Last Friday saw the launch of Windows 8, the latest “best Windows ever” release from the Beast of Redmond.
However, the launch was not without its problems for MS, as reported by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The FSF crashed the Windows 8 launch event in New York City. A cheerful GNU and her team handed out DVDs loaded with Trisquel GNU/Linux (a Linux distribution that meets the FSF’s very strict definition of free. Ed.), FSF stickers and information about the FSF’s new pledge, which asks Windows users to upgrade not to Windows 8, but to GNU/Linux.
The FSF crew at NYC Windows 8 launchHave a FSF sticker!
I must concur with the FSF’s conclusion: Windows 8 is a downgrade, not an upgrade since it compromises users’ freedom, security and privacy. Some of the ‘features’ of Windows 8 identified by the FSF that Microsoft won’t tell potential users about are:
Restricts freedom: Windows 8 is proprietary software. At its core, it’s designed to control you as a user. You can’t modify Windows 8 or see how it is built, meaning Microsoft can use its operating system to exploit users and benefit special interests.
Invades privacy: Windows 8 includes software that inspects the contents of your hard drive and Microsoft claims the right to do this without warning. These programs have misleading names like “Windows Genuine Advantage.”
Exposes personal data: Windows 8 has a contacts cache that experts fear may store sensitive personal data and make users vulnerable to identity theft.
In terms of world history, not a lot happens on remote Saint Helena. According to Wikipedia, St Helena “is one of the most isolated places in the world, located in the South Atlantic Ocean more than 2,000 kilometres (1,200 mi) from the nearest major landmass. The nearest port on the continent is Namibe in Southern Angola, the nearest international airport the Quatro de Fevereiro Airport of Angola’s capital Luanda.”
It has a population of 4,255 (2008 census) and a total area of 122 km2 (47 sq mi). Its chief role in history seems to have been as a place of exile for those Great Britain thought undesirable, ranging from Napoleon Bonaparte to 5,000 Boer War prisoners.
There’s one more interesting fact about St Helena: it has dreadful internet access. According to the Connect St Helena campaign website, the island’s current internet connection to the internet consists of a single 7.6 m diameter satellite dish installed in 1989; this provides the island’s only internet and international telephone connection. It uses a C band transponder on Intelsat 707 for a link to the UK with 10 MBit/s downstream and 3.6 MBit/s upstream through which all data and voice traffic is being routed. This satellite was launched in March 1996 and had a predicted lifetime of 11 years, which is already exceeded by five years now. The connection has a a total bandwidth of 10 MBit/s downstream, which is partly reserved for certain customers while the remaining capacity is shared by all other customers on the island resulting in very low effective bandwidth, often in the two-digit kbit/s range, roughly matching analogue modem speeds used in the late 1990s. Thus many internet applications like YouTube or Skype are hardly or not usable and the internet service on the island cannot be considered as “broadband” by any current definition.
Connect St Helena campaign logo
Not only is St Helena’s internet access slow by modern standards, it also prohibitively expensive. The most expensive access package costs £119.99 per month for a download speed of 384 KBit/s and 128 KBit/s upload. This package is capped to 3,300 MB/month data, with any excess charged at 9p/MB. By contrast the cheapest package costs £19.99/month for speeds of 128/64 KBit/s respectively and a 300 MB data transfer cap; exceeding the cap incurs a charge of 12p/MB (not very good is it? Ed.).
However, there is currently a once-in-a-liftime opportunity to change this. Plans exist for a super-fast transatlantic submarine optic fibre cable called South Atlantic Express (SAEx) between Brazil, Angola and South Africa. If this cable also made landfall at St Helena, the islanders could finally join the information society, which would improve standards of education and healthcare, as well as offering new economic prospects, as shown on the map below.
Proposed route of the SAEx cable and suggested change to connect St Helena
To enable the island to be connected to SAEx would require the British Government to stump up the cash. At Bristol Wireless we believe they should since we have always believed that access to information and knowledge via the internet is not a privilege, but a right. This is echoed in the closing paragraph of the Connect St Helena campaign website:
Please support us in bringing broadband internet to St Helena and improve life on this picturesque island. Being separated by a distance of 2,000 km from the next hospital, library and university, reliable broadband internet access would mitigate many problems resulting from St Helena’s isolation. There is probably no other place in the world that could profit so much from the merits of broadband telecommunications than St Helena.
The security breach resulted in the harvesting of details for some 2,000 accounts, including users’ names, email addresses, postal addresses and phone numbers.
Amongst the details leaked by the group were the login for the Administrator account and a link to McDonald’s Thailand Office Mail Login. The password of the administrator is in plain text. They are using a weak password; the password is ‘password’.
If all other multinational corporations took the same rigorous precautions as McDonald’s…
Canonical released Ubuntu 12.10 on Thursday. This new release introduced tighter integration with Amazon in system search results – a move which has provoked criticism from the Ubuntu community. Canonical asserts that Amazon integration in Dash is something users expect and it will integrate other online services in future Ubuntu releases.
The move was defended by Steve George, Canonical’s Vice-President of communications and products, who told The Inquirer that: “Users increasingly expect to search. It is driven by two things, firstly the fact that online they search, so naturally they think about searching and the other thing is the total amount of content. […] The Dash has previously been restricted to only the things that were on your desktop, so where we are taking the Dash so we are trying to pull it so that everything – your personal cloud – all of your online and offline, everything you have in your universe around you, the Dash will be able to search that and find those things for you.”
Thanks for that Steve. I’ve been using Ubuntu happily on my laptop for two and a half years now, but if you’re going to clamber into bed with the likes of Amazon, I’m putting Debian on that machine when the long term support on my present Ubuntu install runs out.
Update 21/10/12: Bruno Girin has been in touch since I wrote this post and informed me there are 2 options for disabling the Amazon search – turning it off in the system settings and removing the package respectively – as follows:
Option 1: system settings -> privacy -> include online search results = off
There must be something in the water in North Somerset that induces idiocy and Luddism in that unitary authority’s councils.
Not far away from schizophrenic Clevedon, where members of the public can use social media to their hearts’ content during council meetings, but councillors cannot (posts passim), is Nailsea.
Today’s Bristol Post reports on yesterday’s meeting of Nailsea Town Council which, with typical bureaucratic perspicacity, voted to ban councillors from using iPads and laptops during meetings over concerns that councillors would use them to either surf the internet, send emails or post messages on networking sites.
The move hasn’t gone down well with one member of the town council – Councillor Mary Blatchford, who also represents Nailsea on North Somerset Council. Cllr. Blatchford has good reason to feel aggrieved: she has a hand injury; the latter makes it hard for her to write. She therefore quite sensibly uses her iPad for taking notes during meetings. It’s therefore hardly surprising she described the move as “archaic” and has moreover threatened to resign in protest.
GNOME – enjoy with a beer!Phoronix reports that 2 of my favourite things – beer and open source – are being combined in GBeers (GNOME + Beers = GBeers), a world-wide initiative for GNOME meet-ups with lightning talk presentations taking place while drinking beer. Madrid in Spain recently hosted the very first GBeers event. Other GNOME users and developers are being encouraged by the GNOME project to arrange GBeers in their own towns and cities.
The proposed format of GBeers events is one hour of lightning talks (with each talk lasting 5-10 minutes. Ed.) on unrestricted topics every month, with the talks possibly being recorded for internet distribution. A further possibility is for virtual GBeers through Skype or Google hang-outs.
I’m intrigued by the way we advocates of free and open source software (FOSS) are viewed and described by the world outside our circle. Frequently, the terms are very loaded, e.g. ‘zealot’.
A report today in The Register Channel on Scottish NHS IT procurement and a decision to waste millions on Microsoft Windows 7 is no exception. Mark Taylor, CEO of Sirius, a major UK open source supplier, is quoted and referred to as a ‘firebrand’.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, firebrand‘s first recorded use was in the 13th century, when it was originally “a piece of burning wood“. Its meaning was extended to over subsequent centuries to include “one that creates unrest or strife“.
I’ve met and spoken to Mark on a number occasions and the last thing one can describe him as is a firebrand or any of its above synonyms. Admittedly, he has a business to run, but he’s also concerned that the UK spending on ICT amounts to an eye-watering £20 billion per year. That’s three times more than is spent on the army. Most of that £20 billion is spent on proprietary software and its suppliers, in the course of which vast amounts of taxpayers’ money are exported to MS’ coffers in Redmond, USA.
Both Mark and I feel that FOSS would be a better alternative and there’d then be more money for the NHS to spend on patient care – a far better use of resources. If that makes us ‘firebrands’, then we’ll wear the label with pride.
Tux – the Linux kernel mascotIt was recently announced that when it is released in some 6 months’ time, the forthcoming Linux 3.7 kernel will incorporate support for multiple ARM System on Chips (SoCs) platforms, Softpedia reports.
Having all ARM platforms supported by a single kernel package is a good news for everyone from end users to hardware manufacturers who base their kit on ARM chips and the Android operating system.
“This is a pretty significant branch. It’s the introduction of the first multiplatform support on ARM”, said kernel developer Olof Johansson on the Linux kernel Git commit page. “And with this (and the later branch) merged, it is now possible to build one kernel that contains support for highbank, vexpress, mvebu, socfpga, and picoxcell”.
When Linux kernel 3.7 is released (the latest Linux kernel release at the time of writing is 3.6. Ed.), it will initially provide support the following ARM platforms: VExpress, Highbank, SoC FPGA, Picoxcell and Mvebu, although support for more ARM platforms will be added to subsequent kernel releases.
Since Clevedon Town Council enacted its ban, legislation has come into effect under which local councils are expected to provide reasonable facilities for members of the public to report the proceedings of council meetings as they happen. Indeed, the legislation was devised to “make it easier for new social media reporting of council executive meetings, thereby opening proceedings up to internet bloggers, tweeting and hyper-local news forums”.
However, while members of the public will be able to report freely during the proceedings, Cllr. Jane Geldart has told me she will still be silenced, as per the following conversation on Twitter:
@JaneGeldart I just read that Clevedon Town Council will allow live tweeting by public. Does ban on councillors tweeting still apply?
@wood5y It does sadly. Despite new legislation they (Town Council) are hiding behind an Act from 1960 …….
Given that MPs and peers regularly tweet the proceedings of Parliament and council meetings everywhere else in the country are covered by webcasts, local bloggers and Twitter, one must wonder what motives Clevedon Town Council has for its schizophrenic attitude.
Location map for Umbria. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia CommonsIt’s not just self-employed wordsmiths such as myself that are moving away from overpriced proprietary office suites towards free and open source alternatives: cash-strapped public sector organisations are doing so too.
EU open source news website Joinup reports that the Administration the Italian region of Umbria has started a project to migrate an initial group of 5,000 users to LibreOffice. Osvaldo Gervasi, president of Umbria’s Open Source Competence Centre – CCOS – states that getting rid of IT vendor lock-in is one of the main motives for the migration.
As part of the move, the region will also be adopting LibreOffice’s default Open Document Format as an open document standard.
The legal basis for the migration is a 2006 regional law promoting the use of free and open source software by the public sector in Umbria.
According to the Libre Umbria blog, the project involves the Provinces of Perugia and Terni, Local Health Unit no. 2 and the Region of Umbria, and is being co-ordinated by the Consortium of Umbrian Authorities (Consorzio SIR Umbria) and CCOS Umbria.
The story is also covered by La Stampa (in Italian).
