<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
+ <item>
+ <title>Debian Edu interview: Roger Marsal</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Roger_Marsal.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Sun, 30 Mar 2014 11:40:00 +0200</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>
+keep gaining new users. Some weeks ago, a person showed up on IRC,
+<a href="irc://irc.debian.org/#debian-edu">#debian-edu</a>, with a
+wish to contribute, and I managed to get a interview with this great
+contributor Roger Marsal to learn more about his background.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
+
+<p>My name is Roger Marsal, I'm 27 years old (1986 generation) and I
+live in Barcelona, Spain. I've got a strong business background and I
+work as a patrimony manager and as a real estate agent. Additionally,
+I've co-founded a British based tech company that is nowadays on the
+last development phase of a new social networking concept.</p>
+
+<p>I'm a Linux enthusiast that started its journey with Ubuntu four years
+ago and have recently switched to Debian seeking rock solid stability
+and as a necessary step to gain expertise.</p>
+
+<p>In a nutshell, I spend my days working and learning as much as I
+can to face both my job, entrepreneur project and feed my Linux
+hunger.</p>
+
+<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
+project?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I discovered the <a href="http://www.ltsp.org/">LTSP</a> advantages
+with "Ubuntu 12.04 alternate install" and after a year of use I
+started looking for an alternative. Even though I highly value and
+respect the Ubuntu project, I thought it was necessary for me to
+change to a more robust and stable alternative. As far as I was using
+Debian on my personal laptop I thought it would be fine to install
+Debian and configure an LTSP server myself. Surprised, I discovered
+that the Debian project also supported a kind of Edubuntu equivalent,
+and after having some pain I obtained a Debian Edu network up and
+running. I just loved it.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I found a main advantage in that, once you know "the tips and
+tricks", a new installation just works out of the box. It's the most
+complete alternative I've found to create an LTSP network. All the
+other distributions seems to be made of plastic, Debian Edu seems to
+be made of steel.</p>
+
+<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
+Edu?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I found two main disadvantages.</p>
+
+<p>I'm not an expert but I've got notions and I had to spent a considerable
+amount of time trying to bring up a standard network topology. I'm quite
+stubborn and I just worked until I did but I'm sure many people with few
+resources (not big schools, but academies for example) would have switched
+or dropped.</p>
+
+<p>It's amazing how such a complex system like Debian Edu has achieved
+this out-of-the-box state. Even though tweaking without breaking gets
+more difficult, as more factors have to be considered. This can
+discourage many people too.</p>
+
+<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I use Debian, Firefox, Okular, Inkscape, LibreOffice and
+Virtualbox.</p>
+
+
+<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
+get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
+
+<p>I don't think there is a need for a particular strategy. The free
+attribute in both "freedom" and "no price" meanings is what will
+really bring free software to schools. In my experience I can think of
+the <a href="http://www.r-project.org/">"R" statistical language</a>; a
+few years a ago was an extremely nerd tool for university people.
+Today it's being increasingly used to teach statistics at many
+different level of studies. I believe free and open software will
+increasingly gain popularity, but I'm sure schools will be one of the
+first scenarios where this will happen.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Dokumentaren om Datalagringsdirektivet sendes endelig på NRK</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dokumentaren_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_sendes_endelig_p__NRK.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Dokumentaren_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_sendes_endelig_p__NRK.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Wed, 26 Mar 2014 09:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p><a href="http://www.nuug.no/">Foreningen NUUG</a> melder i natt at
+NRK nå har bestemt seg for
+<a href="http://www.nuug.no/news/NRK_viser_filmen_om_Datalagringsdirektivet_f_rste_gang_2014_03_31.shtml">når
+den norske dokumentarfilmen om datalagringsdirektivet skal
+sendes</a> (se <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2832844/">IMDB</a>
+for detaljer om filmen) . Første visning blir på NRK2 mandag
+2014-03-31 kl. 19:50, og deretter visninger onsdag 2014-04-02
+kl. 12:30, fredag 2014-04-04 kl. 19:40 og søndag 2014-04-06 kl. 15:10.
+Jeg har sett dokumentaren, og jeg anbefaler enhver å se den selv. Som
+oppvarming mens vi venter anbefaler jeg Bjørn Stærks kronikk i
+Aftenposten fra i går,
+<a href="http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kronikker/Autoritar-gjokunge-7514915.html">Autoritær
+gjøkunge</a>, der han gir en grei skisse av hvor ille det står til med
+retten til privatliv og beskyttelsen av demokrati i Norge og resten
+verden, og helt riktig slår fast at det er vi i databransjen som
+sitter med nøkkelen til å gjøre noe med dette. Jeg har involvert meg
+i prosjektene <a href="http://www.dugnadsnett.no/">dugnadsnett.no</a>
+og <a href="https://wiki.debian.org/FreedomBox">FreedomBox</a> for å
+forsøke å gjøre litt selv for å bedre situasjonen, men det er mye
+hardt arbeid fra mange flere enn meg som gjenstår før vi kan sies å ha
+gjenopprettet balansen.</p>
+
+<p>Jeg regner med at nettutgaven dukker opp på
+<a href="http://tv.nrk.no/program/koid75005313/tema-dine-digitale-spor-datalagringsdirektivet">NRKs
+side om filmen om datalagringsdirektivet</a> om fem dager. Hold et
+øye med siden, og tips venner og slekt om at de også bør se den.</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
+ <item>
+ <title>Public Trusted Timestamping services for everyone</title>
+ <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html</link>
+ <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Public_Trusted_Timestamping_services_for_everyone.html</guid>
+ <pubDate>Tue, 25 Mar 2014 12:50:00 +0100</pubDate>
+ <description><p>Did you ever need to store logs or other files in a way that would
+allow it to be used as evidence in court, and needed a way to
+demonstrate without reasonable doubt that the file had not been
+changed since it was created? Or, did you ever need to document that
+a given document was received at some point in time, like some
+archived document or the answer to an exam, and not changed after it
+was received? The problem in these settings is to remove the need to
+trust yourself and your computers, while still being able to prove
+that a file is the same as it was at some given time in the past.</p>
+
+<p>A solution to these problems is to have a trusted third party
+"stamp" the document and verify that at some given time the document
+looked a given way. Such
+<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notarius">notarius</a> service
+have been around for thousands of years, and its digital equivalent is
+called a
+<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trusted_timestamping">trusted
+timestamping service</a>. <a href="http://www.ietf.org/">The Internet
+Engineering Task Force</a> standardised how such service could work a
+few years ago as <a href="http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3161">RFC
+3161</a>. The mechanism is simple. Create a hash of the file in
+question, send it to a trusted third party which add a time stamp to
+the hash and sign the result with its private key, and send back the
+signed hash + timestamp. Both email, FTP and HTTP can be used to
+request such signature, depending on what is provided by the service
+used. Anyone with the document and the signature can then verify that
+the document matches the signature by creating their own hash and
+checking the signature using the trusted third party public key.
+There are several commercial services around providing such
+timestamping. A quick search for
+"<a href="https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rfc+3161+service">rfc 3161
+service</a>" pointed me to at least
+<a href="https://www.digistamp.com/technical/how-a-digital-time-stamp-works/">DigiStamp</a>,
+<a href="http://www.quovadisglobal.co.uk/CertificateServices/SigningServices/TimeStamp.aspx">Quo
+Vadis</a>,
+<a href="https://www.globalsign.com/timestamp-service/">Global Sign</a>
+and <a href="http://www.globaltrustfinder.com/TSADefault.aspx">Global
+Trust Finder</a>. The system work as long as the private key of the
+trusted third party is not compromised.</p>
+
+<p>But as far as I can tell, there are very few public trusted
+timestamp services available for everyone. I've been looking for one
+for a while now. But yesterday I found one over at
+<a href="https://www.pki.dfn.de/zeitstempeldienst/">Deutches
+Forschungsnetz</a> mentioned in
+<a href="http://www.d-mueller.de/blog/dealing-with-trusted-timestamps-in-php-rfc-3161/">a
+blog by David Müller</a>. I then found
+<a href="http://www.rz.uni-greifswald.de/support/dfn-pki-zertifikate/zeitstempeldienst.html">a
+good recipe on how to use the service</a> over at the University of
+Greifswald.</p>
+
+<p><a href="http://www.openssl.org/">The OpenSSL library</a> contain
+both server and tools to use and set up your own signing service. See
+the ts(1SSL), tsget(1SSL) manual pages for more details. The
+following shell script demonstrate how to extract a signed timestamp
+for any file on the disk in a Debian environment:</p>
+
+<p><blockquote><pre>
+#!/bin/sh
+set -e
+url="http://zeitstempel.dfn.de"
+caurl="https://pki.pca.dfn.de/global-services-ca/pub/cacert/chain.txt"
+reqfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsq)
+resfile=$(mktemp -t tmp.XXXXXXXXXX.tsr)
+cafile=chain.txt
+if [ ! -f $cafile ] ; then
+ wget -O $cafile "$caurl"
+fi
+openssl ts -query -data "$1" -cert | tee "$reqfile" \
+ | /usr/lib/ssl/misc/tsget -h "$url" -o "$resfile"
+openssl ts -reply -in "$resfile" -text 1>&2
+openssl ts -verify -data "$1" -in "$resfile" -CAfile "$cafile" 1>&2
+base64 < "$resfile"
+rm "$reqfile" "$resfile"
+</pre></blockquote></p>
+
+<p>The argument to the script is the file to timestamp, and the output
+is a base64 encoded version of the signature to STDOUT and details
+about the signature to STDERR. Note that due to
+<a href="http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=742553">a bug
+in the tsget script</a>, you might need to modify the included script
+and remove the last line. Or just write your own HTTP uploader using
+curl. :) Now you too can prove and verify that files have not been
+changed.</p>
+
+<p>But the Internet need more public trusted timestamp services.
+Perhaps something for <a href="http://www.uninett.no/">Uninett</a> or
+my work place the <a href="http://www.uio.no/">University of Oslo</a>
+to set up?</p>
+</description>
+ </item>
+
<item>
<title>Video DVD reader library / python-dvdvideo - nice free software</title>
<link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Video_DVD_reader_library___python_dvdvideo___nice_free_software.html</link>
and program
<a href="http://bblank.thinkmo.de/blog/new-software-python-dvdvideo">python-dvdvideo</a>
written by Bastian Blank. It is
-<a href"http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
+<a href="http://packages.qa.debian.org/p/python-dvdvideo.html">in Debian
already</a> and the binary package name is python3-dvdvideo. Instead
of trying to read every block from the DVD, it parses the file
structure and figure out which block on the DVD is actually in used,
and only read those blocks from the DVD. This work surprisingly well,
and I have been able to almost backup my entire DVD collection using
-this method.</p> So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
+this method.</p>
+
+<p>So far, python-dvdvideo have failed on between 10 and
20 DVDs, which is a small fraction of my collection. The most common
problem is
<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=720831">DVDs
installation will get the installation going. This affect all
installations in Jessie, and I expect it will be fixed soon.</p>
-Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
+<p>Give it a go and let us know how it goes on the mailing list, and help
us get the new release published. :) Please join us on
<a href="irc://irc.debian.org:6667/%23freedombox">IRC (#freedombox on
irc.debian.org)</a> and
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff