In honour of the 20th anniversary of the release of libwww into the public domain (posts passim), CERN has restored the first ever website at http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
As screenshot of the front page of this historic site is shown below. The links on the pages are active too!
Well done CERN.
In the past this blog has drawn attention to the sloppy use of terminology by the BBC and others, confusing translators with interpreters.
As some media types seem incapable of dealing with too many words, here’s a handy illustrated guide for them (all images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).
Firstly, a translator in the pre-digital age.
The bearded chap scribbling away is St. Jerome, one of the fathers of the Catholic Church, renowned for his translation into Latin of the Vulgate Bible.
Nowadays, a modern translator is more likely to be scribbling away using the kit in the picture below.
Note the keyboard, screen and dictionaries. The written word is clearly involved here.
Next we have a couple of conference interpreters.
Note the use of headsets and microphones. The spoken word is in evidence here.
However, interpreters sometimes use the written word to take notes, as shown here, but this is merely to assist in remembering long passages of spoken words.
Confused by translators and interpreters? You shouldn’t be! We’re here to help nation write and speak respectively to nation! 😉
The H Online reminds us that 20 years ago CERN in Geneva gave Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau official permission to release the libwww library free of charge, according to Berners-Lee, “to create a server or a browser, to give it away or sell it, without any royalty or other constraint”.
Since then this act of altruism on the part of CERN has had a profound effect on the world of communications. libwww (Library World Wide Web) is a highly modular client-side web API for Unix and Windows, as well as being the name of the reference implementation of this API. It can be used for both large and small applications, including web browsers/editors, robots and batch tools.
Its more modern replacement is considered to be libcurl.
You can read more about libwww on Wikipedia.
Politicians are not renowned for their use of either modern technology or social media. As regards the latter, this was previously noted by tech humour site xkcd with the “Clueless Politician Coast” on the island of Twitter on its Updated Online Communities map in 2010.
If proof were needed of this cluelessness, this was happily provided today by Maria Miller MP, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.
Case proven, m’lud?
Those with memories capable of coping with more than 140 characters – 138 more than used by Ms Miller – may recall she was the MP who thought it was perfectly in order for taxpayers to provide her parents with somewhere to live.
If you’re interested in safe, secure internet browsing, you’ll be interested in the Tor Browser Bundle.
Tor itself is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the internet. As a user, Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your internet connection from learning what sites you visit; it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location and it lets you access sites which are blocked. For more information about Tor, read the project’s overview page.
The Tor Browser Bundle lets you use Tor on Linux, Mac OS X or Windows without the need to install any software. all you need to do is unzip the package for your particular OS, and it’s ready to use. The Tor Browser bundle can run off a USB flash drive, is self-contained and comes with a pre-configured web browser to protect your anonymity.
The government wants to establish a database of all the emails, internet browsing habits and telecommunications data under the Communications Data Bill, also known as the Snooper’s Charter (posts passim).
Why not save them one day’s effort by copying you send for a whole day to the Home Secretary? Show “Big Sister” that her “Big Brother” plans are not acceptable.
For those readers on Facebook, there’s a campaign page there.
It seems that the Home Office is trying to sneak the Communications Data Bill, also known as the Snooper’s Charter, into the Queen’s Speech to be given to Parliament on 8th May.
It’s trying to do this with as little consultation as possible and whilst trying to keep the details of the Bill secret.
As I’m not a criminal, I object to having my communications monitored by the government and have today written the email below to my MP, Stephen Williams, to draw his attention to the Home Office’s shenanigans.
Dear Mr Williams
I’ve written to you before on the matter of the Snooper’s Charter, also known as the Communications Data Bill.
The Home Office is – to the best of my understanding – trying to rush through an revised version of the Bill (the previous version was roundly condemned by a joint committee of both Houses, if I recall correctly) with minimal or no consultation.
In addition, the Bill has also attracted the attention of the Information Commissioner. Home Secretary Theresa May has so far declined to explain a proposed “filtering” system which would allow officials to trawl through the public’s private emails, text messages and other messages sent through the internet. However, the Information Commissioner has now ordered the Home Office to publish the advice that ministers received on the design, cost and risks of the new filtering system by 11th May. If the Home Office fails to comply with the Information Notice issued by the Commissioner last week, it will be judged as being in “contempt of court”. For full details, please see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/10007940/Home-Office-faces-legal-action-unless-it-reveals-details-of-Snoopers-charter.html
I would urge you to use your influence with Nick Clegg and David Cameron, who are this week deciding whether to keep the Snoopers’ Charter in the Queen’s Speech on 8th May.
Yours, etc.
For those readers also concerned by the illiberality of the Home Office’s proposals – of which the GDR’s Stasi would have been proud – discover what you can do by consulting the Open Rights Group website.
Yesterday Neil McGovern posted an email to the Debian Development announce list giving the timetable for the next release of the stable version of Debian GNU/Linux, codenamed Wheezy.
We now have a target date of the weekend of 4th/5th May for the release. We have checked with core teams, and this seems to be acceptable for everyone. This means we are able to begin the final preparations for a release of Debian 7.0 – “Wheezy”.
The intention is only to lift the date if something really critical pops up that is not possible to handle as an errata [sic], or if we end up technically unable to release that weekend (e.g. a required machine crashes or d-i explodes in a giant ball of fire). Every other RC fix that does not make it in time will be r1 material. Please be sure to contact us about the RC fixes you would like included in the point release!
Status
======From the usertags page you can see a total of:
Blockers for Wheezy bugs (2 bugs)
Planned for removal bugs (4 bugs)
Ignored for Wheezy bugs (58 bugs)These have all been actioned/fixed. However, there are also about 17 bugs that have not yet been tagged and are not hinted. These will be actioned shortly.
Awesomeness of Wheezy
=====================We really need some more work on http://wiki.debian.org/NewInWheezy, please help contribute! Let’s tell everyone why Wheezy will be the best release ever.
As well as this, release notes, installation guides and documentation in general, especially translations can always do with some work. Please see previous mails on these, and help if you can.
I’ve been using Wheezy on my laptop for the last couple of weeks and it’s a very stable, reliable operating system. See instructions for getting Debian if you want to use or try it too.
In conjunction with both Fossbox and Flossie, BCSWomen, the British Computer Society’s specialist women’s group, is organising 3 open source career taster days for women in London next month.
The days involved are 13th, 20th and 28th May and the sessions will run from 10.00 am to 5.00pm.
All the taster days will be held at BCS, 1st Floor, The Davidson Buidling, 5 Southampton Street, London, WC2E 7HA (map).
The cost will be £10.00 plus VAT (i.e. £12.00 in total) per day, but this will include lunch and refreshments.
The organisers are promoting these days as a series of three one-day workshops for women returners aimed at raising awareness of Open Source development as a dual skillset or second career.
The course will aim at building awareness and confidence and help women take some first steps either towards learning to code or to update existing skills and to learn how they might contribute to open source projects. It will also aim to raise awareness of self-training opportunities and of open source career paths and entry points.
Day 1 will include and introduction to FLOSS culture and licensing models, plus programming for Android mobile devices using MIT App Inventor.
Day 2 will comprise an introduction to open source projects and resources, as well as an introduction to Git.
Day 3 will give participants an introduction to programming with Python.
Online bookings only will be accepted and those interested are advised that places are limited.
Just when we were all thinking the Green Party was composed of gentle, tree-hugging vegans, along comes Bristol’s Councillor Gus Hoyt…
For the credulous, there is an alternative explanation: Gus was let down (yet again!Ed.) by the predictive texting software on his iPhone, but if you’ll believe that, you’re daft enough to vote for him. 😉