The OPs use of, punctuation makes the post, read like a haiku.

Ukraine != Poland, either. The entire northern half speaks Russian natively and, despite the best efforts of the Ukrainian Ukrainians, they appear to have the upper hand in parliment right now. I'd say that the jury is still out, and while Ukraine certainly isn't Belarus, they lean a lot more towards Moscow than you suggest.

Oh exquisite the irony of those words.

Kinda sad you had to add that. But, yeah, you kinda had to.

You are so right! That's why I like to send nVidia a check for around $800 every year or so. I want to do my part to support science!

That would disable the cool search features.

Well stated, sir. If I may mix my metaphors, big tents make for strange, even nonsensical, bed-fellows.

Mmmm. Pretty sure it won't. I'll bet cash that no flight crew or passenger will stand down to box cutters at this point. We've seen how that movie ends.

Which is why we should look to empowering, not humilating, the people in the plane. That's the only sure way to prevent another hijacking.

Quite right! Use an Android tablet, maybe one of those cheap Nooks with a custom CM9 ROM! Inexpensive, and none of that walled-garden nonsense!

I've been reading books on my phone for years, and I've just started reading them on a tablet. It conveniently there for me when I'm in the mood to read, and it's conveniently there when I'm in the mood to do something else. "a sense of permanence has always been part of the experience"? WTF? It's just a book. A sense of entertaining (or educational) words in a proper sequence pretty much defines it for me.

You dead-tree bibliophiles remind me a movie fans, always talking about "films" and trying to suck the fun out of a diversion. Or vinyl lovers always talking about the "warmth" of the old-school scratchy record sound. The earth is not flat, the horse-drawn carriage is not coming back, and old, inefficient memes are all headed for obsolescence.

Save a tree. Buy a Luddite a tablet!

Wish I had points to mod parent up. I have a drawer full of EFF T-shirts, but this crusade just doesn't smell right to me. Giving free stuff to strangers without any screening, and volunteering to swallow all the risk for the "common good" goes way past "naive" into "masochistic". There are just too many many ways this can go wrong. Besides, I just don't see this encouraging the sorts of behavior I want to see. We want people to feel they should be able freeload connectivity? Is that the best way to parcel out a scarce resource?

Alternately, it could be said that this is proof that there is not yet a compelling enough reason to migrate to IPv4 for market forces to drive the rates up to the point where it make sense for ISPs to pay for the requisite infrastructure changes. It's either that, or your "Evil-Corporate-Conspiracy" theory. Could go either way.

RE: "Berners-Lee asked how can we 'make use of the web so it connects people together and breaks down barriers more than it builds them up.' Any ideas?"

I like barriers. It's why I have a yard. And headphones.

What a bunch of sanctimonious nonsense. How's this for a reason: It's fun. Jeez. You guys need to take the tape off your glasses and sneak some hootch into the stadium.

I might if Assange was plainly on the side of angels. He's not.

I don't know what possible good purpose Assange thinks will come out of sharing a list of sensitive sites, but I think that whatever credibility had had going into this is now gone. The guy just hates the U.S. and doesn't seem to care who might be hurt by his grudge. I'm usually the 1st guy to jump on the bandwagon when it comes to sticking it to the man, but this guy is just a jerk.