OccupySF IT Admins Using Pedal Power For Protest 202
99luftballon writes "The OccupySF team have been running an ad-hoc computer network on the streets of San Francisco without a steady power source, no Wi-Fi and even the occasional police raid. It turns out the best way to keep the lights on is car batteries and pedal power."
Meh: (Score:2)
I think I'd get hold of a small camp generator. They're small, pretty cheap and very quiet. Someone might even loan or donate one.
But, I guess that doesn't have the suffering for your cause appeal of pedaling a hacked up bike generator.
Given the food conversion efficiencies, fuel used in production, transport fuel usage for getting it to the city, the mentioned conversion inefficiency, etc. how carbon neutral that all is compared to just saying screw it and buying a little gasoline.
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The problem is that this is SF. There are emmissions control laws against such petrol generators. Many inhabitants don't even have petrol powered lawn mowers. Many even use old fashioned mechanical push powered rotary mowers, due to the taxes on owning gas mowers.
Generators would be hard to own in SF
Really? (Score:2)
A quick google search sure shows a lot of generator rental and sales places in San Francisco proper.
Must not be that hard to own.
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Why just not get an electric mower?
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Even if it's a bit more expensive, a well made push mower lasts a long long time and needs little maintenance. One up front cost and then nothing more. No need to store gasoline and oil, either.
For a small enough yard, it makes a lot of sense.
For a slightly larger one, a plug in electric mower makes sense.
Go solar (Score:2)
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No kidding. They're already going far too long without showers. Why make things worse?
Harbor Freight has a 45 watt solar kit for $180. Just add a battery and an auto adapter for your laptop and you're good to go. That'd be plenty for my little i7 notebook and charge a few phones even if I was sitting there all day playing FarmVille. And probably store enough power to run a 4G hotspot thru the night.
And this part really gets me:
However, one bright spark managed to cobble together a new converter that downstepped the 12 volt supply directly to five volts much more efficiently, using mail-order parts and a bit of ingenuity.
What mail-order parts? They could go to any electronics store in the area (
Really.... (Score:4, Insightful)
"The group were having to run a 12 volt supply, convert it to 150 AC and then back down to five volts for phones and the portable radios used to maintain emergency contact."
Glad to see that there are NO electronics engineers or other people that have a clue as to what they are doing.
12V run into inverters to make 120VAC (not the 150AC the writer failed to fact check) and then using wall chargers for the devices. Nobody had a fricking car charger for their phone? This is getting utterly comical.
I am glad to see this because it means in the SHTF situation, most of the populace will die horribly because they are far too uneducated about basics of life so they will pedal 40% more than they need to to make up for the power losses because they cant be bothered to think through what they are doing.
get some basic education people. learn about electricity, you fricking use it every day.
Dollar store solutions. (Score:3)
Another potential solution is to have someone park a car nearby and keep it running with a 20foot extension cord attached to the accessory plug. Put a car battery at the other end for when they have to drive away and you ha
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The expensive part is buying the 50foot extension cord and loping it's ends off.
The other expensive part is keeping a car idling for a long period of time...
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Re:Dollar store solutions. (Score:4, Funny)
Most expensive of all however would be th[e] impou[n]d fees. If you park on Market they'll tow your car in minutes even if there isn't a demonstration going on.
Just use one of those Smart cars... Kinda hard to tow a vehicle that's been tossed up in a tree or hidden in a porta-potty.
Re:Really.... (Score:5, Informative)
Bizarrely, the double conversion might be more efficient than a car charger. Car chargers are often just linear regulators, which means they're dropping 12v to 5v by dumping the difference to heat. They're only about 40% efficient.
An inverter is usually 80-90% efficient. AC switchmode power supplies (which is what USB wall-warts are) are 80-90% efficient. That's about 65-80% efficient, full-cycle. The inverter won't do well at low-load, but if they have a half-dozen wall warts on a plugstrip, they'll do better than your average car charger.
People recombining technologies to make a new thing isn't bad. From a philosophical standpoint, electrical engineers are doing the same thing - they're just recombining slightly lower-level technologies. Sure, a 12v-5v DC-DC converter will do better, but is it really worth the extra engineering effort when you already have the necessary higher-level components to build something that works?
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Re:Really.... (Score:5, Informative)
i've taken apart about 20 no-name car chargers now. linear regulators are too expensive, too much dissapted heat means you need expensive metal to make a heatsink. counter-intuitively, switching regulator designs are cheaper to produce. they are almost all based on the mc30463 or equivalent circuit.
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I've taken apart a couple and found nothing but a LM7805 and a couple caps. It runs hot as hell, but it puts out 500ma without melting.
But you're right, many of the better ones have at least a basic buck converter.
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I completely agree with that being a worthwhile thing to do, but what I really meant was whether it was if the present problem was big enough to be worth the investment of time. For this problem? Probably not. But if it was me, I'd do it anyway, because I enjoy doing and learning.
Re:Really.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Two paragraphs after the one you quoted from TFA: "However, one bright spark managed to cobble together a new converter that downstepped the 12 volt supply directly to five volts much more efficiently, using mail-order parts and a bit of ingenuity."
The other problem with stepping 12V DC down to 5V is that often, the only charger people have for their phone is the proprietary AC one. The industry has standardized on mini/micro USB lately, but most older phones will only charge with an AC adapter. And almost nobody will be willing to chop up their laptop's AC adapter plug to be able to hook it up to straight DC. So the universal power supply remains 120/240 V AC.
I do have to wonder though, given this report is from San Francisco and the type of people drawn to OWS, why hasn't anyone thought to set up a windmill or some sort of solar array (about 4-5 m^2 @ 0.15 capacity factor should generate as much power as people taking turns cycling 24/7). PV solar sucks in comparison to other electricity sources, but it's forte is off-the-grid applications like this.
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Indeed. I've been off-grid at various times, and my ace in the hole is a 2x2 solar panel with alligator clips charging a 12v automotive jumpstart box that had a built-in inverter. Charge it all day, power the laptop and charge the phone all night.
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My ace in the hole is a 45W harbor freight system... enough to run a netbook and my WISP connection via POE injector :D
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I do have to wonder though, given this report is from San Francisco and the type of people drawn to OWS, why hasn't anyone thought to set up a windmill or some sort of solar array (about 4-5 m^2 @ 0.15 capacity factor should generate as much power as people taking turns cycling 24/7). PV solar sucks in comparison to other electricity sources, but it's forte is off-the-grid applications like this.
The bike generator was donated, how much would such a solar panel cost? Plus, with a bike generator, the protesters don't have to leave in order to get an exercise it's a win-win situation. :)
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.
Won't work for a lot of laptops - they draw so much power that unless the want lots of current flowing through the DC lead, they often use higher voltages. 16V, 18V, 20V+ are fairly common voltages.
(Modern laptops can easily require 75W, 130W, 200+W of power. We're talking of 6-10+A in the DC lead...).
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I do have to wonder though, given this report is from San Francisco and the type of people drawn to OWS, why hasn't anyone thought to set up a windmill or some sort of solar array (about 4-5 m^2 @ 0.15 capacity factor should generate as much power as people taking turns cycling 24/7). PV solar sucks in comparison to other electricity sources, but it's forte is off-the-grid applications like this.
Because the cops come through and confiscate everything and throw it in the trash, so using expensive stuff is risky. The other day the police took a bunch of stuff from the OccupySF group and threw it in the garbage. The sanitation folks returned it to the protestors saying "we're in the 99% too."
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I get your point about pointless waste of energy through needless steps of conversion though. I'm still amazed at the number of people that have solar on their roof, battery storage, have the time to plan things and still have full mains power lighting. My dad had 12V lighting for a complete house in 1959 and the technology has moved on a bit since then guys. Then of course there's photovoltaics to run air conditioning. WTF?
Re:Really.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think it takes a degree to see people who were at least partially responsible for the meltdown getting their asses saved through government largess doing rather well, while the average person is worse off for it. We can debate a lot of things, but what we can't debate is that those who are most responsible are getting off rather easy; that's politicians and corporate leaders alike.
What's become pretty apparent to me is that while the protesters don't know shit about economics, neither, it appears, do those at the top of the food chain.
Other options... (Score:5, Interesting)
Probably the easiest and most sustainable setup would be to convert a port-a-potty into a biogas digester, and use it to run a small gas genset or even a thermoelectric generator. Of course that would make something of a target for police.
Some motorcycles or scooters have alternators, that can be used for battery charging. Or if size is an issue, there's always a small generator like the Honda EX350 that can be had for around $200.
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I think the easiest and most sustainable* setup is to simply get a bunch of deep cycle batteries and charge them from the mains. 1 human pedaling is maybe 50 watts if they're in average shape. 1 100 amp-hour 12-volt lead acid battery is 1200 watt-hours... Which is an entire 24-hour day's worth of pedaling.
They're set if someone can bring in a half-dozen batteries once a week by station wagon or hand dolly. But this isn't about practical. The bike is more fun and/or attention-getting.
* In any sense: I d
Did anyone read this article? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know this is /. but did anyone read the article? The second page is ridiculous.
“We’d love to get an Apple, because a lot of the software we’re used to is on the Mac,” What software does a protest need other than maybe a web browser to organize and spread your message? Where are all of these people's computers? I'm guessing sitting at home because they don't want to have it broken, stolen or lost...
Then they continue on to make a cellular hotspot or an android phone sound like complicated network infrastructure being managed by the protestors...
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Video editing apps so they can post to Youtube... That's my first guess.
Frankly, they could probably do JUST FINE uploading cell-phone videos and having a friend offsite to edit/caption/comment and whatnot.
Occupy Portland doing something similar (Score:2)
I saw minutes of a meeting being typed on computer and projected on white sheet w/computer and projector getting power from an exercise bike rig
Yeah, why aren't all exercise bikes generators? (Score:2)
But what would reall
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The youth of today are a bunch of whiny crybabies.
As opposed to their whiny hippie (grand)parents from 40-50 years ago?
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Yes, actually. Their whiny hippie grandparents went to prison rather than accept the draft. They broke segregation laws to push for equal rights and often ended up beaten or imprisoned as a result. They gave up their material possessions because they were at odds with their beliefs (not that I'd advocate this kind of lifestyle) and went to live in communes.
Today, their grandchildren are sipping Starbucks lattes while posting from their (parent-bought) MacBooks about the evils of corporations.
It made
Re:These people need to find jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
The American Work Ethic? I'd say they have it. They're pedaling to keep things going.
I've met many of those protesting. You know what? Many of them do have jobs. They do have lives. They're there anyway because they know things are messed up.
In my city the protestors are feeding the homeless. They're doing good works, and they're encouraging discussion about the future of our nation. There is no possible way this is a bad thing. Why are there so many unemployed out there? It isn't because the employed don't care, it's because the employed are trying to keep their jobs.
Pedal away, SF.
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Re:These people need to find jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh my! My webpost parser jammed up bad on this one! Either you are horribly deluded about the present situation and woefully ignorant of why freedom to assemble to address grievances is a constitutionally protected right, or you are a serious troll doing serious trolling.
In the case of the former, the problem is that the "american dream" you are alluding to no longer exists in the form you are implying; it is no longer possible to "pull one's self up by one's bootstraps" as you put it, due to artificial barriers to entry that are strongly enforced by power of law.
Beating the protesters to disperse them is a violation of their civil liberties, and the fact that their protest irritates you is simply a sign that it is working. A protest that does not illicit a reaction is a protest that means nothing. Simply because somebody is doing something you don't like is not reason to lynch them. Under that logic the protesters should drop their signs, and instead pick up ball bats and molotov cocktails and start firebombing rich people's houses and beating them bloody when they run out screaming from the fire.
So, as far as I can tell, the only whiny bitch I see here is the one whining about the protesters.
Re:These people need to find jobs. (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh my! My webpost parser jammed up bad on this one! Either you are horribly deluded about the present situation and woefully ignorant of why freedom to assemble to address grievances is a constitutionally protected right, or you are a serious troll doing serious trolling.
In the case of the former, the problem is that the "american dream" you are alluding to no longer exists in the form you are implying; it is no longer possible to "pull one's self up by one's bootstraps" as you put it, due to artificial barriers to entry that are strongly enforced by power of law.
I guess someone forgot to tell me. I had to drop out of high school in the 10th grade, because I was forced to support myself. I've since got my GED and paying for college courses out of pocket and will probably continue for the rest of my life (Non-degree seeking). Now, I'm a productive adult employing others and running a successful business. If that's not "pulling one's self up by one's bootstraps" I don't know what is. I'm not so diluted to think that everyone can do that, because no they can't. However, it is still possible.
I agree with you though. The right to assemble is very important and even if someone doesn't agree with the protesters they have should have the right to peacefully protest. However, a lot of their complaints seem to be silly and self severing.
Re:These people need to find jobs. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is also important to take the elapsed time since your "success" into account. The situation the protesters are protesting is the situation in the now, while the situation that gave rise to your success story is in the "then."
I agree that the movement seems nebulous. I attribute it to a total constellation of several effects, including but not limited to the following things:
The american school system sucks balls to the point that higher education is essential to become gainfully employed. The number of institutions offering that service has not appreciably grown to meet demand, causing prices to rise. Students leave colleges with thousands of dollars in debt for a slip of paper that essentially just says "I can finish what I start and am not an idiot who can't write his own name." Given the actual value of their degree in the job market, they are naturally angry to have been forced into having to take on mountains of debt to accomplish this simple milestone when a simple core competencies test would have sufficed.
Coupled with the proclevity for large corporations to offshore inexpensive and low training jobs to places like mexico, china, and india, there is a stark lack of entry level jobs for these debt laiden college grads to take to gain the much needed work histories they need to create careers.
The reasons why these trends are occuring is indeed because of systemic greed at many levels, so protesting against institutionalized greed sorta does make sense.
The greed of the accredation institutions motivates them to maintain the status quo of very high student tuition.
The greed of the public school system, coupled with absurd laws, makes it originate the need to require a degree for janitorial work.
The greed of multinationals makes them seek every possible means of squeezing profit from the market.
The greed of stockholders (and by proxy, wallstreet) drives the corporations to be ever more greedy to satisfy the already horribly unrealistic expectations of those stock holders. (Purpetual gains in profitability are not sustainable.)
So, the protest message as I can see it is "I have been victimized by the system you created. I had to sell many years of my life in the form of intractible debt JUST to be ABLE to work, only to have to fight for scraps with what are essentially slave laborers in other countries because of your insatiable greed. We want to be released from the burden of our unfair debts, and have the possibility of finding work without competing with HIB visas and slaves from china."
When you think about it, that doesn't really sound like such a terrible demand.
Re:These people need to find jobs. (Score:4, Insightful)
1. The 'confusion': Ignoring the stuff manufactured purely for rhetorical effect("Those crazy kids are just lazy communist anarchists who don't even know what they want!"), you don't really have to be able to trace every detail of exactly how American financial and labor systems have evolved to produce a practically banana-republic wealth distribution in order to take a look at the numbers and see that they, however the details work, definitely have. This is basic "black box" analysis here, the sort of thing that you use (formally or informally) all the time when dealing with complex situations. I don't understand why some people suddenly fall flat on that.
2. The "53%"-er response, and its ilk: Yes, everybody realizes that is, in fact, possible to make money and survive in the US without being a member in good standing of the plutocracy. Were that not the case, things would be a little noisier. That is orthogonal to the displeasure people feel at having to work increasingly hard for a steadily dwindling slice of the pie and no chance of the handy state handouts received by the people who need them least. This school of response isn't false, per se, it's just an enormous non-sequitor.
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I'm not so sure. I started in the job market as an IT professional before the dotcom bubble burst. At the time, computing and computer science related industries looked lucrative and promising. After the burst I was laid off and became hopelessly unemployed. I am lucky that there is a local major industry (aerospace), and used what money I did have to return to school and study to become an engineer. (A feat I would not habe been able to accomplish withou being very clever and creative.)
I currently have w
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This is essentially an argument based on reaping what you sew. In most cases I would agree with you, but most of these students lack realworld experiences that would alert them that debt in any form can be crippling.
I learned about the value of money the hard way as a child. (Despite mom having 3 degrees, she was a woman. She got her degrees concurrently, and paid for them simmilarly to how I did, but she worked as a sheet press operator at a local laundry. As a woman, there was a glass ceiling preventing
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I do not think you can build a society purely on greed. That seems to me to invite little more than a sort of hedonism. At some point you have to demonstrate a little altruism, otherwise how are you not essentially a sociopath?
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You can base a society on greed, but only if you select very intelligent people to be part of your society. Those people will realise that mutually beneficial cooperation will give better long-term results than short-term gains at the expense of others. They will also realise that it's easy in a largely trusting and cooperating society for sociopaths to gain an advantage by exploiting this in others and will institute controls to prevent this from happening.
Otherwise, see the tragedy of the commons for w
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There have long been debates in the psychology and animal behavioral communities about whether true altruism exists. But the one thing that is clear from observing human societies and the societies of our closest relatives, that whatever the ultimate nature of altruism, it does exist, at least within a kin group. There's no doubt we can be selfish and greedy, but there are no lack of stories of people risking life and limb for other people, not to mention for peoples' pets (where, I think, you'll find tha
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I don't buy it. There's enough evidence for altrusim in our nearest relatives that I think it is a real phenomenon. A society is held together by more than greed, and it's just greed, then that society will fling itself apart. There ought to be a sense of community, and not just everyone looking to cut other people down for spurious benefits. Like I said, if it's pure greed, then it's just sociopathy, but clearly it is not. A parent does not rush into a burning building to save her child, she does it bec
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I meant to say "A parent does not rush into a burning building to save her child to feel good, she does it because there are basic urges far greater than how much you've got in the fucking bank."
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at it's core, the exact same thing as greed.
Apples are fruit, fruits are not apples. That said, a society based on self-interest would work because it is not in my self-interest to embezzle all the money from my company. Of course, a society based on self-interest would require people smart enough to realize that it's not in their self-interest to embezzle all the money from their company, and/or at least not crazy enough to believe they can get away with it.
(interesting side note: the captcha for this po
Wall Street insiders steal from outsiders (Score:2)
There's a difference between "greed" as motivation to improve yourself to create more value for others, and "greed" as motivation to grow your bank account any way you can.
For example: Sheared By The Shorts: How Short Sellers Fleece Investors [wordpress.com]. If I owned stocks, I would be sure that "thieves" couldn't borrow them to screw me with a "bear raid". From the link:
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That is the lie that has been pulled over your eyes.
Admiring the rich, successful people and thinking you could make it too if only you work hard enough - and then most often inevitably blaming and loathing yourself when you don't, that's the great American swindle.
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It's been downsized by corporate America, along with all the other types of ethics.
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Only whiners whine about whiners.
Think about it.
Re:so do what load up on student loans and learn s (Score:5, Insightful)
99% of them are stupid whores who have 3 kids,
Actually fertility and marriage rates have been uniformly declining for decades, especially among college graduates -- it's a serious demographic problem, and if all of these people had three kids then Social Security and Medicare would probably be solvent, unchanged, for the next hundred years.
got a $100,000 degree in some bullshit subject like Black Studies,
While I cannot quote statistics, most corporate officers and successful entrepreneurs I've interacted with generally had undergraduate degrees in some kind of "soft" liberal arts, like American studies, history, political science, and anthropology.
Steve Jobs famously dropped out of college in order to study calligraphy. Worked for him.
and then wonder why no one wants to hire them and that a nonprofit that gives out needles to dopeheads doesn't pay $100K a year.
Needle exchanges save lives. And I know a lot of people involved in non-profits, doing things they love and believe in, getting paid jack and making no complaints.
The problem aren't the people who want $100k a year to distribute needles. The problem are the people who think that anyone who chooses to not be a millionaire is a chump, and should be exploited, because they "bring it on themselves."
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Since it was a different person than the original poster, I presume honesty -- trolls do not collaborate.
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"Steve Jobs famously dropped out of college in order to study calligraphy. "
He studied calligraphy in a college. (While not being enrolled.)
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"99% of them are stupid whores who have 3 kids, got a $100,000 degree in some bullshit subject like Black Studies, "
And 100% of the people that say things like that are completely uneducated idiots.
Yes I am calling you an UNEDUCATED IDIOT. Come on back when you actually have a clue as to what you are talking about.
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Lol. I have a social work degree, and that woman is an idiot. Who the hell do you think is going to PAY you to support hairy clams?
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Relevant:
http://i.imgur.com/FIZuV.png
FWIW... (Score:2)
That's a cartoon/comic supporting the protests, not an anti-protest message (not a gross-out image either, for that matter.)
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Also relevant:
http://i.imgur.com/3N3v6.jpg [imgur.com]
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Interesting)
One effect of being well organised is that only a few need to be taken out for the movement to fail. Taken out can include bribery, change of attitude, killing, etc.
Not having one key demand makes it very hard for the power structure to undermine the key message.
It is often considered to be one of the strengths of the movement that saw NZ buck its dominating partners (Britian and US) and become the first country in the world to go nuclear free. There were attempts by the authorities to undermine the power structure, only they could not find it as there was no heircachial power pyramid for them to comprehend.
Many other example can be quoted but the real message is the effect - a group with similar goals but no strong structure can be a very effectivce counter to a strong power structure with rigid form and plentiful resources.
Hopefully Occupy Wall Street will remain somewaht amophus. Tight enough for people to agree they support it, loose enough to be hard for the indrisal-military combine and allies (banking and oil included) to comprehend.
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Would you consider the lack of a hierarchical structure to be helpful for the open-source movement?
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
From the website I found it's about solidarity, which seems like an awfully nebulous concept to be campaigning for...
Yeah, did nothing for Poland, the Warsaw Pact, and the Soviet Union.
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Informative)
Well, it did nothing for the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union.
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It's driving force is a desire for equality, where equality means that you get free money from the government.
To be fair, I think the driving force is more like frustration. While they don't seem to be focusing that feeling very much, I think it's reasonable to be frustrated with a lot of things in the world, including a lot of economic things. In some ways I think that the "we're angry and we don't know what to do" attitude is more rational than the more commonly espoused "we're angry and that means we should vote for [insert name of newest doppelganger candidate representing a major political party and promisin
Re:Uh... (Score:4)
I understand they are frustrated, but they are so completely unfocused, or focused like laser on expanding the same problems that created this situation in the first place, that you can't define it.
But the one common theme is that they want to take money away from people who have a lot of it. And not pay their student loans.
I am frustrated, too - that a bunch of people are trashing things my tax dollars pay for.
Not the same problems, different ones (Score:3)
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Total BS. Most of these guys aren't saying (just) take from the rich. They *are* saying that the rich have been gaming the rules because they have money to pay for politicians.
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And since you are on the topic, check out who and which party gets the most contributions from Wall Street Fat cats. I bet you don't have the guts to post the results.
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Which party? When did that become relevant? Do you think this is some kind of fake grass roots thing to favor one party over another?
I don't think so. I think the people protesting well understand that game is rigged on all sides.
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"take money away from people who have a lot of it"??
When the fuck did paying your fair share of taxes become akin to theft?
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I have a job, and I'm successful at it, but it's clear that a number of things we're doing right now aren't working and I'm frustrated that no one is proposing anything other than things that will advance their party platform. So here's MY proposal:
We push for a constitutional amendment to require a national confidence vote every 50 years, starting now. The ballot will consist of a list of American institutions (e.g. congress, the executive branch, the judicial branch, the RNC and DNC, and any other institu
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps for some. For others it might be better explained as a desire to be free from the defacto serfdom that comes with bearing the label of "consumer."
Say for instance, with "owning" a ps3, but being dictated to about what you can use it for, or what services you connect it to.
Or perhaps in regard to being held hostage by the fallout of the market manipulation that comes about by driving speculation trends by wallstreet? (Eg, perhaps some people might not like having the equities in their 401k devalue radically after some random wallstreet firm shorts millions in stock based on a tiny deviation from expected value.)
The protest appears to be about this radical imbalance of power, and the flagrant diregard these organizations and individuals have for the consequences of their greed motivated activities.
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's driving force is a desire for equality, where equality means that you get free money from the government.
Or maybe it just means that rich people should have to pay their own way too.
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Informative)
A brilliant lie. Almost believable, with that tiny grain of truth in the middle. Of course, the top 10% of earners pay 70% of income taxes. Which account for well under half of the government's revenues. Most of the rest comes from Social Security payroll taxes, of which the vast majority is paid by the middle class.
Once you account for that, you quickly find that the top 10% earn about 45% of the income and pay about 45% of the taxes. Except for one small problem. No one is out there saying "We are the 90%". The top 1% of earners have 35% of the wealth and pay only around 25% of the taxes.
And then, of course, you need to account for disposable income. Someone in the bottom quintile has no disposable income at all. If you charge them an extra dollar in taxes, you have to give them an extra dollar in food stamps or else let them starve. Someone in the middle quintile has some disposable income, but not much. Most of their paycheck immediately goes to their mortgage and car payments and insurance premiums and grocery bills and so on. They pay what they can, but higher taxes can cause them serious hardship.
In the top 1%, nearly all wealth is disposable. These people could live in luxury on just 10% of their incomes... often on just 1%. Raising their marginal tax rate by 5 percentage points would have no real impact on their quality of life, while giving us enough extra money to (and this is just an example, not a recommendation) double the funding of the Department of Education.
And I haven't even started talking about sales taxes yet....
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What I'm wondering is why all these lickspittles defending the rich all post anonymously. It's almost as if they don't want to be called on their bullshit at a later date.
Re:Uh... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's driving force is a desire for equality, where equality means that you get free money from the government.
Well that's how FOX News viewers would perceive it, the demonstrations come out of frustration with the state of the current financial system, and the fact that the people who caused it are very well off whilst the middle class is being obliterated.
People aren't protesting to get free stuff, but to express their disagreement with a country where 1% of the population control 40% of the wealth and growing, being able to use this to influence legislation in order to keep it that way.
So yeah, maybe you should get a clue before making incorrect assumptions/uninformed statements.
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People aren't protesting to get free stuff, but to express their disagreement with a country where 1% of the population control 40% of the wealth and growing, being able to use this to influence legislation in order to keep it that way.
Very nicely put.
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Add to that, a society where the entire notion of value is completely screwed up. A big chunk of my income comes from writing software. Some of what I've written is used by millions of people, some is used by medical research to improve the speed of things like protein folding simulations. I periodically get job offers from banks telling me I could be making five to ten times as much money doing something that contributes nothing to society other than allowing a small group of people to skim money off th
Re:Uh... (Score:5, Informative)
The TARP was a TINY fraction of the free money the banks got. They paid back the TARP money they got directly but they didn't even have to pay back all the money that was funnelled through AIG directly in to their pockets, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche bank in particular. If AIG has been allowed to fail and those tax payer billions hadn't been funnelled through AIG, Goldman Sachs and the rest would have failed.
The banks are still getting free money by the truck loads.
First, they got to unload hundreds of billions in toxic assets on the Fed in exchange for fresh green backs at 100 cents on the dollar.
The Fed has their interest rates to banks set at approximately zero. The economists term for this is "financial repression", where interest rates are substantially below inflation. Its designed to completely screw people who save to bail out debtors including banks. It especially screws seniors who live on CD interest. It is designed to force them to gamble on the stock market to just stay even. Many seniors who remember the '29 crash dont want to play the stock market.
There are also still trillions in loan guarantees that will dealry cost someone if those assets crater which some of will if there is a double dip.
And the Fed constantly pumps hundreds of billions in short term, low interest loans, to all sorts of troubled banks, all the time through the discount window.
Companies like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley are pure gamblers, they pocket the profits when they win. They should NEVER be allowed to come to the U.S. taxpayer or the Fed when they lose.
Bottom line, banks get their money at zero percent. The poor get their money from payday loans at 30% and up.
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Well, as long as they have a clear cut action program, what could go wrong?
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I walk past the group everyday, just today about noon in fact. They are camped right in front of the federal reserve building on main and market. They mostly try to bum cigarettes and money, and leave trash everywhere. Some protest.
I heard French revolution started same way
and then heads started rolling :)
Re:Or car batteries + masturbating over The Bell J (Score:5, Funny)
Or car batteries and goblin farts. Car batteries and pixie snot. Car batteries and invisible pink unicorn spunk. See where I'm going with this?
Thankfully, no.
But I do... (Score:2)
The OP seems to assume two things.
First, that the main issue here is the "greenness" of the power source.
It is not. It's the independence and mobility of the power source as protesters can't just plug their devices in the socket in the sidewalk AND they have already been raided several times by the police.
Second, OP seems to assume that car batteries are charged by cars, i.e. by burning fossil fuel - which is not very "green".
From TFA:
A bicycle generator donated by Rock the Bike runs 24/7, with volunteers usually lasting 30 minutes before handing off to the next fresh set of legs.
The electricity thus generated runs into three car batteries to maintain a backup power supply, but the amount of juice that a single bike can generate is only enough to power a single laptop.
So there... It IS pretty green too.
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As non-idiots know, batteries are a so-called "energy storage device" that requires charging with a "generator".
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Can the protesters focus on winning instead of trying to be techie??
The media didn't even cover the protests until they put up videos of cops beating them on Youtube. Now, with this story, they have more coverage.
Diversity is helping them.
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Interesting that you brought up the point about 'wasting time'. Tell us more about their time usage both before and after they set up the computer station.
Re:waste of time (Score:4, Informative)
Can the protesters focus on winning instead of trying to be techie??
Winning what? Nobody knows what they actually want, including the protesters. Their message ranges anywhere from simply giving unions a bigger piece of the pie to outright Marxism.
Hardly a waste of time (Score:3, Informative)
To the Politicians and the 1%: This occupation is its own demand.
Since we don’t need permission to claim what is already ours, we do not have a list of demands to give you. There is no specific thing you can do in order to make us “go away”. And the last thing we want is for you to preserve your power, to reinforce your role as the ruling classes in our society.
It may not be obvious to you, but the decisions you make daily, as well as this system you are a part of, these things are not working for us. Our goal is bring power back where it belongs, with the people, so we can fix what politicians and corporations have screwed up.
Stand aside!
To the Media: Our struggle won’t fit in a 15 second soundbite.
This occupation is a beginning, and we have a long way to go. And while we have much in common, we believe the people are stronger united behind many banners, rather than a single one. We want to make it very clear that Occupy Oakland is not putting forward leaders, tactical or strategic directives, or a uniform message or political platform.
One of the ways I disagree with that statement is I believe there are concrete things that can be done now that will make a big difference in our lives. Without even taking a breath, I can rattle off a dozen of thing
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Except the website says nothing. "Stand aside!" ? "We are not putting forth..." ? Ah, I still don't know what their goal is; it sounds as clear as a company's mission statement.
Now YOU DID point out many points that have merit. The problem is it is YOUR take on the situation. And a fine take it is.
However, the more I read and watch about the Occupiers, all I get is Corporations/Capitalist Bad, Wall St. Bad, Healthcare Good, Top 1% Bad, Need More Jobs. The only one that has an end state is to tax the R
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What's with the armchair criticism? There's not a lot of space there. I walk past these guys every day: they've got a lot of things to communicate, and that means keeping cell phones and laptops charged for full time and part time protesters. There are good technical reasons for their choice: many of us are interested in clean energy and are protesting in part corporate pursuit of fossil fuels at all costs. They've lots of human energy and electrical outlets, not so much. The list goes on.
Or it could be the case of... (Score:2)
...The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight! [youarenotsosmart.com]
Adventure!
Excitement!
You'll think that you are smarter than the "other people"!
TLDR version. [wikipedia.org]