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Category Archives: International IT News

News from around the world

US govt. urged to use open source

BBC Technology reports that Scott McNealy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, is preparing a paper on the use of open source software for the new US administration. “It’s intuitively obvious open source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software,” he said, adding, “Open source does not require you to pay a penny to […]

Helping our dear IE users

The sad plight of our dear friends the Internet Explorer user base has come to our attention. Apparently a serious security flaw in version 7 of their flagship web browser and according to the BBC, the seriousness of the problem means that security experts are advising users to switch to another browser until the issue […]

Free software equals sovereignty? Stallman speaks

Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project, was recently interviewed by Rosalie Marshall of Australia’s IT news and gave the following intriguing response when asked: “Do you think public authorities should be leading the way with free software?” Every public agency has a duty to maintain its control over its computing, as a matter of […]

Venezuela buys 1 mn. Linux laptops

The BBC reports that, as part of a $3bn (£1.66bn) bilateral trade deal with Portugal, it will be buying one million low-cost laptops for its schoolchildren. Portugal is manufacturing the blue and white laptops under licence from Intel and the machines are broadly based on the design of Intel’s Classmate computer, which will also sport […]

Quebec Government in the dock for ignoring open source

FACIL, a Canadian voluntary organisation that promotes free and open source software, has filed a suit with the Quebec Superior Court against the Quebec Provincial Government. The suit was filed on 15th July and has come to light during the last week. FACIL alleges that the provincial government has refused to consider competitive bids from […]

A new use for Tetrapak – a waveguide antenna

In its early days, Bristol Wireless relied heavily on ‘homebrew’ equipment, such as the whisky tin wifi antenna (cantenna), some of which has survived very well (news passim). We were therefore very interested to hear that, at the recent hackerspace.net 08 festival in Paris, Benjamin Henrion from Belgium’s Reseau citoyen.be was presenting a waveguide antenna […]

OpenWrt announces OpenWrt Kamikaze 808 Release

Bristol Wireless has been using OpenWrt for some time now for its network infrastructure. We’re very pleased to learn from our friends at the Freifunk blog that the OpenWrt team has announced the release of its latest version, named Kamikaze 808. The release schedule is as follows: Last day in July – final release candidate: […]

Russia to monitor wi-fi use

Australia’s Computerworld reports that Rossvyazokhrankultura, the Russian Mass Media, Communications and Cultural Protection Service, has a draconian-sounding policy of registration being required for every wi-fi device and hotspot in the country, according to a report this week from Russian news agency Fontanka. Vladimir Karpov, the deputy director of the agency’s communications monitoring division, said that […]

The white rabbit vanishes

Easterhegg 2008 in Cologne has now vanished, like the rabbit down the hole in Alice in Wonderland and – besides the souvenir mug and T-shirt – what’s left besides memories? I hope to try and answer that question.    It’s been a wonderful long Easter weekend in the Rhineland, including the unexpected sight of snow […]

We’re supporting Document Freedom Day, are you?

It’s just over a week to go to Document Freedom Day on 26th March and Bristol Wireless’ promotional pack – full of stickers, leaflets and a flag – has been received safely from the Free Software Foundation Europe (thanks 🙂 ). Here at Bristol Wireless, we’ve worked since our creation with open standards and are […]