Steve Woods

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  • CCC files internet spying charges against German state

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

    CCC logoGermany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has filed a lawsuit against the German Federal government and other agencies in conjunction with human rights organisation the Liga für Menschenrechte e. V. (League for Human Rights). The government and its agencies are being charged with violating citizens’ personal lives by security services surveillance and toleration of such surveillance, Linux-Magazin reports.

    In addition to domestic and foreign agents, the charge filed by the plaintiffs with the Federal Prosecutor General is made against the chairman of the Federal Intelligence Service, the military counter-intelligence service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The CCC and the Liga are accusing these and the Federal government, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, of aiding and abetting due to toleration of and co-operation with the surveillance activities of the American NSA and UK’s GCHQ.

    With the charge the instigators would like to initiate investigations by the Federal Prosecutor General since the secret service organisations and others have broken German law by the surveillance measures. The are charging intelligence service and Federal government officials of having “not only tolerated banned intelligence service activities, but also of having provided assistance to them actively and to a considerable extent”. This is contrary to § 99 of the Criminal Code (prohibited intelligence agency agent activity), §§ 201 et seq. of the Criminal Code (infringements of personal life and privacy) and § 258 of the Criminal Code (aiding and abetting the commission of crime).

    Furthermore, the plaintiffs are demanding in the charge that US whistleblower Edward Snowden is called as an expert witness. If called as a witness, he should receive safe conduct and be protected against extradition to the USA.

  • Rent your freedom

    Steve WoodsOpen Standards, Tech

    Anyone who uses MS Office will know that .docx (otherwise known as Microsoft Word Office Open XML Format. Ed.) is a file format used by MS Word.

    As a proprietary file format, there’s always a risk of vendor-lock-in with .docx and its fellow Office file formats.

    That said, this vehicle rental firm has an most apposite slogan on its vehicles, particularly as Microsoft has now moved MS Office onto subscription licensing with MS Office 365.

    image of van bearing wording DOCX Rental, Rent Your Freedom

    To avoid renting freedom where your data is concerned, this blog recommends using free and open document formats, like Open Document Format (ODF).

    Next month sees Document Freedom Day 2014 (DFD) being held on 26th. DFD’s aims are to promote information accessibility and raise awareness of open standards. More details and resources are available on the DFD website.

    Hat tip: FSFE

  • Bristol Post Balls – the broken spellcheck

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media

    One really has to admire the journalists at the Bristol Post, getting the news out to the public 6 days a week, sometimes in the face of extreme adversity.

    For instance, a Sunday morning is a bad time for the spellchecking software to have a dicky fit. After all, no IT support will be available until Monday.

    Never mind, in the absence of a spellchecker, the Post’s Geoff Bennett ploughed valiantly on to produce this report, part of which is shown in the screenshot below.

    screenshot of Bristol Post article

    How long will it take before ‘spoekesman’, ‘reeasonably’ and ‘spercial’ are added to the Oxford English dictionary?

  • UK Government speaks of open standards and ODF

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech

    ODF file iconOn Wednesday the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) held an event called Sprint 14, in which it invited Ministers, civil servants, suppliers and the media along to showcase some major new digital public services for the first time.

    Among the speakers was Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who in his speech made some interesting and welcome noises about document formats:

    Today I can announce that we’ve set out the document formats that we propose should be adopted across government – and we’re asking you to tell us what you think about them.

    He then continued with equally welcome and interesting noises on open standards:

    Technical standards for document formats may not set the pulse racing – it may not sound like the first shot in a revolution. But be in no doubt: the adoption of open standards in government threatens the power of lock-in to propriety vendors yet it will give departments the power to choose what is right for them and the citizens who use their services.

    The documents formats referred to by Mr Maude in his speech can be found on the Cabinet Office’s Standards Hub section of its website on the Sharing or collaborating with government documents webpage, which states

    When dealing with citizens, information should be digital by default and therefore should be published online. Browser-based editing is the preferred option for collaborating on published government information. HTML (4.01 or higher e.g. HTML5) is therefore the default format for browser-based editable text. Other document formats specified in this proposal – ODF 1.1 (or higher e.g. ODF 1.2), plain text (TXT) or comma separated values (CSV) – should be provided in addition. ODF includes filename extensions such as .odt for text, .ods for spreadsheets and .odp for presentations.

    Whilst the government has conceded that open formats and standards should be used when dealing with citizens, how long will it take for changes to take place before editable documents intended for use by we peasants citizens will be available in anything other than the quasi-ubiquitous MS Office formats currently provided?

  • LibreOffice 4.2 offers increased performance and interoperability

    Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

    The Document Foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 4.2 for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X. The new version is better integrated into Windows 7 and 8, as it now groups the preview of opened documents on the taskbar by application. A list of the last documents opened can now be displayed on the taskbar with a right mouse click.

    According to The Document Foundation, Calc – the spreadsheet application – has undergone the most extensive changes in its history, which should result in considerable increases in speed when calculating large volumes of data. A new optional formula interpreter enables massively parallel calculation of formula cells using the GPU via OpenCL.

    In addition to this, LibreOffice developers have improved interoperability with Microsoft Office, particularly when reading and writing .docx files. Amongst other things, LibreOffice 4.2 interprets MS SmartArt graphics better than the previous version. New import filters now also read Abiword documents and Apple Keynote presentations. A new start screen now shows a preview of recently opened documents.

    screenshot of new start screen in LibreOffice 4.2 running on Ubuntu Linux
    New start screen in LibreOffice 4.2 running on Ubuntu Linux

    The improvements also include the option in Windows environments the ability of centrally managing and locking down the configuration with Group Policy Objects via Active Directory and blocking individual options.

    On the mobile side, LibreOffice now supports an Impress Remote Control for iOS – in addition to the already available Impress Remote Control for Android – which allows visual management of presentation delivery on the laptop using the screen of an iPhone or iPad. The app is currently waiting for review from Apple, and will be announced as soon as it is available on iTunes Store.

    Moreover, the development team has also cleaned up and tweaked the user interface and revised 70% of dialog boxes. It will also look more modern due to the new flat Sifr icon set.

    All the new and improved features of LibreOffice 4.2 have been summarised here.

  • Swiss canton of Bern focuses open source

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Politics, Tech

    Bern coat of armsWith a massive majority of 130 in favour, 0 against and one abstention, the Grand Council (Grossrat), the parliament of the Canton of Bern, has passed the motion “To exploit synergies when using software in the Canton of Bern”, Computerworld.ch reports. The cantonal administration had previously announced its support for the request by the Evangelical People’s Party (EVP), Social Democratic Party (SP), Conservative Democratic Pary (BDP), the Green Party (GPS) and the Green Liberal Party (GLP). The individual points of the motion will now go to the Canton’s chief civil servant for implementation.

    With this motion the parliament wants the Cantonal Office for Computing and Organisation (KAIO) and Bedag Informatik AG, which is owned by the Canton, to co-operate in the information technology sector with other authorities on open source projects. Its own developments for which the Canton holds the copyright shall be released as open source software where reasonable so that other authorities can use the software and future development costs can be shared.

    In addition, managers for each new IT project must disclose in future which open source alternatives have been investigated during procurement. If none is included, this must be justified. The same criterion shall be applicable to every new specialist application or one that is to be adapted. Either a release under an open source licence must be planned here or a justification given as to why it should not be released as open source.

    Finally, the Canton of Bern is to be more actively involved in existing and new open source development and specialist applications and their respective organisations.

  • Snowdrops

    Steve WoodsBristol

    Whenever I get my first sight of snowdrops (Galanthus) each winter, my spirit lifts as this very unassuming little flower is the first to bloom each year and thus indicates spring cannot be far away.

    It will soon be followed by crocuses, daffodils, tulips and other popular garden bulbs.

    image of snowdrops

    These snowdrops were spotted at Lawford’s Gate, Bristol on the site of the Lawford’s Gate House of Correction, a former prison lying outside the city of Bristol until the late Victorian era. Along with the city’s other gaols, it was a target in the 1831 Bristol Riot, when it was set alight. The prison also had a whipping post for punishing prisoners.

    Once a place of punishment and misery, the site of the prison is now a pleasant green space with mature trees and – in January at least – the first heralds of spring.

  • An open source messenging service for French universities and elite schools

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

    Blue-Mind, the French open source collaborative messaging solution, has been adopted for French universities and other associated establishments, including scientific and technical public institutions, Le Monde Informatique reports today.

    screenshot of Blue-Mind software

    The Ministry for Higher Education and Research has signed a four-year framework agreement with French software supplier Blue-Mind. Its collaborative open source messenging solution is therefore now available with a specific pricing structure to all French universities, elite schools (the so-called ‘grandes écoles‘), scientific and technical public institutions such as the CNRS, INSERM, INRA, INRIA, etc. and public sector research and computing centres.

    The Blue-Mind offering is positioned as a competitor to Google Apps as regards functionality. Its features include messenging/email, contact management, calendars, etc. for all types of devices, including mobiles.

  • Chinese internet suffers major breakdown

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Social Media, Tech

    keyboard showing Chinese flag on enter keyAt the start of the week, China suffered a major internet outage for several hours, Le Monde Informatique reported yesterday. Experts are wondering about the cause; was it hacking (to use the verb ‘to hack’ in its Daily Mail sense. Ed.) or a technical problem with the country’s censorship mechanisms?

    Last Tuesday more than two-thirds of Chinese websites were inaccessible and millions of users were deprived of internet access for some 8 hours, according to Qihoo 360, a Chinese security software supplier best known for supplying anti-virus products. Security experts are wondering about the origin of this outage. Some believe it was hacking whilst others think there was a fault with the country’s so-called ‘Great Firewall’ censorship system.

    After the outage, Chinese authorities conducted a preliminary inquiry which focussed on hacking. The Chinese CERT team is continuing its inquiry. giving priority to the hacking theory, Chinese specialists believe that they hijacked a root DNS server in China to reroute all the traffic. The Greatfire.org website, which analyses Chinese online censorship, disputes this diversion, stating that Google’s DNS servers were affected.

    A poorly blocked traffic hijack?

    However, Greatfire.org also showed that some of the user traffic had been redirected to an IP address in the United States and more specifically to the Dynamic Internet Technology site which has links to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is heavily repressed in China. Greatfire.org believes the origin of the breakdown was due to a technical problem with the ‘Great Firewall’.

    China regularly blocks sites whose content is critical of its government, including Facebook, Twitter and the New York Times. By wanting to block the Dynamic Internet Technology site, the Chinese authorities would have inadvertently rerouted the whole nation’s traffic, according to Greatfire.org.

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