Regional supercomputing centre set to revolutionise research

Posted on 28/03/2012 by woodsy

Bristol Uni's Blue Crystal supercomputer. Picture by Dr Ian Stewart

The University of Bristol has announced it has joined forces with the Universities of Oxford, Southampton and University College London to form a Centre for Innovation to share state-of-the-art equipment and world-leading skills, speeding up the rate at which complex data can be processed and will play key role in a new £3.7 million regional centre for supercomputing.

Supercomputers are seen as the “third pillar” of modern research and are used in fields as diverse as quantum physics, weather forecasting, climate research, oil and gas exploration, molecular modelling, finance, engineering and manufacturing.

The award for the Centre of Innovation marks the first significant activity for the e-Infrastructure South Consortium formed by the four universities in 2011 with the aim of exploring and exploiting opportunities for sharing of hardware platforms, applications software, user support services and skills – known as research e-infrastructure – across the four institutions to tackle scientific and industrial research challenges.

The University of Bristol’s existing supercomputer, a £7 million Linux machine called BlueCrystal, was introduced in 2008 and is used by more than 600 of the university’s researchers

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Open standards for open government?

Posted on 23/03/2012 by woodsy

On Monday, 30th April 2012 the Policy Exchange think tank is organising an event entitled Open Standards for Open Government? at The Ideas Space, Policy Exchange, 10 Storey’s Gate, Westminster, SW1P 3AY (map).

The UK Government is currently consulting on its open standards policy. Technology standards are important to ensure interoperability; open standards are often cited as ways to promote innovation and avoid vendor lock-in. Open standards supporters cite a whole range of benefits – from saving money to areas as diverse as revitalising the use of ICT in schools, making it easier for public sector bodies to support local businesses, enhancing digital inclusion via low-cost internet access and extending the useful life of hardware (all true! Honest! Ed.).

The event will examine the role of open standards in UK public policy. How much potential is there for open standards to power public sector reform, catalyse competition and contribute to economic growth? If open standards in the public sector are a policy goal, then what will it take to deliver change?

Speakers confirmed to date are:

  • Adam Afriyie MP, Chair of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology and President of the Conservative Technology Forum;
  • Gerry Gavigan, Chair of the Open Source Consortium;
  • Chris Yiu, Head of the Digital Government Unit at Policy Exchange.

Other speakers have yet to be confirmed.

Further details can be found on the Policy Exchange website and if you’re interested in attending, email events (at) policyexchange.org.uk.

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Meanwhile back in the lab…

Posted on 22/03/2012 by woodsy

Chrome OS logoBristol Wireless was donated* some redundant laptops yesterday that were surplus to requirements.

Their arrival has encouraged volunteer Acesabe to try experimenting, as about an hour ago he tweeted:

Think I’ll have a pop at installing ChromeOS on one of those old laptops we got donated @BristolWireless yesterday http://chromeos.hexxeh.net

Please let us know how it goes, Acesabe. :)

* Please read if you’re thinking of donating hardware to Bristol Wireless.

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A DFD free gift for politicians

Posted on 22/03/2012 by woodsy

Do you know a certain politician who should really learn more about Open Standards? This is the question that the Free Software Foundation Europe has asked in the last couple of days.

The article goes on to ask readers if they have tried to explain the importance of Open Standards to your boss, friends, local administration or service, but without any results? Would support from the outside world help? If so, inform FSFE’s Document Freedom Day (DFD) team about your situation and we will send a free, remarkable gift to your contact to help them learn more about the power of Open Standards.

The remarkable free gift will be a set of handcuffs. As all of we advocates of openness know, when you opt for proprietary software and proprietary formats, you are relinquishing your freedom; here in Bristol Wireless, we use Open Document Format (ODF) for our office suite files. We know we’ll be able to read them in 10, 50 or 100 years time, because ODF is a proper international standard format endorsed by the ISO (it’s standard ISO/IEC 26300, to be exact. Ed.). If you’re using MS Office, will you still be able to do likewise with your .docx and .xlsx files, whose fate is controlled solely by the individual software manufacturer?

Anyway, let’s return to the handcuffs. Bristol Wireless has 2 nominees for this unique gift: 1 national politician and 1 local.

Firstly, we think Minister for the Cabinet Office Francis Maude MP deserves a pair. Francis is in charge of “making government work better.” This currently includes the implementation of open source and open standards across Whitehall. This has not exactly been a smooth process (news passim) and there has even been some talk of progress being nobbled by vested interests. So, for general prevarication and dithering, we’re pleased to nominate you, Francis; keep on eye on your post at 70 Whitehall, London SW1A 2AS.

A champagne LibDem from CliftonOur local nominee is none other than the leader of Bristol City Council, Cllr Barbara Janke. Bristol City Council talks a lot about open source and standards (news passim). However, under Barbara’s leadership the council has ditched its open source Star Office suite and moved back to Microsoft Office 2010, just as many of the council’s European counterparts are moving the other way from proprietary to free and open source. We’re pleased to nominate you too, Barbara, for a fine local effort; we trust your letter from the FSFE will shortly arrive at The Council House, College Green, Bristol BS1 5TR. ;)

Will our nominees receive their handcuffs in time for DFD? Only the FSFE knows. :)

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Scotrail to pilot free wifi on trains

Posted on 21/03/2012 by woodsy

Scotrail has just secured £250,0000 of funding from the Scottish government for a three month pilot project to trail the provision of free wifi on trains.

According to Guardian Government Computing, the pilot will run from June until September on trains travelling primarily between Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Class 170 in Scotrail livery

A Class 170 train set in Scotrail livery, similar to those to be used in the pilot. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

An ethernet backbone will be installed a total of four Class 170 trains, each consisting of three vehicles. The system will be fitted with inter-vehicle jumpers to allow passengers to access the internet in each carriage with no degradation of service. Brown says that the router will be mounted in the roof space in the middle vehicle, close to the external antennae to minimise signal loss.

Read the original Guardian story.

Posted in National IT News | Tagged | 3 Comments

Iceland’s public sector increasing use of free and open source

Posted on 21/03/2012 by woodsy

All public sector organisations in Iceland are increasing their use of free and open source software, Joinup reports, and the country’s government recently launched a one year migration project for all of its departments. Project leader Tryggvi Björgvinsson states: “The goal of the project is not to migrate public institutions to free and open source software in one single year but to lay a solid foundation for such a migration which institutions can base their migration plans on.”

However, Iceland’s public sector bodies have been steadily moving towards free and open source software over the past few years,including the three biggest public institutions in Iceland, all of the ministries, the city of Reykjavik and the National Hospital.

In the education sector, the majority of the secondary schools are already running Moodle, an open source course management system, whilst other public bodies such as the newly founded Media commission also run entirely on free and open source software.

Moreover, Iceland’s government has had a free and open source policy since 2007, which emphasises that there should be a level playing field for free and open source software vis-a-vis its proprietary equivalent. The Icelandic government’s free and open source policy is also available in English as a PDF.

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Bristol Hackspace chat channel

Posted on 19/03/2012 by woodsy

Bristol Hackspace logoOur friends at Bristol Hackspace now have a chat channel, as testified by the following status update on Twitter.

We have an IRC channel. Chat with us on irc.freenode.net in #bristolhackspace or on the website: http://bristol.hackspace.org.uk/chat/

We might see you in there for a natter sometime! :)

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28th March is Document Freedom Day

Posted on 16/03/2012 by woodsy

This year’s Document Freedom Day, which celebrates information accessibility and raises awareness of Open Standards, will take place on Wednesday, 28th March. Here in Bristol Wireless, we’ve been using the Open Document Format (ODF) Open Standard for exchanging documents internally for many years now. We like it since it has many advantages: firstly, there’s the file size (considerably smaller than equivalent proprietary formats); and secondly, it’s an international standard approved by the ISO.

This year, Document Freedom Day is being supported by no less a luminary than Stephen Fry, actor, broadcaster, general purpose Renaissance man and well-known geek, who states:

“It is time once and for all to end the pointless nonsense of one document sent on one platform being incomprehensible to the user of another.”

Read the testimonials of the wide range of other supporters of Document Freedom Day.

Open Standards are essential for interoperability and freedom of choice based on the merits of different software applications. They provide freedom from data lock-in and subsequent vendor lock-in. This makes Open Standards essential for governments, companies, organisations and individual users of information technology.

DFD 2012 banner

Open Standards ensure that individuals and organisations can:

  • Choose any operating system or application and still be able to read and edit all their old documents;
  • Collaborate with others regardless of which software they are using;
  • Use any software of your choice to interact with your government (Are you listening UKgov? Your use of open file formats for documents has been woeful to date! Ed.).

The less visible effects of Open Standards are that they lead to more competition in software and more effective governmental IT solutions that avoid the cost of lock-in.

If you’re organising a Document Freedom Day event, register it! We shall have the Document Freedom Day flag fluttering gently outside the lab all day. :)

Update: 19/03/12: DFD posters are now available from the Free Software Foundation Europe. Please email samtuke (at) fsfe.org to order.

Posted in Bristol Wireless News, International Events, International IT News, Open Source News | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

MonmouthpediA

Posted on 16/03/2012 by woodsy

In about one month’s time (April 21st to be precise, according to Sam Downie. Ed.) a delegation of Bristol Wikipedians is due to visit Monmouth.

Why Monmouth you may ask? And why Wikipedians too? What has a small Welsh town with a millennium or so of history, that was home to the Tudor family and Charles Rolls (partner of Mr Royce) got to do with the world’s largest open source project?

Well, there’s the small matter of a project called Monmouthpedia.

Monmouthpedia is the first ever Wikipedia project to cover a whole town – specifically, the Welsh town of Monmouth (aka Trefynwy). The project aims to cover every single notable place, person, artefact, flora, fauna and other things in Monmouth in as many languages as possible, but with a special focus on Welsh. This is a different scale of wiki-project.

Moreover, Monmouthshire County Council intend to install free town-wide wifi for this project (thanks folks! Ed.)

The amount, detail and quality of the information that the community in Monmouth could create is staggering. The Council for British Archaeology have designated Monmouth as the seventh best town for archaeology in Britain. Knowledge gives us context, it allows us to appreciate our surroundings more: Monmouth may well be the first place in the world to offer its tourist information in over 250 languages.

Wikipedia likes cake: a Monmouthpedia cupcake. File courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Read the full story of Monmouthpedia on Wikipedia.

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Spain – over half of central government using open source

Posted on 15/03/2012 by woodsy

Cenatic reports that ONFSA – the National Observatory for Open Source Software – has published its 2011 public sector open source software use survey.

According to the survey, which covered 198 central government bodies, most of Spanish central government organisations use free and/or open source software for both server and desktop systems. More specifically, 9 out of 10 organisations have open source solutions deployed on their servers, while 8 out of 10 use open source desktop programs.

68% of central government organisations acquired the open source technologies they have implemented for free, acquiring them from a software repository or forge; 33% of the organisations have issued tenders for the acquisition of commercial open source software; and 27% report having reused open source solutions from another public sector organisation.

In terms of the volume of open source software (programs, operating systems and utilities, both in production and in testing or pre-production environments) deployed on the servers in Spanish central government organisations, approximately 40% is open source software. With regard to desktop software as a whole, open code solutions represent around 15%.

In spite of this widespread usage, the shortage of personnel who are experts in open source solutions and the associated need for training is considered to be the main barrier to the adoption of open source software in the public sector.

However, for us the most striking finding of the survey is that 46% have been actively involved in developing their own open source solutions.

And this makes us wonder, how many UK public sector bodies are actively assisting open source projects or even – like their Spanish counterparts – developing their own applications. Please use the comments below to let us know if your public sector body is emulating its Spanish equivalent.

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