That's an interesting take, when I read the section about how the group flooded the emails of politicians and DDoS'd their websites, my first thought was of politicians who don't even know they have a website and don't know how to use email. So basically, an anonymous, faceless group sending massive digital attacks against email boxes that never get checked and websites nobody reads.

It brings into full discussion the group's claim that attacks are more effective than petitions...are they actually more effective? It's an old argument about terrorism, where the organization under attack is forced to do nothing because reacting simply brings more attacks. While I agree that petitions rarely bring change (the Turing case in England being an instance where a petition actually worked), how 'effective' is an all-out digital attack at forcing governments to change policy?

I will say the only effect thus far seems to be creating discussion of the issue (of which I was previously ignorant), but if Slashdot is any indication, people will discuss the idea over an 'Anonymous' spokesperson far more than the merits of their methods or their cause.

I agree completely...one of the issues I see here with GIMP has always been that the developers approached GIMP's UI as being 'this is how the user should interact with the UI'.

But...

Hard core image editing is about the IMAGE...not the UI. So putting everything in a single window mimics the basic premise behind creating a piece of artwork. If you were painting a picture, you start with the blank canvas and remain focused on the image on the canvas while reaching for various tools. The GIMP UI (which I've used extensively) is more like trying to create a painting with the easel in one room, the canvas in another room, and each individual paint color in yet another room. Sure, it sounds like an farcical analogy, but giving each element in creating a painting the same independence has this effect.