+
+
8th May 2016
+
Where I set out to figure out which multimedia player in
+Debian claim support for most file formats.
+
+
A few years ago, I had a look at the media support for Browser
+plugins in Debian, to get an idea which plugins to include in Debian
+Edu. I created a script to extract the set of supported MIME types
+for each plugin, and used this to find out which multimedia browser
+plugin supported most file formats / media types.
+The
+result can still be seen on the Debian wiki, even though it have
+not been updated for a while. But browser plugins are less relevant
+these days, so I thought it was time to look at standalone
+players.
+
+
A few days ago I was tired of VLC not being listed as a viable
+player when I wanted to play videos from the Norwegian National
+Broadcasting Company, and decided to investigate why. The cause is a
+missing MIME type in the VLC
+desktop file. In the process I wrote a script to compare the set
+of MIME types announced in the desktop file and the browser plugin,
+only to discover that there is quite a large difference between the
+two for VLC. This discovery made me dig up the script I used to
+compare browser plugins, and adjust it to compare desktop files
+instead, to try to figure out which multimedia player in Debian
+support most file formats.
+
+
The result can be seen on the Debian Wiki, as
+a
+table listing all MIME types supported by one of the packages included
+in the table, with the package supporting most MIME types being
+listed first in the table.
+
+The best multimedia player in Debian? It is totem, followed by
+parole, kplayer, mpv, vlc, smplayer mplayer-gui gnome-mpv and
+kmplayer. Time for the other players to update their announced MIME
+support?
+
+
+
+
+
4th May 2016
+
A friend of mine made me aware of
+
The Pyra, a
+handheld computer which will be delivered with Debian preinstalled. I
+would love to get one of those for my birthday. :)
+
+
The machine is a complete ARM-based PC with micro HDMI, SATA, USB
+plugs and many others connectors, and include a full keyboard and a 5"
+LCD touch screen. The 6000mAh battery is claimed to provide a whole
+day of battery life time, but I have not seen any independent tests
+confirming this. The vendor is still collecting preorders, and the
+last I heard last night was that 22 more orders were needed before
+production started.
+
+
As far as I know, this is the first handheld preinstalled with
+Debian. Please let me know if you know of any others. Is it the
+first computer being sold with Debian preinstalled?
+
+
+
+
+
18th April 2016
+
It is days like today I am really happy to be a member of
+the Norwegian Unix User group, a
+member association for those of us believing in free software, open
+standards and unix-like operating systems. NUUG announced today it
+will
+try
+to bring the seizure of the DNS domain popcorn-time.no as
+unlawful, to stand up for the principle that writing about a
+controversial topic is not infringing copyrights, and censuring web
+pages by hijacking DNS domain should be decided by the courts, not the
+police. The DNS domain was seized by the Norwegian National Authority
+for Investigation and Prosecution of Economic and Environmental Crime
+a month ago. I hope this bring more paying members to NUUG to give
+the association the financial muscle needed to bring this case as far
+as it must go to stop this kind of DNS hijacking.
+
+
+
+
+
15th April 2016
+
I dag tok jeg mot til meg og pakket sammen en ny versjon av den
+frie norske stavekontrollen, ca. tre og et halvt år etter forrige
+gang. Resultatet kan lastes ned fra
+no.speling.org-prosjeksiden, både
+som kildekodepakke og som "pack"-fil som kanskje fortsatt kan brukes
+av OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice. Byggesystemet trenger oppussing, men i
+denne omgang hadde jeg bare tid til å fikse byggefeil forårsaket av
+endringer i GNU grep. De øvrige endringene var gjort tidligere i
+påvente av en ny utgave.
+
+
Her er det som er nytt (fra NEWS-fila i
+kildekodepakken):
+
+
Release 2.2 (2016-04-15)
+
+
+
+ - Rewrite how scripts/speling2words handle tripple consonants, to
+ avoid importing duplicate words from no.speling.org, and getting
+ rid of the existing duplicates in norsk.words.
+ - Remove duplicate entries with tripple consonants from norsk.words.
+ - Update frequency for entries in norsk.words based on
+ (ran 'make
+ freq-update').
+ - Correct nn ispell build, avoid crash in munchlist causing lots of
+ words to fall out of the database.
+ - Use grep -a to convince grep it is working on text files, to work
+ with newer grep versions.
+
+ - Remove some words disputed in the no.speling.org review process:
+
+ - apparent (nb)
+ - likke (nb)
+ - ugjest, ugjesten, ugjestens (nb)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
13th April 2016
+
I first got to know I.F. Stone when I came across an article by Jon
+Schwarz on The Intercept
+about
+his extraordinary contribution to investigative journalism in
+USA. The article is about a new documentary in two parts
+(part one is 12 minutes and
+part two is 30 minutes), and
+I found both truly fascinating. It is amazing what he was able to
+find by digging up public sources and government papers. He
+documented lots of government abuse and cover ups, and I find
+his weekly news letters
+inspiring to read even today.
+
+
+All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed.
+
- I. F. Stone
+
+
+
His starting point was that reporters should not assume governments
+and corporations are telling the truth, but verify all their claims as
+much as possible. I wonder how many Norwegian reporters can be said
+to follow the principles of I. F. Stone. They are definitely in short
+supply. If you, like me half a year ago, have never heard of him,
+check him out.
+
+
+
+
+
12th April 2016
+
I'm happy to report that
+the
+French paperback edition of
+my
+project to translate the Free
+Culture book by Lawrence Lessig is now available for sale on
+Lulu.com. Once I have formally verified my proof reading copy, which
+should be in the mail, the paperback edition should be available in
+book stores like Amazon and Barnes & Noble too.
+
+
This French edition, Culture Libre, is the work of the
+dblatex developer Benoît
+Guillon, who created the PO file from the initial translation
+available from
+the Wikilivres
+wiki pages and completed and corrected the translation to match
+the original docbook edition my project is using, as well as
+coordinated the proof reading of the final result. I believe the end
+result look great, but I am biased and do not read French. In
+addition to the paperback edition, the book is available in PDF, EPUB
+and Mobi format from the github project page linked to above.
+
+
When enabling book store distribution on Lulu.com, I had to nearly
+triple the price to allow the book stores some profit. I also had to
+accept that I will get some revenue when a book is sold via Lulu.com.
+But because of the non-commercial clause in the book license
+(CC-BY-NC), this might be a problem. To bypass the problem I
+discussed how to handle the revenue with the author, and we agreed
+that the revenue for these editions go to the
+Creative Commons non-profit
+Corporation who handle donations to the Creative Commons project.
+So far they have earned around USD 70 on sales of the
+English
+and
+Norwegian
+Bokmål editions, according to Lulu.com. They will get the revenue
+for the French edition too. Their revenue is higher if you buy the
+book directly from Lulu.com instead of via a book store, so I
+recommend you buy directly from Lulu.com.
+
+
Perhaps you would like to get the book published in your language?
+The translation is done using a web based translator service, so the
+technical bar to enter is fairly low. Get in touch if you would like
+to make this happen.
+
+
+
+
+
10th April 2016
+
During this weekends
+bug
+squashing party and developer gathering, we decided to do our part
+to make sure there are good books about Debian available in Norwegian
+Bokmål, and got in touch with the people behind the
+Debian Administrator's Handbook
+project to get started. If you want to help out, please start
+contributing using
+the
+hosted weblate project page, and get in touch using
+the
+translators mailing list. Please also check out
+the instructions for
+contributors.
+
+
The book is already available on paper in English, French and
+Japanese, and our goal is to get it available on paper in Norwegian
+Bokmål too. In addition to the paper edition, there are also EPUB and
+Mobi versions available. And there are incomplete translations
+available for many more languages.
+
+
+
+
+
7th April 2016
+
Just for fun I had a look at the popcon number of ZFS related
+packages in Debian, and was quite surprised with what I found. I use
+ZFS myself at home, but did not really expect many others to do so.
+But I might be wrong.
+
+
According to
+the popcon
+results for spl-linux, there are 1019 Debian installations, or
+0.53% of the population, with the package installed. As far as I know
+the only use of the spl-linux package is as a support library for ZFS
+on Linux, so I use it here as proxy for measuring the number of ZFS
+installation on Linux in Debian. In the kFreeBSD variant of Debian
+the ZFS feature is already available, and there
+the popcon
+results for zfsutils show 1625 Debian installations or 0.84% of
+the population. So I guess I am not alone in using ZFS on Debian.
+
+
But even though the Debian project leader Lucas Nussbaum
+announced
+in April 2015 that the legal obstacles blocking ZFS on Debian were
+cleared, the package is still not in Debian. The package is again in
+the NEW queue. Several uploads have been rejected so far because the
+debian/copyright file was incomplete or wrong, but there is no reason
+to give up. The current status can be seen on
+the
+team status page, and
+the
+source code is available on Alioth.
+
+
As I want ZFS to be included in next version of Debian to make sure
+my home server can function in the future using only official Debian
+packages, and the current blocker is to get the debian/copyright file
+accepted by the FTP masters in Debian, I decided a while back to try
+to help out the team. This was the background for my blog post about
+creating,
+updating and checking debian/copyright semi-automatically, and I
+used the techniques I explored there to try to find any errors in the
+copyright file. It is not very easy to check every one of the around
+2000 files in the source package, but I hope we this time got it
+right. If you want to help out, check out the git source and try to
+find missing entries in the debian/copyright file.
+
+
+
7th April 2016
@@ -32,7 +403,7 @@ mye som mangler og en om
hvor
stor andel dokumenter som journalføres mer enn 180 dager etter
dokumentdato. Jeg synes det er interessant å se hvordan det
-utvikler seg over tid, så her tallene for 2015 og 2014. 2014-tallene
+utvikler seg over tid, så her er tallene for 2015 og 2014. 2014-tallene
bør være de samme som sist, men kan ha litt avvik på grunn av
endringer/korreksjoner gjort i OEP. Denne gangen har jeg samlet alle
tallene i samme bloggpost.
@@ -71,8 +442,10 @@ blitt holdt tilbake på forespørsel.
| 7.2 | 4201 | 57778 | 2.8 | 1542 | 53911 | Norges vassdrags- og energidirektorat |
| 7.4 | 2028 | 27385 | 10.8 | 2342 | 21539 | Kulturdepartementet |
| 7.7 | 13994 | 179777 | 7.9 | 13743 | 171924 | Arbeidstilsynet |
+
| 8.6 | 3256 | 37553 | 8.5 | 3203 | 37675 | Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet |
| 9.8 | 7256 | 73440 | 8.8 | 6541 | 74189 | Statens vegvesen Region midt |
| 10.7 | 3802 | 35467 | 7.5 | 2780 | 36664 | Forsvarsbygg |
+
| 11.0 | 1157 | 10448 | 9.6 | 1148 | 11935 | Landbruks- og matdepartementet |
| 11.1 | 14089 | 126652 | 11.7 | 12439 | 105491 | Statens vegvesen Region vest |
| 11.1 | 1756 | 15726 | 6.9 | 1242 | 17980 | Brønnøysundregistrene |
| 11.2 | 3417 | 30277 | 9.3 | 2653 | 28291 | Lotteri- og stiftelsestilsynet |
@@ -83,7 +456,6 @@ blitt holdt tilbake på forespørsel.
| 12.9 | 941 | 7247 | 22.8 | 1687 | 7393 | Domstoladministrasjonen |
| 13.0 | 14170 | 108284 | 14.0 | 15650 | 111147 | Statens vegvesen Region sør |
| 13.4 | 1394 | 10364 | 17.5 | 1484 | 8440 | Direktoratet for mineralforvaltning med Bergmesteren for Svalbard |
-
| 13.5 | 1413 | 10448 | 12.5 | 1492 | 11935 | Landbruks- og matdepartementet |
| 13.6 | 5297 | 38707 | 11.5 | 4366 | 37961 | Statens vegvesen Vegdirektoratet |
| 14.4 | 3001 | 20820 | 13.0 | 2943 | 22557 | Samferdselsdepartementet |
| 14.4 | 9453 | 65642 | 12.7 | 7841 | 61425 | Statens vegvesen Region nord |
@@ -101,13 +473,13 @@ blitt holdt tilbake på forespørsel.
| 18.8 | 2499 | 13281 | 20.8 | 2888 | 13853 | Olje- og energidepartementet |
| 18.8 | 7804 | 41362 | 15.0 | 5824 | 38769 | Luftfartstilsynet |
| 19.1 | 479 | 2505 | 21.1 | 563 | 2660 | Norges geologiske undersøkelse |
+
| 19.2 | 13777 | 71409 | 20.4 | 13318 | 65121 | Utenriksdepartementet |
| 19.8 | 3605 | 18194 | 22.1 | 4177 | 18833 | Klima- og miljødepartementet |
| 20.6 | 1736 | 8412 | 23.1 | 2018 | 8701 | Statens lånekasse for utdanning |
| 20.6 | 2930 | 14220 | 18.7 | 2459 | 13138 | Barne-, ungdoms- og familiedirektoratet |
| 21.0 | 3786 | 17975 | 18.4 | 3213 | 17452 | Fylkesmannen i Telemark |
| 21.4 | 4930 | 22971 | 22.5 | 4565 | 20202 | Fylkesmannen i Møre og Romsdal |
| 22.0 | 8244 | 37385 | 17.5 | 6420 | 36587 | Statens kartverk |
-
| 22.4 | 8414 | 37553 | 24.3 | 9157 | 37675 | Nærings- og fiskeridepartementet |
| 23.0 | 2212 | 9593 | 23.0 | 1797 | 7799 | Norsk Akkreditering |
| 23.0 | 6622 | 28777 | 21.4 | 6142 | 28622 | Nasjonal kommunikasjonsmyndighet |
| 23.4 | 2672 | 11405 | 25.7 | 3039 | 11812 | Oljedirektoratet |
@@ -121,12 +493,12 @@ blitt holdt tilbake på forespørsel.
| 24.8 | 3711 | 14933 | 6.4 | 795 | 12300 | Direktoratet for forvaltning og IKT |
| 24.9 | 5002 | 20033 | 21.6 | 3997 | 18424 | Fylkesmannen i Nord-Trøndelag |
| 25.1 | 1246 | 4954 | 27.2 | 1305 | 4781 | Konkurransetilsynet |
+
| 25.6 | 5674 | 22128 | 20.4 | 4936 | 24189 | Helse- og omsorgsdepartementet |
| 26.9 | 22947 | 85293 | 24.3 | 21337 | 87572 | Helsedirektoratet |
| 27.2 | 3648 | 13401 | 18.5 | 1898 | 10234 | Vox, nasjonalt fagorgan for kompetansepolitikk |
| 27.6 | 23161 | 83795 | 29.7 | 22587 | 75973 | Statens legemiddelverk |
| 27.7 | 6373 | 22941 | 28.3 | 6449 | 22738 | Fylkesmannen i Sør-Trøndelag |
| 27.9 | 784 | 2807 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | Jernbaneverket |
-
| 28.0 | 6196 | 22128 | 27.0 | 6534 | 24189 | Helse- og omsorgsdepartementet |
| 29.6 | 1290 | 4352 | 47.0 | 1401 | 2976 | Nasjonalt organ for kvalitet i utdanningen (NOKUT) |
| 29.8 | 6990 | 23388 | 30.2 | 7263 | 23997 | Fylkesmannen i Buskerud |
| 29.9 | 2932 | 9778 | 32.3 | 3439 | 10643 | Statsministerens kontor |
@@ -170,14 +542,17 @@ blitt holdt tilbake på forespørsel.
| 91.1 | 609 | 668 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | Direktoratet for e-helse |
| 91.4 | 10838 | 11854 | 87.1 | 10278 | 11798 | Garantiinstituttet for eksportkreditt |
| 98.9 | 17373 | 17563 | 0.0 | 0 | 0 | Forbrukerrådet |
-
| 99.8 | 71323 | 71409 | 44.3 | 28865 | 65121 | Utenriksdepartementet |
Interessant å se hvordan Utenriksdepartementet tilsynelatende er
blitt ekstremt mer hemmelighetsfull på tre år. I 2015 var 99,8% av
71409 dokumenter merket som unntatt offentlighet, mens i 2014 var det
44,3% av 65121 og og i 2013 var det bare 12,1% av 67828. Lurer på hva
-som har skjedd.
+som har skjedd. (
Oppdatering 13:40: Dette er en teknisk feil
+i databasen, da UD har begynt å legge inn '-' der det ikke er unntak,
+mens det tidligere var et tomt felt. Skal lage ny statistikk, men det
+tar noen timer å lage ny tabell. Oppdatering 15:30: Ny tabell på
+plass, mer forklaring nederst i teksten.)
Dernest kommer statistikken over hvor mange saksnummer og
dokumenter som ikke finnes i OEP (dvs. hull i saksnummer- og
@@ -463,6 +838,21 @@ det manglende opplæring, vanskelige systemer, vond vilje eller noe
helt annet som er årsaken? Det hadde vært interessant å finne ut om
det var noen fellestrekk for dokumenter som ikke blir journalført før
det er gått et halvt år.
+
+
Oppdatering 2016-04-07: En nærmere undersøkelse av
+OEP-oppføringene til Utenriksdepartementet viste at det var en teknisk
+feil i måten jeg laget statistikken, der alle oppføringer med '-' i
+unntaksgrunnlagsfeltet ble talt opp som unntatt offentlighet. Det
+var UD ikke alene om. Det viste seg å gjelde Barne-, likestillings-
+og inkluderingsdepartementet (4), Helse- og omsorgsdepartementet
+(3525), Landbruks- og matdepartementet (1753), Nærings- og
+fiskeridepartementet (11780), Nærings- og handelsdepartementet (7),
+Nærings- og handelsdepartementet (frem til 31.12.13) (10417) og
+Utenriksdepartementet (78798) også. Antall påvirkede oppføringer står
+i parentes. Jeg har fikset problemet og oppdatert tabellen for
+hemmelighold over. Oppføringene for Nærings- og handelsdepartementet,
+Landbruks- og matdepartementet, Utenriksdepartementet og Helse- og
+omsorgsdepartementet fikk ny plassering i lista.
-
-
2nd April 2016
-
Two years ago, I had
-a
-look at trusted timestamping options available, and among
-other things noted a still open
-bug in the tsget script
-included in openssl that made it harder than necessary to use openssl
-as a trusted timestamping client. A few days ago I was told
-the Norwegian government office DIFI is
-close to releasing their own trusted timestamp service, and in the
-process I was happy to learn about a replacement for the tsget script
-using only curl:
-
-
-openssl ts -query -data "/etc/shells" -cert -sha256 -no_nonce \
- | curl -s -H "Content-Type: application/timestamp-query" \
- --data-binary "@-" http://zeitstempel.dfn.de > etc-shells.tsr
-openssl ts -reply -text -in etc-shells.tsr
-
-
-
This produces a binary timestamp file (etc-shells.tsr) which can be
-used to verify that the content of the file /etc/shell with the
-calculated sha256 hash existed at the point in time when the request
-was made. The last command extract the content of the etc-shells.tsr
-in human readable form. The idea behind such timestamp is to be able
-to prove using cryptography that the content of a file have not
-changed since the file was stamped.
-
-
To verify that the file on disk match the public key signature in
-the timestamp file, run the following commands. It make sure you have
-the required certificate for the trusted timestamp service available
-and use it to compare the file content with the timestamp. In
-production, one should of course use a better method to verify the
-service certificate.
-
-
-wget -O ca-cert.txt https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt
-openssl ts -verify -data /etc/shells -in etc-shells.tsr -CAfile ca-cert.txt -text
-
-
-
Wikipedia have a lot more information about
-trusted
-Timestamping and
-linked
-timestamping, and there are several trusted timestamping services
-around, both as commercial services and as free and public services.
-Among the latter is
-the
-zeitstempel.dfn.de service mentioned above and
-freetsa.org service linked to from the
-wikipedia web site. I believe the DIFI service should show up on
-https://tsa.difi.no, but it is not available to the public at the
-moment. I hope this will change when it is into production. The
-RFC 3161 trusted
-timestamping protocol standard is even implemented in LibreOffice,
-Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat, making it possible to verify when
-a document was created.
-
-
I would find it useful to be able to use such trusted timestamp
-service to make it possible to verify that my stored syslog files have
-not been tampered with. This is not a new idea. I found one example
-implemented on the Endian network appliances where
-the
-configuration of such feature was described in 2012.
-
-
But I could not find any free implementation of such feature when I
-searched, so I decided to try to
-build
-a prototype named syslog-trusted-timestamp. My idea is to
-generate a timestamp of the old log files after they are rotated, and
-store the timestamp in the new log file just after rotation. This
-will form a chain that would make it possible to see if any old log
-files are tampered with. But syslog is bad at handling kilobytes of
-binary data, so I decided to base64 encode the timestamp and add an ID
-and line sequence numbers to the base64 data to make it possible to
-reassemble the timestamp file again. To use it, simply run it like
-this:
-
-
-syslog-trusted-timestamp /path/to/list-of-log-files
-
-
-
This will send a timestamp from one or more timestamp services (not
-yet decided nor implemented) for each listed file to the syslog using
-logger(1). To verify the timestamp, the same program is used with the
---verify option:
-
-
-syslog-trusted-timestamp --verify /path/to/log-file /path/to/log-with-timestamp
-
-
-
The verification step is not yet well designed. The current
-implementation depend on the file path being unique and unchanging,
-and this is not a solid assumption. It also uses process number as
-timestamp ID, and this is bound to create ID collisions. I hope to
-have time to come up with a better way to handle timestamp IDs and
-verification later.
-
-
Please check out
-the
-prototype for syslog-trusted-timestamp on github and send
-suggestions and improvement, or let me know if there already exist a
-similar system for timestamping logs already to allow me to join
-forces with others with the same interest.
-
-
As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
-
-
-
-
-
23rd March 2016
-
Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an
-extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for
-later processing and graphing. The original collector store the
-battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new
-collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design
-full level, last full level and current battery level. This make it
-possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise
-the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.
-
-
The new tools are available in /usr/share/battery-stats/
-in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable. Get the new battery level graph
-and lifetime prediction by running:
-
-
-/usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv
-
-
-
Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.
-
-
The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu
-entry yet):
-
-
-/usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow
-
-
-
I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least
-when there are few data points. The graphs look a bit better with a
-few years of data.
-
-
A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats
-collector broke in Debian. The scripts in
-/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/ were no longer executed. I
-suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not
-know. The issue is reported as
-bug #818649 against
-pm-utils. I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call
-the collector script every time the power connector is connected and
-disconnected. With this fix in place it was finally time to make a
-new release of the package, and get it into Debian.
-
-
If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please
-check out the
-battery-stats
-in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on
-Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from
-github.
-As always, patches are very welcome.
-
-
-
-
-
19th March 2016
-
Back in 2013 I proposed
-a
-way to make paper and PDF invoices easier to process electronically by
-adding a QR code with the key information about the invoice. I
-suggested using vCard field definition, to get some standard format
-for name and address, but any format would work. I did not do
-anything about the proposal, but hoped someone one day would make
-something like it. It would make it possible to efficiently send
-machine readable invoices directly between seller and buyer.
-
-
This was the background when I came across a proposal and
-specification from the web based accounting and invoicing supplier
-Visma in Sweden called
-UsingQR. Their PDF invoices contain
-a QR code with the key information of the invoice in JSON format.
-This is the typical content of a QR code following the UsingQR
-specification (based on a real world example, some numbers replaced to
-get a more bogus entry). I've reformatted the JSON to make it easier
-to read. Normally this is all on one long line:
-
-
-{
- "vh":500.00,
- "vm":0,
- "vl":0,
- "uqr":1,
- "tp":1,
- "nme":"Din Leverandør",
- "cc":"NO",
- "cid":"997912345 MVA",
- "iref":"12300001",
- "idt":"20151022",
- "ddt":"20151105",
- "due":2500.0000,
- "cur":"NOK",
- "pt":"BBAN",
- "acc":"17202612345",
- "bc":"BIENNOK1",
- "adr":"0313 OSLO"
-}
-
-
-The interpretation of the fields can be found in the
-
format
-specification (revision 2 from june 2014). The format seem to
-have most of the information needed to handle accounting and payment
-of invoices, at least the fields I have needed so far here in
-Norway.
-
-
Unfortunately, the site and document do not mention anything about
-the patent, trademark and copyright status of the format and the
-specification. Because of this, I asked the people behind it back in
-November to clarify. Ann-Christine Savlid (ann-christine.savlid (at)
-visma.com) replied that Visma had not applied for patent or trademark
-protection for this format, and that there were no copyright based
-usage limitations for the format. I urged her to make sure this was
-explicitly written on the web pages and in the specification, but
-unfortunately this has not happened yet. So I guess if there is
-submarine patents, hidden trademarks or a will to sue for copyright
-infringements, those starting to use the UsingQR format might be at
-risk, but if this happen there is some legal defense in the fact that
-the people behind the format claimed it was safe to do so. At least
-with patents, there is always
-a
-chance of getting sued...
-
-
I also asked if they planned to maintain the format in an
-independent standard organization to give others more confidence that
-they would participate in the standardization process on equal terms
-with Visma, but they had no immediate plans for this. Their plan was
-to work with banks to try to get more users of the format, and
-evaluate the way forward if the format proved to be popular. I hope
-they conclude that using an open standard organisation like
-IETF is the correct place to
-maintain such specification.
-
-
Update 2016-03-20: Via Twitter I became aware of
-some comments
-about this blog post that had several useful links and references to
-similar systems. In the Czech republic, the Czech Banking Association
-standard #26, with short name SPAYD, uses QR codes with payment
-information. More information is available from the Wikipedia page on
-Short
-Payment Descriptor. And in Germany, there is a system named
-BezahlCode,
-(specification
-v1.8 2013-12-05 available as PDF), which uses QR codes with
-URL-like formatting using "bank:" as the URI schema/protocol to
-provide the payment information. There is also the
-ZUGFeRD
-file format that perhaps could be transfered using QR codes, but I am
-not sure if it is done already. Last, in Bolivia there are reports
-that tax information since november 2014 need to be printed in QR
-format on invoices. I have not been able to track down a
-specification for this format, because of my limited language skill
-sets.
-
-
-
-
-
15th March 2016
-
Back in September, I blogged about
-the
-system I wrote to collect statistics about my laptop battery, and
-how it showed the decay and death of this battery (now replaced). I
-created a simple deb package to handle the collection and graphing,
-but did not want to upload it to Debian as there were already
-a battery-stats
-package in Debian that should do the same thing, and I did not see
-a point of uploading a competing package when battery-stats could be
-fixed instead. I reported a few bugs about its non-function, and
-hoped someone would step in and fix it. But no-one did.
-
-
I got tired of waiting a few days ago, and took matters in my own
-hands. The end result is that I am now the new upstream developer of
-battery stats (available from github) and part of the team maintaining
-battery-stats in Debian, and the package in Debian unstable is finally
-able to collect battery status using the /sys/class/power_supply/
-information provided by the Linux kernel. If you install the
-battery-stats package from unstable now, you will be able to get a
-graph of the current battery fill level, to get some idea about the
-status of the battery. The source package build and work just fine in
-Debian testing and stable (and probably oldstable too, but I have not
-tested). The default graph you get for that system look like this:
-
-
-
-
My plans for the future is to merge my old scripts into the
-battery-stats package, as my old scripts collected a lot more details
-about the battery. The scripts are merged into the upstream
-battery-stats git repository already, but I am not convinced they work
-yet, as I changed a lot of paths along the way. Will have to test a
-bit more before I make a new release.
-
-
I will also consider changing the file format slightly, as I
-suspect the way I combine several values into one field might make it
-impossible to know the type of the value when using it for processing
-and graphing.
-
-
If you would like I would like to keep an close eye on your laptop
-battery, check out the battery-stats package in
-Debian and
-on
-github.
-I would love some help to improve the system further.
-
-
-
-
-
19th February 2016
-
Making packages for Debian requires quite a lot of attention to
-details. And one of the details is the content of the
-debian/copyright file, which should list all relevant licenses used by
-the code in the package in question, preferably in
-machine
-readable DEP5 format.
-
-
For large packages with lots of contributors it is hard to write
-and update this file manually, and if you get some detail wrong, the
-package is normally rejected by the ftpmasters. So getting it right
-the first time around get the package into Debian faster, and save
-both you and the ftpmasters some work.. Today, while trying to figure
-out what was wrong with
-the
-zfsonlinux copyright file, I decided to spend some time on
-figuring out the options for doing this job automatically, or at least
-semi-automatically.
-
-
Lucikly, there are at least two tools available for generating the
-file based on the code in the source package,
-debmake
-and cme. I'm
-not sure which one of them came first, but both seem to be able to
-create a sensible draft file. As far as I can tell, none of them can
-be trusted to get the result just right, so the content need to be
-polished a bit before the file is OK to upload. I found the debmake
-option in
-a
-blog posts from 2014.
-
-
To generate using debmake, use the -cc option:
-
-
-debmake -cc > debian/copyright
-
-
-
Note there are some problems with python and non-ASCII names, so
-this might not be the best option.
-
-
The cme option is based on a config parsing library, and I found
-this approach in
-a
-blog post from 2015. To generate using cme, use the 'update
-dpkg-copyright' option:
-
-
-cme update dpkg-copyright
-
-
-
This will create or update debian/copyright. The cme tool seem to
-handle UTF-8 names better than debmake.
-
-
When the copyright file is created, I would also like some help to
-check if the file is correct. For this I found two good options,
-debmake -k and license-reconcile. The former seem
-to focus on license types and file matching, and is able to detect
-ineffective blocks in the copyright file. The latter reports missing
-copyright holders and years, but was confused by inconsistent license
-names (like CDDL vs. CDDL-1.0). I suspect it is good to use both and
-fix all issues reported by them before uploading. But I do not know
-if the tools and the ftpmasters agree on what is important to fix in a
-copyright file, so the package might still be rejected.
-
-
The devscripts tool licensecheck deserve mentioning. It
-will read through the source and try to find all copyright statements.
-It is not comparing the result to the content of debian/copyright, but
-can be useful when verifying the content of the copyright file.
-
-
Are you aware of better tools in Debian to create and update
-debian/copyright file. Please let me know, or blog about it on
-planet.debian.org.
-
-
As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
-activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
-15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b.
-
-
Update 2016-02-20: I got a tip from Mike Gabriel
-on how to use licensecheck and cdbs to create a draft copyright file
-
-
-licensecheck --copyright -r `find * -type f` | \
- /usr/lib/cdbs/licensecheck2dep5 > debian/copyright.auto
-
-
-
He mentioned that he normally check the generated file into the
-version control system to make it easier to discover license and
-copyright changes in the upstream source. I will try to do the same
-with my packages in the future.
-
-
Update 2016-02-21: The cme author recommended
-against using -quiet for new users, so I removed it from the proposed
-command line.
-
-
-
-
-
4th February 2016
-
The appstream system
-is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
-convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
-firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it. This can
-be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
-about. :)
-
-
Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
-file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
-picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
-unstable. In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
-by the kernel during kernel module loading. To find the package
-providing the example file, do like this:
-
-
-% apt install appstream
-[...]
-% apt update
-[...]
-% appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
- awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
-firmware-qlogic
-%
-
-
-
See the
-appstream wiki page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
-a way appstream can use.
-
-
This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
-given MIME type. This is very useful when you get a file you do not
-know how to handle. First find the mime type using file
---mime-type, and next look up the package providing support for
-it. Lets say you got an SVG file. Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
-and you can find all packages handling this type like this:
-
-
-% apt install appstream
-[...]
-% apt update
-[...]
-% appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
- awk '/Package:/ {print $2}'
-bkchem
-phototonic
-inkscape
-shutter
-tetzle
-geeqie
-xia
-pinta
-gthumb
-karbon
-comix
-mirage
-viewnior
-postr
-ristretto
-kolourpaint4
-eog
-eom
-gimagereader
-midori
-%
-
-
-
I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
-packages providing appstream metadata.
-
-
-
-
-
24th January 2016
-
Most people seem not to realise that every time they walk around
-with the computerised radio beacon known as a mobile phone their
-position is tracked by the phone company and often stored for a long
-time (like every time a SMS is received or sent). And if their
-computerised radio beacon is capable of running programs (often called
-mobile apps) downloaded from the Internet, these programs are often
-also capable of tracking their location (if the app requested access
-during installation). And when these programs send out information to
-central collection points, the location is often included, unless
-extra care is taken to not send the location. The provided
-information is used by several entities, for good and bad (what is
-good and bad, depend on your point of view). What is certain, is that
-the private sphere and the right to free movement is challenged and
-perhaps even eradicated for those announcing their location this way,
-when they share their whereabouts with private and public
-entities.
-
-
-
-
The phone company logs provide a register of locations to check out
-when one want to figure out what the tracked person was doing. It is
-unavailable for most of us, but provided to selected government
-officials, company staff, those illegally buying information from
-unfaithful servants and crackers stealing the information. But the
-public information can be collected and analysed, and a free software
-tool to do so is called
-Creepy or Cree.py. I
-discovered it when I read
-an
-article about Creepy in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten i
-November 2014, and decided to check if it was available in Debian.
-The python program was in Debian, but
-the version in
-Debian was completely broken and practically unmaintained. I
-uploaded a new version which did not work quite right, but did not
-have time to fix it then. This Christmas I decided to finally try to
-get Creepy operational in Debian. Now a fixed version is available in
-Debian unstable and testing, and almost all Debian specific patches
-are now included
-upstream.
-
-
The Creepy program visualises geolocation information fetched from
-Twitter, Instagram, Flickr and Google+, and allow one to get a
-complete picture of every social media message posted recently in a
-given area, or track the movement of a given individual across all
-these services. Earlier it was possible to use the search API of at
-least some of these services without identifying oneself, but these
-days it is impossible. This mean that to use Creepy, you need to
-configure it to log in as yourself on these services, and provide
-information to them about your search interests. This should be taken
-into account when using Creepy, as it will also share information
-about yourself with the services.
-
-
The picture above show the twitter messages sent from (or at least
-geotagged with a position from) the city centre of Oslo, the capital
-of Norway. One useful way to use Creepy is to first look at
-information tagged with an area of interest, and next look at all the
-information provided by one or more individuals who was in the area.
-I tested it by checking out which celebrity provide their location in
-twitter messages by checkout out who sent twitter messages near a
-Norwegian TV station, and next could track their position over time,
-making it possible to locate their home and work place, among other
-things. A similar technique have been
-used
-to locate Russian soldiers in Ukraine, and it is both a powerful
-tool to discover lying governments, and a useful tool to help people
-understand the value of the private information they provide to the
-public.
-
-
The package is not trivial to backport to Debian Stable/Jessie, as
-it depend on several python modules currently missing in Jessie (at
-least python-instagram, python-flickrapi and
-python-requests-toolbelt).
-
-
(I have uploaded
-the image to
-screenshots.debian.net and licensed it under the same terms as the
-Creepy program in Debian.)
-
-
-
-
-
15th January 2016
-
During his DebConf15 keynote, Jacob Appelbaum
-observed
-that those listening on the Internet lines would have good reason to
-believe a computer have a given security hole if it download a
-security fix from a Debian mirror. This is a good reason to always
-use encrypted connections to the Debian mirror, to make sure those
-listening do not know which IP address to attack. In August, Richard
-Hartmann observed that encryption was not enough, when it was possible
-to interfere download size to security patches or the fact that
-download took place shortly after a security fix was released, and
-proposed
-to always use Tor to download packages from the Debian mirror. He
-was not the first to propose this, as the
-apt-transport-tor
-package by Tim Retout already existed to make it easy to convince apt
-to use Tor, but I was not
-aware of that package when I read the blog post from Richard.
-
-
Richard discussed the idea with Peter Palfrader, one of the Debian
-sysadmins, and he set up a Tor hidden service on one of the central
-Debian mirrors using the address vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion, thus making
-it possible to download packages directly between two tor nodes,
-making sure the network traffic always were encrypted.
-
-
Here is a short recipe for enabling this on your machine, by
-installing apt-transport-tor and replacing http and https
-urls with tor+http and tor+https, and using the hidden service instead
-of the official Debian mirror site. I recommend installing
-etckeeper before you start to have a history of the changes
-done in /etc/.
-
-
-apt install apt-transport-tor
-sed -i 's% http://ftp.debian.org/% tor+http://vwakviie2ienjx6t.onion/%' /etc/apt/sources.list
-sed -i 's% http% tor+http%' /etc/apt/sources.list
-
-
-
If you have more sources listed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, run
-the sed commands for these too. The sed command is assuming your are
-using the ftp.debian.org Debian mirror. Adjust the command (or just
-edit the file manually) to match your mirror.
-
-
This work in Debian Jessie and later. Note that tools like
-apt-file only recently started using the apt transport
-system, and do not work with these tor+http URLs. For
-apt-file you need the version currently in experimental,
-which need a recent apt version currently only in unstable. So if you
-need a working apt-file, this is not for you.
-
-
Another advantage from this change is that your machine will start
-using Tor regularly and at fairly random intervals (every time you
-update the package lists or upgrade or install a new package), thus
-masking other Tor traffic done from the same machine. Using Tor will
-become normal for the machine in question.
-
-
On Freedombox, APT
-is set up by default to use apt-transport-tor when Tor is
-enabled. It would be great if it was the default on any Debian
-system.
-
-
-
-
-
2nd January 2016
-
Det kommer stadig nye løsninger for å ta lagre unna innslag fra NRK
-for å se på det senere. For en stund tilbake kom jeg over et script
-nrkopptak laget av Ingvar Hagelund. Han fjernet riktignok sitt script
-etter forespørsel fra Erik Bolstad i NRK, men noen tok heldigvis og
-gjorde det tilgjengelig
-via github.
-
-
Scriptet kan lagre som MPEG4 eller Matroska, og bake inn
-undertekster i fila på et vis som blant annet VLC forstår. For å
-bruke scriptet, kopier ned git-arkivet og kjør
-
-
-nrkopptak/bin/nrk-opptak k https://tv.nrk.no/serie/bmi-turne/MUHH45000115/sesong-1/episode-1
-
-
-
URL-eksemplet er dagens toppsak på tv.nrk.no. Argument 'k' ber
-scriptet laste ned og lagre som Matroska. Det finnes en rekke andre
-muligheter for valg av kvalitet og format.
-
-
Jeg foretrekker dette scriptet fremfor youtube-dl, som
-
-nevnt i 2014 støtter NRK og en rekke andre videokilder, på grunn
-av at nrkopptak samler undertekster og video i en enkelt fil, hvilket
-gjør håndtering enklere på disk.
-
-
-
