Free Raspberry Pi Beginners Workshop in Newcastle

This evening I attended the Raspberry Pi Beginners Workshop at Core Electronics in Newcastle. A Pi computer all all the bits need were provided for each participant (you don't need to buy anything and the workshop is free). This is in their well equipped Makerspace at the back of the shop. The workshop covered the first couple of exercises from the video course. It was fun to be able to handle a computer, plug in the connections, wire some components to a breadboard, and program a light to flash. This was enough to give me the confidence I could at least assemble a Pi based project from a set of instructions (such as an air quality monitor to add to vehicles, ships and aircraft, in bushfire zones). There are also Arduino Beginners Workshops.

Open Source Software for Indian Government

The Indian Department Of Electronics and Information Technology issued a “Policy on Adoption of Open Source Software for Government of India” (F. No. 1(3)/2014 – EG II, Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, March 2015). The policy is mandatory for all Central Government Organisations for all new e-Governance applications and new versions of existing systems.

"3. Policy Statement

Government of India shall endeavour to adopt Open Source Software in all e-Governance systems implemented by various Government
organizations, as a preferred option in comparison to Closed Source Software (CSS).
The Open Source Software shall have the following characteristics: 

3.1 The source code shall be available for the community / adopter / end-user to study and modify the software and to redistribute copies of either the original or modified software.

3.2 Source code shall be free from any royalty."

Talks on Open Source at Microsoft in Sydney

Steven Edouard, Felix Rieseberg and Rita Zhang will speak on "Open source at Microsoft" at the Sydney Linux User Group (SLUG) meeting, 6pm 23 October 2015 in Sydney. The SLUG meetings are free and always entertaining (it is worth attending, just to see the venue: Google Sydney HQ). While in Sydney, Steven, Felix  and Rita are also speaking at the .NET user group, Docker Meetup and Muru-D.

"As you may (or may not) know, nowadays Microsoft is a big supporter of open source, so much so, that Microsoft has become one of the biggest contributors to the Linux kernel.
In this talk we'll discuss how we 'do' open source at Microsoft, including some projects we've partnered with such as Docker, Deis, Flynn, Cloud Foundry, Ember.js and a variety of others. We'll show off some of the open source integrations we've done and how you can leverage some of this open work in your own projects. Join our San Francisco-based open source engineering team for this interesting discussion on our new direction and learn more about open source at Microsoft."

Replace Windows XP with Linux

In "Open Source Alternatives For Windows XP" Robert Edwards and Eric C. McCreath from ANU make the case for Linux to replace XP on old low power PCs. Last year I was helping someone move house. Among the appliances to be disposed of in the move were four desktop PCs, running various old versions of Microsoft Windows (from 98 to XP). The PCs were so old they were unlikely to be able to run newer version of  Microsoft Window, so installed Mint Linux (version 15) "Mate". The Mate version of Mint Linux provides an interface not that different to an old version of Windows. The installation came with the Libre Office suite and enough applications programs to be usable.

Sahana Software Foundation Internships

The Sahana Software Foundation, which I am a member of, is a not-for-profit organization supporting open source disaster management software used by the Red Cross, United Nations and other organizations around the world. Sahana is running software development virtual internships from November 2013 to March 2014 for work on UI/UX design. These are available world wide.

Free eBook on Disaster Management with Open Source Software

My colleagues at the Sahana Foundation have released "Sahana Eden: Essential Guide", a  free ebook about how to use the Sahana free open source disaster management software. The software was first developed for the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, and subsequently around the world for disaster relief operations. A Resource Mapping System was contributed to Sahana Eden by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and is available for other organizations to use. The book is available as web pages by chapter, one web page, ePub, and PDF (104 pages).

Table of Contents

Introduction

• About this Book
• Why Sahana Eden?
• What Does Sahana Eden Do?
• Who Uses Sahana Eden?
• Technical Overview
• Planning a Deployment

Getting Started

• Installation
• Configuration
• Importing Data
• Localization

Administration

• Maintenance
• Data Export

Extending Sahana Eden

• Installing a Developer Environment
• Customization
• Building a New Module
• Further Reading

Meeting The Sahana Community

• Sahana Software Foundation
• Getting Support
• Getting Involved
• Contributing Code
• Where to Go Next

• Appendices

• Resource Model
• Mapping & GIS
• Scheduler
• Synchronization
• Web Services
• S3XML
• Glossary
• Credits

Open Knowledge Down Under

Dr. Rufus Pollock, founder of the Open Knowledge Foundation will speak on open knowledge and open data, around Australia in August 2013: Sydney 27 August, Canberra 28 August, Brisbane 29 August, Adelaide 30 August, and Melbourne 2 September.

Dr. Rufus Pollock graduated from Cambridge University as a Mead fellow in Economics (after graduating with a distinction in mathematics). Rufus is a well regarded economist because of his scholarly and advisory work on open data and open knowledge economies. Rufus co-founded the Open Knowledge Foundation in 2004 and personally wrote the first lines of code for the CKAN data system (Rufus is also an accomplished programmer). Rufus has sat on several government advisory panels including the British Prime Minister’s appointed Public Sector Transparency Board. This involved working with Sir Tim Berners-Lee, who credited Rufus with starting the ‘Raw Data Now’ meme[1].

Currently, Rufus is a Shuttleworth fellow and is helping to expand the Open Knowledge Foundation worldwide, of which over 50+ chapters have formed including our Asia-Pacific neighbors: India, Nepal, Taiwan, China.

The objectives of this open knowledge tour include: Talk to government representatives about the idea of ‘open knowledge’ especially ‘open data’, ‘data journalism’ & other ‘open’ events and efforts. Launch the official OKFN Australian chapter.

edX MOOC Software Open Source

The edX consortium have announced they will release their edX software as open source 1 June and Stanford will integrate its Class2Go software with this. However, it is not clear what the functionality of this software is and how it will work alongside existing open source Learning Management Systems, such as Moodle. The emphasis with MOOCs at present seems to be on video and automated testing, much like 1960s computer assisted instruction. Some of the announcements from MOOC consortia are less than credible, such as edX claiming to be able to automatically grade essays (Essay-Grading Software Offers Professors a Break, JOHN MARKOFF, April 4, 2013, NY Times).  There seems to be little regard given to the effort needed to design content for a course and particularly text based materials, nor to what the research on effective on-line pedagogy tells us.  I will discuss some of this in my conference talk on "MOOCs with Books", in late April, in Colombo.

Lightning Calendar Extension for Thunderbird Email

For years I have been relieving those annoying emails from scheduling systems asking to insert an appointment in my calendar.   I tried an integrated email/calendar package for Linux, but it did not do email very well (or anything else). So I was reduced to either ignoring the messages or trying to decode what they said. Recently I installed the Lightning calendar extension for Thunderbird email. This is small and works well. It decodes the incoming invitations,  lets you accept or reject, puts them in your calendar and sends a reply. It may do other things, but that was all I wanted. The extension is also available for Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS X.

Free Open Source Software for Red Cross Disaster Response

Greetings from Canberra, where I am attending an on-line meeting of the Sahana Software Foundation, which provides free and open source software for disaster response. We are having a presentation on the Resource Management System (RMS) which was built with Sahana's software for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). This is a modular system, used by some of the national Red Cross societies to help run their emergency response. The additional software developed as part of RMS the project is then contributed back to the open source system, for use by other organizations. The software will need to be upgraded to handle the scale of larger humanitarian organizations, such as in China. Also the software has to be able to support mobile devices and have provision for off-line use. Currently phase 3 of the project is considering which features to concentrate on and accepting input from users. There is a  job available coordinating the Resource Management System at IFRC for someone with both IT and Unitarian organization experience.

Cyber Security Needs to Cover All Threats

US computer security company Mandiant released a detailed 76 page report "APT1: Exposing One of China’s Cyber Espionage Units" (18 February 2013). This alleged that numerous cyber attacks on governments and companies around the world were undertaken by a specialist unit of the Chinese army (PLA GSD 3rd Department, 2nd Bureau MUCD Unit 61398). However, the existence of state sponsored cyber espionage should not come as a surprise. It is to be expected that nations will attempt to extract secrets from others for commercial and strategic reasons, even ones they have friendly relations with (as has been routine in the pre-Internet age). In addition, it is to be expected that nations will have in place plans for conducting offensive cyber warfare to disrupt the military operations, government and civil infrastructure of potential opponents. Pointing out that other nations are planning, or carrying out, cyber attacks is not an effective form of defense.

The US Army Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD) hosted a planning day for the "Tactical Electromagnetic Cyber Warfare Demonstrator" (Tec-WD, pronounced "Tech-wood") in late 2012. The Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard,  visited the Australian Defence Department's Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC) at the Defence Signals Directorate in Canberra to announce an "Australian cyber security centre to be established". This followed the launch of the  "Strong and Secure: A Strategy for Australia’s National Security". US President Obama signed a "Presidential Policy Directive -- Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience" on 14 February.

However, a military cyber-center cannot protect a government or civilian computer system which has lax security measures. All companies and government agencies should have in place defenses to protect against on-line attack. Mandiant describe "spear phishing" as the most commonly used attack. With this a message is sent which appears to be from within an organization. The message has an attachment which exploits security flaws in the computer operating system. The example given shows an executable program (.EXE) file disguised as a PDF document. However, any organization which allows arbitrary executable programs to pass through its firewalls and then allows such code to be executed on its computers has a very low level of security. Every government agency and company of any size should have procedures in place to prevent this form of attack. A common problem is old software with known security flaws, which has not been updated. If the organization cannot afford to install new versions of commercial software, then there are free open source software packages, with government security ratings, available for use.

Opening Government Data in Australia

NICTA are hosting "Opening Government Data in Australia – Next Steps" with the Australian Information Commissioner, in Canberra at noon on Friday, 22 February 2013. Other Australian events for "Open Data Day" are Hack for Education and Environment at UTS in Sydney and "Maleny2013".

Opening Government Data in Australia 

Description:

To support and encourage the International Open Data Hackthon (http://opendataday.org/), the Australian Information Commissioner, NICTA/eGov Cluster and the Office for Spatial Policy are doing a launch event about next steps for opening up government data in Australia.
Recording: This event will be recorded and published online after the event.
Date: Friday 22 February 2013
Time: 12:00 - 13:00
RSVP : Eventbrite

Schedule:

12:00 – The OAIC will launch their latest publication, Open public sector information; from principles to practice and Australian Information Commissioner Professor John McMillian will discuss:

• agency successes in implementing the Principles on open public sector information
• the challenges to be overcome
• the opportunities for agencies to increase the value of public sector information
• action the OAIC will take to assist agencies to further implement the Principles
• international developments in the open government movement

12:20 – Helen Owens from the Office of Spatial Policy – will discuss progress on opening government geospatial data and specifically the Foundation Spatial Data Framework.

12:35 – The eGov Cluster will present some recent projects using government data for public benefits and innovation, and will discuss how governments can collaborate with the private sector.

12:50 – A short Q&A panel session with the speakers about opening government data in Australia.

Using Free Linux Software for Teaching Online at Australia's Leading University

The Sydney Linux Users Group (SLUG) were short a speaker for their monthly meeting, so I volunteered with "Linux Software for Teaching Online at Australia's Leading University". SLUG meetings are always interesting, with a wide range of speakers (not just me) and have the bonus of being held at Google Sydney: 6pm for 6:30pm, Friday, 30 November 2012.

Using Free Linux Software for Teaching Online at Australia's Leading University

Speaker: Tom Worthington, Adjunct Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University 

Tom talks about how he used Linux and other free open source software for creating and running an award winning online course at the Australian National University. See also: "A Green Computing Professional Education Course Online with Moodle"

Linux Allows for Using Low Cost Hardware

Use a 11.6 Inch sub-notebook computer which cost less than $500.

Switched off new "Unity" Ubuntu interface for "classic".

Upgraded with a  60 GB Solid State Disk (SSD).

Use a USB wireless modem.

In the home and university offices have desktop screen, keyboard and mouse.

Free Open Source Office Software on the Laptop

1. LibreOffice suite for word processing and spreadsheet
2. Mozilla Thunderbird for email
3. Calibre for creating ebooks
4. Slidy for web based presentations

Free Software on University Servers

Moodle Learning Management System.

Free in the Cloud

• HTML Tidy to fix HTML errors
• Achecker for web accessibility
• Wikipedia for reference purposes

Some Tips

1. Use HTML in place of PDF and WP
2. Create text in LibreOffice with default format,
3. Export course content as HTML to Moodle,
4. Export as HTML to Calibre to create eBooks,
5. Use Moodle to communicate with students, not email.

Example: Course Notes Via The Web

1. eBook exported from Moodle
2. Published to web, ePub eBook and POD paperback
3. Notes in Moodle most popular with students and simpler to maintain

E-learning in Sumatra

Simple HTML course materials allows translation into Indonesian: " Sustainable Development Through Green ICT: The Role of Education and the Business Sector".

Totara Corporate Version of Moodle Learning Management System

Totara offer an interesting commercial open source distribution of the popular Moodle Learning Management System, tailored for corporate training. Moodle was originally developed for universities and so does not have the compliance features needed for vocational and corporate education. Normally the organization installing Moodle has to add extra packages and customizations (there are specialist companies which do this, such as NetSpot and BrightCookie).

Totara appear to have packaged up their customizations and are selling these bundled with Moodle (note that Totara is commercial open source, that is when you buy it you get to see the code, but it is not free). It is not clear how much of Totara is really a unique product and how much is the same open source add-ons which are normally used with Moodle.

Redesigning World Government Online

Following on from GovHack in Canberra/Sydney and Govcamp in Canberra, the global GovJam, commences 5:45pm 5 June 2012 (Canberra time). The event will be launched Senator the Hon Kate Lundy, Minister for Sport, Minister for
Multicultural Affairs, Minister Assisting for Industry and Innovation (See video of Senator Lundy at the first GovHack in 2009).

You can take part in the GovJam from anywhere in the world online via the Global Headquarters (Canberra). There are also local events in: Brisbane, Canberra, Katherine, Paris, Köln (Cologne), Thessaloniki, Tehran, Milan, Bilbao, Madrid and London.

Here is the program for Canberra:

Wednesday:
8:30 am – 5:30 pm – Jamming
11:30 am – Transit of Venus
5:00 pm – link in with French Government and project transfers overseas
6:00pm – Dinner at Zieholtz UC (optional, at own cost)
7:30pm – Special Screening of I AM on Hyperwall at INSPIRE

Thursday:
8:30 – 5:30pm – Jamming, presentations, awards
Alcohol Tuesday evening is on a BYO basis.
So, what do you need to do to make this Jam phenomenal?
1. Check out the rules of the Jam - http://www.govjam.org/content/jam-rules
2. Check out your Jamming Wednesday:
8:30 am – 5:30 pm – Jamming
11:30 am – Transit of Venus
5:00 pm – link in with French Government and project transfers overseas
6:00pm – Dinner at Zieholtz UC (optional, at own cost)
7:30pm – Special Screening of I AM on Hyperwall at INSPIRE

Thursday:
8:30 – 5:30pm – Jamming, presentations, awards
Alcohol Tuesday evening is on a BYO basis.
So, what do you need to do to make this Jam phenomenal?

Linux Australia Conference 2013 in Canberra

Linux Australia will hold linux.conf.au 2013 in Conference 2013 in Canberra, from 28 January to 2 February, at the Australian National University. The organizers are looking for volunteers, ideas and sponsors. I have suggested a theme of "Open Source for Open Government: Defense, Education and Government".

Managing the complexity of Open Source Software

Dr. Pietro Abate, Université Paris Diderot / Irill - INRIA, will speak on "Managing the complexity of component based systems" at the Australian National University in Canberra, 3:30pm, 10 January 2012.

Managing the complexity of component based systems

Dr. Pietro Abate (UniversitA Paris Diderot / Irill - INRIA )

COMPUTER SCIENCE SEMINAR

DATE: 2012-01-10
TIME: 15:30:00 - 16:30:00
LOCATION: RSISE Seminar Room, ground floor, building 115, cnr. North and Daley Roads, ANU ...

ABSTRACT:
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) distributions are rather peculiar instances of component-based software platforms. They are developed rapidly and without tight central coordination, they are huge (tens to thousands components per platform), and their importance in the Internet computing infrastructure is growing.

Both the construction of a coherent collection of components and the maintenance of installations based on these raise difficult problems for distribution maintainers and system administrators. Distributions evolve rapidly by releasing new component versions and strive for increasingly high Quality Assurance (QA) requirements on their component collections. System upgrades may proceed on different paths depending on the current state of the system and the available components, and system administrators are faced with difficult choices of upgrade paths and with frequent upgrade failures.

The now concluded project MANCOOSI (Managing the Complexity of the Open Source Infrastructure) aims to solve some of these problems. I will describe current and past work done in the context of MANCOOSI and some future directions.
BIO:
I received my Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Australian National University (ANU) in 2006 focusing theoretical computer science. During my Ph.D. I developed the Tableau WorkBench, a generic theorem prover that is both easy to use and flexible accepting specification in different formats. The TWB has been used to experiment with a number of modal logics and in particular with fix-point logics.

In the last 5 years I've been involved with two academic research projects, Cduce and Mancoosi founded by European community. Recently I have joined the center for research and innovation on Free Software (irill). I'm a strong supporter of the Debian project (despite I never officially joined it ).

My current academic interests are software engineering, theorem proving, functional programming, modal logic. My focus at the moment is on open source and in particular in relation to quality assurance aspects of software distribution and component based system.

Engaging in Democracy with Web 2.0 Initiatives

Pia Waugh, Adviser to Senator Kate Lundy, will speak on "Engaging in Democracy with Web 2.0 Initiatives", at the AGM of Computing Assistance Support & Education Inc, in Canberra, 26 October, 2011

Pia Waugh started work as an Adviser to Senator Kate Lundy in April 2009. Prior to this she was a consultant at Waugh Partners in Sydney, Australia. She also works to develop the Australian FOSS industry and improve Government policies towards Free and Open Source Software.

Google Maps Challenge in Canberra

Google Engineers will conduct the "Google Maps Challenge" at the Australian National University in Canberra, 29 September 2011, 5:30pm to 8:30pm. Those wanting a more policy perspective can attend the United Nations Internet Governance Forum 'remote hub' at ANU, the same day.

Less talk, more code!

Google (Google)

GENERAL

DATE: 2011-09-29
TIME: 17:30:00 - 18:30:00
LOCATION: CSIT N115
CONTACT: heather.mcewen@anu.edu.au

ABSTRACT:
Google Engineers are visiting the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science. All interested staff and students are invited to attend their hands-on interactive tour of the Google Maps API.

They will take you inside the API and the solutions used to build a fast, feature-full, flexible API beginning with the basics by completing small exercises of increasing complexity.

Free pizza and Google prizes are also on offer.

Who: Computer science students and anyone with an interest in software development.
*Skill requirements: You should be able to write programs of beginner complexity.
**Technical Requirement: Please bring a laptop if you own one to secure a spot.

First come, first serve for lab computers.

What: Google Maps Challenge

When: Thursday, 29 September at 5:30pm - 8:30pm

Where: CSIT N115

How: RSVP

Open Source Developers Conference 2011

The Open Source Developers Conference 2011 will be held at the Manning Clark Center, Australian National University, Canberra, 14 to 18 November 2011. Senator Kate Lundy will open the event. One talk which caught my attention is Stephen Roberts from ANU on "Predicting the Flow of Tsunamis and Floods Using FOSS Environment ANUGA". OSDC are looking for sponsors.

Speakers and topics:

• Keynote: Senator Kate Lundy
• Alexander Zangerl: Practical Online Anonymity with Open Source Software and Open Services
• Steve Dalton: Messaging with Bunnies: RabitMQ
• Graham Weldon: An Introduction to Titanium
• Robin Sheat: Koha - Bringing Libraries Into the Present Day
• Pia Waugh: Open Government: what does it all mean, really?
• Glen Smith: Fake Your Way as a Developer Rockstar with Phonegap
• Dan Bentley: Opening a Closed World
• Andrew Gerrand: Go: It's that Simple?!
• Paris Buttfield-Addison: Design for Developers: Making Beautiful Android Apps
• Evan Leybourn: Free as in Kittens
• Rusty Russell: CCAN: C Code Archive: Like CPAN, Before it Got Popular!
• Andrew McMillan: Free Software in the Android Ecosystem
• Nariman Habili: Open Source Tools for Field Data Collection and Analysis at Geoscience Australia
• Adam Harvey: What's New in PHP 5.4?
• Wii Homebrew: Running and Writing Software for the Wii
• Brendan Scott: Negotiating Contracts Involving Open Source
• Arjen Lentz: SQL Locking and Transactions
• Lana Brindley: Open Source Docs: The Good, The Bad, and the WTF?!
• Keynote: Damian Conway
• Paul King: Groovy Testing for Agile Teams
• Bernard Duggan: Erlang in Production: "I wish I'd known that when I started"
• Sridhar Dhanapalan: Australias Toughest Deployment
• Jason Shepherd: JBoss AS7
• Jacinta Richardson: Perl Best Practices
• Arjen Lentz: Real Brain Hacking
• Paul Marrington: Unifying the Software Development Lifecycle Using Open Source and Domain Specific Languages
• Edward Scofield: Python for R&D
• Swayam Prakasha: Open Source Solutions for High Availability and Disaster Recovery
• Cliffano Subagio: Continuous Delivery Using Jenkins
• Kazuaki Maeda: Structured Data Representation for Ruby, Groovy and Scala
• Olly Betts: The Art of Writing Small Programs
• Keynote: Brian Catto, Director Architecture and Emerging Technologies, AGIMO
• Graham Weldon: Building 3D Apps with Javascript
• Paul King: Groovy Concurrency With Gpars
• Stewart Smith: Dropping ACID: Eating Data in a Web 2.0 Cloud
• Marc Fasel: Joys and Pains of Node.js in the Enterprise
• Stewart Mackenzie: Lifting Scala's Functional and Object Styles to Concurrent Programming
• Gavin Jackson: An Introduction to Open Source GIS
• Ben Tesse: The Return of JavaScript: 3 Open-Source Projects that are driving JavaScript's renaissance
• Craig Aspinal: Groovy Baby!
• Tim Serong: Cross-Distribution Packaging Made Easy
• Stewart Smith: Drizzle 7, GA and Supported: Current & Future Features
• Michael Neale: Coping With Errors - We are Doing it Wrong
• Stephen Roberts: Predicting the Flow of Tsunamis and Floods Using FOSS Environment ANUGA
• Keynote: Tony Beal, Deputy Australian Government Solicitor