The site, which is run by the Maltese Local Councils Association, uses Centos Linux as the operating system, the MySQL database management system, the Nginx web server and the WordPress content management system.
At present it offers a wide number of tourism datasets open for using and reusing as well as useful and interesting information concerning open data.
The open data portal has been created as a result of the EU’s HOMER project, harmonising open data in the Mediterranean through better access and reuse of public sector information.
Open Data Malta aims to make available and exploitable Public Sector Information (PSI) related to the tourism sector in order to ensure transparency. By simply opening PSI, citizens can be better informed and participate in the decision making process.
This Tuesday is a day to fight back against mass surveillance of communications.
Mass surveillance is a huge problem, as shown by the Snowden revelations on the communications interception activities of the US’ NSA and the UK’s GCHQ. Governments are spying on us all, endangering the very fabric of democracy. Corporations are asking us to give away our privacy for a little convenience with much the same effect.
Furthermore, mass surveillance is a hard problem to solve since we are essentially up against a very human fear of dangers hidden somewhere in the dark and we’re being told that surveillance will protect us from those dangers.
However, surveillance not only fails at protecting us, it also makes everyone worse off in the long run.
Here are 3 simple ways to do to counter the pervasiveness of surveillance.
Make your web browsing more secure by installing the HTTPS Everywhere extension in your browser. This will make it much harder for potential snoopers to intercept your connection with the web sites you look at, and will help to protect any data you send there.
Generate a GPG key, and start using it to encrypt your data, especially your email. (There’s help on the web.)
Write to one or more of your political representatives. Explain that you are deeply concerned about mass surveillance, and ask them to help end the practice. Be polite, brief and clear.
By so doing, you have not only made yourself a little more secure, but have also helped others to improve their privacy and have contributed to driving political change.
The paper edition of the Law Gazette of 3rd February 2014 contained the following letter from Matthew Coxall of Thomas Boyd White Solicitors of Bexleyheath in Kent, whose content needs no further commentary.
Germany’s Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has filed a lawsuit against the German Federal government and other agencies in conjunction with human rights organisation the Liga für Menschenrechte e. V. (League for Human Rights). The government and its agencies are being charged with violating citizens’ personal lives by security services surveillance and toleration of such surveillance, Linux-Magazin reports.
In addition to domestic and foreign agents, the charge filed by the plaintiffs with the Federal Prosecutor General is made against the chairman of the Federal Intelligence Service, the military counter-intelligence service and the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. The CCC and the Liga are accusing these and the Federal government, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, of aiding and abetting due to toleration of and co-operation with the surveillance activities of the American NSA and UK’s GCHQ.
With the charge the instigators would like to initiate investigations by the Federal Prosecutor General since the secret service organisations and others have broken German law by the surveillance measures. The are charging intelligence service and Federal government officials of having “not only tolerated banned intelligence service activities, but also of having provided assistance to them actively and to a considerable extent”. This is contrary to § 99 of the Criminal Code (prohibited intelligence agency agent activity), §§ 201 et seq. of the Criminal Code (infringements of personal life and privacy) and § 258 of the Criminal Code (aiding and abetting the commission of crime).
Furthermore, the plaintiffs are demanding in the charge that US whistleblower Edward Snowden is called as an expert witness. If called as a witness, he should receive safe conduct and be protected against extradition to the USA.
On Wednesday the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) held an event called Sprint 14, in which it invited Ministers, civil servants, suppliers and the media along to showcase some major new digital public services for the first time.
Among the speakers was Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, who in his speech made some interesting and welcome noises about document formats:
Today I can announce that we’ve set out the document formats that we propose should be adopted across government – and we’re asking you to tell us what you think about them.
He then continued with equally welcome and interesting noises on open standards:
Technical standards for document formats may not set the pulse racing – it may not sound like the first shot in a revolution. But be in no doubt: the adoption of open standards in government threatens the power of lock-in to propriety vendors yet it will give departments the power to choose what is right for them and the citizens who use their services.
When dealing with citizens, information should be digital by default and therefore should be published online. Browser-based editing is the preferred option for collaborating on published government information. HTML (4.01 or higher e.g. HTML5) is therefore the default format for browser-based editable text. Other document formats specified in this proposal – ODF 1.1 (or higher e.g. ODF 1.2), plain text (TXT) or comma separated values (CSV) – should be provided in addition. ODF includes filename extensions such as .odt for text, .ods for spreadsheets and .odp for presentations.
Whilst the government has conceded that open formats and standards should be used when dealing with citizens, how long will it take for changes to take place before editable documents intended for use by we peasants citizens will be available in anything other than the quasi-ubiquitous MS Office formats currently provided?
With this motion the parliament wants the Cantonal Office for Computing and Organisation (KAIO) and Bedag Informatik AG, which is owned by the Canton, to co-operate in the information technology sector with other authorities on open source projects. Its own developments for which the Canton holds the copyright shall be released as open source software where reasonable so that other authorities can use the software and future development costs can be shared.
In addition, managers for each new IT project must disclose in future which open source alternatives have been investigated during procurement. If none is included, this must be justified. The same criterion shall be applicable to every new specialist application or one that is to be adapted. Either a release under an open source licence must be planned here or a justification given as to why it should not be released as open source.
Finally, the Canton of Bern is to be more actively involved in existing and new open source development and specialist applications and their respective organisations.
This blog recently reported on the removal of apostrophes – and other punctuation – in street names by Cambridge City Council as they “could lead to mistakes, particularly for emergency services” (posts passim).
Some heartening news now arrives courtesy of Private Eye on the response of Cantabrigians to their illiterate local authority.
It just goes to show that one cannot keep good pedants down.
At the start of the week, China suffered a major internet outage for several hours, Le Monde Informatique reported yesterday. Experts are wondering about the cause; was it hacking (to use the verb ‘to hack’ in its Daily Mail sense. Ed.) or a technical problem with the country’s censorship mechanisms?
Last Tuesday more than two-thirds of Chinese websites were inaccessible and millions of users were deprived of internet access for some 8 hours, according to Qihoo 360, a Chinese security software supplier best known for supplying anti-virus products. Security experts are wondering about the origin of this outage. Some believe it was hacking whilst others think there was a fault with the country’s so-called ‘Great Firewall’ censorship system.
After the outage, Chinese authorities conducted a preliminary inquiry which focussed on hacking. The Chinese CERT team is continuing its inquiry. giving priority to the hacking theory, Chinese specialists believe that they hijacked a root DNS server in China to reroute all the traffic. The Greatfire.org website, which analyses Chinese online censorship, disputes this diversion, stating that Google’s DNS servers were affected.
A poorly blocked traffic hijack?
However, Greatfire.org also showed that some of the user traffic had been redirected to an IP address in the United States and more specifically to the Dynamic Internet Technology site which has links to the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is heavily repressed in China. Greatfire.org believes the origin of the breakdown was due to a technical problem with the ‘Great Firewall’.
China regularly blocks sites whose content is critical of its government, including Facebook, Twitter and the New York Times. By wanting to block the Dynamic Internet Technology site, the Chinese authorities would have inadvertently rerouted the whole nation’s traffic, according to Greatfire.org.
This blog has drawn attention before to the lamentable lack of knowledge of certain bodies, e.g. the BBC and various newspapers, to the difference between translating and interpreting.
As the screenshot below shows, these bodies have now been joined by Capita Translation & Interpreting, that arm of the Crapita empire which is busy wasting public money by failing to provide interpreters – or those of good enough quality – for courts and tribunals under a contract with the Ministry of Justice (posts passim).
This exchange came into my Twitter timeline on the same day as the Law Gazette reports that Capita T&I has never managed to reach its 98% performance target under its Framework Agreement with the Ministry of Justice in the 2 years it has held the contract and just a few days before Ursula Brennan, Permanent Secretary at the MoJ, is due to appear before the House of Commons’ Public Accounts Committee as they examine the interpreting contract for a second time (posts passim).
As the Crapitards in charge of the Capita T&I are clearly confused by the difference between translators and interpreters, I can only recommend they too read my illustrated guide post.
Last year Mid Devon District Council took the daft and ungrammatical decision to ban the use of apostrophes – and other punctuation – in street signs (posts passim).
Mid Devon’s decision was justified by the pathetic excuse that removing punctuation was to “avoid confusion”.
This same line is now being trotted out by Cambridge City Council, in whose hallowed halls the city’s reputation for learning and scholarship appears has lost a battle with the dead hand of bureaucracy, as the Cambridge News reported on Friday.
According to the Cambridge News
Officers said they were following national guidance which warned apostrophes could lead to mistakes, particularly for emergency services.
Hobson’s Conduit. Soon to be Hobsons Conduit courtesy of Cambridge City Council?
Needless to say, with such a high profile city, the move has been criticised by language experts.
I know some people think apostrophes are superfluous but we really need them and I think it’s the first step on a slippery slope.
If councils are getting rid of them, what kind of message does that give out to students at schools?
Dropping apostrophes is pandering to the lowest denominator and while eradicating them anywhere is dreadful, it is particularly bad to do it in Cambridge.
Quite.
One must wonder what kind of English language teaching the officers of Cambridge City Council underwent at school, particularly since according to the British Council‘s grammar reference for people learning English, the rules for the use of apostrophes are “very simple”.
Apostrophes
We use an apostrophe (‘) to show either possession or that there is a letter missing (e.g. the apostrophe in ‘she’s’ shows that there is a letter missing in ‘she is’)
We use apostrophes with people or animals to show possession.
My sister’s house.
The dog’s blanket.
For things we use ‘of’ (the front of the car, NOT the car’s front.)
The position of the apostrophe depends on whether the noun is singular or plural. look at these two examples.
My friend’s house. This is about one friend.
My friends’ house. This is about two or more friends who share a house.
If a plural noun does not end in ‘s’ (e.g. men, people, children) we use ‘s to show possession.
The children’s bedroom.
A pair of women’s sunglasses.
We also use an apostrophe in some time expressions.
two weeks’ holiday
ten years’ experience
If people are really getting confused by apostrophes, doesn’t this indicate that English language teaching – particularly that related to punctuation – needs to be improved? After all, banning something you don’t understand is the action of a philistine.
Germany’s 
On Wednesday the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS) held an event called 
With a massive majority of 130 in favour, 0 against and one abstention, the Grand Council (Grossrat), the parliament of the Canton of Bern, has passed the motion “To exploit synergies when using software in the Canton of Bern”, 
At the start of the week, China suffered a major internet outage for several hours, 
