The Crown Commercial Service has signed a deal with an open source software company called Collabora Productivity that will make the Libre Office software available across all government departments. Libre Office is a free version of Microsoft Office, a software package that the government spends millions in license fees to use. Collabora will provide a specially tailored version of Libre Office for free and will provide technical assistance and support.
The CCS deal is their latest move in a long running campaign to stamp out the public sector culture of mindlessly funnelling taxpayer money to big software companies and comes on the back of Government Digital Service’s victory in forcing Microsoft into supporting Open Document Formats. Libre Office uses the ODF standard and by making Microsoft support the format, CCS have opened the door for a seamless switch to free opensource software such as Libre Office. Don’t expect Microsoft to go down without a fight…
Mr Justice Ouseley rules that a smart phone or other GPS device does not equal a taxi-meter, representing a win for Uber
— Ben Ando (@BenAndo) October 16, 2015
The ruling clarifies that Uber’s smartphone app isn’t breaking the law as it isn’t operating in the same way as the regulated meters used by black cabs to calculate fares. The cabbies will be furious…
UPDATE: The luddites have already appealed
Unbelievable! High Court says it's NOT a meter! LTDA have lodged appeal to Supreme Court
— The LTDA (@TheLTDA) October 16, 2015
UPDATE II: Uber have responded
“This is great news for Londoners and a victory for common sense. Now the High Court has ruled in favour of new technology, we hope Transport for London will think again on their bureaucratic proposals for apps like Uber. Compulsory five-minute waits and banning ride-sharing would be bad for riders and drivers. These plans make no sense. That’s why 130,000 people have already signed our petition against these proposals. We hope TfL will listen to Londoners and let Uber keep London moving.”
Tesla have rolled out an “Autopilot” update to its Model S cars today; watch as the new software drives by itself through New York traffic:
It’s not quite a fully driverless car yet, but it’s not far off. The cabbies must be quaking in their boots…
John Whittingdale turned up at BAFTA’s HQ to help plug the launch of a music streaming device called “Electric Jukebox“. The Jukebox is an ugly oversized remote and dongle that plugs into the back of your TV, and has quickly become the butt of jokes. It is basically the same as a Google Chromecast or Amazon Fire Stick, except with a fraction of the functionality. The Chromecast and Fire Stick cost £30 or £35 respectively. The Electric Jukebox costs £179…
Rob Lewis, chairman of Electric Jukebox, then popped up to tell everyone that the world needs the £180 remote control because it’s “almost like you need a degree in engineering” to use services like Spotify. Lewis has two failed music streaming services under his belt…
Electric Jukebox perks include curated mixtapes from Stephen Fry and Robbie Williams’ wife:
And if you want to keep streaming music after a year? It’ll cost you £60…
The Investigatory Powers Tribunal, the only judicial body with the power to investigate MI5, MI6 and GCHQ, has ruled today that it’s completely fine for spooks to snoop on the communications of MPs. The ruling lays firmly to rest any pretence that the Wilson Doctrine – the principle that MPs’ and peers’ phones should not be tapped, holds any water with GCHQ. If it ever really did…
“We do not accept that the Wilson Doctrine was ever absolute. The policy or general policy of which Mr Wilson spoke was one of not tapping the telephones of Members of Parliament. It seems unlikely to us that such policy, particularly once RIPA was passed by Parliament, with its statutory justification for warrants by reference to the necessity for the interests of national security or the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime etc , was intended to rule out any tapping of such telephones or other similar direct surveillance and certainly not any incidental interception. It is difficult to see how there could be an absolute policy which would rule out interception of any communications with parliamentarians, as opposed to a policy relating to those involving confidential communications with constituents etc.”
Maybe MPs will be more interested now they know all their calls, texts and emails are being logged…
Twitter fired 8% of their staff today and it appears the unlucky 336 employees in for the chop first found out when they tried to log into their Twitter accounts. This is how Bart Teeuwisse, one of Twitter’s Senior Software Engineers, found out he had been culled this morning:
https://twitter.com/bartt/status/653946266938818561
The layoffs are the first major move made by Jack Dorsey since he was made chief executive of Twitter last week. Looks like the social network is in big twubble...
