Tech | Steve Woods

An open source framework for the “internet of things”

11/12/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

Today’s Le Monde Informatique reports that the AllSeen Alliance, an umbrella group for major consumer electronics manufacturers, is working on an open source framework with which it will be possible to connect almost anything to the internet.

Household electrical goods, cars and computers could soon communicate with each other thanks to an open source framework developed by the AllSeen Alliance with the support of the Linux Foundation. This group of major consumer electronics manufacturers includes Cisco, D-Link, Haier, LG Electronics, Qualcomm, Panasonic and Sharp. According to the Linux Foundation, “the framework, originally developed by Qualcomm under the name of the AllJoyn Project, will enable different systems to see each other, to connect and to interact transparently, irrespective of their manufacturer or the operating system they use”. Members of the alliance will contribute to the framework by providing engineering resources and software resources to enable developers, manufacturers and suppliers to provide interoperable services and devices. “Qualcomm has contributed to the AllJoyn code under the aegis of the AllSeen Alliance. This will hold the copyright, offering the project a broader reach,” said Jim Zemlin, Executive Director of the Linux Foundation. “The open source community can also contribute to this code,” he added.

The framework runs on Linux, Android, iOS, Windows and other OS variants involved. “Developers can download the code already and find details of APIs using the reference source allseenalliance.org and start working,” the Foundation announced. “Once APIs comprising an interoperability layer are supplied to the open source community, it will be possible to graft all sorts of services onto them,” Zemlin stated in an email. For example, the framework could enable users to play music easily because there are various wireless loudspeakers nearby. “Today this would be difficult because the majority of consumers have audio systems from different manufacturers, they store their music on various media and use different cloud storage services,” Zemlin explained. “This framework will therefore enable easy playing of music on compatible loudspeakers near these sources,” he added. “Engineers are already at work writing this code and implementing it in existing products. We are expecting several announcements of this type at the next CES (7th -10th January 2014), ” he stated.

A truly universal framework

The framework could also be used to enable a domestic electrical system to turn of a home’s heating system when the house is empty and thus contribute to reducing household energy bills. “Such a system could be adapted to different scenarios; for example, to put household equipment on standby when its occupants are out and turn them on gradually before their return,” Zemlin declared. “The same system could enable the family car to be detected when it’s a mile away, switch on the lights and start up the heating or even open the garage door automatically when the car is approaching,” he added. “All these communications could work with existing transmission technologies – wifi, Bluetooth – and future ones, such as those based on radio waves,” Zemlin also stated.

The AllSeen Alliance is the Linux Foundation’s 11th collaborative project. “As companies create more products integrating this code, the developer community devoting time to extending and improving this code will grow, just like what happened with other projects based on Linux or OpenStack,” Zemlin stated.
USL Umbria 1 migrates 300 workstations to LibreOffice

06/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

Italian regional health organisation USL Umbria 1 has completed the first phase of its migration to Libre Office, Libre Umbria reports.

USL Umbria 1’s territory includes the districts of Perugia, Assisi, Trasimeno, the middle and upper Tiber valley and the upper Chiasco valley (the Chiasco is a tributary of the Tiber. Ed.).

LibreOffice start centre

After some two months from the start of the migration, USL Umbria 1 has already converted 300 stations from running proprietary office suites to LibreOffice and is scheduled to migrate the rest of its PC pool within the next few months.

In parallel with the LibreOffice installation, users are being offered training in the new software; those who’ve already been switched to the open source office suite should complete their training by the end of the year.

In the opinion of the LibreUmbria project, USL Umbria 1 is a good example of how it is possible for public sector organisations to adopt free and open source software.
Phishing email deceives WordPress administrators

06/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

Germany’s Heise Online reports that security firm Sucuri is warning of a wave of phishing emails intended to trick WordPress administrators into installing a plug-in which serves up malware to site visitors. The email ostensibly offers site administrators the Pro version of the popular All in One SEO Pack plug-in free of charge.

However, anyone clicking on the email’s download link isn’t taken to the official WordPress plug-in page, but to a spammer-infested domain in Australia (.com.au) or Brazil (.com.br). At least administrators should be taken aback by now! According to Sucuri, some of their customers have nevertheless actually installed the malicious plug-in. This results in the malicious code opening a backdoor on the server giving the attackers full access and replacing the infected blog’s index.php file.

Once installed, the criminals behind the fake plug-in can insert any code they like into their victim’s website and attempt to attack visitors’ computers. Several versions of the malicious plug-in relay visitors to pornography site or other servers which also attempt to install malware on victims’ computers.

Due to its widespread use, WordPress is a favourite target for hackers who attempt to misuse others’ websites for spam distribution or for DDoS attacks. There was such a DDoS attack recently on a forum in which thousands of legitimate WordPress sites were misused as part of the attack wave without the knowledge of their owners.
LibreOffice 4.2 international bug hunting session announced

05/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

The Document Foundation, the non-profit organisation behind the free and open source LibreOffice productivity suite, announced earlier today that the LibreOffice 4.2 International Bug Hunting Session will start on 6th December and end on 8th December. During the three days, volunteers from all over the world will test the beta of LibreOffice 4.2 to find bugs and regressions.

LibreOffice 4.2 will be released at the end of January 2014 with a large number of new features and loads of fixed bugs. See the release notes for more details. The community is working to make this major release the finest in the history of the free office suite.

In order to join the bug hunting session, volunteers should download LibreOffice 4.2 Beta 2 from http://www.libreoffice.org/download/pre-releases/.

Mentors will be available at least from 08:00 UTC to 22:00 UTC and will be reachable through IRC (irc://chat.freenode.net/libreoffice-qa) and the QA mailing list (libreoffice-qa@freedesktop.org).

Other information on the LibreOffice 4.2 International Bug Hunting Session can be found on the Document Foundation wiki.
Supercomputer app store being developed

02/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

Today’s Le Monde Informatique asks how the world of high-powered computing (HPC) can be reconciled with the needs of companies as regards simulation and modelling. An American research centre is working of the creation of an app store to provide dedicated applications.

The major problem for supercomputers is that companies are not benefiting from this technology. The modelling and simulation tools based on supercomputer processing could enable companies to create and test prototypes in virtual environments. However, the licence fees required for simulating wind tunnels, furnaces, welding and other processes are expensive. Furthermore, these solutions require multi-core systems and qualified engineers to use them. The solution is to take a HPC treatment and convert it into an application.

Blue Mountain supercomputer. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

The Ohio Supercomputer Center (OSC) is working on this via a programme called AweSim. An investment of US $ 6.5 mn. has been made by the US government and private companies such as Procter & Gamble to create an App Store. This should open at the end of the first quarter of 2014 with one application and several web-based tools. The AweSim programme has the ultimate aim of becoming a business and bringing together thousands of applications.

Reducing costs and resorting to open source tools

Tom Lange, Procter & Gamble’s Director of Modelling and Simulation states that these solutions will serve as the group’s logistics. He explains that traditionally, “the software industry is based on the sale of licences which can cost $50,000 dollars per year for an HPC application. This price is beyond the reach of small businesses which are not interested in temporary use”.

AweSim will use open source HPC tools in its applications and is working on partnerships with major HPC software suppliers to make some of their solutions available in the form of applications. OCS is also working on a development kit so that other centres with supercomputers can supply applications. Programme Director Alan Chalker explains how this may work. A vehicle manufacturer wants to produce a solution to reduce the wind resistance of an 18 wheel truck. He will be able to download a CAD file, refine some parameter, click to launch it and use 128 cores out of the OCS supercomputer’s 8,500. The final cost will be US $200-500 for one hour of processing by over 6,000 CPUs. It will take 48 hours to simulate the process and report the results. A test in an actual wind tunnel can cost up to US $100,000.
Greens/EFA urge greater FOSS use in European Parliament

02/12/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

Joinup, the EU’s open source public sector news website, reports today that the European Parliament’s Greens/EFA Group is urging the European Parliament to make an earnest attempt to using free and open source software. In a letter to EP President Martin Schulz (PDF), which was released last week Friday, the group links free software and open standards to the Parliament’s transparency obligations.

The text of the letter is reproduced below.

Sir,

Thank you very much for your reply to our letter of 10 July 2013 regarding Free Software and Open Standards in the European Parliament, further to the Decision on discharge in respect of the implementation of the general budget of the European Union for the financial years 2010 and 2011.

We are very happy to have received the first, and ground-breaking, report on the matter, but we kindly remind you to ensure that the study is completed as well, as requested in the European Parliament resolutions of 10 May 2012 and 17 April 2013, on Parliament’s obligations, in particular under Rule 103 of its Rules of Procedure, with regard to Free Software and Open Standards.

We have commissioned a second opinion on the report to better understand how we can contribute to the Parliament’s efforts in this field. Please find it attached. The opinion concludes that a study on Parliament’s transparency obligations under Rule 103 vis-à-vis its ICT-policies would “result in recommendations to what extent the use of FOSS and open standards is critical to adhere to these principles as a whole”.

We believe that if, as the opinion suggests, these recommendations were to follow from the Rules of Procedure, it would serve the Parliament well to develop them.

Thank you for taking immediate action to remedy the situation.

Yours faithfully,

(signed)
Rebecca Harms

(signed)

Daniel Cohn-Bendit

Co-Presidents
Greens/EFA Group in the European Parliament

No political organisation seems to be complete without a modicum of hypocrisy. In this instance, despite the Greens/EFA’s avowed espousal of free and open source software and open standards, readers may be interested to know that the PDF version of the letter was produced using the proprietary Nitro Pro PDF production software, which runs exclusively on the Windows operating system. 😉
More wifi on Bristol’s buses

28/11/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Tech

Some time ago, FirstBus, Bristol’s major bus operator, introduced free wifi on its services nos. 8 and 9 (news passim).

Never mind the fares, at least the wifi’s free!

Today the Bristol Post reports that there’s to be a large scale expansion of free wifi for Bristol’s bus passengers, starting next month.

Written by the Post’s business correspondent, Michael Ribbeck, the article states:

Free wifi has already been introduced on the 8 and 9 routes in the city on a trial basis but is being rolled out across Bristol throughout December.

Fellow operator Wessex is also offering free wifi to its customers and is looking to have most of its buses connected to the internet by the end of the year.

A spokesman for First stated: “We are currently in the process of installing wifi on the majority of our vehicles in the West of England. We fully expect that this work will be completed by Christmas and that all the vehicles that regularly travel in and out of Bristol, in addition to a number of vehicles that are used elsewhere, will offer our customers access to free wifi by the New Year.”

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.
Polish school finds Ubuntu PCs “faster and cheaper”

27/11/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, reports that the Zolnierzy Sybiru high school in the Polish city of Lubawka has converted 11 of its PCs to run Ubuntu Linux.

The 11 machines are shared by 55 pupils and the conversion took place at the instigation of one of the school’s teachers.

The switch has made the PCs run faster and there have been savings on Windows and other proprietary software licences too, according to FWiOO, the Polish foundation for Free and Open Source Software.

The 11 PCs in question were bought in 2005 with funds from the Ministry of Education and previously ran Windows XP. In September the PCs were converted Ubuntu Linux.

In September a brief report (Polish) summarising the high school’s switch to Ubuntu Linux was published.

The pupils store their data in a free cloud solution offered by Canonical, the firm behind Ubuntu Linux.

“By using Ubuntu, these computers run faster and more reliably”, FWiOO notes.
Linux: suitable for business and personal use

11/11/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

The Netherlands’ Nationaal Cyber Security Centrum (NCSC), part of the Dutch Ministry of Justice, has recently published a fact sheet (PDF) about Microsoft’s impending withdrawal of support for its ancient Windows XP operating system.

The fact sheet urges users to switch to more modern operating systems as alternatives, but also says some interesting things about Linux, for example:

Newer versions of Windows, such as Windows 7 are 8, are still well supported. The same is true of Linux-based operating systems like Ubuntu and Red Hat.

When it comes to operating system updates and suitable uses for operating systems, the NCSC remarks as follows:

In addition to the newer versions of Windows, there are other operating systems which are also regularly provided with updates. There are various Linux distributions which are suitable for personal and business use. Ubuntu and Red Hat are two popular examples of these. It is also possible to replace the computer itself, or you could also choose a computer with a Mac OS X operating system. These are supplied and supported by Apple. Even older versions of Mac OS X or Linux-based systems reach the “end of life” status from time to time. It is therefore also important for users of these operating systems to use a current version.

The NCSC’s main target groups for this working paper are the Netherlands’ ministries, national government councils and service organisations, Joinup reports.
Face recognition advertising – sign the petition

04/11/2013 Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

News broke yesterday that supermarket giant Tesco is set to install hi-tech screens that scan customers’ faces in petrol stations so that they can be fed targeted advertising. The screens will be provided by Amscreen, whose chief executive seems to think that implementing a system like “something out of Minority Report“, the dystopian science fiction film, is something of which to be proud. ( Here’s a hint for Alan Sugar’s son: that’s like recommending Nineteen Eighty-Four as a blueprint for running the United Kingdom. Ed.)

It isn’t. What is being proposed is a gross intrusion of privacy and an affront to dignity.

Naturally, this has caused a storm of outrage on social media.

Every little helps?

However, it’s not just Tesco that’s planning this. Some parts of the UK’s healthcare sector are also planning to implement it.

Fortunately, someone with some gumption and a great regard for their own and others’ privacy has set up a petition on the government’s e-petition website. The petition reads as follows:

Face recognition software is about to be used to see what adverts you are looking at. It recognises your gender, age and will be used in GP surgeries, hospitals, dentists whilst you wait for your appointment and other public areas. This is a complete invasion of privacy.

Sign the petition.

Finally, let’s not forget how George Orwell described advertising in 1936 in Keep the Aspidistra Flying:

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket.

A truly universal framework

Reducing costs and resorting to open source tools

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