Monthly Archives: September 2013

  • Canonical and Dell launching Ubuntu computers in 1,000+ shops in China

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Tech

    The Canonical blog reports that Dell and Canonical will be launching Dell machines running Canonical’s Ubuntu Linux operating system in more than 1,000 outlets in China in the next few weeks.

    Dell and Canonical will be jointly extending a range of Dell hardware pre-loaded with the Chinese language version of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS across a swathe of major Chinese cities. Sales in the original stores have proven so successful that the companies have agreed to expand to beyond 1,000 outlets.

    Ubuntu's Chinese store promotional materials
    Ubuntu’s Chinese store promotional materials

    This is the latest of a series of developing partnerships in China for Ubuntu. In March 2013 it was announced that the Chinese Ministry for Industry & Information Technology had selected Ubuntu as the basis for its reference architecture for operating systems (posts passim).

  • Bristol Post Balls – is the paper now written by greengrocer’s?

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    The greengrocers’ – or superfluous – apostrophe has a special place if one’s selling bananas (shouldn’t that be banana’s? Ed.), but it looks sadly out of place in Bristol’s newspaper of record, which is what happened yesterday in this heartening story from the St George area of the city.

    The offending punctuation even had the temerity to turn up in the item’s opening sentence, as follows:

    Crofts End Church in St George has just opened the doors to it’s newly refurbished internet suite.

    No doubt the bosses at the Temple Way Ministry of Truth believe the downward spiral in quality is a small price to pay for what they’re saving by not employing sub-editors.

  • Absent interpreters delay 642 court cases in 2012

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    image of gilded statue of Justice on top of Old BaileyThe Independent reports today that more than 500 court cases are being thrown out or delayed each week due to failings by prosecutors or in the court system.

    Government figures reveal that a total 106,859 cases before crown and magistrates’ courts were dropped or delayed in 2012, costing the public purse an estimated £17.4 mn.

    Of this total the absence of an interpreter was responsible for delays to 642 cases in the year in question.

    No doubt Helen Grant MP and her colleagues at the Ministry of Justice will attribute these interpreter absences as “teething troubles” with its contract with Capita Translation & Interpreting, rather than a sign of the latter’s total incompetence and yet more evidence that it was wrong to fiddle with the previous arrangements with interpreting services for courts and tribunals in the first place.

  • Free commuter coaches with free wifi from N. Somerset

    Steve WoodsBristol, Tech

    Today’s Bristol Post reports North Somerset commuters travelling to Bristol during November and December will be able to travel to work for free under a scheme set up by North Somerset Council and coach operator The Kings Ferry Ltd.

    The service will link Weston-super-Mare, Clevedon and Portishead with major employment areas around Bristol, including Aztec West, Rolls Royce, Royal Mail and Airbus. Two routes will be operated: one starting in Weston and picking up in Clevedon and the other starting in Portishead.

    The coaches to be used will be equipped with luxury seats, air conditioning, power sockets, drinks machines, toilets and free wifi.

    This new commuter coach service will be free throughout November and December for everyone who registers at www.bristolcommute.com by the end of October.

    Reposted from Bristol Wireless.

  • Save Felix Road Adventure Playground – the final push

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    This blog has featured the campaign to save Felix Road Adventure Playground from closure before (posts passim).

    image of Felix Rd Adventure Playground
    Felix Rd Adventure Playground

    The email below has now been received from local councillor Margaret Hickman and requires no further explanation.

    Dear All,

    The community around Felix Road Adventure Playground would be so grateful if you could complete the on-line petition which is below. What we are trying to do is collect 3.5k signatures to trigger a debate in the council chamber. We want to ensure that a long term sustainable solution is found for all the adventure playgrounds in the city.

    Can you please sign the petition now on-line and forward this email to all your Bristol contacts.

    Thank you so much.

    Best wishes. Marg

    Here is the link to the e-petition to save Felix Road: http://epetitions.bristol.gov.uk/epetition_core/community/petition/2326

    As the adventure playground has been a valuable local facility for decades, I’ve signed the petition already; have you?

  • Running normally?

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Social Media

    Have you ever wondered why your train is running late?

    The National Rail Enquiries Twitter feed is very useful for providing answers, as per the typical tweet below.

    screenshot of National Rail Enquiries running normally tweet

    I can hear those of you with an acute sense of English already asking whether “running normally” on the UK rail network usually involves “following a broken down train” (because that’s what travelling by rail normally feels like? Ed.). 😉

  • YLAL: interpreting outsourcing a lesson for legal aid changes

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

    YLAL logoThere’s a debate on criminal legal aid reforms and price competitive tendering taking place in Westminster Hall on 4 September 2013. The debate has been secured by Labour’s Karl Turner MP and will centre on the Ministry of Justice’s proposed changes to criminal legal aid contained in the consultation paper “Transforming Legal Aid: Delivering a More Credible and Efficient System”.

    Ahead of the debate, Young Legal Aid Lawyers (YLAL), a 2,000-strong group of lawyers committed to practising in areas of law traditionally funded by legal aid, has very helpfully prepared a briefing note (PDF) ahead of this debate.

    The briefing note is not very complementary about the MoJ’s experience with the outsourcing of interpreting services for courts and tribunals to ALS/Capita T&I (posts passim) and makes the following point about this ongoing fiasco.

    Short term “savings” cannot justify the long term cost to the justice system, one which Mr Grayling is correct to describe as “a justice system of which we can be proud and which justly deserves its world-wide recognition for impartiality and fairness”. We should learn the lessons of outsourcing to the lowest bidder and how this leads to the state picking up the tab when providers fail to deliver, for example, the contracting of interpreting services for the court and tribunal system.

    What’s the betting Justice Minister ‘Failing’ Grayling – the first non-lawyer to be appointed Lord Chancellor since 1673 – completely ignores all advice and pushes ahead regardless with his disastrous plans?

  • Bristol Post Balls – headline news

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    This blog has before drawn attention to the difficulty of devising an apposite newspaper headline (posts passim).

    No such troubles beset the Bristol Post as shown by the following headlines from today’s News section of the online version.

    screenshot of Bristol Post
    Read all about it! Click on image for the full-sized version.

    One question remains: one’s written in English, but in what language are the other two written?

    Just minutes after I’d tweeted the existence of this post, the headlines to the reports were changed, such is the power of blogging (and such is the care and attention the Bristol Post lavishes on its online version. Ed.). 🙂

    Update 07/09/13: I’ve since been informed as follows by the Post’s Vicki Mathias regarding what occurred:

    I think it might be subeditors’ code for I’ll put a headline in here later- uploaded automatically by mistake due to technical quirk.

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