Bristol Wireless News

Instead of the traditional Christmas-time office booze-up, Bristol Wireless is organising something slightly different this year: we’re putting on a geek quiz night as a fundraiser.

Details are as follows:

• Venue: St Werburghs Community Centre, Horley Road, BS2 9TJ;
• Date and time: Friday 19th December at 7pm;
• Team size: 4-6 persons;
• Entry fee: £2.50 per person;
• Quizmasters: Sean and Woodsy

In addition, we’ll have a licensed bar open with, inter alia, cider from our good friends at Ciderpunk, as well as refreshments.

All are welcome, so hope to see you there and remember: points means prizes!

On the morning of Saturday 29th five Bristol Wireless members arrived at the Red Factory social centre off Portland Square, Bristol armed with one of our mobile LTSP servers, 3 of our posher LTSP client laptops, one of our 30 quid Linux PCs and some bumf about free software and BW to assist in the Opening the Doors to Autonomy day of activities and workshops taking place there.

We set up on a couple of tables on the landing and were up and running by about 11AM. We used a 3G dongle for Internet access and a laptop for routing. We have live burning of giveaway copies of various Linux distros and many good chats about social and artist freedom with the people who came along. Through the event, Bristol Wireless were able to support and strengthen our links with the Bristol social activist movement. We also had information available about the next hacktionLab rural hack-meeting to take place in the spring of 2009.

Yesterday the Bristol Wireless lab was graced by a visit from Ronnie Corbett - the real one that is, not the wee comic…

Anyway, avid readers of BW News will remember that Ronnie was the warden at Princess Royal Gardens (news passim). He’s now retired from wardening duties for Bristol City Council, but is still keenly interested in IT for senior citizens and feels he can now throw himself into this fully without any of the constraints imposed by being a wage slave.

How does Ronnie intend to provide IT for the elderly on little or no budget? By using free software and Linux of course! (How else? Ed.)

Rich Higgs was chauffeured by Ronnie yesterday to a prospective install site at a local social club for an initial visit. More details as and when they arrive…

In the meantime, thanks very much for the biscuits Ron, and your justification for computing for the elderly is still the best we’ve read.

Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project, was recently interviewed by Rosalie Marshall of Australia’s IT news and gave the following intriguing response when asked: “Do you think public authorities should be leading the way with free software?”

Every public agency has a duty to maintain its control over its computing, as a matter of sovereignty. Using a non-free program means giving the program’s developer control over that computing. Thus, public agencies must reject proprietary software and move to free software. Venezuela and Ecuador are on the right track.

Discuss.

Hat tip: northxsouth

Our old friend Shevek has just given the first notice of the next Adventure in Technology will be returning again early in 2009. Writing from the other side of the Atlantic, Shevek posted the message below yesterday to the BBLUG mailing list:

Hi,

We are holding the next episode of our festival of creative technology in Bristol on the 28th February 2009, where we will be removing lids marked “Do not remove this lid”, going “ooh!” and making more interesting things out of the debris. There will also be both high- and low-tech talks and demos on topics including cryptography, demo coding, talking to politicians, audio production and robotics.

This time, in addition to guests from Europe, we are likely to have a number of notable guests from the USA (where I am currently residing).

The event web site is at http://www.techadventure.org/ - please join the group (Google) as further announcements will mostly be placed there. Entrance will be free, as this is one of our guiding principles, and there is a car park and a licensed bar.

Of course nobody knows quite what people (including you!) are going to bring or do until the day of the event. If you want to talk or demo something, it will help us if you contact us in advance so that we can warn the stage crew of numbers, and what to expect. However, if you just turn up on the day, we will do our best.

Come along and have fun!

S.

This year’s event (news passim) was great fun. What Shevek didn’t mention in his announcement was that the venue will be the same as last time - Trinity Community Arts, our near neighbours and another organisation committed to using free and open source software. Finally, the Techadventure Google group is already firing off a flurry of messages (thanks to whoever signed me up! ) and I’ll be there on the day to cover the fun.

Every now and again one’s previous work comes back up again to haunt - just like the previous night’s dodgy takeaway meal.

This has just happened to Bails, one of Bristol Wireless’ longest serving volunteers, who yesterday posted the following message to the BW mailing list:

Last year I was requested to put together an LSTP server and several clients for a friend. These were subsequently shipped out to Senegal. They have now arrived (12 months later) after the hassle of getting them through customs (via a neighbouring country).

We set the system up so it should JFW. But now the computers have arrived in Senegal, they have realised they have no technicians who understand Linux or LTSP.

If anyone is in that region and could help would they please reply to this thread and I will put them in contact with the people on the ground.

Thanks

Bails

For the Francophones out there, here’s a French translation of Bails’ message:

L’année dernière j’ai préparé un serveur LSTP (Linux Terminal Server Project) et plusieurs clients légers pour un ami. Ceux-ci ont été ultérieurment expédiés au Sénégal.

Ils sont maintenant arrivés (12 mois plus tard) après les ennuis de les dédouaner (par l’intermédiaire d’un pays tiers voisin). Nous avons installé le système d’exploitation et le serveur et les clients doivent ainsi fonctionner sans aucune intervention ou configuration ultérieures. Depuis l’arrivée des ordinateurs au Sénégal, on s’est rendu compte qu’il n’y a aucun technicien qui comprend Linux ou LTSP.

Si quelqu’un dans la région peut offrir de l’aide, vous êtes priés de répondre à ce fil et je vous mettrai en contact avec les personnes sur site.

Merci à l’avance

Can you help Bails out here? If so, can you please subscribe and respond to our mailing list (details here).

Spanish site Dos Hermanas Wireless reports that five villages in Girona, northern Spain, that have been bypassed by the telephone companies, decided a few years ago to install their own WiFi networks to provide internet access to residents. The regulator, the Telecommunications Market Commission (CMT) has now fined them for breaking the law, as the service was not notified to and registered with the Commission.

In 2006, the CMT received a number of anonymous emails about some villages (Bordils, Campllong, Espinelves, Fornells de la Selva and Quart) in the Province of Girona offering wireless access to their residents at a price of between six and nine euros per month. The villages had contracted Gesmedia to take charge of building and operating the network infrastructure.

The ambitions of the villages were modest: one or two lines and ADSL for people to meet the demand of a population that in no case was more than a couple of hundred inhabitants. All localities had coverage problems and in some areas connections were not possible.

The local authorities are deemed by CMT have breached section 6.2 of the General Telecommunications Law, which requires those involved in operating a network or providing an electronic communications service to notify the CMT.

The mayor of Campllong (400 inhabitants), Lluís Freixas, was indignant with the CMT’s decision. “We got into this situation by providing a public service, by replacing someone, an agency or operators who have not done their work,” he said. The nearest telephone exchange to the village is three kilometres away and its wiring is old and inadequate, according to the mayor. “There was no coverage,” he adds. In the absence of companies providing a service, they decided to take action themselves, “so people could read their email or use the internet,” he explained.

Some of the local councils told the CMT they were unaware they had to register and all agreed that network operator Gesmedia had not done its job properly. None of the local authorities receive any financial benefit from the service, for which subscribers pay Gesmedia.

Read the story in the original Spanish.

Hat tip: Global Freifunk

Over the last few weeks Bristol Wireless volunteers have been installing seven LTSP workstations for public use in the foyer of Easton Community Centre in Kilburn Street.

In keeping with our greener credentials, the Compaq workstations (also known as clients. Ed.) run on minimal power, having no moving parts such as hard disks and optical drives; they were originally used as desktop machines by the National Health Service and were donated to our project through Byteback Computer Recycling in Hartcliffe. The new Dell server we’ve chosen to run the suite and all the user applications is also very low-powered, but very efficient.

We’ve installed our own flavour of Debian Linux (news passim) sporting the Bristol Wireless desktop and your usual suite of tools - web browser, word processing, graphics software, etc. - most users will want to utilise.

There’s recently been a change of management in the ECC and we wish the new team well. Those readers with good memories will recall that Bristol Wireless was associated with the centre for many years in the past and we’re very pleased to renew our collaboration.

Bristol Wireless volunteer Acesabe is currently doing the final installation and configuration of a laptop due to go out to Palestine in the near future through the good offices of Bristol Computers For Palestine, who are currently raising funds for computers for educational and community use in the West Bank.

The machine itself is a Toshiba Satellite 4060XCDT with a PII processor and, in view of its vintage, Acesabe has installed the latest version (codenamed Toussaint Louverture) of the lightweight AntiX distribution.

Talking to a representative of Bristol Computers For Palestine, I learnt that the organisation has already got a batch of 16 full-sized desktops and monitors already crated up and ready to go: all that’s required is a reliable contact in Israel to take delivery and they can then be delivered to the West Bank. This, along with the intransigent attitude of the Israeli authorities, have been the major obstacles to date. Laptops, on the other hand, are easier to get their final recipients as they can travel as normal cabin hand luggage on aeroplanes.

Researching this piece, we learnt there’s a Palestine Linux Users’ Group, so there’s a friendly group of people locally who’ll be able to help with any queries users may have.

Finally, if you have any laptop(s) you could donate, Bristol Computers For Palestine would be pleased to hear from you; contact them through their website. Any personal data can be deleted if necessary.

The BBC reports that, as part of a $3bn (£1.66bn) bilateral trade deal with Portugal, it will be buying one million low-cost laptops for its schoolchildren.

Portugal is manufacturing the blue and white laptops under licence from Intel and the machines are broadly based on the design of Intel’s Classmate computer, which will also sport digital cameras and a broadband net connection, as well as running a version of Linux (what else? Ed.) developed in Venezuela.

Read the original story here.