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        <channel>
                <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from December 2012</title>
                <description>Entries from December 2012</description>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>

        
        <item>
                <title>A word on bitcoin support in Debian</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/A_word_on_bitcoin_support_in_Debian.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:59:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;It has been a while since I wrote about
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.bitcoin.org/&quot;&gt;bitcoin&lt;/a&gt;, the decentralised
peer-to-peer based crypto-currency, and the reason is simply that I
have been busy elsewhere.  But two days ago, I started looking at the
state of &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/bitcoin&quot;&gt;bitcoin in
Debian&lt;/a&gt; again to try to recover my old bitcoin wallet.  The package
is now maintained by a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-bitcoin/&quot;&gt;team of
people&lt;/a&gt;, and the grunt work had already been done by this team.  We
own a huge thank you to all these team members. :)
But I was sad to discover that the bitcoin client is missing in
Wheezy.  It is only available in Sid (and a outdated client from
backports).  The client had several RC bugs registered in BTS blocking
it from entering testing.  To try to help the team and improve the
situation, I spent some time providing patches and triaging the bug
reports.  I also had a look at the bitcoin package available from Matt
Corallo in a
&lt;a href=&quot;https://launchpad.net/~bitcoin/+archive/bitcoin&quot;&gt;PPA for
Ubuntu&lt;/a&gt;, and moved the useful pieces from that version into the
Debian package.  &lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After checking with the main package maintainer Jonas Smedegaard on
IRC, I pushed several patches into the collab-maint git repository to
improve the package.  It now contain fixes for the RC issues (not from
me, but fixed by Scott Howard), build rules for a Qt GUI client
package, konqueror support for the bitcoin: URI and bash completion
setup.  As I work on Debian Squeeze, I also created
&lt;a href=&quot;http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-bitcoin-devel/Week-of-Mon-20121217/000041.html&quot;&gt;a
patch to backport&lt;/a&gt; the latest version.  Jonas is going to look at
it and try to integrate it into the git repository before uploading a
new version to unstable.

&lt;p&gt;I would very much like bitcoin to succeed, to get rid of the
centralized control currently exercised in the monetary system.  I
find it completely unacceptable that the USA government is collecting
transaction data for almost all international money transfers (most are done in USD and transaction logs shipped to the spooks), and
that the major credit card companies can block legal money
transactions to Wikileaks.  But for bitcoin to succeed, more people
need to use bitcoins, and more people need to accept bitcoins when
they sell products and services.  Improving the bitcoin support in
Debian is a small step in the right direction, but not enough.
Unfortunately the user experience when browsing the web and wanting to
pay with bitcoin is still not very good.  The bitcoin: URI is a step
in the right direction, but need to work in most or every browser in
use.  Also the bitcoin-qt client is too heavy to fire it up to do a
quick transaction.  I believe there are other clients available, but
have not tested them.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;My
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Now_accepting_bitcoins___anonymous_and_distributed_p2p_crypto_money.html&quot;&gt;experiment
with bitcoins&lt;/a&gt; showed that at least some of my readers use bitcoin.
I received 20.15 BTC so far on the address I provided in my blog two
years ago, as can be
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blockexplorer.com/address/15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&quot;&gt;seen
on the blockexploer service&lt;/a&gt;.  Thank you everyone for your
donation.  The blockexploer service demonstrate quite well that
bitcoin is not quite anonymous and untracked. :) I wonder if the
number of users have gone up since then.  If you use bitcoin and want
to show your support of my activity, please send Bitcoin donations to
the same address as last time,
&lt;b&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;bitcoin:15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&amp;label=PetterReinholdtsenBlog&quot;&gt;15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/b&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Piratpartiet på opphavs-retrett?</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Piratpartiet_p__opphavs_retrett_.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Piratpartiet_p__opphavs_retrett_.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Wed, 19 Dec 2012 13:10:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Jeg ble overrasket over å se at Piratpartiet i
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.aftenposten.no/kultur/Piratpartiet-stiller-til-Stortingsvalget-7073298.html&quot;&gt;Aftenposten&lt;/a&gt;
er referert på følgende:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
Når det gjelder retten til opphavsrett for kulturproduktene, mener
Piratpartiet av levetid + 14 år er tilfredsstillende.
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Det betyr en vernetid langt ut over det kommersielle livet til de
aller fleste opphavsrettsbeskyttede verker, og er i strid med slik i
hvert fall jeg har tolket punkt 5 i
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.opera.com/howcome/2012/piratpartiet/kjerneprogram.html&quot;&gt;kjerneprogrammet
til Piratpartiet&lt;/a&gt;:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;5: Åndsverk og patenter: tilbake til start&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;table border=&quot;1&quot;&gt;
&lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;forslag:&lt;/th&gt;&lt;td&gt;14 års opphavsrett og ingen
programvarepatenter&lt;/td&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;

&lt;tr&gt;&lt;th&gt;grunn:&lt;/th&gt;&lt;td&gt;Den første loven om opphavsrett spesifiserte 14
års vernetid. Senere har mediabransjens lobbyister stadig presset
loven mot lengre vern, nå er det 70 år etter forfatters død. Dette
gjør at mange verk glemmes og går tapt, noe som er skadelig for norsk
språk og kultur. Vi til tilbake til start: 14 års
vernetid. Patentloven sier klart at dataprogrammer ikke kan
patenteres. Likevel klarer patentadvokater å lure gjennom
programvarepatenter. Slike patenter gjør dingsene våre dyrere og kan i
enkelte tilfelle stoppe dem helt.&lt;/th&gt;&lt;/tr&gt;
&lt;/table&gt;
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Den opprinnelige opphavsretten var på 14 år totalt, ikke 14 år
etter opphavspersonens død.  Jeg tenkte først dette kanskje var
feilsitering fra Aftenposten, men jeg finner samme påstand i en &lt;a
href=&quot;http://piratpartietnorge.org/om-gramo-og-piratpolitikken/&quot;&gt;bloggpost
fra Geir Aaslid&lt;/a&gt; på Piratpartietes offisielle nettsider.  Der
skriver han følgende:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
Hva vi gjør med opphavsretten er mer komplisert fordi den omfavner så
mange bransjer, med ulike behov. Enhver reform er en forbedring men
det er nærliggende å anta at en opphavsrett på levetid + 14 år er
fullt ut tilfredstillende for musikk, film, litteratur og spill.
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Det virker dermed på meg som om Piratpartiet allerede har gjort
retrett fra sin beundringsverdige holdning om at det holdt med 14 års
total vernetid, til sin nye som tar utgangspunkt i levetiden til
opphavspersonen.  Jeg håper det baserer seg på en misforståelse hos
piratlederen som blir korrigert tilbake til 14 års total vernetid før
partiet stiller til valg.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Hvis du lurer på hvilke problemer lang vernetid bringer med seg,
anbefaler jeg å lese boken &lt;a href=&quot;http://free-culture.cc/&quot;&gt;Free
Culture&lt;/a&gt; av Lawrence Lessig.  Jeg og en liten gruppe andre er igang
med å
&lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/petterreinholdtsen/free-culture-lessig&quot;&gt;oversette
boken til bokmål&lt;/a&gt; og tar gjerne imot hjelp med oversettelse og
korrekturlesing.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Oppdatering 2012-12-20&lt;/strong&gt;: Oppdaget at
&lt;a href=&quot;http://piratpartietnorge.org/om-gramo-og-piratpolitikken/&quot;&gt;bloggposten
til Geir Aaslid&lt;/a&gt; er endret siden i går, og nå inneholder følgende
avsnitt i stedet for det jeg siterte over:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;
Hva vi gjør med opphavsretten er mer komplisert fordi den omfavner så
mange bransjer, med ulike behov. Enhver reform er en forbedring men
det er nærliggende å anta at en opphavsrett lik levetiden, evt + 14 år
er fullt ut tilfredstillende for mange skapere av musikk, film,
litteratur og spill. Det er for det meste de store forlagene som er
imot enhver reform.
&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I tillegg har det dukket opp en setning nederst &quot;Dette dokumentet
er et utkast til svar på et angrep på Piratpartiet fra Gramo. Det
endrer seg derfor over tid og den endelige versjonen er det som blir
publisert på Hardware.no&quot;, som tyder på at originalformuleringen ikke
var veloverveid og sitatet i Aftenposten kanskje var basert på en
misforståelse.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Ledger - double-entry accounting using text based storage format</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Ledger___double_entry_accounting_using_text_based_storage_format.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 18 Dec 2012 23:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;A few days ago I came across
&lt;a href=&quot;http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/hledger/&quot;&gt;a blog post from Joey
Hess&lt;/a&gt; describing &lt;a href=&quot;http://ledger-cli.org/&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt; and
hledger, a text based system for double-entry accounting.  I found it
interesting, as I am involved with several organizations where
accounting is an issue, and I have not really become too friendly with
the different web based systems we use.  I find it hard to find what I
look for in the menus and even harder try to get sensible data out of
the systems.  Ledger seem different.  The accounting data is kept in
text files that can be stored in a version control system, and there

are at least &lt;a href=&quot;https://github.com/ledger/ledger/wiki/Ports&quot;&gt;five
different implementations&lt;/a&gt; able to read the format.  An example
entry look like this, and is simple enough that it will be trivial to
generate entries based on CVS files fetched from the bank:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
2004-05-27 Book Store
      Expenses:Books                 $20.00
      Liabilities:Visa
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The concept seemed interesting enough for me to check it out and
look for others using it.  I found blog posts from
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.spang.cc/posts/hledger_rocks_my_world/&quot;&gt;Christine
Spang&lt;/a&gt;,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://bugsplat.info/2010-05-23-keeping-finances-with-ledger.html&quot;&gt;Pete
Keen&lt;/a&gt;,
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.andrewcantino.com/blog/2010/11/06/command-line-accounting-with-ledger-and-reckon/&quot;&gt;Andrew
Cantino&lt;/a&gt; and
&lt;a href=&quot;http://blog.iphoting.com/blog/2012/11/29/command-line-double-entry-accounting/&quot;&gt;Ronald
Ip&lt;/a&gt; describing how they use it, as well as a post from
&lt;a href=&quot;https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/ledger-cli/r0oWjwbQ9Bo&quot;&gt;Bradley
M. Kuhn&lt;/a&gt; at the Software Freedom Conservancy.  All seemed like good
recommendations fitting my need.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/l/ledger.html&quot;&gt;ledger&lt;/a&gt;
package is available in Debian Squeeze, while the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://packages.qa.debian.org/h/haskell-hledger.html&quot;&gt;hledger&lt;/a&gt;
package only is available in Debian Sid.  As I use Squeeze, ledger
seemed the best choice to get started.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;To get some real data to test on, I wrote a
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/tools/lodo2ledger&quot;&gt;web scraper&lt;/a&gt; for
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.lodo.no/&quot;&gt;LODO&lt;/a&gt;, the accounting system used by
the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.nuug.no/&quot;&gt;NUUG&lt;/a&gt; association, and started to
play with the data set.  I&#39;m not really deeply into accounting, but I
am able to get a simple balance and accounting status for example
using the &quot;&lt;tt&gt;ledger balance&lt;/tt&gt;&quot; command.  But I will have to
gather more experience before I know if the ledger way is a good fit
for the organisations I am involved in.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>61 kommuner lenker nå til FiksGataMi fra sine nettsider</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/61_kommuner_lenker_n__til_FiksGataMi_fra_sine_nettsider.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/61_kommuner_lenker_n__til_FiksGataMi_fra_sine_nettsider.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Tue, 11 Dec 2012 23:55:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;For noen dager siden omfavnet nok en kommune NUUGs
&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.fiksgatami.no/&quot;&gt;FiksGataMi&lt;/a&gt;.  Med 61 kommuner
som lenker til FiksGataMi fra sine hjemmesider er «markedsandelen» 14%
(av 429 kommuner).  Siden
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/59_kommuner_omfavner_n__FiksGataMi.html&quot;&gt;siste
oppdatering i november&lt;/a&gt; har kommunene Re og Vågsøy kommet til og
slår følge med kommunene Askim, Askøy, Audnedal, Aure, Balestrand,
Bærum, Eide, Farsund, Flekkefjord, Folldal, Gran, Grue, Hadsel,
Halden, Halsa, Hamar, Hobøl, Holtålen, Hægebostad, Høyanger,
Kongsberg, Kristiansund, Kvinesdal, Kviteseid, Levanger, Lindesnes,
Luster, Lyngdal, Løten, Mandal, Marnardal, Moss, Namsos, Nissedal,
Nordreisa, Randaberg, Rindal, Sel, Sirdal, Skiptvet, Sortland,
Spydeberg, Stange, Stjørdal, Stord, Søgne, Sør-Odal, Tolga, Trysil,
Tynset, Tysvær, Ullensvang Herad, Utsira, Vennesla, Verdal, Vågan,
Vågå, Våler og Åseral.  Oppdatert liste er tilgjengelig fra
&lt;a href=&quot;http://wiki.nuug.no/grupper/fiksgatami/positivemottakere&quot;&gt;NUUGs
wiki&lt;/a&gt;.  Kartet er dog ikke oppdatert med de siste kommunene.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Kanskje du bør høre med din kommune om de vil bli mer aktive
brukere av FiksGataMi?  Se
&lt;a href=&quot;http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/40_kommuner_lenker_n__til_FiksGataMi_fra_sine_nettsider___gj_r_din_.html&quot;&gt;en
tidligere bloggpost&lt;/a&gt; med tips om hvordan det kan gjøres.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I snitt rapporteres det nå via FiksGataMi ca. 60 meldinger fra
innbyggerne i uka om feil på offentlig infrastruktur.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
        </item>
        
        <item>
                <title>Scripting the Cerebrum/bofhd user administration system using XML-RPC</title>
                <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</link>        
                <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Scripting_the_Cerebrum_bofhd_user_administration_system_using_XML_RPC.html</guid>
                <pubDate>Thu, 6 Dec 2012 10:30:00 +0100</pubDate>
                <description>&lt;p&gt;Where I work at the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.uio.no/&quot;&gt;University of
Oslo&lt;/a&gt;, we use the
&lt;a href=&quot;http://sourceforge.net/projects/cerebrum/&quot;&gt;Cerebrum user
administration system&lt;/a&gt; to maintain users, groups, DNS, DHCP, etc.
I&#39;ve known since the system was written that the server is providing
an &lt;a href=&quot;http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XML-RPC&quot;&gt;XML-RPC&lt;/a&gt; API, but
I have never spent time to try to figure out how to use it, as we
always use the bofh command line client at work.  Until today.  I want
to script the updating of DNS and DHCP to make it easier to set up
virtual machines.  Here are a few notes on how to use it with
Python.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I started by looking at the source of the Java
&lt;a href=&quot;http://cerebrum.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/cerebrum/trunk/cerebrum/clients/jbofh/&quot;&gt;bofh
client&lt;/a&gt;, to figure out how it connected to the API server.  I also
googled for python examples on how to use XML-RPC, and found
&lt;a href=&quot;http://tldp.org/HOWTO/XML-RPC-HOWTO/xmlrpc-howto-python.html&quot;&gt;a
simple example in&lt;/a&gt; the XML-RPC howto.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;This simple example code show how to connect, get the list of
commands (as a JSON dump), and how to get the information about the
user currently logged in:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
#!/usr/bin/env python
import getpass
import xmlrpclib
server_url = &#39;https://cerebrum-uio.uio.no:8000&#39;;
username = getpass.getuser()
password = getpass.getpass()
server = xmlrpclib.Server(server_url);
#print server.get_commands(sessionid)
sessionid = server.login(username, password)
print server.run_command(sessionid, &quot;user_info&quot;, username)
result = server.logout(sessionid)
print result
&lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Armed with this knowledge I can now move forward and script the DNS
and DHCP updates I wanted to do.&lt;/p&gt;
</description>
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