While the assistance with the bail is neat, the real story here is that Michael Moore has said he will be lending support in regards to the online availability of the WikiLeaks content.

If he follows through on that promise, then I believe that will be very beneficial for WikiLeaks, as they're starting to need help in this area (given that their service is getting cut by all these different institutions).

It only took two days since the attack occurred for the perpetrator to be tracked down and arrested? I can't say I've ever heard of such a fast response time to a computer crime. I'm quite surprised.

Is this typical these days?

The lawyers are taking home 25% of the 8.5 million (plus interest), plus reimbursement of costs and expenses, according to the class action website.

Frankly, if I had to choose between a company keeping the money it has earned versus going to a random group of lawyers, I'd go with the former. Maybe I'd be more for punishing an organization financially if they were engaging in risky behavior and refusing to stop; however, from what I can remember about the incident, Google apologized and shut the thing down quickly (I'm not 100% on that, though).

This is true; it is difficult to get TV service if you subscribe to Comcast Business.

As far as I'm concerned, high quality Internet service trumps TV any day. I get great download/upload speeds (not sure what residential is at, but it is fine for my purposes), great 24 hour customer/technical support that knows wtf they're talking about (Me: "Hey, can you set up reverse DNS for me?" Them: "Sure!"), two or more static IP's, consistent monthly prices that don't go up, etc.

I'll never buy TV service again, ever. What a waste of time. Sure it's just as easy to waste time on the computer, but at least there's a chance you might end up doing something productive.

(By the way, for people having issues with their Domain Helper crap: Have your network set to use the 4.2.2.1, 4.2.2.2, 4.2.2.3 (etc.) nameservers for DNS. I never even knew about this new service until reading about it here.)

Although you'll get different interpretations of the same talking points by sampling polarizing US media, it's doubtful you'll get any different, tenable pieces of information from the endeavor.

I believe that the most important interpretation and view point regarding a current event at the end of the day is your own. Instead of juggling interpretations of the same data provided by journalists who are all working under the same framework, I find it more useful to juggle opposing accounts and data.

To do so you need to find sources that operate with interests that are actually opposed to those held by your average news sources. That means, if the news topic is regarding Iran, comparing what you have read in US media to articles put out by Iranian news agencies and other countries in the surrounding region.

While you may think that anything coming out of a state-run Iranian news agency is rubbish, the fact of the matter is plenty of journalists in the Western world rely on information provided by their own government in regards to matters on the world stage (not entirely of course, but a large amount of it is). The information provided will be whatever it needs to be in order to fuel their interests while (hopefully) conforming to any applicable laws, and that's it.

It's a completely reasonable assertion to view a news source as potentially unreliable based simply on its point of origin vs the subject matter.

It isn't necessarily because the people writing the article are untrustworthy or biased, instead it is the framework they operate in (where they get their information from, government sources, etc.) itself that is biased, as it naturally has interests.

If pirating software is anything but an impossible endeavor for users, then it is going to happen.

If a solid revenue stream is your primary concern as a developer, and piracy is something that is keeping you up at night, then you should be making apps that cater to businesses instead of individual users.

If the platform is such that targeting anything but individual users is not feasible, then unless your app is extremely popular, it is a poor platform to use for generating revenue.

Nuclear weapons, by their very nature are NOT defensive.

Regardless of whether mutual assured destruction is a sound military doctrine or not, the fact of the matter is that nuclear weapons have resulted in the deterrence of conventional aggression between states belonging to the developed world.

Throughout history, the great powers of Europe have regularly gone to war with each other; that is, up until 1945. Since then, there have been no major conflicts at all between the major states. These are the same states that suffered unbelievable devastation and losses due to World War I, and still that wasn't enough to prevent a second World War from occurring a short time after.

To say that the nature of government underwent a fundamental change in the year 1945 would be a ridiculous claim. A more reasonable claim is that, for the first time in history, the costs of committing acts of conventional aggression (between major powers) have become so great and terrible as to dissuade their execution.

Individuals supporting nuclear abolition have good intentions. After all, nuclear weapons are horrible weapons of destruction easily capable of causing our complete eradication. While that's true, I assume that, based on our own long history, that complete nuclear abolition would usher in the return of conventional aggression between major powers, leading to major conflicts or even a new world war.

Here's a very short paper on the subject from a foreign-policy think tank in DC: http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/Miller1.pdf.