- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__George_Bredberg.html">Debian Edu interview: George Bredberg</a></div>
- <div class="date"> 9th July 2012</div>
- <div class="body"><p>The <a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu /
-Skolelinux</a> project have users all over the globe, but until
-recently we have not known about any users in Norway's neighbour
-country Sweden. This changed when George Bredberg showed up in March
-this year on the mailing list, asking interesting questions about how
-to adjust and scale the just released
-<a href="http://www.debian.org/News/2012/20120311.html">Debian Edu
-Wheezy</a> setup to his liking. He granted me an interview, and I am
-happy to share his answers with you here.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I'm a 44 year old country guy that have been working 12 years at
-the same school as 50% IT-manager and 50% Teacher. My educational
-background is fil.kand in history and religious beliefs, an exam as a
-"folkhighschool" teacher, that is, for teaching grownups. In
-Norwegian I believe it's called "Vuxenupplaring". I also have a master
-in "Technology and social change". So I'm not really a tech guy, I
-just like to study how humans and technology interact and that is my
-perspective when working with IT.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux/Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-I have followed the Skolelinux project for quite some time by
-now. Earlier I tested out the K12-LTSP project, which we used for some
-time, but I really like the idea of having a distribution aimed to be
-a complete solution for schools with necessary tools integrated. When
-K12-LTSP abandoned that idea some years ago, I started to look more
-seriously into Skolelinux instead.
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-The big point of Skolelinux to me is that it is a complete
-distribution, ready to install. It has LDAP-support, MS Windows
-integration tools and so forth already configured, saving an
-administrator a lot of time and headache. We were using another Linux
-based thin-client system called Thinlinc, that has served us very
-well. But that Skolelinux is based on VNC and LTSP, to me, is better
-when it comes to the kind of multimedia used in schools. That is
-showing videos from Youtube or educational TV. It is also easier to
-mix thin clients with workstations, since the user settings will be the
-same. In our VNC-based solution you had to "beat around the bush" by
-setting up a second, hidden, home-directory for user settings for the
-workstations, because they will be different from the ones used on the
-thin clients. Skolelinux support for diskless workstations are very
-convenient since a school today often need to use a class room
-projector showing videos in full screen. That is easily done with a
-small integrated media computer running as a diskless workstation. You
-have only two installs to update and configure. One for the thin
-clients and one for the workstations. Also saving a lot of time. Our
-old system was also based on Redhat and CentOS. They are both very
-nice distributions, but they are sometimes painfully slow when it
-comes to updating multimedia support and multimedia programs (even
-such as Gimp), leaving us with a bit "oldish" applications. Debian is
-quicker to update.
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux/Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Debian is a bit too quick when it comes to updating. As an example
-we use old HP terminals as thinclients, and two times already this
-year (2012) the updates you get from the repositories has stopped
-sound from working with them. It's a kernel/ALSA issue. So you have
-to be more careful properly testing the updates before you run them in
-a production environment. This has never happened with CentOS.</p>
-
-<p>I also would like to be able to set my own domain-settings at
-install time. In Skolelinux they are kind of hard coded into the
-distribution, when it comes to LDAP and at least samba integration.
-That is more a cosmetic/translation issue, and not a real problem.
-Running MS Windows applications within the Skolelinux environment needs
-to be better supported. That is, running them seamlessly via RDP, and
-support for single-sign on. That will make the transition to free
-software easier, because you can keep the applications you really
-need. No support will make it impossible if you work in a school where
-some applications can't be open source. As for us we really need to
-run Adobe InDesign in our journalist classes. We run a journalist
-education, and is one of the very few non university ones that is ok:d
-by Svenska journalistförbundet (Swedish journalist association). Our
-education gives the pupils the right of membership there, once they
-are done. This is important if you want to get a job.</p>
-
-<p>Adobe InDesign is the program most commonly used in newspapers and
-magazines. We used Quark Express before, but they seem to loose there
-market to Adobe. The only "equivalent" to InDesign in the opensource
-world is Scribus, and its not advanced enough. At least not according
-to the teacher. I think it would be possible to use it, because they
-are not supposed to learn a program, they are supposed to learn how to
-edit and compile a newspaper. But politically at our school we are not
-there yet. And Scribus lacks a lot of things you find i InDesign.</p>
-
-<p>We used even a windows program for sound editing when it comes to
-the radio-journalist part. The year to come we are going to try
-Audacity. That software has the same kind of limitations compared to
-Adobe Audition, but that teacher is a bit more open minded. We have
-tried Ardour also, but that instead is more like a music studio
-program, not intended for the kind of editing taking place in a radio
-studio. Its way to complex and the GUI is to scattered when you only
-want to cut, make pass-overs, add extra channels and normalise. Those
-things you can do in Audacity, but its not as easy as in Audition. You
-have to do more things manually with envelopes, and that is a bit old
-fashion and timewasting. Its also harder to cut and move sound from
-one channel to another, which is a thing that you do frequently
-because you often find yourself needing to rearrange parts of the
-sound file.</p>
-
-<p>So, I am not sure we will succeed in replacing even Audition, but we
-will try. The problem is the students have certain expectations when
-they start an education towards a profession. So the programs has to
-look and feel professional. Good thing with radio, there are many
-programs out there, that radio studios use, so its not as standardised
-as Newspaper editing. That means, it does not really matter what
-program they learn, because once they start working they still have to
-learn the program the studio uses, so instead focus has to be to learn
-the editing part without to much focus on a specific software.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>Myself I'm running Linux Mint, or Ubuntu these days. I use almost
-only open source software, and preferably Linux based. When it comes
-to most used applications its OpenOffice, and Firefox (of course ;)
-)</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>To get schools to use free software there has to be good open
-source software that are windows based, to ease the transition. But
-it's also very important that the multimedia support is working
-flawlessly. The problems with Youtube, Twitter, Facebook and whatever
-will create problems when it comes to both teachers and
-students. Economy are also important for schools, so using thin
-clients, as long as they have good multimedia support, is a very good
-idea. It's also important that the open source software works even for
-the administration. It's hard to convince the teachers to stick with
-open source, if the principal has to run Windows. It also creates a
-problem if some classes has to use Windows for there tasks, since that
-will create a difference in "status" between classes, so a good
-support for running windows applications via the thin client (Linux)
-desktop is essential. At least at our school, where we have mixed
-level of educations, from high-school to journalist-school.</p>
-
-<p>Update 2012-07-09 08:30: Paul Wise tipped me on IRC about three
-useful sources related to Free Software for radio stations: the LWN
-article <a href="https://lwn.net/Articles/481607/">Radio station
-management with Airtime</a>,
-<a href="http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/airtime/">Airtime</a> which
-claim to be a Free open source radio automation software and
-<a href="http://www.rivendellaudio.org/">Rivendell</a> which claim to
-be complete radio broadcast automation solution. All of them seem
-useful to the aspiring radio producer.</p>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/intervju">intervju</a>.
-
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Why_do_schools_waste_money_on_IT_.html">Why do schools waste money on IT?</a></div>
- <div class="date"> 8th July 2012</div>
- <div class="body"><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>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
-
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Free_Timetabling_Software___nice_free_software.html">Free Timetabling Software - nice free software</a></div>
- <div class="date"> 7th July 2012</div>
- <div class="body"><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>
-</div>
- <div class="tags">
-
-
- Tags: <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/debian edu">debian edu</a>, <a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/tags/english">english</a>.
-
-
- </div>
- </div>
- <div class="padding"></div>
-
- <div class="entry">
- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Mer_oppf_lging_fra_MPEG_LA_om_avtale_med_dem_for___kringkaste_og_publisere_H_264_video.html">Mer oppfølging fra MPEG-LA om avtale med dem for å kringkaste og publisere H.264-video</a></div>
- <div class="date"> 5th July 2012</div>
- <div class="body"><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>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Kontant_betaling__takk_.html">Kontant betaling, takk!</a></div>
+ <div class="date">11th October 2012</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>Jeg har tidligere nevnt at jeg foretrekker å betale med kontanter,
+da jeg anser det som en borgerrett å kunne handle anonymt uten at det
+blir registrert noe sted. Mine handlevaner tilhører privatsfæren, og
+ikke jeg ønsker å dele dem med banken og andre. For meg er det et
+angrep på mitt personvern å nekte meg å ta imot kontanter. Det er
+litt av bakgrunnen for følgende epostutveksling mellom meg og
+Ballangen kommune, som jeg håper kan inspirere andre til å sikre at
+<a href="http://www.lovdata.no/all/hl-19850524-028.html#14">sentralbanklovens
+paragraf 14</a> overholdes. Dette er en historie om forvirring,
+bløff, og merkelig håndtering av unntak fra offentlighetsloven. Jeg
+er dog veldig glad for at kommunen fikk ryddet opp i sitt brudd på
+sentralbankloven, og håper denne epostutvekslingen kan inspirere andre
+til å hjelpe flere offentlige etater til å følge loven.</p>
+
+<p>Det hele startet i romjula 2011, da vi tok en tur innom legen med
+ungene for å sikre at alt skulle gå greit på flyturen hjem igjen fra
+Ofoten. Jeg ønsket å gjøre opp kontant, men personen bak skranken
+nektet å ta imot, og lot seg ikke påvirke av at jeg fortalte at jeg
+mente dette var i strid med sentralbankloven. Sendte derfor en epost
+til kommunen da jeg kom hjem, og satte ordføreren som jeg kjenner
+såvidt fra oppveksten i samme nabolag på CC.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Date: Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:10:57 +0100
+<br>From: Petter Reinholdtsen <pere (at) hungry.com>
+<br>To: post (at) ballangen.kommune.no
+<br>Cc: Anne-Rita Nicklasson <anne-rita.nicklasson (at) ballangen.kommune.no>
+<br>Subject: Brudd på sentralbankloven hos legevakten i Ballangen?</p>
+
+<p>I dag var vi innom legevakten i Ballangen, og oppdaget noe som for
+oss virker å være et brudd på sentralbankloven. Etter undersøkelsen
+skulle vi kjøpe medisin i skranken, men ble avvist da vi forsøkte å
+betale kontant, med beskjed om at kun direktebetaling med kort var
+mulig og at vi kunne få faktura hvis det ikke var aktuelt. Da jeg
+spurte om det ikke var krav i følge sentralbankloven å ta imot
+kontanter fikk jeg beskjed om at de i skranken hadde fått beskjed om
+at kun kort skulle godtas og at hun var ukjent med noe lov som sa at
+kontanter måtte godtas.</p>
+
+<p>Så vidt jeg vet fra sentralbanklovens paragraf 14 er kontanter
+tvunget betalingsmiddel, hvilket betyr at alle er pliktig å oppgjør i
+kontanter. Se
+<URL: <a href="http://www.lovdata.no/all/hl-19850524-028.html#14">http://www.lovdata.no/all/hl-19850524-028.html#14</a> >
+for å se hva jeg baserer dette på.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg ber herved om å få tilsendt kopi av beskjeden som er gitt til
+legevaktmottaket om å nekte bruk av kontanter. Hvilken hjemmel har
+legevakten i Ballangen til å nekte å ta i mot kontant betaling i strid
+med sentralbanklovens paragraf 14?</p>
+
+<p>Jeg ber om rask tilbakemelding med saksreferansen min henvendelse
+har fått og hvordan henvendelsen vil bli behandlet videre av kommunen,
+for å være sikker på at henvendelsen er registrert mottatt. Jeg ber
+videre om svar eller midlertidig svar innen onsdag 11. januar slik at
+jeg slipper å ta saken videre.</p>
+
+<p>Det er fint om svar sendes på epost til pere (at) hungry.com.</p>
+
+<p>--
+<br>Vennlig hilsen
+<br>Petter Reinholdtsen</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>I første omgang så jeg ikke noe poeng i å be kommunen endre
+praksis, da det raskt kan ende i en diskusjon rundt hva som er riktig
+og galt, og jeg som tilfeldig innbygger neppe anses som en autoritet
+på området. I stedet spurte jeg kommunen om dokumenter jeg antok de
+hadde skrevet og vurderinger jeg antok de hadde gjort, når de avviker
+fra sentralbanklovens bokstav. Slike dokumenter har en i følge
+offentlighetsloven rett til å få innsyn i og kopi av. Svaret fulgte
+raskt første dag etter ferien.</p>
+
+<p><blockquote>
+<p>Date: Mon, 2 Jan 2012 11:12:50 +0100
+<br>From: svenn.ole.wiik (at) ballangen.kommune.no
+<br>To: Anne-Rita Nicklasson <an-ritn (at) online.no>,
+<br> Petter Reinholdtsen <pere (at) hungry.com>
+<br>Cc: post (at) ballangen.kommune.no
+<br> anne.lundberg (at) ballangen-helseetat.no,
+<br> anne.dahlberg (at) ballangen-helseetat.no
+<br>Subject: Ad: Fwd: Brudd på sentralbankloven hos legevakten i Ballangen?</p>
+
+<p>Hei og GODT NYTTÅR!</p>
+
+<p>Ordningen med betaling enten ved bruk av kort (debet eller
+kredittkort) eller ved tilksending av faktura er innført for å få
+bedre kontroll med kassefunksjonen som er utfordringen i forhold til
+regnskapsførsel og intern kontroll. Dette er en ordning som er
+godkjent av revisjonen og der vi unngår daglige kassetellinger,
+z-strimler og lignende.</p>
+
+<p>Kontantbetaling kan skje til servicetorget.</p>
+
+<p>Med vennlig hilsen,</p>
+
+<p>Svenn Ole Wiik
+<br>rådmann</p>
+</blockquote></p>
+
+<p>I og med at jeg ikke fikk svar på det jeg spurte om, fulgte jeg
+raskt opp med en klargjøring.</p>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff