I was reminded today by a fellow labrat that there’s only one month to go to the next Adventure in Technology – Techadventure for short, as mentioned here last autumn (news passim). “An Adventure in Technology” is a party which will be held on the 28th February at the Trinity Centre in Bristol (map). Doors […]
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 […]
This coming Tuesday 20th January is Penguin Awareness Day (hat tip: Kerry McCarthy). Why is a tech news site so concerned about aquatic, flightless birds you may ask? Anybody familiar with Linux will be aware of the existence of a character called Tux, the mascot of the Linux kernel and a penguin to boot (should […]
When I saw that as the subject line in an email we’ve received, I thought it was a great way to open a testimonial to Linux. Last week we had a visitor in the lab who bought one of our splendid £30 computers. Normally, we don’t hear from our customers: the machines just keep running […]
The time: first thing on Monday morning this week (Groan! Ed.). The place: outside the Watershed by Bristol’s historic docks, where Rich Higgs and yer ‘umble scribe found ourselves unloading a car full of stuff – a refurbished £30 computer, the Bristol Wireless banner, blank CDs, literature, etc. – to haul inside for the South […]
On the morning of Saturday 29th five Bristol Wireless members arrived at the Red Factory social centre off Portland Square, Bristol armed with one of our mobile LTSP servers, 3 of our posher LTSP client laptops, one of our 30 quid Linux PCs and some bumf about free software and BW to assist in the […]
Yesterday the Bristol Wireless lab was graced by a visit from Ronnie Corbett – the real one that is, not the wee comic… 😉 Anyway, avid readers of BW News will remember that Ronnie was the warden at Princess Royal Gardens (news passim). He’s now retired from wardening duties for Bristol City Council, but is […]
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 […]
Our old friend Shevek has just given the first notice of the next Adventure in Technology will be returning again early in 2009. Writing from the other side of the Atlantic, Shevek posted the message below yesterday to the BBLUG mailing list: Hi, We are holding the next episode of our festival of creative technology […]
Every now and again one’s previous work comes back up again to haunt – just like the previous night’s dodgy takeaway meal. This has just happened to Bails, one of Bristol Wireless’ longest serving volunteers, who yesterday posted the following message to the BW mailing list: Last year I was requested to put together an […]
Over the last few weeks Bristol Wireless volunteers have been installing seven LTSP workstations for public use in the foyer of Easton Community Centre in Kilburn Street. In keeping with our greener credentials, the Compaq workstations (also known as clients. Ed.) run on minimal power, having no moving parts such as hard disks and optical […]
Bristol Wireless volunteer Acesabe is currently doing the final installation and configuration of a laptop due to go out to Palestine in the near future through the good offices of Bristol Computers For Palestine, who are currently raising funds for computers for educational and community use in the West Bank. The machine itself is a […]
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 […]
Last night our friends at Trinity Community Arts (aka 3ca) held their first computer give-away for people who’d successfully completed their music technology course. It also marked the release into the wild of the first public version of Trubuntu (codenamed 0.2), Trinity’s custom edition of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution. While waiting for their machines, […]
On Tuesday 30th September, the Bristol branch of the British Computer Society (BCS) is hosting a talk from Gavin Beckett, ICT Strategy Manager at Bristol City Council, entitled ‘Using Open Source and Open Standards to Enable Transformational Government’. Transformational Government is intended to be an intensive, structural and fundamental change in the operational processes of […]
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 […]
Stephen Fry, well-known modern renaissance man, TV and radio personality and lesser known free software advocate, has produced a video to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the foundation of the GNU Project by Richard Stallman. In the video, Fry explains why free software (as used by Bristol Wireless. Ed.) is important, both to him and […]
In case you hadn’t heard, last weekend saw the climax of this year’s Climate Camp near Kingsnorth, Kent. Bristol Wireless was in attendance, providing kit and tech support for the Be The Media centre, including Camp Radio (archive here). As usual, the event was powered by renewable energy: indeed, as can be seen below, the […]
ITPro reports that pre-installed Linux has arrived on the mass market and is growing rapidly, according to new market research. Figures from market researcher Context show that, based on sales of PCs shipped with a pre-installed operating system in the UK over the past 18 months through traditional distribution channels, Linux could only claim a […]
Even though it’s the height of summer and we really should be out enjoying the sunshine (like our network engineer who’s actually getting to achieve his ambition of combining tech with festivals 😉 ), work continues apace in the lab in the Burg. One noticeable change is how much cooler it is in the lab […]