Tim Berners-Lee’s post about Aaron Swartz’s death. (Click on image to read.)

Aaron Swartz, one of the most gifted and interesting lads I’ve ever encountered, has committed suicide at the age of 26. At the moment, nobody knows why, but the obvious suspicion is that it might have had something to do with the fact that he was being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts for “wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer, in relation to downloading roughly 4 million academic journal articles from JSTOR”. If convicted, he would have faced a potential prison term of up to 35 years and a fine of up to $1 million. His motive for doing this was his belief — shared by many of us — that scholarly publications should be in the public domain.

All suicides are complicated and it’s possible that Aaron’s reasons may have been unconnected with the prosecution. But whatever the explanation, the fact is that the world — and the Internet — has lost one of its best and brightest stars. If you’ve never heard of him and wonder what the fuss is all about, then I suggest that this post from his blog will give you some idea of why we mourn his loss.

May he rest in peace.

LATER: Lovely obit by his friend Cory on BoingBoing.

Wonderful letter from Philip Greenspun to two college-age children of a friend.

Your dad says that you’re applying to college. Remember that nearly all careers in the U.S. now require a graduate degree. Nobody will ever ask where you went for undergrad. It is not especially helpful to go to a prestige university undergrad because the professors won’t know who you are and won’t be persuasive about getting you into grad school. Economists found that people admitted to Ivy League schools who chose to attend state schools instead ended up with the same income. Being smart enough to get accepted to a top school has some value but actually attending the top school doesn’t have any value compared to U. Mass. And the most prestigious schools are research universities (e.g., MIT, Stanford, Princeton, etc.). It isn’t really even part of a professor’s job to teach undergrads and, in fact, they do very poorly at teaching. Check my analysis of a lecture by one of Yale’s top professors within

http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/universities-and-economic-growth

You need a bachelor’s degree, of course, but don’t succumb to the undergraduate admissions industry’s efforts to convince you that your whole life depends on what happens in the next few months. I was an undergrad at George Washington University and MIT. My fellow students at MIT were smarter/more interesting. My professors at GWU were much more interested and engaged with me. I wouldn’t say that MIT was vastly better than GWU or vice versa.

I’m always amazed by how American families subscribe to the myth that just because an institution is a great research university then the tuition is, by definition, better. One of things that really marks out Oxbridge (and some of the other leading UK universities) is that they remain committed to providing good undergraduate teaching as well as to doing frontline research.

Er, Descartes’s Error, surely?

The Internet — in the sense of the network based on the TCP/IP family of protocols — is 30 years old today. Google asked Vint Cerf, who with Robert Kahn was co-designer of the system, to mark the anniversary with a blog post explaining how it came about.

TCP/IP was tested across the three types of networks developed by DARPA, and eventually was anointed as their new standard. In 1981, Jon Postel published a transition plan to migrate the 400 hosts of the ARPANET from the older NCP protocol to TCP/IP, including a deadline of January 1, 1983, after which point all hosts not switched would be cut off.

When the day came, it’s fair to say the main emotion was relief, especially amongst those system administrators racing against the clock. There were no grand celebrations—I can’t even find a photograph. The only visible mementos were the “I survived the TCP/IP switchover” pins proudly worn by those who went through the ordeal!

It’s typical of Vint that he should downplay the brilliance of the TCP idea, not to mention his own role in it. A fuller version of the story is told in my book on the history of the Net. As a taster, here’s the text of the relevant chapter.

Perceptive piece by Scott Gilbertson in The Register. Sample:

So far, despite Microsoft’s best efforts, the tablet world is still very much orbiting the twin stars of iOS and Android.

Having used a Samsung Windows 8 tablet for a few months, I have a theory as to why: you think you want a full desktop computer on your tablet – I certainly did — but you don’t. It simply doesn’t work.

In the case of Windows 8 you can blame some of the “not working” on the buggy, incomplete software that is Windows 8, but not all of the problems can be attributed to a shortcoming of touch APIs.

Much of what makes a full desktop interface terrible on a touch screen tablet is simply the whole desktop paradigm was never designed to be used on a tablet and it shows. The Metro interface for Windows 8 is excellent; different, but in my experience really well done.

Where Windows 8 on a tablet falls apart is when you try to bring the software keyboard to the traditional desktop interface on a tablet. The software keyboard takes up half the screen, which makes even simple tasks difficult. How to you rename a file and move it? First you tap it to select it, then you tap the button to bring up the keyboard, then you type, then you touch away the keyboard, then you touch the file again. It isn’t just awkward and slow; it’s downright antagonizing.

Yep.

From The Register:

The yacht was launched in October, with the team that worked on the custom-build project receiving a specially engraved iPod from the Jobs family. Starck, however, had been promised nine per cent of the estimated €150m cost of the boat as a commission, but the Jobs family claimed that Venus had not been as expensive as first planned and disputed the charge.

After the yacht completed sea trials and arrived the Port of Amsterdam earlier this month, Dutch bailiffs boarded her and put Venus in chains until the legal dispute was settled. The impounding order has now been lifted and a settlement achieved on Christmas Eve, Le Monde reports.

“The Venus is not under arrest,” said Gérard Moussault, the Dutch lawyer representing the Jobs family. “A solution has been found and a guarantee has been deposited in a bank account so that the boat can leave.” He declined comment on the exact amount.

Phew! That’s all right, then.

One of the really nice things about Christmas is that the phone stops ringing and the tide of work-related email recedes, leaving time for reading. Here’s what’s I’m into just now:

Artemis Cooper’s biography of Patrick Leigh Fermor. Like many people I’ve been fascinated by Fermor ever since reading his two great travel books — A Time of Gifts and Between the Woods and the Water. I’ve long been curious to know what the rest of his life was like. Now I’m finding out.

Sebastian Seung’s Connectome: How the Brain’s Wiring Makes Us Who We Are.

Larry Lessig’s new book, Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress – and a Plan to Stop It.

Age of Fracture,a terrific work of intellectual history and the first really convincing account I’ve come across of how and why the post-war liberal consensus ran out of steam and was replaced by the neo-con nonsense that has got us into our current mess.