Daily Archives: Monday, December 10, 2012

  • LibreOffice 4.0.0 Beta1 released

    Steve WoodsOpen Source

    the LibreOffice logoIT news website The H Online reports that The Document Foundation has announced the release of the first beta of version 4.0 of LibreOffice, the free and open source office suite for Linux, Windows and MacOS.

    The stable version of LibreOffice 4.0 is scheduled for release in February 2013.

    The Document Foundation advises that this version should not be used for “mission-critical” jobs and the main purpose of the beta release is to find and report bugs, notify developers of regressions, confirm bugs already reported in 4.0 and verify existing bug fixes.

    The main changes from previous releases are set out in the release notes.

    For those interested in even more bleeding-edge binaries of our current development, The Document Foundation recommends checking out its nightly builds. However, these are are potentially even less suitable for productive work and come with the warning caveat emptor.

  • Snooper’s Charter – rumours that Parliament is unimpressed

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    IT news website The Register reports today that the joint parliamentary committee of members of the Commons and Lords scrutinising the government’s draft Communications Data Bill – also known as the Snooper’s Charter (posts passim) – will publish its report tomorrow (Tuesday, 11th December).

    It is believed that most of the committee’s members felt the Home Office had failed to make a convincing case for the scale of requested draconian powers required to monitor British citizens’ activities online. The message likely to come from the joint parliamentary committee will probably be to encourage the police and law enforcement agencies to devise a much simpler scheme that the public can trust, along the lines of “go back to the drawing board and come and talk to us when you have something fresh”.

    The cost of the scheme – some £1.8 bn. – will also come in for criticism from the committee at a time when police resources are being severely cut.

    NB: This is a revised version of a post originally published on the Bristol Wireless site.