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OccupySF IT Admins Using Pedal Power For Protest
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."
so do what load up on student loans and learn skill that do not help on the job?
It's best to just ignore them. You don't want to turn them into martyr's by beating them.
The youth of today are a bunch of whiny crybabies.
As opposed to their whiny hippie (grand)parents from 40-50 years ago?
Flower power.
i'm a firm believer that successful people are born from parents who beat and deprived their children, specifically the father.
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.
So I've been researching this OccupySF thing (I googled once, I'm not really too interested) and I have no idea what it is.
From the website I found it's about solidarity, which seems like an awfully nebulous concept to be campaigning for...
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
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.
The logical progression of this idea -- autonomy, self-sufficiency, self-ownership of resources, etc.-- leads toward the creation of an alternate, non-corporate, user-owned internet. I think that could be amazing.
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?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Can the protesters focus on winning instead of trying to be techie?? Such a classic mistake -- find something that sounds cool to do, then try to justify it.
Their efforts would be *much* more effective if they spent that time calling people to recruit more people to join. Cell phone batteries last a really long time these days, and can be recharged a zillion ways, all of which are easier than hooking up some sort of bike-converter-stepper-battery thing. I guess if they hook it up to the cloud and leverage some social media powered crowdsourcing they'd be all set.
The movement is doomed if they won't discipline themselves to do the hard, effective work. The fun, worthless stuff, like this, is a distraction. Maybe they could go ask John Lewis how he and SNCC changed american history while being dirt poor and without technology.
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.
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."
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
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.
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.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I would propose purchasing a couple of solar panels to do the same job. It may be a little bit more expensive, but not by much - PV prices have completely collapsed this year. Granted the solar panels won't work after dark...
I was going to say don't feed the trolls, but then I realized that this might be a case of Poe's Law :/
Since it was a different person than the original poster, I presume honesty -- trolls do not collaborate.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
It seems to me neither taking money way from rich people nor people not paying their student loans were responsible for creating "this situation" (I'm assuming you mean the ongoing bad economy). So while I agree the protests are unfocused and/or advocating extreme positions, at least their positions are extreme in the OPPOSITE direction from what got us into this mess.
"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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That's not what the geniuses on Fox News are saying.
Are you telling me those fine people at FOX NEWS are LYING?
Next you will tell me that trickle down is a lie...
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
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.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
"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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You're protesting the unethical treatment of protestors, and mythical animals.
It really sickens me to learn they might be wasting pink unicorn spunk. That's an incredibly rare substance, which is merely powering network gear instead of something more noble, like curing republicanitis (apply liberally).
Said ancestors also had reactionaries telling them to shut up and like the status quo....
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 have your backup power supply. The expensive part is buying the 50foot extension cord and loping it's ends off.
Sometimes boldness is in fashion. Sometimes only the brave will be bold.
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.
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...
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?
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.
I was utilizing hyperbole and using their `99%' rhetoric. I was under the impression that any human capable of abstract thought would recognize that I was not actually claiming such amazingly high birthrates. I suppose that I was wrong. I will try to be as painfully blunt as possible when making a point in the future, so that we can avoid such misunderstandings.
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.
I don't give three fourths of a fuck about what people study. If you want to be an artist, that's great. We need that to advance culture. But don't expect that that expensive wine making degree is going to get you work.
Steve Jobs famously dropped out of college in order to study calligraphy. Worked for him.
I bet he never expected that people pay him the salary to be free spirit and retire at 45 as a a calligrapher either.
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.
Again, I don't give a shit about what they do, but it isn't Wall St.'s fault if that doesn't pay very well.
Let me try again: I have no love for unregulated capitalism. In fact, I hate it, it is terrible and leads to awful inequality and eventual subjugation. I am not saying that poor are `bringing it on themselves', I am saying that the ``protesters'' are making the cause look bad by being entitled fucksticks.
I'm sorry, did I disagree with you? I'm sure that that hurt your feelings, so I won't take offense to you labeling me as a troll. I understand that it's your way of comforting yourself.
I should really read further down the thread before I make a reply. If I had known that you had already dismissed me as a troll, I wouldn't have bothered responding.
this: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/10/12/1025555/-Open-Letter-to-that-53-Guy
Where is the "+1 Douchebag" moderation?
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.
Some of my favourite people are from th US; Vonnegut, Chomsky, Bill Hicks.
That's a cartoon/comic supporting the protests, not an anti-protest message (not a gross-out image either, for that matter.)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
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 what many would consider to be a dead end job that I took to build career experience, but I have been exercising "people connections" to advance to better employment. (I am not lazy, and take pride in my work. I am not in the job I am in because of lack of quality, but because I lacked industry experience. That is no longer the case.)
I am fortunate that my employer can afford to hire low experience engineers due to his being an old tightwad.
If I had been saddled with obscene debt I would not have been able to take this job, as I wouldn't have been able to pay my bills. I was very adamant against taking any such loans, despite fairly constant pressure from student affairs at the local university. (I wasy paying my tuition by killing myself with moonlighting as a student assistant, donating plasma, and by holding paid study sessions in "hard" classes like chemistry. Having a mom with 3 degrees in hard sciences has some advantages it seems. Many students don't know how to actually study, and helping them do so for a fee paid off for me.)
I barely pulled my entrylevel job out of my rabbit hole. I can only imagine what the kids in SF have to deal with considering the H1B visa problems there.
I find two things very curious about the 'confusion' surrounding, and some of the reactions to, the protesters:
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.
In other words, you made wise decisions regarding your investment in your education and you're doing (mostly) alright. Creative destruction will always mean that people will have to adjust their skillsets over time as industries are always going to be in flux.
The number one issue with student debt are students who take on too much debt. That sounds tautological, but it is ultimately a personal choice. Education is an investment in your future earning power - it should be considered as such when selecting the school and cost of said school. I realize that in California (as an example), even the state schools are relatively expensive - but there are still ways to minimize costs relatively easily. For example, graduating in three years and spending the first year and a half at a much cheaper community college would reduce one's bills immensely (by over 50%, depending on the schools). You can turn that $50,000 bill into a $25,000 or $30,000 one - which is hardly a crippling debt load, even for a relatively low income job.
College prices are skyrocketing because students don't seem to care about price - there is some self-delusion that the cost doesn't matter. If students focused more on price and colleges actually had to compete on it, tuition prices would drop. Unfortunately, college is overly idealized and price is viewed as only a small factor in college selection choices. That's a cultural problem - which is something that isn't going to be fixed by the stroke of a legislative pen.
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?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's been downsized by corporate America, along with all the other types of ethics.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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. If I owned stocks, I would be sure that "thieves" couldn't borrow them to screw me with a "bear raid". From the link:
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
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 because there are basic urges far greater than how much you've got in the fucking bank.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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."
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
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 post was "murder"; is Slashdot forming AI?)
Observation bias (you wouldn't have even cared if it had been "banana" would you?), plus I think slashcode uses a word already on the page to decide what the captcha would be, so chances are the word is relevant.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
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 her using them in a powerful way. Dad's pay wasn't too great, as he was a police officer. My childhood was quite meager.)
Most college students first learn about fiscal responsibility while in college. Arguing that they should be culpable for horrifying debt because they agreed to it without realizing what they were agreeing to and without realising there are always options (if you are willing to work for them), is a bit like saying toddlers first learning about gravity while playing on a balcony deserve to have traumatic brain injury by choosing to try to come down to mommy by jumping.
I don't hold the students at fault for this failure, I hold the parents in that capacity.
While my childhood sucked, and I essentially wore rags, it did teach me the value of looking for the malt-o-meal bag, when surrounded by colorful boxes.
Having been impoverished, I am not so quick to ascribe the label of "lazy" to them. Not everyone is as fortunate as I am.
Time and time again, slashdot moderaters have shown to be insensitive clods who unfairly suppress free speech by their draconian moderating practices! It is time we the free thinking geeks of slash dot show these Neanderthals who is in charge! WE ARE THE 99 percent!
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.
... if any of those deadbeat socialists had gotten jobs and practiced personal responsibility, they'd have a generator to run things.
Oh, wait. Then they wouldn't be protesting, asking for the world to take care of them. I forgot.
Notice all the negative comments? Rather a lot even for Slash Dot.
This event must have the "powers that be" worried.
Do a Google search on Paid Posing. Rather scary.
It was their choice to attend university - and more than likely, it was there choice to get a crummy degree.
Would you consider PhD's in Biochemistry, Virology and so on to be crummy degrees? I've been talking to some friends in those fields, who are now basically unemployable because of the massive flood of Chinese postgrads. You see, Chinese postgrads don't make a fuss by pointing out that the seals on the biocontainment boxes are 12 months overdue for their quarterly safety tests. Chinese postgrads will fake the hours on their timesheets to keep the lab budget down, while working 70+ hours a week. Chinese postgrads don't need to have unemployment or healthcare benefits, because you just send them home if anything happens. Chinese postgrads can be ordered to do pretty much anything with the threat of revoking their visas, and banning them from ever re-entering America.
So, you know, anyone who spends 10+ years training themselves, then won't work for an hourly rate that works out less than a Walmart shelf stacker is totally too lazy for Real America. Poor choices indeed, you're saying they should never have aspired to do anything above part time retail jobs, because we have Chinese slaves to do the real, productive work for us now.
Of course, you might want to think about what happens when these Chinese students go home, with their training, and knowledge, leaving Americans with neither to pick up the pieces. Naahhh, *you* have a job, and American Idle on the Chinese made flat screen TV, why would you think about the future?
ummm.... they are marching on Washington
This is pretty much classic trolling shit, but for your information, in referencing Poe's Law I was implying that you were expressing opinions so idiotic that on most issues I would attribute them to trolling but because of the subject being discussed I felt there was a better than even chance that they were genuine. Thanks for confirming that you're a troll for me, my already low level of respect for humanity was in danger of dropping another notch there...
"Steve Jobs famously dropped out of college in order to study calligraphy. "
He studied calligraphy in a college. (While not being enrolled.)
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
Only whiners whine about whiners.
Think about it.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
I see, you still think the laws are made there. I mean, really made there, not only formally.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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 me sad some months ago that the biggest student protest that the UK has seen for decades was about... raising tuition fees. It's easy to get students to turn out to protest having to spend money, but that seems to be the only cause that really interests them these days.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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 what happens.
The main difference between what we call selfishness and what we call altruism is the scope. Someone acting altruistically improves the society in which they live, which eventually benefits them.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Greed is not just self-interest. Greed means putting self-interest above everything else, at least as far as material things are concerned.
Self interest is not bad. Putting self interest above everything else is.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
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 things, any of which would start us down a path to the overall goal of running this nation for the people and by the people...
1 corporations are not persons and do not have rights other than those explicitly granted in their corporate charter
2 return of the Glass-Steagall Act
3 a small transaction tax on all trades of stocks, bonds, commodities, and derivatives
4 minimum requirements for cash on hand for all financial institutions
5 restrictions on derivatives including bans on instruments that pose systemic risk
6 a public banking sector, run at the state and local level like in Germany, to provide reasonable and fair financing to people and businesses
7 progressive income taxes and capital gains that are more in line with historical periods of prosperity, like the '50s or '60s
8 real patent and copyright reform
9 single payer healthcare or a robust public insurance choice
10 ban all donations to elections or elected officials except limited and disclosed donations from individuals, screw that, publicly funded elections are better, make the bastards come to my neighborhood and talk me into voting for them and ban all bribes/donations
11 audit the Federal Reserve
12 stop waging wars, especially unnecessary wars
now once that is in place we can start talking about real reform.
-- QED
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.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
OccupyKC has a solar panel array
...The Illusion of Asymmetric Insight!
Adventure!
Excitement!
You'll think that you are smarter than the "other people"!
TLDR version.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
As non-idiots know, batteries are a so-called "energy storage device" that requires charging with a "generator".
But what would really be cool is a bike like this in a house that's off the grid. When your wind turbine isn't spinning, the sun is down and your battery reserves are low, you could still maintain essential house functions by just ... exercising. Lance Armstrong can generate 500 Watts of power for about an hour. A mere mortal can comfortably do 150 Watts for much longer intervals. That's certainly enough to power your wireless router, refrigerator/freezer, iPad and LED light bulb and still charge up some batteries.
We've got pedal power, along with solar, at Occupy Boston as well. I'm not sure about tech specifics, as I only saw it briefly in the media tent, but it's been a major help in keeping the media tent online. As for nerdy networking solutions, I came up with some plans, except that the luddites present make enacting certain solutions not really workable for the group, due to cutting them out of the process. It's seemed that so far, technological education for smaller working groups has been a better way forward than attempting to really get any of the larger groups processes digital (outside of the obvious media through wordpress).
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 that human capacity to make even non-humans members of the tribe) that the statement "We're all just greedy, even altruism is greed based upon delayed reward" does not explain human behavior.
But back to the point. A society based on greed would fail. I doubt even a bunch of smart people could make it work. At some point you have to trust that your neighbor isn't going to stab you in the back for his benefit, and he you. Without that, the whole fabric of society would collapse.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
If I were to generously say 50 people showed up at Occupy Regina, that would mean we had a whopping 0.05% turnout for a city of 100,000+.
Harper and his cronies win by default.
The opposing team never took the field.
I'm so depressed.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
What happened to lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps, rather than whining about others that have done well
What happened is that those people have realized that "lifting yourself up by your own bootstraps" is a line, and when it miraculously happens, it's 99/100 luck and only 1/100 determination (as in, out of 100 people who try hard, 1 succeeds - and I'm being generous here). More importantly, they've realized that none of the people persistently telling them to do so - be it Fox News talking heads or high-ranking Republicans or corporate bosses - have done it themselves.
Now, they just need to replace the car batteries with one's made from coconuts.
of the SF protest "people" where disgusting. If them having power supply problems in minimizing the number of pictures coming out of there I'm all for it.
OccupySF = Utter Disgust.
Just saying.
I'm not so diluted to think
More schooling for this boy! Unless you really meant watered-down.
...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 that human capacity to make even non-humans members of the tribe) that the statement "We're all just greedy, even altruism is greed based upon delayed reward" does not explain human behavior.
Oh but it does - it's just that evolution (ALL about the "delayed reward") cares more about groups, over longish periods, than about the level of individuals. Also evolution of societies, the one which determines which will become stronger and dominate, one way or another, over others (and note how much easier - also for present us, "civilised" people - it is to wage destruction on humans when they are different enough, mostly far away; and to see it as "just war" or some such)
...but since it was tapping into mechanisms directed for many millions of years mostly towards our "kins", it brought over other effects. And to what degree - heck, we basically worshipped our prey, in animist beliefs; which also still greatly influences present religions (holy blood & flesh, sacrifice, "lamb of god" origin, those are post-animism rituals of ex-hunter-gatherers)
...or so the hypothesis goes:
As for pets, we possibly see animals in a bit atypical & strange way, perhaps because the primates are usually mostly hunted upon or fighting (also killing) among their species - and, once we started serious hunts, we used, we externalised this aggression to our prey, to some other animals
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homo_Necans
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunting_hypothesis
Still, note how we generally value more the "smallish, cute and fluffy" kind of animals (curiously, somewhat reminiscent of typical primate, especially juvenile...). Plus it's strongly cultural conditioning - most people in our culture don't really care about cows for example, but go to one subcontinent... (where, in the general region, qualms against eating dogs or cats are often almost nil; the differences possibly stemming from much longer importance of agriculture)
Anyway, we most likely greatly contribute to what will be most rapid extinction events in geological record, I don't quite see it as indicative of how "caring" we are towards other lifeforms...
One that hath name thou can not otter