rye</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Justin_B__Rye.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 8 Apr 2012 10:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>It take all kind of contributions to create a Linux distribution
-like <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>,
-and this time I lend the ear to Justin B. Rye, who is listed as a big
-contributor to the
-<a href="http://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Squeeze">Debian
-Edu Squeeze release manual</a>.
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I'm a 44-year-old linguistics graduate living in Edinburgh who has
-occasionally been employed as a sysadmin.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I'm neither a developer nor a Skolelinux/Debian Edu user! The only
-reason my name's in the credits for the documentation is that I hang
-around on debian-l10n-english waiting for people to mention things
-they'd like a native English speaker to proofread... So I did a sweep
-through the wiki for typos and Norglish and inconsistent spellings of
-"localisation".</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>These questions are too hard for me - I don't use it! In fact I
-had hardly any contact with I.T. until long after I'd got out of the
-education system.</p>
-
-<p>I can tell you the advantages of Debian for me though: it soaks up
-as much of my free time as I want and no more, and lets me do
-everything I want a computer for without ever forcing me to spend
-money on the latest hardware.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I've been using Debian since Rex; popularity-contest says the
-software that I use most is xinit, xterm, and xulrunner (in other
-words, I use a distinctly retro sort of desktop).</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Well, I don't know. I suppose I'd be inclined to try reasoning
-with the people who make the decisions, but obviously if that worked
-you would hardly need a strategy.</p>
+ <title>TV with face recognition, for improved viewer experience</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/TV_with_face_recognition__for_improved_viewer_experience.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 9 Jun 2012 22:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Slashdot got a story about Intel planning a
+<a href="http://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/12/06/09/0012247/intel-to-launch-tv-service-with-facial-recognition-by-end-of-the-year">TV
+with face recognition</a> to recognise the viewer, and it occurred to
+me that it would be more interesting to turn it around, and do face
+recognition on the TV image itself. It could let the viewer know who
+is present on the screen, and perhaps look up their credibility,
+company affiliation, previous appearances etc for the viewer to better
+evaluate what is being said and done. That would be a feature I would
+be willing to pay for.</p>
+
+<p>I would not be willing to pay for a TV that point a camera on my
+household, like the big brother feature apparently proposed by Intel.
+It is the telescreen idea fetched straight out of the book
+<a href="http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt">1984 by George
+Orwell</a>.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Why the KDE menu is slow when /usr/ is NFS mounted - and a workaround</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_the_KDE_menu_is_slow_when__usr__is_NFS_mounted___and_a_workaround.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Fri, 6 Apr 2012 22:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Recently I have spent time with
-<a href="http://www.slxdrift.no/">Skolelinux Drift AS</a> on speeding
-up a <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
-Lenny installation using LTSP diskless workstations, and in the
-process I discovered something very surprising. The reason the KDE
-menu was responding slow when using it for the first time, was mostly
-due to the way KDE find application icons. I discovered that showing
-the Multimedia menu would cause more than 20 000 IP packages to be
-passed between the LTSP client and the NFS server. Most of these were
-
-NFS LOOKUP calls, resulting in a NFS3ERR_NOENT response. Because the
-ping times between the client and the server were in the range 2-20
-ms, the menus would be very slow. Looking at the strace of kicker in
-Lenny (or plasma-desktop i Squeeze - same problem there), I see that
-the source of these NFS calls are access(2) system calls for
-non-existing files. KDE can do hundreds of access(2) calls to find
-one icon file. In my example, just finding the mplayer icon required
-around 230 access(2) calls.</p>
-
-<p>The KDE code seem to search for icons using a list of icon
-directories, and the list of possible directories is large. In
-(almost) each directory, it look for files ending in .png, .svgz, .svg
-and .xpm. The result is a very slow KDE menu when /usr/ is NFS
-mounted. Showing a single sub menu may result in thousands of NFS
-requests. I am not the first one to discover this. I found a
-<a href="https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211416">KDE bug report
-from 2009</a> about this problem, and it is still unsolved.</p>
-
-<p>My solution to speed up the KDE menu was to create a package
-kde-icon-cache that upon installation will look at all .desktop files
-used to generate the KDE menu, find their icons, search the icon paths
-for the file that KDE will end up finding at run time, and copying the
-icon file to /var/lib/kde-icon-cache/. Finally, I add symlinks to
-these icon files in one of the first directories where KDE will look
-for them. This cut down the number of file accesses required to find
-one icon from several hundred to less than 5, and make the KDE menu
-almost instantaneous. I'm not quite sure where to make the package
-publicly available, so for now it is only available on request.</p>
-
-<p>The bug report mention that this do not only affect the KDE menu
-and icon handling, but also the login process. Not quite sure how to
-speed up that part without replacing NFS with for example NBD, and
-that is not really an option at the moment.</p>
-
-<p>If you got feedback on this issue, please let us know on debian-edu
-(at) lists.debian.org.</p>
+ <title>Web service to look up HP and Dell computer hardware support status</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Web_service_to_look_up_HP_and_Dell_computer_hardware_support_status.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 6 Jun 2012 23:15:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A few days ago
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html">I
+reported how to get</a> the support status out of Dell using an
+unofficial and undocumented SOAP API, which I since have found out was
+<a href="http://lists.us.dell.com/pipermail/linux-poweredge/2012-February/045959.html">discovered
+by Daniel De Marco in february</a>. Combined with my web scraping
+code for HP, Dell and IBM
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">from
+2009</a>, I got inspired and wrote
+<a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/">a
+web service</a> based on Scraperwiki to make it easy to look up the
+support status and get a machine readable result back.</p>
+
+<p>This is what it look like at the moment when asking for the JSON
+output:
+
+<blockquote><pre>
+% GET <a href="https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1">https://views.scraperwiki.com/run/computer-hardware-support-status/?format=json&vendor=Dell&servicetag=2v1xwn1</a>
+supportstatus({"servicetag": "2v1xwn1", "warrantyend": "2013-11-24", "shipped": "2010-11-24", "scrapestamputc": "2012-06-06T20:26:56.965847", "scrapedurl": "http://143.166.84.118/services/assetservice.asmx?WSDL", "vendor": "Dell", "productid": ""})
+%
+</pre></blockquote>
+
+<p>It currently support Dell and HP, and I am hoping for help to add
+support for other vendors. The python source is available on
+Scraperwiki and I welcome help with adding more features.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Debian Edu in the Linux Weekly News</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_in_the_Linux_Weekly_News.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Thu, 5 Apr 2012 08:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>About two weeks ago, I was interviewed via email about
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a> by
-Bruce Byfield in Linux Weekly News. The result was made public for
-non-subscribers today. I am pleased to see liked our Linux solution
-for schools. Check out his article
-<a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/488805/">Debian Edu/Skolelinux: A
-distribution for education</a> if you want to learn more.</p>
+ <title>Kommentar til artikkel i Adresseavisa som omtaler FiksGataMi</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kommentar_til_artikkel_i_Adresseavisa_som_omtaler_FiksGataMi.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kommentar_til_artikkel_i_Adresseavisa_som_omtaler_FiksGataMi.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 2 Jun 2012 19:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Jeg oppdaget nylig en
+<a href="http://www.adressa.no/nyheter/trondheim/article1831198.ece">artikkel
+i Adresseavisa</a> i Trondheim som nevner FiksGataMi, og der Trondheim
+kommune ser ut til å fortelle at de ikke følger forvaltningslovens
+krav ved mottak av meldinger sendt inn via FiksGataMi. La derfor
+nettopp inn denne kommentaren til artikkelen:<p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+
+<p>Her er en liten faktaoppdatering om FiksGataMi-tjenesten, da noen
+ser ut til å ha misforstått hvordan den fungerer.</p>
+
+<p>FiksGataMi er et privat initiativ opprettet og drevet av
+medlemsforeningen NUUG. FiksGataMi tar imot meldinger om feil i
+offentlig infrastruktur, og sender meldingen skriftlig videre på vegne
+av innmelder til aktuell aktør i det offentlige, det være seg kommune,
+fylke eller vegvesenregion. Offentlig etat blir valgt ut fra
+geografisk plassering og kategori valgt av innsender. Offentlige
+etater er i følge forvaltningsloven pliktig å følge opp og besvare
+skriftlige henvendelser, og hvis noen av mottakerne ikke gjør dette
+kan en klage på lovbrudd i det offentlige. FiksGataMi fungerer dermed
+som en slags epostklient for innbyggerne der kopi av innsendte
+meldinger gjøres tilgjengelig og knyttes til kartplassering for enkel
+gjenfinning. Å sende inn nye problemrapporter via FiksGataMi er
+dermed ikke avhengig av at kommunen aktivt må følge med på meldinger
+hos FiksGataMi, da de får dem tilsendt på sine offisielle
+epostmottakspunkter. Hvorvidt noe blir fikset og om innbyggerne er
+opp til mottaker av meldingene. For Trondheim kommune er
+mottaksadressen bydrift.vegdrift@trondheim.kommune.no, en adresse jeg
+inntil jeg leste denne artikkelen trodde ble håndtert i henhold til
+forvaltningslovens krav.</p>
+
+<p>Kan ellers fortelle at 57 kommuner lenker til FiksGataMi fra sine
+nettsider, og at 37 % (4182 av 11266 ) av problemrapportene sendt inn
+via FiksGataMi er markert som løst i løsningen. Trondheim kommune har
+fått tilbud om å få rapportene levert på datamaskinlesbart format i
+stedet for epost, men har ikke takket ja så langt.</p>
+
+<p>Vennlig hilsen Petter Reinholdtsen, en av NUUG-folkene bak FiksGataMi.no</p>
+
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>Det høres for meg ut som om innbyggerne i Trondheim burde klage på
+kommunens potensielle lovbrudd.</p>
</description>
</item>
<item>
- <title>Debian Edu interview: Wolfgang Schweer</title>
- <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</link>
- <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Wolfgang_Schweer.html</guid>
- <pubDate>Sun, 1 Apr 2012 23:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
- <description><p>Germany is a core area for the
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Mike Gabriel</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Mike_Gabriel.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 2 Jun 2012 15:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Back in 2010, Mike Gabriel showed up on the
<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu and Skolelinux</a>
-user community, and this time I managed to get hold of Wolfgang
-Schweer, a valuable contributor to the project from Germany.
+mailing list. He quickly proved to be a valuable developer, and
+thanks to his tireless effort we now have Kerberos integrated into the
+<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
+Squeeze</a> version.</p>
<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-<p>I've studied Mathematics at the university 'Ruhr-Universität' in
-Bochum, Germany. Since 1981 I'm working as a teacher at the school
-"<a href="http://www.westfalenkolleg-dortmund.de/">Westfalen-Kolleg
-Dortmund</a>", a second chance school. Here, young adults is given
-the opportunity to get further education in order to do the school
-examination 'Abitur', which will allow to study at a university. This
-second chance is of value for those who want a better job perspective
-or failed to get a higher school examination being teens.</p>
-
-<p>Besides teaching I was involved in developing online courses for a
-blended learning project called 'abitur-online.nrw' and in some other
-information technology related projects. For about ten years I've been
-teacher and coordinator for the 'abitur-online' project at my
-school. Being now in my early sixties, I've decided to leave school at
-the end of April this year.</p>
+<p>My name is Mike Gabriel, I am 38 years old and live near Kiel,
+Schleswig-Holstein, Germany. I live together with a wonderful partner
+(Angela Fuß) and two own children and two bonus children (contributed
+by Angela).</p>
+
+<p>During the day I am part-time employed as a system administrator
+and part-time working as an IT consultant. The consultancy work
+touches free software topics wherever and whenever possible. During
+the nights I am a free software developer. In the gaps I also train in
+becoming an osteopath.</p>
+
+<p>Starting in 2010 we (Andreas Buchholz, Angela Fuß, Mike Gabriel)
+have set up a free software project in the area of Kiel that aims at
+introducing free software into schools. The project's name is
+"IT-Zukunft Schule" (IT future for schools). The project links IT
+skills with communication skills.</p>
<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
project?</strong></p>
-<p>The first information about Skolelinux must have come to my
-attention years ago and somehow related to LTSP (Linux Terminal Server
-Project). At school, we had set up a network at the beginning of 1997
-using Suse Linux on the desktop, replacing a Novell network. Since
-2002, we used old machines from the city council of Dortmund as thin
-clients (LTSP, later Ubuntu/Lessdisks) cause new hardware was out of
-reach. At home I'm using Debian since years and - subscribed to the
-Debian news letter - heard from time to time about Skolelinux. About
-two years ago I proposed to replace the (somehow undocumented and only
-known to me) system at school by a well known Debian based system:
-Skolelinux.</p>
-
-<p>Students and teachers appreciated the new system because of a
-better look and feel and an enhanced access to local media on thin
-clients. The possibility to alter and/or reset passwords using a GUI
-was welcomed, too. Being able to do administrative tasks using a GUI
-and to easily set up workstations using PXE was of very high value for
-the admin teachers.</p>
+<p>While preparing our own customised Linux distribution for
+"IT-Zukunft Schule" we were repeatedly asked if we really wanted to
+reinvent the wheel. What schools really need is already available,
+people said. From this impulse we started evaluating other Linux
+distributions that target being used for school networks.</p>
+
+<p>At the end we short-listed two approaches and compared them: a
+commercial Linux distribution developed by a company in Bremen,
+Germany, and Skolelinux / Debian Edu. Between 12/2010 and 03/2011 we
+went to several events and met people being responsible for marketing
+and development of either of the distributions. Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu was by far much more convincing compared to the other product that
+got short-listed beforehand--across the full spectrum. What was most
+attractive for me personally: the perspective of collaboration within
+the developmental branch of the Debian Edu project itself.</p>
+
+<p>In parallel with this, we talked to many local and not-so-local
+people. People teaching at schools, headmasters, politicians, data
+protection experts, other IT professionals.</p>
+
+<p>We came to two conclusions:</p>
+
+<p>First, a technical conclusion: What schools need is available in
+bits and pieces here and there, and none of the solutions really fit
+by 100%. Any school we have seen has a very individual IT setup
+whereas most of each school's requirements could mapped by a standard
+IT solution. The requirement to this IT solution is flexibility and
+customisability, so that individual adaptations here and there are
+possible. In terms of re-distributing and rolling out such a
+standardised IT system for schools (a system that is still to some
+degree customisable) there is still a lot of work to do here
+locally. Debian Edu / Skolelinux has been our choice as the starting
+point.</p>
+
+<p>Second, a holistic conclusion: What schools need does not exist at
+all (or we missed it so far). There are several technical solutions
+for handling IT at schools that tend to make a good impression. What
+has been missing completely here in Germany, though, is the enrolment
+of people into using IT and teaching with IT. "IT-Zukunft Schule"
+tries to provide an approach for this.</p>
+
+<p>Only some schools have some sort of a media concept which explains,
+defines and gives guidance on how to use IT in class. Most schools in
+Northern Germany do not have an IT service provider, the school's IT
+equipment is managed by one or (if the school is lucky) two (admin)
+teachers, most of the workload these admin teachers get done in there
+spare time.</p>
+
+<p>We were surprised that only a very few admin teachers were
+networked with colleagues from other schools. Basically, every school
+here around has its individual approach of providing IT equipment to
+teachers and students and the exchange of ideas has been quasi
+non-existent until 2010/2011.</p>
+
+<p>Quite some (non-admin) teachers try to avoid using IT technology in
+class as a learning medium completely. Several reasons for this
+avoidance do exist.</p>
+
+<p>We discovered that no-one has ever taken a closer look at this
+social part of IT management in schools, so far. On our quest journey
+for a technical IT solution for schools, we discussed this issue with
+several teachers, headmasters, politicians, other IT professionals and
+they all confirmed: a holistic approach of considering IT management
+at schools, an approach that includes the people in place, will be new
+and probably a gain for all.</p>
<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?</strong></p>
-<p>It's open source, easy to set up, stable and flexible due to it's
-Debian base. It integrates LTSP out-of-the-box. And it is documented!
-So it was a perfect choice.</p>
-
-<p>Being open source, there are no license problems and so it's
-possible to point teachers and students to programs like
-OpenOffice.org, ViewYourMind (mind mapping) and The Gimp. It's of
-high value to be able to adapt parts of the system to special needs of
-a school and to choose where to get support for this.</p>
+<p>There is a list of advantages: international context, openness to
+any kind of contributions, do-ocracy policy, the closeness to Debian,
+the different installation scenarios possible (from stand-alone
+workstation to complex multi-server sites), the transparency within
+project communication, honest communication within the group of
+developers, etc.</p>
<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
Edu?</strong></p>
-<p>Nothing yet.</p>
+<p>Every coin has two sides:</p>
+
+<p>Technically: <a href="http://bugs.debian.org/311188">BTS issue
+#311188</a>, tricky upgradability of a Debian Edu main server, network
+client installations on top of a plain vanilla Debian installation
+should become possible sometime in the near future, one could think
+about splitting the very complex package debian-edu-config into
+several portions (to make it easier for new developers to
+contribute).</p>
+
+<p>Another issue I see is that we (as Debian Edu developers) should
+find out more about the network of people who do the marketing for
+Debian Edu / Skolelinux. There is a very active group in Germany
+promoting Skolelinux on the bigger Linux Days within Germany. Are
+there other groups like that in other countries? How can we bring
+these marketing people together (marketing group A with group B and
+all of them with the group of Debian Edu developers)? During the last
+meeting of the German Skolelinux group, I got the impression of people
+there being rather disconnected from the development department of
+Debian Edu / Skolelinux.</p>
<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-<p>At home (Debian Sid with Gnome Desktop): Iceweasel, LibreOffice,
-Mutt, Gedit, Document Viewer, Midnight Commander, flpsed (PDF
-Annotator). At school (Skolelinux Lenny): Iceweasel, Gedit,
-LibreOffice.</p>
+<p>For my daily business, I do not use commercial software at all.</p>
+
+<p>For normal stuff I use Iceweasel/Firefox, Libreoffice.org. For
+serious text writing I prefer LaTeX. I use gimp, inkscape, scribus for
+more artistic tasks. I run virtual machines in KVM and Virtualbox.</p>
+
+<p>I am one of the upstream developers of X2Go. In 2010 I started the
+development of a Python based X2Go Client, called PyHoca-GUI.
+PyHoca-GUI has brought forth a Python X2Go Client API that currently
+is being integrated in Ubuntu's software center.</p>
+
+<p>For communications I have my own Kolab server running using Horde
+as web-based groupware client. For IRC I love to use irssi, for Jabber
+I have several clients that I use, mostly pidgin, though. I am also
+the Debian maintainer of Coccinella, a Jabber-based interactive
+whiteboard.</p>
+
+<p>My favourite terminal emulator is KDE's Yakuake.</p>
<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-<p>Some time ago I thought it was enough to tell people about it. But
-that doesn't seem to work quite well. Now I concentrate on those more
-interested and hope to get multiplicators that way.</p>
+<p>Communicate, communicate, communicate. Enrol people, enrol people,
+enrol people.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>SOAP based webservice from Dell to check server support status</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/SOAP_based_webservice_from_Dell_to_check_server_support_status.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 1 Jun 2012 15:20:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p>A few years ago I wrote
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Checking_server_hardware_support_status_for_Dell__HP_and_IBM_servers.html">how
+to extract support status</a> for your Dell and HP servers. Recently
+I have learned from colleges here at the
+<a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a> that Dell have
+made this even easier, by providing a SOAP based web service. Given
+the service tag, one can now query the Dell servers and get machine
+readable information about the support status. This perl code
+demonstrate how to do it:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+use strict;
+use warnings;
+use SOAP::Lite;
+use Data::Dumper;
+my $GUID = '11111111-1111-1111-1111-111111111111';
+my $App = 'test';
+my $servicetag = $ARGV[0] or die "Please supply a servicetag. $!\n";
+my ($deal, $latest, @dates);
+my $s = SOAP::Lite
+ -> uri('http://support.dell.com/WebServices/')
+ -> on_action( sub { join '', @_ } )
+ -> proxy('http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx')
+ ;
+my $a = $s->GetAssetInformation(
+ SOAP::Data->name('guid')->value($GUID)->type(''),
+ SOAP::Data->name('applicationName')->value($App)->type(''),
+ SOAP::Data->name('serviceTags')->value($servicetag)->type(''),
+);
+print Dumper($a -> result) ;
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>The output can look like this:</p>
+
+<p><pre>
+$VAR1 = {
+ 'Asset' => {
+ 'Entitlements' => {
+ 'EntitlementData' => [
+ {
+ 'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
+ 'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
+ 'Provider' => '',
+ 'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
+ 'DaysLeft' => '0'
+ },
+ {
+ 'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
+ 'EndDate' => '2009-07-29T00:00:00',
+ 'Provider' => '',
+ 'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
+ 'DaysLeft' => '0'
+ },
+ {
+ 'EntitlementType' => 'Expired',
+ 'EndDate' => '2007-07-29T00:00:00',
+ 'Provider' => '',
+ 'StartDate' => '2006-07-29T00:00:00',
+ 'DaysLeft' => '0'
+ }
+ ]
+ },
+ 'AssetHeaderData' => {
+ 'SystemModel' => 'GX620',
+ 'ServiceTag' => '8DSGD2J',
+ 'SystemShipDate' => '2006-07-29T19:00:00-05:00',
+ 'Buid' => '2323',
+ 'Region' => 'Europe',
+ 'SystemID' => 'PLX_GX620',
+ 'SystemType' => 'OptiPlex'
+ }
+ }
+ };
+</pre></p>
+
+<p>I have not been able to find any documentation from Dell about this
+service outside the
+<a href="http://xserv.dell.com/services/assetservice.asmx?op=GetAssetInformation">inline
+documentation</a>, and according to
+<a href="http://iboyd.net/index.php/2012/02/14/updated-dell-warranty-information-script/">one
+comment</a> it can have stability issues, but it is a lot better than
+scraping HTML pages. :)</p>
+
+<p>Wonder if HP and other server vendors have a similar service. If
+you know of one, drop me an email. :)</p>
</description>
</item>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff