What about trying to apply for a political asylum in some other country?
It would suck to be sitting in a court room some day and have yourself declared a flight risk because you said on hacker news a few years ago that you would absolutely be a flight risk.
On an unrelated note, I have always admired Socrates' response to Crito.
Very interesting. Especially in light of the recent "NSA spying on US citizens" articles. Someone had mentioned an interesting loophole that is exploited and that data can always be collected about anyone and stored. "Search" does not occur until a human acts to retrieve that data. Also it seems there is no historical limit on the data. So if at any point you become a "person of interest" it is theoretically possibly they could have access to all the data you ever generated since birth, if you happen to be 70 years old at the time.
So, how do you feel about a prosecutor that throws the book at a guy that wants nothing more than to improve the world and does what he can with the skills that he's given?
Does 35 years in prison and a ridiculous amount of money to defend yourself against a federal suit of which the aggrieved party wants no part make sense to you?
Do you feel that the prosecutor had 'no options' here or do you believe there was an element of discretion involved?
It would be really convenient if we could just say 'oh, Aaron killed himself because he was mentally ill', especially for all those in positions similar to yours. But as a person that is a lot more stable than Aaron I have to admit that I have no idea how I would react to being pushed by the system to this extent.
What should surprise us is that there are people that the system can waltz over like this that do not start to consider extreme options.