</description>
</item>
+ <item>
+ <title>Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 10 Dec 2010 08:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>With this weeks lawless
+<a href="http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/06/wikileaks/index.html">governmental
+attacks</a> on Wikileak and
+<a href="http://www.salon.com/technology/dan_gillmor/2010/12/06/war_on_speech">free
+speech</a>, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can
+not be trusted to handle money transactions.
+A blog post from
+<a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/06/now-accepting-bitcoin/">Simon
+Phipps on bitcoin</a> reminded me about a project that a friend of
+mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get
+involved with <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>. I got
+some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me
+some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon
+for helping me remember BitCoin.</p>
+
+<p>So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital
+crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer
+networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central
+control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments
+and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The
+source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9
+for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command
+line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/578157">will get the package into
+Debian</a> soon.</p>
+
+<p>Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR.
+There are <a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/trade">companies accepting
+bitcoins</a> when selling services and goods, and there are even
+currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There
+are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you
+want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare,
+you can even get
+<a href="https://freebitcoins.appspot.com/">some for free</a> (0.05
+bitcoin at the time of writing). Use
+<a href="http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/">BitcoinWatch</a> to keep an eye
+on the current exchange rates.</p>
+
+<p>As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my
+machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin
+donations to the address
+<b>15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</b>. Thank you!</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Pornoskannerne på flyplassene bedrer visst ikke sikkerheten</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pornoskannerne_p___flyplassene_bedrer_visst_ikke_sikkerheten.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Pornoskannerne_p___flyplassene_bedrer_visst_ikke_sikkerheten.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 10:45:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>Via <a href="http://webmink.com/2010/12/10/links-for-2010-12-10/">en
+blogpost fra Simon Phipps i går</a>, fant jeg en referanse til
+<a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/9/exposed-tsas-x-rated-scanner-fraud/">en
+artikkel i Washington Times</a> som igjen refererer til en artikkel i
+det fagfellevurderte tidsskriftet Journal of Transportation Security
+med tittelen
+"<a href="http://springerlink.com/content/g6620thk08679160/fulltext.html">An
+evaluation of airport x-ray backscatter units based on image
+characteristics</a>" som enkelt konstaterer at
+<a href="http://www.dailysquib.co.uk/?a=2389&c=124">pornoscannerne</a>
+som kler av reisende på flyplasser ikke er i stand til å avsløre det
+produsenten og amerikanske myndigheter sier de skal avsløre. Kort
+sagt, de bedrer ikke sikkerheten. Reisende må altså la ansatte på
+flyplasser <a href="http://www.thousandsstandingaround.org/">se dem
+nakne eller la seg beføle i skrittet</a> uten grunn. Jeg vil
+fortsette å nekte å bruke disse pornoskannerne, unngå flyplasser der
+de er tatt i bruk, og reise med andre transportmidler enn fly hvis jeg
+kan.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Some thoughts on BitCoins</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Some_thoughts_on_BitCoins.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sat, 11 Dec 2010 15:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>As I continue to explore
+<a href="http://www.bitcoin.org/">BitCoin</a>, I've starting to wonder
+what properties the system have, and how it will be affected by laws
+and regulations here in Norway. Here are some random notes.</p>
+
+<p>One interesting thing to note is that since the transactions are
+verified using a peer to peer network, all details about a transaction
+is known to everyone. This means that if a BitCoin address has been
+published like I did with mine in my initial post about BitCoin, it is
+possible for everyone to see how many BitCoins have been transfered to
+that address. There is even a web service to look at the details for
+all transactions. There I can see that my address
+<a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b">15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b</a>
+have received 16.06 Bitcoin, the
+<a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3">1LfdGnGuWkpSJgbQySxxCWhv8MHqvwst3</a>
+address of Simon Phipps have received 181.97 BitCoin and the address
+<a href="http://blockexplorer.com/address/1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt">1MCwBbhNGp5hRm5rC1Aims2YFRe2SXPYKt</A>
+of EFF have received 2447.38 BitCoins so far. Thank you to each and
+every one of you that donated bitcoins to support my activity. The
+fact that anyone can see how much money was transfered to a given
+address make it more obvious why the BitCoin community recommend to
+generate and hand out a new address for each transaction. I'm told
+there is no way to track which addresses belong to a given person or
+organisation without the person or organisation revealing it
+themselves, as Simon, EFF and I have done.</p>
+
+<p>In Norway, and in most other countries, there are laws and
+regulations limiting how much money one can transfer across the border
+without declaring it. There are money laundering, tax and accounting
+laws and regulations I would expect to apply to the use of BitCoin.
+If the Skolelinux foundation
+(<a href="http://linuxiskolen.no/slxdebianlabs/donations.html">SLX
+Debian Labs</a>) were to accept donations in BitCoin in addition to
+normal bank transfers like EFF is doing, how should this be accounted?
+Given that it is impossible to know if money can across the border or
+not, should everything or nothing be declared? What exchange rate
+should be used when calculating taxes? Would receivers have to pay
+income tax if the foundation were to pay Skolelinux contributors in
+BitCoin? I have no idea, but it would be interesting to know.</p>
+
+<p>For a currency to be useful and successful, it must be trusted and
+accepted by a lot of users. It must be possible to get easy access to
+the currency (as a wage or using currency exchanges), and it must be
+easy to spend it. At the moment BitCoin seem fairly easy to get
+access to, but there are very few places to spend it. I am not really
+a regular user of any of the vendor types currently accepting BitCoin,
+so I wonder when my kind of shop would start accepting BitCoins. I
+would like to buy electronics, travels and subway tickets, not herbs
+and books. :) The currency is young, and this will improve over time
+if it become popular, but I suspect regular banks will start to lobby
+to get BitCoin declared illegal if it become popular. I'm sure they
+will claim it is helping fund terrorism and money laundering (which
+probably would be true, as is any currency in existence), but I
+believe the problems should be solved elsewhere and not by blaming
+currencies.</p>
+
+<p>The process of creating new BitCoins is called mining, and it is
+CPU intensive process that depend on a bit of luck as well (as one is
+competing against all the other miners currently spending CPU cycles
+to see which one get the next lump of cash). The "winner" get 50
+BitCoin when this happen. Yesterday I came across the obvious way to
+join forces to increase ones changes of getting at least some coins,
+by coordinating the work on mining BitCoins across several machines
+and people, and sharing the result if one is lucky and get the 50
+BitCoins. Check out
+<a href="http://www.bluishcoder.co.nz/bitcoin-pool/">BitCoin Pool</a>
+if this sounds interesting. I have not had time to try to set up a
+machine to participate there yet, but have seen that running on ones
+own for a few days have not yield any BitCoins througth mining
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>Update 2010-12-15: Found an <a
+href="http://inertia.posterous.com/reply-to-the-underground-economist-why-bitcoi">interesting
+criticism</a> of bitcoin. Not quite sure how valid it is, but thought
+it was interesting to read. The arguments presented seem to be
+equally valid for gold, which was used as a currency for many years.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>How to test if a laptop is working with Linux</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/How_to_test_if_a_laptop_is_working_with_Linux.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 22 Dec 2010 14:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>The last few days I have spent at work here at the <a
+href="http://www.uio.no/">University of oslo</a> testing if the new
+batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few
+years the university have organized shared bid of a few thousand
+computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and
+five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX
+group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL
+and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the
+university.</p>
+
+<p>My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and
+perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE
+install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run
+a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When
+something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move
+on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS
+vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely
+have the time to do this for all the problems I find.</p>
+
+<p>Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests
+I perform on a new model.</p>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li>Is PXE installation working? I'm testing with RHEL6, Ubuntu Lucid
+and Ubuntu Maverik at the moment. If I feel like it, I also test with
+RHEL5 and Debian Edu/Squeeze.</li>
+
+<li>Is X.org working? If the graphical login screen show up after
+installation, X.org is working.</li>
+
+<li>Is hardware accelerated OpenGL working? Running glxgears (in
+package mesa-utils on Ubuntu) and writing down the frames per second
+reported by the program.</li>
+
+<li>Is sound working? With Gnome and KDE, a sound is played when
+logging in, and if I can hear this the test is successful. If there
+are several audio exits on the machine, I try them all and check if
+the Gnome/KDE audio mixer can control where to send the sound. I
+normally test this by playing
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/aktiviteter/20101012-chef/ ">a HTML5
+video</a> in Firefox/Iceweasel.</li>
+
+<li>Is the USB subsystem working? I test this by plugging in a USB
+memory stick and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
+
+<li>Is the CD/DVD player working? I test this by inserting any CD/DVD
+I have lying around, and see if Gnome/KDE notices this.</li>
+
+<li>Is any built in camera working? Test using cheese, and see if a
+picture from the v4l device show up.</li>
+
+<li>Is bluetooth working? Use the Gnome/KDE browsing tool to see if
+any bluetooth devices are discovered. In my office, I normally see a
+few.</li>
+
+<li>For laptops, is the SD or Compaq Flash reader working. I have
+memory modules lying around, and stick them in and see if Gnome/KDE
+notice this.</li>
+
+<li>For laptops, is suspecd/hibernate working? I'm testing if the
+special button work, and if the laptop continue to work after
+resume.</li>
+
+<li>For laptops, is the extra buttons working, like audio level,
+adjusting background light, switching on/off external video output,
+switching on/off wifi, bluetooth, etc? The set of buttons differ from
+laptop to laptop, so I just write down which are working and which are
+not.</li>
+
+<li>Some laptops have smart card readers, finger print readers,
+acceleration sensors etc. I rarely test these, as I do not know how
+to quickly test if they are working or not, so I only document their
+existence.</li>
+
+</ul>
+
+<p>By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are
+for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report
+the test results later. For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work
+fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid,
+and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p. As you
+can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting
+observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the framerate than
+RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>165 norske overvåkningskamera registert så langt i OpenStreetmap.org</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/165_norske_overv__kningskamera_registert_s___langt_i_OpenStreetmap_org.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/165_norske_overv__kningskamera_registert_s___langt_i_OpenStreetmap_org.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Fri, 24 Dec 2010 11:20:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description>
+<p>Jeg flikket litt på OpenStreetmap.org i går, og oppdaget ved en
+tilfeldighet at det er en rekke noder som representerer
+overvåkningskamera som ikke blir med på kartet med overvåkningskamera
+i Norge som
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kart_over_overv__kningskamera_i_Norge.html">jeg
+laget</a> for snart to år siden. Fra før tok jeg med noder merket med
+man_made=surveillance, mens det er en rekke noder som kun er merket
+med highway=speed_camera. Endret på koden som henter ut kameralisten
+fra OSM, og vips er antall kamera økt til 165.</p>
+
+<a href="http://people.skolelinux.no/pere/surveillance-norway/">Kartet</a>
+er fortsatt ikke komplett, så hvis du ser noen kamera som mangler,
+legg inn ved å følge instruksene fra
+<a href="http://personvern.no/wiki/index.php/Kameraovervåkning">prosjektsiden</a>.
+Hvis du vet om noen flere måter å merke overvåkningskamera i OSM, ta
+kontakt slik at jeg kan få med også disse.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
</channel>
</rss>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff