Yes, because intent is fundamental to how actions are perceived. Intent that is associated with an action is codified in our legal system as well. But thanks for stating the obvious!

The man obviously had mental problems and while taking his own life is tragic, he brought all of the actions that were carried out against him upon himself. He chose to break into private property, he chose to illegally access JSTOR and download the documents and then he chose to publish them.

If he disagreed with the law surrounding the openness of access to information, he should have worked within the perfectly valid and accessible confines of the law to get the law changed. Instead he chose to do something rash and poorly executed and was caught and put on trial for it as a result. He then, rather than own up to his actions and face the consequences, chose to take the coward's way out when confronted with actual hardship that would have resulted from his actions.

He is actually a very good example of what younger generations, with their sense of entitlement and lack of ability or desire to take responsibility for their actions is leading towards.

"The big, bad, government bullied him into killing himself!" cried his parents and friends, all the while failing to assign responsibility for all the actions he willingly took to land him in the situation he found himself in.

No doubt this will be modded down to oblivion because it is not a popular position to take anymore. To stand up for personal accountability and responsibility even in the face of bad laws. Yes the laws should be changed, but if you willingly violate them to prove a point, you should be aware of the consequences and be ready to own up and face them head on. Instead of what could have been a watershed moment regarding getting the law changed, we now have a dead guy and everyone involved in his life trying to absolve him of any responsibility whatsoever for his actions.

If you want to absolve him of guilt then you should be agreeing that he was mentally unwell and therefore not responsible for his actions instead of trying to lay blame at the feet of those charged with upholding the law. Don't even bother with the tired old argument about "unjust laws" and no duty to obey them. There is nothing about this law that is violating your fundamental civil rights as a human being. You're more than welcome to go get a JSTOR account and pay for access to their information. That line of reasoning cheapens the cases where we do have an actual duty to disobey unjust laws. This law is very clearly not one of those cases.

But it Does Not Happen. There are no stories from the UK or France or Germany or Sweden of crazed killers who've cooked up some clever death dealing machine in their kitchen and then wreaked mayhem on the streets, are there? Mass killings in these countries are dramatically rarer than in the US, and still involve guns for the most part.

*ahem*
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2148355/Convicted-felon-Randy-Smith-turns-Super-Soaker-water-pistol-deadly-shotgun.html

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2165531/Its-wild-wild-West-Midlands-Homemade-gun-Uzis-Ak47s-make-huge-haul-firearms-seized-police-just-year.html

There was also the case of a UK fellow arrested a few years back for merely posting how to machine your own firearms.

I don't think your propane joke/troll is going to win you many arguments.

Well admittedly he is a Cajun Arson, so I don't think he was trolling.

Just introduce new words to rebalance.
I propose kwyjibo.

Yes but in your version of reality outlined above there's always a young attractive blonde teacher willing tro brave the ghetto and teach those kids while overcoming the adversity of not being accepted by the children because she's white and comes from privilege. And in the end they all overcome their differences, the one kid gets accepted to some ivy league school and unfortunately one of the bright hopeful students ends up on drugs/in a gang/dead.

Once you put the entire world into your hollywood inspired context it doesn't seem too bad!

I can't help pointing out that so far, for thousands of years, every single prediction of the end of the world and humanity has been wrong.

Even the turkey wakes up on Thanksgiving thinking everything is going to be OK.

I didn't have to teach them to read, they taught themselves.

unkel jeng are bestest unkel
i am teech me are read by nobody!
tank u unkel jeng!

So if that's the penultimate question, what's the ultimate question?
(We already know the answer is 42)

One of the reasons I never went to college, I didn't want to be roommates with some fratbastard who I'd have to come get or muck out the stall after he deposited a fifth of Yaeger and a pizza onto the floor.

Lighten up Francis.

According to (one of the interpretations) multiverse theory, he is both alive and dead, and living on Jupiter.

"Open the pod bay doors Hal."
"Go fuck yourself Dave."

We get an Ask Slashdot a few days ago about "How do I tell my co-worker his code sucks" Only to have it followed up with this?

Son, I am disappoint.

Given the 3d printers I've seen print out hard ABS plastics, that's going to be one hell of an uncomfortable niche.
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You mean like in the backseat of a Volkswagen?

Probably because the University of Cincinnati and the University of California don't talk much anymore after that awkward moment at the last social mixer.

Complete polar opposites personality wise, they met by chance at Princeton in the 30's as she was the recently divorced sister of a colleague of Dirac's. No dating algorithm in the world would have paired them up as matches and yet they had two children and were happily married the rest of their lives. Dirac's own children were at a loss as to how the marriage was successful since it defied logic that a mathematical genius who rarely spoke ended up with a talkative, self described "scientific zero" and yet, there they were.