Weblog: Archive

Pjotr has just posted the video from our Murmansk trip to Google Video:

Pictures will hit Flickr a bit later.

Re-posted 2006-11-02: Better quality video now available.

We rolled the initial Project Broker user interface into OpenPsa 2 with Rambo yesterday. Since we were on schedule we went to work in the countryside where we wouldn't be disturbed. Fireplace, a bit of snow, and no Internet connection make it a perfect place for a coding sprint.

The idea of the Project Broker is to be a DBE service that automatically looks for potential subcontractors in the Fada P2P network. Matching criteria include competence tags, schedule and endorsements given by other members of the network. In addition to DBE, the same searches also work inside a single OpenPsa installation enabling automatic scheduling and resourcing of tasks:

Another change we rolled in was a reworked hour reporting system to the OpenPsa front page. There are now two ways to report hours: by manually entering them using a composite widget, or by letting OpenPsa keep the time for you selecting what you are working on:

The Supreme Administrative Court has ruled that Lord Mayor Jussi Pajunen was disqualified to decide the fate of the historic Helsinki-Malmi airport. Helsingin Sanomat reports:

Pajunen participated in the preparation of Helsinki's general land use plan 2002 in the Helsinki city council. At the same time he was also the president of the Malmin Nova company. The company had business in the Malmi shopping center. In addition the company was preparing an enlargement of the shopping center synchronized with the land use plan.

... The Administrative Court sees that the company's fortunes were closely tied to how the land of the Malmi Airport was utilized.

The part on destroying the Helsinki-Malmi airport has now been removed from the land use plan. Another win for The Friends of Malmi Airport Society!

Updated 2006-11-08: I have to agree with Phil that Mr. Pajunen's behavior is definitely corruption.

As reported by Inz, Maemo Blog seems to work properly with Midgard CMS now. Cool!

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Updated 11:09Z: Edited via MarsEdit as Maemo Blog doesn't do links and categories yet. Hopefully Tigert's UI sketches get implemented soon.

I've today upgraded the Midgard development environment on my MacBook to a more reasonable software setup:

• Midgard 1.8
• PHP 5.1
• MySQL 5
• Apache 2.2

So far things look quite good. I found and fixed some PHP5-related notices in MidCOM, but apart from those it runs really nicely.

This means I get to work on MultiLang and things like Microformat parsing. Midgard 1.8 may not be the jazzy thing, but at least it means my devel environment is trendy and not passé. :-)

I will be flying to Foz do Iguacu tomorrow for the LatinoWare 2006 conference. My talk on Digital Business Ecosystem is scheduled at 2pm on thursday the 16th.

As I've already given two earlier talks on DBE in Brazil, I will this time skip most of the politics and focus on how DBE can make everybody in the business of free software happier.

In the other news, here is the first look at the new version of the Maemo application catalog:

Notable changes include switching to a more easily browse-able format from the old giant wiki page, using the new single-click install format and automatically linking all wiki pages tagged with application's name to the application page.

Updated 2006-11-15: My talk has been rescheduled to 3pm.

Guardian reports that the British RFID passports are now cracked, meaning that their information can be remotely read, and the passport copied:

"If you can read the chip, then you can clone it," he says. "You could use this to clone a passport that would exploit the system to illegally enter another country."

I unfortunately was forced to get this new "mark of the beast" last month when my previous 10 year passport had again been mutilated by some border guards, breaking off the information page. So now I lost couple years of passport validity (RFID passports are valid only for 5 years), and have a passport that most likely contains similar security holes as the passports used in USA, UK, Germany and The Netherlands.

Until the silly idea that EU for some reason needs remotely readable passports passes I'll keep mine in a RFID blocking passport case.

Update 2006-11-20: Comments from an Estonian correspondent

This arrived via email as the blog entry had already been locked from comments. The author wishes to remain anonymous.

I wouldn't call the referred attack cracking the passport. If you read the specs it's easy to see that the security measures used aren't meant to deter copying the passports. The security experts are breaking through an open door. (this is just my opinion, but it somewhat looks as a desperate way to gather attention to themselver and not the issues) The basic access control (BAC) was meant to protect against skimming (i.e. finding out someones identity without their consent) and eavesdropping. It doesn't take a security guru to figure out that the 35 or so bits of entropy in the encryption key (document no, birthdate, expiry date) thats directly used for session encryption isn't very secure against bruteforcing. Fortunately eavesdropping from a distance of more than a couple of meters takes some pretty complicated and bulky equipment. When fingerprints are added to passports an advanced extend access control comes into use, mandating strong session encryption and PKI certified passport readers. Against skimming the 35 bits is good enough. It's extremely unlikely that someone could get hold of your passport number, expiry date and birthdate and not find out your name at the same time. And if they do, there's not much else in the chip to constitute a privacy risk. That said, I would still be much happier if they had increased entropy by atleast 20 bits by incorporating the MRZ name line in the authentication key.

If copying is to be avoided, the spec has a provision for active authentication (AA) - i.e. a private key on the chip that is verified against a public key signed by document issuer. I don't know if Finland has implemented active authentication in their e-passports. England and Germany obvously have not, but I know for certain that Estonian e-passports will contain active authentication when we're going to start issuing them in the first half of next year.Even if your passport doesn't contain AA, you shouldn't worry too much about cloned passports, the new passports still contain other security measures so making a cloned passport is no easier now than it was before e-passports. On the contrary, e-passports most likely contain new revised security measures making them harder to clone.

Anyway, I'm just trying to clear up some FUD about the e-passports. Whether wirelessly readable passports are useful, practical or necessary is a whole another debate that I'd rather not go into. But I hope that you atleast see that they're not horribly insecure.

Thanks for the comments! This definitely helps to clarify the issue.

It also has to be noted that Electronic Frontier Finland was satisfied with the security clarifications they received from interior ministry in October.

Like last year and FISL, I'm again representing DBE in LatinoWare. My talk was yesterday, and this time I focused a bit more on the practical applications of DBE instead of the politics.

My slides are now available in PDF format (6MB). I also have most of the talk in cell phone video format that I will try to process and YouTube at some point.

After the talk I've been mostly hanging out in the conference cafeteria, discussing free software with other speakers and participants.

The conference is held in the technology center of Itaipu, world's largest hydroelectric plant. On thursday evening we went to see the light show on the massive dam wall, and after that to a Open Bar student party.

Friday morning, slightly hung over, we crossed the Friendship Bridge to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. The city had the strongly commercialized feeling of a border town, closely resembling Vyborg for example. But that was quickly forgotten by getting to try a motorcycle taxi on the way back.

Updated 2006-11-20: Dave Neary has a good write-up on the conference.

Nokia has released a Navigation kit for 770, providing GPS navigation capabilities to this Linux device. The navigation software used is Navicore Personal which application requires Tablet OS 2006. The announcement says:

One of the most wanted features for the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet has been navigation. Now we have good news for those of you who have been waiting for it. The Navigation Kit for Nokia 770 is now available for purchase through nokia.com, now with free shipping.

Featuring Navicore Personal 2007 Europe software, the Navigation Kit helps you in finding destinations and interesting locations conveniently. While traveling, you can easily search for information on your destinations from the web using your Nokia 770.

No comments on this 199 EUR package on Planet Maemo yet. I'll try to get hold of the package when back in Finland in order to review it and study compatibility options with the GeoClue stuff we're working on.

Hopefully the availability of a real navigation package will not hurt the promising Maemo Mapper project, as having a free alternative is important.

Updated 2006-11-27: Navigation kit review by pycage, via Andrew Turner.

I was discussing this IT problem at ESEEI today:

Mamona, or Castor oil plant is an oil-producing plant that can be grown in relatively dry areas. Farmers of dry areas in the state of Paraná, Brazil are generally relatively poor. Petrobras has a process where Mamona seeds can be used to produce biodiesel fuel.

The IT problem related to this is that the farmers in poor areas that plant Mamona are not very well connected, and so it is difficult for Petrobras to know how many crops have been planted, and the farmers to know when and where to deliver their produce.

A quick solution would be something like the following:

Petrobras could build a simple web-based database of Mamona producers, collection points and logistical companies using a Geospatial Content Management System like Midgard. Here farmers would be guided through a process of registering their farm, positioning it on a Google Map, and reporting the number of their planted crops.

Since the farmers do not have IT infrastructure available, Petrobras could distribute a set of Nokia 770 Internet Tablets and GPRS-enabled cell phones for them. Compared to a regular PC, the 770 has advantages of relatively low cost, low power consumption, support for using cell phone network for connectivity and support for any regular Nokia phone charger, including solar and hand cranked chargers. Since the 770 platform is open the software setup could also be tailored for the specific needs of the Mamona program.

When a Mamona harvest happens the farmers would again log into the website and report the number of crops produced. This information would be produced as a GeoRSS feed to the logistical companies whose 770s could automatically find loads to pick up from their vicinity. The feed would contain the farmer's contact information so that they could contact the farmer, and since it is geotagged would also automatically appear as a Point of Interest in the 770 map application. Farmers could similarly get a feed of nearby logistical companies.

Clicking on a POI the logistics company would be directed to the website where they could make the agreement on where to deliver the stock.

This way Petrobras would constantly know how much is being produced and where, farmers would know who can carry their goods to the refineries, and logistics companies could monitor new available loads.

The setup would have several advantages:

• Software required for this solution would not be complex to make
• Fully open, and free software environment could be used, including Maemo and GeoClue
• Reliance on open standards like HTTP and GeoRSS make future integration easy
• HTTP makes the system also easy to secure via regular SSL encryption
• There is good knowledge of the Nokia 770 platform in Brazil already
• Only cell phone network would be needed, and the system would work also in areas where electricity is not easily available
• Most or all of the deployment could be handled using local IT resources
• Equipment needed is relatively inexpensive. At retail prices the whole stack per farm costs about 500 USD, but Petrobras could most likely get a lot better deal

Disclaimer: I'm not sure if this would really work in the Brazilian reality, but the thought play was definitely interesting.

Updated 2007-01-10: A bicycle-powered charger, as shown by Motorola could help this kind of deployments in rural areas.

The FON WiFi community is now offering free Fonera access points in Finland. FON allows you to share internet access with all other community members:

FON is the largest WiFi community in the world. Our members share their wireless Internet access at home and, in return, enjoy free WiFi wherever they find another Fonero's Access Point.

It all started as a simple idea. Why should you pay for Internet access on the go when you have already paid for it at home? Exactly, you shouldn't. So we decided to help create a community of people who get more out of their connection through sharing.

The concept sounds very promising. I've already ordered my access point, so later on this network will be part of the movement.

Updated 2006-11-29: There is a FON-compatible autologin applet for GNOME that might be a useful thing to port to Maemo. This would be good not only for FON but also for other WiFi networks that require a web-based login like TeliaSonera HomeRun that we use.

Also, FON and Plazes are planning to collaborate. The ideas sound interesting...

When Stefan and I were first thinking about Plazes it was clear to us, that networks are social entities. That people being connected to the same LAN or Hotspot not only share a common geography at a point in time but most likely also similar interests and ideas. Or put differently: A network is more than access, it´s a cristallisation point for sociality. (Check out Project Placesite which pretty much does what we initially came up with.)

I've just upgraded to the latest Democracy Player "Internet TV" version:

It's pretty simple. You get a better internet video experience with Democracy Player because you can do more and you can do it more easily. Some people call it a 'TiVo for the internet' or a 'Firefox for videos'.

Democracy Player is free, open source, and built by a non-profit organization. Our goal isn't to make money off of you. Our goal is to give you the best possible video experience.

In addition to being able to subscribe to PodCasts, it can also perform searches on YouTube and Google Video, and subscribe to the search results. This way I get automatically all new Haidong Gumdo videos to my desktop for example.

Now, if only it was also available for my 770...

Updated: Lifehacker has a nice short review on Democracy Player.