From: Petter Reinholdtsen Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 13:56:04 +0000 (+0000) Subject: New post. X-Git-Url: https://pere.pagekite.me/gitweb/homepage.git/commitdiff_plain/89c05f318d0a44fc206408f7c6335111c0ede44c?ds=sidebyside New post. --- diff --git a/blog/data/2010-12-10-bitcoin.txt b/blog/data/2010-12-10-bitcoin.txt index ee5852259f..9880467f77 100644 --- a/blog/data/2010-12-10-bitcoin.txt +++ b/blog/data/2010-12-10-bitcoin.txt @@ -1,47 +1,89 @@ -Title: Now accepting bitcoins - anonymous and distributed p2p crypto-money -Tags: english, debian, bitcoin, personvern, sikkerhet -Publish: 2010-12-10 -Date: 2010-12-10 08:20 - -

With this weeks lawless -governmental -attacks on Wikileak and -free -speech, it has become obvious that PayPal, visa and mastercard can -not be trusted to handle money transactions. -A blog post from -Simon -Phipps on bitcoin reminded me about a project that a friend of -mine mentioned earlier. I decided to follow Simon's example, and get -involved with BitCoin. I got -some help from my friend to get it all running, and he even handed me -some bitcoins to get started. I even donated a few bitcoins to Simon -for helping me remember BitCoin.

- -

So, what is bitcoins, you probably wonder? It is a digital -crypto-currency, decentralised and handled using peer-to-peer -networks. It allows anonymous transactions and prohibits central -control over the transactions, making it impossible for governments -and companies alike to block donations and other transactions. The -source is free software, and while the key dependency wxWidgets 2.9 -for the graphical user interface is missing in Debian, the command -line client builds just fine. Hopefully Jonas -will get the package into -Debian soon.

- -

Bitcoins can be converted to other currencies, like USD and EUR. -There are companies accepting -bitcoins when selling services and goods, and there are even -currency "stock" markets where the exchange rate is decided. There -are not many users so far, but the concept seems promising. If you -want to get started and lack a friend with any bitcoins to spare, -you can even get -some for free (0.05 -bitcoin at the time of writing). Use -BitcoinWatch to keep an eye -on the current exchange rates.

- -

As an experiment, I have decided to set up bitcoind on one of my -machines. If you want to support my activity, please send Bitcoin -donations to the address -15oWEoG9dUPovwmUL9KWAnYRtNJEkP1u1b. Thank you!

+Title: How to test if a laptop is working with Linux +Tags: english, debian, debian edu +Date: 2010-12-22 14:55 + +

The last few days I have spent at work here at the University of oslo testing if the new +batch of computers will work with Linux. Every year for the last few +years the university have organized shared bid of a few thousand +computers, and this year HP won the bid. Two different desktops and +five different laptops are on the list this year. We in the UNIX +group want to know which one of these computers work well with RHEL +and Ubuntu, the two Linux distributions we currently handle at the +university.

+ +

My test method is simple, and I share it here to get feedback and +perhaps inspire others to test hardware as well. To test, I PXE +install the OS version of choice, and log in as my normal user and run +a few applications and plug in selected pieces of hardware. When +something fail, I make a note about this in the test matrix and move +on. If I have some spare time I try to report the bug to the OS +vendor, but as I only have the machines for a short time, I rarely +have the time to do this for all the problems I find.

+ +

Anyway, to get to the point of this post. Here is the simple tests +I perform on a new model.

+ + + +

By now I suspect you are really curious what the test results are +for the HP machines I am testing. I'm not done yet, so I will report +the test results later. For now I can report that HP 8100 Elite work +fine, and hibernation fail with HP EliteBook 8440p on Ubuntu Lucid, +and audio fail on RHEL6. Ubuntu Maverik worked with 8440p. As you +can see, I have most machines left to test. One interesting +observation is that Ubuntu Lucid has almost twice the framerate than +RHEL6 with glxgears. No idea why.