● 03.20.15

● Links 20/3/2015: Linux 3.12.39 LTS, GNOME Nearing Release

Posted in News Roundup at 6:25 am by Dr. Roy SchestowitzContentsGNU/LinuxGNU/Linux

• You have ignored persistent Linux myths and decided to give Linux a try. How do you ensure that your transition to the new OS is smooth? Stick to the following five rules and you should do just fine. It’s time to get over your fear of failing at Linux.

• I find interesting the weekday rates of usage. */Linux usage is growing every day of the week. Android/Linux seems to be getting more usage at home on weekends but weekday use is also growing. Chrome OS is getting more usage weekdays, perhaps at schools. It’s all good. FLOSS should be used in all ways every day of the week. Finally there is competition on retail shelves. I was in Walmart yesterday. The space left for that other OS is shrinking and sad. The notebooks appeared to have heavy black steel bars laid over them to prevent theft, as if anyone wanted them… Not one of the few working notebooks had anything useful onscreen. It was just a list of features or “welcome”… One desktop was underneath the shelves still in a box. I was the only human being near that shelf.

Server

• One of the main goals at both Red Hat and at Docker is to make this statement less true. My team at Red Hat is continuing to try to take advantage of other security mechanisms to make containers more secure. These are a few of the security features we are working at implementing and how they might affect Docker and containers in the future.

Kernel Space

• Intel has been a leader in the Linux kernel community for almost two decades – and was named the no. 1 corporate contributor to the kernel for 2014, according to the recent Who Writes Linux report. The company’s influence also extends into the broader open source community, where Intel stands out as a model for how to effectively engage in projects and incorporate open source strategy into product development.

• Intel previously committed an H.265 / HEVC video decoding API to the video acceleration VA-API interface. The Intel VA-API developers have now complemented that by adding a HEVC encode API to this open-source GPU-based video acceleration library.

• Jiri Slaby has announced today the immediate availability for download of the Linux kernel 3.12.39, a LTS (Long Term Support) release aimed at servers and embedded devices where stability is extremely important. This maintenance release of Linux 3.12 kernel includes a great number of changes and updated drivers.

Graphics Stack

• Besides NVIDIA announcing yesterday the $999 GeForce GTX TITAN X graphics card that will soon be reviewed under Linux on Phoronix, NVIDIA also announced the Digits DevBox: a $15,000 USD Linux-powered system.

Applications

• Many problems in science and engineering are modeled through ordinary differential equations (ODEs). An ODE is an equation that contains a function of one independent variable and its derivatives. This means that practically any system that changes over time can be modeled with an ODE, from celestial mechanics to chemistry reaction rates to ecology and population modeling.

• Twitch Indicator is, like its name suggests, a www.twitch.tv appindicator. In case you’re not familiar with Twitch, this is a popular live streaming video platform that primarily focuses on video gaming.

• The purpose of Twitch Indicator is to track the channels you follow and notify you when they go live. Besides notifications, which can be turned off from the indicator settings, the list of live channels is displayed in the indicator menu and clicking on any channel will open its Twitch page in your default web browser.

• Rygel, an open-source home media solution that allows users to easily share all kinds of multimedia files to various UPnP (Universal Plug and Play) devices has been recently updated to version 0.25.3 as part of the GNOME 3.16 Release Candidate desktop environment.

Proprietary

• Opera Software, through Helge Andre Gjølme, has announced earlier today, March 19, the immediate availability for download and testing of the Opera 29 Beta web browser for computers, supporting the GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Instructionals/Technical

Wine or Emulation

• CodeWeavers, through Josh DuBois, had the pleasure of informing us today, March 19, about the immediate availability for download of the CrossOver 14.1.0 software update, a commercial application that allows users of the Linux and Mac OS X operating systems to install and use Windows apps.

Games

• I do enjoy looking over games more than, for example, networking tools. Sometimes console tools are intended for discrete applications and discrete audiences, and if I lack the experience needed to make them work, it can be a little frustrating.

• Yesterday BioShock Infinite was finally released for Linux as the latest high-quality game being ported over from Windows. Judging from the comments, this is going to be one of the more popular Linux games for the time being. The good news is I’ve adapted the game for serving as our latest Linux gaming benchmark.

• The PiPanther robot is a smart, fast vehicle that you control using the Ubotia app on your smartphone. As it explores rooms, you can set up battlefields anywhere and fight your friends using the Ubotia software. Plus you can customise the tank with your own attachments. But there’s just 15 minutes to go now [Ed: PiPanther’s Kickstarter clock is counting down] and we only have 22% [of €5,000/$5,900]. It’s not enough, unfortunately.

• Dreaming Sarah has been available in an open Linux beta on Steam since December, but got a proper release last week. The game was made available DRM free for Linux on Desura and Itch.io yesterday and is currently on sale at a reduced price on Steam and Itch.io.

• Today we take a look at ‘In Exilium’ that was recently released on Steam. It’s an interesting looking and simple hack and slash RPG.

• Descent returns in Descent: Underground! With a big goal to hit, and tons of time left this could easily be funded.

• Testing before the release, I was getting over 100FPS, and a patch just before release nerfed it down to 30FPS and below, but the great news is this patch is giving me a solid 60FPS, so while not the same as before, it is a solid and commendable improvement considering they can’t replicate it their end.

• Hey there Linux gamers, today we are happy to inform you that a new Crimson Bundle game sale is taking place these days and it includes no more than 10 awesome games for GNU/Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows operating systems.

• Worlds of Magic is a good looking 4X strategy game that has been in early access for a while, but that ends now. The game has reached the point of a full release.

Desktop Environments/WMs

• The Linux distro poll is over and we’re crunching the numbers for an article to go up later today. However, first we want to introduce our second annual Desktop Environment poll.

• It only seems fitting, somehow, that we would follow up our what’s-your-distro poll with a Linux desktop poll. After all, we see and interact with our desktop everyday — but we never “see” our operating systems — meaning most users actually have a better understanding of their desktop environment or window manager than they do with the underlying distro. So much so, that many users — especially outside of the *nix world, often think of their desktop environment as the operating system.

K Desktop Environment/KDE SC/Qt

• David Revoy will be teaching Krita, with a focus on concept art and the challenges of digital painting — and he’ll introduce the new features we just released with Krita 2.9! Sarah Laufer has founded her own animation studio, regularly gives Blender courses in San Jose, and is now, of course, in the Netherlands for Project Gooseberry. She will focus on animating characters. François Gastaldo is an Open Shading Language expert and that’s the topic of his master class, while François Grassard from University Paris-8 has led the transition to free tools: Krita, Blender, Natron. He will talk about his experiences, but also about camera tracking, 3D integration and particle systems.

• In a few weeks (April 11-12) the KDE e.V. board is going to have an in-person board meeting in Berlin.

• This is mainly a bugfix release with two minor new features. The first one is a new page in a pairing wizard. Instead of closing the wizard when it finishes, a success page is now shown to the user to indicate device setup was completed.

GNOME Desktop/GTK

• Frederic Peters on the behalf of the GNOME release team announced the GNOME 3.15.92 release today, which serves as the release candidate ahead of the GNOME 3.16 official release at month’s end.

• The GNOME PERU FEST 2015 event took place last Friday 13th, March in Centro Cultural PetroPerú. Special thanks GNOME Foundation for sponsoring us all again, as well Fedora, Infopucp, La Bouquette, Nexsys, PetroPerú and IBM.

• We’ve announced a yesterday that immediate availability for testing of the Release Candidate version of the forthcoming GNOME 3.16 desktop environment. The GNOME Control Center application has also been updated as part of this RC (Release Candidate) release of GNOME 3.16 and includes a great number of changes that we have listed for you in the next paragraphs.

• The GTK+ 3.15.12 toolkit has been released recently as part of the GNOME 3.16 RC (Release Candidate) desktop environment and it introduces the last changes to be implemented in the final GTK+ 3.16.0 released, which will be distributed alongside GNOME 3.16, due for release on March 25, 2015.

Distributions

Reviews

• There are many different distributions that use Ubuntu as a base, but one you might not have heard of is Black Lab Linux. Black Lab Linux uses…you guessed it…a cute black labrador retriever as its mascot, and the distro itself is focused on providing a compelling and easy to use desktop version of Linux. Toward that end they’ve tried very hard to create a desktop distro that someone coming from a Mac or Windows could jump in and use, even if they are completely new to Linux.

• There’s nothing functionally wrong with Lubuntu. It’s not bad. It’s simply not interesting. It’s meat without flavor, it’s a hybrid car, it’s accounting lessons at the local evening school, it’s morning news, it’s a visit to Pompei while blindfolded. There’s no excitement. You need a lean distro? Fine. Xubuntu. Problem solved. It’s that simple. LXLE does offer some small advantages over this distro, but not by a great margin. Maybe there’s a limit to how fun LXDE can really be. Alive does not mean lively.

• I liked this desktop environment in the past, but it’s stagnated. It hasn’t evolved at all, and its competitors have left it far behind. And that reflects poorly on Lubuntu, which, despite a calm and stable record of spartan behavior, has left with me an absolute zero of emotional attachment toward it. That’s not good. It’s 6/10 not good. Now, almost four years since my last Lubuntu review, that’s quite bad actually. Overall, you shouldn’t pass on this distro, and perhaps Utopic + LXDE is the perfect match for your aging hardware. But in most cases, you can happily replace it with Xubuntu, and everything will be just as fine, only far more fun. And that brings us to the end of this review. Fire away thy angry emails.

New Releases

• Both Linux and open source have come a very long way. But all of those strides could so easily be undone by the constant proliferation of tools such as Popcorn Time. And now, even a Linux distribution, ChaletOS has included Popcorn Time by default. The ChaletOS could be one of those Linux distributions anyone and everyone could use and love. After all, it offers an interface that is as close to Windows 7 as any Linux desktop has ever achieved (thanks to Xfce). Average Windows users will be right at home with an arsenal of applications that easily covers their work and personal needs. But then, the developers throw in Popcorn Time. What makes this doubly odd is that ChaletOS is hosted by Google.

PCLinuxOS/Mageia/Mandriva Family

• The GNOME Shell graphical design has a touch of a minimalistic ergonomics resembling some MacOS concepts. The user may easily concentrate on the job with the help of compact and ergonomcal GUI elements. Laptop users are especially encouraged to use GNOME Shell.

Arch Family

• There are many different Linux distributions available, but few provide as much direct control over your computer as Arch Linux. One of our bloggers here on ITworld shares his thoughts on why he picked Arch Linux as his desktop distro, and why you might want to consider it as well.

• Arch Linux is “a lightweight and flexible Linux distribution that tries to Keep It Simple.” It’s also known as a rolling release distribution that is characterized by frequent updates rather than periodic reinstalls. Arch has remained in Distrowatch.com’s top 10 Page Hit Ranking since 2009 and was once a darling of the Linux blogosphere. Swapnil Bhartiya today posted five reasons folks should “roll with Arch Linux.” Elsewhere, Red Hat had an interesting day on Wall Street and Jack Wallen said Popcorn Time isn’t the kind of application distributions should be including. And finally, a new poll was posted to bring some fun to your Thursday evening.

Ballnux/SUSE

• LINUX DESIGNER SUSE and Apache Hadoop vendor Veristorm are teaming up to bring Hadoop to IBM z and IBM Power systems.

Red Hat Family

• Trade-Ideas LLC identified Red Hat ( RHT) as a “barbarian at the gate” (strong stocks crossing above resistance with today’s range greater than 200%) candidate.

• Open source solution provider Red Hat has announced a new emphasis on enterprise mobility, leveraging its enterprise-grade open source technologies. This focus is in response to the demand for faster and continuous development cycles that challenge traditional IT infrastructure and development methodologies. Red Hats efforts includes services that companies to become more mobile-centric and evolve in a way that supports both the agility of new mobile initiatives and stability of core IT.

Fedora

• Fedora 22 Workstation’s GNOME 3.16 desktop makes almost everything easy using a standard point and click interface. But one of the best reasons for using it is the power you can also get in the Terminal app. There’s a world of power available through that command line. And the new Terminal job notifications keep you in touch with the command line, even if you’re doing something else.

• We announced last week the immediate availability for download and testing of the Fedora 22 Alpha operating system, which included the Live Workstation edition with the latest development version of the upcoming GNOME 3.16 desktop environment, and an Xfce spin that brought us the latest Xfce 4.12 desktop environment.

• I’ve been a bit lazy on the ARM kernel status updates. There wasn’t one at all for 3.18 but the fact was, that while there was lots of under the hood improvements for ARM/aarch64, the new device support or improvements from a user’s point of view was positively boring so I never bothered!

• It took a while to get all the ingredients together, but we baked up a delicious batch of new Fedora Badges and they’re fresh out of the oven.

• I’m Maria Leandro, known also as Tatica and I work as a photographer on my own business, Tap.Pics. I work exclusively with Open Source tools, which has made my life quite interesting. I started with Linux back in 2005 and since then, I have never felt the need of change my OS. It started (like many other people), at college, and it became part of my personal and professional life. All my works have been related directly to Open Source technologies, including teaching and organizing events.

Debian Family

Derivatives

• Linux Mint Debian 2 has an official release candidate available for download. Linux Mint Debian 2 RC offers the Cinnamon or MATE desktop environments.

• The Linux Mint crew has released the first release candidates of Linux Mint Debian Edition 2 “Betsy” with the Cinnamon and MATE desktop spins.

Canonical/Ubuntu

• It was brought to our attention that a new application is now available in the Ubuntu Touch Store that helps users get a better Ubuntu phone experience by offering a wide variety of tips and tricks for Ubuntu devices.

Devices/Embedded

• The kit arrived the Friday before Thanksgiving, and I wasted no time getting to work. I didn’t need another computer running Linux at home, so my interest in the Raspberry Pi focused on what its hardware could offer that my laptops couldn’t.

• Aaeon’s rugged, fanless “Boxer-6614″ box-PC runs Linux on a quad- or dual-core Celeron SoC, and offers 8GB RAM, HDMI and VGA, dual GbE, and dual mini-PCIe.

Phones

• Announced one year ago, Google’s Android Wear software is available on a half-dozen different smartwatches, ranging in price from $200 to $300. All of those smartwatches, whether they’re the Motorola Moto 360, LG G Watch R, or Sony Smartwatch 3, are from traditional consumer electronics and smartphone makers. Today, Google is announcing a partnership with Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer that will put Android Wear on luxury timepieces for the first time.

• Your next Android Wear watch could be a TAG Heuer. Intel and Google are today announcing a partnership with the iconic watch brand that will result in a TAG-branded Swiss watch powered by Android Wear.

• Watch out Apple: Swiss company Tag Heuer is developing its own smartwatch with tech rivals Google and Intel.

• The high-end watch maker says its smartwatch will run on Google Inc.’s Android Wear platform and Intel Corp.’s technology.

Android

• Android 5.1 Lollipop, which has already been rolled out over-the-air (OTA) to the Google Nexus 6 phablet, has reportedly started rolling out over-the-air to Google’s 2013 flagship smartphone, the LG-made Nexus 5. The OTA rollout of the update does not come as a surprise, as Google has already provided a Android 5.1 Lollipop factory image for the LG-produced Android stock phone. The firm has also listed a new Android Lollipop image for Nexus 6 on its Google Developers page.

• If there’s a better way for Amazon to celebrate its Android app store’s birthday than by offering a bunch of solid paid apps for free, we don’t know what it is. Beginning immediately and likely ending at some point in the near future, Amazon is offering a huge sale on paid Android apps. There are 34 apps in total, and they would normally combine to cost more than $100.

• Android Auto has gone live, for devices running Android 5.0 and up, so long as users have a car stereo system that’s compatible with the in-car software. For now, that means a range of Pioneer headings, which are already available for sale in the U.S. and the U.K.

• Google today updated its Android Device Manager service with support for Android Wear. In other words, you can now find your lost smartphone using your smartwatch.

• It seems that Huawei is apparently unhappy with the amount of freedom they have to personalise the platform to cater to their own wishes and help differentiate their devices to those of their competitors. The whole User Interface (UI), apps and menus can not be changed or any additional features added to the OS like they can do with Android. The only thing they can do is add their own watch faces. That’s it!

• Just about every time the tiresome Android vs. iOS debate rears its ugly head on the Internet, the argument is made that Android is better because developers have the freedom to do practically whatever they want. While there is definitely some truth to the notion that Android apps have capabilities iOS apps do not, it obviously doesn’t make Google’s mobile platform inherently better than Apple’s.

• Google’s Android Auto smartphone interface for cars is finally hitting the road as the first aftermarket units become available for sale this week. In the US market, the new Pioneer AVIC-8100NEX, AVIC-7100NEX and AVH-4100NEX models will all feature Android Auto integration.

Free Software/Open Source

• A collection of articles from educators, students, advocates, parents, and more who are implementing open source in education and working toward a more open knowledge base for everyone.

SaaS/Big Data

• The OpenStack open source cloud platform has grown in popularity in recent years as a pathway to enable multiple types of applications and services in the cloud. One such application class is databases, which are enabled by way of the Trove database-as-a-service project that first became part of OpenStack in April of 2014 with the Icehouse release.

• OpenStack remains the open-source community’s cloud of choice, mustering tens of thousands of minions as it marches on toward cloudy relevance. That same community has turned OpenStack into a morass of competing projects and priorities, but there’s one area where OpenStack dearly needs even more community:

Business

Semi-Open Source

• Open-Xchange announced on Thursday that it has completed a merger with email server software provider Dovecot OY. Under the terms of the merger, Dovecot will become a subsidiary of Open-Xchange.

Funding

• The program is dubbed Cloud Foundry Dojo and will be located in EMC’s Kendall Square office, at 11 Cambridge Center. It will begin this summer and could help train about 150 developers this year, according to Hopkinton, Mass.-based EMC.

• Somewhat controversially, Kelly said MongoDB’s example raises a big doubt as to whether it, and other open-source NoSQL startups, such as Basho Technologies Inc., Couchbase Inc., and DataStax Inc., will ever be able to turn a profit in a market Wikibon estimates will be worth just $1.825 billion by 2017.

BSD

• AsiaBSDCon 2015 happened last week in Tokyo, Japan. Besides learning about OpenBSD’s custom-built HTTP/web server, there was also a presentation entitled “OpenBSD Sucks” by one of the OpenBSD developers.

• I am pleased to announce the availability the fist ALPHA build of the 10.1-RELEASE Release cycle which is available on SourceForge for the amd64 and i386 architectures.

FSF/FSFE/GNU/SFLC

• First, we must understand why we can’t make hardware free the same way we make software free. Hardware and software are fundamentally different. A program, even in compiled executable form, is a collection of data which can be interpreted as instruction for a computer. Like any other digital work, it can be copied and changed using a computer. A copy of a program has no inherent physical form or embodiment.

Openness/Sharing

• Some open source texts need to be as accessible, powerful, efficient, and fault-free as a GNU/Linux server.

Programming

• GXUI is a new cross-platform user interface library developed at Google for their Go programming language.

Leftovers

Health/Nutrition

• Crisis in mining industry could bring economic benefits and opportunities for other sectors and place greater emphasis on corporate social responsibility

Security

• The vulnerability was widely discussed earlier this week in social media threads such as this one. It was discovered by David Ramos of Stanford University, who agreed to withhold publishing proof-of-concept code that exploits the bug until server administrators have had time to patch the security hole. Based on today’s description of the bug, however, it likely won’t be hard for other people to independently develop exploits.

• The latest OpenSSL security vulnerabilities were made public today with four CVEs being addressed.

• Security may be a process, not a product, but security patches are definitely a product. Some reflections on a few recent experiences making security sausage, er, patches.

• I appear to have found myself in the position of OpenBSD sausage grinder even though it’s not a great fit. It’s not in my temperament to care about yesterday’s problems after they’re fixed, nor am I enthusiastic about long term support. I mostly run current, so I don’t have much personal interest in fixing stable. Unfortunately, I wrote the tool used for signing patches which somehow turned into a responsibility for also creating the inputs to be signed. That was not the plan!

Defence/Police/Secrecy/Aggression

• Well, ISIS is openly committed to a policy of genocide–not only against non-Muslim minorities like the Yazidi (New York Times, 10/21/14), but against entire Shia denomination of Islam (“Shia have no medicine but the sword” is an ISIS slogan) who make up two-thirds of the population of Iraq. Thinking that that makes ISIS a bad choice to rule Iraq requires you to think of Shi’ite Muslims as human beings, I suppose.

Environment/Energy/Wildlife

• Pump too much groundwater and wells go dry—that’s obvious.

• But there is another consequence that gets little attention as a hotter, drier planet turns increasingly to groundwater for life support.

Finance

• The one thing that is supposed to be helping is the newly announced “Help to Buy ISA”. The stated aim is to support those who are saving to buy a house – but the reality is that the Government is doing nothing more than bribing people to take on excessive debt – to keep up the lending that keeps house prices unfathomably out of reach for so many.

Privacy

• As reported in Wired, GCHQ’s development of hacking technologies is completely absent of external regulation, and their bosses at the Foreign Office lack the ability to understand what they are doing.

• Spies will target IT staff with access to infrastructure and information, says NSA whistleblower in a video-link interview at CeBIT in Hannover.

• These are our first impressions on reading the Intelligence and Security Committee’s key recommendations in its Privacy and Security Report.

• A decade ago, it was rare to hear politicians speaking about the need for a free, open Internet — and even rarer to meet one who understood what that meant. Despite the number of foot-in-mouth inanities mumbled by today’s crop of technologically ignorant pols, it was much, much worse then.

• And of course, today, every issue is a digital issue: you can’t talk about the economy, security, health or education (let alone elections) without talking about digital rights.

• Let’s take a few examples. Privacy is one of your most important rights. Yet most people tend to think of privacy as a question of private life, the choices you make about your person and the things that make you uncomfortable. In the digital world, privacy is a question of personal information, automated judgements and profiling. Many people want to know everything they can about you, because they can – or hope they can – make money out of this. GCHQ perhaps wants to know if you are a threat; and they help the NSA get to know you in case you are politically or economically interesting.

• German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel (above) said this week in Homburg that the U.S. government threatened to cease sharing intelligence with Germany if Berlin offered asylum to NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden or otherwise arranged for him to travel to that country. “They told us they would stop notifying us of plots and other intelligence matters,” Gabriel said.

• The vice chancellor delivered a speech in which he praised the journalists who worked on the Snowden archive, and then lamented the fact that Snowden was forced to seek refuge in “Vladimir Putin’s autocratic Russia” because no other nation was willing and able to protect him from threats of imprisonment by the U.S. government (I was present at the event to receive an award). That prompted an audience member to interrupt his speech and yell out: “Why don’t you bring him to Germany, then?”

• NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden took part in a debate on data security on Wednesday at the CeBIT IT trade conference, via video link from Moscow.

• With every iPhone, iPad and iPod comes a set of densely worded documents informing you that by using these gadgets you’re giving up a ton of highly sensitive information. It’s perfectly legal for Apple to gobble up all this personal data because you’ve basically said it’s allowed to do so. Worse, you might not even realize that you have.

• Shane Tusch faked his suicide in an attempt to test the authenticity of Facebook suicide prevention tool and got detained for 72 hours

• Customs boss Carolyn Tremain has told MPs the department would only request travellers hand over passwords to their electronic devices if it had a reason to be suspicious about what was on them.

• The department unleashed a furore last week when it said in a discussion paper that it should be given unrestricted power to force people to divulge passwords to their smartphones and computers at the border.

• PRESSURE GROUP PRIVACY INTERNATIONAL has published a court document that it claims reveals government support for broad and alarming GCHQ surveillance powers.

• Privacy International, and others, have challenged the government on its use of surveillance technology, and the government has stoutly defended its actions on each occasion.

• Now Privacy International has published a court document relating to two court cases initiated last year against GCHQ that challenge what Privacy International claims is invasive state-sponsored hacking that was revealed by Edward Snowden.

Internet/Net Neutrality

• Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) this week called out the FCC, saying its recently passed net neutrality rules have “the exact opposite” effect on protecting an open Internet.

• The Federal Communications Commission last month voted 3-2 in favor of reclassifying the Web as a Title II telecom service— “the strongest open Internet protections ever proposed,” according to Chairman Tom Wheeler.

Intellectual Monopolies

• While we are in the midst of the current battle to end the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions here in the US, we can’t lose sight of the broader global fight being waged via the secretive Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) Strategic Partnership Agreement. If you aren’t familiar with TPP, it is a multinational trade agreement being developed through a series of secret negotiations that are pushing a host of restrictions. From making the DMCA’s anti-circumvention provisions global, to spreading the threat of software patents around the world, to extending copyright indefinitely, these secret negotiations present a plethora of threats to user freedom.

Copyrights

• The results of a new poll published today in Iceland indicates that the Pirate Party has just become the country’s most popular political party. According to the results, almost a quarter of all citizens would vote Pirate today. Speaking with TF, movement founder Rick Falkvinge describes the result as an “extraordinary accomplishment.”

• The Pirate Party now measures as the largest political party in Iceland, according to a new survey from the Icelandic market and research company MMR which regularly surveys the support for the political parties in Iceland.

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