As per usual, potential users are warned that this is a development version and it should not be installed on production machines: in other words, the developers recommend not using LibreOffice pre-release builds for “mission-critical” purposes. These are intended for testing purposes only.
For further information, potential users should consult the release notes.
Yesterday’s Bristol Post carried a report on the start of building works at Wapping Wharf down by the city docks.
On the whole the report is fairly bland and it looks like a standard bit of blurb produced from a property developer’s press release.
Nevertheless, one sentence in particular drew my attention. It reads:
In recent days large machinery has moved to the site to prepare for the start of remediation and ground works.
After reading that, I began wondering how many of the Post’s readers know what remediation works actually are or what they involve.
Turning to the dictionary, remediation is defined as “the act or process of correcting a fault or deficiency.”
Correcting a fault or deficiency sounds fairly harmless and definitely a good thing to do, doesn’t it?
However, one has to add the word ‘site’ or ‘environmental’ to remediation to get at its actual meaning as used in the Post’s report, which is cleaning up pollution or contaminated land.
There are various means of effecting remediation, depending on the contamination or pollutant involved, but one very common means (and one which has been used extensively in the past by developers in Bristol. Ed.) is the use of heavy plant to dig up the contaminated soil, load it into lorries and cart it off to a toxic waste dump.
The entrance to the Wapping Wharf site in Wapping Road. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Finally, a small piece of advice: if you know of any remediation works taking place, for the sake of you health do try not to be downwind of them, especially in dry and/or windy weather.
On 28th March, just one day after Document Freedom Day (posts passim) the LibreOffice team made the 2nd and final release candidate for LibreOffice 4.0.2 available for evaluation, quality assurance testing, etc.