According to Collins English Dictionary, headline has the following definition as a noun:
a phrase at the top of a newspaper or magazine article indicating the subject of the article, usually in larger and heavier type
Here’s a headline from a piece in today’s Bristol Post (since corrected after being ridiculed by a sharp-eyed reader. Ed.).
When it comes to how to use a headline, dictionaries unfortunately do not give guidance regarding their making sense. 🙂
As an answer to a question from a Swedish politician the EU Commission has also confirmed ODF as a standard document format, Germany’s Linux Magazin writes. However, free software advocates are criticising the step as “not far-reaching enough”.
The Commission’s answer was given a few days ago. According to a report on Joinup, the EU’s public sector open source news site, EU Commission Vice-president Maroš Šefčovič himself responded to the written question and mentioned OOXML and ODF as minimum requirements for document exchange. Šefčovič maintains that this ensures no vendor lock-in exists or can occur. In addition, public sector organisations should support other file formats in accordance with the best effort principle, i.e. if this is practically possible.
Open source activists, such as the Open Forum Europe are describing the decision as overdue, but are criticising the EU for missing an opportunity for the EU to lead by example for not daring to stipulate ODF as a single open standard. Switzerland’s Open Systems Group welcomes this first step, Joinup states. Mathias Stürmer is even hoping that the Swiss government will follow suit, even though it is not within the EU; although it would definitely help to prompt other public sector organisations to make the change to ODF.
Friday’s Le Monde reports that Russian State security agency the FSO is going to step up its surveillance of bloggers and others who are critical of the Russian government.
While Russian state security agencies already have surveillance systems in use, the administration has decided “to entrust this part of the work to professional computer specialists“.
Quoting Izvestia, Le Monde states that an invitation to tender with a maximum budget of 31.8 mn. roubles (€700,000) has been issued for the procurement of a centralised data collection system for data published on the internet.
The subject of the invitation to tender is the creation of a system comprising a database of citizens who have a “negative” opinion of the government and the provision of a daily summary of publications concerning the president, his administration, the prime minister or even the opposition. The procurement of this system is reportedly not a case of “turning up the heat” by the authorities, but more enabling them to anticipate some events by the early detection of protests being organised (a likely story. Ed.)
Hardly a week goes by without concern being expressed about the quality of the interpreters provided to the police, courts and tribunals by Capita T&I. Interpreters working for the company are allegedly classified by ability in 3 tiers, from 1 to 3, with Tier 1 as the highest and 3 as the lowest.
On 9th January RPSI Linguist Lounge published the following post outlining solicitor Richard Lacey’s experience with the need for a Vietnamese interpreter at St Anne Street Police Station in Liverpool.
I attended St Annes [sic] Street Police Station in Liverpool today for an interview requiring a Vietnamese interpreter having confirmed at 8.10 that said interpreter was attending at 9.30. When I arrived I was told by the custody officer that ALS/Crapita had called at 9.20 to say the interpreter was no longer available and they wouldn’t be able to supply one until 7 this evening.
The custody officer was no more happy than I was and had instituted some sort of escalation procedure. He then explained to me that there are differing grades of interpreter available and they might have to go for someone less qualified. I now understand that the top level can interpret both written and spoken versions of the language. The next level down can only translate orally. I am unsure what the lowest level can do – point out Vietnam on a map?? Possible grounds for appeal if interpreter assistance in police interview was inadequate? Savings in the system? – ho ho ho!
Incidentally, prior to qualifying as a solicitor, I was a police custody officer and we rarely had difficulties using NRPSI system!
When will the Ministry of Justice admit failure, do the decent thing and terminate the contract with Capita T&I? Probably never, given the government’s failure to acknowledge its mistakes, leaving a government of a different colour to do the decent thing after the 2015 general election.
In the meantime the waste of money and time continues, as does the delay and denial of justice.
If you either travel into or out of Bristol from the south or sail into or out of the city docks, you’ll be familiar with the Plimsoll Bridge, a swing bridge built over the Cumberland Basin in 1965.
Unfortunately, there’s been some trouble with the bridge recently: during one recent rush hour swing some vital part broke and the bridge remained open – and closed to motor traffic – until the next day when it was cranked closed by hand.
The various repairs that need to be carried out will require several weeks and vessels with high masts will therefore not be able to get into and out of the docks for that period.
Yesterday the Bristol Post’s Michael Ribbeck reported on the latest stage of repairs.
His first sentence reads as follows:
A carriageway of a swing bridge in the centre of Bristol had to be closed overnight while repairs were carried out to lose joints.
Poor Michael! Not only does he have trouble with his vowels, as with the old Stork margarine advertisement, he can’t tell verbs from adjectives! 🙂
The Gallipoli Campaign, also known as the Dardanelles Campaign, took place on the Gallipoli peninsula in the Ottoman Empire between 25 April 1915 and 9 January 1916.
The campaign was one of the greatest Ottoman victories during the war and is considered a major Allied failure and the casualties and losses on both sides amounted to some 250,000 each on both the Allied and Turkish sides.
My paternal grandfather, Ted Woods, was shipped out there as a member of the Norfolk Regiment and was thus part of the PBI – the poor bloody infantry – the cannon fodder for the mechanised slaughter that characterised the erroneously styled Great War. The only photograph I’ve seen of him depicted him in his uniform just before being shipped out there.
Conditions for the Allied troops during the campaign could hardly be described as luxurious, as the picture below shows.
In some parts of the peninsula, the front line trenches between the Allied and Turkish forces were only a handful of metres apart and in spite of the ferocity of the fighting, there were times when fraternisation took place.
Gallipoli by Robert Rhodes James, originally published in 1965 by BT Batsford Ltd., and republished in 1974 as Part of Illustrated Grand Strategy series by Pan Books Ltd. gives one instance of fraternisation between Anzac (Australian and New Zealand) forces and their Turkish opponents on p. 187 of the Pan edition:
The Anzacs sometimes threw tins of bully-beef into the Turk trenches, and once received the reply: “Envoyez milk. Bully-beef, non”; on one occasion a tin of cigarettes came flying over from the Turkish trenches, on which was written, “Prenez avec plesir a notre heros ennemis*”.
*To our heroic enemies, take these with pleasure.
This year marks the centenary of the start of the First World War and already at least one government minister, Education Secretary Michael Gove, is banging the jingoistic drum (warning: link to Daily Mail article. Ed.). Unfortunately, Gove later received support for his attack on ‘left wing academics’ from those experts on the First World War – Prime Minister David Cameron and London Mayor Boris Johnson (warning: link to yet another Daily Mail article. Ed.).
People as ignorant as Mr Gove et al. should heed the words of the late Harry Patch (17th June 1898 – 25th July 2009), who was dubbed “the Last Fighting Tommy” in his later years and who very wisely said the following:
[The] politicians who took us to war should have been given the guns and told to settle their differences themselves, instead of organising nothing better than legalised mass murder.
Harry never spoke a word in public about WW1 until he was over 100 years old. Mr. Gove on the contrary approaches every subject with an open mouth and a closed mind.
The initiatives for encouraging young people to get into programming are multiplying, writes French news site Le Monde Informatique. With CodeCombat the work is both study and play.
Now released as open source, CodeCombat is a video game devoted to teaching programming. The platform is multi-player and uses CoffeeScript, a programming language that transcompiles to JavaScript. It’s possible to use JavaScript libraries even though CoffeeScript is very well documented.
The basic idea is very simple: lines of code need writing for players to make progress in the game (see the image above) and to compete against other programmers/players. Volunteer participants create levels and characters which can be borrowed by other players.
Developed by Nick Winter, an alumnus of Oberlin College in Ohio, CodeCombat is available in seven languages thanks to the efforts of willing participants in this collaborative development work.
Here’s a sneak preview of LibreOffice 4.2 – the next version of this great cross platform open source office suite – which is due for release in February 2014.
The first release candidate (RC) for this version was also released this week.
Besides its use in the agricultural context, the term ‘cowboy‘ has long been in use informally to describe a person who is an irresponsible or unscrupulous operator, as in the phrase cowboy builder.
Today’s Bristol Post carries a report where it’s uncertain as to who are the cowboys – the builders or the journalists who wrote the piece.
The report in question covers repairs and refurbishment works currently underway at the former home of Thomas Chatterton (20th November 1752 – 24th August 1770), Bristol’s renowned 18th century poet and forger of alleged medieval literary works.
With a sharp eye for inaccuracies, my attention was drawn to the following passage in paragraph 8:
Lathe and plaster is being used on the walls and re-rendering on the outside is being carried out with limestone instead of modern materials so the original stonework can “breathe”.
For anyone familiar with traditional building techniques, the 2 absolute howlers in there are immediately apparent.
For anyone unfamiliar with traditional building techniques, such as passing Bristol Post journalists in search of enlightenment, here’s an illustrated guide showing where the authors went wrong.
Here is a lathe: this one is for working metal; other types can be used for wood and other materials.
Here are some laths, minus their original plaster coating.
This is limestone – a whole pavement of it.
This is a house in St. Davids, Wales showing a traditional limewash finish, yellow ochre coloured in this case.
Just before the end of last month Wildfire Games announced the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 15 “Osiris”. 0 A.D. is a real time strategy game and the new release comes with additional functions. It’s available free of charge for Linux, Mac and Windows and is licensed under Version 2 of the GPL. The Alpha 15 release, which is playable, provides a multi-player lobby, in which players can meet and play each other, whilst a new playable civilisation can be added with the Ptolemaic Egyptians. However, only some of the latter’s buildings units and play functions can be tested; the civilisation itself shall only be made available in the next alpha version.
A new play mode has been added to the game with so-called “Skirmish Maps”. Units now also gain a bonus if they come within reach of a certain building or special unit. Up top now temples regenerate the health of nearby units and most heroes also have such an “aura”. This function will be further refined and extended in future versions of the game.
The user interface has also been improved so that players can now order their troops to defend other units or buildings. An audible signal or a chat message notifies when a player is being attacked, whilst flashing pixels on a miniature map show where the attack is taking place. Fighting units can be returned to the civilian work they were previously carrying out with a new “Back to work” button.
In addition, there are new graphic elements, pieces of music and bug fixes, etc. in 0 A.D. Alpha 15 “Osiris”. The game is available for download from the project website.
Finally, the project is seeking volunteer contributors in programming, art, sound, documentation and more. For details, log onto #0ad-dev on QuakeNet on IRC and meet the developers or register on the project’s forums and start participating!