Daily Archives: Friday, December 6, 2013

  • USL Umbria 1 migrates 300 workstations to LibreOffice

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Open Standards, Tech

    USL Umbria 1 logoItalian regional health organisation USL Umbria 1 has completed the first phase of its migration to Libre Office, Libre Umbria reports.

    USL Umbria 1’s territory includes the districts of Perugia, Assisi, Trasimeno, the middle and upper Tiber valley and the upper Chiasco valley (the Chiasco is a tributary of the Tiber. Ed.).

    LibreOffice menu screen
    LibreOffice start centre

    After some two months from the start of the migration, USL Umbria 1 has already converted 300 stations from running proprietary office suites to LibreOffice and is scheduled to migrate the rest of its PC pool within the next few months.

    In parallel with the LibreOffice installation, users are being offered training in the new software; those who’ve already been switched to the open source office suite should complete their training by the end of the year.

    In the opinion of the LibreUmbria project, USL Umbria 1 is a good example of how it is possible for public sector organisations to adopt free and open source software.

  • Phishing email deceives WordPress administrators

    Steve WoodsOpen Source, Tech

    WordPress logoGermany’s Heise Online reports that security firm Sucuri is warning of a wave of phishing emails intended to trick WordPress administrators into installing a plug-in which serves up malware to site visitors. The email ostensibly offers site administrators the Pro version of the popular All in One SEO Pack plug-in free of charge.

    However, anyone clicking on the email’s download link isn’t taken to the official WordPress plug-in page, but to a spammer-infested domain in Australia (.com.au) or Brazil (.com.br). At least administrators should be taken aback by now! According to Sucuri, some of their customers have nevertheless actually installed the malicious plug-in. This results in the malicious code opening a backdoor on the server giving the attackers full access and replacing the infected blog’s index.php file.

    Once installed, the criminals behind the fake plug-in can insert any code they like into their victim’s website and attempt to attack visitors’ computers. Several versions of the malicious plug-in relay visitors to pornography site or other servers which also attempt to install malware on victims’ computers.

    Due to its widespread use, WordPress is a favourite target for hackers who attempt to misuse others’ websites for spam distribution or for DDoS attacks. There was such a DDoS attack recently on a forum in which thousands of legitimate WordPress sites were misused as part of the attack wave without the knowledge of their owners.

  • Oldham Evening Chronicle apologises to interpreters

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics

    RPSI Linguist Lounge reports that on 2nd December, the Oldham Evening Chronicle published an apology to NRPSI interpreters on Page 2 of that day’s edition.

    The apology is reproduced below.

    image of apology scanned from Oldham Evening Chronicle

    It would appear that since publication of the original article, journalists at the Chronicle have learned the actual meaning of the word ‘cartel’.

    Oldham is the home town of Gavin Wheeldon, the founder of Advanced Language Solutions (ALS) which was subsequently sold to Capita and renamed Capita Translation & Interpreting. The latter is currently presiding over the fiasco commonly known as the Ministry of Justice framework agreement for courts and tribunals interpreting (posts passim).