Last week Bristol Wireless indulged in some internal training – something we haven’t done for a couple of years. Ably led by Ben Green and Julien Weston, Bristol Wireless volunteers are now more familiar with the ins and outs of Linux system administration, MySQL, the Puppet configuration management tool, vserver environments and web services, to […]
According to German technology news website Heise, news is emerging on discussion and support forums of graphics problems when updating from Ubuntu 13.04 to the latest version – Ubuntu 13.10. Users are reporting graphics problems in the form of a black screen. The problem most affects systems with AMD graphics cards if the proprietary AMD […]
We’ve had an email from Sean Kenny of Circle Interactive informing us of some forthcoming training for CiviCRM, the free and open source CRM used by Bristol Wireless. Sean’s email says: Now London CiviCON 2013 is behind us and we’ve recovered from an exhilarating two days we’ve got some up and coming training in Bristol […]
Distro Astro is a Linux distribution based on Ubuntu/Linux Mint which aims to cover the requirements of astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts. The project has announced the release of version 1.0.2 of its distribution, codenamed Ceres. Distro Astro has features for almost all astronomy uses — from observatories, planetariums – and for all users from professional […]
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 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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Yesterday, the Bristol Wireless members of the production crew returned to Bristol from this year’s Barncamp event (the fifth that has been organised. Ed.) after clearing out all the kit. Barncamp is a joint event organised by HacktionLab, Bristol Wireless and FLOSS Manuals, and has been described by our friend Charlie as follows: …hanging out […]
News has just arrived via email that registration for the Bristol IT Megameet (news passim) on 1st June has now been extended until Friday 24th May. To quote from the email: Although we currently have over 250 people registered, with the very recent addition of a couple more sponsors, we are now able to take […]
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 […]
Wikimedia Commons is a great resource: nearly 17 mn. freely usable media files that anyone can use for any purpose and to which anyone can contribute too! Contributing to Wikimedia Commons is also getting easier: it’s now possible to transfer images to the Commons database from an Android or iOS smartphone using a free and […]
On 27th April the administrative court of Almada, Portugal, declared a €550,000 contract between Microsoft and the Municipality of Almada to be illegal. The technical specifications of the competition launched by the municipality prevented any company other than Microsoft and their partners from submitting a bid. This ruling is especially significant as it clarifies that […]
The H Online reminds us that 20 years ago CERN in Geneva gave Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau official permission to release the libwww library free of charge, according to Berners-Lee, “to create a server or a browser, to give it away or sell it, without any royalty or other constraint”. Since then this act […]