Following a call for submissions from the Israeli Patent Authority, the Israeli Free Software Society, Hamakor, submitted a memorandum calling for the annulment of the Software Patents. A Memorandum drafted by Adv. Jonathan J. Klinger, Hamakor’s chief legal counsel, presented a tough and strict approach claiming that software patents harm innovation and incur high legal costs on software developers.

“protecting software through patents shall provide protection on ideas, which are usually expressible in more than one manner, and shall be the beginning to a race to the bottom where every person shall register as many patents possible and incur high costs on each player in the software field”, said Klinger, and added that “the chilling effect created by the fear of using software protected by patents, be it free software or proprietary software, and incur costs on the system solely in order to purchase insurance from the theoretical patent infringement. In such case, any independent development of software without legal assistance from the first day of development shall be problematic, and deter developers from developing free software or promote innovation”.

Until recently, the Israeli patent authority rejected Software Patents and provided protection only regarding hardware (in re Eli Tamir). However, the recent call for submissions had raised the fear that software patents shall be used to deter innovation.

Currently, Israeli venture capital funds and technology evangelists often see patents as the core asset when protecting software companies from competition, which creates a race to the bottom that requires startups and innovative companies to register patents in order to raise funds. Hamakor presents, in its memorandum, a new approach focusing on people and not patents, as the core asset of the Israeli Innovation.

See Also:

• Hamakor, Israel’s Open Source Society, calls for annulment of Software Patents for the English version of the memorandum
• Hamakor’s website for Hebrew version of the memorandum

My cider (we call it Chateau la Sheffer)

Hey all,

During the semester break, I brewed alcoholic Cider (not to mix with apple juice, which is no-alcoholic). My cider has 7.2% alcohol.

Although some readers might think that making alcohol out of plain apple juice might involve black magic, its actually quite simple. The only thing it really takes is time – about 3 months total to start drinking, but if you wait 5 months, you will get something that tastes much better. Its quite fun, and one can create unique flavors.

What do you need?

To brew cider, or any other alcohol with this method, you will need to pay a visit to a brewery shop near you, because there is some equipment you are unlikely to find anywhere else. I found in Israel a shop called homebrewing.co.il in Hulon (Hebrew only), and another called The Winemaker, both were really nice and recommended.

The equipment you will need:

A Tank

I used a 25 liters Tank. Although I only used 20 liters of it. It should be possible to do the same process with a smaller batch, but since it takes time and preparation, I preferred to do one that lasts me most of the year. Note that you must get a tank that is hermetically sealed and should be built to contain food products, don’t use just any tank, it might contain toxic products. I got mine at homebrewing, and it also has a tap at the bottom of it, so I can move the cider easily to bottles when ready. If you are doing a smaller batch, you might be able to use some big glass jug or something similar.

An Airlock

An airlock, or fermentation lock, is one of the essential parts to brewing. It lets out the carbon dioxide that is generated from the yeast , but also does not let air back in. You should be able to get them in any brewer shop, you will need one of those.

Brewers Yeast

The yeast (or eukaryotic micro-organisms classified in the magical kingdom Fungi), are the key ingredient that do all the work, they turn sugar to gold alcohol in a process called fermentation. For the chemists around they are basically doing this:  C₆H₁₂O₆ → 2C₂H₅OH + 2CO_{2  (or to translate: 1 sugar molecule} → 2 alcohol molecules + 2 carbon dioxide molecules).

These wonderful organisms come in easy to use packs, I used 5 grams for my 20L batch. You should get brewers yeast, there are many kinds, and they effect have a significant effect on the beverage, from taste to amount of alcohol. For example, champagne yeast will last in higher PH (acidity), so it will live longer and produce more alcohol, unlike beer yeast that would die much sooner. In my first batch I used beer yeast, but in my second found that champagne was more to my taste.

Sanitizer

This is really important, YOU MUST sanitize anything that comes in to contact with the liquid you are brewing. If any organism gets in, it can take over and you will end up with vinegar (useful too, but it’s not alcohol). To avoid this, use a sanitizer, mostly chlorine in powder form. You can get this too at a brewer shop. After sanitizing with chlorine you have to rinse and wash with water all the equipment, if any sanitizer remains it will kill the yeast.

Hydrometer (optional)

A hydrometer is a useful tool, it will tell you how much alcohol you actually have in the beverage by measuring its relative density. All you have to do is measure the gravity before and after fermentation. With this you can calculate the amount of alcohol. The principle that a hydrometer works on is the Archimedes principle, which is actually quite fun to know, because I have been learning about it and using it the past year as a physics student in the first year.

Once you have the gravity before and after, just use an alcohol by volume (ABV) Calculator. The equation is:

In my case:

So I am quite happy, it’s between a light wine or dry beer.

Yeast nutrient (optional)

The yeast nutrient gives  more food for your yeast, so it should make them thrive better. I don’t know how much it affects the batch since in all the times I did this so far I added nutrient.

Apple Juice

You will also need to get about 20 liter of all natural apple juice  from your local supermarket (or you can go pick apples). This is actually harder than you might think, because they don’t always keep that much on the shelf. So go to a big supermarket!

Recipe

1. Get the equipment – for first stage

   1. Fermentation tank about 20-25L
   2. Air lock
   3. 5 grams of champagne yeast
   4. Sanitizer, chlorine usually, about 1.5 tbsp fer 20L of water per sanitation for my powder.
   5. Apple juice, 20 Liters – they are all 50% water and 50% apples. Make sure its all natural juice with nothing else in it.
   6. White sugar (optional, according to taste) – Add for more alcohol, it will not make it sweeter, it turns all to alcohol.
   7. Yeast nutrient  (optional, recommended) – There are many kinds, I just picked one, but you can consult the shop owner.
   8. Hydrometer (optional, recommended) – Careful they break!

2. Get the equipment – for second stage

   1. bottles that can hold pressure – glass soda bottles or mineral water bottles with good caps, NOT wine bottles, they will burst.
   2. A tube to help you move the alcohol from the tank to bottles (recommended)
   3. I added in this stage things for flavor, frozen fruit, vanilla sticks, even a bit of chilli in some bottles! Just make sure anything you add is sanitized! (I placed the vanilla for a day in vodka to kill germs, and frozen fruit is sanitized. The chilli actually killed most of the yeast.  See other recipes for ideas! However for a first batch I’d recommend to try just simple plain apple juice.

3. First fermentation stage

   1. Sanitize everything – tank, airlock and everything you are going to use! To do this I added 1.5 tbsp of chlorine to the fermentation tank and 25L warm water (hot means reactions happen faster).  Immerse in water the airlock and any other tools inside the tank and let it stay there for about 20 minutes. This is actually the longest part of the first stage.
   2. Rinse everything – The phrase “rinse the hell out of everything” is what was told to me in the IRC channel of #homebrewtalk . This is quite right, because if any sanitizer is left, it will kill the yeast. So make sure you do wash everything really well (just with plain water).
   3. Fill the tank up with apple juice – simple as that
   4. Add the Yeast – Again, simple.
   5. (optional) Add sugar - I might point out again at this point, that any sugar you put in will turn in to alcohol, so don’t think that sugar will make the beverage sweeter, it won’t. I added about 11 tbsp of white sugar (about 1 per 2 liters), and my cider is sour.
   6. (optional) Measure gravity of the liquid – I had to use a long container I got at a chemist shop, because the hydrometer sank in quite a lot, it was deeper than a 1.5 liter bottle.
   7. Close tight and let it sit for about a month – it should be sealed, with only the airlock controlling the air flow. Make sure your airlock has a bit of water in it.

4. Second Fermentation – after about a month (you can wait even 2 weeks more)

   1. Sanitize everything – yet again, everything needs to be sanitized. This is again quite long process because you need to immerse and wash every bottle. It takes time.
   2. Open your tank – at last you can open the tank. You should be able to smell alcohol at this phase (if it smells like vinegar you have a problem). Don’t worry if it tastes bitter, its ok, it will get flavor in the second fermentation.
   3. Bottling - this part was fun, the fact that I have a small tap at the bottom of my tank really helped. Move the liquid to bottles (if you are using a tube, make sure its sanitized too).
   4. (optional, not for a first batch) Add more things! – I also added in this phase to some bottles blueberries, black currant, vanilla sticks and chilli (to separate bottles). I really don’t recommend this for a first batch. I did it in my second. Note that fruit adds more sugar, and will increase the pressure in the bottles.
   5. Add sugar – If you like your drinks carbonated (fizzy) then add sugar in this phase. I really recommend you do! I added about 7 tsp (note its tea-spoons now)  of white sugar per liter. But I think this was too much (few bottles busted, but it was also due to the fruit), I think next time I’ll about 5 tsp per 2 liter.
   6. Let it age, at least 2 months - the more you wait, the better it gets, you can start drinking from about two months. Plastic bottles will puff up as they fill with carbon (makes it easier to monitor than glass),I found that after half a year it becomes really good! Some bottles even tasted like apple wine. It is interesting how the flavor varies from bottle to bottle, and gets better over time. Best served cold.
5. Have a party

This is about it. I hope to do this at the end of this year too. It was a lot of work, and the price after two batches is about like cheap beer. The taste really nice, it’s also cool because in Israel they don’t sell any cider that I know of.

For further reading you can read mostly just by googling and asking around in forums. I used a lot the IRC chat and forum of homebrewtalk, but there are others. I am a newbie to this so would love to hear comments.

Finally, although this blog has mostly about software, this post comes to show that Homebrew is not only for software!

There are selected photos below of the process. You can see the complete album here:  stage 1 and stage 2.

Bottling

Filling up a bottle

Measureing with the hydrometer

Opening the tank for bottling

Bottles ready and sanitized

Sanitizing bottles

Sukkot In Israel is a great time for music, with 2-3 concerts everynight. This year for the first time we had RockAmi in Jerusalem a great mix of Jewish rock from several different genres.

There was a great atmoshphere and some great performances from the line up.

Semantra opening the event

Majuda experience with their unique African Jewish vibes

Yood giving a great perforamnce

piamenta showing us his amazing guitar skills

Gershon Veroba organiser and performer giving a gr8 show

Soulfarm veterans of the Jewish music scene but always with a fresh lively perfomance

Moshav, need I say more

The Bumble-b

Hi all,

The past week I have been playing around with my new Bumble-b, as I mentioned in my last post. Basically what I did with it is control an LED matrix. After doing that I made it in to a USB Device! Thanks to the simple library LUFA. Now I can use a simple echo > /dev/ttyACM0 command to send a text message to the display. Meaning that I have now /dev/matrix!

In this post I hope to explain how to use the Bumble-b, a  programmable USB chip, including its own built in programmer, for just $20. I would also like to encourage people here in Israel to start playing with this, since its cheap and easy to order way to get started with amateur electronics.

Here is a quick introduction video (followed by a detail post):

What is the Bumble-b?

The bumble-b is a USB programmable AVR chip with a programmer built in to it (called a breakout board). It is an AVR chip, meaning that its based on something that is widely used (the model is at90usb162). Moreover, since it has a USB connector right on it , this makes the creation of USB devices really simple. But not only USB devices alone.

For those who are thinking about getting an arduino, the main advantage I can see to an arduino over the Bumble-b is that it has analog-to-digital converters, which means its more built for connecting sensors, for things like robots. If that is not what you’re looking for, the Bumble-b will serve you well as a starting project, and is cheaper.

For more information, check out dflecher’s website (also for ordering), the bumble-b datasheet and the #bumbleb IRC channel.

Compiling code with gcc-avr (yes! now with 100% gcc)

Although I am linking here to a scripts I wrote, which should help you avoid writing in the shell, I do want to stress, that unlike the PIC project, here the compiler that is used is gcc-avr, which is fully  open  source.  I will get in to the specifics of how to use it in the IDE section.

How to get it in to programming mode

If you get a Bumble-b and plug it in right away, it will identify itself as a serial device on your computer. This is NOT the programmer, this is an initial program dflecher ships the Bumble-b with. The program lets you control the pins by sending them serial calls. Although it really is a useful program, you will want to install your own. To do that you need to set the Bumble-b to DFU mode (Device Firmware Update). This is mentioned in the schematic, but I will go over it here again:

1. Connect pin 21 (HWB) to pin 12 (GND)
2. connect a button between pin 9 (RESET) and pin 12 (GND)

Bumble-b in programmer mode

Now to go in to DFU mode press the REST button you installed. You should see in dmesg output:
usb 3-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 13
usb 3-2: New USB device found, idVendor=03eb, idProduct=2ffa
usb 3-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
usb 3-2: Product: AT90USB162 DFU
usb 3-2: Manufacturer: ATMEL
usb 3-2: SerialNumber: 1.0.5

After getting in to programming mode, you can upload compiled .hex files to it. The programmer that is used is called dfu-programmer. It exists in the Debian repository (Kaplan, no excuses now). The commands to flash a .hex file will be:
dfu-programmer at90usb162 erase
dfu-programmer at90usb162 flash program.hex

But you can just use the scripts I wrote to do this. As explained in the next section.

Setting up an IDE environment in linux

The frustrating part for me was that unlike piklab that I used for the PICs, I could not find an IDE that will support the Bumble-b’s dfu-programmer out of the box. But rest assured! I found how to set one up. Thanks to Ori Iran’s guidelines I manage to set up an lightweight IDE called Geany to work with the bumble-b. Here are the steps:

1. Download my script packages. And extract them where you want to develop.
2. Get Geany with your distro’s repository, and open it.
3. Create a new .c file and save it (you can also open “hello_world.c” in the script package).
4. Open the ‘Build’ menu and select “Set includes and arguments”, You should get the window in the photo.
5. Set the fields as shown in the photo below (“./compile %f”  in compile field, “./program %f” in the build field, and “./run” in the execute field”).



6. You are good to go. Now to program just press ‘compile’, then “build” and ‘execute’ (don’t forget to press the RESET button before pressing ‘build’!).

The Geany IDE

LUFA library – How easy it is to make USB devices

After getting my LED matrix to display messages, I wanted to make use of the USB port, and get the matrix to work as a USB device, this was much simpler than I expected. Once I had the code to control the matrix, it was simply a matter of copying it and using LUFA.

LUFA (Lightweight USB Framework for AVRs) is a library that will let you get the Bumble-b to work as a USB device. It can be used as  a mouse, a keyboard, a joystick, a storage device and anything really (there is a full list is on the site).

To get the LED matrix to work off USB, all I had to do is copy the Demo that located in Demos/Device/ClassDriver/CDC. I also used code modified by dflecher (he built a USB missile launcher with it). Note that you will change the following lines in the makefiles of the LUFA Demo in order to use it with the bumble-b:

1. BOARD=BUMBLEB
2. MCU=at90usb162
3. F_CPU = 16000000

There is more info about what pins do (like joysticks buttons) in the LUFA readme on the bumble-b.

You can also download my matrix code and have a look.

More info?

• I will mention again that there is an IRC chat room for the #bumbleb on freenode. There is also a chat room on AVRs in general.

• dflecher’s site has all the information about the bumble-b. Also a great thanks to him for putting up with my questions .
• AVR freaks is also a good place to look for things.
• You can also take a look at the youtube videos I have been posting the last few days

Code published in the post

Just to make sure you saw all the code published in the post

• Geany-Bumble-b scripts
• matrix.c code without the USB control
• Matrix control with the LUFA library (type ‘make’ in the CDC_matrix dir to compile).

That’s it. What are you waiting for? Amateur electronics is at your grasp!

בתקופה האחרונה מגיעות אלי יותר ויותר בקשות להצטרף לפלאנט התוכנה החופשית. אני אשמח לראות שיותר ויותר אנשים רוצים להצטרף לקבוצה הזאת שחולקת את דיעותיה במקום מרכזי. כרגע יש כ-60 משתתפים, ואשמח לראות את המספר הזה ממשיך לגדול. פניות בנושא זה, ניתן לעשות לכתובת planet AT hamakor.org.il.

אני מזכיר כי הפלאנט פתוח בפני כל מי שכותב על תוכנה חופשית ונושאים דומים או קשורים. “החוקים” להצטרפות/כתיבה לא השתנו בשנה וחצי האחרונה…

במקביל, נפתח פלאנט נוסף שמיועד להכיל את *כל* הפוסטים של אנשי התוכנה החופשית, בכל נושא שהוא. הפלאנט עונה כרגע לכותרת “ריכוז פוסטים של חברי קהילת התוכנה החופשית” וזמין בכתובת http://blogs.hamakor.org.il .

הפלאנט החדש נמצא בניהולו של רם-און אגמון. כדי לפשט את חוקי ההצטרפות, נקבע כי כל מי שעומד בקריטריונים להצטרפות לפלאנט תוכנה חופשית, יוכל להצטרף לפלאנט החדש.

לסיום, טיפ קטן לחברי הפלאנט (או מי שרוצה להצטרף) – הפלאנט יודע לעבד טוב יותר feedים מסוג ATOM מאשר RSS. למה? שאלה טובה.

אהוד קינן קורא למשרד החינוך לשקול מחדש את נושא התוכנה החופשית במערכת החינוך לקראת סיום הסכם חותם עם מיקרוסופט. אני כמובן בעד, ומנסה לראות מה הקהילה יכולה לעזור כדי לקדם את הנושא.

דבר ראשון, צריך לזכור כי בחמש שנים האחרונות השתנו דברים מכמה בחינות. הראשונה היא שיש פחות תקציבים, ואולי דווקא תג המחיר של תוכנה חופשית יעזור כדי לשכנע את משרד החינוך להכניס תוכנה חופשית באופן פורמלי. זהו טיעון חלש יותר מאשר החופש של התוכנה ושהתוכנה מאפשרת, כמו גם היתרונות החינוכיים שלה, אבל אם זה יעבוד – אני לא אתלונן.

דבר שני – בחמש שנים האחרונות של ההסכם ראינו מספר מקומות שהוכיחו שיש ביקוש לתוכנה חופשית ושאפשר לעזור בעזרתה מהפכות ברמה המונוציפלית. זה לדעתי מראה כמה יש דרישה לתוכנות מחשב ולא תמיד מעניין איך ולמה. העיקר שאפשר יהיה להתאים אותן לצרכים של המערכת ושל התלמידים. תכונה שמוצרים קניינים לא ממש מצטיינים בו.

כאשר אני חושב על ההסכם עם מיקרוסופט, הדבר הראשון שעולה לי בראש הוא אופן אופיס, אבל דווקא אותו הייתי משאיר לסוף. יש כזה עושר לתוכנות חופשית, גם לפלטפורת windows שלא צריך להתווכח דווקא על מעבד התמלילים. מה עם דפדפנים שונים, תוכנות לעריכת קול, תוכנות עריכת תמונות, נגני וידאו, תכונות צריבה והרשימה עוד ארוכה.

לדעתי, הכיוון שאנחנו צריכים להציג הוא הדגש על נושא לימוד המיומניות המחשב, ולא דווקא מימוש זה או אחר. עלינו להראות כי יש מספר מימושים רב, ועל התלמידים לדעת לעבוד עם מגוון תוכנות תוך כדי מימוש המיומניות שהם רכשו. מערכת החינוך צריכה לחנך את התלמידים ולא לשרת אינטרסים של חברה זאת או אחרת וללמד אותם נישה טכנית כלשהי.

נקח דוגמה ממדעי המחשב – אפשר ללמד את עקרונות תכנות מונחה עצמים באמצעות C++, Java ו-C# (ועוד מיליון שפות), אך תלמיד שידע את העקרונות יוכל לעבור בין השפות בקלות לעומת תלמיד שלמד שפה ספציפית. כמובן, שאנחנו לא צריכים להגביל את עצמנו למדעי המחשב אלא לפרוץ את הגבולות, ולנצל גם תוכנות חופשיות בתחומי המדעים (אסטרונומיה, כימיה וכו’), מאגרים חופשיים בתחומים הומניים.

הלוואי ומחר כל משרד החינוך יעבור ללינוקס ותוכנה חופשית, אבל כדי לאפשר להם לחשוב בכלל בכיוון, צריך לאפשר להם לבצע תהליך (כנראה איטי) של הכנסה מדורגת של תוכנה חופשית. לראייתי, תפקידנו כקהילה שרוצה לקדם את התוכנה החופשית בארץ היא לבנות הצעה ראשונית לכזאת תוכנית כדי להבהיר שהדבר אפשרי. בפשטות, לאפשר למשרד החינוך לעשות את הצעד הראשון בכיוון של תוכנה חופשית.

אופן אופיס הוא בהחלט סמל המאבק, והכנסה שלו למערכת החינוך מהווה שינוי אדיר. אך עם כל העבודה שלנו, התמיכה בו בעברית אינה מושלמת. יש לזכור כי הוא מתאים לפחות ל-80% מהעבודה, אך אני צופה התנגדות גדולה על סמך ה-20% הנותרים. כמו כן, מעצמם מרכזיותו, תהיה התנגדות רבה להכנסתו למערכת (מצד משרד החינוך וגורמים מסחריים שונים). זאת הסיבה העיקרית שאני רוצה לנסות להכניס את אופן אופיס, אבל הוא לא חייב להיות עיקר ההצעה לגבי תוכנה חופשית במערכת החינוך.

לגבי ההסכם הנוכחי – יש לזכור כי הוא בסופו של דבר הסכם שמיועד לבתי ספר שיש להם מחשבים, ואינו רלוונטי לבתי ספר שאין להם מחשבים או יכולת לקנות כאלה. בעידן בו המחשוב בבתי הספר מתחדש בקצב איטי, גם מחשבים שנרכשו הינם איטיים וחלשים במושגים של מחשב ביתי עדכני. אפילו אם נצליח להכניס תוכנה חופשית כדי לנצל את מחשבים אלה, נצליח לעשות מהפכה במערכת החינוך.

מי שמעוניין לעזור (אולי גם לקחת על עצמו את ההובלה), מוזמן ליצור איתי קשר. אני מקווה לפרסם משהו ראשוני לאחר שיחה עם כמה אנשים בקהילה.

Car and the breadboard

Hey all,

I have been playing with electronics the last few days, and I thought I might show you the outcome.

I basically took a remote controlled car, and connected it to a 16F84 programmable chip, and now I can control the car using C code.

Although I am using a car in this guide, you should be able to close and open any kind of switch. Anything under 15 volts.

For people who have don’t feel like reading all this (and also for those who do), here is an action-packed video of the outcome:

After you saw that, here is how I did this.

Starting with electronics

This project was really my start on electronics. I guess reading about transistors (on my way to become an amateur radio ham) got me in to all of this. The transistor lets you control circuits with any other circuits. You better just google them, and read, the more you know the cooler things you can build!

Finding what you need is usually the harder part of the job, I better thank #electronics channel on freenode for helping me find the parts I needed. Once you find the part, you better look at its schematic, it will tell you what all the pins do. Schematics are easily searchable on the web. You can also open up old electronics (the simpler the better), and look for parts there, but it is hard to find exactly what you need, and you most likely will need to spend some money on parts (really, they cost nothing!). In Jerusalem you can check out the shop Kashayuf.

Here are the parts I used for my project:

The 16F84 programmable chip (the brain)

The 16F84A is really an obsolete chip, and is very limited. However, it was the only one I could get around here. And since it only costs 8  NIS  (under 2$),  I got more than my money worth. After all, what possibly could you get for under 2$ that you can write code for?

The programmer

Usually the programmer will cost you more than the chip. Mine cost 50$, and is called the MPLAB ICD2. I got it off ebay. Although its powerful and can program many PICs, I guess I could have gotten something much cheaper.

The software for the chip

I used an IDE to code called Piklab, it really gave me everything I needed, from programming and compiling, to pin diagrams of the chips.

To compile I sadly had to use CCS (you can see the code here). I should be able to use the open source alternative SDCC, but it seems the delay_ms() function there is not working for my chip. If anyone has any source, I’d gladly use it.

7805 – 5V Regulator

The 7085 chip lets you take anything and turn it to a 5 volt power supply. If you want to try something simple, like building a USB power charger. Watch this systm episode. That video will also explain you how a bread board works.

14066 – The switching transistor

The MC14066 chip I used is a 4-in-1 chip that lets me open and close circuits. Its really a bunch of transistors. Before using it I tried using an IR540 MOSFET transistor, but it needs +5V at its gate, and the PIC only gives out 2.5V.  Still it could be used to turn on an off motors with the LPT port, or big lights. Remember: Without transistors, you will only be able to power using the 2.5 signal that comes out form the PIC, or anything else.

Other chips Programmable chips

There are many chips, as I said in the video, the AVRs are popular, and are the basis for many projects you might have heard of (like the Arduino), you can have a look at avrfreaks for projects.

Next project – The bumble-b

While doing this project I found a really cool looking chip called the bumble-b. I ordered one, and I hope to update once I try it out.

This is really all for now, hope you enjoyed my quick introduction to electronics and my project, and I hope to do more projects before the semester starts.

Update: All 4  directions on the car are working , a friend and I hope to code it a route in the campus!

Crictor, the “technology news, for technology people” initiative I actually help found, interviewed me about the OLPC pilot in Israel, during the Israeli FOSS convention called August Penguin. Also, in the convention Netzach gave a talk about the pilot we did, and the new program with open source and eeePCs.

There are English subtitles, now, so enjoy.

You can to visit the article’s page in Crictor.

Today is the first day of school, let us hope the laptop program started here succeeds.

Hi all,

I am going to explain here how I managed to use the Cannon open source hack development kit , known as CHDK, to photograph stars and even create neat movies of the stars motion.

It all started this Monday, I was lucky to see that there is going to be Perseids meteor shower, a day in advance. So I had time getting the code ready before it was too late. I thought I would go somewhere next to Jerusalem and photograph, but in the end, friends of mine (Shy and Anna) from the Israeli Astronomy Association, which I am part of, told me they are going down south to the dessert, far away from light pollution, to take count of the meteors for the IMO. So I joined him, and my data is also available.

Before all the technical stuff, here is a video I made that shows you what this all comes to:

Now back to CHDK, and how this was done.

What is CHDK? And how do I install it?

CHDK is a firmware addon for Cannon powershot digital cameras. It supports most of them, mine is a simple powershot A590, costs to date about 700 NIS. Moreover, since its an addon, it will not void warranty, and can’t damage your camera. It has a lot of features (including games and an e-book reader!).

Installing it is really easy and comes the complete version comes with everything you need. All you do is extract the version for your camera on your SD card. Then start the camera in the review mode, and select in the menu ‘Firm Update…’, Look at CHDK’s wiki for more info.Now that CHDK is running,  pressing the (used to be useless) printer button on your camera. It will bring an <alt> symbol at the bottom of the screen, meaning all buttons will control the options of CHDK. Pressing the printer button again will move you back to use the camera menus. Restarting the camera will wipe out CHDK from the memory (you need to do ‘Firm Update’ again, to use it again). So if you want to stop CHDK, just turn the camera off and on. Uninstalling is just removing CHDK’s files from the card.

Firm Update (not really a firm update)

My Basic Ubasic application

Once I got CHDK running, and after  looking around the menus and confusing people by playing Reversi on my camera, I started looking in to the scripting capability.

One can write scripts both in ubasic and lua. I wrote mine in ubasic, although I never wrote in ubasic/basic before, it was dead easy to pick up. I choose ubasic because some developer told me lua has some timing problems. Both languages don’t need compilation, just write a text file and put it in the /CHDK/SCIPTS folder in the SD and they will run. To run a script select the ‘load script’ option, when in <alt> mode. Now, when in standby mode, using the capture button will run the selected script, and not just photograph as normal.

The programming commands I got mostly from this tutorial. Note how easy it is to let the user to have configurable parameters, print stuff on the screen, and shoot images. You can also change parameters of the camera using PropertyCase commands (see my code to see how it is used).

My meteor script, avilable here, it basically (pun!)  starts the camera, disables flash and goes in to loop shooting images on a given ISO and exposure time until the shooting button is pressed again. You can see the selection interface on the right (sorry for the typo on the word Meteor, it was late). If you use my script then you better disable the screen display before shooting, and the review time, so at night, all you see is a blinking led telling you the camera us working (was ok for the astronomer standard too). The camera lasted about an hour of photographing before the batteries ran out. Luckily I had about 4 pairs of AA batteries. There is much to improve in the script, but it works.

Loading the Meteor program

Processing Animations with FFmpeg

Sadly, I did not catch any meteors in any of my 700 images. I think I did not set the aperture to be open all the way, I expected it will do it in a dark setting.

However, connecting all the images together gave me an animation of the moving sky Using FFmpeg. It seems that FFmpeg is a bit picky about its file formats. So here is how to take your jpg images and turn them to a movie:

1. You will need to download all your images to a single folder.
2. Run this bash script I wrote, it will make an ‘out’ folder in the folder, and copy all the files numbering them 000.jpg 001.jpg etc. Like FFmpeg likes, otherwise ffmpeg segfaults (thanks to #ffmpeg on freenode for the guidlines):

#!/bin/bash
# Not enough information to compute
if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
echo "Syntax: `basename $0` "
exit
fi
i=0
#if dir exists, then go over all files and copy them
if [ $# -eq 1 -a -d "$1" ]; then
mkdir -p $1/"out"
for file in $1/*.[jJ][pP][gG]
do
cp "$file" $1/out/$(printf "%0.3d.jpg" $i)
i=$(( $i + 1 ))
done
exit
fi
exit

3. After the jpg images ready, you can run FFmpeg with this command in your folder: ffmpeg -r 24 -f image2 -i %3d.jpg -b 700000 -s 720x480 output.avi . Note you can change resolution there, bitrate, and do anything ffmpeg does. Since the images are in a camera quality you can even do HD video with a cheep camera!
4. Thats is, you have a time lapse video

My Videos

List of videos using this script. I also made a page for them here.

• Orion, Venus and Sunrise (my favorite)
• Scorpius setting
• Polaris time lapse
• Cassiopeia time lapse
• Cygnus time lapse

Closing

CHDK seems to have many new ways to take a simple camera, one you might even already have, and do things you never thought possible on a normal camera. Maybe next I’ll try using RAW imaging, that will let me get even better views of the stars.

Thanks to #chdk and #ffmpeg on freenode, for helping me out with the code.

And thanks to Anna and Shai for a wonderful night

Update: There is a forum thread in CHDK’s website about the blog post with even more talks.

Meteor Counting

Waiting in the middle of nowhere, for my bus up north

אייל הקדים אותי ופרסם את עמוד המשוב על אוגוסט פינגווין בויקי של העמותה (מצריך רישום).

אשמח אם תמלאו שם את הנקודות שלכם לגבי הכנס (חיוביות ושליליות) במטרה להקל על המארגנים של הכנס הבא. מי שרוצה, יכול גם להעביר לי את הנקודות שלו במייל ואני מקווה להוציא דוח מסודר על הכנס מתישהו במהלך החודש הקרוב.

About half a year ago, a law for internet censorship passed the first stage in our parliament, on its way to become in effect. The way it was done is disguising the law as a way to protect against child pornography.

There was quite a lot of opposition and finally at the beginning of this week, the law proposal was dropped. This of course makes quite happy.

However, this week I stumbled on a Google Talk of Rick Falkvinge, the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party. He said, and I quote (the video skips to the quote):

“I’ll give you an anecdote of a copyright  seminar. The Danish head honcho came and said: You know, the politicians don’t understand file sharing. So what we need to do is to filter the internet. But since politicians don’t understand what that means, we should associate it with child pornography. Because politicians understand child pornography.“

This is exactly what was done in Israel

In Israel, the attempt was passing an ISP filter law as a disguising against child pornography. Moreover, making this more suspicious. The proposal for the law came from a religious orthodox party called “Shas”. This suggests that someone from outside was behind this party to propose this law. Someone that was in contact with these copyright people.

One down, Another to go

There is now, a new law that is on its way to be passed. Again it shows that our politicians fail when faced with technology laws. The law is for building a biometric database of fingerprints and faces of all citizens. Although at first it seems a logical step forward, it is a known fact that these databases leak to the net in a blink of an eye (you can already get the ID database of Israel on the net).

Also, it would be easier to replicate a fingerprint than an ID card. All you need is silicon. But this would not just be an ID theft now, its an identity theft,  so easy anyone can do it!

Just an example of implication: If you have a camera in a street, anywhere in the world, you can detect Israeli citizens, and know anything you want about them. Here is a hebrew video of channel 1,  saying the above more or less. For English only readers, here is a video of the law committee throwing out a blogger with a camera (not a viral video fan, but thats all I find).

Its not over yet

Its clear that this week that we have won this round. However the people behind this ISP filter law would not stop here, it seems that its a part of a much bigger picture, and we must stay vigilant.

בעוד עבדכם הנאמנים עובדים סגירת תוכן הכנס, אני רוצה לפרסם מספר עדכונים:
1. החשוב ביותר הוא שהכנס יתקיים השנה במכון ויצמן ברחובות, כך שזה הזמן שלכם לבדוק כיצד אתם מגיעים (המלצה שלי – ברכבת).
2. נדרשים מתדנבים לצילום הכנס.
3. נדרשים מתנדבים ו/או עזרה לגבי מספר בירורים הקשורים לכנס. פרטים בפוסט של מיטל.
4. הוחלט כי השנה ניתן לתת חסות באופן אישי בעזרת תרומות קטנות לעמותה. מטרת התרומות היא לאפשר לקהילה להשתתף במימון לא כי אין נותני חסות. נתני החסות האלה יוזכרו באתר הכנס (בדף נפרד). פרטים נוספים בהמשך. בשלב זה אשמח אם תשלחו לי מייל עם שמכם, הסכום אותו אתם רוצים לתרום ומספר פלאפון בו ניתן ליצור אתכם קשר.
5. בזימון בפייסבוק יש כ-108 אנשים שאישור הגעה ועוד כ-80 איש שאולי יגיעו. לא רע (: אחרי שיפורסם הלו”ז הרשמי של הכנס, אנסה לעורר עוד נגלת פרסום לכנס דרך הפייסבוק שבנתיים מגיעה לאנשים מחוץ לקהילה בצורה מרשימה.

סופ”ש שקט.

Sugar running on the Nokia N810

Hey all,
This past week I managed to do something quite interesting. I got sugar, running on my Nokia N810, compiled for armel.

The trick that made it work was thanks to easy Debian chroot, that got me access to installing sugar without a few good hours of compilation for arm (and I did that before).

Touchscreen is cool!

The first thing that I found pretty neat was running sugar on a touchscreen device. It really felt better, since most people that I let play with my XO and flip its screen 180 degrees naturally try touching the screen, expecting it had a touchscreen. Sugar was actually quite good with it on the Nokia.

Any hardware – Any use

It is refreshing to see Sugar running on a different system, let alone a difference architecture (armel). Sugar seems to be attributed to OLPC and its unique hardware. I guess this comes to show that to in order to get sugar really to reach its full potential, we should take in to account it can run on anything: Why not old hardware? Why not smartphones? OLPC uses the XO, but everyone else can use anything else really.

This also is connected to things going on in our pilot in OLPC Israel. I won’t get in to it in this post, because Netzach and I are going to write a report about it regarding a pilot we are doing with 9 Bedouin kids in the Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center.

More about the hardware – How to get Sugar in your pocket

If you are wondering if this actually worked fully on the Nokia (unlike people who claim Android worked there, and it’s just the x86 emulator). Well, it did pretty much work. However it was slow, and you wont get the browser working on it with 128MB ram. However I did get avahi-daemon working (remember to turn it on). Then I got in to the Chat system, and I could share things, etc. You might need to enlarge the easy chroot iso image, so you have space to install sugar. I also guess that if someone installs it on Mer (an Ubuntu-based distro for the Nokia),  it might even work faster.

Another problem is that the Nokia keyboard has no F1-F12 keys. They are essential in sugar. So I had to plug in an external USB keyboard for that. It could be fixed with an Xmodmap script.

Thats all for now more pictures below.

Watching the network view

Sugar on the Nokia talking to an XO

Nokia N810 and XO together

Tracking with the Nokia N810.

Hey all,

This Passover, I went on a trip in the North of Israel in the Golan heights.

However, apart from enjoying the beauty of nature I thought I might do a little experiment with my Nokia N810, a Linux device with a GPS receiver.

What I did was switch it on at the beginning of the tour and put it back inside my bag, ignoring it most of the time.

The result was a complete GPX file of our tour.

On the Nokia it looked nice, however I wanted to see if I can extract more data at home with the GPX file.I found 3 tools I could do with it.

The first was slicing the exact route (since I left it on after getting in the car and driving home, it had the 5 hour route I drove home too). For that I used an application called Viking. Viking also give me another bit of information I liked – it said we walked 10 kilomiters.

The second was an online tool called gpsvisualizer. This gave me a nice view of the track, along with the height variation, you can see the outcome on the right.

gpsvisualizer

Gpsvisualizer also gave me an option to convert the gpx file to a .kmz file, a googleearth filetype. So I could now load my track in to googleearth.

I could see now the route overlaid with google’s rich data, from photos to a high res satellite map, and 3d view!

The Track from Google Earth

A Deep Valley we crossed

I thought I might share with you the fun trip I had, and digital fun that came after it. I know there are others here that have gps tools and I’d love to hear what tools you use.

A lot of Caterpillars on a shoot

A nice View of the valley

OLPC Israel Debian Desktop View

Hey All,

I am Happy to update we have now a working prototype OS for the OLPC pilot here in Israel.

As explained in my last post, we have only B2/B1 laptops that are not compatible with the current sugar version. Because of this we had to develop our own OS that we will put on SD cards and in to the laptops (in the full project we want to use sugar, we did this for the B2s only really).

This system works well also with the normal OLPC units. And I’d be glad if anyone would like to use it copy, and modify.

The system is based off Debian and runs on XFCE. The B2 laptops work with only 128 RAM so we really reduced the memory usage. The kernel on the system is from build 711, which is the last to work with the B2. Still, it works fine on any OLPC. I hope we will have Kernel Headers for the release someone in the future.
I’d also like to take the opportunity for give a huge thanks to Ram-on Agmon who really got the system up and running.

You can download the latest build here.

To dump the image on to a 2GB sd card simply dd it as so:

dd if=/path/to/image of=/dev/sdb conv=sync

Note:

• This will destroy all data on the card.
• The path to the sd-card device is the partition table, because the img file includes also a swap partition.
• You will need to have at least firmware q2e20.
• The distro only works on an SD card.
• If you are running a modern OLPC system you will also have to include your developer key in the right place.

One last unrelated thing (before pictures of the OS): There are updates on the web that OLPC has stopped the “give many program”, if anyone is worried about that effecting our pilot then i can assure you I talked to OLPC and it is related only to people that want to buy laptops regardless to intent and where they are in the world. Not to mention we are working as volunteers with a university to get this project to people who need it.

Hope to update soon, however I might not because I have a big test in physics the next week, and the ones after.

Guy

Here are more photos:

OLPC Israel Debian running the epiphany browser and a shell

Hello all big news:

B2 OLPC boxes

I have in my room, 24 B2 laptops!

Dima (ITU alumnai), Netzach (head of Ilan Ramon Center) and I had a meeting with Peres Center for Peace. To our great surprise, the center had 24 B2 laptops, which were laying there for more than a year without any use (if you are yelling “but why?!” then the quick answer is that none had the technical ability to get them truly working).

So to sum up: the pilot can start! .. but wait, there is a catch.

The goal of the pilot  the moment is not exactly what you might think.

The B2 machines are really old, Dan from OLPC, who just came back from Ethiopia, told me that they have B2 laptops in storage, where they belong. These are not modern OLPCs. And OLPC don’t support them anymore.

So our goal is not really to show that these computers are going to be the main learning tool for children, they are going to be mostly a tool for playing with code. OLPC Israel is not getting of the ground, because the main opposition says that its just a toy, not a “real computer” they say “its good for kids in Africa, but here its an insult to people that want what their friends have”. And with that, no funding could be received, no research is done, and the laptops just lay there.

Our pilot does see the laptops as educational toys for the moment. And we are going to try and show that in our environment they can aid children, giving them 24/7 access time to their machine that they can code on but not as a laptop (even if it would be shell only!).

This is the current status. I wish we could have gotten, right now new OLPCs, but with the current funding problem this is what we have. And once we have a report of how kids relate to the laptop, the adults might have the confidence to buy new OLPCs, and the snowball effect might go from there.

We need technical help

Luckily the B2 laptops can load the new operating system of OLPC, but one major problem remains – the graphics adapter won’t load (the new OLPC has a diffrent one). So what we need now is help compiling the old driver whose support has been dropped, on the new system. If you can help out, call me at 050-8580942, and I might even lend you a B2 unit to test this out. Because it is a big problem at the moment.

Hope to keep updating…

B2 OLPC boxes

In Israel we have no problem when it comes to cellphone reception, even in deserts you will find that the reception is at full gain. However when the access is antiques, quality and reliability of that access the becomes the really important issue.

Part of a jungle of models

It seems that the service models are quite different around the world, and this seems to directly effect the usage pattern in the country. A common problem in Asia is when one has a monopoly, where a single company is in charge of the cellphone service, usually derived by an agreement with the government. This usually creates dis-connectivity in places where there is a low concentration of people, or remote places that are hard to reach.

Israel is different

In Israel we are on the other side of the spectrum, but with a different problem.
According to Reza Jafari, the head of board of directors in the ITU (Intentional Telecommunication Union) “There need to be at least 3 service providers for a fair competition”, however, in Israel this is the case. And we do see a burst of connectivity. In a talk I had with Reza he told me that the problem in Israel is that the providers do not share the infrastructure. He told me that the ITU did try and advise the carriers in Israel, but they did not listen.

The providers are working backwards

In Israel we have 4 providers, 2 of them (Orange and Cellcom) have two septate infrastructures broadcasting on the same GSM waveband. The outcome is lower quality for all, plus the service is expensive from all the providers (infrastructures need to be maintained after all). After returning to Israel I found that the situation is only getting worse, since Pelephone (whom I counted above) is building yet another GSM network. And why should they? there are 2 already existing! This will only cause bad performance for everyone. Not to mention increasing the count of broadcasting antennas.

The Model already works in Israel

The model of virtual providers does already work in Israel when it comes to the ISPs and infrastructure providers for the Internet. And also for international calls. Thanks to that the price dropped for those services and the quality of service grew rapidly. The same needs to happen in the cellphone networks, if we want to see an expansion in the number and ways of the technology being used. The situation we have now resembles a cartel – 4 providers with an average service, for a high price. However this happens because there is no cooperation between them (unlike in a cartel). This kind of cooperation should lead to profit eventually, once customers use more frequently the provider services (that would be cheaper and better, after all). A cellphone costs 5 times more than a ground-line in Israel today, maybe virtual providers might change this.  I might also end by saying, that the law for virtual providers has passed in Israel, but we don’t seem them yet.

Hey all,

I am happy to tell that in the last few days there were talks between OLPC and the “Ilan Ramon Youth Physics Center” with a goal to start an OLPC pilot in Israel.

The plan

The Ilan Ramon Center already has an ongoing project for mathematical thinking and programing in the Be’er Sheva area (aka the Negev desert), where they mostly help poor families, and also Bedouin. This is a perfect place to help with OLPCs (some Bedouin even live in tents!). There is a lot to do to help. This past week I had to help the people in the Center get a C and Java IDE to work on the green laptop.

Roadmap

At the moment we need to adapt the laptops to suit the needs of the Ilan Ramon Center project. This means translating Sugar to Hebrew, here we really could use help from the community. We also need to make the preparations so the laptops won’t get stuck at customs. Also we need to prepare a software image to load in to the laptops once they get here.

Also (sadly) we wont be able to print Hebrew keyboards (OLPC works by the ten of thousands, ‘ too much). So we would have to figure out a way with stickers, and design a layout for the small keyboard.

We Need Translators!

At the moment we have about 3000 strings to translate for the graphical interface. I’ll be glad to recruit any volunteer that can translate and help our Israeli OLPC project, and OLPC as a whole.

Also, I’d like to get anyone that wants to help in the loop and update you about what’s going on, whether  it’s code, or anything else you might want to do.

There were a few people before that contributed code from Israel, but i am not sure who they were (who on earth translated scracth?!).

(You can contact me at guysoft _at_ gmail.com)

I hope to update whenever I can, the university takes up all my time now.

Hey all,

I am happy to announce that we have a Debian repository of weekly builds of sugar-jhbuild.

You can see its wiki page here.

You can get it by adding the following line to your /etc/apt/sources.list
deb http://download.sugarlabs.org/sugar/liveimages/debian-jhbuild/apt/ sid main

Then type:

apt-get update
apt-get install sugar-jhbuild
Now you can try sugar in a seprate window:
sugar-jhbuild-emulator

The OLPC system

Hey all,

After a few days work, I have finished Building a LiveCD that, by booting from it. You would get a full sugar system, no installation required.

Where to get?

Here, in the Sugarlabs Wiki

For Users

Just download the ISO, burn it, and boot from it. Its that easy.

I recommend you get two computers (or an OLPC if you have one), get them on the same network, and try the chat application, its fun!

You can also open the browser and download more activities from here, with one click.

I know that some things don’t work, I hope to fix that soon.

For Developers

I got this CD running, by packaging sugar-jhbuild in to a Debian package, then building a debian-live cd around it. I hope soon to do another post with the tools, so you can build one yourself.

If you pull the latest git repository, my code should be there, you can follow the instructions I wrote in the sugar-jhbuild wiki here (it should be commited tomorrow).

What Next?

There are two major things I want to do next.

The first one is to script all the creation process, so we should have a working repository that would hold Debian packages of the newest sugar build. Also, it would be nice if anyone could help me get the package buildable in fedora, that is what the OLPC develoepers use, and i want this to be accessible to them as possible.

However this is more maintenance.

What I REALLY would like to get going is the ability of a computer lab, with these livecds working, to be able to communicate to a class that runs on OLPCs. This could be a really kick to this little project, and might take it to the classrooms.

This is what I truly want from this project, kids across the world, communicating, using a common platform.

Hi all,
This is the second day of the IGF 2009 and the 4th and last day of my journey.

There was a lot to write about, and I had little time back in Israel, so it took a while to publish.
I recommend you read my closing statement.
Scroll to the titles that interest you:

Jordan FOSS community

I met this morning the representative of the Jordanian Open source community, Issa Mahasneh. We had a good talk and hope to keep in contact when I am back. We both seem to agree that there are common goals for both of us in the region (yes, apart from RTL).

Privacy session

I was in the main session on a panel on privacy (you can watch the video). It seems a great deal of what was said was mentioned in other workshops the day before, still there were a few new angles. It seems mainly that by participating in a social network one really has to trust the provider, unfortunately nearly all providers are thinking of profits and not the users, since they are ad funded. Social networks have a huge amount of data to an extent that it becomes problematic, they are selling it to third parties. Also (in timeline 00:58) the panel seem to agree that filtering should not be done under the excuse of blocking child pornography and security of the state. I hope that now when this  talk is on stage at the UN governments might take this in to account, since this has happened in Israel once and is still happening again today. This is a global problem!

In addition, Bruce Schneier’s interesting point regarding why it is so hard to explain people why privacy is important (timeline 00:42:00), he notes there is no price or measurement on privacy, his words are “privacy not saleient”. We have here in Israel a movement to stop a Biometric database law by the government, and this is one of the hardest things to explain to people that are not part of the movement, mostly because of the argument above.

Dynamic Coalition on Open Standards

After a while in the privacy session I got another IRC call from Jeremy that the “open standards” session was in progress, as I got there I found myself in the Luxor hall, that was built so everyone could participate. The Jordanian FOSS representative from the morning was there too, and so were Microsoft from the other day, but for a change, the projector in the room had Ubuntu system on it. At some point Sunil, the moderator of the session, turned to both me and Issa and asked if the Open source community has anything to say (apparently I am now the OLPC person by name in the IGF). So I found myself speaking, agreeing with most of the panel, I mentioned that closed standards are problematic because they usually mean you get vendor lock-in on the user side,  open standards also mean that the data can be manipulated to create new metadata and in governments that can give vital information on many things. As the panel was ending, a few people in the panel said they would like to hear suggestions of how to get awareness to the public. I suggested that they could make a simple ranking system, something along A B C, that non-techies can understand, and it could be partly based on the W3C validators. I am not sure if my explanation was heard there due to technical reasons, I hope to join their maillist and keep talking. I recommend others here to have a look at the list of dynamic coalitions. There must be something interesting for you there!

A short Interview of me – the internet is closed-source

Seiiti Arata, who photo-streamed all of the conference, asked me to do a short interview. At first I was not sure what to say, since I am more of a technical person than ‘internet governance’ oriented.  After thinking for a while I noticed that no one seemed to pay attention in the IGF to the fact that one of the main disadvantages of internet structure is that the source is closed, that is, you can’t really see what a site does with your information because you can’t see its code. In a away its what Richard Stallman said in The JavaScript Trap blog post. Sadly 30 minutes is not enough for my poor mind to articulate this after 3 hours of sleep, so i think I failed to get the point across , still, here is my interview.

A few more things that happened that I did not mention- The diplomatic incident with China

Although this is yesterday’s news, I thought I might write it in for people that were not following my twitter. There was an incident with China that was quite important during IGF 2009.

Egyptian security pulled down banner of Deibert-Rohozinski new book called “Access Controlled” because it mentioned the Chinese censorship (aka the great firewall of china). This is really bad. To recap, this censorship happened during a UN conference about internet censorship! This created a wave of replies and tweets, slashdot articles and also a youtube video of the incident.

During the IGF – talks on the Human network website

A project I was working on with Dima, Amna Khan, Samuel Morgan and a few other Youth Fourm members is a site called the Human Network. The goal is to get a talk going on between people interested in ICT around the world, with a focus of course on Youth fourm members from ITU TELECOM and other similar events. We found time to talk about the site at the IGF with a few YF members, and also with Walda. It seems like what we need is for people to start talking, the site is there.

Anyway, if you are interested in joining this initiative of building a community of young people all around the world, centred on ICT talks, please contact us from the site. And we will send you an invite.

Getting back home

After the dynamic session, there was another dinner, however I did not have time for the main course to come, I had to head back to the main hotel to get back home. I actually found a neat trick to travel back all the way to Jerusalem in the evening – Since there is no bus I took a Russian excursion tour to Jerusalem that leaves from Sharm, the tour picks you up from the hotel and takes you all the way to Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Dead Sea (I got off at Jerusalem as you can guess). The plan worked perfectly, I managed to save an extra day. Although I did feel strange waking up in the rain, in the middle of east Jerusalem, with a suitcase and dressed as a diplomat. It made bargaining with the taxi driver much harder. Still, I am safe and with great memories

Closing

During this trip to IGF 2009 I really learned a great deal about internet politics and the common burning issues that are rising around the world. Back in Israel I have started telling people how happy I am that the internet had been invented in the 60’s when freedom for all was an ideology, if it had been invented in the 50’s or 40’s it might have looked completely different. However this freedom might not last for long, we are now in a phase where big organisations and governments have an interest in controlling the internet. They are tapping in to our traffic, invading our privacy and breaking one of the foundation principles of the internet – “Net neutrality” (that is the principle that you don’t tap in to the information your are passing for someone else). The internet is a wonderful tool, and it might be one of the turning points for all of humanity evolution. We are now at a crossroads in history where we need to decide what is the policy on the internet: is it free or closed? Who will set its policy? Who does the information on websites belong to? What are the norms and what is taboo?

In our daily use we don’t think about these problems, but in the coming decades, we might be deciding the fate of the internet, and even the fate of humanity and culture itself.

Dima and I are going to write a paper back to ministry of communication here in Israel, after they could not reach the IGF (security/budget reasons). We are going to recommend they continue having a local Internet governance forum here in Israel.

Photos of the day

Well by now you can view my photo album of the trip

Still, to make it easy here are a few selected ones:

The entrance Hall of the confrence

View from our hotel room

Crossing the border to Israel at night

Hi all,

Today is the third day of my trip and the first day off the IGF conference.

Today was full and exciting as expected!

Scroll down to the subject that interests you.

Backdoor  Censorship

In the morning we went to the main opening session of the IGF, where I met (thanks to Dima) Robert Guerra who among other things, did a large evaluation of the policy in freedom of expression around the world. I asked him if the latest Israeli phenomena, where pressure is put on the governments to pass censorship laws for the Internet that are disguised as laws against child pornography. He told me this is terribly common. I am actually quite alarmed, as someone against Internet filtering. It seems the only solution that people can come up with for stopping child pornography and other illegal activity on the net, is to block the Internet in a way that might turn it to just another corporation and government tool.

Open Standards and Microsoft

After the main generic session, a new friend of mine called : Jeremy Malcolm, told me on the #igf chat channel on IRC to come join the open standards workshop. I just walked in time to hear Microsoft’s response about a claim (that I missed) that government document formats need to be open source. Quickly I found that no one was listening to each other: Microsoft said what they think (closed source solutions), Sun said what they thought (They actually coined the term semi-open solutions) and so did the human right person too (they like open source). Here is an  example: There was a mention on the panel that in a certain country there was a voting system that was only working in “some browser”. Microsoft would never support such a claim, they just changed he subject.

Its a shame because the issues raised where interesting, mostly about e-goverment policy – Should they support more than one standard? or should the government impose standards on others. There was also a talk about the fact that a lot of existing solutions are in most cases sing closed protocols because those tools were mostly developed by companies in the private sector.

I am worrid about what is going to happen in 30 years, with no standard how could we open historical documents from the archives if we can’t open them?

Main Session with Tim Berners-Lee, founder of W3C

The opening session had quite an number of important people. the ministry of communication in Egypt, followed my the Prime Minister, this was quite an honor.

The lecture after them was smart and with a nice prospective  - Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of W3C gave this talk. He started talking about how the http protocols were written, and how the count of web pages grew to be about the same amount of brain cells he has (joking that the difference is that the number of web pages is rising, and his brains cells number is going down) . Then he continued to tell how W3C had developed its agenda where everyone should be connected. They started working on multilingualism followed by attending the needs of people with disabilities, who actually find the web a lot easier to use for certain daily things. He continued to talk about the new mobile web and how most of he people I the world today are going to encounter the Internet for the first time in their lives via a cellphone and not a PC. His final statement was that W3C is launching a new organization called W3F, he tweeted this on stage, Sadly I could not re-tweet this because the Internet just crashed at that time.

Israelis in the IGF – ISOC IL and the Embassy

As I exited to the lobby I was approached to my surprise by someone talking to me in Hebrew. This was Oren Marmorstein from the Israeli Embassy in Egypt, who came all the way from Cairo to visit us. Apparently the Ministry of Communication told him about us. At the same time we finally found Rimon Levy, the head of Israeli Internet society (ISOC-IL), and all of a sudden there were 4 of us speaking Hebrew in the lobby.

A talk with Rimon on ISOC-IL and the new localized domain names

One of the hot topic in IGF this year is that they are launching this week what they call international domain names or IDN. This means we will have domain names in unicode supporting not only Latin characters. I asked Rimon if we are going to have those in Israel and how they will work.

He told me that the Israeli domains would actually be right-to-left. So the parsing of the links will go in the opposite direction (even when combining with English). There is also the question of who will be the IDN register in Israel. It seems important that we will make sure in Israel that the IDN control will not fall in to a commercial company hands, because this would mean the money spent on domains would not go back to the community.

Another thing I asked was how the Israeli domains are going to look like, ICANN who is in charge of domain registration requires that the county domains would contain something related to the country, although “. ישראל” Is quite long to be added to every Internet address. ISOC-IL did not come with a solution yet. So I would love to pass ISOC-IL suggestions for Israeli domain names here if you comment!

By the way,  I asked Rimon why a few weeks ago there was a lot of criticism made by bloggers about the management of ISOC-IL and he said he is not really sure himself, so if any of you bloggers are reading I would like you to comment on this (flame responsibly).

The Big Dinner and a talk with one of the founders of the Internet

Dima is among other things trying to compile a biography of Jon Postel, one of the key people during the founding of the Internet, at a certain time he was the person you had to give a phone call to register a domain. At the dinner, we were introduced by Walda (that I met in ITU Telecom 2008) to a person called Robert Kahn, who knew John and actually passed the domain registration work to him after he found it to be too annoying.

Robert told us all along the dinner stories on how the Internet was formed. It was fascinating! I was peculiarly fascinated by the fact that he is the one that invented the format of IP addresses where you have to separate the bytes by a dots (like 127.0.0.1). He did that to distinguish between Internet IPs and the ARPANET addresses. He told us how they tried to implement other communication systems before they Internet that did not work (using radio and satellites among other things), how finally they arrived to Internet and how they got it bridged with other networks that existed at the time. He told us how slowly the world took interest in the Internet and that it became all of a sudden a worldwide network, interesting organizations like the ITU, UN and countries.

Tomorrow is my last day, so I hope I will manage to blog

Dima., Oren from the Israleli embassy, Rimon from ISOC-IL, 'Gbenga from Nigeria and me

Opening Panel

Robert Kahn and me

Hi all,

I thought I might update that I am going to the  IGF (Internet Governance Forum) conference in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt from this Friday till Monday. I am going in hope to meet new people and hear the talks. I see this visit as a continuation of my visit to ITU TELECOM Asia 2008 in Thailand last year (which was a lot of fun).

With me are coming from Israel Dimity Epstein (who introduced me to the ITU) and the Head of Israeli ISOC (The Internet Society) Rimon Levi.

For more information on the conference you can see the IGF conference website and the programme.

I hope I would find time to update during the conference. I would try and twitter too. I am right in the middle of my second year in physics studies, so I will have little time when I get back.

Hope to update soon

Hamakor are a Jerusalem based group that play a uniqe blend of elcto – rock with Jewish and ethnic influences. The singer/ rhythm guitarist Nachaman Solomon is the younger brother Yehuda Solomon of Moshav and Noah Solomon of Soulfarm and there influnce can be felt a little in their music, although they do have their own uniqe sound.

They Recently headlined a concert in Jerusalems Yellow Submarine where I was brought in to photograph for the band and while the warm up group Optimystical where doing their soundcheck we went into the backstage area of the sub and did some promo shots for the group. I had a lot of fun and I think I got some good results even if I did only have about 15min and a very basic strobist set up.

Hamakor

Hamakor

Hamakor

Hamakor

Hamakor

Hamakor

Hamakor – the whole group

Nachman (singer) -Hamakor

Coby Klar (bass) – Hamakor

Jono (Drums) – Hamakor

Gabriel (keyboard) – Hamakor

Bruce “Rebbe Soul” (lead guitar) – Hamakor

Concert Pics to come

Frame Out