Bristol Wireless News

Here at Bristol Wireless we do as much as we can to re-use and extend the working life of old computer hardware.

Through our Byteback partnership We are able to sell reconditioned machines for just £50.

We recognise that sometimes it is appropriate to purchase new hardware, and when new purchases are made it is worth considering the environmental credentials of the suppliers. Greenpeace have done some research to make this evaluation easier.

“We first released our ‘Guide to Greener Electronics’ in August 2006. The guide ranks the 18 top manufacturers of personal computers, mobile phones, TV’s and games consoles according to their policies on toxic chemicals and recycling.

The sixth issue of the Guide has been expanded to include televisions and game consoles. Market leaders Microsoft, Nintendo, Philips and Sharp enter at the bottom of the ranking of environmental performance with Nintendo being the first company scoring zero out of a possible 10 points. Philips and Microsoft performed little better, scoring only 2 and 2.7, respectively. Sony Ericsson has taken over the top spot from Nokia while Samsung and Sony have surged ahead to now occupy second and third positions.” Full report here.

News arrives from Bristol City Council that a state-of-the-art Wi-Fi network has been installed to give partial Wi-Fi coverage of The Council House on College Green.

The network will allow anyone attending a meeting or event in the building’s committee rooms, Council Chamber and Conference Hall to call up agendas, reports and other background materials on laptops other wireless devices.

In addition, there’s now a wireless hotspot in the building’s foyer and other public areas that anyone visiting the offices can use.

The new network consists of 17 radio nodes placed in the main committee rooms and the foyer area. Each node offers 54 Megabits per second (Mbps) capacity, allowing secure wireless access for authorised users of the Council’s internal Virtual Private Network (VPN), as well as open internet access Cityspace’s StreetNet service, which already provides free internet access for web users in the surrounding city centre area.

For more details see the full council press release.

Author’s note: A rendition of ‘Council House’ in the local vernacular – more details here.

On 29th November 2007 we will be running a beginners’ training course from 7pm – 9pm at St. Werburghs Community Centre, Horley Road, St. Werburghs. The course will cover logging in and out, the desktop, the file system, word processing, setting up and using web based email and surfing the World Wide Web. Bristol Wireless members will be on hand to offer friendly advice and get you confidently using a machine and enjoying the internet even if you’ve never used either before.

If you are interested in booking or know someone who may be interested, or even if you require further information, please ring Bristol Wireless on 0117 3250067 or contact us here.

Author’s note: The following is an article I’ve written for an Easton newsletter being set up in the new year. I’ve posted it here because I mention Bristol Wireless and their contribution to recycling waste electrical and electronic equipment towards the end.

The Problem

More than a million tonnes of waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) is created each year, and the amount is growing three times faster than any other type of waste. In July 2007 it was estimated that 90% of WEEE ended up in landfills, where its toxic components and non-biodegradable parts pose serious environmental concerns.

Computers in particular become obsolete quicker than any other consumer product. When Microsoft’s latest operating system (Vista) was released in January 2007, the Green Party suggested that “future archaeologists will be able to identify a ‘Vista Upgrade Layer’ when they go through our landfill sites.”

Vista uses more power than previous Windows incarnations because it scours your computer every few milliseconds to ensure that no ‘premium’ video or sound is being decoded. This means that new power-guzzling, costly hardware is required. The Green Party’s Sian Berry predicted that tonnes of perfectly functional monitors, video cards and whole computers would be dumped, due to lacking “the paranoid lock down mechanisms Vista forces you to use”.

Throughout the entire range, new versions of Microsoft have required twice as many system resources to run as their predecessors. Such resource-hungry programs are known as ‘bloatware‘.

The Solution?

European Regulations implemented in July 2007 mean that manufacturers and distributors of electronic goods will have to pay for the recycling or safe disposal of their products. Retailers will have to provide ways to return old gadgets when their customers upgrade and many civic amenity sites will provide facilities specifically for dealing with electronic waste. Initial UK targets require the safe disposal or reuse of 4kg of techno waste per person per year, approximately 25% of the total amount.

Good news? Well, maybe a step in the right direction, but a closer look at UK law shows that the legislation may not go far enough. Manufacturers are not responsible for their own products, but rather for their share of the market; they are able to join a scheme allowing them to pay a percentage of the total cost of recycling. “This means producers with better-designed products are financially penalised,” says Greenpeace, as savings from environmentally-conscious products benefit everyone, regardless of their own green track record.

UK law also allows retailers to contribute to civic amenity sites and inform customers of where they can recycle their WEEE, instead of taking waste back themselves. In fact they’re quite within their rights to charge you for any equipment they do collect.

What’s Going On Round Here

Byteback is a Bristol-based scheme that has been assisting companies in achieving their legal obligation to recycle IT equipment since 2001. They are fully WEEE compliant and operate under the guidelines of Environment Agency policy.

On receiving machines, Byteback irrecoverably destroy data on their hard disks, whilst Inside Out Trust collects the remaining equipment to be refurbished by inmates in local prisons. The hard disks and refurbished equipment are reunited at a depot in Cheltenham where they are packed ready for distribution via Byteback’s partners, IT Schools Africa and Computers for African Schools.

Computers that can’t be fixed are stripped for working parts; the remaining broken equipment is sent to specialist recyclers who recover raw materials from printed circuit boards, plastic and mixed metals. Byteback use some of the recovered parts to repair and upgrade PCs — a service available to anyone at the cost of £20 per hour. If they can’t fix your computer, they won’t charge you and any bits they use are thrown in for free.

Some of the machines recycled by Byteback end up with Bristol Wireless (a volunteer run co-operative who provided the internet connections at the Chelsea Inn and Easton Community Centre, to name but two) who install them with a Linux operating system called Debian; Debian is less power-hungry than Microsoft systems and is free to use. The computers come complete with web browser, email client, photo-editing software, anti-virus software and an office suite compatible with Microsoft Office, consisting of word processor, spreadsheet program and presentation software. These bloatware-free computers are available at the modest sum of £50 each (news passim).

So, with companies like that on the case there’s no need to get caught in an endlessly expensive software/hardware upgrade spiral! To get in touch with them, use these details:-

Byteback:

URL: http://www.byteback.org.uk
Phone: Tel: 0173706456, Mob: 07917166905
Email: bytebackcomputerrecycling@gmail.com

Bristol Wireless:

URL: http://www.bristolwireless.net
Phone: 01173250067
Email: info@bristolwireless.net

The open internet access suite at the Chelsea Inn in Easton, provided and managed by Bristol Wireless, has been completely overhauled. The addition of an extra station brings the total to three now, all of which are newer-style Compaq thin clients providing access to the server upstairs via LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project). The new stations are smaller, so the whole install is now at desk level and therefore in much less risk of damage by the usual pub shenanigans. Built-in sound and accessible USB key access is now standard.. The wireless AP has been moved downstairs and is now mounted on the wall, correcting the coverage problems that were previously experienced in areas due to the thick concrete ceiling joists. Ben Green updated the software on the LTSP server, whilst Lloyd Cohen carried out the rest of the work.

On Tuesday Bristol Wireless volunteer and Nixcom employee Lloyd Cohen installed an omni-directional antenna on the roof of The Cube Microplex cinema in Kingsdown. The AP is to be used for the high-quality infrastructure-level connection of strategic points around the adjoining Dove St. flats, from which free open access wireless coverage will be provided to the residents via a local micro-mesh solution. Kudos to The Cube for hosting this, especially to their volunteer Marcus Valentine for cycling down to give me access and make me tea throughout the job.

On Tuesday 6th November, Bristol Wireless received a visit from Tim Erickson of E-Democracy.org, who have been helping encourage participation in the democratic process since 1994. We first me Tim on his initial visit to Bristol 2 years ago and were responsible for introducing him to West Country cider.

Tim called by with MJ Ray, a friend of his from Turo Technology LLP, another co-operative (like Bristol Wireless) based in Weston Super Mare. Local Bristol area readers may know MJ, as he does attend BBLUG sessions.

We were very pleased to see how Tim’s IT skills had improved since his last visit – he’s now blogging and doing audio and video recording. As part of an organisation that encourages and trains people in using such tools to improve their skills and get involved in their communities, it’s only right and proper that the leading advocates should know what to do with them too.

As proof of his newly-acquired skills, he recorded a 10-minute interview with Rich Higgs and your ‘umble scribe.

Tim has recorded his visit on the E-Democracy.org project blog. His piece on Bristol Wireless can be read here, whilst those of you who are brave may like to listen to the interview.

 Interview with Tim Erickson: Play in Popup | Download

Since its inception as a community wireless networking project, Bristol Wireless’ range of activities has expanded at a rapid rate. One of the newer lines of work – although the idea was first mooted a few years ago – is the development of our own Bristol Wireless Debian-based Linux distribution. Ben Green has today announced that our BW distro has now reached version 0.9.4.

Since the last announcement, the following changes have been implemented for this release:

• the Bristol Wireless desktop background has been added as default for all users (regardless of a whether this is a new account or not);
• printer GUI has been restored;
• users-admin icon added to SLAB menu;
• recoll search icon added to SLAB menu and set up sudo access;
• bw_setup now changes the sources.list to an internet facing one by default;
• ‘less’ has been added as a default package;

Ben adds that a new user must be created to make use of the new SLAB additions.

There are still a couple of items on Ben’s to-do list. At the moment these are:

• adding support for madwifi;
• adding a line to firefox plugins for divx to use the Mplayer plugin.

In a subsequent mail, Ben reports that we’re almost on the verge of having a version 1.0 ready for distribution. If anyone has professional CD printing facilities we can use for this forthcoming milestone, please get in touch.