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1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

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Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#21

Post by nerdfiles »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #19
nerdfiles wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm just going to state this, as statefully as I can, without trying to be sensationalist. Everyone I come across these days insist on calling me "schizophrenic" or "paranoid" or what have you: But "Marshall Law", as I understand it, is _more or less_ in effect, and a lot of people are talking about Obama's UAVs and whatever it is they do. (I know it was repealed. But you get what I mean. We're all consuming roughly…

I don't know if you can call it a civil war when only one side has a military. There are no defined "sides" even. Not everyone in government or politics is a bad guy -- look at Sen. Wyden or Rep. Lofgren, for example. It's almost like the internal struggle we all face in our own lives. Doing the right thing is hard, doing the wrong thing is convenient. So the people we have running our government are human, they pick…

Something needs to be done, I agree, but I do not understand what you mean when you say "we the people". (I'm not sure how one reads the Internet Declaration of Independence and walks away thinking that phrase is meaningful in any politically relevant sense.)

And honestly. I'm sure a majority of us here are prepared to print a gun and build a quadcopter at the drop of a pizza slice.

[Ugh. Of course that doesn't mean "let's go out and get crazy!" I just want to make it clear that something is emerging socially in this country, and it is due to the fact that weaponry is so widely available. (And even further, by the Bureau for Justice Assistance, my Terminal is technically considered a weapon.) Many of us defend the idea of printing a gun, and this in itself is problematic for something like a "Congress" that cannot even begin to understand, in any practical sense, what 3D printing amounts to economically and socially.]

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#23

Post by polarix »

untog wrote: post #15
[deleted] wrote: post #12

[deleted]

I want to take this opportunity to talk about myself. And to those who might say that I'm using Aaron's death to further my self promotion, show me a post where he says I'm not awesome. ..you need to look up the definition of "burden of proof", possibly in conjunction with "social norms".

Erm, this sounded more to me like: people who are frustrated he was persecuted, come here to figure out how to take action on his beliefs which we share. Bad wording to be sure but the spirit was healthy.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#24

Post by adamnemecek »

Cushman wrote: post #14
adamnemecek wrote: post #3

How ironic that this did not happen when it could have made a difference.

Presumably the protest is intended to help ensure that his death does make a difference.

By difference I of course mean Aaron not having killed himself.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#27

Post by noonespecial »

nerdfiles wrote: post #9

I don't understand. I've downloaded articles from JSTOR, Project Muse, books on top of books, and am publicly re-hosting them through my own Dropbox, which I publicly link to on my own Website. Maybe I'm missing something here. Was he made an example? Is this the fundamental nature of the protest and the outrage, that we perceive that he was made an example of, that we are aware, and that it is unfair, in some essent…

I've been trying to get a handle on my own feelings of outrage all day. Lots of people are given what amounts to life in prison for a few ounces of weed thanks to ridiculous "three strikes" laws, and while I'm outraged, its orders of magnitude less than what I feel in this case.

It could just be that Aaron was a "kindred spirit" but what I think at last is that it comes down to the fact that someone who was so valuable to us was taken from us by the actions of someone who offered us so very little with their own life, for nothing more than a small amount of personal gain for themseleves.

Its the same feeling I get when I learn an NFL star or a merit scholar was killed in a mugging over a few hundred bucks by some worthless thug.

And so I'm outraged.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#28

Post by nerdfiles »

polarix wrote: post #23
untog wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want to take this opportunity to talk about myself. And to those who might say that I'm using Aaron's death to further my self promotion, show me a post where he says I'm not awesome. ..you need to look up the definition of "burden of proof", possibly in conjunction with "social norms".

Erm, this sounded more to me like: people who are frustrated he was persecuted, come here to figure out how to take action on his beliefs which we share. Bad wording to be sure but the spirit was healthy.

"...beliefs which we share."

When I look at the most ubiquitous photo of Mr. Schwartz ( this one: http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Aaron_... ), and I see that smile...

I sincerely do feel that "sharing beliefs" is an understatement.

I know that smile. That is my smile. I make it often. And perhaps many others do too. It's when I know I have no other business being exactly where I am except for the fact that I'm right.

I did not know him personally, yet I benefited personally from his mind, such that many of my projects were successful because I started mouthing off ideas that depended on RSS.

What if you collaborated with Newton? Spinoza? Even that fat bastard Leibniz? Huygens? Popper? Russell? Whitehead? What if you slogged through those theorems, or those symbols, or those programs? Did you simply "share beliefs"? What about those times, for brevity, you had to assume, at least in some partial, pseudometaphysical way, assume the identity of that author, and speak as if you were them, for clarity, gusto and confidence?

I cannot fully fathom these feelings, but even that "they took our kin from us" is an understatement.

We are building something here. An Architect of the Web was given no light to see, given no capacity to imagine his work come to fruition. There's more than belief sharing going on. "Sharing is caring" but that doesn't quite get at the right picture.

Re: 1/13 noon at MIT: Protest wrongful prosecution of Aaron Swartz

#30

Post by phyalow »

nerdfiles wrote: post #28
polarix wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Erm, this sounded more to me like: people who are frustrated he was persecuted, come here to figure out how to take action on his beliefs which we share. Bad wording to be sure but the spirit was healthy.

"...beliefs which we share." When I look at the most ubiquitous photo of Mr. Schwartz ( this one: http://memex.naughtons.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Aaron_... ), and I see that smile... I sincerely do feel that "sharing beliefs" is an understatement. I know that smile. That is my smile. I make it often. And perhaps many others do too. It's when I know I have no other business being exactly where I am except for th…

tldr;
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