Chief scribe
Today is Safer Internet Day, which is organised in February of each year to promote the safe and responsible use of online technology and mobile phones by children and young people. In conjunction with Safer Internet Day, Avon & Somerset Police are organising an online safety webchat tomorrow, 12th February, from 7.00 pm to 8.30 […]
Lille-Flandres and Avignon TGV will be the 2 pilot SNCF stations to offer free wifi from the end of March 2014. In total 100 stations will benefit from wifi network access before the end of the current year and 128 stations by the end of February 2015.
Germany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has filed a lawsuit against the German Federal government and other agencies in conjunction with human rights organisation the Liga für Menschenrechte e. V. (League for Human Rights). The government and its agencies are being charged with violating citizens’ personal lives by security services surveillance and toleration of such surveillance, […]
An international research group of scientists and engineers led by the University of Bristol has made an important advance towards a quantum computer by shrinking key components and integrating them into a microchip.
On Wednesday last week, the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) held an event called Sprint 14, in which it invited Ministers, civil servants, suppliers and the media along to showcase some major new digital public services for the first time. Among the speakers was Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who in his speech made some […]
Blue-Mind, the French open source collaborative messaging solution, has been adopted for French universities and other associated establishments, including scientific and technical public institutions, Le Monde Informatique reports today. The Ministry for Higher Education and Research has signed a four-year framework agreement with French software supplier Blue-Mind. Its collaborative open source messenging solution is therefore […]
The Dutch town of Ede spends 92% less on licence fees than other Dutch local authorities. How? By using free and open source software wherever possible according to the Dutch edition of Computerworld. Where NOiV initiative failed, the municipality of Ede wants to be a shining example as regards the use of open source software. […]
At the start of the week, China suffered a major internet outage for several hours, Le Monde Informatique reported yesterday. Experts are wondering about the cause; was it hacking (to use the verb ‘to hack’ in its Daily Mail sense. Ed) or a technical problem with the country’s censorship mechanisms? Last Tuesday more than two-thirds […]
Coming soon: the fair city of Manchester is holding its first Free Software festival between Monday 3rd February and Saturday, 8th February 2014. To quote from the FSFE Manchester website: We are delighted to announce that FSFE-mcr and friends will be running a whole week of Free Software fun in Manchester’s very first Free Software […]
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS proved to be the most secure product in a client operating system investigation by British security body Communications Electronics Security Group (CESG), which is part of GCHQ and provides assistance to government departments on their own communications security, according to a report today in Germany’s Linux-Magazin. The test field consisted of 11 […]
The Italian government has made free software the default choice for public sector organisations, the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) reports. In a document (PDF, Italian) published last Wednesday, the Italian Digital Agency (Agenzia per l’Italia Digitale) issued rules saying that all the country’s government organisations must consider using free software before buying licences for […]
The initiatives for encouraging young people to get into programming are multiplying, writes French news site Le Monde Informatique. With CodeCombat the work is both study and play. Now released as open source, CodeCombat is a video game devoted to teaching programming. The platform is multi-player and uses CoffeeScript, a programming language that transcompiles to […]
The January newsletter for CiviCRM, the free and open source CRM package used by Bristol Wireless, has just arrived in our inbox and it contains 3 items of interest for UK-based users. Dealing with them in strict chronological order, the first date for your diaries is a Free CiviCRM Showcase Day in Leeds on 16th […]
Just before the end of last month Wildfire Games announced the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 15 “Osiris”. 0 A.D. is a real time strategy game and the new release comes with additional functions. It’s available free of charge for Linux, Mac and Windows and is licensed under Version 2 of the GPL. The Alpha […]
In a case brought by civil liberties campaigners, a Brooklyn court has ruled that US Customs officers do not need to suspect a crime to examine travellers’ computer equipment at borders, Le Monde Informatique reported yesterday. In the United States the border police may carry out checks of travellers’ portable computers and other mobile devices […]
Tomorrow Bristol Wireless bids farewell to long-serving volunteer Andy Sabel and his partner Llanos, who are migrating south – and not just for the winter. Llanos has got a new job in Gibraltar with a prominent British betting company and Andy is moving with her (from Windmill Hill to William Hill, as some bright spark […]
The French government’s open data site has undergone a facelift, according to Le Monde Informatique. Now more ergonomic and featuring more new data sets, the site wants to be the pivot for the policy to open up public data. The in-depth revamp of the data.gouv.fr has been given a high level relaunch. The French Prime […]
Microsoft has announced that it will be ending support for Windows XP, now 12 years old, on 8th April 2014. The Bristol & Bath Linux Users’ Group (BBLUG) has seen this as an opportunity to introduce people currently using XP to a reliable free and open source Linux operating system and has planned an event […]
Today’s Bristol Post reports that First Great Western (FGW) will be offering free wifi on its services between Bristol and London within one year. Wifi provision on trains is part of the deal agreed with the government under which First will continue operating the Great Western franchise for an additional two years. All 53 of […]
The University of Bristol has announced that its research is being revolutionsied by one of the fastest and most advanced supercomputing facilities in the UK, capable of over 200 trillion calculations per second. A £2 million investment has increased the capability and power of the University’s state-of-the-art BlueCrystal High Performance Computer (HPC) facility, which allows […]