Petter Reinholdtsen

Klikk her for å kjøpe boken.

I 2004, mens Creative Commons-bevegelsen vokste frem, skrev bevegelsens stifter Lawrence Lessig boken Free Culture for å forklare problemene med økene åndsverksregulering og for å foreslå noen løsninger. Jeg leste boken den gangen, og den både inspirerte meg og endret på hvordan jeg så på opphavsrettslovigving. Jeg skulle ønske flere folk leste denne boken. Den gir en god gjennomgang av hvordan økende åndsverksregulering skader både nyskapning og kulturlivet, og skisserer hvordan både lovgivere og oss vanlige borgere kan bidra for å få slutt på dette.

Derfor bestemte jeg meg sommeren 2012 for å oversette den til norsk bokmål og gjøre den tilgjengelig for de blant mine venner og familie som foretrekker å lese bøker på norsk. Jeg oversatte boken ved hjelp av docbook og en gettext PO-fil, og endte opp med to utgaver, en på norsk og en på engelsk. Den engelske publiserte jeg i forrige uke, og den norske utgaven på papir er nå klar for salg. Slik ser omslaget ut:

I tillegg til den norske og engelske utgaven holder vi på med en fransk utgave. Den koordineres av dblatex-utvikleren Benoît Guillon, og oversettelsen var komplett denne uka men må korrekturleses før den kan gis ut. Flere frivillige trengs her, så ta kontakt med Benoît hvis du vil bidra.

Boken er også tilgjengelig i PDF, ePub og MOBI-format fra min github-prosjektside. Merk at ePub og MOBI-utgavene har noen formatteringsproblemer som jeg tror kommer av feil i docbook-verktøyet dbtoepub (Debian BTS-rapporter #795842 og #796871), men jeg har ikke tatt meg tid til å undersøke problemene. For de som vil ha elektronisk kopi anbefaler jeg å bruke PDF- og ePub-utgaven i denne omgang, da de ser ut til å hånderes bra av de fremviserne jeg har tilgjengelig.

Etter at oversettelsen til bokmål var ferdig klarte jeg å overtale NUUG Foundation til å sponse trykking av boken. Det er årsaken til at stiftelsens logo er på baksiden av omslaget. Jeg er svært takknemlig for dette, og bruker bidraget til å gi en kopi av den norske utgaven til alle Stortingsrepresentanter og andre beslutningstakere her i Norge.

Click here to buy the book.

In 2004, as the Creative Commons movement gained momentum, its creator Lawrence Lessig wrote the book Free Culture to explain the problems with increasing copyright regulation and suggest some solutions. I read the book back then and was very moved by it. Reading the book inspired me and changed the way I looked on copyright law, and I would love it if more people would read it too.

Because of this, I decided in the summer of 2012 to translate it to Norwegian Bokmål and publish it for those of my friends and family that prefer to read books in Norwegian. I translated the book using docbook and a gettext PO file, and a byproduct of this process is a new edition of the English original. I've been in touch with the author during by work, and he said it was fine with him if I also published an English version. So I decided to do so. Today, I made this edition available for sale on Lulu.com, for those interested in a paper book. This is the cover:

The Norwegian Bokmål version will be available for purchase in a few days. I also plan to publish a French version in a few weeks or months, depending on the amount of people with knowledge of French to join the translation project. So far there is only one active person, but the French book is almost completely translated but need some proof reading.

The book is also available in PDF, ePub and MOBI formats from my github project page. Note the ePub and MOBI versions have some formatting problems I believe is due to bugs in the docbook tool dbtoepub (Debian BTS issues #795842 and #796871), but I have not taken the time to investigate. I recommend the PDF and ePub version for now, as they seem to show up fine in the viewers I have available.

After the translation to Norwegian Bokmål was complete, I was able to secure some sponsoring from the NUUG Foundation to print the book. This is the reason their logo is located on the back cover. I am very grateful for their contribution, and will use it to give a copy of the Norwegian edition to members of the Norwegian Parliament and other decision makers here in Norway.

Bitcoin er i litt vinden i Norge for tiden, med kronikk om bitcoin-overføringer på tvers av landegrensene hos NRK Ytring for to dager siden og dokumentar om bitcoin på NRK 2 i forgårs og i går. I den sammenhengen er det spesielt hyggelig med en gladnyhet fra EU om Bitcoin.

I dag konkluderte EU-domstolen at Bitcoin-kjøp fra Bitcoin-børser ikke er MVA-pliktig (sak C‑264/14). Fant nyheten først hos Reuters, etter tips fra innehaveren av Bitmynt. EU-domstolens avgjørelse er stikk i strid med annonseringen fra Skatteetaten i 2013, der de konkluderte med at bitcoin er et «formuesobjekter» som det skulle betales mva på ved kjøp og salg. Dermed la Skatteetaten opp til dobbel MVA-betaling hvis en kjøpte noe med Bitcoin fra Norge (først mva på kjøp av Bitcoin, deretter mva på det en kjøper med Bitcoin). Jeg lurer på om denne avgjørelsen får Skatteetaten til å bytte mening. Gleder meg til fortsettelsen.

Last year, US president candidate in the Democratic Party Lawrence interviewed Edward Snowden. The one hour interview was published by Harvard Law School 2014-10-23 on Youtube, and the meeting took place 2014-10-20.

The questions are very good, and there is lots of useful information to be learned and very interesting issues to think about being raised. Please check it out.

I find it especially interesting to hear again that Snowden did try to bring up his reservations through the official channels without any luck. It is in sharp contrast to the answers made 2013-11-06 by the Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg to the Norwegian Parliament, claiming Snowden is no Whistle-Blower because he should have taken up his concerns internally and using official channels. It make me sad that this is the political leadership we have here in Norway.

The movie "The Internet's Own Boy: The Story of Aaron Swartz" is both inspiring and depressing at the same time. The work of Aaron Swartz has inspired me in my work, and I am grateful of all the improvements he was able to initiate or complete. I wish I am able to do as much good in my life as he did in his. Every minute of this 1:45 long movie is inspiring in documenting how much impact a single person can have on improving the society and this world. And it is depressing in documenting how the law enforcement of USA (and other countries) is corrupted to a point where they can push a bright kid to his death for downloading too many scientific articles. Aaron is dead. Let us all weep.

The movie is also available on Youtube. I wish there were Norwegian subtitles available, so I could show it to my parents.

Jeg lot meg fascinere av en artikkel i Aftenposten der det fortelles at «over 600 telefoner som benyttes av stortingsrepresentanter, rådgivere og ansatte på Stortinget, kan «fjernstyres» ved hjelp av programvaren Airwatch, et såkalte MDM-program (Mobile Device Managment)». Det hele bagatelliseres av Stortingets IT-stab, men det er i hovedsak på grunn av at journalisten ikke stiller de relevante spørsmålene. For meg er det relevante spørsmålet hvem som har lovlig tilgang (i henhold til lokal lovgiving, dvs. i hvert fall i Norge, Sverige, UK og USA) til informasjon om og på telefonene, og hvor enkelt det er å skaffe seg tilgang til hvor mobilene befinner seg og informasjon som befinner seg på telefonene ved hjelp av utro tjenere, trusler, innbrudd og andre ulovlige metoder.

Bruken av AirWatch betyr i realiteten at USAs etteretning og politimyndigheter har full tilgang til stortingets mobiltelefoner, inkludert posisjon og innhold, takket være FISAAA-loven og "National Security Letters" og det enkle faktum at selskapet AirWatch er kontrollert av et selskap i USA. I tillegg er det kjent at flere lands etterretningstjenester kan lytte på trafikken når den passerer landegrensene.

Jeg har bedt om mer informasjon fra Stortinget om bruken av AirWatch via Mimes brønn så får vi se hva de har å fortelle om saken. Fant ingenting om 'airwatch' i postjournalen til Stortinget, så jeg trenger hjelp før jeg kan be om innsyn i konkrete dokumenter.

Oppdatering 2015-10-07: Jeg er blitt spurt hvorfor jeg antar at AirWatch-agenten rapporterer til USA og ikke direkte til Stortingets egen infrastruktur. Det stemmer at det er teknisk mulig å sette opp mobiltelefonene til å rapportere til datamaskiner som eies av Stortinget. Jeg antar det rapporteres til AirWatch sine sentrale tjenester basert på det jeg leste fra beskrivelsen av Mobile Device Management på AirWatch sine egne nettsider, koblet med at det brukes en standard app som kan hentes fra "app-butikkene" for å få tilgang. Enten må app-en settes opp individuelt hos Stortinget, eller så får den beskjed fra AirWatch i USA om hvor den skal koble seg opp. I det første tilfellet vil den ikke rapportere direkte til USA, men til programvare utviklet av AirWatch som kjører på en maskin under Stortingets kontroll. Det er litt bedre, men fortsatt vil det være umulig for Stortinget å være sikker på hva programvaren som tar imot forbindelser gjør. Jeg ser fra beskrivelsen av Enterprice Integration hos AirWatch at det er mulig å ha lokal installasjon, og håper innsynsforespørsler mot Stortinget kan fortelle mer om hvordan ting konkret fungerer der.

As I wrap up the Norwegian version of Free Culture book by Lawrence Lessig (still waiting for my final proof reading copy to arrive in the mail), my great dblatex helper and developer of the dblatex docbook processor, Benoît Guillon, decided a to try to create a French version of the book. He started with the French translation available from the Wikilivres wiki pages, and wrote a program to convert it into a PO file, allowing the translation to be integrated into the po4a based framework I use to create the Norwegian translation from the English edition. We meet on the #dblatex IRC channel to discuss the work. If you want to help create a French edition, check out his git repository and join us on IRC. If the French edition look good, we might publish it as a paper book on lulu.com. A French version of the drawings and the cover need to be provided for this to happen.

When I get a new laptop, the battery life time at the start is OK. But this do not last. The last few laptops gave me a feeling that within a year, the life time is just a fraction of what it used to be, and it slowly become painful to use the laptop without power connected all the time. Because of this, when I got a new Thinkpad X230 laptop about two years ago, I decided to monitor its battery state to have more hard facts when the battery started to fail.

First I tried to find a sensible Debian package to record the battery status, assuming that this must be a problem already handled by someone else. I found battery-stats, which collects statistics from the battery, but it was completely broken. I sent a few suggestions to the maintainer, but decided to write my own collector as a shell script while I waited for feedback from him. Via a blog post about the battery development on a MacBook Air I also discovered batlog, not available in Debian.

I started my collector 2013-07-15, and it has been collecting battery stats ever since. Now my /var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log file contain around 115,000 measurements, from the time the battery was working great until now, when it is unable to charge above 7% of original capacity. My collector shell script is quite simple and look like this:

#!/bin/sh
# Inspired by
# http://www.ifweassume.com/2013/08/the-de-evolution-of-my-laptop-battery.html
# See also
# http://blog.sleeplessbeastie.eu/2013/01/02/debian-how-to-monitor-battery-capacity/
logfile=/var/log/hjemmenett-battery-status.log

files="manufacturer model_name technology serial_number \
    energy_full energy_full_design energy_now cycle_count status"

if [ ! -e "$logfile" ] ; then
    (
	printf "timestamp,"
	for f in $files; do
	    printf "%s," $f
	done
	echo
    ) > "$logfile"
fi

log_battery() {
    # Print complete message in one echo call, to avoid race condition
    # when several log processes run in parallel.
    msg=$(printf "%s," $(date +%s); \
	for f in $files; do \
	    printf "%s," $(cat $f); \
	done)
    echo "$msg"
}

cd /sys/class/power_supply

for bat in BAT*; do
    (cd $bat && log_battery >> "$logfile")
done

The script is called when the power management system detect a change in the power status (power plug in or out), and when going into and out of hibernation and suspend. In addition, it collect a value every 10 minutes. This make it possible for me know when the battery is discharging, charging and how the maximum charge change over time. The code for the Debian package is now available on github.

The collected log file look like this:

timestamp,manufacturer,model_name,technology,serial_number,energy_full,energy_full_design,energy_now,cycle_count,status,
1376591133,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,62800000,62160000,39050000,0,Discharging,
[...]
1443090528,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,
1443090601,LGC,45N1025,Li-ion,974,4900000,62160000,4900000,0,Full,

I wrote a small script to create a graph of the charge development over time. This graph depicted above show the slow death of my laptop battery.

But why is this happening? Why are my laptop batteries always dying in a year or two, while the batteries of space probes and satellites keep working year after year. If we are to believe Battery University, the cause is me charging the battery whenever I have a chance, and the fix is to not charge the Lithium-ion batteries to 100% all the time, but to stay below 90% of full charge most of the time. I've been told that the Tesla electric cars limit the charge of their batteries to 80%, with the option to charge to 100% when preparing for a longer trip (not that I would want a car like Tesla where rights to privacy is abandoned, but that is another story), which I guess is the option we should have for laptops on Linux too.

Is there a good and generic way with Linux to tell the battery to stop charging at 80%, unless requested to charge to 100% once in preparation for a longer trip? I found one recipe on askubuntu for Ubuntu to limit charging on Thinkpad to 80%, but could not get it to work (kernel module refused to load).

I wonder why the battery capacity was reported to be more than 100% at the start. I also wonder why the "full capacity" increases some times, and if it is possible to repeat the process to get the battery back to design capacity. And I wonder if the discharge and charge speed change over time, or if this stay the same. I did not yet try to write a tool to calculate the derivative values of the battery level, but suspect some interesting insights might be learned from those.

Update 2015-09-24: I got a tip to install the packages acpi-call-dkms and tlp (unfortunately missing in Debian stable) packages instead of the tp-smapi-dkms package I had tried to use initially, and use 'tlp setcharge 40 80' to change when charging start and stop. I've done so now, but expect my existing battery is toast and need to be replaced. The proposal is unfortunately Thinkpad specific.

Creating a good looking book cover proved harder than I expected. I wanted to create a cover looking similar to the original cover of the Free Culture book we are translating to Norwegian, and I wanted it in vector format for high resolution printing. But my inkscape knowledge were not nearly good enough to pull that off.

But thanks to the great inkscape community, I was able to wrap up the cover yesterday evening. I asked on the #inkscape IRC channel on Freenode for help and clues, and Marc Jeanmougin (Mc-) volunteered to try to recreate it based on the PDF of the cover from the HTML version. Not only did he create a SVG document with the original and his vector version side by side, he even provided an instruction video explaining how he did it. But the instruction video is not easy to follow for an untrained inkscape user. The video is a recording on how he did it, and he is obviously very experienced as the menu selections are very quick and he mentioned on IRC that he did use some keyboard shortcuts that can't be seen on the video, but it give a good idea about the inkscape operations to use to create the stripes with the embossed copyright sign in the center.

I took his SVG file, copied the vector image and re-sized it to fit on the cover I was drawing. I am happy with the end result, and the current english version look like this:

I am not quite sure about the text on the back, but guess it will do. I picked three quotes from the official site for the book, and hope it will work to trigger the interest of potential readers. The Norwegian cover will look the same, but with the texts and bar code replaced with the Norwegian version.

The book is very close to being ready for publication, and I expect to upload the final draft to Lulu in the next few days and order a final proof reading copy to verify that everything look like it should before allowing everyone to order their own copy of Free Culture, in English or Norwegian Bokmål. I'm waiting to give the the productive proof readers a chance to complete their work.

Today, finally, my first printed draft edition of the Norwegian translation of Free Culture I have been working on for the last few years arrived in the mail. I had to fake a cover to get the interior printed, and the exterior of the book look awful, but that is irrelevant at this point. I asked for a printed pocket book version to get an idea about the font sizes and paper format as well as how good the figures and images look in print, but also to test what the pocket book version would look like. After receiving the 500 page pocket book, it became obvious to me that that pocket book size is too small for this book. I believe the book is too thick, and several tables and figures do not look good in the size they get with that small page sizes. I believe I will go with the 5.5x8.5 inch size instead. A surprise discovery from the paper version was how bad the URLs look in print. They are very hard to read in the colophon page. The URLs are red in the PDF, but light gray on paper. I need to change the color of links somehow to look better. But there is a printed book in my hand, and it feels great. :)

Now I only need to fix the cover, wrap up the postscript with the store behind the book, and collect the last corrections from the proof readers before the book is ready for proper printing. Cover artists willing to work for free and create a Creative Commons licensed vector file looking similar to the original is most welcome, as my skills as a graphics designer are mostly missing.