Your analogy is indeed good. But it actually serves to undermine your point. The people who released the documents to the public are...(get ready)... the journalists and reporters! Wikileaks supplied a few select organizations with the cables, then reprinted them after the New York Times and others published them widely. So it appears that the "blind idiot apologist" here is you. Why is your anger directed at Wikileaks, and not the people who did the real "harm" of releasing this information to the public? Could it be that you are just buying into the propaganda and FUD that has been relentlessly spread by the government and others since this incident took place?

Let's hope they post it WikiLeaks-style. That would mean they spend months coordinating with journalists to redact names and other information that might put individuals' lives at risk. Then, they would only release a few select important parts of the material in a completely responsible manner.

Of course, that is not what the editors and poster were trying to convey by 'WikiLeaks' style. Why insert this useless anti-free-speech FUD into the story?

Actually, that's the first intelligent response I have seen to the DDOS=sit-in analogy. You have a very good point. In some ways this is much closer to a sit-in in which participants actually handcuff themselves to objects in the business. Its still not an attack.

Analogies between the real and virtual world are bound to be flawed. But calling it a hacker attack is extremely misleading to a public that imagines the attackers are breaking in to computers and damaging them or stealing data. Despite the analogy's flaws "sit-in" is much more accurate than "attack."

Your argument is based on an incorrect analogy. No property is being damaged here. Space (bandwidth space) is being taken up by protesters in order to prevent other legitimate activity. This is how protests have functioned for decades. Perhaps you believe that people in the civil-rights movement should have taken less aggressive tactics so that we wouldn't have had to end segregation so quickly, eh?

Yes, these protesters are actively interfering with businesses. This is one of the lowest imaginable crimes. They must be jailed and punished just like the lunch-counter sit-in protesters who actively interfered with businesses in the sixties. So selfish!

Yes, its not 'hacking' and these are not 'attacks' and there is no 'war.' Those are loaded terms, and they are being used in order to make it seem like this is not an ethical politically-motivated action. Participants are not stealing or damaging property. They are simply taking up bandwidth. This is firmly in the tradition of passive resistance, in which protesters enter a business or property and simply take up space to prevent business from occurring (i.e., lunch counter sit-ins). The terms we should be using are 'protest' or 'online sit-in' and the hackers should be called 'protesters.'

Slashdot editors: please stop calling these 'attacks.'

These are not attacks. This is not a war. A politically motivated DDOS is exactly analogous in form and function to a lunch counter sit-in. These should be called 'protests' or 'online sit-ins.' Use of the words like 'war' and 'attack' only fuels a belief that there is no justified ethical motivation for these protests.

Its probably because you are self-filtering information that contradicts your own opinion. There are in fact many examples of information in these documents that the American public has a right to know. Here is a clear cut example:

The United States has been knowingly lying to the American public about its participation in military strikes in Yemen. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley in answered "No" to the question "Is the U.S. involved in any military operations in Yemen?" But the documents reveal the answer was a lie. Crowly was not misinformed. He was lying. Dont you believe that US citizens have a right to know when killing is being done in their name?

A good article with several links, and fascinating audio: http://www.salon.com/news/wikileaks/index.html?story=/opinion/greenwald/2010/12/08/wikileaks/

Bad design -- there is no reason to embed display-control strings in the character set. Is there a "start-italics" character? No, of course not. Software should keep track of hyphenation positions the same way it keeps track of other formatting positions.

Actually, they are orthogonal categories. Some things are art, some are vandalism, some are neither, and some are both.

Based on my late-90s studying of AI, I was completely in agreement with you. But tech moves forward. Allow me to introduce you to Big Dog http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1czBcnX1Ww. Click ahead to 1:20 to have your mind blown away.

Your problem with jerks is that you have to be very careful of them? Being very careful should be your default behavior as a driver.