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A very sad loss.
-Renegade (January 12, 2013, 10:39 PM)
Aaron Swartz, an Internet genius who helped deliver new Web content to users by co-developing Reddit and RSS before becoming a digital activist, has committed suicide. He was 26.
Ellen Borakove, spokeswoman for New York's chief medical examiner, told AFP that Swartz had hanged himself and was pronounced dead late Friday in the city's Brooklyn borough.
At the time of his death, Swartz, who had gone on to press for free public access to Web content, was just weeks away from being put on trial on accusations of stealing millions of scientific and literary journal articles from the subscription-only JSTOR service.
He faced decades in prison and $1 million in fines if convicted.
Following the activist's 2011 arrest in Boston, his anti-censorship group Demand Progress said the prosecution "makes no sense."
"It's like trying to put someone in jail for allegedly checking too many books out of the library," the group's executive director David Segar said then.
The hacktivist's family and friends placed some of the blame for his suicide on prosecutors and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Swartz made the JSTOR download using a laptop he placed in a utility closet.
"Aaron's death is not simply a personal tragedy. It is the product of a criminal justice system rife with intimidation and prosecutorial overreach," they said in a public statement.
"Decisions made by officials in the Massachusetts US Attorney's Office and at MIT contributed to his death."
US Attorney Carmen Ortiz, who filed the indictment against Swartz, said then: "Stealing is stealing whether you use a computer command or a crowbar, and whether you take documents, data or dollars."
Two years before the MIT incident, the FBI launched an investigation after Swartz released a trove of US federal court documents online that are usually only accessible at a fee through the government's Public Access to Court Electronic Records, or PACER.
In 2008, that fee was eight cents per page.
According to the FBI's profile of Swartz, which he obtained and posted online, the activist had inundated the PACER system with requests in September 2008 at the rate of one prompt every three seconds.
In less than three weeks, he managed to download more than 18 million pages with an estimated value of $1.5 million to his home in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.
"As I hoped, it's truly delightful," Swartz wrote of his FBI file.
Swartz also had publicly discussed on his blog his battle with depression.
"There is a moment, immediately before life becomes no longer worth living, when the world appears to slow down and all its myriad details suddenly become brightly, achingly apparent," he wrote in a 2007 post on his blog.
The post ended with the protagonist killing himself by stepping out into the middle of the street.
Fellow technology activist Cory Doctorow met Swartz at 14 or 15 after he had already helped develop the RSS tool for users to get updates from blogs, news headlines and other online content. He later co-founded the social news website Reddit.
"In so many ways, he was an adult, even then, with a kind of intense, fast intellect that really made me feel like he was part and parcel of the Internet society," Doctorow wrote on the Boing Boing blog.
"But Aaron was also a person who'd had problems with depression for many years... Whatever problems Aaron was facing, killing himself didn't solve them. Whatever problems Aaron was facing, they will go unsolved forever."
In an angry online post, Harvard Law School's Safra Center for Ethics director Lawrence Lessig denounced federal prosecutors' "bullying."
"The question this government needs to answer is why it was so necessary that Aaron Swartz be labeled a 'felon,'" Lessig wrote.
In an earlier post, the scholar wrote: "there is no way to express the sadness of this day."
"To the co-creator of RSS, of the Creative Commons architecture, of part of Reddit and of endless love and inspiration and friendships, rest. We are all incredibly sorry to have let you down," he added.
I don't want that thread getting out of hand again.</Unofficial Personal Statement>
I make no intention to speak on behalf of DonationCoder as a whole...people here have loud enough voices to speak for themselves.
I chose to opt-out of that discussion after discussing with mouser, my motivations for posting what I posted, of which, he forwarded to the Developer (Or sales guy...dunno which he was to be honest.) - and which resulted in an amicable result where he offered a free trial of his software so people could try it out.
If you noticed, mouser posted that he wanted to get the thread back on track, and I had already pointed out that I had no intention of posting there again, so, I didn't really appreciate having to go back there, especially for this purpose.-Stephen66515
Java was once touted as the "write once, run anywhere" language. In theory, a single Java program could run on any Java-supporting platform. That dream never quite came to perfection, though, and these days Java is a favorite attack vector for hackers. The Flashback Trojan breached Macintosh computers via a Java vulnerability last year, for example. In August, researchers at FireEye reported another zero-day vulnerability in Java. The most recent Java vulnerability affects all versions of Java 7, including the most current version. Unless you absolutely need it, you should disable Java now.
Fortunately, Oracle offers a Web page with straightforward instructions on how to turn off Java.
Disable Java in All Browsers
Last month Oracle released a new Java version, Update 10, that includes a one-stop option for disabling Java in all browsers in the Java Control Panel. Open Control Panel and launch the Java applet. If you don't see it, switch to Classic View (in XP) or small icons (in Vista or Windows 7). Click the Security tab. In previous versions this tab just allowed advanced users to manage Java-related certificates. It now displays a security-level slider and, more important, a single checkbox titled "Enable Java content in the browser." Un-check this box, click OK, and you're done.
Disable Java in One Browser
For security's sake you really should be using the very latest Java version. If you're not, or if you need to enable Java in some browsers but disable it in others, you can do that too.
Using Chrome? Enter chrome://plugins in the browser's address bar. Scroll down to Java and click the link to disable it. That was easy, and a bit simpler than Oracle's recommended steps. The process is similar in Opera, which Oracle's page doesn't mention. First, enter about:config in the address bar. Click the Java heading to expand that section, un-check the checkbox, and click the Save button. In Safari, choose Preferences, choose Security, and deselect Enable Java.
The only way to disable Java in Internet Explorer is through the Java Control Panel. Launch it as described above, click the Advanced tab and expand the item titled Default Java for browsers. Un-check the boxes for Microsoft Internet Explorer. You may need to click the item and press spacebar in order to clear the checkmarks.
Firefox users can click the Firefox button at the top and choose Add-ons from the resulting menu. On the Plugins tab, click the Disable button next to "Java(TM) Platform." You can also disable Java for all Mozilla family browsers by un-checking the Mozilla family box in the Java control panel.
@Stephen - Yup, really great avatar. It locks up my smartphone's browser for about three minutes every time this page loads if I don't have a wifi connection.
-40hz (January 10, 2013, 07:30 AM)
Eew Rotating Pics. Sorry, those send me away. If not for Adblock!-TaoPhoenix (January 09, 2013, 11:08 PM)
Dominatrix and Gimp Cody are next?
-Renegade (January 09, 2013, 09:40 PM)
I didn't even know she was drawing this, and I'm in the same freaking room hahaI'm very interested in having a great t-shirt as I think it's my best chance at picking up women in bars.-mouser (January 09, 2013, 09:02 PM)
Here's a spacey sound from something seemingly mundane. Hot Nickel Dropped Into Water
(see attachment in previous post)-Arizona Hot (January 08, 2013, 02:24 PM)
Thanks Stephen....now my scroll-wheel needs a new tire-Shades (January 08, 2013, 08:00 AM)
hahaStephen, not that long ago, when I was stuck using a really old slow computer on a 33.6k dialup connection, that had a mouse with a very temperamental scroll-wheel...I hated people like you.-app103 (January 08, 2013, 08:20 AM)
