New RIFERS blogs entries from Tyler Pitchford

Why does American Express hate the blind?

Tyler Pitchford — Wed, 06 Dec 2006 20:55:54 +0100

So anyone here with an American Epress has probably gotten the MylifeMyCard advertisments and the information on their MyWishList contest (http://mywishlist.mylifemycard.com/). What I find interesting is every year the contest has been in Flash (not good for the blind to start), but this year they outdid themselves. They managed to add a captcha to the contest that has no audio alternative --wonderful.

You're probably thinking well why does this guy care? Mainly 1) my neighbor is blind and 2) I'm in law school and had to study the American with Disabilities Act. All in all I'd say anyone with standing could sue the living shit out of AMEX for a violation of their ADA rights --since this is a public contest. I mean AMEX might argue "Hey, we're a private group and the contest is private," but I doubt a court would buy it. They've got millions of card holders and the contest is open to every one of them. Either way, it's not very nice of American Express to forget their are blind card holders who they're straight screwing over.

Time to make a phone call,
Tyler

Can Wardialing help in a war?

Tyler Pitchford — Tue, 05 Dec 2006 22:04:24 +0100

First off, finals are over and I'm back to being human for a few months (yay!). Second I still love RIFE and now I'll have time to use it. Thrid and the point of this post is can the old BBS days trick of Wardialing to find connections help in a war?

What I mean is there have been several articles posted on bombs being set off remotely by cell phones in Iraq and other places like Bangladesh. I was just wondering if it would be possible to have the phone company periodically just ring all the phones and set off the bombs before they're supposed to detonate. Obviously using simple triangulation, etc. the possible canidates for dialing could be lowered, but either way it's still the principle that's interesting.

Might be better than using cell phone jammers. If nothing else it would make the detonators more complex and harder to build instead of a simple 5V or whatever pulse off the phones speaker there would have to be some kind of tone reader to check for key presses or at least a counter for X rings.

Cheers,
Tyler

The fairytale of Ruby, her magical kingdom, and the mutilation of poor elseif

Tyler Pitchford — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 22:45:06 +0200

Once upon a time there was a beautiful thing born and it was known as Logic. Eventually, Logic gave birth to a beautiful baby Computers. Now, Computers gave birth to many things, but this story focuses on part of it's bastard step child --programming languages and it's cousin software development.

Now programming languages was very promiscuous and had many many bastard children of it's own. One was the demon seed known as Perl. However, evil can change it's stripes in this magical land and eventually from Perl arose a somewhat less evil descendant. This somewhat less evil descendant was named "Ruby."

Eventually, Ruby, the somewhat less evil descendant of the demon seed Perl, developed a kingdom and a large following (mostly from her vast rail network). Many wars were waged between Ruby's kingdom and those of the somewhat evil PHP, a bastard child of C++, who himself was a bastard child C, and so on. These wars lasted many years, but they're not the focus of this story. No, this story focuses on Ruby.

Now, Ruby, with her vast kingdom made many decrees. Some where simple such as "Types shall not be found in my kingdom!, unless they're for conversions?” Other degrees were to appease her kingdom and it's vast population of characters.

One example, was Ruby's degree: "No character shall not have a meaning in our kingdom!"
To which the people cried "Not even ! ?"
Ruby replied "No, ! shall be factorial AND not"
"What of @?" they said next.
"@ shall define class members" she replied
"And |, what of smelly old | ?" the pondered,
"Ah, a tough one, but | shall have a use in iterators"
... this went on for awhile as there were a lot of characters to be appointed.

Near the end one character spoke up, little ^, and asked Ruby for a meaning. Poor little ^ said to Ruby, "Your majesty, I've been known around the world to represent the exponential operation and I'd like have the same meaning in your kingdom."

Ruby, who had a brief affair with ** several years earlier; told poor little ^ to go to hell and appointed ** as the exponential operator. Poor little ^ was left with only being useful as a regular expression operator and eventually committed suicide. Poor little guy. Many in the kingdom were furious and confused about Ruby's decision to select ** over brave little carrot and swore off Ruby and her kingdom forever.

Eventually, an underground began to form in the kingdom. They tried for years to over throw ** as the exponential operator but failed. The operators of the underground were two nobles named If and Else. If and Else were lovers and were recently blessed with a child. If and Else, being subjects of a kingdom founded by a distant relative of Logic, name their child Elseif --a token of their undying love for each other and honor to the legend of Logic.

The wars fought between the underground and Ruby's armies were amazing, even more so then those waged between the Ruby's kingdom and PHP, but there is no time to describe them here. Eventually, the leaders of the movement If and Else were caught along with their two greatest generals, the twins { and }. Being slightly evil, really pissed off by the underground's attacks, and insulted by the fact that anyone in her kingdom would question her decision to appoint ** over ^, Ruby came up with a horrific plan to teach any dissenters a lesson.

First, she imprisoned If and Else's generals, { and }, to work with smelly old | for all eternity. Next, and the most dastardly of all, Ruby ordered Elseif’s e cut off in front of the whole kingdom. Yes! Poor newborn’s e was cut off Poor and waived around for all to see. Poor little Elseif, now forever more only Elsif was forever ruined by Queen Ruby and never could find meaning in life. Yes, it was a sad day for all. The entire kingdom wept, developers fled upon hearing the news and If and Else could not believe Ruby would commit such a horrific act and begged to be executed immediately. In a misguided attempt to honor Elsif, Interpreter, a good friend of the family, refused to throw an error or warning if Elseif’s name was ever used.

However, reaching deeper into her well of evil, Ruby declared one final punishment. Ruby stayed If and Else's executions and ordered them to live with end --the most annoying of all Ruby's kingdom for all eternity.

And all wept again.

Tesla Testament (A Book Review)

Tyler Pitchford — Thu, 11 May 2006 16:29:01 +0200

So about 2 weeks ago I get a package on my door. Not 100% sure what it was, figured it’s something from my family (usually is). I guessed it was a care package, since finals were about to start here at law school. Anyway, I toss it to the side and head to class. Get back that night and decide to open it up. I’m thinking I could use some cookies.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed when I opened it, but 2 days later I was happy with what I received. Turns out it was an advanced copy of Tesla Testament a novel by Eugene Ciurana. I normally wouldn’t start reading a book right before finals, but it wasn’t a case book and had Tesla in the title. That sparked my interest. I may be a law student now, but in my former life I was definitely a computer geek and a man-of-science.

So I flip the book over and read the description to make sure it’s not just a catchy title. Turns out Tesla Testament is a spy thriller based around Tesla’s works and a spy named Francis Montagnet. Ok, I think, maybe I’ll read a few pages. I was quite surprised to find out the book changes the back story to the Tunguska event, one of my favorite mysterious happenings, by the end of chapter one. That definitely grabbed my attention and as I said earlier it was done by the next night.

I don’t want to give away too much about the plot, but the book definitely held my attention through the whole read. The book follows Francis Montagnet’s quest to stop the Rebirth Alliance, a terrorist organization, from using Tesla’s works to create a new super weapon. Montagnet travels the globe in his quest to stop the Alliance, traversing numerous cities and countries. Of course, there’s a girl. A beautiful Russian girl no less.

I always figured a spy novel wouldn’t have much in the way of character development, but was presently surprised that Tesla Testament actually developed its characters. I really felt like I understood the characters by the end of the book. The descriptions of the numerous landscapes brought back memories of my trips through the Europe (ah, for pre-law school days again). The action scenes are well described, with a lot of kick boxing references. I have to admit, I liked the kick boxing, they reminded me of the Bloodsport movies. The only real issue I had with the book was the use of Islamic extremists as the villains. I’ve spent time in Islamic countries and as a result I have a lot of Muslim friends. I think they’ve been getting a bad rap, in the media, lately and would liked to have seen a different group being utilized. Otherwise, no complaints.

All in all, Tesla Testament is well written and has the right balance of science, technology, sex and action to make a believable plot. Some parts might be a little technical, but Mr. Ciurana provides explanations and I think that most readers should get by without issue. If you like Tesla and I hope you do, then you should check the book out.

In conclusion, it may not have been cookies, but it was still tasty. I’ve never read a spy novel, but I’ll definitely read another one. Now that finals are over.

Cheers,
Tyler

Making OSS Contributions that are Voidable?

Tyler Pitchford — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 23:52:42 +0200

After some recent events, I've been wondering: "Should we contribute to OSS, but make these contributions voidable?" What I mean is should we write code for a project, donate it to that project, but make sure it can be taken out / stop use, if that project goes sour? Here's an extreme example:

Project X is formed and it's a great idea. You join up with Project X and make a few modifications and add some cool new features. Project X continues to grow and becomes really popular with millions of users, so you start listing yourself as connected with Project X. Finally, Project X's administrator, who you trusted to handle the project correctly, decides that the logo should be switched from a Teddy Bear to Ted Bundy and display a message about killing your family. There was no fork, there was only a modification to the project, a project that you've tied yourself to. So you of course cut your ties and do your best to explain you had nothing to do with that project, but what if you could say "stop promoting your project until you remove my ties / contributions to it?"

Unlike most OSS project where there is was a fork to the project before it went sour, here this is not the case. Here, we've got a project administrator who just decided to up and change course out of the blue and you're caught in the crossfire. The best you can do is drop all connections with the project and play clean up with your reputation, but is that right? You can fork the project, hoping that the users offended by the changes are willing to try your new product, but you've still been negatively impacted (reputation, lose of users, etc.). What if they jump to another alternative, because the "Project X" name has been tainted forever and when they see your application load, they're just waiting for Ted Bundy to pop up and tell them to kill their families so they just shut it down and uninstall it?

I know as OSS developers we allow our code to be used freely by others, but we assume that major changes will result in a fork. What happens when there is no fork and the administrator of the project just decides to switch coarse taking us with them? What can we do? I like to think most OSS developers have faith that people who start/maintain OSS projects are going to keep to their words and keep software free and/or at least follow the path. Should we take out insurance on our contributions, make contracts with the administrators ("you can use this until you sell us out") or should we just have blind faith that OSS will manage itself?

Right now, I'm at a loss. Do I plan to keep my faith in people to do what they promise or do I make sure I can stop them from adversely affecting me? Is open source going to get to the point where we need contracts with Administrators to keep their words and keep projects on track? Or should we stick to the old Fork and Rebuild ontology and hope that we can "cover" all the damage to our reputations without much hassle?

I just don't know,
Tyler

A great day / Why you should be active (Non-Java)

Tyler Pitchford — Wed, 05 Apr 2006 06:51:58 +0200

Just wanted to share a great experience I had today. I started volunteering with a group who helps monitor foster families. I went to visit a child and his family. The child has gone from a troubled past to making honor roll twice this year. He told me "I love my life."

I won't say anymore, except it's wonderful to hear something like that and actually see a system that we hear so much bad about working. Sure millions might get "wasted" a year, but that money has really helped this child out. Anyway, I know there are still a lot of horror stories out there and this is probably the "exception", but that's why I'm volunteering to make this the norm.

If you have the time you should really consider working with some kind of community group. I'm holding 2 jobs and attend law school fulltime and I've made time to help out. The only real difference I find from most people is I don't watch TV. If you are saying to yourself "I don't have time," make sure it isn't because you're watching "American Idol." I hope anyone reading this would have a hard time justifying that "American Idol" is more important than making sure that children in the foster system have their needs met and are in a safe home. It only takes a few hours a month, think about it.

Cheers,
Tyler

Peace Corps Closes Bangladesh Program

Tyler Pitchford — Fri, 17 Mar 2006 14:02:12 +0100

It's been awhile since my last post, it's been a busy couple of weeks. Anyway, to the point. The Peace Corps has closed down its Bangladesh Operations after the JMB attempted to kidnap one of the volunteers.

While I'm glad to see the Peace Corps finally taking responsibility for its volunteers safety, they've still let their volunteers down. Many of the volunteers gave up homes, apartments, jobs, etc. to take a position with the Peace Corp and now have no money and no place to live, because the Peace Corp failed to provide these volunteers with a site that they could serve their 27 month commitments. Due to Peace Corp policies all of the volunteers now receive NOTHING.

They do not get their $6,000.00 adjustment fees (read what MANY of the volunteers were counting on to get housing when they got home). They do not get scholarships to grad school. They get NOTHING. Correction, they can sign up for another 27 month commitment (note: the 7+ months / 18+ months for others won't count at ALL towards the next 27 months).

Hell, the Peace Corps puts it in their records that they've "quit." That's just disgraceful. These people have given up their lives in America to represent our country. They were faced with bombing attempts, kidnappings, suicide bombers, poor medical treatment (sound like a soldier to you? except without training to defend themselves, no guns, and working for peace) , and what do they get?

They get shafted by the government that they honorable served and represented in Bangladesh. I have been to Bangladesh and I can tell you first hand that the citizens of Bangladesh know that the Peace Corp's volunteers were representing America and that they were all well respected. In conclusion, these give up their lives in America, risk their lives in an increasingly hostile environment, and when they get home some have no homes, and none were given what they were promised due to the Peace Corps' negligence.

So to hell with the Peace Corps unless they fix the mess they've created. Until then I suggest everyone tells anyone thinking of joining the Peace Corps to find another organization to work with. Personally, I think everyone should protest the Peace Corps publicly (anyone for a trip to D.C.?) and call their Senators / Congress people and let them know of this terrible atrocity against, literally, some of the bravest and nicest American's I've ever met.

Cheers,
Tyler

[Legal aside since I'm in law school]
Negligence = DUTY, BREACH, CAUSATION, DAMAGES

Duty: Duty to [provide volunteers a cite they could finish their 27 months and a Duty to disclose possible problems with the country BEFORE they accept their commissions

Breach: They sure as hell didn't do EITHER of those

Causation: Yup, not doing those caused the problems

Damages: Let's see... No homes, No money, No health care, Nothing to put on a resume, 7+ months down the drain, and I'm sure there's a lot more.

Back in Action

Tyler Pitchford — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 16:06:32 +0100

Sorry for the lack of posts as of late. I've had an extremely busy week. In the next week or two there should be a big annoucement, so look out for that. Sorry that I can't be more specfic, but NDAs and all (I'm sure you all know the drill). Anyway, keep an eye out.

Cheers,
Tyler

P.S. Checkout RIFE 1.4 (just released with full POJO support).

Closed source can keep you out of jail

Tyler Pitchford — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 04:15:32 +0100

The choice of Closed vs. Open source can keep you out of jail. Florida recently decided that evidence from a Breathalyzer test could not be introduced because the source code was closed. The court found that the lack of source code, denied the accused the right to determine if the machine accurately calculated his Alcohol levels. I found it an extremely interesting issue and I figured others might too.

If you've read my Blog you know I'm a law student and software designer. I'm probably best known for being the co-founder of the Azureus, an open-source bit torrent client. I'd consider myself an open source proponent, but by no means am I an open source zealot, though I think I may be changing. What interested me about this case is the conflict between Open vs. Closed source and it's impact on a humans freedom. No freedom to get a job, freedom to information, but literally the possibility of someone going to jail. This is about a person’s right to confront their accuser. As we've privatized the justice system, we seem to have forgotten that these machines, radar guns, breathalyzers, DNA analysis, etc. are used to convict people of crimes, serious crimes. These people have the right to confront their accusers, but if they're not made of Silicon.

Software and Reputations

Tyler Pitchford — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 06:16:12 +0100

I do work for a http://www.ikarma.com . They're a reputation engine site, think ebay's feedback, but without being tied to any one company. The concept is to create a reputation that you can take anywhere. Interesting concept, I think, but I wanted to know what others think.

Anyway, their site is built on ASP / IIS (ugh) and I'm trying to get them over to RIFE. I remember many an hour spent working with their developers to build Mail Queues, RSS feeds, CSS, blah blah blah. When I look at RIFE and Ikarma, I realize how much time would have been saved, oh well.

Here's what the badge looks like, I want a dynamic image showing my stars, but it'll be another week or two until the Web 2.0 stuff rolls out. Whenever that's released I'll have my API to the ratings data and can have my way with the badges, woo.

So what does everyone think of a portable reputation engine? I know it's trite but I really like playing with the network viewer, heh.

Do data provides hate the blind?

Tyler Pitchford — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 06:09:39 +0100

Why do computers make life for blind living hell? Most major databases, when they generate a PDF file for download store the file as unsearchable images in a PDF. The result, screen readers for the blind don't work.

Why does this matter? Well a year ago I would have said it really didn't, but living next to a blind L.L.M. candidate made me think differently. I spent 4+ hours converting PDFs for him to a readable format so his screen reader would read the text to him. It ended up costing him $60.00 in software, 4+ hours of both of our time, and he now gets OCR'd text formats that a sighted person gets to read for free. However, $60.00 later there's still some major problems.

If you've ever read a legal treatise there's about half a page of text and then half a page of cites. The normal reader skips over the cites, but for my neighbor they get read to him by his screen reader and throw his comprehension off. The other big problem? The OCR software (the only one sub 500.00) didn't structure their menus to be navigated by keyboard, so the screen reader can't read off the menu items. The result, a sighted person has to convert all of the documents, because the blind can't use the software. Argh.

Over the years he's learned to kind of block out the citations, but it's a sad state of affairs. You honestly never consider how a blind person deals with software or data until you spend your entire night helping them out. No Superbowl, No homework done, No coding done, nothing... just 4+ hours spend making something readable for a friend. Seriously, for everyone who hates XML take a lesson from this. If the documents were sent out in a well formatted XML, the reader could be configured to ignore cites while reading, not generate UNREADABLE images (or at least provide text descriptions), and a billion other formats.

We as software developers really need to put more time into accessibility planning. I know it's a seemingly small percentage of users, but for the ones it impacts it really makes a huge difference. So in the future, turn off your screen, turn on a screen reader and see if you can navigate your software, read the data you’re pumping out, get around your website, if you can smile. If not, try again.

Cheers,
Tyler

P.S. Next project after CRUD updates and when I get free time (read: 2015ish) I'll add the RIFE/Accessibility framework

RIFE/CRUD gets Rails like ActiveRecord Support

Tyler Pitchford — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 02:16:33 +0100

Ruby on rails, it's the new hot thing. I hate it. I hate it, because I hate Ruby Syntax. Why do I hate Ruby's syntax, easy it looks like Perl and I hate Perl's syntax. I also dislike the naming convention of Rails tables, bah. Ok, so I'm a script hater, I'll admit it. Scripts have their place, just not as the backbone of my projects.

However, I like what Ruby on Rails has to offer. The simple command line tools to generate basic elements, scaffold, it gets you a crappy looking prototype up in no time. I'm jealous I must admit. So, instead of learning to put up with Ruby's syntax, I took a syntax I prefer Java (no it's not my favorite syntax, but it'll do) and a tool I love RIFE/CRUD and added Admin generation based on a DB schema. Currently it's in a closed Alpha, but trust me it does work so far.

I hope to have full support for all primitive DB types tonight, and within a week full support for RIFE specific constraints. By next week, the eCalender demo ( http://www.rifers.org/theater/rifecrud_intro_tutorial ) should be generatable automatically by the new CRUD support. More importantly, it should be generatable in under 5 minutes. A full eCalender site with back end administration, in under 5 minutes (sweet). A blog demo in under 15 including the RIFE download, installation of RIFE, image support, comments, time to get a cup of coffee, would be more than possible by next week.

Keep an eye out for the new CRUD release, especially if you dislike Ruby, but love the prototyping abilities offered by Rails. One more thing, it auto handles schema updates too, just refresh your browser.

Cheers,
Tyler

P.S. My disdain for Ruby is not shared by other RIFE developers, they have and should have their own opinions.

A sample of RIFE (overly advanced thumb gallery)

Tyler Pitchford — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 19:58:57 +0100

This is my testing site for my rife experiments. http://www.imleaving.com . Right now the page is a seemingly simple thumbnail page for my fiancé. If you visit the site (WARNING: it goes up and down as I make changes, forget to turn it on, etc).

What you don't see is the site uses OSCache to handle the image caching, because the thumbnails are generated on the fly the backend determines if the browser is WAP, XHTML, or XHTML+MP, loads the proper size/image type (support GIF, JPG, or PNG) and then generates/caches the thumbnails correctly for each phone. Each Bi-directional template (WAP, XHTML, XHTML+MP) specifies to the backing Element how many images it wants per row. This allows all the templates to use the same Element for generation. The result is 3 different views and one controller (nifty). RIFE really is amazing at separating the model, view, and controller into distinct pieces. It takes some getting used to build templates without ANY logic in them, but when you master it, you really realize how useful it is to separate the logic and templates (AKA. 3 templates and one Controller... so nice).

Right now I have the WAP stuff turned off, but all the auto generation/scaling code is in play. You can also see a small demo of integration of RIFE with AJAX like libraries (Lightbox in this example). How rife handles it's templates makes integration with AJAX libraries a breeze.
I'll re-enable the WAP stuff later, so be sure to check from your phones.

Tonight I'll add in the paging code (quite easy w/ RIFE). When I enable the paging, the templates will specify how many elements per page, so for example the WAP can request 1 per page, XHTML+MP 3 per page, XHTML, 20 per page, and they'll ALL be controlled by the same logic in ONE controller. I absolutely love it. The designer does his work, and I simply build one Element, beautiful.

Cheers,
Tyler

Dynamic Image Generation / OSCache

Tyler Pitchford — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 10:18:40 +0100

Managed to get OSCache and Dynamic Image Generation going with RIFE. Found a slight issue with GIF (damn you patents), but worked it out. Now I can generate, scale, cache, and serve out Images (Jpeg, Gif, Png, whatever else I want to integrate) on the fly with RIFE.

I'll try to write up an article tomorrow, after I finish my reading for class, on how to setup this system. Bevin helped me with some of the finer details. The beauty of the way RIFE handles dynamic content generation is you can feed ANYTHING directly to a client without temp files, or swapping to disk at all, everything can be fed through memory. As a matter of fact, Bevin showed me a shot of a video streaming live to a client without the need to hold much of anything in memory (gotta get some more info on that one).

Ok, I'll try to do a better job explaining this tomorrow. However, let me say the system is amazingly versitile and the ability to generate, cache, and serve out dynamic content (note: without temp files, without database backends, automatic expiration based on usage, etc.) opens the door to amazing possibilities. How many of us have worked at companies that needed dynamic document generation.

I remember one company where they pulled the values out of a COBOL database, fed it to a PDF construction system, it got stored to a temp directory on the server, then it was served out to the requester. The system worked, but whenever there was an issue a temp file was left on disk, when someone else wanted the document (same values) another one was generated, stored, etc.

Anyway, hopefully more on this tomorrow.

Cheers,
Tyler

Bombs in Bangladesh

Tyler Pitchford — Fri, 27 Jan 2006 16:33:50 +0100

Bombs in Bangladesh, who cares? Me. Why? Because while as I've noted I'm in law school, and a software architect for a company in China, but I haven't mentioned my fiancé is a Peace Corps volunteer serving in Bangladesh. There's going to be some background information and then I'll get on with my griping.

So back to the point, Bombs in Bangladesh, who cares? People with fiancés in the Peace Corps who live in Bangladesh, that's who. Apparently, last week an article came out about how the JMB (a militant group on Bangladesh) attempted to bomb the Peace Corps training facility and kill the 60 new volunteers when they arrived approx. 6 months ago (read: my fiancé). They wanted to ward off NGOs from assisting the governments, so they tried to gather some extra suicide bombers to hit the Peace Corps training office in Gazipur.

What has the Peace Corps done about this? Nothing, not a damn thing. What about world media? Nothing, not a damn thing. Why? Because just about no one cares about Bombs in Bangladesh, except those of us with loved ones there.

The Peace Corps has offered its volunteers what is known as "Interrupted Service", basically they're allowed to leave Bangladesh and try to find another country to work in with the Peace Corps. Sound nice, right? Well, it would be except that the 6 months of time + 3 months of training my fiancé has put in doesn't transfer to the new project. That means that she would have to spend another 27 months to get her benefits and a proper discharge from the Peace Corps.

It really ticks me off that they would take my fiancé, who just wanted to help people, send her to a country where they KNEW their was trouble, knew an election was coming up next year, figured that they'd have to close the program down and evacuate the volunteers, at some point, and offer her no other option than "start over and get nothing." She's promised them two years of her life and the best they gave her back is placing her in harms way. It is disgusting that the Peace Corps would treat their volunteers this way.

I understand that training from one country to another isn't transferable, but 1) they NEVER should have sent her to a country they didn't have full confidence for her safety and where she couldn’t finish her two year commitment or at least; 2) the time she's spent should count towards her two year commitment.

In conclusion boo the Peace Corps, boo the JMB, yay Bangladesh, and yay software development, and yay RIFE ( http://www.rifers.org )

Note: I've been to Bangladesh and the people are lovely, kind, caring, and completely against this kind of violence. The news media seems to forget to say that out of the 150 million people in Bangladesh there are probably 5,000 militant Islamists and the "average" people of Bangladesh detest them. Honestly, if you have a chance to visit Bangladesh I'd definitely suggest it. Leave Dhaka and spend some time in one of the countryside towns, it's beautiful and the people are very kind. Honestly, I've traveled all over the world and Bangladesh was one of my favorite places.