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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen</title>
                <description></description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
                <atom:link href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/index.rss" rel="self" type="application/rss+xml" />
        
        <item>
                <title>Working on updated Norwegian Bokmål edition of Debian Administrator&#39;s Handbook</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Working_on_updated_Norwegian_Bokm_l_edition_of_Debian_Administrator_s_Handbook.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 4 Jul 2020 23:55:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Three years ago, the first Norwegian Bokmål edition of
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://debian-handbook.info/&quot;&gt;The Debian Administrator&#39;s
Handbook&lt;/a&gt;&quot; was published.  This was based on Debian Jessie.  Now a
new and updated version based on Buster is getting ready.  Work on the
updated Norwegian Bokmål edition has been going on for a few months
now, and yesterday, we reached the first mile stone, with 100% of the
texts being translated.  A lot of proof reading remains, of course,
but a major step towards a new edition has been taken.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The book is translated by volunteers, and we would love to get some
help with the proof reading.  The translation uses
&lt;a href=&quot;https://hosted.weblate.org/languages/nb_NO/debian-handbook/&quot;&gt;the
hosted Weblate service&lt;/a&gt;, and we welcome everyone to have a look and
submit improvements and suggestions.  There is also a proof readers
PDF available on request, get in touch if you want to help out that
way.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Secure Socket API - a simple and powerful approach for TLS support in software</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Secure_Socket_API___a_simple_and_powerful_approach_for_TLS_support_in_software.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 6 Jun 2020 12:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;As a member of the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;Norwegian Unix
User Group&lt;/a&gt;, I have the pleasure of receiving the
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/&quot;&gt;USENIX&lt;/a&gt; magazine
&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/&quot;&gt;;login:&lt;/a&gt;
several times a year.  I rarely have time to read all the articles,
but try to at least skim through them all as there is a lot of nice
knowledge passed on there.  I even carry the latest issue with me most
of the time to try to get through all the articles when I have a few
spare minutes.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The other day I came across a nice article titled
&quot;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.usenix.org/publications/login/winter2018/oneill&quot;&gt;The
Secure Socket API: TLS as an Operating System Service&lt;/a&gt;&quot; with a
marvellous idea I hope can make it all the way into the POSIX standard.
The idea is as simple as it is powerful.  By introducing a new
socket() option IPPROTO_TLS to use TLS, and a system wide service to
handle setting up TLS connections, one both make it trivial to add TLS
support to any program currently using the POSIX socket API, and gain
system wide control over certificates, TLS versions and encryption
systems used.  Instead of doing this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TCP);
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;the program code would be doing this:&lt;p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
int socket = socket(PF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, IPPROTO_TLS);
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;According to the ;login: article, converting a C program to use TLS
would normally modify only 5-10 lines in the code, which is amazing
when compared to using for example the OpenSSL API.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The project has set up the
&lt;a href=&quot;https://securesocketapi.org/&quot;&gt;https://securesocketapi.org/&lt;/a&gt;
web site to spread the idea, and the code for a kernel module and the
associated system daemon is available from two github repositories:
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/markoneill/ssa&quot;&gt;ssa&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/markoneill/ssa-daemon&quot;&gt;ssa-daemon&lt;/a&gt;.
Unfortunately there is no explicit license information with the code,
so its copyright status is unclear.  A
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/markoneill/ssa/issues/2&quot;&gt;request to solve
this&lt;/a&gt; about it has been unsolved since 2018-08-17.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I love the idea of extending socket() to gain TLS support, and
understand why it is an advantage to implement this as a kernel module
and system wide service daemon, but can not help to think that it
would be a lot easier to get projects to move to this way of setting
up TLS if it was done with a user space approach where programs
wanting to use this API approach could just link with a wrapper
library.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I recommend you check out this simple and powerful approach to more
secure network connections. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Bompenge-Norge, med noen tall fra bompengekalkulator</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bompenge_Norge__med_noen_tall_fra_bompengekalkulator.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Bompenge_Norge__med_noen_tall_fra_bompengekalkulator.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 1 Jun 2020 14:50:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Det er tett med sensorstasjoner langs veinettet i Norge, som
registrerer hvilke kjøretøy som passerer eller tar bilde av de som
drar forbi.  I følge
&lt;a href=&quot;https://vegkart.atlas.vegvesen.no/&quot;&gt;Vegvesenets nasjonale
veidatabank (NVDB)&lt;/a&gt;, er det 353 bomstasjoner langs det norske
veinettet.  21 i nordnorge, 48 i trøndelagsområdet, 13 på
nordvestlandet, 91 i bergenstraktene og 180 på østlandsområdet.  I
tillegg finnes det et utall overvåkningskamera og noen titalls
RFID-avlesere for bompengebrikker som samler inn informasjon om hvilke
biler som befinner seg hvor i landet.  For ikke å glemme alle
mobilbasestasjoner som registrerer hvor brukere av mobilnettverket
befinner seg.  De er ikke tema i dag.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;De som kjører mye har interesse av å vite hvor mye bompenger det vil
koste å kjøre fra et sted til et annet, og dette behovet har aktørene
bak &lt;a href=&quot;https://bompengekalkulator.no/&quot;&gt;Bompengekalkulatoren&lt;/a&gt;
tatt sikte på å tilby i markedet.  Fornuftig nok har de også en
gratistjeneste, slik at de får frivillige til å gi innspill om feil i
datagrunnlaget.  Jeg ble nylig nysgjerring på hvor mye det til koste å
kjøre på kryss og tvers i Norge, og valgte meg ut en teststrekning fra
Oslo til Tromsø for å se hvilke beløp som gjelder.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Bompengekalkulatoren viser frem flere rutealternativer for et gitt
reisesøk, og i dette tilfellet, for reise fra Oslo Sentralstasjon til
Tromsø sentrum, viser den tre alternativ.  Merk, disse tallene gjelder
bensindrevet personbil.  En kan velge takstkategori i
webgrensesnittet.  Det ene rutealternativet er E6 gjennom Norge, de to
andre er E45 og E4 gjennom sverige.  E45 er innlandsruten i Sverige,
motorvei gjennom store skoger som i følge kalkulatoren skal ta 22
timer og 26 minutter med norsk bompengebeløp på 164 kroner.  Jeg har
mine tvil til om datasettet til Bompengekalkulatoren har svenske
bomstasjoner, så ta dette beløpet med en klype salt.  E4 er veien
langs Bottenviken og mer befolket område, og skal ta 22 timer og 50
minutter til en norsk bompengebeløp på 71 kroner.  Den norske ruten
langs E6 skal derimot ta 23 timer og 16 minutter og beløpe seg til 664
kroner.  Beløpene er uten autopass-brikke, slik at en slipper å få
bilens posisjon registrert i alle bompengebrikkeavleserne som ikke
også er bomstasjoner.  For trailere er bompengekostnaden 2-3 ganger så
høy som for personbil.  I tillegg til pengebeløpet, som faktureres
etterskuddsvis og de siste årene har blitt umulig å gjøre opp kontant
på stedet, så kommer kostnaden med å få sine personopplysninger samlet
inn, lagret og gjort tilgjengelig for fremmede på ubestemt tid.  Jeg
ser på den kostnaden som mye høyere en pengebeløpet som
faktureres.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For en tilsvarende tur fra Oslo til Bergen, så forteller
kalkulatoren at raskeste vei er riksvei 7 på 7 timer 4 minutter med
bompengebeløp 409 kroner.  Alternativene listet opp er E134 på 8 timer
37 minutter med bompengebeløp 318 kroner og fylkesivei 40 på 7 timer
30 minutter med beløp 331.  Det kan kanskje være greit å sjekke ut før
en setter seg i bilen hvor ens personopplysninger vil bli samlet inn
og lagret 5 fem år, når en velger hvilken rute en går for.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
til min adresse
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.
Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>More reliable vlc bittorrent plugin in Debian (version 2.9)</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_reliable_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_9_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/More_reliable_vlc_bittorrent_plugin_in_Debian__version_2_9_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sun, 24 May 2020 17:00:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;I am very happy to report that a more reliable
&lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/vlc-plugin-bittorrent&quot;&gt;VLC
bittorrent plugin&lt;/a&gt; was just uploaded into debian.  This fixes a
couple of crash bugs in the plugin, hopefully making the VLC
experience even better when streaming directly from a bittorrent
source.  The package is currently in Debian unstable, but should be
available in Debian testing in two days.  To test it, simply install
it like this:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
apt install vlc-plugin-bittorrent
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After it is installed, you can try to use it to play a file
downloaded live via bittorrent like this:

&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
vlc https://archive.org/download/Glass_201703/Glass_201703_archive.torrent
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It also support magnet links and local .torrent files.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Debian Edu interview: Yvan Masson</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Yvan_Masson.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 12 May 2020 06:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been way too long since my last interview, but as the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.skolelinux.org/&quot;&gt;Debian Edu / Skolelinux&lt;/a&gt;
community is still active, and new people keep showing up on the IRC
channel &lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu&quot;&gt;#debian-edu&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.debian.org/debian-edu/&quot;&gt;the debian-edu mailing
list&lt;/a&gt;, I decided to give it another go.  I was hoping someone else
might pick up the idea and run with it, but this has not happened as
far as I can tell, so here we are… This time the announcement of a new
free software tool to
&lt;a href=&quot;https://framagit.org/Yvan-Masson/WhosWho&quot;&gt;create a school year
book&lt;/a&gt; triggered my interest, and I decided to learn more about its
author.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Who are you, and how do you spend your days?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My name is Yvan MASSON, I live in France. I have my own one person
business in computer services.  The work consist of visiting my
customers (person&#39;s home, local authority, small business) to give
advise, install computers and software, fix issues, and provide
computing usage training.  I spend the rest of my time enjoying my
family and promoting free software.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What is your approach for promoting free
software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;When I think that free software could be suitable for someone, I
explain what it is, with simple words, give a few known examples, and
explain that while there is no fee it is a viable alternative in many
situations. Most people are receptive when you explain how it is
better (I simplify arguments here, I know that it is not so simple):
Linux works on older hardware, there are no viruses, and the software
can be audited to ensure user is not spied upon. I think the most
important is to keep a clear but moderated speech: when you try to
convince too much, people feel attacked and stop listening.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
project?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I can not remember how I first heard of Skolelinux / Debian Edu,
but probably on planet.debian.org. As I have been working for a
school, I have interest in this type of project.

&lt;p&gt;The school I am involved in is a school for &quot;children&quot; between 14
and 18 years old.  The French government has recommended free software
since 2012, but they do not always use free software themselves.  The
school computers are still using the Windows operating system, but all
of them have the classic set of free software: Firefox ESR,
LibreOffice (with the excellent extension Grammalecte that indicates
French grammatical errors), SumatraPDF, Audacity, 7zip, KeePass2, VLC,
GIMP, Inkscape…

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;It is free software! Built on Debian, I am sure that users are not
spied upon, and that it can run on low end hardware.  This last point
is very important, because we really need to improve &quot;green IT&quot;.  I do
not know enough about Skolelinux / Debian Edu to tell how it is better
than another free software solution, but what I like is the &quot;all in
one&quot; solution: everything has been thought of and prepared to ease
installation and usage.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I like Free Software because I hate using something that I can not
understand. I do not say that I can understand everything nor that I
want to understand everything, but knowing that someone / some company
intentionally prevents me from understanding how things work is really
unacceptable to me.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Secondly, and more importantly, free software is a requirement to
prevent abuses regarding human rights and environmental care.
Humanity can not rely on tools that are in the hands of small group of
people.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
Edu?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Again, I don&#39;t know this project enough. Maybe a dedicated website?
Debian wiki works well for documentation, but is not very appealing to
someone discovering the project. Also, as Skolelinux / Debian Edu uses
OpenLDAP, it probably means that Windows workstations cannot use
centralized authentication. Maybe the project could use Samba as an
Active Directory domain controller instead, allowing Windows desktop
usage when necessary.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;(Editors note: In fact Windows workstations can
&lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DebianEdu/Documentation/Buster/HowTo/Samba&quot;&gt;use
the centralized authentication in a Debian Edu setup&lt;/a&gt;, at least for
some versions of Windows, but the fact that this is not well known can
be seen as an indication of the need for better documentation and
marketing. :)&lt;/p&gt;
     
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which free software do you use daily?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Nothing original: Debian testing/sid with Gnome desktop, Firefox,
Thunderbird, LibreOffice…&lt;/p&gt;
     
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
get schools to use free software?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Every effort to spread free software into schools is important,
whatever it is. But I think, at least where I live, that IT
professionals maintaining schools networks are still very &quot;Microsoft
centric&quot;.  Schools will use any working solution, but they need people
to install and maintain it.  How to make these professionals sensitive
about free software and train them with solutions like Debian Edu /
Skolelinux is a really good question :-)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Jami as a Zoom client, a trick for password protected rooms...</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_as_a_Zoom_client__a_trick_for_password_protected_rooms___.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 8 May 2020 13:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Half a year ago,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Jami_Ring__finally_functioning_peer_to_peer_communication_client.html&quot;&gt;I
wrote&lt;/a&gt; about &lt;a href=&quot;https://jami.net/&quot;&gt;the Jami communication
client&lt;/a&gt;, capable of peer-to-peer encrypted communication.  It
handle both messages, audio and video.  It uses distributed hash
tables instead of central infrastructure to connect its users to each
other, which in my book is a plus.  I mentioned briefly that it could
also work as a SIP client, which came in handy when the higher
educational sector in Norway started to promote Zoom as its video
conferencing solution.  I am reluctant to use the official Zoom client
software, due to their &lt;a href=&quot;https://zoom.us/terms&quot;&gt;copyright
license clauses&lt;/a&gt; prohibiting users to reverse engineer (for example
to check the security) and benchmark it, and thus prefer to connect to
Zoom meetings with free software clients.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Jami worked OK as a SIP client to Zoom as long as there was no
password set on the room.  The Jami daemon leak memory like crazy
(approximately 1 GiB a minute) when I am connected to the video
conference, so I had to restart the client every 7-10 minutes, which
is not a great.  I tried to get other SIP Linux clients to work
without success, so I decided I would have to live with this wart
until someone managed to fix the leak in the dring code base.  But
another problem showed up once the rooms were password protected.  I
could not get my dial tone signaling through from Jami to Zoom, and
dial tone signaling is used to enter the password when connecting to
Zoom.  I tried a lot of different permutations with my Jami and
Asterisk setup to try to figure out why the signaling did not get
through, only to finally discover that the fundamental problem seem to
be that Zoom is simply not able to receive dial tone signaling when
connecting via SIP.  There seem to be nothing wrong with the Jami and
Asterisk end, it is simply broken in the Zoom end.  I got help from a
very skilled VoIP engineer figuring out this last part.  And being a
very skilled engineer, he was also able to locate a solution for me.
Or to be exact, a workaround that solve my initial problem of
connecting to password protected Zoom rooms using Jami.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;So, how do you do this, I am sure you are wondering by now.  The
trick is already
&lt;a href=&quot;https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/202405539-H-323-SIP-Room-Connector-Dial-Strings#sip&quot;&gt;documented
from Zoom&lt;/a&gt;, and it is to modify the SIP address to include the room
password.  What is most surprising about this is that the
automatically generated email from Zoom with instructions on how to
connect via SIP do not mention this.  The SIP address to use normally
consist of the room ID (a number), an @ character and the IP address
of the Zoom SIP gateway.  But Zoom understand a lot more than just the
room ID in front of the at sign.  The format is &quot;&lt;tt&gt;[Meeting
ID].[Password].[Layout].[Host Key]&lt;/tt&gt;&quot;, and you can hear see how you
can both enter password, control the layout (full screen, active
presence and gallery) and specify the host key to start the meeting.
The full SIP address entered into Jami to provide the password will
then look like this (all using made up numbers):&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;tt&gt;sip:657837644.522827@192.168.169.170&lt;/tt&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Now if only jami would reduce its memory usage, I could even
recommend this setup to others. :)&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>GnuCOBOL, a free platform to learn and use COBOL - nice free software</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/GnuCOBOL__a_free_platform_to_learn_and_use_COBOL___nice_free_software.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 29 Apr 2020 13:10:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;The curiosity got the better of me when
&lt;a href=&quot;https://developers.slashdot.org/story/20/04/06/1424246/new-jersey-desperately-needs-cobol-programmers&quot;&gt;Slashdot
reported&lt;/a&gt; that New Jersey was desperately looking for
&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COBOL&quot;&gt;COBOL&lt;/a&gt; programmers,
and a few days later it was reported that
&lt;a href=&quot;https://onezero.medium.com/ibm-rallies-cobol-engineers-to-save-overloaded-unemployment-systems-eeadf13eddce&quot;&gt;IBM
tried to locate COBOL programmers&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I thus decided to have a look at free software alternatives to
learn COBOL, and had the pleasure to find
&lt;a href=&quot;https://sourceforge.net/projects/open-cobol/&quot;&gt;GnuCOBOL&lt;/a&gt; was
already &lt;a href=&quot;https://tracker.debian.org/pkg/gnucobol&quot;&gt;in
Debian&lt;/a&gt;.  It used to be called Open Cobol, and is a &quot;compiler&quot;
transforming COBOL code to C or C++ before giving it to GCC or Visual
Studio to build binaries.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I managed to get in touch with upstream, and was impressed with the
quick response, and also was happy to see a new Debian maintainer
taking over when the original one recently asked to be replaced.  A
new Debian upload was done as recently as yesterday.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Using the Debian package, I was able to follow a simple COBOL
introduction and make and run simple COBOL programs.  It was fun to
learn a new programming language.  If you want to test for yourself,
&lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GnuCOBOL&quot;&gt;the GnuCOBOL Wikipedia
page&lt;/a&gt; have a few simple examples to get you startet.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As I do not have much experience with COBOL, I do not know how
standard compliant it is, but it claim to pass most tests from COBOL
test suite, which sound good to me.  It is nice to know it is possible
to learn COBOL using software without any usage restrictions, and I am
very happy such nice free software project as this is available.  If
you as me is curious about COBOL, check it out.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Totalovervåkning av innbyggernes bevegelser - nei takk!</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Totaloverv_kning_av_innbyggernes_bevegelser___nei_takk_.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Totaloverv_kning_av_innbyggernes_bevegelser___nei_takk_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 16 Apr 2020 20:30:00 +0200</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Jeg er blitt spurt hva jeg synes om lansering av smittestopp-appen,
overvåkningsløsningen lansert av Folkehelseinstituttet,
Simula-senteret og Regjeringen i dag, fulgt av klare trusler fra
regjeringen om konsekvenser hvis befolkningen ikke tar den i bruk.
Rekker ikke skrive noe fyldig om temaet, men det er klart for meg at
den utraderer retten til privatliv samt utgjør en personlig
sikkerhetsrisiko for alle som tar den i bruk.  Bare det er nok til at
det fremstår som en svært dårlig ide å bli med på denne &quot;dugnaden&quot;.
Det finnes andre og bedre tilnærminger enn den valgt av FHI.  Har de
valgt sin tilnærming for å sikre seg nok et datasett i den fremtidige
ehelse-portalen?  Potensialet for misbruk av informasjon samlet inn av
appen er for stort, effekten på neste krise for klar og gevinsten for
liten.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For å si det med forhenværende leder i Datatilsynet, Georg Apenes,
som skrev i en kronikk den gang Datatilsynet vernet
privatsfæren at
«&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.dagbladet.no/kultur/rent-mel-i-bilen/66333882&quot;&gt;SENTRALT
I en liberal forestillingsverden finner vi aksept av borgerens rett
til å kunne velge å være i fred; å være u-iakttatt, uregistrert og
anonym&lt;/a&gt;».  Det er ikke uten grunn han startet kronikken med
«Personvern et fremmedord i enkelte av de statsorganene som samler
inn, oppbevarer og bruker personopplysninger».  Der har nok
statsorganene bare blitt dårligere på 13 år.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Det er jo også verdt å merke seg at personvernrådet i EU (EDPB)
mener smittestopp-appen
&lt;a href=&quot;https://nrkbeta.no/2020/04/16/personvernrad-i-eu-mener-norsk-app-bryter-med-viktig-personvernprinsipp/&quot;&gt;opererer
i strid med prinsippet om dataminimering&lt;/a&gt;.  Også de ser at det
finnes mye bedre måter å gjøre dette på.&lt;/p&gt;


&lt;p&gt;Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
til min adresse
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.
Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Ny URL til den frie norske stavekontrollen</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_URL_til_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ny_URL_til_den_frie_norske_stavekontrollen.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Sat, 21 Mar 2020 08:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Det er lenge siden jeg har sett på den norske stavekontrollen, sist
jeg skrev om temaet var i 2016, og i mellomtiden har nettstedet
no.speling.org forsvunnet, og både git-depotet på Alioth og
mailman-tjenesten som hadde epostlistene for oversettelser blitt lagt
ned.  Men bokmål og nynorsk trenger fortsatt stavekontroll, så etter
et par purringer fra en som har lyst til å forbedre stavekontrollen
har jeg endelig fått lagt ut ny offentlig kopi av git-depotet.  Jeg
valgte gitlab foran github..  Siste utgave av stavekontrollen kan
hentes ned fra
&lt;a href=&quot;https://gitlab.com/norwegian-language-tools/spell-norwegian&quot;&gt;https://gitlab.com/norwegian-language-tools/spell-norwegian&lt;/a&gt;.
Ingen ny versjon i denne omgang altså, bare et nytt sted å samle
forbedringer til den frie norske stavekontrollen. :)

&lt;p&gt;Som vanlig, hvis du bruker Bitcoin og ønsker å vise din støtte til
det jeg driver med, setter jeg pris på om du sender Bitcoin-donasjoner
til min adresse
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.
Merk, betaling med bitcoin er ikke anonymt. :)&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Nikita version 0.5 released - updated free software archive API server</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nikita_version_0_5_released___updated_free_software_archive_API_server.html</link>
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Nikita_version_0_5_released___updated_free_software_archive_API_server.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Mon, 2 Mar 2020 19:00:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Today, after many months of development, a new release of
&lt;ahref=&quot;https://gitlab.com/OsloMet-ABI/nikita-noark5-core/&quot;&gt;Nikita
Noark 5 core project&lt;/a&gt; was finally
&lt;ahref=&quot;https://lists.nuug.no/pipermail/nikita-noark/2020-March/000519.html&quot;&gt;announced
on the project mailing list&lt;/a&gt;.  The Nikita free software solution is
an implementation of the Norwegian archive standard Noark 5 used by
government offices in Norway.  These were the changes in version 0.5
since version 0.4, see the email link above for links to a demo
site:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;

  &lt;li&gt;Updated to Noark 5 versjon 5.0 API specification.
    &lt;ul&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Changed formatting of _links from [] to {} to match IETF draft
      on JSON HAL.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Merged Registrering og Basisregistrering in version 4 to
      combined Registrering.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;DokumentObjekt is now subtype of ArkivEnhet.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Introducing new entity Arkivnotat.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Changed all relation keys to use /v5/ instead of /v4/.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Corrected to use new official relation keys when possible.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Renamed Sakspart to Part and connect it to Mappe, Registrering
      and Dokumentbeskrivelse instead of only Saksmappe.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Moved Korrespondansepart connection from Journalpost to
      Registrering.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Moved Part and Korrespondansepart from package sakarkiv to
      arkivstruktur.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Renamed presedensstatus to presedensStatus.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Use new JSON content-type &quot;application/vnd.noark5+json&quot;.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Updated prepopulated format list to use PRONOM codes.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Implemented endpoint for system information.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Implemented national identifiers for both file and record.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;Implemented comments.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;implemented sign off.&lt;/li&gt;
      &lt;li&gt;implemented conversion.&lt;/li&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Improved/implemented OData search and paging support for more entities.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;No longer exposes attribute Dokumentobjekt.referanseDokumentfil,
   one should use the relation in _links instead.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Corrected relation keys under
   https://rel.arkivverket.no/noark5/v5/api/administrasjon/, replacing
   &#39;administrasjon&#39; with &#39;admin&#39;.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Fixed several security and stability issues discovered by Coverity.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Corrected handling ETag errors, now return code 409.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Improved handling of Kryssreferanse.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Changed internal database model to use UUID/SystemID as primary keys
   in tables.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Changed internal database table names to use package prefix.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Changed time zone handling for date and datetime attributes, to be
   more according to the new definition in the API specification.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Change revoke-token to only drop token on POST requests, not GET.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Updated to newer Spring version.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Changed primary key and URL component for metadata code lists to
   use the &#39;kode&#39; value instead of a SystemID.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Corrected implementation of Part and Sakspart.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Changed instance lists with subtypes (like .../registrering/ and
   .../mappe/) to include the attributes and _links entries for the
   subtype in the supertype lists.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Adjusted _links relations to make it possible to figure out the
   entity of an instance using the self-&gt;href-&gt;relation key lookup
   method.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Fixed several end points to make sure GET, PUT, POST and DELETE
   match each other.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Updated DELETE endpoints to work with UUID based entity
   identifiers.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Restructured code to use more common URL related constants in entry
   point values and replace @RequestMapping with method specific
   annotations.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Added first unit test code.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Updated web GUI to work with the updated API.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Changed integer fields, enforce them as numeric.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Rewrote and simplify metadata handling to use common service and
   controller code instead of duplicating for each type.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Implemented the remaining metadata types.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Changed Country list source from Wikipedia to Debian iso-codes and
   updated the list of Countries.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;Many many corrections and improvements.&lt;/li&gt;

&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If free and open standardized archiving API sound interesting to
you, please contact us on IRC
(&lt;a href=&quot;irc://irc.freenode.net/%23nikita&quot;&gt;#nikita on
irc.freenode.net&lt;/a&gt;) or email
(&lt;a href=&quot;https://lists.nuug.no/mailman/listinfo/nikita-noark&quot;&gt;nikita-noark
mailing list&lt;/a&gt;).&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;As usual, if you use Bitcoin and want to show your support of my
activities, please send Bitcoin donations to my address
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        </channel>
</rss>