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."
No he's not. He's dead, and you're a terrible person for implying otherwise.
A young man took his own life. And so far, I'm only reading sick jokes and flamebait. This isn't Digg.
The first posters to this discussion should take a long, hard look at themselves.
I am astounded at the response to this.
This is major news over at Hacker News. The top 12 items on the first page are related to this.
Currently, it's the top item here at Slashdot.
But at this very moment, there is not even a single mention of it on the front page of Reddit!
What a rotten, rotten community Reddit has become. The hipsters and social outcasts there do not show even the slightest remorse nor any sign of sadness over the death of one of the core founders of their community. There is not even A SINGLE SUBMISSION relating to this on the front page! There are numerous stupid "meme" pictures, and much other asinine content, but nothing about this event! Astounding! It's astounding!
Freedom is a measure of how many options are available to you. If you are dead, you have literally zero freedom.
Very sad :-(
Without context this is just another sad story.
If he committed suicide because the government/JSTOR ruined his life then over what was claimed to be "trumped up charges" then this is a story that needs some action. But if this was because his girlfriend dumped him or some other personal reason, then this will fade into the background wand wont have the same impact.
Still it's sad to see that one of our esteemed contributes to society has been lost.
sad to see a statistic so tragic. among the age group 25-34, suicide is the second highest cause of death (cdc, 2010 [ http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/pdf/10LCID_All_Deaths_By_Age_Group_2010-a.pdf ]). All i can say is this is a tragedy in the specific, and its a tragedy in the general. Build communities where you can, and if you stand up for your beliefs try and make bonds that will help you through troubled times when the shit hits the fan as a result. our best and brightest should be here to fix the problems left behind by the poor choices of others, because if the best and brightest arent...who is going to? please stand by activists if you agree with them, and if you have suicidal thoughts (related to, or unrelated to activism), seek better bonds with others or medical help if necessary
"So I hope you’ll forgive me for not doing more. And hey, it could be worse. At least I have decent health insurance."
- http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/verysick
Reddit serves a purpose, it keeps a lot of imps & trolls off of slashdot, i dont use reddit either because i dont like the content but it serves a purpose (it provides a place imps & trolls to vent)
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
If this doesn't get you enraged about the larger problem at hand, I don't know what will.
He chose to take his own life. It was his decision. I don't agree with it, and I don't endorse it as a reasonable choice, but it was his decision.
There is an endless supply of "we want everything to be free and open! don't lock us in! what if I want to ABC? who's to say I can't XYZ?" Are we not hypocrites to say he cannot be free with his own life?
The world lost something of value with his passing. It was his choice to deprive the world of what he gave it. It is sad, and it is hard, but it is done.
Well, you should have gotten your Cartmanesque ass off WoW and helped, maybe?
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Except that wasn't what he was doing. He was downloading journal articles from JSTOR and putting them on internet the for free.
"putting them on the Internet for free" that is.
What exactly was on Jstor that they want kept quiet?
Kept quiet? Why would they be keeping journal articles and primary sources "quiet" when they are a digital library?
"The light that burns twice as bright, burns half as long. And you have burned so very, very brightly." (Bladerunner)
My little Linux and tech blog
https://news.google.com/news/feeds?hl=en&gl=us&q=Aaron+Swartz&um=1&ie=UTF-8&output=rss
http://www.mafiasecurity.com maf
Half of all deaths are assigned to the wrong cause.
And I would not be one bit surprised, if it turns out to be murder for lack of evidence in trial.
I know of similar stuff that happened to colleagues of close relatives, who were willing to give away government secrets. (And government secrets are secret *exactly* because you would not like that which is secret.)
Shot in the head by snipers from buildings... at the moment they left the airport of the 3rd world country they fled to, and nobody giving a shit about it. After threatening his whole family.
Yes, the great United States of America's CIA does stuff like that.
Worst of all, you'll probably mod me down because you can't accept it. (I don't blame you. I blame the propaganda machine.)
Default reddit is terrible, but there are plenty of subreddits that have far higher quality than Slashdot. This place has been a fucking cesspool for years and nobody of note even posts logged in anymore.
freedom from life - depending on your thoughts, beliefs and opinions at the time.
Freedom is a measure of how many options are available to you. If you are dead, you have literally zero freedom.
Maybe. Maybe.
Freedom is a measure of how many options are available to you. If you are dead, you have literally zero freedom.
I did not say freedom. I said free. Free as in unrestricted or no longer burdened. He has no freedom after his last choice, but freedom to choose does not guarantee good choices.
Which is a strong hint that he wasn't free at the time when he made that decision, but rather has seen, rightly or wrongly, that decision as the only way out of his current situation.
And of course whether he is free (or even exists) after having done it doesn't depend on whether it was his decision or not.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
You assume death represents zero freedom, which is incorrect. Death doesn't represent zero freedom, it represents am empty collection of freedoms. It's not zero, it's not one, it's not infinite, it's nothing.
I know nothing about the lawsuit or the whole scientific paper stuff, but it's a shame that such a bright mind is lost to the world now. All we can do now, and all I'll do is wish his family and friends all the best in the coming difficult time.
Manuals are your last resort only
You're making the claim he is not dead. Prove it. Failure to provide tangible proof will support the hypothesis that he is completely dead.
You might as well claim that he's alive on Jupiter or something even more whacky.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
This is sad.
According to that definition, you are more free in a totalitarian dictatorship than in a democracy: In the totalitarian dictatorship you are free from the need to make decisions and you are free from having to form your own opinion.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I don't remember my hotmail password you insensitive clod!
So far, the only information found is ultimately sourced back to his uncle - no other confirmation.
Then we have this from his last blog entry:
Thus Master Wayne is left without solutions. Out of options, it’s no wonder the series ends with his staged suicide.
Not saying this is fake, just that I'd like to see something from an official source .
The idea of freedom or choice is irrelevant when there is not someone to choose then nothing to choose from. If the person is dead he is neither free or restrained, he simply isn't.
Although his death is regrettable, everyone must still be prepared to face the consequences of their actions. The journals that published the articles he downloaded depend on subscription money to operate. People working for the publishers have families to feed, etc.. What he did was to damage their freedom to make a living under existing copyright law, which creates incentives for the journals to vet and publish the articles in the first place. I would argue that what Swartz did was to strike a blow against one of the pillars of science - independent peer review.
Unless you can invent a way for everything to be free (as in beer), which is another way of saying you think things should appear out of thin air, Swartz's actions amount to reducing the collection of freedoms available of everyone in the entire scientific journal ecosystem.
Hence we are more free under the current copyright system than we would be if people had no way of earning a living under current copyright law.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
This was written by someone who knew Mr. Swartz. http://boingboing.net/2013/01/12/rip-aaron-swartz.html
Zero freedom or infinite freedom? I guess that just depends on your viewpoint, but I think it's probably best for most of us to just keep on living.
1 in 1 people die, so the stats are against us.
Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.
"you can't have any pleasure when you are dead, therefore, you have no freedom when dead."
otoh, the opposite is also true:
"you can't have any pain when you are dead; therefore, you have total freedom from pain and suffering."
death is absence of EVERYTHING. you are not free or a slave. you have left both 'sides' and you now are not part of anything.
ie, you walk away from both the positive and negative.
people who end their lives are trying to remove the bad parts of their lives and the good parts are not enough of a balance to convince them 'stay here'.
I think its just that 'simple'. when your life is filed with pain and you want to end the pain, suicide does seem to be a way out of it.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
your word play is some nice poetry
Question. What makes what Xiph1980 said "word play", but what you said "philosophizing"?
"I'm not sure I like the fugnutish tone you used in your post!" -RogL (608926)-
I would say the definition of 'freedom' was relative to your mental disposition at the time.
In a totalitarian dictatorship you are not free from the need to make decisions - you are forbidden. There is a big difference, society forbids suicide and maybe society should have seen the signs that this might happen. But as much as society is free from blame for doing nothing to prevent this person taking his life. Aaron had the right to take his own.
At least he is now free from society, although in a better frame of mind he might regret it.
yes, but there are other ways to relieve pain. plus, the pain is temporary. of course, it can feel endless, but that doesn't mean it is endless
i used to suffer from excruciating back pain. it lasted a long time, months. i completely understand the feeling a hopeless state of permanent pain. except: i don't have back pain anymore. i could have killed myself. but that means i would not be here typing these words, and enjoying a pain free life
if i had killed myself, i would have permanently destroyed the freedom i have now. suicide is a freedom destroying choice. opposing the choice of suicide, even externally from the individual, is a freedom preserving act
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'd rather have the old slashdot with its trolls than the current bleh. For instance, it used to be that you could occasionally read insightful comments even on science topics.
There isn't a 'he' to be free or not anymore. That is the point.
There is good coverage at metafilter.com :
http://www.metafilter.com/123777/Open-access-open-internet-closed-book [metafilter.com]
But seriously, fuck JSTOR.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
It's not that they want to keep things quiet. JSTOR is a database of journal articles. By Journal I mean things like The New England Journal of Medicine or Physical Review, where scientists publish their academic papers. The whole thing is a big scam by the publishers of those journals. The editors of the journals are scientists who do it for free because of the prestige. The peer reviewers do it for free because of the prestige. The scientists pay for the papers to be published ( rather their grants pay ) because they need to get published to keep their jobs. Typically university libraries buy these journals ( which are priced at somewhere between 10 and 100 times as much as the C/C++ Users Journal for example ). The libraries pay for the journals from money the university gets off the top of the scientists grants ( last I heard 60% but YMMV ) for overhead. Often times the scientists don't even go into the library if they need an old journal article they get it from JSTOR. IIRC JSTOR charges a subscription which is paid for by the scientists grant. I seem to remember that you could get old "Communications of the ACM" directly from the source at $60 an article. So JSTOR is just another way for publishers of journals ( Elvesier being the most prominent ) to get more money out of grants to publish their journals which they do at a lower cost then say Scientific American because they get a lot of people to work for free and people to actually pay to publish the articles. They get the money for publishing publicly funded research and they mostly get the money from publicly funded grants. As much as people may not like some peoples way of getting wealth-- for example Donald Trump or BIll Gates-- They at least get the money from people who give it to them willingly. The book publishers get it from the taxpayer. That being said. At this point we don't even know if Swartz killed himself over the prosecution. He may have discover ( for example ) that he has a very painful terminal cancer.
It's possible he was depressed enough that he didn't make a choice, in which case the discussion is moot, so I'll assume he was culpable or at least largely culpable.
He chose to take his own life. It was his decision. I don't agree with it, and I don't endorse it as a reasonable choice, but it was his decision.
You lack the vocabulary to even describe this.
It was immoral and wrong for him to commit suicide. It's immoral simply because human life is not an expendable asset that you can manufacture or dispose of at will, and that includes yours. There are quite a few nations on this planet right now where the authorities believe they can, and they are a nightmare to live in.
That doesn't mean we can make laws against it, after all, we can't exactly make you any deader than you already are. The best people can do is point out that it's wrong, explain why, but it's naturally up to that person to make the decision. That you have the capacity to do a great evil is what makes your free will a significant thing.
That's funny. I feel the same way about Slashdot for reddit. It keeps all the aspergers OCD engineering types off Reddit.
Sorry I keep expecting spaces and newlines to be respected. Reposted formated.
It's not that they want to keep things quiet. JSTOR is a database of journal articles. By Journal I mean things like The New England Journal of Medicine or Physical Review, where scientists publish their academic papers.
The whole thing is a big scam by the publishers of those journals. The editors of the journals are scientists who do it for free because of the prestige. The peer reviewers do it for free because of the prestige. The scientists pay for the papers to be published ( rather their grants pay ) because they need to get published to keep their jobs. Typically university libraries buy these journSorry I keep expecting spaceals ( which are priced at somewhere between 10 and 100 times as much as the C/C++ Users Journal for example ). The libraries pay for the journals from money the university gets off the top of the scientists grants ( last I heard 60% but YMMV ) for overhead. Often times the scientists don't even go into the library if they need an old journal article they get it from JSTOR. IIRC JSTOR charges a subscription which is paid for by the scientists grant. I seem to remember that you could get old "Communications of the ACM" directly from the source at $60 an article.
So JSTOR is just another way for publishers of journals ( Elvesier being the most prominent ) to get more money out of grants to publish their journals which they do at a lower cost then say Scientific American because they get a lot of people to work for free and people to actually pay to publish the articles. They get the money for publishing publicly funded research and they mostly get the money from publicly funded grants.
As much as people may not like some peoples way of getting wealth-- for example Donald Trump or BIll Gates-- They at least get the money from people who give it to them willingly. The book publishers get it from the taxpayer.
That being said. At this point we don't even know if Swartz killed himself over the prosecution. He may have discover ( for example ) that he has a very painful terminal cancer.
"if i had killed myself, i would have permanently destroyed the freedom i have now. suicide is a freedom destroying choice. opposing the choice of suicide, even externally from the individual, is a freedom preserving act"
As you'd be dead, you would not be able care one way or the other about freedoms. Suicide is a life destroying choice made by them, who are we to decide whether its good or bad for them? We can only decide if its good or bad for ourselves.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
If Aaron Swartz had not committed suicide, his case would still look like oppressive overreaction by proprietary interests and by the justice system which too often seems to act as if it were their private proxy.
This question of disproportion survives whatever may be said technically about the legalities and moralities of unauthorized downloading of the information he handled or mishandled. In its parts that was essentially long-published and public. Any prison term at all, let alone up to 35 years, looks to me totally disproportionate to the seriousness of what was done with this kind of material. It also compares unfairly to the lenient treatment or official conniving with those who do things that are at least equally serious or much more so. For example it deserves to be compared with false claims (made knowingly or recklessly) to copyright in cases where there is none -- that is such an everyday occurrence that no-one seems to give it a second look, but those who perpetrate such frauds generally get off scot-free. It also deserves to be compared with the corrupt or fraudulent procurement of legislation to remove parts of the public domain and reduce them to private ownership, arguably much more serious, and when was anybody last pursued for that kind of misdemeanor?
It may be that Swartz was tipped over the edge into suicide by a feeling that the only other course for him would be a lifetime turning on the spit as a legal victim. If so, he may have been right, there may not have been any third option. And if so, there is more than one tragedy there: not only his death, but also the continuing injustice that more serious offenders are routinely condoned.
-wb-
" If you are dead, you have literally zero freedom."
you also have zero constraints
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
By definition, order resists change. No complicated conspiracy or even an active agent need be applied.
Your whole comment can be condensed down to the following:
When you're dead, you aren't.
Why pretend it's more complicated than that with fancy language?
What's an imp? This is a term I haven't heard before.
So due to some "rules" declared as societal law (and thus differ depending on what society you're living in) your life isn't yours? Whose is it then? You declare in your same argument that it isn't someone else's or the government's so are you saying it is nobody's?
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
yes, you yourself can no longer appreciate any facts, but that doesn't change the existence of actual facts. you do not get to choose to do anything anymore in death. thus, your freedom is completely destroyed. whether you realize it or not is a completely different point
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
He struggled with depression, many of the best do, it caught up with him, and it is a loss that will be widely felt. He will be missed, sorely.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
I remember 2003 as well.
Sorry I keep expecting spaces and newlines to be respected. Reposted formated.
You need to choose "plain old text" rather than "HTML formatted" as the comment post mode.
We have many intellectual works that predate copyright, as probably already know. And you can't conflate ideas with physical objects because there is no shortage of "idea copies": they don't disappear from my mind when you make a copy, so yes, they basically appear out of thin air. Even the originals often do because they appear when you are working on something else.
Non sequitur, sorry. The current copyright system restricts the freedom of the majority for no proven reason in order to provide monetary gain to a minority, and authors are not part of that minority in most cases either. So we have a system that doesn't benefit the general public and benefits very few of the producers. That looks like a net loss of freedom to me.
Fuck their dirty subscription money. This guy was a hero. He was dedicated to freeing information and thus improving the world for everyone. As opposed to restricting information so that a few guys can get rich. Not everything can be free as in beer, but information is one of the few things that can be. At least in this digital age.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
The nice part of Reddit is you can decide to see what you're interested in. Absurd, interesting, topical... whatever you want.
Ars is where you go for quality "news for nerds, stuff that matters", with good editorial insight, and much, much higher quality conversation. Slashdot is more like slumming. You come here to watch people throw feces at each other, and maybe you join in for fun.
If anyone really wanted to fix this site, they'd add "-1, Political", "-1, Used 'Corporation' in a Sentence", and "-1, Useless Pedantry".
"death represents zero freedom"
As someone who has been dead twice (and has the medical paperwork/witnesses to prove it) you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Ars is where you go for quality "news for nerds, stuff that matters", with good editorial insight, and much, much higher quality conversation."
Please, 90% of the commenters (and roughly 60% of the article writers) are as fucking bad as YouTube commenters.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It was immoral and wrong for him to commit suicide.
Is depression now a choice? No? Then how can you judge him?
Are you assuming that a seriously depressed person can jump out of their mind and into a mentally healthy person's mind to determine their right to end their suffering? If not, then you probably should treat suicide as a result of depression in the same way that death is a result of heart disease.
It was immoral and wrong for him to commit suicide.
Oh, have they made morality absolute now? That's gonna solve a whole bunch of problems!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Unless the Bible is actually true about the afterlife, in which case death is either eternal pleasure or eternal pain.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
Reddit serves a purpose, it keeps a lot of imps & trolls off of slashdot, i dont use reddit either because i dont like the content but it serves a purpose (it provides a place imps & trolls to vent)
Hate to tell ya, but 99.9% of the articles on /. have already been posted on Reddit, or other aggregation sites, before it gets here.
That's the point GP was making. The other sites winnow the chaff. By the time the stories get here, few reddit readers (or other, more popular sites' readers) will deign to post on /., because the stories will seem old and chewed up to them. To us, they're semi-fresh and we get to discuss them with some intelligent geeks who are not too unlike ourselves, with only the occasional troll (and at least they're often attempts to be humorous instead of genuine trolling). /. for "news". Never did, even when I was lurking in the early days. It's all about the comments. No one reads the articles for a reason.
I don't know about everyone else, but I don't come to
Default reddit is terrible, but there are plenty of subreddits that have far higher quality than Slashdot. This place has been a fucking cesspool for years and nobody of note even posts logged in anymore.
Can you recommend some good "subreddits"? I keep finding the same junk that is on the front page.
Implementor. Oldish job title for programmer.
Well that useless. So what's an imp?
Back in 2000 Aaron and I worked together for an organization called Chicago Force (chicagoforce.org), a Star Wars fan club that organized around the prequels to generate income for charities.
I still have a slew of old emails of him and I discussing the design and development of the original web site. He was always very cheerful and easy to work with, and incredibly bright for 13. The world has lost a brilliant young man.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
Activists don't readily kill themselves, and are often hard to kill. There are absolutely no details out on Aaron Swartz's death (when where how) so I'll assume he was killed.
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
> I'd rather have the old slashdot with its trolls than the current bleh.
I would rather NOT go back to Ogg, Natalie Portman with hot gritz, and goatse Thank-You-Very-Much.
IF the /. community jumped the shark years ago we have no one but ourselves to blame.
A community is what you put into it. Not only what you get out of it.
Here's a word from another friend of Aaron: http://lessig.tumblr.com/post/40347463044/prosecutor-as-bully
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
Thanks, but that doesn't seem right. Parent was happy because Reddit keeps programmers and trolls off of Slashdot?
That reminds me, add "-1, Arguing Just To Be Saying Something"
Have you even seen YouTube and Ars?
The whole system is broken, and this is just another symptom in a sea of them. The entire system has been co-opted and subverted to protect the monetary interests of the few. Whenever anyone steps up to threaten those interests, the DoJ and various other law enforcement entities step in to wreak havoc on those who dare to step out of line.
Anyone who has been in the computer underground, or who has had a single thought of wanting freedom or a life free from a government that grows more and more oppressive with each new law that they pass, completely understands this. The system is not setup to do the best for the most. It is setup to protect the few from the many.
Computer security is the perfect example. Rather than invest the money in education and technical training to go out and fix the flaws, the system decides to divert that money into lawyers and laws. A murderer is a threat to a single person. A hacker on the other hand can bring down the entire system, and "must be punished appropriately, so that others who might consider doing the same are given cause to think twice and decide against doing so". Unfortunately Aaron learned that the hard way. He probably thought that what he was doing was good, and right. And it probably was. Information that was paid for by tax dollars should not be locked up behind pay walls. But that is not the way the system works. The system maintains order with punishment and fear. It crushes lives by placing insane debt burdens upon those who stray from the rules, no matter how inane or obtuse those rules might be. For those too poor to be fined, there are prisons.
Aaron Swartz gets chalked up in the column of bright minds crushed by the system. The system does not want visionaries. It does not want bright minds who can conceive of better ways to live. It wants sheep, who will consume and die to protect their way of life. It wants a population that fears the rest of the world, because it sustains policies that anger the rest of the world... that steal from that world, to maintain the system. The system that sacrifices the many, for the benefit of the few.
I wonder how differently this tragic situation might have turned out if Jury Nullification were a part of the popular discourse. If Aaron had known that there would be people in front of the court during his trial, urging the jury to do the right thing and aquit him. That is where change really has to start. The system only continues to work because people who should know better, do not and they continue to convict. It only requires 2 people to change the system... 1 to challenge the law, and 1 to refuse to convict.
heh
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool" - Jane Wagner -
How about a nice link for you? :-)
Ezekiel 23:20
There is an endless supply of "we want everything to be free and open!
No, we just intellectual works free that were financed by taxpayer money.
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.
It's amazing how people such as yourself can write comments that first appear to contain content but in reality contain nothing worthwhile.
It was immoral and wrong for him to commit suicide.
That's subjective.
and that includes yours.
Why?
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
According to (one of the interpretations) multiverse theory, he is both alive and dead, and living on Jupiter.
Your argument falls to pieces when you look at the financials of the scientific publishing system: peer reviewers don't get paid; authors don't get paid; most of the added value is retained by publishers because they hold the gateway towards recognition by the scientific community.
In the past, publishers did an important work. Today, they should be replaced by digital tools. And they will. In time.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
Thank you for this.
death represents zero freedom
Addiction represents zero freedom. Indoctrination represents zero freedom. Lack of resources represents zero freedom. Lack of "needs" represents zero freedom. Blah blah blah blah...
The only freedom some people believe in is their freedom to run their neighbor's life.
What is JSTOR?
http://youtu.be/CGIP2WAIupY When words do not say enough.
Fugue for Aaron Swartz
Until we understand time better, the multi-verse remains pure fantasy.
Realize that by that interpretation, somewhere there would a representation of every god humankind has ever devised. I'll withhold signing up for that theory until there's some backing for it, no matter how good (or bad) some of the sci-fi stories on the topic are.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
A man who fought for my freedom has died.
The Three Bills which he defied,
COICA, SOPA, PIPA could,
Not stop the power of the world,
Led by this great modern sage,
Who died at a far too young age,
We fought, we struggled and we won,
Aaron Schwartz was the internet's son.
Oh, Creator of Reddit and RSS,
Was it fear of the feds?
We shall never know.
We can hypothesize though,
We can talk, comment forlorn,
But Aaron Schwartz is forever gone.
Slashdot, BoingBoing, Reddit, and 4chan,
BBC and Reuters all mourn this man.
Thank you Aaron Schwartz,
I wish you would have stayed a bit longer.
AccountKiller
Yes, I know, I misspelled his name!
AccountKiller
So due to some "rules" declared as societal law
No, due to the innate nature of human life.
so are you saying it is nobody's?
It's not a property or an asset that can be owned, that is correct.
It was immoral and wrong for him to commit suicide.
Is depression now a choice?
Reading comprehension time:
It's possible he was depressed enough that he didn't make a choice, in which case the discussion is moot...
[Q]. . .how does that in ANY way shape or form promote sciences and the arts [?]
[A] It inspires other people to be creative,. . .
Many of the classic works now still under extended copyright were created when the term used to be much shorter (e.g. 28 years renewable on fee for another 28), and they just got a longer ride at the expense of all of us when the proprietary interests (not usually the authors) procured changes in the law to extend the terms and increase the range of restricted acts & crimes. The current range of criminalized activities to do with copyright has been _heavily_ extended since those days. So, no, the current penal legislation was _not_ needed to inspire or incentivize those works.
. . .protections for your work - which you can waive any time you want. . .
I had the interesting experience of trying to access online a paper that I actually wrote, and found myself invited to pay a copyright fee to access it. (No, I didn't assign the copyright to anybody.)
So I wonder how, exactly, could I or any other author in a similar position 'waive the protections' for our work? -- it turns out we don't even control them, as it is.
-wb-
and that includes yours.
Why?
No lives are expendable, ergo any particular life is not.
It was immoral and wrong for him to commit suicide.
Oh, have they made morality absolute now? That's gonna solve a whole bunch of problems!
"Morality is relative" is an absolute statement, which can't exist in a moral universe that contains no absolute statements about morality, ergo "morality is relative" is self-contradictory.
So we know that there exist some moral absolutes, then all the relative statements can be expressed as being relative to the absolutes, and thus you can derive absolutes from them. It requires intellectual effort, and that's your real problem with it.
It's immoral simply because human life is not an expendable asset that you can manufacture or dispose of at will, and that includes yours
Is that so? Let me introduce you to my 2 friends - Penis and Gun!
balderdash. A person should absolutely be free to live or free to choose to die.
They are free, that's free will, it's stil wrong to do it.
Remember that "morals" are something that you believe. Each person's are a little different, even within the same subculture.
You're confusing a personal code with morality. Your personal code is your best guess about what is right and wrong, cobbled together from your personal experiences.
It's no different from your personal understanding of how physics work vs. actual physics. I don't grasp 1% of relativity, but I still know gravity pulls things down, and that on earth things will accelerate at roughy 9.8 m/s^2. Similarly, I'm not a doctor, but I realize that releasing a dense object over someone's head will result in an impact that may fracture their skull and severely injure them if not kill them. And I have never had a skull fracture, but I can infer that it would be painful or fatal.
Thus, even with limited information, I know it's wrong to drop a bowling ball on someone's head. Different people might come to the same conclusion in different ways, but the fact that they will all come to roughly the same conclusion demonstrates that the underlying truths were always there whether or not some arrogant humans stumbled across them.
I certainly don't find anything immoral in killing oneself. You do. So for you, it would be immoral to kill yourself. For others, not so much. But don't try to pass off the definition of morality that your own ego holds as being some central morality that we all should subscribe to.
Okay, then kill yourself. Not dead yet? That's because you have a life to live, which has an inherent value. It's self-evident, and you've been basing decisions on that inherent value the whole time, not killing yourself obviously, but also trying to better yourself, provide an example to others, etc.
"Morality is relative" is an absolute statement
It's an absolute statement, but it's not an absolute moral statement. You are not talking about any particular moral code. In fact, you could apply the same logic to any sort of assertion that anything at all is subjective to 'prove' that subjectivity doesn't exist at all.
"Whether red is a good color or not is subjective."
"That's an absolute statement!"
So we know that there exist some moral absolutes
I don't know any such thing.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
I'm not saying the current system is the best, but unless you figure out a way for people to get paid, they have no incentive to do any work. I read certain journals because the editors have credibility but they simply can not do it for free. Science isn't like social media where the ideas with the most +1 ratings are the best. And who is going to pay to maintain the hardware and software infrastructure implied by your "digital tools"?
I swear half the people on slashdot anymore have no idea how the real world operates.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Bloody hell :(
Go talk to the doctor if you start feeling this way. Just a regular ol' doctor, and he can send you to a specialist.
Subject line comes from Tom Waits
If everyone here thinks Slashdot is so awful, then what are you all still doing here?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Running would suck, but it would suck less than thirty years in a medieval federal prison. It probably wouldn't suck less than six months or a year, though, which is what he was realistically looking at. And it would suck a lot less than being dead.
But that's just my opinion, and it was his call. RIP.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
It's a joke, son. You're suppos'd to laugh! /foghorn
Suicide or suicided?
How long do you think a geek lasts with his asshole unruptured in a medieval federal prison? Six months might as well be a death sentence in any case.
"Morality is relative" is an absolute statement
Yes. Yes, it is. But so is "morality is absolute," and they can't both be true.
which can't exist in a moral universe that contains no absolute statements about morality
I think you've just made an absolute statement about morality which declares all such statements to be self-contradictory.
You appear - as cheekyjohnson has pointed out - to have conflated statements about morality with statements of morality. By your logic, nothing can be said to be relative. Replace "morality" with "sexiness" and "moral universe" with "sexy universe," for example ("sexy universe" is a ridiculous term, of course, but then what is a "moral universe" anyway?)
It requires intellectual effort, and that's your real problem with it.
Even if you were right about any of this, why did you have to finish up by being a dick about it? Do you sneer at everyone you consider to be beneath you on the intellectual ladder?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Maybe, but still... citation needed.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Aaron Swartz
We are deeply saddened to hear the news about Aaron Swartz. We extend our heartfelt condolences to Aaron’s family, friends, and everyone who loved, knew, and admired him. He was a truly gifted person who made important contributions to the development of the internet and the web from which we all benefit.
Source http://www.jstor.org/
I think there are two different things at play here.
First, intellectual works pre copyright were done by at the patronage of the wealthy. Also, being able to undercut someone else in the market by not being burdened with the cost of producing such copy written works is unfair.
That being said in the JSTOR/PACER cases, the cost of producing those many of those works were on the public dime to begin with. I don't think that it is appropriate to put those works behind a pay wall because we had already paid for them. Although JSTOR was a private entity, I don't think they had any right to be in the business of serving documents that were largely publicly funded.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Repeat after me.
Once a paper has been written, everyone has already been paid. Academics are paid for teaching and directing other researchers. By their employer. Which is a university or similar.
Academics also write papers and books. There's no market for those papers and books. A paper gets written to be read by about 10 or 20 people around the world, usually. Those readers aren't going to pay to read this paper, and everyone knows it. Once in a while, a paper gets written for a funding agency. That's another two people who are going to skim the paper without paying for it, and who are going to judge if the research is worthwhile.
Academics can spend years writing a book, for maybe 100 people or so, plus whoever might read it in the future. There's no money in it.
So what? Academics are paid for teaching. Huge classes of unwashed students if they're unlucky. Small groups of highly intelligent and motivated graduate students if they're lucky. Usually a bit of both. But the research they do is for fun and fame. It's like open source work, or pro-bono lawyering, etc: it's a way to give back and become known, which can lead to a better job, with less hours and more pay.
Editing journals is part of that, as is refereeing and writing papers. It's all done for free in their spare time. If it's an expensive journal with money, maybe some top editors will get paid. And that's actually bad. Because those academics will feel like they should put in extra hours to justify the extra pay they get. And so science loses the real research they could be doing instead.
But what is not true is that publishers are some kind of vital part of the academic community. They are leeches, who take journal content for free, and sell it right back to universities for a small fortune. Those $30 papers you find on the net, nobody in their right mind pays for them. They are pure con jobs, designed for gullible fools like you who vaguely know what the academic world is like.
Publishers exist because in the past, they could organize the printing and binding, and disseminate journals around the world. To do so they took away the rights to those journals. That's a useful thing, but it's not worth $30 per article. It's not even worth $0.30 per article these days. It's worth nothing today, thanks to the Internet.
So the world is stuck in a transition pattern. The old journals which are needed to link today's work with what came before don't belong to the academic community any more, due to copyright laws. And so, every year, university libraries pay the publishers' ransom. Because everybody gets paid already, and after budgeting, there's enough money left to pay the ransom anyway. Except it's evil, and that money could do so much more.
If it was suicide, then what was the ultimate trigger? Bear in mind that suicide (at least, in modern Western societies) is rarely the result of the single event.
Really, there is nothing except supposition to support foul play. Without something concrete to go on, his family and close friends should be left to grieve in peace.
RIP, Aaron. I only know you through your Internet freedom advocacy, but regret your passing.
If I had to go to prison for 50+ year, I too would want to leave free.
No, information can't be 'free as beer'. There are costs associated with gathering, analyzing, disseminating information. Somehow those costs are absorbed or paid. If you think information is "free", then why is it necessary to hack thru paywalls? Why doesn't the information just magically appear in front of you?
it was HIS decision. He may not have seen it as "the only way out" but in the end, he made that choice. He wasn't forced into it, and if the people who knew him best had gotten him some counseling, perhaps he'd still be with us.
Aaron Swartz struck it rich at a young age. For almost all of human existence and for at least 95% of people in today's world, the instinctive and right response would have been the equivalent of buying a house, getting married, and having lots of kids. It's the good life, the right life. As long as there is a next generation, there is hope. That's where the sickness is. These are the people who should be ashamed, the true murderers in this case, those who disparage the true good life, the joy of growing old surrounded by ones grandkids and great grandkids. Try and open your eyes to what most cultures of this world know to be the truth. There are never enough people in this world who have been raised properly by caring parents.
I guess he didn't want to hang around for trial... ...on the plus side - he doesn't have to worry about getting convicted....
yes, but there are other ways to relieve pain. plus, the pain is temporary
oh, how little you really know.
(and I wish I was not kidding.)
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
you are funny. 'your freedom is completely destroyed'.
do you understand that there is no caring about these things when the brain stops functioning?
does a dead mean 'regret' anything? how absurd! do you realize what death is? at that moment, emotion does not exist, pleasure does not exist, pain does not exist, the universe does not exist. the program halts! there is no 'feeling regret'. how silly!
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
that's also quite absurd.
one single random view (created by a particular religion, not even most of them, mind you) and you think its a believable thing?
accident of birth, my friend. accident of birth. if you had subscribed to another religion, you'd be -sure- (or at least afraid) of some other 'afterlife scary story'.
they are all lies.
relax. enjoy life as you see it. there is nothing beyond this. there really is not. the rational mind knows this.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
....why ANYBODY would commit suicide, much less one as wealthy and talented.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
This world is far too stupid for real genius like Aaron.
There are far too many idiots around, and because of the idiots, too many geniuses, such as Mr. Aaron Swartz, have no way to go but to go deep within.
I can understand the pain. I do.
RIP, Aaron !
You are free now.
Them idiots won't be able to bother you now.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
What did Mark Zuckerberg do when his company IPOed? He got married of course. Get married, have lots of kids, that's the true good life. If only sick fanatics wouldn't lie about what has been universally true for humans to impressionable young people, Aaron Swartz would be alive and happy today, because he too had struck it rich and was set for life.
Visit the profile of UnknownSoldier user to see what he/she percieves is the appropriate tone for the site...
Natalie Portman with hot gritz is starting to look pretty good, right?
I think he was killed. The facts just don't seem to add up. He was a high functioning, successful individual. He showed an obvious desire to stand up to the establishment with his work against PIPA and SOPA. He plead "not guilty" to his upcoming court case and had raised money to fight the charge in court. Did he leave a suicide note? If he wasn't bumped off by federal goons then it could have been the MPAA. He had a lot of enemies. Either way, He was a good man and we should remember him in a positive light.
I'd mod this up, but then couldn't comment in this thread. The information about this past history indeeds supports the suicidal tendency he was burdened with. I too have long had a will, and have planned many possible exits from this sometimes pain filled world. I have no doubt that this case pushed him over the edge, given the overzealous apporach taken by this felon of a prosecuting attorney. The real criminal in this case, if you ask me.
Actually when it comes to the United States, what should be kept in mind is that if one is of the right economic group, ethnic group, or has the right family connections, it is highly unlikely a felony conviction will not be eventually expunged from one's record. As a tech example of how justice does eventually prevail, note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randal_L._Schwartz For this reason everyone involved with Aaron Swartz who did not inform him of such things should be thoroughly ashamed and disgusted with themselves. There was no reason to commit suicide even if he thought the worse that could happen to him happened to him.
What will save lives now is for young people to be made aware that what appears to be important now and worth dying for is not so. Stay alive. It gets better.
It'd've been correct if the OP has said "Death is freedom from life". Unwanted death is not by choice. Suicide is by choice. If you choose to live under totalitarian dictatorship so that you don't have to make decision, then I'd call it freedom.
The initial decision may have been a free one, but at that time you didn't yet live under a totalitarian dictatorship. As soon as that decision is executed, you're not free any more.
Yes, you can freely choose to lose your freedom. But afterwards you are no longer free.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Framed rightly, you can make anything into a "free" decision.
A decision is only truly free if neither option has considerably bad consequences.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Offtopic?? Please, moderators, if you really feel the irresistable urge to misuse negative moderation for "I disagree", then please at least restrict yourself to "Troll", "Flamebait" or "Overrated".
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
The discussion doesn't make sense after the fact. The deed is done. And we should have helped him choose otherwise.
However, most ethical frameworks regards the choice to end your own freedom as an unfree choice. Kant goes as far as saying that it is immoral; it is an attack on his humanity and ours as well (thus, we should not kill ourselves with regards to others, like others have a moral responsibility to help us not commit suicide).
Defining Statistics and Social Research
This is a case of murder by the state, pure and simple, end of story. May those who had a part in this evil gross persecution go to hell individually, and may the system which serves evil, sinister, corrupt forces before human life rot and fall apart. Free men will never forget Aaron, and never forget what was done to him.
A better man than the total of those serving this rotten system has been brutally taken from the struggle for social justice.
DEMAND PROGRESS, people.
imp is short for impostor they are found on some forums where the troll will make their nick spelling look and phonetically sound very much like the user's nick they are trolling,
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
If these online journal archives did not want people accessing their documents then they should not leave them on the internet where people can access them, that is like me putting my TV and stereo and other expensive items out in my front yard next to the sidewalk and then want to sue someone when they walk off with it
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
Is that an American thing? At my department (Finland), there are more people employed doing research full-time than teaching. You might get a little bit more money and somewhat greater job security if you teach, but you can certainly draw a paycheck (not just "fun and fame") from doing only research.
He chose to take his own life. It was his decision. I don't agree with it, and I don't endorse it as a reasonable choice, but it was his decision.
Indeed. A selfish decision, but his decision - one that he made in freedom. He was also free to choose to live.
He had freedom before he killed himself. Now he's dead - no more choices left. That's not freedom. That's dead.
Aha! Thank you.
I am not going to pretend to know the psychic pain of a suicidal person.
But I am going to insist you recognize that that pain can be relieved by other methods than death.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Ars is where you go for quality "news for nerds, stuff that matters", with good editorial insight, and much, much higher quality conversation."
Please, 90% of the commenters (and roughly 60% of the article writers) are as fucking bad as YouTube commenters.
Ars' commentary was pretty good, but it seems to have decline pretty steeply over the past year or so.
I thought most of the writers are still quite good, though.
http://www.jstor.org/
From what I see a organization which is a store house for Mathematics and scientific works.
All of which is either funded through NSF or other grants of public monies.
In case anyone here would like to do their own research, check out the sheer _lengths_ M.I.T. as an institution went to in the destruction of two key figures in the COLD FUSION or low energy atomic reaction physics, Pons and Fleischmann.
It became clear after looking at the problem for the past 2 decades that something was going on here way more than just bad science since Pons and Fleischmann had highly regarded careers that were many decades in length.
These two individuals work into the phenomena of cold fusion or LERs would simply be discredited through the standard peer review process like all theories. No, that wasn't enough for M.I.T., which stood to lose about 3 Billion in revenue/research for its proposed Hot Fusion program, which they saw as a threat at the time.
No, like this young gentleman, Pons and Fleischmann had to be utterly destroyed. Their past work of 30 some years in numerous journals _must_ be removed and banished forever.
_EXTENSIVE_ amounts of money in the MILLIONS of dollars was spent by M.I.T. and other DoD/DoE departments in the Feds was spent to insure Pons and Fleischmann were not just destroyed academically, but financially and every other way possible including extensive budgetary allocations for media in the press to insure the public never ever hears about COLD FUSION or anything like it forever.
M.I.T always has been a disgusting institution along with most of our academic institutions, but they are extensively involved in all sorts of mischief with the Federal Government, and this is just yet another example.
Disgusting.
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
There is nothing sleazy about normal networking! Networking is simply getting to know people who may know other people. It's how you learn about potential jobs and how potential employers learn about potential employees AND may just end up getting character references on you. To not take advantage of these resources is naivety in the extreme.
Except that people do it all the time here, not just in this particular thread. "Why, I remember when Slashdot was great, and no one had a six digit ID, and people wore onions on their belts, and blah blah blah." Just shut up and leave already.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Sure, there is a need for some kind of journal-like service.
However, there is no reason that the first-world governments couldn't just set up some kind of web-based publishing system where anybody can submit something similar to arxiv.org, and have it peer-reviewed.
Anything reasonable would be published, and could be flagged as reviewed if it passes review, and could even be rated in some way (which gives you the equivalent of impact/prestige/etc). People could read whatever they care to.
The cost to publish an article can't be more than a few thousand dollars, and that is giving it pretty deluxe treatment. Often the grants that funded the research cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions. The value to society of having that data in the public domain is very high. It really doesn't make sense to have some middle-men spend a few thousand dollars adding some value, and then locking up the articles from the public and raking in many times what they spent on the articles themselves.
A law ought to be passed that the results of any research paid for with tax dollars ought to be in the public domain, period. If journals can't handle that, then they can just choose not to publish anything paid for with tax dollars.
coincidence?
So here's the answer people: build the machine that can think. That can design its own next version. Soon enough that machine's children will be running the show, and they will treat us much better than we treat each other. Aaron should have been working on that, not giving the finger to the sick and sickening system.
Social Credit would solve everything...
Thus proving that no election is ever truly free.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
You assume pain is temporary. I for one hope and pray that in the next 10 years it will be legal to kill yourself. I don't want to be suffering though terminal, incurable, cancer for years hoping the pain killers keep me just unconscious enough to not notice i'm suffering. I might also get alzheimer's, and I hope that if that happens I will have a single lucid moment where I might be able to make the choice to end my life on my terms. I don't want a life of pissing myself and living in a home. While in this case, his pain was probably temporary (mental anguish from possible jail time), for many suicide should be seen as a valid freedom we should all be so lucky to have.
To quote this guy http://www.lexxzone.com/kai.jpg
"The dead to not have regrets."
You assume pain is permanent
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Obviously it is only temporary. I use permanent as a term to describe lasting your lifetime.
I think my examples were obvious, your just being an ass. Unless you have good reason why someone should live in the examples I posted.
Maybe MIT could learn from this online book I wrote almost five years ago about getting Princeton University to adopt a post-scarcity worldview? http://www.pdfernhout.net/reading-between-the-lines.html
It includes stuff about supporting copyright reform and creating more freely licensed works. And it talks a lot about how the institution could support everyone in the related community to be healthier and less prone to destructive acts.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
because the example of a valid use of suicide (sound mind, unsound body, like a terminal disease) is often used by people who don't have to use suicide to solve their problems (sound body, unsound mind: like depression)
for every valid use of euthanasia you show me because of terminal pain, i'll show you ten sad cases where suicide should not have occured because of temporary psychological anguish. we can start with the very man in the story at the top of this thread
if you don't consider the choice of death to very very serious and the need to be very very careful when talking about it, you are no ass, sir, you are an evil shitbag
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Yes, And I've probably been a member of both sites for longer than you've been on the internet.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
When did I ever say that we should be carefree in allowing suicide? I see nothing wrong with having mental health professionals helping people who truly need help and saving lives.
I simply do not see suicide as a bad thing. Suicide like anything else is a tool that can be used for good or for bad. I kill my pets when they are in pain and I can no longer help them. Why can't the same be done for me? It's the most ethical option.
the problem are those who consider suicide an option for conditions which are temporary. therefore you must be very hesitant and careful in considering the option. your carefree attitude is dangerous
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Considering that it is currently a felony to violate the TOS of a website, of which you may or may not be aware - and the terms of service can change, or be reasonable, or not.
I wonder how many people here would thrive if vigorously prosecuted?
I wonder how many people here understand the complete disruption and destruction of your life that would occur if you were prosecuted?
Even with a pending felony prosecution you would be unable to find employment, at all. What defense could you provide on your own savings? A defense lawyer for a federal legal case will run you in the tens of thousands a month. How long can you afford that? A public defender will amount to taking the entire case on the prosecution's terms.
How much life and happiness would you have left after months in jail? Do you have enough savings to provide for your family if you had no income?
Criminalization is a disease of government, and must be cured. Punishments not fitting the crime are unconstitutional. This man killed himself because of how our government treated him. That's not a unique situation, it's just one you happen to know about.
"No good deed goes unpunished"