Bristol Wireless News

Do you work in the voluntary or community sector? Do you want to learn how free and open source software (FOSS) can meet your ICT needs and save you money? Then make a date in your diary to visit the Social Source Conference (PDF flyer here) being hosted by Bristol Wireless at St Werburghs Community Centre on Tuesday 5th February 2008.

Social Source South West will include speakers from the National ICT Hub and Bristol City Council, plus workshops and demonstrations from individuals, organisations and companies already using or helping groups with FOSS both regionally and nationally.

Another element we’ll be looking at is recycling hardware and greener computing: FOSS can help you breath new life into your old kit extending its service life (some of our mobile suite laptops are now 12 years old and still going strong. Ed.) and helping avoid the pitifully short service life of most hardware – typically 3-5 years.

Preparations are advancing steadily and there’s detailed information on the Social Source South West page on the wiki. In addition, friendly Bristol Wireless techs will also be on hand to answer your queries and – if you give us plenty of notice – we could even arrange for you to collect hardware specially configured to your needs.

When asked who should come to Social Source South West, Sean Kenny of the event organisers said: “If you’re an IT technician for your office, you’ll want to learn about alternatives to the commercial software upgrade treadmill. If you’re a finance officer, come and hear about the cost savings and see workshop demonstrations of ways to boost productivity and cut support costs.”

Attendance is free and lunch will be provided, but you’ll need to register online. As we’re limited to 80 people for the venue (including speakers and helpers), registrations will be strictly first come, first served.

The event is being sponsored by the ICT Hub, Connecting Bristol and Voscur.

See you there!

The cabinets for the public terminals in the lobby at St Werburghs Community Centre (news passim) are getting nearer being finalised.

Yesterday John Chilcott, the designer, brought along the latest prototype for appraisal. It got more than that – as the pictures below show; its insides were given a complete working test under the steady hands of Ben Green and others.

Needless to say, although some may like the raw, boilerplate Soviet era of galvanised steel sheet, the completed item will be welded up (not held together with screws) and have a powder coating finish in Bristol Wireless’ very attractive shade of blue-green (or greeny blue? Ed.).

Germany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is one of the longest established (founded 1981) and most influential organisations dealing with the security and privacy aspects of technology; and its links with Bristol are growing.

Back in the autumn, Si, a good friend of Bristol Wireless and a couple of friends decided it would be worthwhile trying to establish a ‘Chaostreff’ (or ‘Chaos Meeting’) here in Bristol. Chaostreffs are Jim and your scribe from Bristol Wireless. According to the CCC website, Chaostreffs ‘are looser meetings of hackers who sympathise with the CCC’. Chaostreff Bristol will tonight be holding its regular monthly meeting at the Hillgrove Porter Stores in Kingsdown. Well done Si and everyone else for keeping them meetings going (and thanks for not clashing with Dorkbot Bristol for once! Ed.) – a first for any place outside the German-speaking world.

Just before Christmas when the rest of the country was settling down the torpor that characterises that part of December, Bristol Wireless had a visit from Elmar ‘mcfly’ Lecher of Darmstadt, who’s the CCC Board member responsible for local groups, who was paying a visit to Chaostreff Bristol after an earlier abortive attempt when his car broke down at Ostend.

Over hot drinks (Bristol Wireless’ coffee got a good review), we introduced Elmar to the work of Bristol Wireless and compared our experiences to those of the various Freifunk projects in Germany: the major city networks mentioned – Hamburg and Berlin – seem to be making steady progress with mesh technology. Freifunk also takes the Bristol Wireless news feed for its global news service.

Elmar gave us a fascinating rundown of some of CC’s recent work, lots of which is of international importance. For instance, CCC members have been able to crack every voting machine ever presented to them, but more of that anon.

Other aspects of CCC’s work of particular interest to UK citizens in the light of privacy and technology are RFID chips and biometrics. Germany already has chipped passports and Elmar let us examine his (no, we couldn’t discern the chip by feel…). He keeps it in a tin foil wallet that has been developed by CCC (see photo). Strangely, HM Government seems to be interested in this aspect of CCC’s work: why else would the British Embassy in Berlin have ordered 100 of the tinfoil wallets? (Seems too few for a population of 60 million! Ed.)

Last week chatting to mcfly on IRC, he stated CCC needed a press release translating into English urgently. A team of 4 from the CCC Translate group – two of whom were in Bristol (Si and yours truly) – set to work via IRC and email, finishing the job in a matter of hours. You can see the finished result here.

Finally, we’ve had an invite to go to Easterhegg 2008 in Cologne, billed as a ‘cuddly CCC event with about 200 participants’. There should be a chance to meet the Freifunk folks there, talk about the translation project and give me something else to write about.