general

Lawrence Lessig has a good rundown of the Aaron Swartz death-by-prosecutor case.
First, there are theories about what Swartz planned to do with the scholarly articles he downloaded from JSTOR but we don't really know.
Second, his motives don't ultimately matter because it was a civil contract case -- for breach of JSTOR's terms-of-service -- and JSTOR said it had no intention of suing him.
So how did federal prosecutors get involved, hounding this poor guy to death?
Lessig explains:

...American law does not typically make the breach of a contract a felony. Instead, contract law typically requires the complaining party to prove that it was actually harmed. No harm, no foul. And in this case, JSTOR -- the only plausible entity "harmed" by Aaron's acts -- pled "no foul." JSTOR did not want Swartz prosecuted. It settled any possible civil claims against Swartz with the simple promise that he return what he had downloaded. Swartz did. JSTOR went away.

But the government did not. In the weeks before his death, the government reaffirmed what they had been insisting upon for the 18 months before: jail, a felony conviction, and a bankrupting fine, or else Swartz was going to face a bankrupting trial.

This rule of American law is absurd -- especially in a world where prosecutors can't be trusted to make reasoned and proportionate judgments about who should be labeled a felon and who should not. A breach of contract is a breach of contract. It is not an act of treason. It is not a threat to the realm. [...]

Computer law is different, however, because Congress didn't really understand this "wild west" (as the network was called when Congress passed the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act in 1986), and because geeks make them uncomfortable. For 25 years, the CFAA has given federal prosecutors almost unbridled discretion to bully practically anyone using a computer network in ways the government doesn't like. It does that by essentially criminalizing the violations of a site's "terms of service" in combination with "obtain[ing] anything of" at least $5,000 in value. And even if in the vast majority of cases prosecutors exercised that discretion, well, in this case the abuse of that discretion has ended in tragedy. [...]

Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren has introduced a bill that would de-criminalize contract breaches under the CFAA. Likely it won't pass because the movie and music monopolists need their prosecutors to scare people away from downloading, sharing, and other non-criminal activities.

More on this.

If, 15 years ago, America Online had announced, "we have a product that we believe is competitive with Google called Graph Search, which allows you to search all of AOL," they would have been laughed off the web.
The New AOL just announced its own Graph Search (it's actually called that) and tech pundit Andrew Leonard stroked his beard and said:

If Facebook’s past is prologue, a vocal minority will complain loudly for a week, the majority will start avidly using the tool, and six months later, Graph Search will feel like an indispensable part of our daily life.

That's supposed to be ironic, maybe, possibly.

Disquiet posted some videos from the performance event at Apex Art I participated in last November. ("Speculative Sound Performance with Disquiet Junto," in conjunction with the exhibition "As Real As It Gets," organized by Rob Walker.) I was excited to be involved but didn't think my tunes needed video documentation. As I explained on Disquiet, in the comments:

Not that anyone’s asking but I requested that Apex take down my video because it didn’t really add anything. My songs were performed on the Octatrack groovebox exactly as you hear them on my website. Hearing them in person gave the added “oomph” of a quality PA system but I could just as easily have been sitting in a chair in the audience pressing the “play” button. The video took the music straight off the soundboard so the only thing you were getting in that documentation was a permanent image of how I looked from a certain camera angle while the music was playing. Boring! It was great (and encouraging) for me to hear the tunes in a room with actual listeners, in a program of music by others whose contributions I enjoyed. But going through the motions of traditional performance makes me uncomfortable and I wonder if other ambient and electronic musicians have thoughts on how we should present ourselves physically, or whether it’s necessary at all, as part of the process of re-inventing music.

No one answered so this would appear to be my issue alone. Although not too long ago there were these groups Drexciya and Underground Resistance that de-personalized their music and didn't participate in the traditional star-making commodity structures of publicity photos and performance videos showing the musicians' faces furiously concentrating as genius welled up from their fingertips. In the YouTube era we are all conditioned to act out so we can be the next Justin Bieber and eventually be infinitely documented throwing up onstage.

Funny/sickening story from the Tampa Bay Times about Gov. Rick Scott's discreet return of a photo-op "rescue dog" after he won the election.
While on the campaign trail, he posted a picture of the Labrador retriever and had a Facebook contest to name the animal.
His FB friends chose the name of one of the worst American presidents.
After the election, reporters started asking what happened to Reagan the dog. The governor's press spokesmen got very testy and evasive, prompting one reporter to ask if the dog had been killed!
Finally someone asked the Governor directly and he admitted that Reagan had some behavioral issues and "wouldn't get better." Staffers then confirmed that Reagan had been returned to All Pets Grooming and Boarding in Naples.

via eschaton

Paul Krugman was the only honest columnist at the New York Times during the Bush era but lately he is tying himself in knots trying to justify Obama, whose politics smell just like his predecessor's. On Naked Capitalism Lambert Strether writes:

I cannot help but think that Krugman must also be waging a tremendous internal battle between his picture of this man he seems to like and trust to do the right thing [Obama], and the picture of human economic devastation in all forms that he must see through the windows of the Acela, which can but tell him that this man is doing nothing like the right thing. This battle — and yes, “Will Doctor Freud please pick up the white courtesy phone?” — can only force its way to the surface with formulations like Obama “wussing out” (others say “cave”). But the possibility that Obama is doing exactly what believes in, cannot be allowed to reach a conscious level, let alone expressed.

Commenter Max424 has some gallows fun with Strether's prognosis in this parody of a recent Bill Moyers interview with Krugman:

Professor, thanks for coming.

“Thanks for having me.”

Yesterday, looking out the port side of your train, you saw two Predator drones firing Hellfire missiles at selected American targets. What did you think of this?

“Well, I’m not entirely sure if the Republican dominated House of Representatives should be forcing Obama to do this. But at the same time, the collateral damage done to infrastructure might be a good thing.”

A good thing?

“Think about it. We’re in a liquidity trap, which means, the Fed can only hand out aspirin. But our depressed economy requires heavy doses of proscribed medications; we need, so to speak, a more potent palliative for our damaged national psyche.

“Now, if we have potholes, and filling them in would be good, it makes sense to assume that bomb holes, which are bigger, would be even better.”

So responsibility for the strikes doesn’t matter, as the strikes are always beneficial?

“Yes and no. The thing to remember is, without the Obama Drone Check, Republicans would use Predators to kill teachers and other public sector workers, and we know that killing teachers is not only wrong, it is a proven anti-stimulative. We need more teachers, not less.”

Where are we headed, Professor?

“If we can find the political will to repair the potholes and the bomb holes, to re-hire the teachers that Obama was forced to fire, or to replace the dead ones when the un-checked Republicans are in charge, it would be significant step toward what I call, a New Deal for 21st century.”

A new New Deal. Is this really achievable?

“Despite the fact that rising ocean levels are going to wipe out New York City by 2030, I believe it is, because I’m hopeful.”