Tech | Steve Woods

GNU Make 4 released

10/10/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

The GNU Project has announced the release of version 4 of GNU Make, the software’s latest stable version.

Make is a utility that automatically builds executable programs and libraries from source code by reading files called makefiles which specify how to derive the target program.

This latest version provides support for Guile integration as an embedded scripting language for makefiles, as well as other new features and many bug fixes and performance improvements. There are also some backward-incompatibilities.

Potential users are advised to read the NEWS file that comes with the GNU make distribution for complete details on changes visible to the user.

Make can be downloaded from http://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/make/.
Linux for Astronomers

08/10/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

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 researchers to astro-photographers and amateur enthusiasts; and that’s why it’s called Linux for Astronomers. The project’s website has a full review of Distro Astro’s features.

Distro Astro’s ISO (size: 1.9 GB) can be downloaded from South Common Observatory in East Sussex.
Bristol Post Balls – the vampire article

06/10/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Tech

Vampires are a mainstay of horror films. Seemingly dead, they rise again unbidden under the right circumstances – usually nightfall – to carry on their (non-)existence.

The press equivalent of the vampire is the story which is initially posted online, only to be deleted (with its expectant reader served up a 404 error page instead. Ed.) and then reappear at a later date.

This happened with the Bristol Post story featured in the screenshot below.

Controversial or what? The Bristol Post’s latest vampire article

This story originally appeared online first thing on Friday morning, only to be pulled a couple of hours later. It has now risen from the dead bearing a Sunday timestamp.

Why was it pulled in the first place, some may be wondering, particularly as it seems like a fairly innocuous tale of an elderly gentleman moaning about parking and especially since those with an intimate knowledge of the Bristol Post will be well aware of its passion for the motor car and all matters motoring.

Indeed, still on all things motoring, the only matter upon which the Post has not offered fawning support to Bristol’s elected mayor George Ferguson is the red-trousered one’s plans to introduce Residents’ Parking Zones, which the paper and its readers have attacked with gusto. One would have thought that George was proposing a murder of first-born children not some modest proposals to counter the dominance of the motor car in our urban environment.

Whether vampire stories feed on blood or some other substance or medium is as yet unknown.
Berlin geodata now available free of charge

02/10/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Data, Politics, Tech

The official geodata of the Berlin Land Surveying Administration are now available free of charge, Heise reports. The data, such as the automated property register map, topographical official map series, aerial photographs and rectified digital photographs derived from these and information about standard land values, may be used for any commercial or non-commercial purpose according to a notice from Berlin’s Senate Administration for City Development & the Environment. The data can be acquired from the geodata portal.

The previous complex terms of use have been abolished and replaced by new uniform terms of use, which permit commercial and non-commercial use of the data free of charge. Modest charges are levied for the provision of data that can only be made available offline. Fees are still charged for official information and extracts from the land register, as well as for permits and certifications.

“Social topics relevant to the future such as climate, energy, mobility or demography are dependent on geodata. Berlin’s implementation of its open data initiative is being continued with the release of official geodata and an important contribution being made to the continuing opening up of the State,” explains Ephraim Gothe, State Secretary for Urban Development and the Environment.

Mathias Schindler of Wikimedia Deutschland sees the move as a small revolution. “In particular, the (meta)data may be copied, printed out, used in presentations, processed and passed on to third parties, merged with one’s own or others’ data, associated with independent data sets and integrated in internal and external business processes and applications in public and non-public electronic networks – all with a source attribution obligation”, he explains in a blog post.

The Berlin Senate published its open data strategy in February 2012. It set up its open data portal – the first in Germany in April 2012.
Italy’s Macerata province halfway through LibreOffice migration

01/10/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, reports that Italy’s Macerata province is halfway its migration to the free and open source LibreOffice suite as a replacement for Microsoft Office. LibreOffice is currently used on 230 of its 450 workstations. The migration is expected to be completed in December next year.

The same article also reports that Windows is being replaced by Linux as the workstation operating system used for non-specialised tasks on the provincial government’s PCs.

These moves are expected to save the provincial authority some €150,000 in 2014. For Italy as a whole, the Asca news agency states the LibreOffice 2013 Conference in Milan was told that migrating the public sector to LibreOffice could save the public purse €300-500 mn.
Happy 30th, GNU!

27/09/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

Today is the 30th birthday of the GNU Project, which instigated the whole move towards free and open source software and the wealth of GNU/Linux distributions and software currently available.

GNU’s initial aim, as outlined by Richard Stallman, was to develop a Unix-like operating system, but one which contained no proprietary Unix code.

Stallman’s original announcement is reproduced below.

Free Unix!

Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu’s Not Unix), and give it away free(1) to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed.

To begin with, GNU will be a kernel plus all the utilities needed to write and run C programs: editor, shell, C compiler, linker, assembler, and a few other things. After this we will add a text formatter, a YACC, an Empire game, a spreadsheet, and hundreds of other things. We hope to supply, eventually, everything useful that normally comes with a Unix system, and anything else useful, including on-line and hardcopy documentation.

GNU will be able to run Unix programs, but will not be identical to Unix. We will make all improvements that are convenient, based on our experience with other operating systems. In particular, we plan to have longer filenames, file version numbers, a crashproof file system, filename completion perhaps, terminal-independent display support, and eventually a Lisp-based window system through which several Lisp programs and ordinary Unix programs can share a screen. Both C and Lisp will be available as system programming languages. We will have network software based on MIT’s chaosnet protocol, far superior to UUCP. We may also have something compatible with UUCP.

Who Am I?

I am Richard Stallman, inventor of the original much-imitated EMACS editor, now at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT. I have worked extensively on compilers, editors, debuggers, command interpreters, the Incompatible Timesharing System and the Lisp Machine operating system. I pioneered terminal-independent display support in ITS. In addition I have implemented one crashproof file system and two window systems for Lisp machines.

Why I Must Write GNU

I consider that the golden rule requires that if I like a program I must share it with other people who like it. I cannot in good conscience sign a non-disclosure agreement or a software license agreement.

So that I can continue to use computers without violating my principles, I have decided to put together a sufficient body of free software so that I will be able to get along without any software that is not free.

How You Can Contribute

I am asking computer manufacturers for donations of machines and money. I’m asking individuals for donations of programs and work.

One computer manufacturer has already offered to provide a machine. But we could use more. One consequence you can expect if you donate machines is that GNU will run on them at an early date. The machine had better be able to operate in a residential area, and not require sophisticated cooling or power.

Individual programmers can contribute by writing a compatible duplicate of some Unix utility and giving it to me. For most projects, such part-time distributed work would be very hard to coordinate; the independently-written parts would not work together. But for the particular task of replacing Unix, this problem is absent. Most interface specifications are fixed by Unix compatibility. If each contribution works with the rest of Unix, it will probably work with the rest of GNU.

If I get donations of money, I may be able to hire a few people full or part time. The salary won’t be high, but I’m looking for people for whom knowing they are helping humanity is as important as money. I view this as a way of enabling dedicated people to devote their full energies to working on GNU by sparing them the need to make a living in another way.

For more information, contact me.

Arpanet mail:
RMS@MIT-MC.ARPA

Usenet:
…!mit-eddie!RMS@OZ
…!mit-vax!RMS@OZ

US Snail:
Richard Stallman
166 Prospect St
Cambridge, MA 02139
GNOME 3.10 released

26/09/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech
Yesterday the GNOME project announced the release of GNOME 3.10, the latest version this popular desktop for GNU/Linux.

This latest release in the GNOME 3 series includes many new features, applications and bug fixes, as well as enhancements and updates to many existing applications.

Introducing the release, Allan Day of the GNOME Design Team said, ‟GNOME 3.10 is a significant upgrade for our users and developers will benefit from new features in the application development platform. Our contributors did an incredible job and have created a really exciting release.“

Highlights for GNOME 3.10 include:
- Experimental Wayland support;
- A reworked system status area, which gives a more focused overview of your system;
- Three new applications (which are technology previews): Maps, Music and Software;
- Three new additions to the core set of GNOME applications: Notes, Photos and Weather;
- ‟Software“, which provides an easy way to browse and install applications;
- New geo-location features, such as automatic time zones and world clocks;
- The ability to set a custom image on the lock screen;
- High-resolution display support.
For developers, there are new GTK widgets, a geo-location framework that will allow location-aware applications and the ability to define composite widgets using XML.

As stated above, GNOME 3.10 also introduces initial Wayland support. This represents a major technological step forward for GNOME and will enable the project to fully adopt the next generation display and input technology in the future.

Full details of the changes in the new 3.10 version of GNOME are set out in the release notes.
Guardian latest media outlet to confuse translators and interpreters

26/09/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Tech

The Guardian, immortalised in Private Eye as The Grauniad for its error-prone typographical propensities, now reveals its errors are not restricted to orthography.

The home page of today’s online edition has a link to an item on machine translation and online translation tools. The perils of machine translation is a topic which has also featured on this blog (posts passim).

However, the link to the report is illustrated by an image depicting interpreters at work, as the following screenshot shows.

This means The Guardian is now the latest media outlet in the UK willing to employ illiterates who can’t tell interpreters from translators along with the likes of the BBC (posts passim) and the Bristol Post (posts passim).

This blog has a handy illustrated guide on the difference between these two sorts of linguists should employees of any of the above organisations need enlightenment.
Bristol Wireless to provide tech training in November

24/09/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Linux, Open Source, Tech
This November Bristol Wireless is offering a week of training days in its lab at Windmill Hill City Farm, Bedminster, Bristol.

One topic will be covered each day of the week of the 25-29 November and there are four places available for each topic.

The course topic for each day is:
- Monday 25th November: Hosting web services
- Tuesday 26th November: Linux Vserver virtualisation environment
- Wednesday 27th November: SQL database programming
- Thursday 28th November: System administration
- Friday 29th November: Administration using Puppet automation software
Tuition will start each day at 10 am and end at 5 pm.

The tutors for the week will be Bristol Wireless’ Ben Green and Julien Weston. Ben has well over 10 years’ experience as a systems administrator, whilst Julien has been an accomplished database engineer for a couple of decades.

Bristol Wireless uses Debian GNU/Linux as its preferred operating system and the courses will be taught on Debian, although participants are welcome to bring their own laptops and preferred operating systems to the courses.

Participants must have some experience of Linux systems, including at least some command line skills and should expect a fast pace of learning. Each participant will be given a virtual server to experiment with on the day with the required tools set up for the topic at hand.

Cost will be £200 per day, which doesn’t include food or accommodation, although the on-site city farm café will be open and there are plenty of other eateries in the area.

For more information please contact Ben Green at Bristol Wireless at training2013@bristolwireless.net or on 0117 325 0067.

Reposted from Bristol Wireless.
French government guiding public sector towards open data

20/09/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Data, Politics, Tech

The French Prime Minister has just distributed a circular promoting the opening up of public data, according to Le Monde Informatique. This was accompanied by a practical guide to assist public sector organisations in joining in this move.

The “Vade-mecum sur l’ouverture et le partage des données publiques” (= Handbook on opening up and sharing public data) was published on 17th September 2013 by the Prime Minister’s office. Originating from the CIMAP (inter-ministerial committee for public [sector] activity modernisation) meeting of 2nd April 2013, the handbook has the aim of encouraging the public sector to open up their data fully by encouraging it to do so. At just 11 pages, the document is very short. It is also based on a provision in the ethical charter signed by each minister of the present French government upon entering office and which makes provision for opening up the data of each ministry as fully as possible.
It also gives a reminder that open data should be referred to on the data.gouv.fr portal. This portal currently hosts 350,000 files according to the Prime Minister’s office.

After having given a reminder of the issues and objective of opening up public data, the handbook sets out the legal forms for so doing, along with the methods and good practice. It concludes by setting out possible examples of the re-use of open public data.

Free Unix!

Who Am I?

Why I Must Write GNU

How You Can Contribute

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