Submission + - The Pirate Party now the biggest party in Iceland (visir.is)

Submitted by jrepin on Thursday March 19, 2015 @06:32AM

jrepin writes: The Pirate Party now measures as the largest political party in Iceland, according to a new servey from the Icelandic market and research company MMR which regularly surveyes the support for the political parties in Iceland. Support for political parties and the government was surveyed in the period between the 13thand 18th of March. The results show that The Pirate Party has gained increased support. Now, support for The Pirate Party totals 23.9%, compared to their previous 12.8% in the last MMR survey.

Submission + - European Court of Justice strikes down data retention law

Submitted by nachtkap on Tuesday April 08, 2014 @08:36AM

nachtkap writes: The BBC reports:

The EU's top court has declared "invalid" an EU law requiring telecoms firms to store citizens' communications data for up to two years. The EU Data Retention Directive was adopted in 2006. The European Court of Justice says it violates two basic rights — respect for private life and protection of personal data.

Germany's supreme court did call on the ECJ to look into this issue as well.

Submission + - Icelandic Pirate Party received 3 members of parlament

Submitted by Thorhs on Sunday April 28, 2013 @04:07AM

Thorhs writes: According to preliminary results (all votes counted, no official word yet) the Icelandic Pirarte Party was able to secure 3 members of the national parlament, first PP to reach a national parlament. Things were hairy during the election night when the PP lost all their MPs when they dropped below the 5% barrier 'needed' in the somewhat complex election system. Thankfully they managed to slip back up above, ending up with 5.1% of the total votes. The old 'crash parties', the ones in charge before our epic financial crash, (Independent and Progressive parties) are the prime candidates to form a new government with just over 51% of the votes, but 40 of 63 seats. RUV (icelandic) has good coverate, while BBC has some info in english.

Submission + - Bill to force Patent Trolls to Defendants costs (arstechnica.com) 1

Submitted by TrueSatan on Wednesday August 01, 2012 @07:48PM

TrueSatan writes: With support from the EFF's Defend Freedom Project two US Republican party Senators seek to introduce a bill called the "Shield Act" (https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/SHIELD_ACT_0.pdf) which, if passed, would enable judges to award costs to defendants if they are found to be the victims of meritless or frivolous patent litigation

Submission + - Wikileaks will get credit card money (www.dv.is)

Submitted by mordur on Thursday July 12, 2012 @10:31AM

mordur writes: An Icelandic District Court has ordered the payment processing company Valitor to immediately re open the merchant account of DataCell and start processing credit card payments for the Wikileaks organization. Noncompliance on behalf of Valitor will result in daily fines of ISK 800.000 (approx. USD 60.000).

Under pressure from the USA based international credit card companies, Valitor stopped all service to DataCell and, thus to Wikileaks, just hours after having started processing payment in July 2011. The court found that Valitor had failed to prove that the processing of payments for Wikileaks was contrary to the business policies of the international credit card companies, nor had the company proved that DataCell was in breach of the service agreement between the companies by serving Wikileaks.

Comment Re:GoDaddy (Score 1) 353

by mordur on Friday December 23, 2011 @10:51AM (#38471796) Attached to: GoDaddy Backs SOPA

For hosting go to https://1984.is/

1984 hosting company supports immi.is, which is conceptually the flip side of SOPA. I'ts a project (well under way) to create a single jurisdiction in the world with optimal legal framework for freedom of speech.

Comment Re:The problem is the law (Score 1) 217

by mordur on Monday October 10, 2011 @09:31PM (#37674400) Attached to: US Government Seizes Email of WikiLeaks Volunteer

Or just host your email with 1984hosting.com

Comment Re:.onion (Score 1) 241

by mordur on Thursday September 22, 2011 @08:32PM (#37487064) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best ccTLD To Avoid Confiscation?

wikileaks.is has never been taken down. And it never will, if this news item is to be believed,

https://www.isnic.is/en/news/view?id=204

where ISNIC states that it will take a police officer carrying a court order from an Icelandic court. And those court orders are very, very hard to come by. In nearly 25 years of .is this has never happened.

Also, remember IMMI:

http://immi.is/

Iceland will hopefully be a safe haven for freedom of expression and freedom of the press in the very near future.. The parliament has passed the resolution and the legislation is in the making.

Comment Iceland, IMMI, ISNIC and .is ccTLD (Score 4, Informative) 241

by mordur on Thursday September 22, 2011 @08:12PM (#37486944) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: Best ccTLD To Avoid Confiscation?

The .is ccTLD has consistently rated as one of the best run ccTLDs out there. In this piece of news item on the ISNIC web site:

https://www.isnic.is/en/news/view?id=203

That basically says that they will take down domains only if one of three conditions is met:
1. Non payment of registration fees
2. If the whois records and registration information is incorrect (the are very strict about the technical setup of domains in whois and dns)
3. If the cops show up with a court order (has never happened in 25 years of the ccTLD
Also, let's not forget this:

http://immi.is/

The Icelanders are going to make their country a safe haven for freedom of expression and the press, so the legal framework will be there for this tld to be the safest in the foreseeable future.

Comment IMMI - International Modern Media Initiative. (Score 3, Informative) 236

by mordur on Sunday April 10, 2011 @03:43PM (#35775864) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Country Has the Best Email Privacy Laws?

I don't know which country has the best protection for users of online services now, but Iceland most certainly will be a contender when the IMMI legislation has been passed as per the Parliamentary Resolution passed on June 16. last year. Check it out: http://immi.is/

How a Key Enzyme Repairs Sun-Damaged DNA 97

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday July 27, 2010 @02:58AM from the one-proton-and-one-electron dept.

BraveHeart writes "Researchers have long known that mammals, including humans, lack a key enzyme — one possessed by most of the animal kingdom and even plants — that reverses severe sun damage. For the first time, researchers have witnessed how this enzyme works at the atomic level to repair sun-damaged DNA. 'Normal sunscreen lotions convert UV light to heat, or reflect it away from our skin. A sunscreen containing photolyase could potentially heal some of the damage from UV rays that get through.'"

Foldit Player May Have Created a Useful Protein 144

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday May 18, 2010 @11:44PM from the know-when-to-hold-'em dept.

An anonymous reader writes "The organizers of the game Foldit, where you fold proteins for scientific research, announced that a user has found a protein that may be able to bind influenza viruses. Researchers plan to test the protein in a lab over the next few weeks to see if it might be medically useful."

New Evidence Presented For Ancient Fossils In Mars Rocks 91

Posted by Soulskill on Friday May 07, 2010 @04:47PM from the hope-the-protectors-leave-them-alone dept.

azoblue passes along a story in the Washington Post, which begins: "NASA's Mars Meteorite Research Team reopened a 14-year-old controversy on extraterrestrial life last week, reaffirming and offering support for its widely challenged assertion that a 4-billion-year-old meteorite that landed thousands of years ago on Antarctica shows evidence of microscopic life on Mars. In addition to presenting research that they said disproved some of their critics, the scientists reported that additional Martian meteorites appear to house distinct and identifiable microbial fossils that point even more strongly to the existence of life. 'We feel more confident than ever that Mars probably once was, and maybe still is, home to life,' team leader David McKay said at a NASA-sponsored conference on astrobiology."

Ubuntu LTS Experiences X.org Memory Leak 320

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @03:25PM from the like-it-when-windows-crashed-more dept.

MonsterTrimble writes "Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 is experiencing a major memory leak due to patches for X.org. 'An X.Org Server update that was pushed into the Lucid repository last week has resulted in the system being slower and slower as it is left on, until it reaches a point where the system is no longer usable. ... In order to make the Ubuntu 10.04 LTS deadline, the developers are looking at just reverting three of the patches, which brings the GLX version back to 1.2. Ubuntu developers are now desperate for people willing to test out this updated X.Org Server package so they can determine by this Friday whether to ship it with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS or doing an early SRU (Stable Release Update). Right now this X.Org Server that's being tested is living in the ubuntu-x-swat PPA.'"

Brain Training Games Don't Train Your Brain 151

Posted by timothy on Wednesday April 21, 2010 @02:03PM from the maybe-it-just-takes-more-than-6-weeks dept.

Stoobalou writes with this excerpt from Thinq.co.uk: "A new study has shown that brain training games do little to exercise the grey matter. Millions of people who have been prodding away at their Nintendo DS portable consoles, smug in the knowledge that they are giving their brains a proper work-out, might have to rethink how they are going to stop the contents of their skulls turning into mush."

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