-<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>