Bits 'n Pieces - 2

BREIN Disconnects The Pirate Bay, For Now

The anti-piracy  outfit, BREIN, in Europe has succeeded in halting traffic to TPB at its new hideout in the Ukraine.

It seems that traffic is routed through Dutch ISP nForce which uses the carrier outfit Leaseweb.  BREIN has asked Leaseweb to block that traffic to the Ukraine site for now aside from its arguments that neither nForce nor Leaseweb are hosting any torrent site but are merely doing their job in routing Internet traffic to the separate, autonomous system.

Repeated "requests" from BREIN finally caused Leaseweb to cave and cut off all contact to the new TPB site.  This sets a disturbing precedent in that if anti-piracy outfits can bully and threaten ISPs and their carriers to cut off access to the various other torrent sites, then the future of BitTorrent is indeed bleak.

Read the details in the article at:

BREIN Disconnects Pirate Bay

___________________________________________

Rolltop - A Rolled Out Laptop?

Here's an interesting concept that some design outfit from Germany dreamed up.  While it looks pretty snazzy in its 3D rendition, I wonder what the actual logistics would be concerning the implementation of this design?

Catch the YouTube Video at:

RolloTop Laptop

___________________________________________

Gnome 3.0 Desktop in Upcoming Ubuntu 10.04

Fresh from Atlanta's Linux Fest comes news that Mark Shuttleworth is up to his old tricks again.  Right on the heels of the newly released Ubuntu 9.10 comes his news of 'Lucid Lynx', the upcoming Ubuntu 10.04 release.

Supposedly, the proposed Gnome 3 Desktop will be making its appearance in this release.  The above link will take you on a quickie tour of the upcoming features expected in this departure from the Gnome 2.x series.  While going through the various capture shots, I could already hear the moans, groans and hoots of derision along with the usual cacophony of the almost Luddite-like legion of stalwarts shouting,"If'n it ain't broke, don't fix it!"

Oh ye of little faith.  These are just capture shots of the development version, nowhere near anything considered for release to the general masses.  If Shuttleworth thinks he can bully the Gnome team into an overdrive release of a new and improved Gnome desktop before they are really ready, then he's got another think coming.  I imagine that he will stand over Canonical's development team and harangue them into doing a Ubuntu only release of Gnome 3 based on what code is available - maybe it could be considered the Gnome 3α release.

It may come out as a resounding success.  They've pulled off amazing feats of development legerdemain before.

Personally, I think that this almost fanatical adherence to the six month release schedule will come up with a real stinker or two of a release.  Then the mad scramble to administer patches and other bug fixes will end up making Ubuntu the Windows of the Linux World.  But then, that's just my humble opinion.

~A~
--