Slashdot Mirror
Aaron Swartz Commits Suicide
maijc writes
"Computer activist Aaron Swartz committed suicide yesterday in New York City. He was 26 years old. Swartz was 'indicted in July 2011 by a federal grand jury for allegedly mass downloading documents from the JSTOR online journal archive with the intent to distribute them.' He is best known for co-authoring the widely-used RSS 1.0 specification when he was 14, and as one of the early co-owners of Reddit."
Incorrect: Reddit Cofounder RIP. Front page. 1294 votes and climbing. Submitted 4 hours ago. 84 comments vs the 24 here.
As a ... well, I'm never sure if I should use the term "suicide survivor" or "failed suicider" ... anyway, as one of those, allow me to respond to your polite request for having some shame with an equally polite "no".
Just because you don't like sick jokes about certain subjects, doesn't mean the rest of us don't.
To some of us, humour is a stress reliever and coping mechanism - telling us that we shouldn't use it, trying to shame and ostracise us for using it, is in fact likely to make us more inclined to follow in Aaron Swartz' footsteps.
There are few things as life affirming as laughter, and some of us have a really hard time finding those laughs in everyday situations.
Laughter is one of the very few parts of the universal human vocabulary, it is delightfully infectious and as far as I know the only emotion that is basically a one way street. I.e. once you start giggling and laughing, it is almost impossible to stop, whereas someone really sad or depressed will almost always start to laugh when faced with others laughing.
I do agree with you though, that the jokers in here should take a long hard look at themselves, but for very different reasons. I think anyone who can make light of a sad situation makes life more bearable, and for people like me, that is a life saver.
Kill a person: 10 years in prison.
No, it's more like:
First-degree murder: Manadatory death sentence or life-imprisonment
Second-degree murder: Manadatory minimum 10-years to life inprisonment.
Rather than read the indictment, or press releases from his side, I prefer actual journalism. Here's a well-written and informative article:
http://www.zdnet.com/hacker-activist-aaron-swartz-commits-suicide-7000009725/
This was written by someone who knew Mr. Swartz. http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html
The indictment is the legal document that says what he was charged with, no more, no less. I don't understand why you would have an issue with a review of the actual charges against him, since many here (and elsewhere) are trying to portray this as a Turing-like harassment by the government (which it is not).
He (allegedly) installed his own computer into an MIT wiring closet, took repeated steps to overcome MIT's efforts to stop him, hid from security cameras, and violated the terms of use for accessing the computer system. Since you prefer journalisim, take a look at this Wired article - it details the charges against him.
Ken
He very clearly struggled with depression for a long time. After he got fired from Wired, he made a blog post about someone committing suicide. He changed the person's name to "Alex" later, but it said Aaron when he wrote it. His friends took this to be a suicide note and called the cops to intervene. Afterwards, he denied that it was a suicide note, but admitted he wasn't in a good state of mind at the time.
He also posted an online 'will' of sorts back in 2002 when he was only 16. For a 16 year old kid to be making such concrete plans in case of his death speaks to his own expectations about his life.