The verdict of the Pirate Bay trial was possibly the most controversial event in the history of file sharing. With each owner owing fines of close to $1,000,000 each, and a year in prison, the people behind the scenes of P2P support on the Internet are finally being scrutinized. Not that this is Pirate Bay’s first run in with the law, but this is definitely the first time which I can recall in which the owners of a file sharing website have been hit this this hard in the legal department.

An important detail of the Pirate Bay trial was how the judge chose to view this case: by intent. All technical aspects of the trial were basically tossed aside, and only the owners intent was questioned. Many people felt this was a big mistake, considering the technical details are what made Pirate Bay almost indistinguishable from many other sites performing similar, very legal services. One of these sites being very, very well known: Google.

And thus The Pirate Google was born!

“Sites such as Google offer much the same functionality as The Pirate Bay and other Bit Torrent sites but are not targeted by media conglomerates such as the IFPI…”

While The Pirate Google has no real affiliation with Google, it works quite well.  It uses some simple Google-Fu to search for torrent files.  The site takes the search string and appends the filetype:torrent argument in order to search all of Google indexed pages containing a torrent file.  This is perhaps even more powerful than the Pirate Bay site in certain conditions.

A quote from the site:

Please Note: This site is not affiliated with Google, it simply makes use of Google Custom Search to restrict your searches to Torrent files. You can do this with any regular Google search by appending your query with filetype:torrent. This technique can be used for any type of file supported by Google.

The intention of this site is to demonstrate the double standard that was exemplified in the recent Pirate Bay Trial. Sites such as Google offer much the same functionality as The Pirate Bay and other Bit Torrent sites but are not targeted by media conglomerates such as the IFPI as they have the political and legal clout to defend themselves unlike these small independent sites.

This site is created in support of an open, neutral internet accessible and equitable to all regardless of political or financial standing.

Cheers!

The quote illustrates the controversy of the guilty verdict, showing how the Pirate Bay’s functionality crossed no more lines than any others do, they are just being targeted due to their themes and attitudes.  While no one really denies that fact that the Pirate Bay did have a hand in software piracy in terms of function and theme, this really just makes them an easy target for corporations like the IFPI to pick on them for performing a legal service.

The fact that nobody wants to pick on the elephant in the room is not the way a verdict should be made, and many P2P enthusiasts are making this clear with statements like this.

The Pirate Bay verdicts will be appealed, and hopefully issues like these will make a stronger case the second time around.

My personal favorite, and perhaps where the distribution got its name in the first place, is the much faster boot speed.  While 8.04 and 8.10 has been mostly standard in terms of boot time in the past, 9.04 has dropped the boot time down to about 75% of what it was.  Some users are reporting boot times of as low as 17 seconds using solid state drives.  While its no instant-on OS, it sure is the fastest booting OS I have used so far, and makes dual booting that much less painless for those of us required to hang on to Windows.

The ext4 file system is a second thing you might want to check out.  While ext3 is still the default file system during installation, I selected ext4 and have had no issues so far.  There are many small improvements , made here, but you are mainly going to notice a performance boost in dealing with large files — nice for performing backups or dealing with media.  Oh, and the maximum file size has been increased to 1 exabyte.  (Thats big!)

Jaunty is also looking better than ever with three new themes.  Finally some native support for those of us who enjoy the darker look.  You can check them out here.

The fourth feature on my list is Gnome 2.26.  You might not notice too much here immediately, but there are a few cool things that catch your eye here and there.  Being a GUI fanatic, I always appreciate update in the DE department.  The Gnome updates basically included UPnP improvements in Totem, a few adjustments to Empathy, and improvements to Brasero.  I had not been a fan of any of these apps besides Totem prior to Gnome 2.26, so this wasn’t ultra exciting news.

The out of the box device recognition and stability are fantastic as usual.

Jaunty Jackalope is a much bigger step up than Intrepid was anticipated to be.  The faster boot times and slick new looks will make even that older PC in the corner feel young again.  Once again, if you haven’t taken the plunge into the world of Linux, now wouldn’t be a bad time to think about doing it, as you won’t be disappointed with Jaunty no matter which OS you are coming from.

The dock is very fast, and snappy, not choppy or sluggish like other docks seem to perform on my Jaunty system. The appearance customisation is good enough. You are able to adjust the height and width of the dock, as well as the color of the backdrop. In the future I would like to see a zoom ratio, and possibly different backdrops similar to AWN, but for now it blows all the apps out of the water as far as responsiveness and UI.

Calling Gnome-do a dock just doesn’t do it justice though. The plugin support for Gnome-do really puts it a step ahead of all the other docks. I haven’t been able to locate a large repository for Gnome-do plugins yet, but it comes with enough to keep you entertained for a while. Gnome-do is perfectly described by its name. Gnome do _________. Fill in the blank as you see fit. This app literally does just about anything you need Gnome to do. Launch an app, search for files on the disk, even do things like post to Twitter. If you already are happy with another dock application, thats fine, because Gnome-do takes many shapes and forms. This app is also a Launchy replacement for Linux. If you never used Launchy on Windows, it is a Start menu eliminator, using Alt+Space (or a key combination of your choice) to bring up a prompt, and you are able to type a name of an app and it would launch it. This is helpful for people who don’t like switching from mouse to keyboard a whole lot. Gnome-do mimics this effect in its non-dock forms using the Super+Space key combination by default.

What I can’t believe is why I haven’t heard about this app before, and why it isnt making a huge scene in the desktop apps department.  I have done a fair amount of searching, and Gnome-do was barely mentioned in many dock discussions. This is one heck of a killer app for Gnome, yet I haven’t heard as much as I feel like I should have.  Perhaps I am just more annoyed then most people over not being able to find a decent dock on Linux, or most people are just happy with what AWN or Cairo offers, but if you are using those apps and feel like there is just something missing, I seriously recommend giving Gnome-do  look.

You can download Gnome-do here, or use apt-get with the command:

sudo apt-get install gnome-do

UPDATE: According to Jason over at Gnome-do HQ, the bzr version of Gnome-do includes many of the features I was longing for in the article.  Instructions for installing this can be found here.