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Face recognition advertising – sign the petition

04/11/2013 Steve WoodsPolitics, Tech

News broke yesterday that supermarket giant Tesco is set to install hi-tech screens that scan customers’ faces in petrol stations so that they can be fed targeted advertising. The screens will be provided by Amscreen, whose chief executive seems to think that implementing a system like “something out of Minority Report“, the dystopian science fiction film, is something of which to be proud. ( Here’s a hint for Alan Sugar’s son: that’s like recommending Nineteen Eighty-Four as a blueprint for running the United Kingdom. Ed.)

It isn’t. What is being proposed is a gross intrusion of privacy and an affront to dignity.

Naturally, this has caused a storm of outrage on social media.

Every little helps?

However, it’s not just Tesco that’s planning this. Some parts of the UK’s healthcare sector are also planning to implement it.

Fortunately, someone with some gumption and a great regard for their own and others’ privacy has set up a petition on the government’s e-petition website. The petition reads as follows:

Face recognition software is about to be used to see what adverts you are looking at. It recognises your gender, age and will be used in GP surgeries, hospitals, dentists whilst you wait for your appointment and other public areas. This is a complete invasion of privacy.

Sign the petition.

Finally, let’s not forget how George Orwell described advertising in 1936 in Keep the Aspidistra Flying:

Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill-bucket.
Capita: still lost in translation?

01/11/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics

The Ministry of Justice has released statistics for the use of language services in courts and tribunals for the second quarter of 2013 (PDF).

If Capita Translation & Interpreting still has a 98% performance target for filling all requests for language services for courts and tribunals, then the fact it is only filled 92% of requests in the quarter under review – as stated by the report – means they are still failing to fulfil the terms of their contract with the MoJ.

Furthermore, the report gives figures for “off-contract” language service bookings for the first time.

“Off contract” bookings are requests for translation and interpretation [sic] services made outside the Capita TI contract. Bookings for the service are made directly by the courts and tribunals – that is, not through the language service booking portal.

In Q2 2013 – the first quarter for which data is held centrally – a total of 2,929 off contract bookings were made by criminal courts, civil & family courts and tribunals. This accounted for just under 7% of all bookings made for languages services in that period.

Just over half (51%) of these bookings were made by tribunals, with a further 48% made by criminal courts.

This blog will be keeping a close eye on the figures for “off contract” bookings in future. Any increase over subsequent quarters will mean that Capita T&I are living up to their parent company’s well-deserved nickname: Crapita.
LibreOffice 4.1.3 released

01/11/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Tech

The Document Foundation (TDF) blog announced earlier today that LibreOffice 4.1.3 has been released for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. This is the third minor release of the LibreOffice 4.1 family, which features a large number of improved interoperability features for proprietary and legacy file formats.

According to TDF, the new release is another step forward in the process of improving the overall quality and stability of LibreOffice 4.1. Nevertheless, for enterprise adoptions, The Document Foundation suggests the use of LibreOffice 4.0.6, which is supported by certified professionals.

The release of LibreOffice 4.1.3 is taking place just one day before the LibreOffice HackFest in Freiburg, Germany, where the community will gather at the ArTik to get started on EasyHacks under the mentoring of experienced LibreOffice developers such as Thorsten Behrens, Eilidh McAdam, Bjoern Michaelsen, Markus Mohrhard, Eike Rathke and Michael Stahl.

LibreOffice 4.1.3 is available for immediate download. Change logs are available at the following links: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.1.3/RC1 (fixed in 4.1.3.1) and https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Releases/4.1.3/RC2 (fixed in 4.1.3.2).
Racist van: a load of tripe

01/11/2013 Steve WoodsMedia, Oddities, Politics

Earlier this year I blogged about the Home Office’s so-called racist van (posts passim). Yesterday along with most of the national media the BBC reported that the Home Office had admitted that just 11 illegal immigrants had left the UK as a result of its ill-advised campaign.

Although the Home Office’s efforts were ill-advised and less than successful, its use of mobile billboards has inspired their use by others like the Tripe Marketing Board, as the picture below – allegedly from Lancashire – shows.
Bristol Post Balls – the pick of the best

31/10/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Media

There are annual events that pepper the year providing easy copy for the media. One of these is Bonfire/Guy Fawkes Night on 5th November.

As 5th November is less than a week away, most media outlets are publicising local fireworks events. Here’s today’s offering of that ilk from the Bristol Post.

As usual a screenshot has been taken, just in case authors Rachel Gardner and Alex Cawthron realise they’ve posted a half-finished article. Additional black marks to Rachel and Alex too for a lower case start to the headline.

What’s the best that Bristol has to offer?
Open data still not open enough

29/10/2013 Steve WoodsOpen Data, Politics, Tech

In the week of a major international summit on government transparency in London, the Open Knowledge Foundation has published its 2013 Open Data Index, showing that governments are still not providing enough information in an accessible form to their citizens and businesses.

The UK and USA top the 2013 Index, which was compiled from community-based surveys in 70 countries. They are followed by Denmark, Norway and the Netherlands. Of the countries assessed, Cyprus, St Kitts & Nevis, the British Virgin Islands, Kenya and Burkina Faso ranked lowest. There are many countries where the governments are less open but that were not assessed because of lack of openness or a sufficiently engaged civil society. This includes 30 countries who are members of the Open Government Partnership.

The Index ranks countries based on the availability and accessibility of information in ten key areas, including government spending, election results, transport timetables, and pollution levels, and reveals that whilst some good progress is being made, much remains to be done.

Rufus Pollock, the Open Knowledge Foundation’s CEO said: “Opening up government data drives democracy, accountability and innovation. It enables citizens to know and exercise their rights, and it brings benefits across society: from transport, to education and health. There has been a welcome increase in support for open data from governments in the last few years, but this index reveals that too much valuable information is still unavailable.”

However, even open data leaders such as the UK and USA have room for improvement: for example, the USA does not provide a single consolidated and open register of corporations, whilst the UK Electoral Commission lets down the UK’s good overall performance by not allowing open reuse of UK election data.

Furthermore, there is a very disappointing degree of openness of company registers across the board: only 5 out of the 20 leading countries have even basic information available via a truly open licence and only 10 allow any form of bulk download. This information is critical for range of reasons, including tackling tax evasion and other forms of financial crime and corruption.

Under half of the key datasets in the top 20 countries are available to re-use as open data, showing that even the leading countries do not fully understand the importance of citizens and businesses being able to use, reuse and redistribute data legally and technically. This enables them to build and share commercial and non-commercial services.
Jamaica adopts GNU Health

29/10/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Open Source, Open Standards, Politics, Tech
Jamaica is to become the first country in the world to adopt GNU Health, the free and open source health and hospital administration system nationwide, Joinup reports, following the signing of an agreement between the Jamaican Ministry of Health (MoH) and GNU Solidario, a NGO supplying free software for health and education.

This will be a herculean task, demanding cross-sectoral integrations from all the regions of this country. To initiate the implementation, programmers, system administrators, physicians, nurses and health records staff, as well as other public officials gathered to participate in several meetings, workshops and focus groups. The MoH Health Informatics team itself had representatives from both the national and the regional levels, as well as health records, clinical, IT and management personnel.

After an intense week, the initial guidelines for the project were designed in order to complete the first stage by the end of this year.

GNU Health provides the following functionality:
- Health Information System (Demographics, Epidemiology);
- Hospital Information System;
- Electronic Medical Records.
In addition, GNU Health has won the Best Project of Social Benefit award from the Free Software Foundation, amongst other international awards.
Wanted: English interpreters in London

27/10/2013 Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Politics

The title is true and it’s a genuine item straight from the news you couldn’t make up department: Capita Translation & Interpeting, the outfit responsible for making an utter mess of the courts and tribunals interpreting contract with the Ministry of Justice (posts passim) is seeking English interpreters for assignments in the London area.

Yes, it does sound amazing, but below is a screenshot of a page from Capita T&I’s website, captured today at 4.45 pm. English is the fifth item down the list.

English speakers wanted in London? The mind boggles.

Do you have any ideas why Crapita should need English interpreters in the capital of the country where the language originated? Put them in the comments below. 🙂

Hat tip: RPSI Linguist Lounge
UK government does something right

27/10/2013 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics, Tech

The UK’s dreadful, destructive coalition government has done something right – for a change.

As part of the forthcoming Local Audit and Accountability Bill, which will be debated by MPs in the House of Commons on Monday, new rights will be granted to the press and citizens to film and report council meetings, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has announced.

In 2012 the government changed secondary legislation to open up councils’ executive meetings to the press and public. However, this did not apply to councils’ committee meetings or full council, nor to parish councils. Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, asked councils to open up their committee meetings, but many councils are still not complying. Many councils, particularly in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire are still keeping democracy behind closed doors. Some councils had even banned local residents from recording, blogging and tweeting at council meetings. Ministers believe these councils are clinging to outdated analogue ideals in a digital age.

Mr Pickles said: “An independent local press and robust public scrutiny is essential for a healthy local democracy. We have given councils more power, but local people need to be able to hold their councils to account. I want to do more to help the new cadre of hyper-local journalists and bloggers.

“I asked for councils to open their doors, but some have slammed theirs shut, calling in the police to arrest bloggers and clinging to old-fashioned standing orders.

“This new right will be the key to helping bloggers and tweeters as well as journalists to unlocking the mysteries of local government and making it more transparent for all. My department is standing up for press freedom.”

The council chamber in Bristol’s Counts Louse (aka City Hall © G. Ferguson)

Here in Bristol, the council is well ahead of Mr. Pickles. Meetings have been webcast for years and members of the public and elected councillors freely tweet proceedings from the Counts Louse.
Embedded Linux on a growth curve

27/10/2013 Steve WoodsLinux, Tech

Tux – the Linux kernel mascot
Embedded Linux developers got together in Edinburgh on 24th and 25th October 2013 for the Embedded Linux Conference Europe in conjunction with LinuxCon Europe, German technology news website Heise reports. Sony’s Tim Bird, Chair of the Linux Foundation’s Consumer Electronics working group, presented a wild ride through the achievements of recent years. Linus Torvalds‘ old joke that Linux would one day achieve world domination has become surprisingly serious.

According to kernel developer Wolfram Sang, problems are causing the overloading of the maintainers who can hardly keep up any more with the incorporation of patches in the kernel. Basic devices were also a topic: the microcontrollers from ARM’s Cortex-M series (which are used for applications such as smart metering, human interface devices, automotive and industrial control systems, white goods, consumer products and medical instrumentation. Ed.) have no memory management unit (MMU), which requires appreciable differences in development. As a consequence uClinux uses its own format for binaries for devices without a MMU.

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