Chris, one of our Bristol volunteers, has been blind since childhood and uses the Vimux distro for the visually impaired, coupled with the Orca screen reader for the GNOME desktop, so he’ll no doubt be very pleased to hear that a new release for Orca is imminent. According to Softpedia, is now at the Beta […]
The release schedule for Ubuntu 14.04 – the next long term support (LTS) release of this popular Linux distribution – has been published on the Ubuntu wiki. According to the schedule, Ubuntu 14.04 LTS should be released in mid-April 2014 after going through the alpha, beta and release candidate stages. Bristol Wireless recommends Ubuntu as […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Yesterday, in the final stage of the EU approval process, the European Parliament formally adopted updated EU rules on the re-use of public sector information. The Council of Ministers had already agreed to the new rules at last week’s Telecoms Council. European Commission Vice-President Neelie Kroes said: “Today we can celebrate our efforts to bring […]
The Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) reports that on 7th June the German Parliament (Bundestag) passed a joint motion to limit software patents (PDF, German). The Bundestag is urging the German Government to take steps to limit the granting of patents on computer programs. Software should be covered exclusively by copyright and the rights of […]
This Saturday 15th June a Raspberry Pi boot camp will be taking place at At-Bristol, Anchor Road, Bristol BS1 5DB (map) from 10.30 am to 4.30 pm. Entry to the event is free, but does not include access to the exhibits of At-Bristol. The event aims to provide fun hands-on workshops for beginners through to […]
On Wednesday this week the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) filed a formal objection to the inclusion of digital rights management (DRM) in HTML5, arguing that a draft proposal from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) could stymie Web innovation and block access to content for people across the globe. The W3C’s HTML working group is […]
Next month on the weekend from Friday 7th to Sunday 9th, BarnCamp 2013 – a weekend of hacktivism, workshops, entertainment, politics and fun in the sun – will be taking place. BarnCamp is three days of workshops, discussions, demos and practical how-to sessions looking at how technology can be useful (and dangerous) for campaigners, community […]
On Thursday 23rd May, Bristol once again plays host to a South West meet-up for people who are interested in, using or developing for CiviCRM, the free and open source customer relationship manager package (as used by Bristol Wireless! Ed.). As with previous meet-ups, this next one will be held between 4.00 pm and 6.00 […]
On Saturday 1st June, UWE will be hosting the 2nd Bristol IT MegaMeet on its Frenchay Campus at Coldharbour Lane Bristol BS16 1QY (map). The event itself will be taking place in Rooms 2Q42 to 2Q50 in Q Block; more direction details and maps here. The event starts with a brew at 9.30 am, with […]
Some time ago we drew attention to the possible eavesdropping problems in using Skype, which is now owned by Microsoft (news passim). This has now been confirmed by German technology news website, Heise. Anyone who uses Skype, has agreed that Skype may also read too. Heise Security has found out that Microsoft actually avails itself […]
Laptops for crew use on the International Space Station (ISS) are being migrated from Windows to Linux, the Linux Foundation reports. The reason for the migration, given by Keith Chuvala of United Space Alliance, a NASA contractor deeply involved in Space Shuttle and ISS operations was as follows: We migrated key functions from Windows to […]
The W3C, the organisation responsible for web standards (which have so far been open standards. Ed.), has taken a step away from openness now that the HTML Working Group has announced their decision to release a First Public Working Draft of the Encrypted Media Extension (EME) specification and a statement has also been released by […]