Chief scribe
Bristol’s University of the West of England (UWE) has announced that a shipment of refurbished computers and office furniture has just arrived in Togo after an eight week voyage. The recycled equipment was refurbished by UWE student volunteers. The equipment is now being installed in 2 internet cafés in Lomé, the Togolese capital. Both internet […]
We have some really talented people volunteering at Bristol Wireless. One of them is Jules, our treasurer. Jules got really frustrated at the lack of a decent accounts package for Linux. There is GNUCash of course, which we’ve reviewed in the past, and KMyMoney. However, neither of these is really up for doing a proper […]
North Somerset Council – Bristol’s immediate neighbour to the south – has announced that free wi-fi will be available in almost every library across North Somerset from 1st August. This will allow library users (not ‘customers’, as stated in your press release, North Somerset! Ed.) to bring their own laptops and other devices into their […]
Earlier this week the Prime Minister was making a lot of noise in the press and elsewhere about filtering the internet (under the dubious cover of protecting children. Ed.). His pronouncements have been met with almost universal condemnation from anyone with a bit of technical knowledge, as well as those concerned with online freedom, including […]
The use of graphene in telecommunications could dramatically accelerate internet speeds by up to a hundred times, according to new research by scientists in Bath University’s Department of Physics. In a paper published in Physical Review Letters, researchers from the Centre for Graphene Science at the Universities of Bath and Exeter have demonstrated for the […]
In an article published yesterday, The Guardian describes how Microsoft is actively cooperating with the USA’s NSA. According to the article, Microsoft is providing the NSA with broad access to the communications of anyone using the company’s services, as follows: Microsoft gives the NSA access to encrypted mails on Hotmail, Live.com and Outlook.com, as well […]
At the end of last week, The Document Foundation blog announced the call for papers for the 2013 LibreOffice Conference, which will be held from 25th to 27th September at the Department of Computer Science of Milan State University in Italy. The Document Foundation is inviting members and volunteers to submit proposals for papers and […]
Following recent revelations about massive extent of telecommunications and internet traffic surveillance carried on by the USA’s NSA and the UK’s GCHQ (news passim), revelations have now emerged in Le Monde, one of France’s leading national newspapers. In a post today entitled “Revelations about the French Big Brother”, Le Monde reveals that France has a […]
The British National Archives announced last week that it has released version 2.0 of the Open Government Licence (OGL) following consultation on how the licence could be developed further to reflect new and emerging thinking on the licensing of public sector information. The OGL is an open licence allowing information to be used and re-used […]
A study of emails carried out between 1st and 30th June 2013 and covering 200,000 mail accounts generating 8.5 mn. emails a day has revealed that over 80% of email traffic is spam and only 9% is legitimate traffic, according to today’s Le Monde Informatique. The study’s authors – email security specialists Vade Retro – […]
The Bank of England recently announced that social and prison reformer Elizabeth Fry, who currently graces the English five pound note, is to be replaced by Sir Winston Churchill, leaving Elizabeth Windsor as the only woman shown on an English bank note – and that’s merely due to an accident of birth. Since the announcement, […]
Dr Martin Poulter, Senior Web Developer for Bristol University’s Economics Network and New Media Manager for the Children of the 90s project, has been appointed Jisc-Wikimedia Ambassador to facilitate a project to bring the academic world and Wikipedia closer together. Based at the University of Bristol, this joint project between UK education charity Jisc, which […]
The Senate and the National Assembly, the two houses of the French parliament, have agreed to make free software a priority for education, according to Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news website. This Wednesday last the National Assembly confirmed a proposal by the Senate urging higher education institutions to give preference to free […]
Have you ever heard of Socmint? No? Neither had we until reading a report posted yesterday on Wired.co.uk. Socmint is an abbreviation of Social Media Intelligence and is a unit within the Metropolitan Police that has been conducting blanket surveillance of British citizens’ public social media conversations for the past 2 years. During this time […]
Le Monde Informatique reports that the Mozilla Foundation has published a shoot ’em up game – BananaBread – to demonstrate the capabilities of its Javascript libraries. If it works in Mozilla’s Firefox browser, all Javascript-compatible browsers are affected by these developments. No plug-in needs to be downloaded since everything is implemented in the browser. The […]
As an organisation, Bristol Wireless has been closely involved in campaigning against the UK government’s plans for mass communications surveillance under the Communications Data Bill, also known as the “Snooper’s Charter” by its opponents (news passim). It now appears that all this work might have been in vain. Amongst the revelations that have come to […]
In the midst of all the recent revelations about the US National Security Agency’s Prism surveillance programme and GCHQ’s Tempora snooping on telecommunications and internet traffic, comes a small but welcome bit of good news. the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a controversial Australian government data retention scheme that would have required Australians’ internet and […]
With the migration from MS Office to LibreOffice, public sector organisations in Italy’s mostly German-speaking South Tyrol region are making their first major steps towards using freien software. Over the coming 3 years, will convert 7,000 PC workstations and thus save some €600,000 in licensing fees. Free software gained entry to Italian public sector organisations […]
The Connect Lockleaze project is being widely recognised for its achievements in helping people who do not have online access to vital services. The project brings together UWE Bristol, Hewlett-Packard (HP), the Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust (LNT), Lockleaze Primary School and Early Years Centre and the North Bristol Advice Centre (NBAC). It has created three state-of-the-art […]
Yesterday Bristol Wireless held its Annual General Meeting (news passim). About 10 members attended along with 2 guests. Part of the proceedings inevitably included the election of the committee and we’re very pleased to announce that Linda Bell has agreed to be our Chair. Linda has been a Bristol Wireless member for many years and […]