todayiamme

Given, that the dominant comments over here are in some shape or form pointing out deficiencies of some sort in Seth, I would like to point out something. You're forgetting how hard it is to start something new. I'm sure that some of us might have avoided some of the items on the list, some might have even managed to avoid all of them. However, I'm also pretty sure that all of us would have made a lot of other gigantic mistakes along the way.

I'm in the process of starting a non-profit in the field of medicine and I've been taking a lot of pain to do my homework. I've spent my evenings quizzing people, reading books, talking to the friends I'm working with, and just trying to get something out of the door, but I wasn't even remotely aware that things could go wrong in half the permutations Seth mentions. In fact, in his list alone, I spotted at least 3 things that I would have inevitably messed up if it hadn't been for an hour of inspired reading based upon his post. It's hard to make something new, sometimes it feels that you're trying to push through the improbable, shift the odds to your favour, and achieve what seems to be so impossible. In that world, in that arena, it's easy to mess up. It's easy to make mistakes and it's very hard to fix them.

At the end of the day, the truth is that everyone messes up. Everyone has that one time where they should have done X, but did Y / nothing and that then resulted in bad thing Z, which could have dragged / or did drag them under. This is why - in my mind - the right question to ask over here is, what does it take to handle a crisis with Seth's grace? After all, not dying is the difference between crossing the finish line and pausing along the way.

So you're saying that top-down management or even peer-to-peer management will exist within the grey goo scenario? I'm somewhat skeptical about top-down management, as there would be enough nano-bots within a 1cm deep layer in a city the size of NYC to far outstrip the attempts of a complex entity to control them coherently. As far as peer-to-peer communication goes, then bacteria are already doing this; http://www.hhmi.org/research/cell-cell-communication-bacteri... and they still haven't covered us in grey goo.

Fundamentally, we already have self-replicating robots with nano-level structures that consume materials from their surroundings and build new copies. They're called bacteria. The interesting bit over here is not the observation, but the question why we aren't all covered in bacterial goo miles thick like run-away nano-technology. (we do have them all around us and in us for what its worth)

I think a part of the answer is that if you have free form replication that isn't perfect, then sooner or later something is going to emerge from that goo that realises that it's just more efficient to eat the goo. Combine that self correcting cycle with hard limits imposed by nature (presumably they need to have a power source to make it work - the goo would start to die the minute it gets to a millimetre because of inaccessible sunlight. Then there is toxicity, what happens to the waste? Heat dissipation. Structural issues and other things...) and you have the recipe for a shorter sci-fi series than Firefly. (Dear Mark, today we succeeded in making self replicating nano-robots. They were exponentially multiplying within the petri dish and then they stayed in the petri dish, because apparently nano-robots are tastier than glass and metal. Doesn't matter though, we cracked open the crate of champagne anyway.)

Which is also an argument against von Neumann probes, btw. Perfect replication isn't possible, so sooner or later you are going to see a ton of weird errors accumulate to unpredictable behaviour... (perhaps a shark that goes around "eating" other probes?)

In my mind one of the key questions to ask in this debate is, if the eventual rise of a more closely controlled internet destroys this frontier, what's next?

Right now thanks to a close confluence of remarkable factors, the barriers associated with starting something are almost negligible. The steady march of Moore's law combined with visualisation has given us servers that cost fractions of a penny to lease per hour. No one has had to beg or pay middlemen to use that server and reach customers around the world. At the other end, customers can finally view these bits, often streamed wirelessly, on magical slabs of glass and metal in their hand or what would have passed for a super-computer in a bygone age... All of this combined with a myriad of other factors has allowed anyone to start a billion dollar company. If this very fragile ecosystem is damaged and it dies out, where should someone ambitious go next to strike out on their own?

The reason why you're being so heavily down voted is that your comment adds nothing of value to our understanding of the issue at hand.

It is empirically of no value whether or not this person is "sticking their chest out" over "bettering a few teenagers at a shitty job." What's valuable is understanding that relegating something this crucial to such a position can harm the long term prospects of a company and this article brings that issue to light.

That said, all accomplishments are relative as is the emotional pride someone feels over them. Sebastian Thrun can be bested at even his best by von Neumann at his worst, does that mean Thrun shouldn't take pride in his work? Nope. Life is complicated. Feel happy about what you can and let the rest be.

I am usually quite resistant to games - even 2048 bounced off of me with little affect - but something about the idea of creating solar systems and playing around with nature's laws is deeply appealing and I just spent 15 minutes figuring out how to construct a system which can get as many points as possible without imploding. (hint: large multipliers. Here's an initial attempt that I intend to refine once I'm done with work; http://www.stefanom.org/spc/?view=2823906 )

As dctoedt pointed out it appears that I might be wrong in this case, I had assumed that the fallout was producing significant neutron radiation which interacted with its surroundings to produce greater amounts of radiation. Adding a moderator in that circumstance should have reduced the burden a bit in theory.

As a potential solution, has anyone considered sprinkling the area with graphite, massive amounts of graphite flakes? It's quite difficult to burn nuclear grade graphite, and it might actually act as a moderator for the fallout and help to control what's happening randomly.

Maybe the solution is to dump a moderator over the area and seed it with organisms and see if something takes hold? Either way, this doesn't seem to be an intractable problem if one is a bit lax in terms of long term uncertainty. (this would throw off the projections of how this is going to play out 500 years from now)

>>> Many of the comments on this thread are just lazy armchair theories, including this one.<<<

That's an ad hominem that adds very little in terms of substance to your argument as you do not know anything about me or my background.

>>>You talk about a "historical precedent" that goes back to when India firmly identified itself as a socialist country. And from that distant, warped past, you fast forward 36 years to the present and to a country that in 1991 began its journey of economic liberation (which included jettisoning its socialist principles for all practical purposes), and expect us to believe that the two incidents are somehow related?<<<

Entity X has demonstrated a history of Y actions. Ignoring that day while analysing the probability of X doing something in the future is foolish.

Further, while the dialogue might have change. The individuals that hold power in India haven't changed over time. It's highly family oriented and it's reasonable to assume that they will act in a similar manner to preserve their interests.

>>>But what better examples to refute your ludicrous theory than Coca-Cola and IBM themselves, both of which came back to post-liberalization India. To the extent that India likely has IBM's largest global workforce [0], and Coca-Cola pours billions of dollars to maintain its leadership over Pepsi [1]<<<

It's a large market. They dropped the statutes is it unreasonable to presume that they won't capitalise on that? I don't see the point on attributing any emotional qualities to this. There is no profit in petty vendettas.

>>>Surely those companies would know a thing or two about "historical precedents", don't you think?<<<

I'm sure they do. Doesn't detract anything from my point or the analysis I've posted elsewhere. I fail to see the argument you're making over here.

>>>As for the most likely reason behind this $5 billion figure (sorry conspiracy theorists, it isn't extortion either as Indian politicians know Google's power isn't something to be messed with in the age of social/Internet savvy voters) is the old-fashioned plant. I'm guessing Microsoft (the primary shadow-backer behind all anti-Google cases in India) laid out the worst-case scenario off-the-record to a PTI journalist, along with the $5 billion figure. And the journalist was either too lazy to question/research it, or too taken in (journalists like throwing up "exclusives" like this with billions of dollars in the headlines) to reduce it to the decidedly unsexy $~33M.<<<

I've never mentioned anything about that. I merely pointed out that such fines and the Indian government being onerous towards entrepreneurial interests is something well established.

>>>It's just a theory mind you, but having been a business journalist in India for nearly 6 years (and having done stories severely critical of Google, lest you think I'm a shill for them), I think it's much more likely than some of the other fantastic theories in this thread.<<<

Okay. You still haven't refuted the core argument of what I had stated which is simply that there is a power base that would like to do such equity grabs and so on and it's not a convenient place to do business. Is that wrong?

>>>a. A law was passed in India called the "Foreign Exchange Regulation Act" in 1973 with the aim of regulating payments and foreign exchange. It contained language that was extremely restrictive for any foreign investments, by all foreign entities including Indian citizens living abroad.<<<

I'm pretty sure that you have misunderstood the law. Here's a report prepared by a group at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1987;

"""During 1977, IBM was asked to withdraw from India due to its unwillingness to comply with the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) of 1973. Earlier, IBM commenced operations in India in 1952, with long term objectives of growth and increasing market share in the world com- puter and information systems market through an improved competitive stance. During a period of 25 years, IBM made total profits of approxi- mately U.S. $5 million on a total investment of $8 million. Total remittable profits, at the time of phasing out its operations in 1970, were approximately $10 million. These profits included a net asset value of approximately $5 million.

This poor performance was largely attributed to several factors, including compensation of approximately $7.5 million paid to employees and assets sold at less than book value. Other factors included a high rate of effective taxation of 80% to 85% as well as low rates of depreciation on equipment. IBM-India operations constituted only 0.06% of IBM Corporation's total business. IBM's activities in India during this period and the events leading to the IBM-India withdrawal are summarized in Appendix A.

During this period, the Government of India (GOI) alleged that a large number of foreign-owned and foreign-controlled corporations operating in India were making excessively high gross revenues and before-tax profits. Further, the repatriation of large amounts of capital by the multinational corporations constituted a serious drain on India's scarce foreign exchange reserves. The GOI contended that the multinational corporations were using monopolistic power to stifle competition in the Indian market. In addition, the multinational corporations, according to the GOI, gained favorable rates for large financial credits, thereby competing with domestic firms for scarce capital. Finally, the GOI per- ceived that the multinational corporations were transferring obsolete technology or current technology of minor importance for developmental purposes.

Surveying the industrial scene, the GOI found that most foreign direct investment had occurred in the consumer goods sector. These ventures yielded high rates of profit and required simple technology which could be furnished by domestic entrepreneurs.

Based on these findings, the GOI formulated its own priorities with regard to the country's development. With an abundance of natural re- sources and a large supply of low-cost skilled labor, India provided the multinational corporations with a large, untapped market and opportunity to enhance their international competitiveness.

Taking stock of its developmental priorities and increased bargaining strength, the GOI formulated its desire to influence the course of foreign direct investment in India. The primary objective was to ensure that foreign direct investment in India would fall in line with the nation's developmental priorities. The means adopted to achieve this objective was the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) legislated on January 1, 1974.

Foreign Exchange Regualtion Act— The FERA affected all foreign companies with foreign equity exceeding 40 percent. According to FERA, four levels of foreign equity participation were permitted.

First, all trading companies engaged in purely commercial activities as well as manufacturing enterprises utilizing "non-sophisticated" technology, were required to reduce their foreign equity to 40 percent.

Second, "high technology" companies, utilizing "sophisticated" technology and/or engaging in "special" activities, as designated by the GOI, were permitted to retain a foreign equity holding of 74 percent.

A third intermediate level of 51 percent foreign equity was established for multi-activity companies engaged in both sophisticated technology fields and other commercial and trading activities.

The fourth level of 100 percent foreign equity was permitted only in those instances where foreign firms were engaged in purely export activities."""

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/28913/...

That sounds like an equity grab to me.

>>> b. This was not initially a concern, but became a huge problem during a 21 month period between 1975-77 when a state of emergency was declared in India [[following the assassination of the then Prime Minister]] edit: incorrect attribution, emergency was declared, but the prime minister was assassinated a few years later.

c. The law was fixed/made more flexible in 1993, and foreign investments immediately started returning. <<<

The assassination in of itself was a result of an intense power struggle in the Indian state. It's not so hard to look at it and see that these people needed additional revenue and decided to pressure successful companies to get a cut of their business. You can call that market protection if you want or attach any other label, but the fact is that they saw (from their perspective) a potential source of revenue and they flexed their muscle to get a slice of the pie. It backfired and they had to drop the changes they made to get people back on the table.

>>> d. The act was repealed in its entirety in 1998. <<<

The protections were enshrined elsewhere. The only thing really changed was that now the Indian market was large enough and that the power players were willing to make nudge-nudge-wink-wink exceptions for much smaller fee.

>>> e. The issue mentioned in the article revolves around a complaint being made to CCI and as "a complaint filed with CCI cannot be withdrawn" there is no choice but to investigate.

f. The $5B amount is baseless and pure conjecture with no source/comment from either the Competition Commission of India, Lawmakers or Google. <<<

I've said nothing about the amount or the complaint, just that such shenanigans aren't out of the ordinary from the Indian power players.

>>>Strangely there are very few to no parallels over here. It definitely does not warrant a statement as broad as India is just not a good place for anyone (other than its citizens perhaps) to do business.<<<

So a country where you have to get a permit for doing every small thing and there's a bribe associated with each permit is a good place to do business?

The interesting thing is that there is a large historical precedent for such activity by the Indian government. In 1977, they tried to do the same thing with IBM and Coca-Cola.[1] Both of the companies pulled out of the Indian market in a move that had widespread impact upon the nascent Indian economy. It is alleged that the desire for an equity grab by the existing power complex in India was the prime motivating factor for the acts that were sprung upon those companies. These acts were designed to force them to "partner" with an Indian company. At that time the market just wasn't big enough to warrant such sacrifice - even today Ikea refuses to enter the market because of this - and they pulled out.

Although there are several parallels over here, one of the key take-aways for me from this news is that India is just not a good place for anyone (other than its citizens perhaps) to do business. The system is inherently broken and flawed to the degree that any smart startup should look elsewhere if they're considering expanding to this market.

----

[1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,919167,...

I got the idea from python and I use repeating double quotes ( " ) or chevrons ( > ) to demarcate the quoted text without spoiling the quotes within the text. It just feels cleaner in a way.

I think that the following comment I wrote on an analogous story a while ago helps to frame this in a better context:

""" I have been obsessed with the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs since childhood and I've read the first hand accounts of astronauts, flight directors, engineers, administrators, and journalists covering the programs. What has consistently struck me is that although the programs were marketed - if you may - along the lines of their exciting thrust into the unknown, the programs were executed based upon a cold rational calculus that extended sabre rattling and the grounds of engagement beyond the surface of our planet.

Yes, for me it might be one of the greatest achievements of humanity, but for the people paying for the show all of that work was for one thing and one thing only; to claim the high ground swiftly and decisively before the enemy. For anyone with the ability to put a capsule into orbit and to retrieve it, also possessed the ability to spy on the other party, safely launch and drop a nuclear warhead into the other party's major cities, and one-up the enemy in a show of technical prowess and strength - something that would persuade those on the fence to pick the right side if it were. That's what these programs were sadly all about and that's why they were ended once the high ground was decisively seized.

The reason why there isn't an Apollo-esque or Manhattan-esque thrust towards landing on Mars is because there is no substantial tactical, economic, or political advantage to be gained from the act. Sure in the long term there will be amazing pay-offs if we open up the solar system and expand outwards, but right now in the minds of the people who are actually cutting the cheques that pay-off is too distant, too abstract, too foolhardy, and too unsettling to justify any kind of support.

Now some people choose to rue the cause behind our current Earth-bound civilization, but I think this is actually a good thing. It ensures that when we do manage to find a way to reach out to the stars we will do it for the right reasons and our exploration will continue from one frontier to another because of that fact. """

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6653483

I do understand that it is now the status quo to disavow everything the NSA is, but foreign intelligence gathering is their mission and releasing these details simply doesn't help the cause of fixing the NSA's less savoury incursions.

While arguably any foreign intelligence agency of note isn't going to be caught off guard by these leaks, leaking these details does offer political ammunition to the very people who stand to gain from the expansion of the NSA's mission into civilian data gathering. It helps to make the case that the leaks aren't such a good thing after all and are compromising the intelligence gathering apparatus of the US of A. Add a bit of spin and you can quickly use this to get back to business as usual and people will actually support them as now it'll become a matter of identity instead of what it should be - a surgical exploration of a cancer afflicting a nation state.

What's interesting to me is that the robber barons owned a disproportionate percentage of the GDP as compared to the most wealthiest individuals in the developed world today. For instance, it is estimated that Rockefeller's personal fortune alone amounted to ~1.5% of the US' GDP. I wonder why this is the case. What changed and why don't we have a Rockefeller equivalent today? Is it perhaps because of greater total prosperity and increased complexity it is harder to dominate large verticals and possess such great personal wealth? Or is it something regulatory?

I'm not sure what to take away from this piece as it appears to be yet another blog post decrying the "easy way out" that seems prevalent (according to the author) within Silicon Valley. I would like to make a digression and point out that in almost every article of this kind that I've read on HN, the author takes pains in comparing a present "fad" to a seemingly hard yet commonly graspable internet success story. Something that most people in the audience could look at and admire while saying inwardly, "if only I did this I could surely build this." Again this might be true, but the point is that such blog posts or articles always contain such seemingly hard, but familiar examples instead of something like say Lightsail Energy or DWave. In the end in an awe inspiring tone and yet in a very graspable way the author concludes the article by stating that you, yes you, can do such great thing X and all you have to do is solve "hard" problems...

What most authors don't realize and that they often fail to grasp is that the fads are necessary. The failures are necessary. Sure it burns to be on the losing side of history, but it is important for that side to exist nonetheless. It is important to try out things nonetheless. Take the great internet fad example, Pets.com. Hindsight tells us that it's a terrible idea but we forget that people weren't excited by the fact that someone was selling pet food. They were excited that they were selling pet food through the internet and because we didn't have any reliable models of the time their reasoning told them that through scale such a thing might make a lot of money due to its reach. They were groping in the dark, but they were trying to hit upon the - at least from my perspective - vein of modern internet retail. They got it tragically and hilariously wrong, wiping out a large amount of investment, but we are all better off from this failure as an example. It helped us to hone our models. All of those failures from the unknown two people in some garage / living room to the big expensive messes like WebVan taught someone something and in general as a society we inched closer to a more refined understanding of things resulting in a better understanding of things. We now know for instance that X, Y, and Z are constraints in e-commerce and to be successful you need A, B, and C. Those things weren't readily deducible in the past, they are now apparent as a result of all of these "fads."

Is there any underlying thesis over here? I don't know, but what I do know is that maybe it is a bit unwise to be so quick to judge someone's efforts and work just because their motivations, direction, and/or the end result doesn't jive with your internal model. Just saying.

Hey,

Your description of a life on the run was quite interesting and I was wondering if I could ask a few questions - would it be possible to do that? (your profile does not have an email ID)

Your description is a much more precise way of looking at it. I was trying to reach for the same concept when I talked about fluid dynamics and the forces acting on the head cancelling out so that it rests at exactly the right distance, but I lacked the clarity to state it so neatly. Thanks!

>>> It is exceptionally challenging engineering. <<<

It's also very beautiful... When you look at something like that it's a bit like looking at a work of art - I don't know how to explain it but it is awe inspiring. I wonder how people end up working on such things... How do you get to the point where you can raise your sleeves and create a system as beautiful as this?

I'm sold, but I have an additional question though. Can you please explain why hard-drives follow a flying head approach? Why don't they just perpendicularly fix the reader above the disk, rotate the disk and then use a linear actuator to move the reader back and forth - exactly like optical drives?

I'm guessing that the status quo exists and that my suggestion is inherently flawed because of the precision required to maintain the head at 10 nm above the surface and as such letting fluid dynamics wrestle with gravity might do the trick for you (given that you can make the spindles in a precise manner that the forces cancel out in a way that ensures that the head is exactly at the desired distance above the drive)

That leads to another thought, would the following conjecture be in the realm of possibility? Imagine that you have coated the disk with mystery thing X - which is an etched semiconductor that does something very magical. When an incident beam of light strikes a point on the coating, it releases electrons, which are then controlled through magical mechanism Y etched on X to create a magnetic field that flips the bit. If you do this then you can remove all of this stuff and it might lead to some gains.

Nitrogen is also inert enough for such use, it's easily contained and it doesn't require such measures.

>>>Having a pressurized enclosure might make the drive more expensive as stronger materials need to be used, and it would also make it more dangerous in case of mishandling<<<

Actually containing He at all would require these measures anyway, as He diffuses through solids much faster than air and as such cannot be easily contained. To quote the wikipedia article;

>>>One industrial application for helium is leak detection. Because helium diffuses through solids three times faster than air, it is used as a tracer gas to detect leaks in high-vacuum equipment (such as cryogenic tanks) and high-pressure containers. The tested object is placed in a chamber, which is then evacuated and filled with helium. The helium that escapes through the leaks is detected by a sensitive device (helium mass spectrometer), even at the leak rates as small as 10−9 mbar·L/s (10−10 Pa·m3/s). The measurement procedure is normally automatic and is called helium integral test. A simpler procedure is to fill the tested object with helium and to manually search for leaks with a hand-held device.

Helium leaks through cracks should not be confused with gas permeation through a bulk material. While helium has documented permeation constants (thus a calculable permeation rate) through glasses, ceramics, and synthetic materials, inert gases such as helium will not permeate most bulk metals.<<<

Further, high pressure containers are dangerous as they might have an outward failure. That is unlikely to be the case with a drive that is at say .5 atm as the pressure is directed inwards, so the worst case over is most probably a drive filled with air or a slightly crumpled drive. (as a thought experiment think about how submarines implode instead of exploding when the hull encounters pressures beyond what it can handle)

I would like to understand why they are using helium at all instead of a several other plausible alternatives. The article offers the following rationale for using helium in this capacity;

>>>At one-seventh the density of air, helium produces less drag on the moving components of a drive - the spinning disk platters and actuator arms -- which translates into less friction and lower operating temperatures.<<<

This appears to be a slight misunderstanding as the density of any gas is variable and we have found that it is directly proportional to the unit weight of the substance, the pressure and inversely proportional to temperature. It is not fixed. They could have easily achieved the result in multiple ways. For instance, to reduce density it might have been easier to simply reduce pressure and then create a hermetically sealed chamber with a reasonably inert gas with low atomic or molecular mass such as nitrogen. This should have saved them a lot of trouble as helium is actually pretty hard to contain. An alternative nitrogen based solution would also have been good enough for a long enough period of time and it could have been achieved in a much less expensive manner. (they say in the article that successfully trapping helium for a long enough period of time required a decade of research. This is a relatively solved problem for gases such as nitrogen)

I am sure that the people at Western Digital can see something that I don't - I'm just curious as to what that insight is. What makes helium worth all of the trouble?

I have been obsessed with the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs since childhood and I've read the first hand accounts of astronauts, flight directors, engineers, administrators, and journalists covering the programs. What has consistently struck me is that although the programs were marketed - if you may - along the lines of their exciting thrust into the unknown, the programs were executed based upon a cold rational calculus that extended sabre rattling and the grounds of engagement beyond the surface of our planet.

Yes, for me it might be one of the greatest achievements of humanity, but for the people paying for the show all of that work was for one thing and one thing only; to claim the high ground swiftly and decisively before the enemy. For anyone with the ability to put a capsule into orbit and to retrieve it, also possessed the ability to spy on the other party, safely launch and drop a nuclear warhead into the other party's major cities, and one-up the enemy in a show of technical prowess and strength - something that would persuade those on the fence to pick the right side if it were. That's what these programs were sadly all about and that's why they were ended once the high ground was decisively seized.

The reason why there isn't an Apollo-esque or Manhattan-esque thrust towards landing on Mars is because there is no substantial tactical, economic, or political advantage to be gained from the act. Sure in the long term there will be amazing pay-offs if we open up the solar system and expand outwards, but right now in the minds of the people who are actually cutting the cheques that pay-off is too distant, too abstract, too foolhardy, and too unsettling to justify any kind of support.

Now some people choose to rue the cause behind our current Earth-bound civilization, but I think this is actually a good thing. It ensures that when we do manage to find a way to reach out to the stars we will do it for the right reasons and our exploration will continue from one frontier to another because of that fact.

I quite frankly don't understand why anyone would condemn such acts of espionage. They are not only essential for a nation state to function successfully, but they are also a far superior way for the US to maintain its hegemony as compared to using acts of brute force.

Now I do not condone Orwellian spying on the citizens of your own republic, but this really is their job and it's quite impressive that they're this good at it. Especially given the fact that historically the US has not been completely invested in espionage and has favoured building up capacity after key events and quickly dismantling the apparatus once the emergency has passed. What these scandals are offering is a glimpse into a dramatic shift in the way the US conducts its affairs and that in of itself is quite noteworthy.

>>> an old woman approached Duignan and said, “That’s not a movie, that’s a weapon against suicide.” <<<

It's amazing what a compelling movie can do. It's a delicate act, but when done correctly it encourages people to use their compassion and empathy as weapons for a cause. We're so attuned to human faces and voices that movies directly and emotionally engage us in ways that are far beyond mere paper.

My friend attempted to do something like this with homelessness. He actually found a camera, went out there, and just tried to talk to homeless people and helped them to get off the streets while chronicling their journey. Although it sounds simple and, well, uninteresting, what he captured on film ended up being a fascinating, compassionate look into this complex world. I really recommend it;

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/but-for-the-grace-of-god/i...

>>> Myself, I'm the guy who dropped out of school to support myself, no family support to fall back on (in fact, I support them now) and I've managed to overcome that and make a success of my life. <<<

I would love to hear your story, would it be possible for me to drop you a line? (your email ID isn't listed on your profile page)

Honestly? I'm a bit speechless that someone would behave in such a manner. I do not wish to engage in a conversation with you as what you are doing simply isn't humane. Neither can I or will I speak for Mr. Swartz, as I did not have the fortune of knowing him.

To quote you;

>>> It was only because this guy had academic and tech industry protectors who backed their precious manbaby that JSTOR and MIT were reluctant to pursue the issue themselves. <<<

I would argue that you are not a critic as the above statement is not a reasoned stance or observation; it is vitriol.

Giving respect to someone's life irrespective of the differences you may have had is not about right or wrong. No, it's more basic than that; it's about compassion.

I'm not sure what is more disturbing; the fact that someone is capable of disparaging a human being who has passed away and is incapable of self-defence, or the fact that some people apparently agree with the diatribe as witnessed by the upvotes.

I don't know about you nor can I or will I speak on the behalf of the real Mr. Swartz, but I've thrown away plenty of opportunities, made plenty of mistakes and done tons of dumb things. I just hope that when my time comes those mis-steps aren't what I'm remembered for.

If I'm correct then the central assertion behind your comment is that in this case obfuscation of identity occurred because Aaron was aware he was performing some malicious activity and sought to distance himself from the "crime" in question. The problem with that is that it requires the following implicit leaps to be made;

Underlying Leap; People only obfuscate their identity whilst doing malicious activity.

Contextual Leap 1; Aaron was aware that what he was doing was a federal crime.

Contextual Leap 2; He hatched a plan to perform that activity in context of knowing that his actions were a criminal activity

Leap 1 is decidedly false as people obfuscate their identity for all sorts of reasons including anonymity. What if Aaron was simply trying to be anonymous?

Leap 2 and leap 3 follow on the basis of what was going on inside his mind, and that is something we are not aware of, so let's not comment.

That said, here's my counter to your assertions, if indeed Aaron was as brilliant as his track record suggests, then do you not think he would have hatched a better way to obfuscate his identity if he knew it would cost him his entire fortune and deprive him of his freedom? Do you not think that he would have come up with an alternate, more anonymous plan such as accessing JSTOR at another library under a fake ID? Or have the common sense to pay some homeless guy $100 to put the laptop in their instead of doing it himself?

Of course this assumes that intelligence in one specific field translates to better planning capabilities in other, that he had the will and the ability to do so. However it can be demonstrated, given his track record, this is not an unreasonable assumption to make and that he was indeed capable of such planning if he assigned importance to it.

I don't usually engage with people in this manner, but may I ask why you feel that jacquesm is a troll? Especially a "known troll?" He seems to be a rather passionate person who is willing to stand up for his views.