Chief scribe
There’s been lots of CiviCRM activity in the chief scribe’s inbox concerning CiviCRM, the open source customer relationship package used by Bristol Wireless, including the anonymous email below from someone called CiviCRM Info. I am emailing to let you know about the next London CiviCRM meet-up on Wednesday 28th November. We’ve run some really successful […]
News arrives via Sean Kenny of Circle Interactive that a CiviCRM user and administrator training session is to be held in Bristol on Tuesday, 11th December from 9.30 am to 5.30 pm at the Create Centre, Smeaton Road, BS1 6XN (map). This is being promoted as a comprehensive one day hands on training course covering […]
Today the Times of India reports that a study on the use of free and open source software in e-governance is to be jointly conducted by the International Centre for Free and Open Source Software (ICFOSS) of Trivandrum in Kerala and the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) in Bangalore, Karnataka. The study, which is planned […]
Bernama.com, the Malaysian national news agency, reports that the Malaysian Administrative Modernisation and Management Planning Unit’s (MAMPU) Open Source Competency Centre (OSCC) is organising the Malaysian Government Open Source Software Conference (MyGOSSCON) 2012 on 26th and 27th November 2012. The OSCC has been leading the implementation of open source software in Malaysian public sector organisations […]
The Open Rights Group is jointly hosting an event on the Communications Data Bill with Index on Censorship in London from 2.00 pm to 6.00 pm on Saturday, November 24 2012. The venue is the Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R (map). This event will gather campaigners and activists to explore and explain […]
Debian is a great Linux distribution. Indeed, besides being a distribution in its own right, it acts as the foundation for the very popular Ubuntu distro and countless others. Here at Bristol Wireless, we’ve been using Debian for as long as the chief scribe can remember. The Debian Project is now in the final stages […]
Regular readers will recall that some time ago Bristol Wireless wrote to its local MP, Dawn Primarolo about the draft Communications Data Bill, aka the Snooper’s Charter (news passim). We have now received a reply from Dawn, which states the following: Thank you very much for your letter in connection with the draft Communications Data […]
CodeWeavers, Inc., the developers of CrossOver, which enables users to run Windows software on Linux and Mac, is having a giveaway today, 31st October 2012. For one day only, CodeWeavers is giving away CrossOver with 12 months’ free support and product upgrades. If you’d like to take advantage of this offer, point your browser at […]
The following email has been received today in the lab from the privacy and anti-censorship campaigners, the Open Rights Group (ORG): Hi all, As I mentioned in my previous email ORG are launching a big drive for new members. The plan is to launch our campaign to fund a Legal Officer on Thursday 1st of […]
Last Friday saw the launch of Windows 8, the latest “best Windows ever” (not again; isn’t that marketing slogan getting rather hackneyed after nearly 20 years? Ed.) release from the Beast of Redmond, backed by a marketing budget rumoured to be $1.5-1.8 bn. However, the launch was not without its problems for MS, as reported […]
In Switzerland open source use is extensive and could make even greater costs savings possible. This is one of the findings of the Swiss Open Source Study 2012 (Open Source Studie Schweiz 2012), which has now been published, Germany’s Linux-Magazin reports. The study states that, of the 200 companies and public sector bodies surveyed, 93% […]
Wikimedia UK, the charity that supports the work of Wikipedia and its sister projects in the UK, is organising an editathon this week for Black History Month in conjunction with University College London’s Equiano Centre. The event will be held on Friday 26 October from 2 pm to 6 pm in UCL’s Geography Department in […]
In terms of world history, not a lot happens on remote Saint Helena. According to Wikipedia, St Helena “is one of the most isolated places in the world, located in the South Atlantic Ocean more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) from the nearest major landmass. The nearest port on the continent is Namibe in Southern […]
Whilst an ever increasing number of countries is deciding to give free software priority in public sector projects, an open source courts package is currently taking flak in Switzerland according to Germany’s Linux-Magazin. Some years ago the Swiss Federal Court developed a program called Open Justitia which assists in inquiries into court decisions. As a […]
It’s always encouraging to see some good open source advocacy and Namibia’s Elizabeth Asino-Joseph doesn’t disappoint with a recent piece on Namibia’s New Era news website. There’s a great justification in the opening paragraph, which reads: Namibia has limited resources to carry out government programs such as computerizing schools, providing universal access to information technology […]
Before we start, let’s be honest. All operating systems have their annoyances. Linux is no exception to this. However, given the foibles of the suppliers of all the Linux distributions, available, the annoyances are likely to vary from distro to distro. Last Thursday Canonical launched the latest version (numbered 12.10) of its popular Ubuntu distribution. […]
Open source services provider Sirius Corporation has revealed today it has been working with Powys County Council to introduce a combination of Open Source and proprietary software at the newly refurbished Ysgol Maesydderwen secondary school in Ystradgynlais, near Swansea. The project, which has been funded by the council, involved the installation of a complete infrastructure […]
News has just arrived in the lab via our IRC channel that Bails, one of our long-standing volunteers and his partner Nurçan have had a baby girl weighing in at 3.12 kg (or 6 lbs 14 oz in old money. Ed.). This happy event was announced by us on Twitter as follows: congratulations BW volunteer […]
Today, 16th October is Ada Lovelace Day, which is a worldwide event about sharing stories of women — whether engineers, scientists, technologists or mathematicians and has the aim is to create new role models for girls and women in these male-dominated fields by raising the profile of other women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics […]
Although the favourite tipple (outside working hours of course! Ed.) of our regular volunteers is cider, we do have a couple – notably Messrs Treasurer and Secretary – who are fond of beer and real ale in particular. Consequently we were intrigued when Phoronix reported that beer and open source are being combined in GBeers […]