Um, what human rights groups are being assaulted by DDoS attacks? The article mentions only a few groups, and the closest things to human rights groups in that list are a Vietnamese environmental protest group and a Russian independent newspaper. And honestly, I can think of a dozen things off the top of my head that could get a group DDoS'd when dealing with Russia.

So I went and skimmed the actual report discussed by the article. (No, I didn't read all 66 pages of it.) It doesn't seem to reference any groups other than those mentioned in the article.

I have no doubt that DDoS attacks can be a threat to human rights sites, but so far I don't see any.

And I am having a hard time avoiding the conclusion that the article is deliberately conflating the pro-WikiLeaks attacks with attacks on "human rights."

As someone who lives in a rural area, allow me to explain how I and everyone around me views the situation.

You are correct. Living in a rural area comes with trade-offs. Everyone, and I mean everyone, who lives out here understands that.

For water, we must pay for a well and a pump. For heat, we must pay for propane tanks to be regularly refilled. For trash, we must drive our own refuse to a dumpster facility, as there is no pickup. After a snow, our roads get plowed last if at all, so we use our own vehicles and equipment to do it sooner. For television, we pay for satellite or make do with rabbit ears.

For Internet, we're willing to pay for the wires to be extended to our area.

Oh, wait, we can't. We don't even have the option of paying for the last mile (well, last several miles).

I guess what I'm saying is, your welfare-queen image of rural residents is wrong. We accept that we have to pay more for a lot of things. We don't want subsidies or charity. I and most people around me would be happy to pay the extra cost.

Currently, I pay for a wireless broadband service. I get about 3 Mbps each way. It's decent but I'm sure I would do more (more work, more video chat, more Google Earth browsing, etc.) if we had Fios. But it's clear we never will. (Before the wireless service was available, I had satellite Internet, which is so bad I wouldn't wish it on anyone.)

The problem with infrastructure being privatized is that it's thoroughly profitable to just build it in a few places, continue taking those customers' payments, and never build any more infrastructure. There is no (short term) economic motive to expand or improve.

You are naive or deliberately acting the fool.

Access to information is what elevates us above cavemen. The net may be full of filth but it's also full of real information, even vital information—on geography, health, science, and even entertainment. The more time I spend in rural areas, the more I am awed by the sad paucity of information available to people who actually would like to learn about the world outside their town. Increasing numbers of critical documents are available online. Broadband affects quality of life and encourages growth of business.

Now, if you'd said "someone might not get his WoW fix, oh noes" I probably would have agreed with you.

Why haven't MS developed a touch-based shell for Windows 7?

I'm convinced Microsoft hasn't done it for the simple reason that they aren't capable of doing it.

The root of this is Microsoft's business model for the past 15 to 20 years: Do things on the cheap and release the result as a major new product. Usually this means a trivial amount of additional development on an existing product which is then released as a brand new product. Regardless, the model is tiny costs, big revenue.

Whenever Microsoft has attempted to create something from scratch, the result has been failure. I don't want to bother trying to list them all, but Vista is an obvious and fairly recent example.

I don't think they have the ability to create any product from the ground up. Most of their products have been acquisitions. I even remember an interview a while back in which a Microsoft exec used the phrase "innovation through acquisition" ... which a Google search shows has since become a common expression.

Yes, yes, I know there are a lot of intelligent people working there. But the ability to solve riddles in interviews isn't a replacement for knowledge about streamlined architecture or user interface design. Those intelligent people could become masters of those things, but I don't think Microsoft's culture encourages that.

Undoing accidental mod.

I've taken over Java progress where everything was OOP'ed into hell (as in a bazillion classes more than was needed for the application)

I certainly have sympathy for you; I've taken over many code bases which were maintenance nightmares.

But I have to take exception (no pun intended) with your above statement. What you took over was not OOP in any way.

OO is not "do all the same crap but do it using copious amounts of inheritance."

I've seen people do what you describe---using an insane mount of classes---and it's abominable, but please don't pin that on OO. The whole point of OO is to minimize the need for looking through code, by making each class simple and opaque with a well-defined contract, so it can be treated like a black box as much as possible.

Most people who venture into OO just do all sharing of data and/or functionality via inheritance. I blame most CS curricula for this, as CS has taught for many decades that languages are all the same and just impose a few different syntax rules on what should be the same logic. Thus, most CS students see inheritance just another syntactic tool, and they are eager to make excessive use of it so they can feel like they're doing things the "Java way" (or .Net way, etc.).

And to try to be a little on topic: the article is quite correct that Java's new question-mark gimmick (the implicit null check) is one of the worst things to happen to software reliability in the last ten years.

Too bad you don't love humans half as much as you love dogs. Perhaps when our alien overlords stop by looking for food, you can offer yourself up as a tasty treat. Damn humanity and all those evil things we've done to dogs. . . like CREATE THEM. What could be more evil and sadistic than hurting a dog? Gee, it couldn't be genocide or torture or rape or dumping millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. . .

I think you've just provided ample evidence of why someone might love dogs more than humans.

I don't see where hesaigo is claiming no act is more evil than hurting a dog. It seems you filled that part in, in order to attack this pet issue (no pun intended) you're carrying around. I think that is what is commonly termed a "strawman."

But, since you mention it: yes, genocide and torture of humans is worse, because humans are capable of distrust and are capable of fighting back, while most dogs will do neither.

The greatest moral perversion of this age, aside from egoism, is the "animal rights" whackos who prioritize the wellbeing of animals over that of human beings. Those who equate the value of life with the ability to suffer, such as Peter Singer. Dogs are dumb, the fact that they have a broad range of emotions doesn't change that. They're our slaves, both physically and mentally bread to be so. A dog not enslaved to humanity is a wolf, hyena, or fox.

If both you and a dog were in a burning building, I'm one of many people who would save the dog first, and depending on my mood, I might or might not go back to rescue you and your bible. People like Singer aren't just valuing life based on whether it can suffer, but rather on all the same criteria used to judge human life except species itself.

No one is putting human life above nonhuman life. Some people are simply suggesting they're equal, that a life should be valued based on the merits of its personality and contributions. If your objection is that some parts of your bible claim otherwise, you probably already realize that it had a lot of claims of inequality which have mostly been dismantled in modern society.

P.S. Hyenas are not canines.

More people are killed by dogs then wild animals AROUND the ENTIRE world.

Your kitten? Wouldn't hurt a fly... oh okay, maybe a fly but nothing else... except mice... and spiders... but you are perfectly safe... unless it can find a way to kill you without leaving a trace.

That is some serious FUD.

First of all, there is not a single puppy on earth who will hurt a human being. Not one.

Second of all, take just ten seconds to think about it and you will realize that dog attacks are more common than wild animal attacks because people are in the company of dogs far more than they are in the company of wild animals. And it doesn't help that many people train dogs to be weapons.

Further, it's actually fairly difficult to get attacked by a wild animal. Most of them want to be left alone and will flee from humans.

I'm not claiming dogs are more intelligent (or less intelligent) than cats; I'm just correcting your misinformation. I actually like the company of both.

Or were you toilet trained by your mom rubbing your nose in it?

I hope that's hypothetical. If you think that's a real, legitimate method of training dogs, you have no business being around them.

Says Mr. Lee:

The Web should be usable by people with disabilities.

If Slashdot is any indication, 95% of web developers will assume they are expected to write multiple versions of each HTML page and will practically riot in the streets before honoring accessibility.

The only solution I can offer is to create some sort of Web author certification. Nothing grand, just something that at least indicates the holder has retained the salient parts of the HTML 4.01 and CSS 2.1 specs. Like accessibility.