Ekspertene slakter Norge - Aftenposten.no

Ekspertene slakter Norge - Aftenposten.no

Hallo, liksom. Norge er et lite, bitte lite, land. Vi kan ikke forvente at vi skal ta en haug med gull hver gang det er vinter-ol.

Jeg synes vi har gjort en grei innsats jeg, og de som har flydd på ski og hoppa og kosta, de har gjort en hederlig innsats.

Dessuten har jeg fått vite at min dr.grads avhandlig er funnet "worthy of defending for the dr. scient degree". Så nå er det nesten bare tut og kjør igjen...

Take care,

digi.no - Rapport hevder Linux-servere er billigst

digi.no - Rapport hevder Linux-servere er billigst

Som man roper i skogen får man svar vil nå jeg si. Som ihuga linux tilhenger er jeg seff enig, men det er nå en gang sånn at Linux og Windows er to helt forskjellige systemer, så jeg skjønner ikke hvorfor man på død og liv skal sammenlikne.

Dersom du har sys.admins som kan både Windows og Linux, vil som regel Linux bli valgt på serversiden dersom applikasjonen man skal implementere tillater valg. Grunnen er opplagt - fra sys.admin siden er som regel Linux et langt mer behagelig valg.

Dersom du har sys.admins som bare kan Windows har du ikke noe valg. Bortsett fra å sparke staben og ansette nye da. Og dersom de bare kan Linux har du heller ikke noe valg.

På desktop siden er systemene såpass forskjellige, at dersom ikke ledelse og sys.admins ønsker å overkjøre sine brukere, og dermed få lite produktive, fiendlige innstilte medarbeidere, så har man heller ikke noe valg i særlig grad. Da snakker jeg om avanserte, oppgående brukere selvsagt - kveget får bruke det de får. Men de andre må altså få velge, og da vil hver enkelt bruker velge det saom passer best for seg, enten det er Linux, Mac OSX, Windows, eller et av de andre OS som finnes.

Omtrent sånn ser nå jeg det.

Gratulerer Sverige!!!

Som noen vet pågår det et OL for tiden. I dag var det sprint-stafett, en langrennsøvelse hvor ihvertfall de fleste normenn nok hadde forventet norske gullmedaljer. Men idag vant Sverige, både herre og dame stafetten. Derfor vil jeg gjerne få lov til å gratulere våre gode naboer på det hjerteligste!

I will soon be a doctor!

Just a short notice to inform my faithful crowd of readers that I soon will be a Dr.Scient. All the required documents are now accepted. The only thing left is that the committee must accept my thesis, and then the defense of the thesis, of course. But that should be walk in the park. not...

Anyway, wish me good luck on the last mile.

And as always, take care out there. There's lot of snow, and the roads are slippy. At least in my area in Norway. Just have a look out of my window:

A silly post. Mostly.

Ok, sorry folks, this post isn't very interesting. I am testing out a program called gnome-blog, running on linux, which can be used for posting directly to the blog from my desktop. As this is a gtk/gnome program, as should be evident from the name, it is not optimal for me. The optimal solution will be something I can run directly from the shell, or maybe even from a macro in the editor vim, but I will just test this program for now.

By the way, I have to report on an extraordinary service from our regular hardware-pusher, pc-express. As reported yesterday, the NIC on my desktop computer at work broke down. As the manufacturer in question, Shuttle, are known by our dealer to not exactly handle guarantee matters in a prompt fashion, I was told today that the just ordered a new box for me, and will handle the return of the old one without bothering me. In effect, I will get a computer back very soon, which is important to me. I think this is more than I could expect, so I am really satisfied.

PE2 2:10-11: But chiefly them that walk after the flesh in the lust of uncleanness, and despise government. Presumptuous are they, selfwilled, they are not afraid to speak evil of dignities.

Whereas angels, which are greater in power and might, bring not railing accusation against them before the Lord.

Take care,

Me and my computers

The regular reader knows that I have right now 3 computers that I use regulary. With two of them there has been some events recently that I can mention here, and for the last one, the P1510, I have promised you some comments on the linux installation.

First, the AMD64 computer that I regularly use at work. The Ubuntu for AMD64 is working flawlessly on that computer. Everything that I need is running just fine. But on friday the NIC fell apart. Usually, that is not a big deal, you just pull the card out and slip a new one in to the box. Problem is that this is a Shuttle SN25p, with the excelent NIC built right into the mainboard. Combined with noe free PCI slot on the mainboard, I do not have any other option but sending the whole box in for service. So, I am happy with the box, it works quite well, and performance is more than adequate for my work (which includes some really heavy simulations of partial differential equations), but no free slot for a emergency NIC can easily be a showstopper in the future. I am thinking on finding other use for the computer within our lab, and get another one for myself.

The PowerMac at home is also doing fine these days. As you know, I ended up installing gentoo on that computer, because the installers of both debian and ubuntu for powerpc failed to work, due to problem with disk partitioning. The installer is just unable to detect the geometry of my partitions, and give me only the option to wipe out the entire disk, including my MacOSX installation, and put in linux. Not what I want, as I use MacOSX for different purposes.

The problem was that I never used the gentoo installed. It just take to much time to compile everything, and a whole lot of packages is masked out for powerpc64, as I guess not very many gentoo users play with these animals. But then I figured out that I already have a working disk geometry and working yaboot for booting the operating system I want, so I just tried to install ubuntu for powerpc64 into or on top of the gentoo installation. For this purpose I chosed the pre-release of the next ubuntu (Dapper Drake), and run the installer in expert modus. In stead of working through the partitioning and mounting step in the installer, I switched to another console, mounted what I wanted as '/target', run the necessary swapon command, and wiped out the original gentoo stuff from /target. Most of the installer worked just fine from that point, except making the installation bootable and writing a correct fstab. The fstab I could easily handle by hand, and the configuration for the 'yaboot' boot-loader I have been clever enough to back up to a USB drive. So, after copying in the yaboot config, running 'ybin -v' and doing some editing of fstab using vim, I have a working ubuntu. Now with most of what I need available in binary form. There are some issues with the airport extreme wireless card, my firewire soundcard and the built in soundcard, but I can live with this.

With the Fujitsu P1510, the history is not very interesting. I booted from Debian sarge net-install cd, performed a regular installation, upgraded to etch. Everything is just fine. Bluetooth, sound, WiFi, Xorg - everything works. There are only a few minior things. Suspend/resume is not working out of the box, so I patched the kernel with software suspend 2. Using this I can hibernate the computer using the swap partition to store the state, and bring it back up and running in a matter of a few seconds. I also have some issues with cpu throttling, I have not manage to get neither cupfreqd nor powernowd to run, this is something I have to look a bit more into.

Take care, folks!

Waiting is over!

The Fujitsu P1520 arrived today! It's a very sweet, little thing.

I am installing Linux on it right now, a report on this will follow shortly.

Take care,

NRK.no - EU - Store all phone and net traffic for two years

NRK.no - EU

The european parliment have just approved a new directive, which state that all phone and internet traffic should be stored for two years. That is just crazy. Apparently, only phonenumbers you call, where you are at what time ip-addresses for communication, etc. But that is pretty extensive. Doesn't sound very well thought about and very crazy.

Hey, I have nothing to hide, but I don't like that idea at all, so I better go dig up those urls again that describes software that can be used to hide your tracks.

Take care - and be scared.

Waiting for Fujitsu Siemens P1510

This is a story in progress!

Back in early october I ordered the new Fujitsu Siemens P1510, a new very cool and very small laptop, from our regular dealer. I was promised that delivery will be around 15. november.

When we approached 15. november, I was told that there was a slight delay, 1. december will be the great day. Somehow I don't belive what I was told. And very correct, there was a further delay, 7. december should be the delivery date. Now I was also told that the computer was shipped from germany, probably from some Fujitsu Siemens manufacturing facility there, so now further delay was expected.

But, hey, thats too simple, isn't it? Yesterday, which was the 7. december, I was again told that a new delay was in progress. New delivery date is 14. december. But then I have some questions. My computer was shipped, right? So, who in this world got my computer? A more important customer? Does someone paid off somebody in the delivery chain to get my computer? Maybe it wasn't shipped at all?

The important thing is that this happens all the time. Should we just take this any longer? When I order an item, and get a delivery date, I expect the item to show up. I guess that if you are a craftsman, and order a new tool, a chainsaw or something like that, and get a delivery date, you expect the item to be around at that time, and tell your customer that you have to wait until that date with delivery. Could the craftsman live with one month or more delay? I guess not. He turn to another vendor. Why can't I do the same? Because every single company in this business is more or less the same.

So, buyers in all countries, speak up. Don't take this any longer. Give the message to your dealer that you want the item on the day they promise. It's much better that the dealer give a correct but long into the future delivery date , than specifying delivery dates that he can not keep up with.

I think I in the future will request a 1% reduction in price for each day the delivery is delayed. If we all request this, maybe we can get a healtier attitude in the business.

Slashdot | Microsoft Open Document Standard Not So Open

Slashdot | Microsoft Open Document Standard Not So Open: "Microsoft Open Document Standard Not So Open"

Please, can someone explain to me why I am not shocked? I guess that as long as water flows, sun raises and sets, Microsoft will never be really open. It's just against their nature, they can't be something they aren't.

Live free and prosper!

Linux on a G5 - Followup

You might wonder how it went with the Linux install on my G5. Please read the previous post on this if you are one of my new readers!


It turned out that the Debian installer still couldn't figure out where to install itself, even when the free space ready for Linux was first on the disk. There is certainly something strange with the partition scheme from Apple. As a last resort I went to gentoo. What you can't do with gentoo, I guess you can't do at all. To make the story short, gentoo works as a charm. During my tests with the other distributions, I figured out how to create partitions and mount them using mac-fdisk, mkfs and mount directly. The problem was that even when I mounted partitions, the installer couldn't find them. And if I got beyond that point, I still wasn't abel to install the bootloader properly. With gentoo, everything is manual and up to me, so it was much more easy to perform the install.

The only problem I really had was with yaboot configuration. The yabootconfig script that should have created a yaboot.conf file was nonfunctional with my setup, so I had to write the config manually, based on some examples I found online. That wasn't that hard, but it took me some time to figure out the ofpath id's I needed to put in there, as well as which partition number the Tiger actually should boot from. It turned out that I should not specify the partition where the Tiger lives, but the one just infront of it.

So - end of the story is that I now have a working Tiger and a working gentoo, though it will still take some time to get all the software I need on gentoo. That's why I don't like gentoo that much. The power of the gentoo install, coupled with the power of apt-get/dpkg, that's really what I want. But I guess I stick with gentoo for now - it will certainly give me a lean, mean machine!

A short note on the Shuttle SN25P case is also appropriate here. I can tweak the ubuntu really to what I want. I got NIS and automount working, I have sound and DVD burning working, and most of the packages I want. Actually, I just think about it as Debian, and it works quite fine. Guess I can live with that!

Take care!

Linux on a G5 PowerMac

I finally wanted to put linux on my G5 PowerMac, as I see my main linux computer today, a laptop, soon will be gone, replaced with a smaller and sweater laptop (the Fujitsu Siemens P1510). As I now have the Shuttle SN25P at the office, I'll also need a stationary computer at home running Linux. Don't get me wrong, the Mac OS X system is a decent system. Unfortunately, it's not up to my standards for doing real work.

This should be an easy task, right. I already have a free external firewire disk, and my intention was to load Linux on that one. Inserted the ubuntu cd (read the story on the Shuttle to get why I just started out with ubuntu), and keep going. Right. Tap, tap, tap, enter, enter, enter, ooopss. I accidentally erased the MacOSX partition instead of repartitioning the external drive. So, thats an extreme makeover for my MacOSX installation. Anyway, most important stuff I have elsewhere, so no big deal. So, took two steps back, installed Tiger on the internal drive, and went back to my original quest. Installation on the external drive went just fine, up to the point where the bootloader, yaboot, is to be installed. It can't be installed on the external firewire drive, at least not from the ubuntu installer. Another couple of steps back.

Next try, go for a split of the internal system. So, I install Tiger again on a smaller partition, leaving a spaceious 80GB towards the end of the drive for Linux. Bahh.. The ubuntu installers is unable to find the free partition and install there. So, I figured out I should start with partitioning from the linux side. So I did - removed the Tiger again, created partitions for Linux at the end of the disk, installed ubuntu. Only to discover that the mac disk utility is unable to create HFS+ partition in the free space for Tiger. I lost counting, but had to destroy everything once more.

This time I did some googling, especially on the Debian installer documentation for PPC. There I got the following recipe: Start with installation of MacOSX, leave free space for Debian at the beginning of the disk. Then, install MacOSX, and finally install Debian.

So, now I will try that and see how it goes. Btw, the one time I actually got ubuntu installed on the internal drive (alone, no MacOSX present) I was unable to boot it, because the SATA drivers was not loaded in the kernel at boottime. I guess I need to use initrd or something, but have to figure that out later on.

On to the next install, I'll see you all later :-)

Linux on Shuttle SN25P

Hi there,

I got my new Shuttle SN25P at work today, and want to load it with linux. The computer comes equipped with a AMD 3500+ 2.2GHz processor, 2GB of memory and a 250GB maxtor SATA disk from the pc-pusher. They have also put an Geforce 6600 something graphics adapter into it.

As a long-time Debian fan, I of course wanted to load it with that. Of course, I know of the, should we say, not so appealing situation with Debian and AMD64, but thought I'll be fine with the glitches that might appear, and eventually some manual work. Now, I found a unofficial sarge netinst image for AMD64, as well as a testing or sid netinst image. To start out easy, I head for sarge. Everything seems fine during the install process, but after a reboot I discovered that the included kernel was not able to properly detect the ethernet card included on the mainboard as part of the nForce4 chipset. Not very usefull with a netinstall image then. So, the sid-image next (it was labeled as sid, but from what I could see during install it's more like a etch image). This time the ethernet card was detected properly, but the installer was heavily broken. For instance, busybox was missing in the target system during installation of package, such that unpacking and installation of packages was impossible. After spending a good hour, trying to put in the necessary stuff from the host (boot) system, I just figured out that this was not the "right way".

To make the long story short - I grabbed the latest ubuntu for AMD64, slipped it in, booted, waited, and had a working system.

While I kind of want Debian where I know all the tricks of the trade, I guess I'll stick with ubuntu for a while, at least until Debian can get something supported out there for AMD64. Hopefully, the unstable also will be useable at that time - as I use unstable on all my x86-32 computers. I'm happy to do the upgrade from stable to unstable on anything, but it is important that I can get a working install at least with network and a compiler, possibly some X11, but that's not significant to get started.

Tomorrow I have to see if I can get the ubuntu install to be something like how I want it, I guess I can. But there are some stuff to sort out still, like sound support. So there will probably be a followup on this.

take care,

NRK.no - Valg 2005

NRK.no - Valg 2005: "De rødgrønne kjøper millionvilla

Partilederne for de nye regjeringspartiene har inngått en avtale om å kjøpe Svein Erik Bakkes 30-millioner kronersvilla på Bygdøy."
(Sitat nrk.no).

Det var jo en lekker måte å begynne på. Gir dette mer skole for pengene, som SV-kristin har mast om. Eller gir dette mer eldreomsorg forpengene, som AP-jens har mast om. Eller hva SP-haga har mast om vet jeg ikke helt... vi kommer sikkert ikke mer inn i eu av dette, så hun har nok sitt på det tørre.

Men en villa på Bygdøy er jo fint å ha. Og det var sikkert de billigste 100m med strandlinje som var å få kjøpt i Oslo-området. Helt sikkert.

Forbruker.no: Kaotisk og lite nytt på Apple-show

Aftenposten/frobruker.no

Dette var bare litt for dumt, så jeg må nevne det. Her drar itjournalistene ut i verden for å se seg om. De burde vel ha litt greie på it de da? Så presteres denne frasen, under Teknisk kaos:

Rent teknisk, var Expoet i sine f�rste timer, et kaos. Ingenting fungerte. For alle journalister med PC, ikke Mac alts�, var det umulig �logge seg p�nettet.

Arrang�rene hadde nemlig gjort det geniale trekket �skjule det tr�dl�se nettverket, noe som gjorde det helt umulig for PC-brukere �finne det.

Og da tenker jeg, hmmm... For det f�rste, hvorfor skulle det gj�re noen forskjell om man bruker Mac n�r det gjelder dette. Dersom nettet er skjult, er det vel skjult for mac ogs�- i motsatt fall er det ikke skjult. Med PC regner jeg med det siktes til windows, som om ikke mac er pc, men anyway, det finnes da verkt�y for �finne nett som skulle ha v�rt �pne.

N�er kanksje ikke it-journalister alltid nerder, men �bl�se seg opp s�pass kraftig p�Apples bekostning, for en s�liten sak, det synes jeg var �ta litt for hardt i.

Men det er kanskje bare meg...

Unfortunately, Norway turns red again...

The red side of politics won the election with 87 against 82 seats in the parliament. It's a sad day for our country. Hopefully they will not spoil to much of what makes Norway a nice place to live, and maybe next time the good guys can get back.

We'll see.

Election in Norway

Today, there is an election for the Norwegian parliament. And this time it is really exciting to follow the counting of votes. Right now it is 85 to 84 between the two main blocks, which mean that the government we have to day, continue. But it is a close race, and I will follow it closely.

For what it's worth, I'm for the current government, and want them to stay.

Visit from uncle Ruben

Visit from uncle Ruben, originally uploaded by mandus.

pyFDM version 0.2

The anticipated version 0.2 of pyFDM was put up at pyfdm at sourceforge, as mentioned in the last post.

Please enjoy as much as I do!

Busy, busy. No time for blogging

I am rather too busy these days - no I really try to finalize my ph.d thesis. So, no time for blogging, no time for photoblogging (almost).

And, hey, watch out at the pyfdm page, there will soon be a new release, as I have done a lot of development on pyFDM lately.

Take care!