161–170 of 211 posts
Quinn Norton proving one again that you should never talk to the authorities. Especially not without a lawyer.
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/03/life-i...
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>Well now, the Boston bombers only killed three people -- bad, but you know, not that bad. That is cruel to the hundreds injured. Try harder to not be a jackass.
I think you might have missed the sarcasm in that sentence, and maybe in the rest of my post. Try harder to understand the things you read before commenting on them.
Suicide is completely a personal choice. MIT had no reason to try and defend an outsider who hijacked part of their network, and trying to make them seem like they caused him to hang himself smacks of tunnel vision. It's a natural response to a suicide; we try and search for something to blame. But unless you argue that MIT should have known Aaron was mentally unstable, saying MIT "caused" him to kill himself is illo…
> Suicide is completely a personal choice. There's no such thing as a "completely personal choice". In fact the whole notion of a "completely personal choice" is ludicrous, bordering on the metaphysical. There is an outside world, a reality, and things that happen there influce our actions, including any decision to commit suicide.
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I think you might have missed the sarcasm in that sentence, and maybe in the rest of my post. Try harder to understand the things you read before commenting on them.
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Several comments have talked about 35 year or longer potential sentences. Those big numbers come from simply taking the maximum possible sentence that can ever be given out for each charge, and adding them all up. There are two things that make that unrealistic in most cases. First, the defendant is almost always charged with several similar or related crimes that have mostly the same elements. If convicted on more t…
Because you are wrong. It doesn't matter whether the chance to get such a high sentence was a realistic one, it is about the fact that there was a time when Aaron was facing such a long time in prison, that he couldn't know for sure it would not happen. From the article: Aaron was charged with wire fraud, computer fraud, and “unlawfully obtaining information from” and “recklessly damaging” a “protected computer.” The…
For a given charge, the law specifies a range of possible sentences. The particular sentence is determined largely algorithmically, with one of the inputs being the defendant's prior convictions. Another input in how much damage was done.
With no prior convictions in this area, even if the court found that Swartz had caused the maximum alleged damage he would not have been able to get anything remotely near the maximum. If the judge had for some reason ignored the rules from the Federal Sentencing Guidelines and imposed a longer sentence, it would have been easily overturned on appeal.
Second, there is a kind of redundancy in the charges. Congress sometimes passes several laws that all cover essentially the same kind of wrongful act. A defendant can be charged under all of them, but is only sentenced under one of them even if convicted for all.
The 35 year number comes from a press release. The press release authors just take the highest number in the range for each charge, and add them all up. They do not take into account the grouping of similar charges for sentencing, nor do they take into account any factors (such as lack of prior criminal record) that lower the maximum for the particular defendant whose indictment they are writing about.
Read Orin Kerr's analysis. It is thorough, and fully documented.
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You clearly misread what he posted, and are now threatening violence? That is beyond pathetic. Grow up, and get over yourself.
Edit: Read his comments, he often is uninformed. I am very sympathetic to Aaron but joking about those injured at the marathon is stupid.
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>his idealistic mission We don't know what he intended to do with the JSTOR data. >being on the MIT subnet without permission was wrong MIT grants guest access to its network while on the physical premises. >MIT’s open-network policies at the time allowed anyone visiting campus to access services like JSTOR.
> MIT grants guest access to its network while on the physical premises. > >MIT’s open-network policies at the time allowed anyone visiting campus to access services like JSTOR. Please not this misinformation again. I have no horse in this race, but he was repeatedly kicked off the network, told not to mass-download again, and yet he chose to find ever-more invasive ways of accessing JSTOR, eventually planting a comp…
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Has NSA sabotaged American computer systems? Most IP 'pirates' seem quite willing to claim that copying data is not at all destructive, and the NSA can make similar claims. But either way, "we" also didn't put anything in our "contract" that let them make nuclear weapons, air forces, computer inter-networks, or social security/welfare programs.
Do you not consider this[0] evidence of them sabotaging cryptography systems? [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6944118
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But now the mistake you're making is that if everyone is responsible then no one is responsible, which is an even worse state of affairs.
He didn't say everyone was responsible. But even if we were it would not follow that no one is since responsibility is not something that depends on others not having any.
Didn't say it directly, but follow the logic.
If the prosecutors are now responsible for only proferring charges on suspects who won't kill themselves then it obviously follows that we need to ensure that no one appoints prosecutors who would do this (it's life and death after all!).
So now the person appointing the prosecutor potentially has blood on their hands. Likewise for the person appointing the person appointing the prosecutor. And God only forbid the population as a whole votes for someone in this chain, could you live with yourself if you had voted for the person who appointed Ortiz or Heymann?
That is insanity and I refuse to go down that path.
Instead point your finger at the person (or even persons) responsible, but don't act like simply being a big mean jerk is by itself tantamount to putting a noose around a man's neck. If that were really the case the vast majority of humanity would at some point be liable for manslaughter or attempted manslaughter.
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Because depressed, suicidal people kill themselves, usually when they're not facing prison? In 2007 Schwartz posted what was believed to be a suicide note after being fired from reddit: http://digitaljournal.com/article/341150
Right.. but people tend to become depressed and suicidal when faced with prison time. Being fired is also high on the depression list. You're pointing out two dark moments in someones life. I've had far more than two and I don't by any means consider myself depressed.
That's actually the point... it is depression that kills, not merely subjecting someone to a "dark moment" in their life. We wouldn't have blamed Alexis and the rest of Team Reddit if Aaron had killed himself after being fired, we would have blamed his depression.